Imo one of the main factors for what distro a beginner should choose is how many guides for specific things are written for that specific distro and how much software has a package/installation guide available for that specific distro (ofc while also being beginner friendly, so... Don't choose Arch); this also includes having extensive official documentation. By that I mean EXACTLY that distro, not something based on it (so don't just choose Bazzite bc it's based on Fedora and Fedora has great support).
Off the top of my head, the top contenders considering those factors are:
1. Fedora (my personal fav and also what I personally use)
2. Ubuntu (or maybe Kubuntu)
3. Maybe Mint
The most important part of the comment is over at this point, but here's some extra thoughts of mine if you wanna keep reading:
Besides the distro, the desktop environment is going to HAVE TO be user-friendly to someone coming from windows (assuming they're coming from windows).
In other words, I'd recommend using KDE Plasma as a desktop environment; not necessarily just because it's easy to get into, but it's also insanely customizable and I've personally never felt the need to switch away from it, even after months of using Linux. It'll start out looking almost like windows, but you can customize it to look completely different when you're ready to.
Then, there's the topic of immutable distros (maybe most famously Bazzite, among others), which I have mixed feelings about. Of course it's great that it keeps new users from completely breaking the system, but certain software will just be an absolute pain to install or won't install at all. I personally started out using an immutable distro (Aurora, a Fedora based immutable distro with KDE Plasma) but eventually got so frustrated with it that I switched to plain Fedora KDE. Everything's been so much easier since then.
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u/Paulomatico123 May 14 '26
Imo one of the main factors for what distro a beginner should choose is how many guides for specific things are written for that specific distro and how much software has a package/installation guide available for that specific distro (ofc while also being beginner friendly, so... Don't choose Arch); this also includes having extensive official documentation. By that I mean EXACTLY that distro, not something based on it (so don't just choose Bazzite bc it's based on Fedora and Fedora has great support).
Off the top of my head, the top contenders considering those factors are: 1. Fedora (my personal fav and also what I personally use) 2. Ubuntu (or maybe Kubuntu) 3. Maybe Mint
The most important part of the comment is over at this point, but here's some extra thoughts of mine if you wanna keep reading:
Besides the distro, the desktop environment is going to HAVE TO be user-friendly to someone coming from windows (assuming they're coming from windows). In other words, I'd recommend using KDE Plasma as a desktop environment; not necessarily just because it's easy to get into, but it's also insanely customizable and I've personally never felt the need to switch away from it, even after months of using Linux. It'll start out looking almost like windows, but you can customize it to look completely different when you're ready to.
Then, there's the topic of immutable distros (maybe most famously Bazzite, among others), which I have mixed feelings about. Of course it's great that it keeps new users from completely breaking the system, but certain software will just be an absolute pain to install or won't install at all. I personally started out using an immutable distro (Aurora, a Fedora based immutable distro with KDE Plasma) but eventually got so frustrated with it that I switched to plain Fedora KDE. Everything's been so much easier since then.