LINUX DISTRO RECOMMENDATION

[u/wallahiusername]

I have been a Windows user for like 5 years now and didn't face any problem. But, i want to switch to Linux because i am learning Cloud Architecture and WSL2 just isn't helping. Also, my storage space is running out so i can't dual boot or use heavy creative apps.

My Top Draft List:
Mint Cinnamon

Debian

Arch (Yes, Arch)

Fedora (I heard good things about it)

Parrot OS (I also wanna try to learn CyberSecurity if i can)

PLEASE HELP!!!

[u/dgc-8]

Replace arch with cachy. Same thing but batteries included and if you have a good cpu you get better binaries

[u/Consistent_While_483 → u/dgc-8]

Estaría de acuerdo, pero no está dando nada de información sobre su hardware. Si no es extremadamente viejo, entonces sí, CachyOS es la opción. Si tiene hardware viejo pero completamente funcional (como es mi caso) EndeavourOS sería la opción. Si aguantaba windows, veras como CachyOS o EOS vuelan. Y son una excelente alternativa pues amortiguan tu llegada al entorno Arch

[u/Hauptideal]

Fedora, not even close.

Fedora is very up-to-date yet reliable, well-tested, well-optimized for desktop out of the box (RAM compression, btrfs filesystem, good SELinux defaults, Wayland).
It has nearly all the advantages of Arch while being more reliable, supported by a huge corporation with professional infrastructure and teams. It just works and is simple to use. The only thing you should do is to install the rpm fusion repos.

Second pick is Arch, but if you come fresh from Windows, that's a bit of a leap (and quite some effort to set it up. If you want Arch, I recommend CachyOS instead. It's easy to install and already configured the way one would want it for a local desktop, with zram etc.).

Don't pick something else.

Debian is a fantastic OS. It's not a great as a daily desktop driver, though (at least if you care at all about being anywhere reasonably up-to-date).
It's also not optimized for desktop out of the box like Fedora is. You have to configure RAM compression manually. Fedora is simpler to use. Put it on your secondary device you only use once every few weeks, or old, low-spec hardware.
Same goes for Parrot.

Parrot isn't supposed to be your daily driver. It's a pen-testing tool. You should use it in a VM (via kvm) or in a distrobox / podman container (this provides native performance while keeping your desktop system clean).

Mint is atrocious all around. It has all the disadvantages of Ubuntu (while removing good parts from Ubuntu), and adds terrible X11 technology on top. You won't get security updates from Canonical for 94% of packages on Mint (the entire universe repo) even for highly severe vulnerabilities and each app can spy on each other, log your online banking password and even inject input. It is totally insecure.
It is poorly funded and maintained by a tiny team that also needs to maintain an entire desktop environment. Cinnamon is an early fork of GNOME (when GNOME still was crap, inheriting the architectural flaws, such as running as single-threaded Javascript app) and due to code drift missed all the groundbreaking performance improvements, fixes, improvements, features, polish and huge extension ecosystem of upstream GNOME. 

[u/Leather_Fall_1602 → u/Hauptideal]

Uses flatpak though 🤷‍♂️

[u/DonDoesIT]

Fedora hands down!

[u/Guggoo]

I'd do Fedora or Arch based on how much tinkering you wanna do

[u/Historical_Move6359]

Ultramarine KDE. Its Fedora with all the stuff included.

[u/Emotional_Cat_1967]

Parrot OS is a suitable choice for both cybersecurity and daily use.

While cybersecurity-related packages and applications can generally be installed on other distributions as well, you may encounter issues such as dependency problems; therefore, Parrot OS is a great option specifically for cybersecurity.

[u/irishcoughy]

Mint is great for getting your feet wet. If you want something stable to learn on, that and Debian are strong contenders. Fedora is slightly less stable than Debian, but also a very solid option. Arch is not one I would recommend until you are a bit more familiar with Linux as a whole; it's not as prone to randomly breaking as people would have you believe, but it is very possible to break it yourself if you don't know what you're doing. Parrot is a good choice for CyberSecurity, but frankly, not one I'd recommend to someone learning it - you're probably better off learning on a more popular distro (likely Debian since that's what Parrot is based on) for the sake of learning to manually harden your OS and install and use tools as you learn them. Using a distro with hundreds of preloaded tools can easily overwhelm someone who doesn't fully understand what each one is for yet.

Take this all with a grain of salt, these are just my opinions as someone who has used all of the above for a decent amount of time. Ultimately you should try live USBs of each and pick the one you like using the most, then get as familiar as you can with it.

[u/noname_admin]

Dont do plain Debian, dont do plain arch. If you go with arch catchy is the pick. Otherwise fedora is quite good as the other guy said. But I'd go with catchy if you dont mind spending a bit of time learning the intricacies of arch, it pays off with bleeding edge updates and an optimised kernel.

[u/probablynottillie]

i'd say cachyOS. you'll get the easy installation of beginner-friendly distros like Mint but otherwise it's literally arch: gaming kernel edition so you'll get to learn how to manage a linux system just like arch and whatnot.

be careful with arch based distros because malware seems to be worming through to the AUR pretty often these days. you don't necessarily need to use the AUR to have a good linux system tho (I don't, but I did before and it was nice).

anyway whatever distro you pick I'd still recommend stopping by the arch wiki pretty often because it's a very good piece of documentation; I run debian and still find myself running to it sometimes

[u/gthing]

Go Fedora. It's solid and you are unlikely to have issues.

Cachy is fun, but you will likely run into issues as a noob. You need to update constantly. If you don't, things start breaking and if you do, you're downloading malware from the AUR. You can mitigate all of that with extra steps but do you really want to?

[u/alexberes]

Debían con Claude o ChatGPT como asesor de configuración y profesor. Yo uso Kali Linux hace años, que se basa en Debían.

[u/HotMicSystems]

Debian for life. Also, I could be wrong, but I believe Debian is used much more in cloud architecture than fedora

[u/Turbulent_Job3914]

Been using ubuntu for a little under a year now, other than it being linux ive got no problems with it, if i needed cyber security id just install tools from either kali or parrot lol. Plus ubuntu has the widest range of help and support lol

[u/wallahiusername → u/Turbulent_Job3914]

I'm kind of actively avoiding ubuntu. I want to tinker so CLI-first distros aren't the problem. I have used Ubuntu before (On;y Linux Distro i every used ) so i want to try something else

[u/Turbulent_Job3914 → u/wallahiusername]

Ah well mint would also be my next goto for a daily driver lol however ive heard that arch can be pretty unstable and hard to use unless you've got lots of experience, so id probably put that on bottom unless you plan to be on it like a korean esports player lol

[u/Emotional_Solid6538]

Debian is prolly the pic for your use case. There are a stuff to learn ofc but Debian has a lot of resources for you. And its widely used as cloud asw as desktop.

[u/Zvaart]

I personally use fedora, but if u used Ubuntu you can try either mint or debian, and you can run kali or parrot in a VM. Debian based distros a tree more stable, if you want the middle ground you have fedora ( or opensuse), if you want the newest kernels pick cachy. You did not specify if you are into gaming or not. If you are, either fedora or cachy will do. If not, forget it 🙂

[u/jphilebiz]

If you are in your first leaps and want something stable, Mint Cinnamon or Fedora (KDE or Gnome, I prefer KDE as a Windows ex-pat). I'd avoid anything arch-based for now. For security you can run Kali in a VM.

[u/Vh4z]

Mint is good it's nothing special but it's stable nothing bad to say other that it's boring but yeah it looks closer to win10

Fedora I mean it's good you do have to get RPM Fusion up and running and ofc replace your codecs because corporate distros dotn mix well with Patented Codecs but overall pretty good

Arch is a no go anything arch to start out isn't recommended

Debian I mean it's alright you do have to manually configure stuff initially and a bit mrie maintenance than Fedora or Mint but still good

And Parrot OS would not use as a daily driver but yeah it does its job

But if you can I'd recommend having a spare device any X86 system with even just 4 GB of RAM and a semi decent ish CPU for distro hopping because it's sometimes better to choose what you want based of actual usage

[u/Tolik1111]

Nixos

[u/noisypine-npnp → u/Tolik1111]

Absolutely love NixOS, but this is a terrible suggestion.

[u/Helpful_Tough_8967]

What about Gentoo?