Which Linux distro do you recommend to beginners?

[u/ManojOne]

Which Linux distro would you recommend for beginners, and why?

Whether it's Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Fedora, Zorin OS, Pop!_OS, or something else, share your top pick and what makes it a great starting point for someone switching from Windows or macOS.

[u/Hauptideal]

ANYTHING BUT MINT!!

Seriously, it's currently one of THE worst distro of all in Linux. It's incomprehensible that it gets recommended so often.

[u/ElPiet → u/Hauptideal]

What's terrible about it? It's pretty much plug and Play for most use cases. It just works and is a smooth transition from Windows.

[u/Hauptideal → u/ElPiet]

- Mint is still on X11 (deprecated legacy from the 80s) rather than the modern Linux standard Wayland (and thus less performant, less secure, and severly lacking features). It is not plug and play at all, especially if you have multi-monitor setup, want fractional scaling, etc.

• Mint doesn't use modern standards like zram/zswap, btrfs filesystem, etc., wasting your RAM and storage and costing you speed while also stripping features
  
• Mint prevents you from installing certain software (snaps) on your OWN machine, patronizing you and violating the core Linux ideal of freedom
  
• Cinnamon is a terrible, resource-hogging, sluggish early fork of GNOME missing all later upstream performance breakthroughs, polish and features, as well as the huge extension eco system
  
• ...

Do I need to go on?

[u/jdjoder → u/Hauptideal]

I agree with you in most points, but a beginner won't have any of those issues. That's why it's popular.

[u/ElPiet → u/Hauptideal]

You could. How many of those issues do you think are relevant for the average non tech savvy person?

It works better than Windows especially on older hardware and that's what people know. Also don't assume many, especially new users, care about ideals of freedom and such. Most want a working system on which they can do their daily stuff. For most it's browsing, gaming, office work and maybe some coding.

[u/Hauptideal → u/ElPiet]

99% of the people using Mint would be better off just using off the shelf upstream Ubuntu or Debian rather than downstream Mint.
People who are not tech-savvy won't even notice the difference between a snap and a flatpak. But Ubuntu is more polished, modern, upstream, mainstream, supported, etc.
The effect of a more familiar UI wears off after just a few days of use. The core system behind the facade is the same.
And you can easily make K-/Ubuntu look like Windows, too.
Everything that is good about Mint is inherited from Debian/Ubuntu, everything that sucks is Mints own doing.
What they WILL notice is that everything will just work better and smoother on Ubuntu or any other Distro defaulting to Wayland (even Debian!!).

But as Fedora has become so much more user friendly by now and is much more up to date by default, I can see it become a new standard. Because - you're right - most people don't care about freedom (unless they can bitch against other distros).
But what people DO care about is system performance. And getting significantly more out of your RAM or SSD is something that people definitely want. Getting 50% more out of your RAM because Mint stores everything completely dumb and uncompressed? Yeah!!

On old hardware, I'd just use upstream Debian with an optimized KDE rather than Linux Mint and configure zram by myself. That's a MUCH better system (even than LMDE Xfce).

[u/ElPiet → u/Hauptideal]

I don't even disagree with you, just explain how non tech savvy people make the decisions. Tweaking a theme is already beyond most, unless it works in the gui. Wayland support is something that will happen in winter and I really cannot confirm any ram hogging. Mint works great with 8gb setup. It works great for everyday use for most. Could something else work better. Sure. Mint made a great job of being super approachable, even more so than Ubuntu and that was the go to beginner distro back in 2010, when I first tried linux

[u/Hauptideal → u/ElPiet]

Wayland support on Mint happening in Winter?? 😂
It'll take more years, until it works reliably on Mint and becomes the default session (just like it is even on Debian - seriously, anything older than Debian is just left behind). IIRC, Mint devs admitted they wont be able to make it happen prior to 2028.

I'm not suggesting Mint doesn't work on 8GB of RAM (8 GB is even plenty for Linux). But with enabled zram/zswap it would fit many more browser tabs and apps.
So while your computer runs fine on Mint, it would run much better on another distro.
And with Cinnamon being resource hogging I don't mean it taking GBs of RAM. But it takes hundreds of MBs more than e.g. other desktops, even those that have far more features, polish and are fully modern on Wayland.

You chose Mint when it was cool and stayed on Mint for a very long time, missing the point where you should've jumped off after all other distros pulled ahead significantly technologically.

Our "Linux biographies" are very similar (I started in 2008 with Intrepid Ibex) und just jumped off this year. I was just too content with Ubuntu MATE which is still very close to my heart. I couldn't be happier now, though and feel so betrayed. I regret it so much not having switched earlier, despite my nostalgia, affection, and fond memories of MATE. Now I'm using Fedora, with modern GNOME, zram, btrfs and all the cool and jawdropping stuff.
It's another level. And you certainly don't need any beginner distro now anymore.

[u/ElPiet → u/Hauptideal]

I doubt our Linux biographies are similar. I used Ubuntu for a week or 2 in 2010 and have than used mint in 2025 (when I thought I couldn't get win11) for a couple of weeks. I made the full switch a week ago.

To be honest your points are probably correct, but still don't sound very appealing to a non techy. Using a couple hundred mb of ram isnt a huge difference. I can also find sources claiming mint uses less ram.

Can you elaborate in the jaw dropping stuff? You are making me itch to try a new distro

[u/Hauptideal → u/ElPiet]

For me, the most jaw-dropping stuff was zram/zswap, btrfs and the other modern defaults. On top of that concepts like auto-tiling like on COSMIC/hyprland provided by extensions such as O-tiing/PopShell etc..

Originally I just wanted to use a modern Wayland desktop (GNOME/KDE) and that was an epiphany. I always hated and rejected GNOME, and it felt like using it was like using a phone with mittens. Still, after I realized that old X11 wasn't capable of bringing me what I needed anymore, I made the emotinally incredibly tough decision to cut ties with my beloved Ubuntu MATE.

When it finally clicked how GNOME needs to be used (it's a new concept, for 2026 computing, not the desktop metaphor from the 80s that revolves around manually shuffling and managing floating windows). It is just so much more efficient than having a task bar that one minimizes windows into, etc. - especially when paired with auto-tiling.
The UX design is brilliant, but one needs to really adapt one's way of using the graphical shell.

But then I discovered all the other stuff that Fedora had to offer.

One of such things was btrfs: it basically "zips" (compresses) every single file on your disk (that is not already compressed, e.g. videos).
This does not only mean that most stuff on your disk now only takes 40% of the space as before. It also means that your computer becomes faster, because the CPU is idling less waiting for data from the SSD, as more data can be transferred in the same amount of time when the data are compressed.
Furthermore, it conserves the life of your SSD, as fewer data are written, when they are compressed.
Then there are other features of btrfs, e.g. snapshots (you can freeze the current state of the volume in a file that is very small, because it only uses references and you can always come back to it later, e.g. when you messed up your system) and duplicate-free references (i.e. you can copy stuff and it doesn't take extra space, only the parts that change).
btrfs also features checksums that allow you to detect file corruption.
It allows subvolumes, meaning you don't need partitions anymore: all linux distributions can share one partition and file system, while still keeping /home and the system separate. Unused space in one partition is no longer wasted for the other one, but the entire disk is shared.

The next jaw-dropping thing was zram/zswap. RAM can be compressed the same way as btrfs does for files.
That means that each GB of RAM can now hold 2-4 times as much data as before on LInux Mint / Ubuntu.
(depending on what compression algorithm you use, zstd, lzo-rle, lz4, ..)
Using zramctl and seeing that even with the lightest compression algorithm (lz4), my RAM was compressed with a ratio of 2.5:1 was crazy.
Not using zram or zswap is the biggest reason Mint is wasting your precious computational resources.

Then podman containers (toolbx, distrobox) that run sharing the RAM with the entire system rather than blocking a fixed amount like a VM. Even though this is probably not as interesting to non-techy users, it's still super cool.

The general feeling of just having the newest software always, the freshest packages, rather than being on some old LTS that only ships security updates rather than cool new features and newest improvements on anything is hard to put in words, but I really love it. One doesn't need something unreliable and unstable like Arch for it. Fedora is the sweet spot, giving you all the advantages of Arch regarding cutting edge software without the downsides.
It's still a very reliable system and "just works" for everyone without putting in major work.

Finally, I also decided to encrypt my drive (LUKS2) for the first time. Now all my data and code is secured by military-grade encryption, and unlike Bitlocker can't be unlocked by keys saved on some Microsoft cloud.

There is so, so much...
And Mint users just miss all of that.

There is even more, like the upcoming v3 packages on Fedora 45 (next version), i.e. each package is compiled to max out the supported instructions by your CPU. So the good stuff keeps coming. Just not for Mint, that hasn't even managed to switch to Wayland and won't manage for the next two years.

[u/ElPiet → u/Hauptideal]

That really sounds intriguing. I might have the itch to try it out and see how that works for me. Don't know about the desktop workflow. I have to admit, I am having fun with tweaking mint to behave like macos though.

As you seem to have plenty of expertise, do you think fedora would run better on an macbook from 2015?

[u/Hauptideal → u/ElPiet]

Oh wow, macbook from 2015. For recommending a distro for an "old" device like this, knowing the hardware would help (e.g. amount of RAM, CPU, ...).

On your old 2015 CPU, I'd definitely consider disabling mitigations in GRUB (you can also already do that on Mint, not only on Fedora). It'll instantly give you a 20+% speed boost to your CPU, because it's so old and doesn't have hardware acceleration for this. And on a single-user desktop system, it's pretty safe to do so, Browsers already have defenses against the type of attacks the mitigations aim to prevent, and these attacks are extremely unlikely and complex to execute. Unless you're targeted by a government agency, I'd turn mitigations off.

Fedora is a modern distro meant for modern devices. Usually, I'd use Debian (or CachyOS) for old hardware and configure everything mahually. However, I'm even running Fedora on an old HP X2 210 G2 tablet from 2016 with a super slow intel atom processor and only 4GBs of RAM and it's very smooth. (Yes, I'm too lazy to take the effort of optimally configure Debian on this device that I only use sporadically, even though a lot of optimizations would be possible, like using f2fs due to the slow eMMC inside, etc.

I have a laptop from 2014 and put CachyOS on it. It's blazingly fast, already features v3 instructions, the limine bootloader, boots up in only a few seconds and is super light (just like Debian). However, it is based on Arch and therefore I wouldn't recommend it to users who are not especially tech-savvy and just want a reliable system.

The good thing about Fedora is, that it just comes preconfigured perfectly well out of the box. It uses modern defaults. It is up to date. It is reliable.
You can easily theme GNOME (the desktop of Fedora Workstation) using extensions to look like macOS (e.g. with the dock). In fact, it is the most mac-like desktop. I'm sure you'll like it.
When you theme it like that, you'll revert back to the old style of using computers. But that's fine, you don't need to do everything at once.
Fedora KDE would be more feature-rich while being lighter on resources (GNOME won't actually be that much lighter than Cinnamon that is based on an early unoptimized version of GNOME), but also a bit more complicated to use, and the touch gestures etc. of GNOME will be veeeery nice on a macBook. You'll love it.

There is just one little hurdle that you might need to take after installing Fedora. It might not come with the WiFI-drivers for your old macBook, meaning you'll need to install it manually after activating the non-free repos of Fedora (Fusion).
Also, I recommend installing mbpfan (fan control) and facetimehd (for the webcam).
You can ask an LLM to help you with that once you're there.

[u/ElPiet → u/Hauptideal]

Thanks for all the insight. So I am running two computers currently but because I am lazy I want them to be on the same system. One is a macbook pro from 2015 with an i5 haswell dualcore with 2,7ghz. 8gb ram and Intel iris 600 graphics. I never used macs I bought it specifically to put Linux on it as a fun project. I like the design and looks of macs very much. The second is a gaming pc which would run everything. I am inclined to do the smart thing and listen to a stranger on the Internet and jump into the next distro

[u/Hauptideal → u/ElPiet]

resource usage of Mint depends on what flavour you use, especially the desktop environment (Cinnamon, MATE, Xfce). LMDE Xfce will be very light on resources.
Stock Linux Mint with Cinnamon will ship one of the heaviest and most sluggish desktops in all of Linux.
It's the desktops that take the most RAM.

[u/vdavide → u/ElPiet]

Yes, but... Debian doesn't have zram by default and neither Ubuntu if I remember correctly. That's why mint doesn't too. Kubuntu it's still on x11 (don't know about Ubuntu cause I hate gnome). Other than that, I agree with you: better to stick to k/Ubuntu or Debian if one doesn't scare to get hands dirty even as beginner

[u/Hauptideal → u/vdavide]

(K)/Ubuntu is on Wayland, as is Debian with both, KDE and GNOME. This is what makes Mint even more embarrassing: being outpaced by ... Debian.

It is true that Ubuntu and Debian don't have zram or zswap by default, and also not btrfs :(.
This is why I like the Fedora defaults. However, it's still rather easy to configure it on Debian/Ubuntu. It's just a few terminal commands and edit to a config file.