Linux recommendations

[ntt]

I've been getting really sick of Windows lately. Microsoft in general, really. Small annoyances have been building up for ages, and it's about to get even worse with all the AI garbage we're getting pushed down our thoats.

So... I'm looking to switch to Linux. I'd like a version that's user-friendly and customizable. Does anyone have any good recommendations?

 

[GlitchyPSI]

Linux distros by default are hella customizable, and the desktop packages take on that customizability philosophy
I will assume you have a PC that can run Win11. In that case I can recommend Kubuntu or KDE neon (both Ubuntu based, which is Debian based)
Ubuntu is a very friendly distro and since it's based in Debian you get the deb package manager/APT which is easy to use IME
KDE stuff is very reliable (NOTE: KDE hosts Krita, an amazing raster graphics editor), and KDE Plasma is familiar and super customizable and HELLA good
However slightly heavy, but not really prohibitive if you can already run 11

An alternative is Linux Mint too, it's also based on Debian/Ubuntu
Pop!_OS also has good word out there for being a good distro for gaming

 

[ntt]

I will assume you have a PC that can run Win11.

Yes, I'm running Windows 11 atm, on both my desktop and my laptop.

 

[Mukky]

If you're not ready to drop Windows right away, I reccomend downloading and tweaking Winaero Tweaker. It allows you to easily disable a lot of the shitty features, including copilot

 

[mercedes]

linux mint xfce

 

[GlitchyPSI]

If you're not ready to drop Windows right away, I reccomend downloading and tweaking Winaero Tweaker. It allows you to easily disable a lot of the shitty features, including copilot

I actually advocate for this more than straight up switching for a distro. This choice is not made lightly -- lots of software many people use straight up don't work on Linux distros even with all the compatibility layers that exist like Wine or Steam's Proton

 

[silly]

Out of all distros Debian is the most stable . It's almost impossible to break , I've been using it for a while and I have nothing bad to say about it . The thing with Linux though is that you need to learn alot of new ways to go about getting stuff the way you'd want them to work . It can become a very time consuming endevour , but personally I think it's worth it . Alot of operating systems especially Windows are slowly but surely getting worse . I still dual boot windows but if things keep going the way they are it'll get harder and harder to tolerate the OS just because software works on it .

 

[ntt]

I've done a lot of experimenting since I first posted this, and I've landed on Manjaro for the time being. All the flexibility of Arch, but with a better release cycle imo. I'm dual booting on my laptop for now, desktop is still just Windows 11. Once I get to use my laptop more I'll know if I wanna switch entirely.

Alot of operating systems especially Windows are slowly but surely getting worse.

True that. I've been getting more and more frustrated by the day, but the sad reality is that I'll probably have to keep using it to some extent.

 

[Bylt]

linux mint xfce

I love mint xfce. Will run smoothly on just about anything, good compatibility and user friendly, and for the most part just works™.

 

[mugrootbeer]

Please, keep in mind I am HEAVILY biased towards low-power, high-efficency distros and DEs because of my stubbornness in using a netbook as my main internet-browsing device.

Mx Linux is great. Debian-based. If you can excuse some of that classic open-source roughness™ it comes built-in with a lot of very specific graphical tools that can reveal themselves to be very useful in a pinch, like:

• A normal live USB flasher tool,
• A Boot Repair tool (for all you distro-hoppers constantly messing up your boot partitions),
• An user manager,
• NVidia and AMD graphics driver installers,
• A repo manager,
• Another not-so-normal live USB flasher tool that allows you to make a perfect snapshot of your current installation and make it into a live bootable ISO you can shove into any USB stick.

All this while being, in my experience with the default Fluxbox installation, completely potato-proof when compared to some other distros (on top of being systemd-free, if that's something you care about).

Q4OS is great, too. Also Debian-based. Very user-friendly and insanely good for low-power devices thanks to its flagship Trinity Desktop Environment, a fork of KDE 3 that's absolutely perfect to run on devices with as low RAM as 256MB.
It comes with an intuitive graphical installer that lets you pick between a barebones and mega-bloated install, office suite and browser included so it covers all bases, pretty much.
If you like your computer looking and acting like Windows XP, with a bunch of fancy themes to boot, this is the distro for you.

My only gripes with both of these distros is that they are debian-based, disallowing me from messing around with specific things like pip because of outdated (though stable!) dependencies.

But messing around isn't everyone's goal, so I'd say Q4OS is a great start, considering it also comes in a KDE Plasma variant in case you're against the whole Windows XP thing.
Plus, I can't really complain about Debian, seeing how dire it's been for 32bit support on linux. Might just have to move to one of those infamous BSDs sometime soon /j

 

[jadd]

Idk what to recommend because I think it depends on your usecase but I can at least share my experience:
I'm using Linux mainly for development work and everyday internet browsing. For art and games I'm still using Windows sadly as I didn't manage to have a good experience running my software (Ableton and stuff) under Wine.
I used to be a big Arch Linux user with a fully customized i3 environment. It was fun to put together, write custom scripts and experiment with how I used my desktop. The Big Problem(tm) of Arch Linux is the maintenance burden: the packages are bleeding edge, so updates often break stuff you have to then manually fix. Also many features that would come standard in other distros (fast projector configuration, bluetooth audio, etc.) have to be enabled and configured manually, which is a pain because it's when you want to use it that you notice it doesn't work.
Few years ago I completely switched my way of thinking, got rid of Arch and i3 and instead installed Fedora with GNOME. You could say i aged 20 years by doing this, i didn't want to spend anymore time building out my OS basically when there was something already available with a good UX (imo) on portable devices. My only problem with Fedora is the default package offering omitting all proprietary software, anything that isn't open source becomes a pain to source and install but I can put up with that.