I always recommend to beginners ElementaryOS. The name being coincidental. It is a relatively simple looking but very very elegant and polished interface. Give it a try.
I've got one friend who uses mint, but I've also seen memes dunking on it so who knows. I actually really only know what I've seen from you all shitposting in other communities
Every distro gets shit on in memes, because each distro does things its own way that some don't agree with. As a new user, most of that doesn't matter much, the biggest changes between distros are how stuff works in the background. What matters more is your choice of Desktop Environment (DE). Essentially "the coat of paint on top". Most distros offer a couple different options when downloading the ISO, or when installing it.
I'd reccomend starting out by trying GNOME and KDE Plasma (if they're easily available for your distro), with GNOME being slightly more macOS-like, and KDE being somewhat similar in feel to Windows. Those are "the big two" DEs, but there's plenty of other options available if you don't like them.
As for distros, whatever works for you is the option you should go with. There's only two distros I recommend against using, Ubuntu (/ close derivatives) and Manjaro. Ubuntu is becoming extremely corporate, going against the "spirit" of a Linux distro. There's "Ubuntu Pro", a subscription for security updates, and "snap", an "alternative to" flatpak that forces you on Ubuntu managed repositories, along with many other issues. Manjaro is often marketed as "an easy Arch-based distro", but is in fact only very loosely derived from Arch. This combined with Manjaro team's inability to maintain the distro properly, causes nothing but issues.
As for every other distro, if it's being updated, and it works for you, then it's a great option. Because that second one is very personal, there is no "single best Linux distro". I would personally suggest to check out Mint and Fedora, those are often great options.
As someone else mentioned, with a "new laptop", hardware compatibility may be an issue. Most distros allow you to try them off the USB before installing, that's probably a good idea.
Go ahead with mint. It's the only distro I know with a fully featured setup wizard that holds your hand through the entire process. I am confident anyone who has used computers can use it.
But honestly, most modern distros are about as difficult as picking up an iOS/android phone for the first time. There are different ways of doing things, but they're still phones and can't be too different anyway. Same with mint, it's just a computer, it isn't all that different.
It's the only distro I know with a fully featured setup wizard that holds your hand through the entire process.
Ubuntu, Fedora, Nobara(Fedora fork by GloriousEggroll of proton-ge), Garuda Arch, Pop!OS. Those are just the few I've personally fiddled with.
Highly recommend Garuda, Nobara and Pop!, in that order, for gaming.
Mint is one of the best bets for beginners, it's very similar to windows 10 UI wise by default and generally very user friendly
Fedora KDE. It's easy to setup, modern, customizable and fast. Second would be Mint, it's only flaws is that it ships an older kernel (might be a pain) and uses X11 (insecure).
Go with Mint, it's my daily drive on both my laptop and HTPC. If you choose the regular edition Ubuntu based you have also hardware enablement (hwe) kernels which could be useful on newer hardware.
Ubuntu. There are mixes of it but out of the box Ubuntu is about as straightforward a dist to install as possible and it is well supported.
That said "new laptop" and Linux are not always a match made in heaven. You might try it from a boot stick and confirm that things like the GPU, touch screen, touchpad, fingerprint reader, USB C / Lightning all work properly.
Ubuntu is horrible these days, including most derivatives that change nothing but the DE. If you want Ubuntu, use Mint instead. There's plenty of other options available, like Fedora, Pop!_OS, etc.
As for testing, most distribution installers allow you to try them without installing first. No need to set up anything separate for that.
Well, except that they have consistently been the one that has and installs proper drivers for a variety of hardware I've used it with. Many - many test units over the years with either brand new or older and obscure hardware that not a single distro I could find recognized, nearly every time it was Ubuntu that came through for me. Including my current laptop. I have been aware of the progression toward a corporate type atmosphere with them, though, and I don't like it. I'm thinking about seeing if plain ol' raw Debian now has the proper drivers because if it does, I may replace my Kubuntu with it. But that doesn't change the fact that they've delivered when all others failed.
In the past, I would've agreed. These days, hardware compatibility for anything except the very latest is pretty much the same among distros.
ITT: 100 people naming their favourite distro and making that fit whatever OP needs.
That's numerous threads every day in every Linux-related forum. A lot of people cannot seem to distinguish a sincere recommendation based on stated needs frombjust the opportunity to proclaim their allegiance to their favorite.
So far, people are being pretty reasonable. Most are recommending mint, ubuntu or similars, and no one recommended arch to someone with basic linux/computing skills. I have to say I'm impressed. Restored my faith in the community.
You can go with mint. It's a solid choice. I prefer opensuse tumbleweed since I find it easier to work with. It also has a great selection of desktop enviroments witch is the thing you interact with and what you use to manage your open programs. If you want something like modern windows you can go with KDE or cinnamon and if you want something more minimal and windoes XP like you can use xfce.
Generally I agree with everyone else, Linux Mint is great.
However, if you really want to not worry at all, you could just buy a laptop from e.g. Tuxedo or System76. They come with Linux preinstalled (I think in the case of Tuxedo at least, you even have a choice of which Linux Distro?), and are guaranteed to have no hardware "difficulties" with Linux, i.e. even if you put another distro on it, you won't encounter driver issues.
(Those have become very rare anyways, but do put a damper on the "Firsttime Linux Experience" if you do encounter them...)
You can also buy from novacustoms and get Linux installed and you get to have coreboot as the bios
HolyOS, Hannah Montana linux, AmongOS
How about serenity OS
Don't forget uWuntu
Personally I would recommend Fedora, most distros people have recommended here works.
I had less issues installing Fedora on a new laptop than I did with the win11 and win10 attempts, I'm never switching back to windows
Linux mint, Debian, Fedora
PopOS if you are into gaming
How is Debian beginner friendly? Quite far from it imho
Have you used it in recent years?
The process for installation is more or less the same for all of them.
Linux Mint and PopOS are the "go to" suggestions. I really don't like the way either of them look. I'm partial to GNOME for aesthetics and ease of use.
Bazzite comes with most of the stuff you will want pre-loaded, and also the cool Steam Deck Gamescope interface. It's the only one I've used with seamless background updates like you might be accustomed to on Android or iOS. That's my recommendation.
Currently using Bazzite as my main OS on my laptop, and it works pretty good, the ostree setup has prevented me from manually installing several things though :/
That is the fun part about Linux is installing anything that's not a Flatpak 😵💫
It's not that bad once you learn how to layer, and use distrobox
What's this ostree setup thing please? Was thinking of trying Bazzite but am not yet a super experienced user so trying to understand any issues beforehand...
Thanks for the input ya nerds. Much love from the geek side of lemmy. I'll be taking the advice of poking around with multiple distros before committing to one, because it sounds a whole lot less painful than I was imagining.
Quick question though, what the hell is a gnome? Or a KDE for that matter?
This is a GNOME: https://www.gnome.org/
This is a KDE (Plasma): https://kde.org/plasma-desktop/
About Gnome and KDE, they are simply different Desktop Enviroments (DE).On Linux, DE's are a software category, much like how browsers are a category with many different alternatives (Firefox, Chrome, Opera, ...) on Linux we got DE's such as: Gnome (a more tablet-like DE. You either love it or hate it) KDE Plasma (by default it's windows-like, but it is very customizeable but can be kinda overwhelming to some) Cinnamon (the one that comes with Mint, very simple, very light, very user friendly and has a familiar layout for Windows users) And many more, Cosmic, Pantheon, XFCE, Sway and so on...
Stop recommending Ventoy! It’s a huge security risk and the author has not responded in 8 months.
Just looked a bit into the issue, and it's surely weird.. Thanks for informing! Already edited my original comment
Linux Mint. I'm a pretty hardcore Linux person, used a dozen different distros, Mint is by far the closest I've experienced to #JustWorks.
It's reliable and simple enough that earlier this year I switched my tech-illiterate parents from Windows to Mint. Works great for them so far.
Yeah Mint being the "Just works" distro is why I use it these days. Debian is best for servers/low maintenance systems, Mint is best for desktops IMHO.
I love it. I run Mint on my business laptop and my personal laptop, it's so solid. And Cinnamon has been the most stable desktop environment I've ever used.
Mint or Zorin
Mint is the best distro for the average user who doesnt want to tinker with their OS or doesnt want to waste time fixing issues.
IF Mint doesnt go well with your laptop, I would try out Fedora, which is more up to date with stuff and also very user friendly choose Fedora Workstation if you're feeling adventurous. choose Fedora KDE if you want a Windows like experience.
To add, if OP is looking to use the laptop for gaming, I can recommend Bazzite. Built upon fedora with some quality of life things and very stable as it's immutable. Very hard to fuck up.
It's hilarious how uncool it is to suggest Ubuntu but it often just works, including very recent hardware if it's from Canonical partners like Lenovo or Dell. And the kerfuffle about things like snaps are way overblown.
I came here to say this as well. Ubuntu "just works"™ and was my entry into linux 15+ years ago.
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Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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