Linux

CachyOS or PikaOS. Nothing Fedora-based for god's sake

Ubuntu or Mint is quite okay, I have used both of them in the past and set it up for a friend with little money, little time, and very little PC expertise. Worked perfectly for them for over 10 years without a problem.

Today, if you can get a little help with setting up, I'd recommend Debian stable with either GNOME or KDE. It is more stable and has longer and better long term security support, which did become more important.

Also, it is now easy to set up with disk encryption, which matters for keeping private data secure on Laptops which can get lost or stolen.

If I'm forced to support it, Arch... It's really not that difficult to use, and I'll be damned if I have to remember all the Debian stuff 😂

You're gonna get "this is my favourite distro and this is why it should be just fine for any purpose including ...what were we talking about again?"

@Grumpy404 Go for Linux Mint. You really need stability.
So many Linux OSes are unstable and can take a very long time to repair.
Linux Mint has the best hardware support while the underlying package manager
is the most supported of the bunch and you can explore from there.

For beginners stay away from these, from bad to worse:

• Controversial distros, Ubuntu and Manjaro (unfortunately, because I had fun using this)
• Breakaway distros, NixOS
• Niche distros, Red Star Linux, Alpine Linux, PostmarketOS, Artix, Hannah Montana Linux
• Downsized or Abandoned distros, Slackware, Knoppix, OpenMandriva
• Build-up distros, Arch Linux, Gentoo, Linux from Scratch
• Any GNU distros, Trisquel, Devuan, Parabola, Guix

It's Mint for beginners. Or openSUSE Leap, but they keep depending on su instead of sudo, so newcomers will get confused with this.

People keep saying Mint, and now that it runs on Wayland at least they will be able to watch a movie without screen tearing. But I do feel like KDE Plasma is a much better first impression, since it doesn't look like a desktop from 2013 (no offense), and has so many customization options that showcase the freedom of a linix desktop.

So for gamers, Bazzite, otherwise Fedora KDE or something

To friends I usually recommend the distro I run myself, as I'm most familiar with it and troubleshoot it the best.

If it's someone who won't get constant tech support from me, I'd probably go with Mint.

As a power user Ubuntu sucks, but if you've never used Linux before it could also be a good starter distro. The vast amount of tutorials online are made for Ubuntu.

Linux Mint. It was specifically created for this use case. It just works. That's it.

I'd say Mint as many others. But any major distro (except Arch) would do the trick if you're willing to learn.

Fedora

Hannah Montana Linux

I suggest Linux Mint, it just works. I have moved over 10 people to it in the last 2 years. Basically, giving life to their old laptops. Never heard a complaint! Here's the latest one, my niece: https://mastodon.social/@eugenialoli/117304062578785444

Mint for most users. OpenSUSE for more technically competent users.

I started my wife on fedora about 10 years ago, and my kids have grown up using fedora

debian. friendly and large community, no weird antifeatures like ubuntu

Debian with MATE desktop: Learn it, Use it, Love it.

There are 3 answers and only 3 answers:

• New and casual users: Mint.
• Gamers: Bazzite.
• Power users: just try a bunch and see which one(s) you like, you people are exactly why there's are so many distros.

Red Star OS

On older PCs use Linux mint but I don't recommend it on newer PCs I have saw a lot of problems with them

CTT had a video about it I found quite nice: https://youtu.be/hnNjFysodRo In shortv

• if you want to game: bazzite
• if you are a power user: cachy
• for office/regular computer usage: mint

Anything but Ubuntu, honestly. I have a few friends who chose Ubuntu as their first distro and after using it for a couple of weeks went back to Windows. Some of them still refuse to give Linux a second chance.

Install Linux mint, never think again

I use and recommend CachyOS. PikaOS is cool too. So try either of those. I hear good things about Fedora as well. Whatever you do, use something with the KDE desktop environment. It's the best.

Bazzite for people new to computers in general. CachyOS for long time Windows users.

Debian based systems for systems you need more stable. Generally not a big concern for me unless you are setting up servers or really depend on specific software.

I wouldn't recommended Ubuntu, I would recommend something like mint if you're going that route. But Ubuntu is a safe feeling first choice and i get why people chose it. If you google a problem and just add the word Ubuntu generally speaking the google result or even googles ai summary has got you covered pretty good.

If you are more into gaming I would suggest something like bazzite, cachyos. Often they handle drivers for you super easily and comes with things like game scope too. Often you want more bleeding edge operating systems for gaming/newer hardware as updates seem to happen more frequently and with more noticeable improvements in the past 5 years.

If you just need a basic computer the choice doesn't really matter all that much its just kind of what looks good to you. You said its just for older computers so something like mint would be a fine choice in this scenario.

Generally speaking you are either picking a arch based system or a Debian based system. And all the distros are kind of the same, they just give you preinstalled software, technically you can pick any and get the features you wanted yourself.

Hopefully I didn't confuse you more or give you too much decision paralysis.

If you want to go rolling, try Tumbleweed or Slowroll from openSUSE, the former is right on the bleeding edge and the latter rolls a bit behind. They get a lot more testing than Arch so are less likely to have problems. The advantage of rolling is that you don't have a periodic big update. If rolling doesn't rock your boat, try Fedora or Mint. Fedora is more up to date.

The thing that will influence how you feel about a distro more than anything is the choice of desktop, so try a few out, at least Plasma, Gnome, Xfce, and Cinnamon. They can all be made to look different to a greater or lesser extent.

Edit: You can even test 100s of them out on distrosea.

Learn basic desktop Linux? Mint. Learn how Linux works and really interested in more of the ins and outs? Arch (Artix if you want systemdless) Learn how Linux works in great depth and are very committed? Gentoo.

Long time arch user, and I've recently switched to bazzite because maintaining an arch system reminds me too much of my actual job. Bazzite is great for daily use and has excellent support for gaming. I would recommend it as its update system makes it exceptionally hard to break your system and has built in stable rollbacks. As a new Linux user I would say just get stuck into either mint or bazzite. Try to learn more about how updating software works to decide between those, the, UI is entirely customizable and separate to the OS. The main Linux desktop UIs are gnome and KDE, both look nice and don't really need strong resources. KDE used to be really hungry but they've made it a lot leaner in recent years.