If you mainly game: Nobara (and I get less and less convinced of that - Fedora original is almost as good by now) If you mainly work on it: Fedora.
If you need broad support: Ubuntu. Sadly. But read up on the drawbacks.
this post was submitted on 30 Jul 2025
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Linux Mint Debian Edition, and KDE Neon are quite nice. I'd try them out on a usb stick first.
Personally, I don't require Microsoft at home, so I only have android devices, and run Linux on my laptop and rpi5.
I don't know shit about Linux, but found it helpful to stick with Debian based distros, simply to keep a consistent set of commands and syntax.
One I recommend putting linux on your last laptop if you have it around. I feel this is better than dual booting as it encourages using linux more often rather than being booted into windows and is simpler and really shows how much better linux performs when you see your old laptop running smoother than your current one. I recommend zorin os which is an ubuntu respin because it uses the stable branch, does not shy from proprietary drivers for like nvidia, it has a windows like interface, and it comes with a bunch of stuff out of the box so once installed you will have libre office for office stuff and evolution to hook up email and calendar software and contact manage and a web browser and disc burning and rdp client and an image viewer and sound recorder and player and is setup to run windows programs about as well as one can be (wine with play on linux so you can right click and exe and run or install), and other little things.
Fedora.
I guess installing arch via the wiki wouldn't be so bad if you are more techy and want to learn about stuff. The arch wiki is also great for any distro.
Eh. It's a fine distro (I use it as one of my boots) but I really would steer new folks away from Arch as a first distro. The wiki is phenomenal but it's not very ergonomic for people who don't live in the terminal (like me), even with Discover.
Xubuntu is very user friendly, low on resources, and overall great to use.
Debian and Mint are super beginner friendly
IDK a guide off the top of my head, but look for a one that allows you to dual boot! Usually distributions have 1st party guides for this.
For instance, I run CachyOS, and their guide would be on their wiki, similar to Arch: https://wiki.cachyos.org/installation/installation_on_root/
Not that I specifically recommend it, depending on what you want. I adore CachyOS, but anything Arch based basically requires a certain “attention level” where you keep an eye on packages that get updated, warnings and errors, wiki instructions, basic knowledge of your hardware like GPU brand/type and such. It’s for if you want to know your computer and system pretty well. If you don’t want to deal with Linux, there are better distributions (like immutable ones) that require less oversight, at the cost of maybe living with certain bugs that get fixed in rapid updates.