We often get the same question with
"I'm new, what distro do you recommend?"
and I think we should make a list/ discussion on what is our pick for each person, and just link that post for them to give them an easy recommendation.
So I made a quick flow chart (will get polished as soon as I get your input) with my personal recommendations. It is on the bottom of the text, so you see the rest of the text here too.
I will also explain each distro in a few, short sentences and in what aspects they do differ and what makes them great.
Here are my "controversial" things I want to discuss with you first, as I don't want to spread nonsense:
Nobara
I don't know if we should recommend it as a good gaming distro. In my opinion, it's a highly insecure and experimental distro, made by one individual. I mean, sure, it gives you a slightly better experience ootb compared to vanilla Fedora, but:
- As said, it's made by one single guy. If he decides to quit this project, many many people will just stop getting updates.
- There are many security-things, especially SELinux, disabled.
- It's severely outdated. Some security fixes take months until they arrive on Nobara.
- It contains too many tweaks, especially kernel modifications and performance enhancers. Therefore, it might be less reliable.
I think, Bazzite is the way superior choice. It follows the same concept, but implements it in way better fashion:
- Just as up-to-date as the normal Fedora, due to automatic GitHub build actions.
- No burden of maintenence, either on the user or the dev side.
- Fully intact security measures.
- And much more.
Immutable distros
I'm a huge fan of them and think, that they are a perfect option for newcomers. They can't brick them, they update themselfes in the background, they take a lot of complexity compared to a traditional system, and much more.
Especially uBlue and VanillaOS are already set up for you and "just work".
If you want to know more about image-based distros, I made a post about them btw :)
VanillaOS
It's the perfect counterpart for Mint imo. It follows the same principle (reliable, sane, easy to use, very noob friendly, etc.), but in a different way of achiving that.
The main problems are:
- The team behind it isn't huge or well established yet, except for the development of Bottles.
- They want to do many things their own way (own package manager, etc.) instead of just using established stuff.
- The current release (V2, Orchid) is still in beta atm.
I see a huge potential in that particular distro, but don't know if I should recommend it at this point right now.
ZorinOS
I think, for people who don't like change, it's great, but it can be very outdated. What's your opinion on that distro? It looks very modern on the surface and is very noob friendly, but under the hood, very very old.
Pop!_OS
Same with that. Currently, there's only the LTS available, since System76 is currently very busy with their new DE. I don't know if we should recommend it anymore.
I made the list of recommendations relatively small on purpose, as it can be a bit overwhelming for noobs when they get a million recommendations with obscure distros.
Do you think that there are any distros missing or a bad recommendation?
A few suggestions:
Start with a question of the user's technical proficiency. This is probably the biggest deciding factor for picking a distro, since some lean heavily toward technically-adept audiences and some are designed for people who've never used a computer before.
Include questions on device type, such as desktop/laptop. Using Linux on a laptop typically requires more research.
Instead of asking about Windows specifically, maybe ask "which OS are you most comfortable with?" with arrows for different versions of Windows, macOS, iOS, Android (and even Linux?).
Make every endpoint self-contained and unambiguous, with at least one concrete recommendation. Avoid vague statements like "use what you want", and avoid referring to other branches of the flowchart. If it makes sense to converge with other branches, use a labelled arrow to point to that branch instead (this will probably require curve support in your design tool to be legible).
Write each box in the form of a question, and label the arrows with answers to that question. I honestly have no idea how to read the "gaming focused" box because it has two bullet points and no indication of what each arrow means. I also can't tell how to read the "general purpose/gaming" box without reading down both paths. And why does the Bazzite box point to popOS? What does this mean? Clearer labels would help.
The red endpoints on the left could be in a single box, since they follow the same path. Alternatively, add more questions to that path to meaningfully differentiate each option. Same with the two clusters of blue endpoints on the right.
Be more explicit in the terms for use cases, since "general purpose" is a bit vague (I would consider gaming to fall under "general purpose", myself). You could have paths for e.g. "web browsing and office work", "gaming", "media creation", "software development or scientific computing". Some of these paths might converge later, and that's okay.
Move the "This is too complicated" box up top. It's funny and probably more useful there as a kind of "TL;DR". Since it's not related to Nvidia, its current placement is odd.
Thank you for your very valuable and helpful criticism!
I like especially your "what OS are you the most comfortable with?"-question, that one is very great!
The rest is also very well thought out, I will implement it as best as I can! :)