Yeah I installed that one you're thinking of.
WHY DOES NO ONE GET THAT IT DEPENDS?
...
srsly tho, how do you want your distro to be?
this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2026
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I dual boot Arch and Arch, and I run an Arch hypervisor as well as an Arch vm in each Arch instance.
Yo dawg...
this guy arches
So what I'm hearing is that you're a big fan of Windows 11....
I am vaguely aware of Arch.
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Shout out to the CachyOS crew. Their Discord is helpful. (Booooo, Discord, I know, I know.) They're friendly and helpful.
Can't agree more. I posted about some strange performance issues last summer and Peter talked with me about it privately for a few hours until it was resolved. Ended up needing some kernel patches for my setup that went on to help with the next release
If you're new to Linux: Mint. Use Mint, with Cinnamon. Or MATE, if you're hardware is older. It works just how you'd expect.
There's many other distros for other purposes. Bazzite has a lot of people who like it for games. If you really want to control EVERYTHING about your machine there's Arch. If you want bleeding edge software and don't mind/can fix the occasional problem caused by rolling releases then I suggest Manjaro.
But most Windows refugees will be looking for something familiar that works and stays out of their face, and for that the simple answer is Mint.
I've never used Linux, but I'm interested in trying it. Is Mint easy to install?
They're almost all easy to install. Linux isn't hard, it's just different.
The hardest thing to installing linux is booting from usb. Windows makes you jump through hoops just to boot from usb. Rest is just clicking few buttons and waiting for few minutes.
Mint user here. Yes, it's easy to install.
From experience (this was a few years ago, but still holds up even today), yes. The GUI installer isΒ veryΒ easy to use (there's lots of visual stuff to). The one thing that the installer does better that the Debian installer, in my opinion, is partitioning (there's more visual aids (a slider you can move around, I believe) (a disclaimer: this is basedoff of materials that i read online, not any personal experience)).
If you want images and stuff, you can always look up 'Calamares installer' (which I believe is the installer Mint uses)
Wish you the best of luck on your linux journey!
E: disclaimerΒ
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According to a survey of the Linux community, the best distro is always not the one that you picked.
The one that makes you happy.
^Or at least overrides the desire to grab a sledgehammer when troubleshooting^
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Any popular non-specialized version will be perfect.
For a new user, the internal differences will be imperceptible, the same applications will be available, and community support will be there.
If you can, install Virtual Box on your current operating system and test the distributions you are considering to see if there is one whose default interface you like best.
I use Mint/Cinnamon.
I'm using openSUSE Tumbleweed with Gnome as of now, but plan on switching to Fedora on my next laptop. I would continue using Tumbleweed if it were not for that every 5 system updates (zypper dup) or so Konsole and some 20 other related k-packages gets automatically installed for some reason. This started happening like 1 year ago and the only solutions I were able to find were just to keep removing (zypper rm -u) it every time or just lock (zypper addlock) it.
i have two moods:
stable (for a server): debian
rolling release (for gaming): arch
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TL;DR: Ubuntu + KDE Plasma (=Kubuntu) + X11 (Wayland fucks with my Firefox)
First thing to acknowledge about Linux is that you have 2 choices in front of you about how you want to configure your operating system:
Distro, and desktop environment.
A distro or distribution for short is the part of the operating system that runs programs, updates them, etc. A distro like Ubuntu will incorporate different code syntactically than another distro like Fedora, but will largely perform the same actions. For instance, to update all of your apps/programs in Ubuntu, you would run sudo apt-get update. To do the same thing in Fedora, you would run sudo dnf update. Other than that, different distros might be optimized for some things over others. Bazzite and SteamOS are distros that optimize for gaming, while Debian is optimized for long-term stability for things like servers.
Desktop environment (DE) on the other hand is all about what you see on your screen. It's the visual portion of your operating system. In my opinion, the choice of DE for you comes down to what's comfortable to use and/or what you grew up with previously. So if you grew up using Windows computers, then DEs like KDE Plasma or Cinnamon would work for you. If you grew up on Mac computers instead, Gnome would be your best choice.
For me, I got exposed to Linux with my Steam Deck, so I wanted to mirror the Deck's Desktop Mode on my laptop. The Steam Deck uses ~~Fedora~~ Arch as the distro and KDE Plasma as the DE. I changed the distro for my new Framework laptop to Ubuntu because I'm more familiar with that, having used Ubuntu computers in middle and high school and dabbling with Ubuntu virtual machines on Windows in the past. KDE Plasma is chill because it reminds me of Windows the most.
And of course, distro and DE aren't the only choices you have on Linux... You have your display server engine like X11 or Wayland, and the seemingly limitless assortment of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) alternatives to your favorite apps/programs on Windows/Mac/Android/iOS.
Edit: Steam Deck uses the Arch distro instead of Fedora.
Solid write up!! One correction though, steam deck uses their own version of arch for the distro, Bazzite is running Fedora under the hood though.
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Guys, what's the best Linux distro to install on my PC?
Yes
I use Arch by the way
I use Arch. Sorry, had to say it.
I like fedora because it uses Duke Nukem Forever as its package manager.
Mint is pretty much the de facto recommendation for absolute beginners freshly moving away from Windows right now, but LMDE especially will be subject to dealing with older software.
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NixOS
Good analogy by using cars. You can test drive a car. Since a lot (all?) distros have a way to run off a USB, so you can get the general "feel" of it. Then you can go from there. Or if you have room to work with, setting up dual boot isn't that hard (outside of how Windows acts sometimes about it). Asking a lot of people what flavor ice cream they prefer isn't going to help you decide your own.
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I just want it to work and not spy on me. It's not part of my self-image, I don't even own a Tux shirt. It's just a tool.
I run Mint. It works. I'm happy.
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