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Discussion on: Recomendations in choosing a Linux distro

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alecaddd profile image
Alex🔥

It mostly depends on your background and which OS are you currently comfortable with.

A bit of background: You can pick between multiple distributions and multiple desktop environments.

To put it really simple, a distribution can be described as the core foundation of your Operating System, the most common distros are Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch, Manjaro, OpenSuse, Linux Mint, elementary os. I'm sure I'm missing a ton of others, but these are for me the common distro. All of these, have different cores and approaches, some of them share the same core but come with drastic edits.

A Desktop Environment is what you actually see, your GUI. Common DEs are Gnome, Cinnamon, Mate, Pantheon, etc.
You can potentially have whatever distro with whatever desktop environment running on top.
If you used Fedora, most likely you used Gnome DE.

If you're coming from Windows I'd suggest Linux Mint with Cinnamon desktop, or Mate desktop. They're both based on Ubuntu, a really common distro based on Debian, with a massive availability of support, software, fixes, etc. Cinnamon and Mate DEs are really familiar looking for a user coming from Windows. They share similarities in managing windows, the file manager, and the overall interface.

If you're coming from MacOS I'd suggest Ubuntu Gnome or Elementary OS. The DEs are really similar to MacOS, and the learning curve is pretty flat.

If you don't know anything about Linux and you don't feel comfortable in tinkering with terminal commands and stuff like that right at the beginning, I'd stay away from Arch based distro, because they require a lot of customization, and also Fedora, because their approach is to include bleeding edge technologies that are not fully stable. Dealing with bugs and spending hours in the terminal is not a great first experience to approach Linux.

ElementaryOS is highly recommended for absolute beginners. Based on Ubuntu, has all the good packages and stuff you can get, but it comes with a strict and highly curated desktop environment called Pantheon. Easy to use, not overwhelming and out of the way. After you get acquainted with Linux and you want to start playing with the command line and heavy customization, you can switch distro.

I know my post is not really accurate, and I'm giving away a lot of average info, but I tried to keep it simple and easy to understand for a new user.

I hope that helps, and apologies for any inaccuracy.

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

Awesome first comment, Alex. 🎉

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alecaddd profile image
Alex🔥

Thank you so much, I hope it'll be somewhat helpful

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jcharliegarciam profile image
Carlos García

Thank you very much man! It was helpful! I'll be checking out Linux Mint