Guys, what's the best Linux distro to install on my PC?
5mon 5d ago by europe.pub/u/cRazi_man in linuxmemes from europe.pub
Yeah I installed that one you're thinking of.
I dual boot Arch and Arch, and I run an Arch hypervisor as well as an Arch vm in each Arch instance.
Yo dawg...
So what I'm hearing is that you're a big fan of Windows 11....
I am vaguely aware of Arch.
this guy arches
Do you use arch containers in the arch VMs?
More arches than an ‘80s suburban house
I triple boot. Pffh.
Surely you run Arch in your containers as well.
by the way?
Hannah Montana Linux?
The only correct answer in this thread.
I've heard good things
Hell yeah brother
The one that makes you happy.
Or at least overrides the desire to grab a sledgehammer when troubleshooting
Happiness is achieved through compiling rust
According to a survey of the Linux community, the best distro is always not the one that you picked.
Debian.
✊
Too old 😵
Debian Testing then
Old trying to act young 😂
And fucking succeeding, pikaOS is gaming on unstable and that's a puma / milf / hot dad archetype type of dist for me at least, no shade on arch though I just prefer to not enable my obsession with tinkering and fixing stuff (that will happen too much anyway to an extreme degree)
If it works, it works.
Sure, if it works for you
The only people I met in real life that use Debian are over 50 years old
An online friend of mine recommended it to me as the one distro I should be on. I agree. We're both under 30 and my friend is younger than I am.
Yup.
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.
Otoh, any of the Puppy distros are a great option for genuinely old hardware; think AM2+/775 or older, that a lot of heavier distros may or may not struggle on.
Having Socket 775, Puppy Linux and genuinely old hardware in the sentence shook me.
I still remember being in high school playing Minecraft on those Optiplexes, and even before that playing Poptropica and CoolMathGames..
775 is a 21-year-old platform and AM2+ is 18 years old.
Yeah, I'm not disagreeing with you, more so making a comment on how it never occurred to me they were that old today.
That being said, by the time I was playing with 775 computers they were pretty out of date (2013) and by 2015 all of those machines were replaced at my school. So in a rational sense that explains the time disparity I feel for Socket 775.
The only thing I would like to add to mint is more folder colors.
It's soo solid, good and stable (as it's Linux eh), I'm still a recovering windozer.
but LMDE especially will be subject to dealing with older software
Are you sure about this? As far as I know, debian modernized their repos quite a bit even compared to ubuntu, that also sparked some controversy from debian long time fans especially because they wanted more dated, stable software. Never used LMDE though, so I'm not sure if it applies
i have two moods:
stable (for a server): debian
rolling release (for gaming): arch
rolling release (for gaming)
Seriously... after all these years without some pesky version upgrade screwing things up I couldn't bring myself to install a non-rolling distro on any device I actively use.
NixOS
Username... almost checks out. It's missing the leading /nix/store/.
Lmao, that had not actually occurred to me before.
Fedora. It's the one Linus uses.
/thread
The hat?
/s
Gentleman
mentlegen
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.
The easiest way would be getting the cheapest SSD (even 30 GB is enough for most distros), swap your current disk with it, play around, and return where you were, if you don’t like anything.
Uwuntu is better than your OS.
Nyarch is better than Uwuntu
gNOme
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.
Gentoo, everything else is for plebs
I started my first Gentoo install in 2002.
It's almost finished compiling.
"I like to rebuild my kit sports car every time I want to take it out for a drive. Anyone who does otherwise is a pleb."
I used this for a few months but I just don't really see the upside in compiling my own code lol
I use Arch by the way
Unless its like arch or gentoo does the distro matter that much? Like its mostly just the default settings which you can tweak. I feel like 90% of distrohopping is just wanting to try a new UI which can you just install yourself.
The main difference is package management so rolling release vs LTS vs 6 month cycle.
In practice we really need to stop using dynamic dependencies/package managers for most applications, for desktop usecase its just not a good pattern anymore, honestly I feel its like 99% of the reason the linux desktop never took off, app dev is just a pain. Thankfully stuff like flatpak and appimage exist now
I can't express how much I disagree with you and further I can not fucking stand flatpacks and the like. Unless I'm running a server, I don't want that crap on my box at all.
Why would you want flatpak on a server, server feels like ideal for dynamic dependencies as you have some highly used, static build (Debian 13 or Ubuntu LTS) where problems can be easily tested and fixes distributed out. The dependencies don't change too much aswell as the usecase for the server stays static. Security features can then be patched in when needed. Desktop usecase all people want is an up to date latest app that works, security rarely matters, and the dependency graph is highly volatile as people constantly update and add new software
So keep the different server processes somewhat isolated without going full VM. If I was admining production boxes for a company, I'd go with VMs. I'm talking about home servers running a couple services, and about desktops at home. Being retired, I haven't had to really do real sysadmin work for years.
I haven't had any issues, that I can think of at least, updating my desktop install which is going on about 10 years now. I've not been stuck in some type of dependency hell for even longer than that. To each their own, if they work for you, great. I can't stand the extra layer that flatpaks bring to me. Seems like back in the day they would have been really useful...but thinking about past hard drive space, processor speeds, and internet speeds, maybe not.
Are you confusing flatpaks and other containerization solutions like docker? Flatpaks are specifically for UI applications, and that doesn't make much sense on a server.
Shit, yeah. I'm dumb. I've just grouped those together in my mind.
Comparing Arch and Gentoo is wild. Arch is so much more simple and well documented.
Arch is harder so install to as a recommendation its harder than the others. Though I think the last time I installed it was years ago ik theirs like a graphical installer now??? How the mighty have fallen
But yeah Gentoo is like in a league of its own
There's no graphical installer officially, no. There are many Arch derivatives with installers though, like CachyOS.
Installing Arch is literally running like 10 commands, and it's all very well documented.
- Put your Archiso USB stick in and reboot
- Format your disks if needed, mkfs
- Mount root and boot partitions
- Run pacstrap to install base system
- Generate fstab
- In chroot, set time and locale(s), set password, install bootloader
- Choose/install a network manager, like systemd-networkd
- Reboot
Now you're running Arch. Make a user and install a DE, optionally.
It's even simpler now: Plug in stick, reboot
Select the stick as the boot media
"archinstall"
Configure
Done.
I don't recommend it to first timers, because the install process does get you a good feel of what you'll be expected to know, but I've been running arch for years I'm not doing that manually anymore xD
I didn't even know that existed until today
I installed my current system with archinstall, I know I can do it the manual way but it was so easy.
Yeah I feel like people vastly overestimate how difficult it is.
It used to be a lot more difficult.
On my first Arch install, I had to edit xorg.conf blindly, because the screen didn't show anything due to an error in xorg.conf.
Could you not have switched tty and edited there?
Distro can alter how it behaves on your hardware. I tried every Debian derivative out there on a 2010 laptop. They would fail install or fail boot due to some hardware error, but fedora or opensuse were fine, and weirdly nixos. All those acknowledged the error and worked around it.
Also, not sure if other distros are this easy (because I didn't experiment) but opensuse let's you install as many DEs as you like with their pattern selections, and you can flipflop between them at the login screen.
I thought that was a good tool for a beginner just wanting to try out each DE without reinstalling as you change your mind.
Pretty much all the distros I use if I install like kde or hyprland it appears as an option in the login screen. Its a little cluttered since you have overlapping gnome and kde apps but I feel like people distrohop alot when they could just install a new DE
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 is very 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: disclaimer
Thank you so much!
Ah, I just noticed your reply now! I'd say Mint's about as easy to install as the other major installations. If you don't care about dual booting, you can just let the installer use the entire hard disk, and that greatly simplifies everything. If you decide to go back to Windows you'll have to go through that process, of course, but usually you make recovery media early on in your system's life, and you could boot from that to get back to a factory state.
So what you're saying is tripleboot those 3. Done.
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.
Ahh, that's right. It's Arch, not Fedora.
I'll make the edit! Thanks
If you want a gaming focused Arch distro, Garuda has been easy and hassle free for me.
cachyOS too. i've heard good things about it
I really liked Garuda but I had to switch because my NVIDIA drivers kept breaking :(
Funny, because I had the opposite problem with my laptop... Bazzite couldn't seem to keep the nvidia gpu happy and working so I switched to Garuda and it hasn't had a problem gaming since.
I love Linux, but hate the user-to-user inconsistency - it really makes answering the #1 question "which distro should I use" basically impossible to answer. Go download all of them that sound interesting and put them on flash drives and try them out in live environment - narrow down to the ones you like the look of the most, and then install them and try it out and see if you can do what you need or not. It's not a difficult process but it is a process and there is no simple answer.
CachyOS is my way
Absolutely love CachyOS. It just works
Fedora for sure, generally pretty up to date, lots of users so you can find articles pretty easily, and it’s a lot more stable than Arch BTW
Debian for my workstation desktops, servers, etc, anything that's stable.
Arch for playing around with new toys/features.
Debian is what you get if "dad getting off the couch noise" was a Linux distro.
https://socially.drinkingatmy.computer/objects/4df5b6b4-102f-4854-8721-480d56380e0c
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
WHY DOES NO ONE GET THAT IT DEPENDS?
...
srsly tho, how do you want your distro to be?
I like fedora because it uses Duke Nukem Forever as its package manager.
linuxfromscratch.org
Who needs ISOs in 2026?
Guys, what's the best Linux distro to install on my PC?
Yes
Fedora KDE
The correct answer.
I have used quite a few, but my longest used ones, in order, are ZorinOS, Linux Mint, KDE Neon, and now Bazzite.
I'd only shoot recommendations once I hear your use case, experience, and willingness to learn
Surprised I had to scroll so far to see ZorinOS mentioned. I love it, and it's pretty user friendly for people new to Linux
I only heard about it through a YouTube recommendation. Very cool features. I may give it a whirl next.
On the question: throw a dice and hope you don't piss off too many people :v
Start out with Linux Mint, it's a debian/ubuntu based distro which has massive support online and is less likely to break during an update, then when you get use to using linux you can make a more personal decision for which distro suits you best.
less likely to break during an update
In my experience, Ubuntu and Debian are by far the most likely to break during an upgrade
apt doesn't even have rollbacks
Apt is one of the worst package managers I've used. Yum is also trash, dnf a bit better. But pacman is by far the best
I haven't used pacman in ages and I don't remember rolling back updates with it so I either never needed to or it was not possible at the time.
dnf did everything I needed it to so I wouldn't know what to fault it for
You can very easily rollback updates from cache, and even rollback all your packages to a specific date in time.
It does get a bit iffy with AUR packages because you often compile them locally, so they would need to be recompiled from a specific commit.
Now that you mention it, I remember rolling back by reinstalling old packages stored in cache, but not rolling back to a specific date. On dnf I once had to roll-back an update, and that is managed by transaction number (let's say revert the last update), so it's good if you don't know which package exactly is causing the issue.
Debian Stable breaks from updating? What?
Upgrading, like from Debian 12 to 13. It's too complex, and if you install anything out of the ordinary (which you have to if you want packages from this decade), things get even more complicated.
I've used the same Arch installation for 14 years and only had issues when we switched to from sysvinit to systemd in 2012 because I didn't read the news. Easily fixable though
I upgraded my machine from Debian 10 all the way to Debian 13 recently. Never had a problem.
GentOwO gang!
I use Arch. Sorry, had to say it.
So what distro would James May be bringing up the rear and is total rubbish?
Oracle Linux
Okay, so, Richard Hammond would be the first to arrive with Linux Mint! ...xfce Edition. It's the sports version, it's lighter, sleeker, faster than the standard version.
Meanwhile, Jeremy Clarkson would arrive with Ubuntu Server, under the impression it somehow has more POWAAA!!!
James May turns up, having done this properly. With FreeBSD.
Nope to mainstream, James would use Haiku OS.
James would probably come in with Panda Linux, especially if he's in Bolivia.
Actually, Hammond would show up with something busted like Manjaro and at some point he'd manage to break Xorg or something near the end of the journey.
Debian Stable, everyone else lies.
Plan 9 master race
Arch BTW
I am a big fan of OpenSuse personally. You have a lot of different options between stable 2-year releases, a rolling release that pairs nicely with a Slowroll monthly snapshot release model if tumbleweed updates too quickly for you, and finally immutable options.
Just installed this on my laptop, been years since I used Linux but I'm looking forward to learning it. Recently also set up proxmox on a new home server so I'm getting right into it this year!
I switched to Linux last year and in comfortably settled into Arch and now I'm to interested in it to try other distros even though I'm very curious to try...
It's super easy to start a VM to try.
Just install qemu (and optionally enable KVM), then to run eg. Ubuntu installer:
qemu-system-x86_64 \
-enable-kvm \
-m 2G \
-cpu host \
-smp 2 \
-cdrom /path/to/ubuntu-24.04-desktop-amd64.iso \
-hda ubuntu-disk.qcow2 \
-boot d \
-vga virtio \
-display gtk
After you install it, run the VM:
qemu-system-x86_64 \
-enable-kvm \
-m 2G \
-cpu host \
-smp 2 \
-hda ubuntu-disk.qcow2 \
-boot c \
-vga virtio \
-display gtk
Or use libvirt, like a layer on top to make things much simpler. I use virt-manager for GUI and virsh on command line.
Oh my goodness, thank you so much this. I'm gonna tinker with it this weekend :)
And when in doubt, just check the Arch wiki, it's a gold mine
Seriously I use it all the time and I am not even on arch. Love it
Don't bother, we've done research everything else is worse.
CentOS 3.6
I recently switched from Linux Mint to Ubuntu Studio. Both are fantastic and intuitive. Ubuntu Studio just has more of the Linux audio configuration worked out by default.
They're almost all the same bar installation and package manager.
I hate Arch! It's dumb.
CachyOS my beloved!
It's not dumb.
You just aren't telling it to be useful.
Look up CachyOS and reevaluate if this is a joke.
I already did,
Nice! I love it. The community has been nice too.
Tripleboot Debian, fedora and arch.
the best distro is the distro you like most out of the ones that work for whatever it is you do on your pc
Guys, what's the best Linux distro to install on my PC?
The one you don't need to install
Gentoo, if you have time you can mold it into whatever you need. And if you do it right its rock solid. And if you dont have a shit ton of time use debian, its reliable, fast, and has a ton of support articles.
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.
Anything that's not Windows.
My favorite is NixOS, but for the love of GOD do NOT try to install and use it. It's like one of those puzzles you buy in a store, it makes you happy every time you solve it, but it pisses you off every time it breaks and you can't figure out how to fit it.
slackware ftw
Ahhh, the Sackcloth and Ashes, I remember it well!
So many config files.........
I'm running kubuntu which I find runs well with no issues (Intel with an NVIDIA card) and plays every game Ive tried to play. I chose kubuntu because I'm more experienced with debian based distros and I like KDE, but I do feel like maybe I should have gone with fedora and KDE instead. Can't really be bothered to distro hop right now though.
So I put kubuntu on my bf's laptop (intel/nvidia), and it's been a painfully bad experience.
Interesting, what hasn't worked? Im running a desktop so might be having less issues due to less bespoke hardware.
I ran it on an Intel/NVIDIA laptop about 10 years ago and had a lot of trouble getting the graphics to work well, particularly the Optimus switching. It never felt like it was working properly and graphics were always sub par to what I got running windows. It was a long time ago in computing terms though.
My 2012 MBP has Intel/ Nvidia graphics and every distribution I’ve ever tried has struggled with that, it seems to just be the way of things.
Have it working perfectly now (disabling Nvidia altogether) but involved both an NVRAM tweak and VGA Switcheroo.
Many distros have failed to even boot to the live USB on that Mac.
Kde is laggy in general, taking a full second or longer to do things like open the start menu or other menus.
Graphical glitches on the secondary display, especially in 2d things like steam or various kde menus. displays are mirrored, btw.
Volume slider appears randomly in the middle of both screens, no apparant cause.
Some games that worked fine under windows don't work anymore, like cyberpunk 2077 (which is known to be better under proton than native windows).
Sound sometimes doesn't work, don't know why.
To resolve this, I tried to switch him over to Mint, because that's what I use and it's great on my machine so I should have tried that first. Laptop won't boot that live usb.
edit: another one, cannot open the driver control menu (I forget what it's called) at all.
Holy moly, that's a lot of issues. Seems like there's something else going on with that laptop given mint won't even boot ..
And that's just what I know of from observing for a couple hours every week. He's not a techie, and I'm out of practice.
I'm thinking either nvidia or dell is at fault, but I haven't had the time to investigate.
I should try to get the model and specs of the machine, and maybe start a thread about it in a linux help community.
Next time you see an error on it run 'journalctl -r' in a terminal and see if you can spot anything specific wiggling out. Should be a good start to working out where the errors might be stemming from.
That said there seems to be a few different issues with that machine so its difficult to see how they might be related ..maybe a hard disk with bad sectors or trashed ram? You could try reseating the ram module(s) and HDD connections?
You could also try update the NVIDIA drivers manually from terminal, switching between the closed and open versions of the latest driver can make a big difference. That might resolve your additional drivers access issue. I have found that GUI sometimes takes a long time to open ..
I use and love Arch, but it's definitely not for everyone.
Obviously we all have our own opinions and good for us but it's fairly obvious that if you're using something that's been around for 10 or 20 years it's probably gonna be okay. So good for you. The Super New Disros are ones where you probably want to pay more attention before adopting them. But some of them are pretty good too, I would imagine.
If you want to emulate the meme, LFS.
I see lots of recommendations for Fedora here. I like Fedora but it tends to be a tad bleeding edge and major version upgrades used to be impossible or sketchy at best. I hope they at least largely worked out the upgrade thing by now.
Mint and Ubuntu are usually the best recommendation for people new to the Linux world. Bazzite if they are into gaming.
when i upgraded fedora 42 to 43 it was literally just a simple install update and reboot. though i do remember a while ago i tried upgrading and i just couldn't get it working, which made me switch distros
The one I’ve been thinking about is gentoo
Pika
In this thread: people proselytizing their favourite distro and telling you how your computer suits their distro -- not necessarily the best distro for your computer.
If you're new to linux, I would recommend something that would work out of the box and which would be user-friendly, like Bazzite (gaming oriented) or Manjaro (User-friendly arch-based distro, with GUI for app management, drivers management etc). Lots of people will recommend Linux Mint and that is not a bad entry point as well.
Note that linux works generally better with AMD GPUs, but Nvidia hardware is coming around more and more.
Assuming you're a hobbyist who wants to play games, CatxhyOS or Mint would be my suggestion
I like Ubuntu too, but Snaps can be annoying with permission weirdness and odd errors that usually stem from their sandboxing system. To be clear the sandboxing is good in theory, but I tried using the Blender to edit a file I got from a friend and I ran into permissions issues. I ended up deleting the snaps and installing from command line and it was so much better.
Installing blender without the app store is still super easy...
sudo apt install blender
I hopped around a lot, but finally settled on openSUSE Tumbleweed.
That entirely depends on what you're using it for. I personally use ZorinOS as my daily driver because it's easy to use, based on Ubuntu, and I like the interface.
If you're using the PC for gaming, go with Nobara. It's based on Fedora and has built-in support for Nvidia.
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.
It starts to feel a bit like going to university. Maybe 10% of the ones you try out will be total misses, maybe even discourage you on the search. But chances are, 90% of the options are perfectly suitable for your uses, and everyone will end up feeling a bit of faithful loyalty to their destination of choice.
Slackware stopped my distro-hop.
Currently loving Ultramarine on my laptop and Chromebook/Chrultrabook. Use Bazzite on the gaming PC.
Pop OS. I don't even like Mac OS but Pop just feels so good! I've used it on 3 different computers now without problems. Ubuntu tutorials usually work if you need to tweak something. Only downside is it's a private company, but it's released free and is well supported.
I've heard a lot of good things about Zorin OS.
yeah, but they do try to sell you a version of the distro with stuff preinstalled
And Gnome customized to look like Windows, rather than Cinnamon or KDE.
wait what thats so dumb lmao
That seems to be what Zorin is offering, it's Gnome that has been customized to look like Windows, and yet not forked into its own thing like MATE, Cinnamon, Unity, Pantheon or Cosmic were. And they'll sell you a Pro version that's got like, Gimp and Darktable and such pre-installed. I genuinely don't see what people see in Zorin.
the version i used once in highschool (in 2023) used KDE. it seemed to work pretty well, at least compared to ubuntu (which was installed in those computers before)
though idk when zorin started that "pro" version, i really hope the school spent money on licenses for linux, because that would be really funny.
Things that make people not want to use Linux.
its because people dont know what they want. Linux has the problem that people want different things, ao theres dozens of distros to choose from.
windows is an example of giving little choice, so people begrudgingly "upgrades" because they ultimately dont really know what they want.
tldr, linux can be choice paralysis. single os is like being forced to drink soylent and only soylent, its got what you need but you might not like it.
The web's dying. The FSF's dying. Windows 11 is made out of people. Dont you see? It's people. They're making our software out of people. Next thing, they'll be breeding us like cattle for training data. You've gotta tell them. You've gotta tell them!
Linux's problem is that it's not an OS, and so suggesting people use Linux doesn't give them much advice.
The next problem is that linux based OSs are generally open source, which means it can be forked any number of times at any point in time.
There's this super awesome and super confusing think in open software where you don't have to use the thing you are given. Want to use facebook? Must use their app. Want to use reddit? Pretty much must use their app, etc.
But if you want to use Lemmy or Piefed, there are a dozen good choices, none are the wrong answer. Want to use Jellyfin? Well I connect with Kodi on my TV, Swiftfin on my mother's, the Android Jellyfin app on my in-laws' TV, Findroid (movies/TV) or Finamp (music) on my phone, etc. You don't like an app you can still use the service just try another app or make your own. This is awesome, but super confusing to non-technical people.
Linux distros are the same. There are dozens of popular ones, many of which are based on others, the variety of choices is awesome but for non-technical people they have no idea where to start.
It's less the choice paralysis than the insufferable superiority complex. Options are great. Wading through a sea of people who think they're better than everyone is not.
Hard disagree. My experience here hasn't been that anyone thinks they're better, they just give recommendations based on their preferences. The problem is that everyone has different preferences.
Which leaves everyone wondering "wtf... There's too many choices and I'm no closer to a decision after I've asked for help than before."
Hell... In my case I was given MORE options after asking for help. In the end, that opened my eyes up to options that were better for my use case, but a lot of people just want to be told "use this and be happy". There's so much going on in everyone's day to day that having to put thought into something they just want to work is exhausting.
That's what windows gives people. The ability to be happy with what they have and not have to put any thought into it.
I am, of course, speaking for the majority out there. The people here, generally speaking, won't be phased by that so take what I'm saying with a grain of salt if it doesn't apply.
But yea... Analysis paralysis is 100% a thing and stops people from ever making the leap.
I feel like I'm starting to see it die down some. There'll always be pockets but it seems when people ask for which distro they just get advice and not flame wars as much