this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2026
29 points (83.7% liked)
Linux
63826 readers
1017 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
There isn't a default beginner distro anymore.
There are a dozen good choices with half a dozen different default desktop environments, all with their pros and cons.
But as a beginner, you have no idea what's best for you.
It used to be a lot easier to choose your first distro, back when Ubuntu was still good (looong ago).
IMO Mint could be it, if they used Plasma instead of Cinnamon, which still doesn't support Wayland.
I've heard real good things about the plug and play ability of Bazzite. Though I say that as a guy that's been debating the switch for a while, my main holdout being that I like to play weird indie games and spend a lot of time away from my computer, so would rather not have to spend my limited free time troubleshooting
Sounds like Bazzite would be a good fit.
I feel like maybe I'm missing something because I tried Bazzite for a bit (before switching to vanilla Fedora) and found it kind of overwhelming? Like there was so much stuff installed by default and it wasn't super clear to me how it all was supposed to work together to do basic things like package management (esp. since dnf doesn't work)
I think that's what makes it good for beginners: it's a lot like a mobile OS. There's an "app store" where you get your programs (bazaar/flathub) and OS updates just happen automatically. Once you find yourself wanting to tinker then hopefully you're confident enough to start installing "normal" distros.
I don’t know about Cinamon as I’ve never used it, but I would never recommand KDE Plasma to a beginner.
It’s way too messy even if it’s really customizable.
Gnome is great, but I also think it’s too different from Windows for a beginner.