Linux

I'm very impressed by the work by the Elementary OS team. Linux is a beast to figure out, and while I've used Linux for 30 years, I remember how frustrating getting started was. I use Pop!_OS on my desktop machines today and Debian or Ubuntu for other machines and I've used dozens of desktops, but Elementary really does just work (and also also happens to be Debian / Ubuntu based).

It has the easiest install process, trouble free device support, and it starts you with guardrails that keep from breaking things, but can be turned off as you figure it out. Very Mac inspired experience, so not completely intuitive from Windows, but the reality of Linux is that you are going to change distros over time, or even use multiple as each do a better job at dealing with niche requirements. Certaintly not the one size that fits no one that is the current Windows 11 debacle.

https://elementary.io/

Edit: Wine math last night, it was summer of 1994 so 30 years, not 35 😅. It was on my new AMD 486DX4/100 with VLB and getting X to work was no picnic. A friend gave me the CD ROMs so at least I wasn't using dialup to download it.

HolyOS, Hannah Montana linux, AmongOS

Any Debian/Ubuntu or fedora based distro will do you fine. I personally ran PopOS when I built my computer earlier this year and didn't have any issues with it

Linux mint, Debian, Fedora

PopOS if you are into gaming

Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora or one of the offshoots like Mint or Pop.

As long as you don't go too far into the weeds with Arch, Silverblue or NixOS, You're probably going to have a pretty decent experience, as long as you don't dig too far under the hood too early most things that you're going to want to try are just going to work out of the gate.

to those suggesting mint, any particular reasons to choose between Cinnamon, MATE, and Xfce versions?

I usually recommend Zorin OS to noobs, but personally I prefer arch based

I can’t disagree with mint being a good distribution, because it is.

I personally think for someone just starting out in Linux that an immutable distribution like fedora silverblue (gnome) or kinoite (kde) is the safest route to take. They’re difficult to break. I personally use bazzite on my framework laptop and it’s basically hassle free. Not for everyone, but they work well.

Fedora KDE. It's easy to setup, modern, customizable and fast. Only issue is that it doesn't come with proprietary codecs, so that could be a problem.

Second would be Mint, it's only flaws is that it ships an older kernel (might be a pain) and uses X11 (insecure).

Install a few and see which one you like the most. You can install several distros at the same time and they'll all appear in the boot menu. When I was deciding which distro to use on my laptop, I was dual booting Debian and Fedora, with one /home partition shared between both of them.

Mint and Fedora are good choices IMO. Everyone is different though :)

I've never noticed any hate for Mint, it seems to be a pretty good option. It'll easily run on anything that was able to run Windows 10 (probably 8 too) and the default desktop environment Cinnamon is easy to navigate if you're coming from Windows. Even if you have some obscure piece of hardware with Mint being based on Ubuntu there's probably a tutorial you can follow to get it working.

linux from scratch /s

Linux Mint is good, Pop_OS! is good, Fedora is good.

I always recommend to beginners ElementaryOS. The name being coincidental. It is a relatively simple looking but very very elegant and polished interface. Give it a try.

Mint was my beginner distro and is what I recommend. In my experience I was able to find a solution for most of my beginner problems by searching for a solution for mint.

Linux mint (Cinnamon is my fav). You can never go wrong.

Maybe

TBH Ubuntu, or if you have an older/lower spec machine xubuntu

Debian all day...

All these shiny new distros promising to make things easier and better... But nothing is easier and better than 30 years of rock solid stability and support.

Depending on how new the laptop is, it might not work on debian stable. Check your compatibility

From personal experience with a new laptop, the intel meteor lake platform didnt work well with debian stable

The first time in installed mint I ruined the partitions on my laptop. But that was on me.

Look at screenshots of default interfaces and pick your fave bug distro. Can't go wrong with fedora, Ubuntu, mint, pop_os etc. mint would be good since you have a friend who uses it. When you want to know how to do something you can ask.

I run arch btw

TuxedoOS has been seamless, runs KDE, and all updates are checked for compatibility