Choosing a Linux Distribution

Introduction

This should function as a general guide to what distribution you should either begin with or switch to. This guide also considers factors such as what you want or need into account.

Initial Troubles and Hurdles

As a beginner or even regular user of Linux, many people may and inevitably will look at your distribution as being "inferior."

Unless there is a justifiable and grounded reason that breaches your security, productivity, or the project is severely unmaintained, this should always be ignored - you probably haven't gotten used to Linux user etiquette enough at this moment, and for the best you shouldn't if you are merely a beginner. As for more advanced users, you should know what you need by now.

If you find your distribution to be less ideal than you had originally perceived, it is best practice to try something new until you find a distribution that suits your needs best.

What do you want from using a distribution?

With so many Linux distributions, there are inherent differences and features that do not necessarily always exist in the other. One may be created to prioritize speed for gaming or productivity, another created "to break free from the norms of modern Linux distributions," another created for security and privacy concerns in oppressive governments...

"Needs" encompass these factors as they play into your workflow. Due to the nature of distributions (or, at least, with the exception of distributions like Red Hat Enterprise Linux) being fully libre, these changes are often easy to replicate for the layman. However, it is often very time consuming to compare and contrast different distributions' features - especially package managers - and what you want from them, so if you have high demands, consider virtualization!

Rolling Release Distributions

• Arch Linux is a rolling release distribution based on pacman - while your perception of its effectiveness and difficulty might vary, it does not hurt to try using it.
• EndeavourOS is a good introduction to using rolling release distributions. Beyond being based on Arch Linux with the benefit of the Calamares installer, it includes many applications that are commonly used for Quality of Life (QoL).
• OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is sourced from SUSE Linux Enterprise as its open-source, rolling variant. It has custom tools such as snapper which has the capacity to handle system snapshots.

Stable/Long-Term Release

• Fedora, while it primarily uses GNOME, it has many differing desktop environments or "spins", that could emulate the look of macOS or Windows, or something entirely unique. With Fedora, you are also getting the package testing seen in Debian, but the package releases close to what you would see in Arch Linux. It's a good in between that works if you just want to move to Linux for the first time. If you want other packages not seen on Fedora's, there's also Flatpak support out of the box.
• Linux Mint is also a good starter, with it being a very popular distribution with a massive community behind it. It is based off of Ubuntu, while not having as many of the problems (if you want to call it that) that Ubuntu has. Linux Mint also uses the Cinnamon desktop environment, which if you have used Windows for long enough, may feel familiar.
• Debian is a distribution with a focus on hardware support and stability, it will never fail on it's own, and it can run on older computer without as much setup as you would need on other distributions.
• Ubuntu is a distribution built upon Debian, it offers Canonical's Snap ecosystem along with Ubuntu's package repositories.