Which Linux should I choose?

Linux Mint. If you came here for the answer, that’s it, and you can go and make a USB stick.

Linux comes in a great many versions, called distributions or distros, and the people who love them argue about them the way other people argue about football. From the outside that looks like a decision you could get badly wrong. You can’t. Every distro on this site runs the same apps, opens the same files and browses the same internet. What you’re picking is a dashboard and a set of habits, and you can change your mind later for the price of an afternoon.

Why Mint

I began with Ubuntu, and these days I use Fedora for development work because I want the newest tools there. When somebody asks me what to put on their own computer, I say Mint.

Mint is built for the person coming from Windows. The menu is bottom-left, the clock is bottom-right, windows have the buttons you expect, and there’s a settings screen you can find things in. It asks for 2 GB of memory and 20 GB of disk. Each version gets fixes for five years, so nobody is going to tell you in 2028 that your computer has expired.

It’s also dull, in the good sense. Mint changes slowly and on purpose. After a few years of Windows rearranging itself under you, a desktop that stays where you put it is restful.

The four exceptions

A PC that’s mainly for games should get Bazzite. It arrives with Steam and the graphics drivers in place and is built so that you can’t easily break it. It wants 8 GB of memory, which is the price. The gaming guide has the rest.

On a genuinely old PC, one with 2 GB of memory or a processor that groans at Windows 10, install Lubuntu. It’s Ubuntu with the weight taken off. MX Linux is the other good choice here, with a toolbox of small utilities that replace jobs other distros leave to the terminal.

If looks matter more to you than anything, install Zorin OS. It’s designed to resemble Windows on purpose and it’s the prettier of the two. Its maker sells a paid edition with extra layouts, and the free one is complete.

And if someone you know already runs Linux and has offered to help, install whatever they run. Being able to ask where a setting lives, and get an answer that matches what’s on your screen, is worth a great deal in the first month.

Can’t tell whether one of those is you? Find my Linux asks about the PC, what you do on it and the apps you can’t lose, then does this sorting for you.

Fine, but not first

Ubuntu is the famous one, and it’s where I started. More instructions on the internet are written for it than for anything else. Its desktop has its own way of doing things, though, with a dock down the side where a Windows user expects a start menu, and its published minimum is 6 GB of memory. If you like the sound of Ubuntu, Kubuntu is the same system with a desktop that behaves the way a Windows user expects.

Fedora is what I use for development work. It gets new software early, and the cost is that each version is supported for about a year before you need to upgrade to the next. That suits me. It won’t suit anyone whose main wish is to be left alone by their computer.

Not yet

Debian, openSUSE Tumbleweed and Manjaro are all respectable, and all three assume you already know your way around. People will recommend them to you with great confidence. Thank them, install Mint, and revisit the question in a year when you’ll have opinions of your own.

The full comparison has memory, disk and support figures for all fifteen.