Choosing the Right Linux Distro

Website Guide: christitus.com/choose-linux-distro/

I'd recommend Gentoo for people new to Linux. It has the coolest logo.

As an IT professional who works primarily on Windows systems for work, I got tired of going home and almost felt like I was still at work with everything I was doing. I switched to Fedora and it quickly became my daily driver. I'm dual-booting and have both operating systems installed on their own M.2's so I can switch over to Windows if I want to game or use anything that's Windows-dependent. Your channel was a key factor in why I wanted to switch and I thank you every day!

Whilst I really respect your experience, and can appreciate that what you suggest here is a really good way of thinking about a choice of distribution for an intermediate or experienced Linux user, I'm glad I didn't receive or follow this advice as a new user back when I was first getting started. What I needed then was a distribution where things just worked and I could get to to enjoy the OS, gathering confidence before setting out on deeper adventures. I needed a distro where hardware such as graphics cards, printers, scanners and DVD players were detected and functioned out of the box, where it was trivial to install CODECs and commonly used fonts, where the spell-checker for the supplied word-processor was pre-installed, where there was a simple way to get the widest variety of software (including non-free software), and where it was easy to access and provide network shares without recourse to the terminal or editing config files... Oh, and I needed a large and friendly community who were generous in helping me with the small problems I did face and understanding about my attempts to grope my way through the obscure etiquette of seeking help on forums. Getting these things, I realised Linux isn't that difficult, I didn't have to be some kind of hacker to use it, and I was soon hooked. Each of the three choices here would have thrown up some significant obstacles in some aspects of this, and may have made me give up before I got going. A new beginner would therefore still do better to just start with Mint, Ubuntu or PopOS, and only then take on the more philosophical questions raised here, deciding on the best distro, desktop, display manager (etc.) for them, and experimenting with the different options. I've since used each of Debian, Arch and Fedora (and a number of their derivatives), and they are all fine distributions. But I'm glad that I didn't start on any of them!

Just wanted to chime in here. I have been following your videos since windows 10 came out. Because, I wanted to get away from windows. So, it is because of you and your videos on Linux that allowed me to finally feel confident to try out Linux again. Thanks to you I have been using Linux without fear. Keep up the great work your doing and many blessings to your family and you.

Found Fedora after a year of using Linux. Most favorite so far.

Something to remember is that Fedora can be troubleshot and configured using the RHEL guides provided by Red Hat. I've rarely run into an edge case unless I was trying to do something super fancy which is why I stopped doing fancy things outside of a VM.

I'm a newer Linux user and over the past year I've tried a lot, if not most of the popular distros. Fedora truly stood out to me. It has an extra level of polish that was lacking in some other distros I've tried. Between the official Fedora repository and RPM Fusion, you have a great selection of software. You won't have the bleeding edge, but you'll never be far behind. It's a good balance both new and experienced users can appreciate.

Arch is my favorite because 1: rolling release 2: pacman is one of the most speedy package managers 3: lightweight iso 4: the aur 5: the speed and responsiveness on almost all hardware 6: it's a diy distro and you choose exactly what you want to install

For newer users migrating from Windows I recommend Cinnamon Desktop Environment. Sort of like a generic Windows 98 - 7 type of interface. A little different, but if you've used Windows to any extent, then Cinnamon will seem intuitive and user-friendly to you.

As a new user of Linux, this video is extremely helpful. You explained everything so well.

I havent messed around with Unix based OSs since high school, and it was nice to come back to this practice that i remember brought be joy when i was younger. Im getting back into it, mostly to optimize my own machine, but your videos don't just blindly recommend a certain distro, they helped me understand what that even means and why the topic is so debated and descisive. Im still picking my distro, but your videos have been instrumental in that process. Thank you for breaking this sort of thing down in a way that can be digested, if it wasnt for people like you, we'd all still be at the mercy of Gates or the ghost of Jobs.

I just started using openSUSE two weeks ago. The most responsive distro I have ever used. Doesn't break either if you know what you're doing, for a rolling distro that is.

I'm super excited about these builds that you are talking about -- starting with a base distro and making your own system from there. I watched your arch build, but I was hoping for a more in-depth problem solving walk through. For example, when you have graphic driver issues, how do you go about researching what your issues are and how to solve them, rather than having done the research prior to the video. I recently migrated from ubuntu 18.04 to 20.04 and my desktop broke. The screen locker no longer worked and I was unable to find a resolution with a ton of web searches and reinstalling the desktop environment. I eventually installed the Cinnamon desktop which had a working screen locker and went from there. I have been using linux for several years, but the inner workings of the desktops and how to fix issues like that are still somewhat esoteric to me. Keep up the awesome videos!

I jumped right into the deep end with Linux using fedora without any pre made DE. Took me 1-2 weeks to get a hold of everything but your videos have been a huge help!

You make more sense than any book or article on the difference of Linux distros. You are straightforward, with a quick personal opinion. Becoming a fan!

Thx for your video and sharing ! For me => Debian/Mate + Flatpak: this combo work great ! -> stability from Debian (11) -> speed/simplicity/low_ressource from Mate (Windows Manager) -> with Flatpak i can access (easily) to all versions i want for many applications/software (with isolation :p) => I'm pretty happy ^^ ps: for dev side, i'm using docker massively :p

Great video Chris. Keep up the good work bro! I started with Linux Mint then POP OS, and now really happy with Fedora, it has up to date packages while being stable and it just works

I’ve used Arch as my daily. I went back to Mint just because it works and feel familiar. It is also the most stable for daily usage.

Fedora has been the best distro for me. I had driver issues on arch and manjaro. I have an nvidia gpu, and arch didn't seem to utilise it well. Nothing felt smooth and videgames were unplayable. I tried multiple debian based distros, including ububtu and linux mint. Despite what you said, all of them had stability issues. This may be driver related again, but apps would frequently crash, and I had more system crashes than on windows. I've been using fedora has my main os for over three months now (I had been on and off linux for nearly two years before this and I still primarily used windows). I've had absolutely no issues with fedora. It works perfectly fine, with no driver or stability issues. I love how it just works. I do use kde plasma with xorg though (wayland is still buggy for me, although it has gotten a lot better in the past year). I'm comfortable with fedora, and I'll probably keep using it. I have no reason to change distro.