This is not a tool suggestion thread.
What is your favorite Linux distro (or best distro) that PG currently doesn’t recommend?
Currently Fedora, openSUSE, Arch, NixOS, QubesOS, Secureblue, Kicksecure, Whonix, and Tails are listed.
For me, Alpine and Debian/Devuan. Former is an interesting project, very lightweight and unlike anything else, but not something most people could use. The latter is stable but perpetually outdated.
No poll since there are too many distros to mention.
EndeavourOS my beloved 
I haven’t used these but I’m giving them a shout out anyway just because I think they’re super cool: Void, 90% because the name and logo are sick; Gentoo, because I aspire to ascend to that level of symbiosis with my computer; and technically not linux but FreeBSD because it’s even more niche than linux. Also the devil logo.
Yes these are very superficial reasons to love distros I haven’t even touched, but I figured this forum could use some lighthearted fun right now 
Universal Blue(s), OpenSUSE MicroOS & Aeon. Debian, Ubuntu (and hopefully in the future if/when they mature GnomeOS and Pop!_OS).
OpenSUSE Tumbleweed/Leap, SUSE SLED, Fedora. I don’t bother with Debian like distros due to the archaeological time capsule that are their repositories. Maybe they’re stable API wise but they’re the only ones I break still.
I like Clear Linux while it was still kicking.
Qubes OS is a hypervisor based on Xen, no Linux Kernel.
I’ll play with the BSDs too every now and then.
Thinking of compiling Android from source for the fun of it. Check out Intel Celedon.
My current favorite Linux distro not recomened by Privacy Guides would have to be Bazzite. It’s a great “just works” gaming distro imo.
Interested in Guix as an alternative to Nix. But for end users I think atomic distros are a general better solution.
It has some privacy and security issues but Zorin OS seems like the best “just works” distro to recommend to incompetent users as it’s the most hand-holdy distro, but Bazzite might be even better for gamers. Ubuntu is also an interesting alternative to Fedora.
As a beginner level user of Linux I definitely found Ubuntu much easier to use then the recommend distros.
Although I still find constantly having to “play settings” for what I think most Windows users would consider minor things, keeps me from being able to daily drive Linux.
Maybe this is for me 
Not to go too off-topic but I’m always curious to hear about users frustrations with Linux. What sort of problems did you run into? Have you asked the Ubuntu Community Hub about any of them?
It’s probably easier to start with compared to Ubuntu, but depending on what sort of issues you ran into it might not be any better.
I find myself having to spend a ton of time either screwing around with settings or finding some random lone dev on github who has a fix. The most recent example I can think of is I switched over my HTPC to Ubuntu and had to spend probably 45 minutes finding a user made driver for the WiFi USB dongle that “just works” when its plugged into a Windows machine.
Other more broad example that stand out is the varying degree to which programs work on which distro and, how impossible seeming it feels to know that ahead of time. I had varying degrees of success just trying to get ProtonVPN to work. I’ll admit, I still haven’t figured out how to get any remote desktop application to work consistently, especially Linux - Windows, which is pretty much guaranteed since I can’t force everyone in the household to now use insert distro of choice here.
I am getting close to my 40s, I have a family and a full time career, its hard for me to blow whatever remaining free time I have on those types of issues.
I have not. I have nothing against using that method. I just haven’t in this case.
I don’t want to derail the thread to far; however i have some input that might be helpful in your case. Therefore I’ve marked the remainder of this post as off topic and others may freely ignore it.
Many modern Linux distributions (Ubuntu included) default to Wayland vs X11. For the end user this should not cause noticeable issues. Unfortunately, there are some use cases/application categories (like remote desktop apps) which need to explicitly implement Wayland support.
If you are still looking for a decent remote desktop application I would recommend taking a look at Rustdesk
I can empathize with how confusing application installation on Linux seems at first. I would recommend sticking to the graphical app store that ships with your distro whenever you can, and remember Ubuntu uses the apt or dpkg package manager.
I tried Guix once and wouldn’t recommend it. Since it’s a 100% free software distro, it uses linux-libre and even the most basic things like networking and fonts will not work for most people. Also Guix seems terribly behind in maintaining packages compared to other distros. I think Parabola or even Hyperbola could be better but again, horrible compatibility. At least Alpine and Fedora make exceptions for nonfree firmware while still generally only allowing free software and repos, and Debian and others maintain separate repos for nonfree software.
If you’re a beginner yes, but for experienced users, the terminal is easier and less confusing and you benefit from one less GUI bloat on your system. Confusing or not, package managers are far superior to downloading exes off the internet and running installers which likely contain bundleware and other crap.
Can’t speak for Gentoo although it seems like a great choice for the most advanced of users. Void and FreeBSD are not cool. As far as BSD goes, OpenBSD is preferable with it’s focus on correctness
I would say we are in agreement here:
I use the terminal for most (if not all) of my package management and update needs, but I will continue to recommend GUI “application stores” for Linux beginners unless I have prior knowledge indicating they would be comfortable at the command line.
There is a non-guix repo to slap in non-free software.
My main interest was that it uses Guile Lisp, which I’ve always enjoyed. But I’m pretty set on using SecureBlue at this point.
Wait why aren’t void and freebsd cool? Am I out of the loop on something?
When I first started using Linux, I chose Kubuntu because of the customization options and I’ve stuck with it ever since. Specifically, I’m using 25.04 because of the switch to wayland. It’s more secure than x11 . I also find it fairly easy to use. I anyone chooses to try it, I recommend adding flathub to the Discover package manager, which you can easily find instructions for online. Kubuntu forums has a good community and will provide help if needed.
Which defeats the whole point of using Guix.
Afaik Void isn’t very reliable and went through many changes like CalyxOS is currently going through, and Alpine is the better distro for avoiding systemd and bloat in general if for some reason you wanted to do that. If you do choose to install Void, do a manual install since their installer doesn’t have an option for full-disk encryption.
But unless you’re a power user who knows how an init system works and spends time setting up and configuring daemons and services, ditching systemd for a better, more lightweight init system isn’t worth the trouble.
You can also disable non-free repos on Debian. People may like to use Guix over Nix based on the experience of development and not just FOSS die (enough to the point someone even made non-Guix in the first place). Guile >> Nix custom language.
I started out with Linux Mint and it remains my favourite distro in terms of overall user experience.
The interface is less Windows like these days but is still fairly familiar if you’re used to Windows.
They do make some sacrifices in terms of security but a lot of the Ubuntu based distro’s are great picks for ease of use. And they aren’t insecure, it’s just that Fedora does improve security in a number of ways.
To me the main seeling point of Zorin is that if you do need Wine to try and run a Windows program Zorin does a great job of setting it up without you having to think about it in my experience. It’s possible to set up on any Ubuntu distro, Zorin just tmade it easier.
The difference between Debian and Guix is Guix is a 100% free distro supported by the Free Software Foundation. The fact nonfree repos on Debian were available at all is why they were never endorsed despite being disabled by default, although recently they started including non-free firmware by default which isn’t necessarily bad. I think exceptions for nonfree firmware should be made not only because of linux-libre security issues but also compatibility. Until a few years ago Debian wasn’t easy to install on nonfree firmware.
Ideally a distro would either keep free and nonfree software in separate repos and only enable the free software repo by default, or a distro wouldn’t package any nonfree software except firmware, essentially only allowing free software with exceptions. This allows users to have a mostly free OS without a huge security tradeoff or compatibility issues.
Regardless, I’m not sure Guix does a good job at keeping their repos up-to-date. And Linux users should probably be keeping up with this and monitoring their distro’s repos to make sure they’re getting the latest versions of every package installed on their system. If you can’t or won’t do that, Linux might not be for you.