That’s a good way to push new users, coming from windows, away. Most of them don’t want to be forced to use a workflow they are not used to and fight with missing features all over the place. KDE and Cinnamon are much better suited for them.
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There is no “agenda”. I am talking about an existing PC user that never used Linux before.
Ubuntu is also based on debian, yet they share little in common in term of the UX. That’s the same for Mint.
In my opinion, Cinnamon is better than GNOME because it actually give you options in the settings. GNOME doesn’t and force you to use the terminal instead.
Plasma is a great DE, but I always feel it doesn’t handle errors very well. I had an error with one of my added dnf repo that couldn’t be fetched. This meant that a message error would pop up every time I open the KDE store, preventing me from using it. This is bad UX.
Haven’t personally tested Pop!_OS, but I will give a shot to Cosmic when it reaches Beta.
Fedora has bad hardware support, it hasn’t worked on Microsoft Surface in years, and they often have bugs. See here.
I put Fedora on a relative’s PC and someday it just kept crashing on logout (I don’t remember the details). The frustrating thing is that as they try to be Windows-like, they remove all information on boot and updates.
43% of US adults use a VPN, almost half of them for privacy reasons. Worlwide, it is estimated between 1.5B and 1.6B people use VPN. There is 5.64B internet users. So more than a quarter of the world internet uses VPN..
Not niche at all.
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Also, I completely agree Linux Mint is less secure than Fedora, no question about that.
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That whole frame is quite silly because it assumes that someone is going to steal your laptop in the first place instead of being some kind of remotely managed malware using driver interfaces with the hardware to maintain persistence.
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Not sure if it was mentioned before, but with atomic distros, you can roll back to a working system, which could be helpful if an update breaks something.
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I vote for classic distros as well because they have better support and more tutorials available.
As for which distro, the 2025 newbie distro of choice is Mint. The prior distro of choice for new users was Ubuntu. Anything outside of those two recommendations are contrary with the majority of the online advice given in the Linux community, and should be highlighted as such.
I don’t use either distro so I don’t have a horse in the race, I do wonder whether some of the niche recommendations are objective, or just a biased person recommending their fav distro as good for everyone else without fully appreciating/acknowledging the frictions of a newbie
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I have a friend who’s willing to try both fedora atomic and Mint and I’ll let you know.
He did keep saying “You said Mint is beginner friendly” but I keep telling him “Yes but so can Fedora, it’ll be up to you then.”
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I have to say fedora is creeping more and more into the easy to setup and use. As an example Fedora Silverblue was as easy to install (IMO) as Ubuntu, Pop or Mint. Now I recommend an extra step for many which is to rebase to bazzite (most want to play games in my circle, so I make assumptions here) which installs Nvidia drivers and other packages convenient for gaming.
This will show how flexible and easy the system can be while making some things a bit more convenient. The flatpak store is easy enough for most to understand and while this doesn’t fit the best security and privacy, it is a step in the right direction.
They can be introduced into more “complex” steps by using the install process for Brave which is fairly easy and laid out (maybe even the script for an easier install). This is all fairly easy to do and when they are ready they can add brace and learn how to use flatseal.
Until you realize
you want signal? Uh oh
apparently the OpenSUSE repo one doesn’t work, will confirm later and the other official method is either snap or distrobox with flatpak being unofficial.
Which the user would really reluctantly install it on flatpak because not many wanna go through a hassle just to install an app.
I’m using Signal on Fedora and don’t have any issues. I downloaded it from flatpack. Is it a problem?
it’s not that it will have a problem necessarily
it’s more like flatpak version is not endorsed by signal and stuff like that therefore you proceed at your own risk.
You use distrobox to get Ubuntu/Debian based distro and use the official installation from there
And if you install flatpak program and see that plugins don’t work. So you need distrobox to install some dependencies, export binaries to host and use it like that. Which might be ok, but it’s not user-friendly and something to recommend to new users.
I find that not everyone wants to immediately move over trying to harden and have the most private settings right away. Flatpak will be an easy of use during a transition period away from windows making it a viable alternative for those wanting to “test” alternatives.
But I do agree the flatpak is not the ideal way
If installing apps in the problem, you could try Zorin OS. Its software store “allows you to install apps from the Zorin OS & Ubuntu APT repositories, Flathub, and the Snap Store out of the box.”
I have never used Linux and I’ve been wanting to for a while. I’m not afraid of terminal and, if you give me some time, I will figure out exactly what you all mean here with all that lingo.
The problem is that I just don’t have the time. I have a pretty stressful job and I’m old and tired.
I’ve never heard of Zorin but from a perfunctory look on their website it seems it’s geared specifically towards beginners, people switching from Windows or MacOs. So that interests me right away. Thanks!
Oh, it’s not hard to understand. Think of it like this:
macOS’s official app store is called Mac App Store. Windows’s official app store is called Microsoft Store.
However, there’s no the official app store for Linux. There are several app stores that Linux distros can choose to support out of the box.
We’re talking about Linux, after all. If a distro doesn’t support the app store of your choice, all you need to do is mess with the terminal the right way and you can download apps from your favorite app store. Of course, this requires some familiarities with the terminal, which newcomers mostly don’t have.
Zorin stands out because it supports three popular app stores right out of the box:
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Ubuntu APT repositories
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Snap Store
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Flathub
So you don’t need to mess with the terminal if your favorite app doesn’t hosted on one of these three app stores but on one of the others.
PS: I mention Zorin OS because @GorujoCY said:
Things everybody should know
Guys, remember that many people don’t like computers. They merely tolerate them to finish their job. Don’t force them to jump through hoops.
Edit: fix grammar
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How is this any different from just using Ubuntu?
Ubuntu doesn’t support Flatpak (and consequently, Flathub) out of the box. Zorin OS lets you browse Ubuntu APT repositories, Snap Store, and Flathub all in one place—the “Software” app.
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Rather just sudo apt install flatpak than use a downstream (fork of a fork) distro with delayed security updates.
edit: my coffee tastes horrible, I ran out of half and half