Choosing a Distro

Linux suffers from fragmentation, which is why there are hundreds of distros out there, with roughly 600 being actively maintained. When choosing a distro, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of options, but realistically you only need to know about four major families: Debian, Fedora, openSUSE, and Arch. Most other distros originate from one of these.

There are also some unique distros you might find interesting, but that’s for you to explore as you get more comfortable with Linux.For now, stick to these four. On top of that, there are plenty of derivatives based on them, they’re mostly the same under the hood, with the major difference usually being the DE (desktop environment, in short: it handles the GUI of the system).

Also, on the topic of desktop environments: when you’re starting out, stick to either KDE (it resembles Windows) or GNOME (it resembles macOS). These are the most popular options, they’re beginner-friendly, and they’re pretty great in terms of customization.

If you don’t want to read through everything, the generally recommended distros are provided at the end.

Things not to do while choosing a distro:

1. Choose a distro based on looks: Don’t pick a distro just because it looks pretty. Customization is one of Linux’s biggest strengths, with a few tweaks, you can make any distro look like another. Choose based on functionality, not form.

2. Choose a niche distro with no community support: Avoid distros that have little to no community. When something breaks (and it will at some point), the community is where you’ll go for help, guides, and fixes.

3. Choose a “hacking distro”: Distros like Kali or Parrot OS aren’t meant for daily use, even their developers say so. They’re designed for quick testing and security research in a virtual machine. With a huge number of preinstalled tools comes a huge attack surface. And please, don’t install Kali just because you saw it in "Mr. Robot."

4. Choose something you don’t understand: Just don’t jump into Arch just because you heard it’s popular. If you’re willing to read the wiki and learn as you go, Arch can be a great experience. But if you’re not ready to troubleshoot or spend time setting things up, it’ll quickly become annoying and more trouble than it’s worth.

5. Distro hop: There’s nothing wrong with trying different distros, but if you’re just hopping around to “find one for you” without knowing what you actually need, you’ll just waste time jumping from one to another.

Recommended Linux Distributions:

Here are some of my recommended distros from each major distribution for beginners using ASUS TUF laptops (keep in mind the numbers aren’t a ranking, just a simple list )

1. Fedora: If you are trying Linux for the first time, I would highly recommend Fedora. It’s a semi-rolling release distro (the kernel and most packages are updated regularly but it still follows a release cycle). It also has excellent software support and compatibility.

2. EndeavourOS: EndeavourOS is basically Arch Linux with a GUI installer. It’s a great distro if you want to try Arch for the first time. If you’re willing to read the documentation, it’s an excellent great.

3. CachyOS: An Arch-based distro that sits between a general-purpose and a gaming-focused distro. By default, it handles all the required configuration, including drivers, with minimal user intervention, and it uses a custom kernel optimized for gaming.

4. openSUSE Tumbleweed: Tumbleweed is a rolling release distro similar to Arch, but updates are slightly slower since they are thoroughly tested. This makes it more stable in my experience. It also has a GUI for almost everything using YaST, so you can configure and manage most tasks without touching the terminal.