Ranking Linux Distributions for 2024: a tier list for my use case !

[@TheLinuxEXP]

Get access to a suite of disposable online tools to protect your privacy with SquareX: sqrx.io/tle_yt

[@comradestannis]

And maybe for gaming.

[@radoslew]

Where would you put MX Linux?

[@wassim-akkari]

It doesn't matter, what matter is where would you put it.​@@radoslew

[@radoslew]

@@wassim-akkari what a stupid comment. I just want to know HIS opinion. That's the point of the whole video. If it doesn't matter, then why did you watch it?

[@wilk85]

Have you tried mint with xfce?

[@BuceGar]

I switched to Linux Mint around a seven years ago and have never looked back. Why would anyone pay for Microsoft spyware?

[@Blue2x2x]

Despite playing around with Ubuntu in the past, Linux Mint is my first personal daily driver Linux after switching from Windows 10 since last summer. I'm quite happy for it.

[@dawsonkramer3672]

Because of apps that don't run on Linux

[@SteveMacSticky]

It's also because they don't know any better

[@Jason-fm4my]

I tried elementary and Zorin this year, before eventually fleeing back to LMDE.

[@pranavanand9818]

I need solid works literally the only reason i boot into windows (i use debian) even my gaming in 90 percent on linux

[@PopCar]

16:09 It's not mentioned in the video because you might have missed it, but Nobara has actually switched to using KDE as its main DE, and while the Gnome version exists it currently ships without any extensions so it's just the default experience. The dev talked a lot about it in a post, but be aware that it doesn't look like this anymore.

[@TheLinuxEXP]

True, I didn’t re-review it since!

[@Th3Rom3]

After being a Windows user since Windows 98/ME I have made the decision to finally run Linux as my main OS on my private machine. So far I had a great time with Nobara and since I have been using open software for most of my usecases for a while the switch was much easier than anticipated.

[@nutbunny10]

@@Th3Rom3 I'm flirting with the idea of moving to Linux from Windows, and Nobara was the one that tickled my fancy. I find Nobara interesting.

[@MiningForPies]

@@nutbunny10 I’ve never heard of Nobra.

[@StarfoxHUN]

Is it only "default" in the sense of customization, or there are non-KDE related missing optimizartions and such left out from the Gnome version?

[@johnettipio]

As a recovering Windows user, I really like Linux Mint with the Cinnamon desktop environment.

[@CC-bm3wb]

Give Tuxedo OS a try sometime too!

[@Wesd_YT]

@@CC-bm3wb is it good? also is it light weight cause rn im using a chromebook with 3.69gb of ram and idk which linux distro i should use cause im just now learning about them cause i used windows but using the regular chrome os has been hell and i just want to make my chromebook a windows 10 or 11 but i dont think it can run on a chromebook with 3.69gb of ram so im tryna find a leightweight copy until my birthday which is in 2 days

[@marcel3979]

@@Wesd_YT happy bday ;)

[@Wesd_YT]

@@marcel3979 ayoooo

[@JohnL_S17]

As soon as I got the steam deck, I fell in love with KDE plasma and connect. It's such a great system and I wanted the same experience on desktop. Now I use kubuntu.

[@spstiles88]

I would like to see MX Linux added to this list. I have been using it for a while and I really love it. I even have it on a rescue USB because it has disk tools that work in the live environment.

[@oldxebeche]

+1 I like MX using Xfce as it's the only distro I know w/ a vertical panel that works and that does not need a horizontal bar/panel. On wide displays, especially 16:9, this saves a lot of space.

[@dandavis5464]

I agree. MXLinux has been at the top of Distrowatch for a couple of years. It simply works well, right out of the box. I think the reviewer shortchanged the audience.

[@regal953]

@@dandavis5464 Not a couple of weeks but rather more than a couple years...more..

[@uberdonkey9721]

Yeh, I expected it here. I tried it, but didn't see any advantage to my regular Mint MATE (was slower for me and I think uglier) but I know some love it

[@Yuzuzuzu]

Mint is what made Linux fun for me and I've been using it on my main PC since. I tried Manjaro and Arcolinux, Fedora and handful of other mainstream distro, but Mint is just really enjoyable to use and tweak.

[@PropaneWP]

Same. I've since tried Nobara, which had problems installing and running properly and Garuda which didn't support all the software I need to use. I decided to go back to Mint.

[@SamsuriAW]

I am just experimenting Linux Mint on my unused desktop. Everything is ok except that Antivirus ads keep notify me that there are threats in my PC. I disable the pop-up notifications, but I still can see the number of new notifications on the taskbar. I don’t know how to stop these anvirus ads from notifying me virus threats. On my working desktop and Macbook, Windows and MacOS are still my preferred OS for now 😅

[@uberdonkey9721]

Who's sending those? You have a dual boot and windows picking it up? Or is it a browser you're using Certainly mint won't be sending anti virus ads.

[@venturiqq]

@@SamsuriAW Probably some malware you got going on.

[@Montegasppa]

Subjective videos are a very good strategy to get lots of comments. 😂

[@TheLinuxEXP]

True 😅

[@Inuit1982]

🤣🤣🤣

[@8lec_R]

Subjective videos are the only Truthful way of doing these. Being objective is an illusion. You might try to be objective but your biases seep their way in through and you end up being subjective while making it look objective. Trying to be objective is an exercise in futility, just try to be as accurate and truthful as possible and continuously question yourself and keep learning.

[@Montegasppa]

@@8lec_R That’s a very common mistake: objectivity isn’t about bias. Objectivity has to do with 2 things: 1) The source data must be well known and the observation must be reproducible the same way with the same results. If there is subjectivity on the source data, that’s a source data’s problem. 2) The author must be honest and clear about their own bias, letting the watchers decide how to deal with it.

[@8lec_R]

@@Montegasppa yes. And that's what I'm trying to get across. There's no way you can be objective the way we typically think of objectivity. In other words you can't be impartial in general. I'd like to use the word the way you use it but unfortunately most people don't. So I'd end up causing confusion

[@coldbrew6104]

5:24 I think it's worth mentioning, too, that elementaryOS doesn't offer an upgrade path between major versions; you MUST reinstall. This is a nightmare for regular end users, something I couldn't offer to someone, say, my mom. Aside from that, my only other gripes keeping me from it is the lack of a tiling window manager (only splitscreen tiling) and the AppCenter is it's own store so it's missing a LOT of packages, even common things like Discord and Spotify. It's such a shame because I find eOS beautiful and I love their design language and philosophy for the most part. I hope new things come soon!

[@dxplosiv1]

This is a great point. I've seen this on smaller distros. I run Bodhi Linux on a very old laptop and have had to reinstall when wanting to upgrade to a later release. It's Tedious having to capture files and applications I want to keep. I could make a separate home partion and back it up, but shouldn't have to in 2024.

[@muharief3885]

You can still use flatpack when there was no your apps on AppCenter..

[@electric7487]

This is what I'm worried about as well. I want Elementary OS to succeed since it looks awesome and would otherwise be a great distro for the everyday user who prefers Mac OS, so I REALLY hope their devs fix this soon.

[@WeirdDuck781]

after configuring for several days DWM on Arch linux, running separately from my KDE session, its really not worth it the time invested. Sure looked exactly like how I wanted it but fixing some details would force me to invest several more hours. I liked the simplicity and increase in productivity but the experience should become more modular and less time consuming

[@winlux2]

Their "design language" is just to copy macOS. I think elementaryOS is a net loss for the Linux desktop because it leads newbys to this macOS-lookalike instead of the two actually good desktops.

[@fedora]

We're glad to see Fedora so high up on the list! Constant improvements and innovation always! 💙

[@saladien9987]

Hopefully fedora will improve based on the feedback :)

[@m1cajah]

I tried Fedora 39, but it wouldn’t recognize my HP Deskjet printer so switched back to Linux Mint (which recognizes it immediately upon WiFi connection).

[@Bruh-cz4fp]

What's going on with Fedora 40 workstation and Nvidia drivers? I mean it's kinda painful to install them. Possible, but pretty, pretty painful. I love this distribution, it's great, but this issue should be resolved. Thanks for your work anyway, gread distro

[@saladien9987]

@@Bruh-cz4fp unfortunately those things are the reason why I’m trying it out every year or so and always give up after a few days. Currently I’m running Zorin runs very well even though it’s a little dated, but it just works

[@НюськаАрбузька]

That was cute :3 Thank you guys for all of your amazing work 🫶

[@baltmatrix]

The only thing I disagree with is the placement of Fedora. I'd put it in 'Good'. The reason being that IBM Legal team made them rip out h.264 native support. Getting it back in isn't a massive hassle but I've run into so many issues with the rpm fusion h.264 support at times. I've gone back to Ubuntu simply because that support is baked in.

[@laminathith2530]

Not big of a deal, just a matter of enabling extra repos that we do anyways. Fedora is the only disto which manages to achieve stability with access to new technology. So I feel placement is perfect

[@baltmatrix]

@@laminathith2530 I don't know what it is about those 3rd party repos but they have created a massive amount instability on all the systems I've installed them on. All devices I'm running Fedora on are Lenovo laptops and desktops. Not sure what's going on.

[@bytesbreadandbarbecue6747]

I think I owe you an apology! After I complained about your ranking of Ubuntu, I temped the fates and my Ubuntu system went belly up this afternoon. LOL. I stand corrected!

[@cluesagi]

I don't use Mint but I feel like it's really the gold standard for what a general-purpose, beginner-friendly distro should be. I've never heard of anyone having a bad experience with it

[@PropaneWP]

I have had minor problems, but I have yet to find anything better. For example, I tried installing the latest 21.3 'Virginia' from a bootable USB stick, but it just would not boot. I tried booting with the previous image instead and that worked fine.

[@b.y.2460]

@@PropaneWP I would guess (just a guess, since I don't know your machine) that your failed boot was because of UEFI instead the install image. It is supposed to be a universal system that just works, but the number of times I have had to physically open and unplug drives to get UEFI boot partition information to 'make sense' to the motherboard really reminds me of the old IDE days of swapping jumpers on pins. It is especially annoying when a motherboard has options to disable some of the drive controllers, but not all. I've even had a Windows installer put the Windows boot loader on a portable Linux drive, so when the portable drive wasn't plugged in, the motherboard didn't even know there was a bootable hard drive with Windows on it in the computer.

[@coolworx]

Mint is great to cut your Linux teeth on. It was the methadone I used to get off the smack that is Windoze. I've been Windoze Sober since 2015

[@MelroyvandenBerg]

It's outdated now. The core packages. It's still based on Ubuntu LTS. This is the only down side for me. As a developer

[@ByronTR]

​@@MelroyvandenBerg What do you think about LMDE?

[@Redyf]

NixOS mentioned! update: davinci-resolve has been broken in nixpkgs for months but nvidia drivers do work, you just need to setup correctly. I've been using NixOS with nvidia drivers for over a year now, it only crashed like 5 times (with hyprland).

[@Cybolic]

Yeah, I resolved to using it in Distrobox, but even then, it wouldn't play nice with Pipewire. Granted, DaVinci Resolve is a packaging nightmare and doesn't even play nice on its supported distros. I ended up having to use a separate install of Fedora 39 with Fedora 38 in Distrobox to finally get it to run flawlessly - no other single distribution would work fully (i.e. without GPU, audio, sync or stuttering issues).

[@FrosthavenLive]

I've been tracking the progress on resolve in nixos - it looks like there is a passing pull request awaiting approval as we speak.

[@ybenax]

@@FrosthavenLiveThat was my only issue with NixOS. I loved the concept of declaring your system, but some packages move way too slow. There’s a nixpkg for XP-Pen drawing tablets that is crucial for my workflow, but it’s been waiting a fix from a PR that has not been merged in for months.

[@FrosthavenLive]

@@ybenax yeah I hear you on that. If you aren't in the business of maintaining your own wrappers you are at the mercy of the maintainers. NixOS is my favorite platform by far, but it is certainly not a distro I recommend to most people.

[@linuxmobile]

@@ybenax Flake exists

[@zolaarczakle]

I love Gentoo (and Portage and OpenRC) but I only recommend it for people who wants to understand how a Linux system is working (great documentation on their website). For the others, I recommand Linux Mint.

[@mkyral]

I love my Gentoo too. The main feature is ability to compile any program that I need, easy applying upstream patches, when something serious happen.

[@rhodaborrocks1654]

@@mkyral It is also easy to apply your own patches if you want to customize a program in one way or another, and have your patches automatically apply to updates (if they will still apply), I have no desire to run anything else, completely satisfied with Gentoo.

[@dvdvnr]

I haven't used Gentoo in years. However, back around 2005, I accepted a Sun Sparc Ultra 10 workstation in part payment for some website work I'd done. Trying to run Solaris on it was painful so I had the idea of using it as a test web server. At the time, Gentoo was the only Linux distribution I found that could do a minimal LAMP install on Sparc. It was great for learning how to get a Linux system up and running, but it did take ages because of all the compiling needed. Around 2010 I found that Gentoo had become a bit unstable as Sparc wasn't exactly a popular platform so I suspect that bugs were slipping through. In 2011 I picked up a free AMD-based PC to replace the Ultra 10 and moved to Ubuntu Server instead and the Ultra eventually got given away to someone who had more use for it.

[@Winnetou17]

Me too! There's a thing that irks me. This adversity or fear of compiling. How is this still an issue for people nowadays, which run it on modern computers is a bit beyond me. Unless you have 5 browsers and you want to compile all of them and also not use clang, then there's no issue with compiling. It's decently fast and can be done in the background with no issues. Or at night / in some pause. That being said, I'd still not recommend Gentoo to normal users. But that's because if you don't want to tinker with it, like choosing what you have in your kernel, and what packages you use in general, and the use flags you want, then there's no point in using Gentoo. And if you're not interested in what I wrote above, then having to do it IS a hassle most people would not want to deal with. I just wish people would be more aware of the points above. It would probably not change much, but still, I like being precise. It help moving things further/forward.

[@briannormant3622]

@@Winnetou17Well there are people who genuinely fear the command-line, so I can imagine what thousands of compiling output with `CC` `CCX` Clang, Warning and whatnot can make to them.

[@Deggo]

Nobara has a discord server and has a channel specifically for technical help. The response times are fairly quick, and the people who do respond to you tend to stick with you till the end of your problem. Nobara definitely deserves a spot in the top tier place.

[@ZeDuck_]

true, its also a good choice for gaming and nvidia compatibility (even though ill use amd once i will finally be able of getting a pc)

[@arturovaldez8420]

I've already started to use Linux. I started with Ubuntu. I'm looking for the difference between Linux distributions. I thank you for the video. I'm going to try to use mint. (Forgive my English, it's not my natural language).

[@murraymcm1]

Given the problems from a year ago, I understand your reluctance to recommend Solus. They have changed their organizational structure, adding much needed redundancy so they are no longer dependent on a single person. There is new management, a plan that has shown fruit and the future is bright there.

[@thelakeman2538]

I understand your reasoning for arch and we all have different experiences with computing but if I were making the list arch and endeavour would go to good category, I'd never in good faith say it's great for everyone or is my go to distro for recommendation but it's what I use daily and ironically the one I've had least problems with.

[@Masta_E]

I typed a similar comment lol. EndeavorOS has been the best linux experience I have ever had, especially with gaming. It also got me comfortable enough that I could use Arch if I ever decide to change but frankly I love endeavor and have no desire to distro hop any time soon.

[@cameronbosch1213]

@@Masta_E EndeavourOS is so good.

[@TheFeelTrain]

I really wonder where the reputation comes from because same for me. Arch been the smoothest, most comfortable OS experience I've ever had lol. Pacman is great and the AUR rules.

[@MetalPhantom1984]

I'm still yet to actually/properly make the transition to Linux, meaning I'm generally a "Linux newbie", but EndeavourOS ended being my choice after testing a few other distros, including Mint, Peppermint and Pop. It just seemed the best from all the options I've tried.

[@bear17293]

Can a newbie use endeavor?

[@Klusio19]

The simple trick to Arch is not to update everyday. Just update once a week or once few weeks.

[@lufazim]

So basically Manjaro?

[@NanescuRadu1]

yep same for me and didn't have any issues running arch for 6 years now ... also try not to use aur so much :) its good but keep in mind some packages might get left behind ... when that happens remove them and get new ones

[@qwfp]

@@lufazim yes, manjaro without manjaro's problems

[@LazarNaskov]

See that sounds fine until you realize that any potential substance abuse problem I would theoretically have has been replaced with an "update Arch" abuse problem, I just like seeing funny version number go up

[@frankhuurman3955]

often had trouble as well when updating after a month or few months or something, I'd love to go bleeding edge but updating on Arch stresses me out a lot more than on a stable release.

[@backpackvacuum9520]

Great video! One critique: I feel you should have disclosed your Tuxedo sponsorship before talking about the distro, including whether or not they have any editorial control over the main contents of the video. I personally trust you and would be surprised if you said anything you didn't believe, but that context is always important to be transparent about and make people aware of so they can be adequately informed. If I didn't already have a good relationship as a viewer, I would be made pretty wary by one of the contestants of the the tier list being revealed as a sponsor AFTER the fact.

[@Thorned_Rose]

I agree. Ranking the distro you're sponsored by highly is a conflict of interest that needs disclosing.

[@Daimo83]

Considering Tuxedo is KDE with their own "control centre" but KDE gets ranked lower

[@zenu903]

I'm rooting for Solus to succeed so much; they really have something special there and it'd be a shame for it to not get the support it deserves

[@maximebeaudoin4013]

Currious, what is Solus offering others don't? Not familiar eith the distro.

[@SS-ze1fo]

@@maximebeaudoin4013 Rolling release and you will not get daily updates! That was my criteria for a distro. Yes so does opensuse tumbleweed but solus does not have that confusing yast

[@pikachusolu1606]

@@maximebeaudoin4013 its not a fork.. its his own thing.. got its own repo.. first distro to come out with budgie desktop among many other things

[@anonymous_opinions1924]

Agreed - I don't use it but the times I've taken a look at it it seems very unique and nice

[@maximebeaudoin4013]

@@pikachusolu1606 For similar reasons I chose voidlinux for my dualboot setup. Still are there distuguishing feature appart from not being a fork (which is great in its own right).

[@Chillkroete]

As a Tumbleweed user I would put that Distro in the Best Category. It has YAST, has a out-of-the-box graphical installer included and has a European/Germany based Company with a Enterprise foundation behind it. Its a Rolling Release which might be second fastest to deliver new packages behind Arch, but thats because its better tested imho. The Distro is much more stable than Arch. But I might be biased with my Daily Driver Distro ;-)

[@grants5036]

Over the years I have used Ubuntu, Arch, Fedora in that order. I used Fedora since 31. OpenSuse Tumbleweed has replaced Fedora for me. I came here for 'the best KDE distro' and I stayed for YaST.

[@MaS-ch2id]

I would like to agree. Installed Fedora KDE with Wayland on my system, many crashesk, and packagekit was really buggy, then installed tumbleweed KDE with wayland, no problems and rock stable. My first real linux experience and running strong since November. I really like tumbleweed for the experience so far.

[@PhyleXTension82]

I really want to like Tumbleweed, and I've given it multiple goes - but I've had consistent issues with my printer. I use a Brother HL-L3230CDW, and do not like to use the proprietary drivers. Without them, I've never been able to get duplexing working, which is a necessity for my work. Other than that, I wasn't a big fan of the ProtonVPN app for Tumbleweed, but that's not the fault of the team either. I'm currently on LinuxMint 21.3 - and I'm quite enjoying the simplicity. I changed away from Fedora because of the RedHat kerfuffle... Personally I like the idea of install once, use forever - hence the appeal of Tumbleweed for me, and I appreciate the Yast suite. I'll probably give it another go soon, just because I really want it to succeed for me

[@m0n0ct0]

I recently switched from Arch to TW and it seems that it was the best decision I could have made (although I miss the plethora of audio plugins Arch has in its official repos and AUR)

[@xoph86]

I probably would too if the installer would be better. In case of installation comfort Tumbleweed is the worst distro I've tried so far. Compared with e.g. EndeavourOS or Mint OpenSuse feels like a decade behind... Apart from that I liked testing Tumbleweed. But in the end I moved to Endeavour. Actually not sure why...

[@calabi-yau4894]

For elementaryOS, I will say that for anyone whose use case requires accessibility functions, the developers have really excelled in providing toggles for dyslexia, various types of colorblindness, and speech-guided installation, in addition to the usual accessibility apps that you can find in general distros. This is obviously not part of Nick's use case, but is worth trying out for anyone who might need additional accessibility options

[@comradestannis]

Does Mint have anything like this?

[@kellenhight]

​@@comradestannis I can't remember exactly how it works on Mint, but I know for sure that it's not as easy as a single flip of a switch in the accessibility page of the Settings app, like it is on elementaryOS

[@calabi-yau4894]

When elementaryOS 7.1 came out, a review mentioned the accessibility aspects, and I read their release notes, which mentioned working with users specifically to enhance these aspects. Would be great to see similar initiatives in other distros.

[@comradestannis]

@@kellenhight thnx

[@soooslaaal8204]

Really pandering to the apple crowd eh

[@dominik3482]

Fedora has always been my go to. It brings new features quickly and is quite stable overall. Love it!

[@dmitrii_cl]

For me it just works and it's enough for work)

[@tristen_grant]

The only issue with Fedora is RedHat.

[@theviniso]

It's been my main distro for two years now and it works so well I'm almost getting bored of it lol

[@dancoways]

anytime i end up distro hopping from time to time to see whats new, i always end up back on Fedora. Has been my go to for many years now.

[@valdez66667]

I always liked Fedora and settled on it for my daily driver last year. This year after an update my external monitor stopped working. 😮 I was so happy, but to lose a basic but important function after an update is not acceptable. 😢

[@saint_luiz]

I am new to Linux and using SteamOS because of my Steam Deck. I am using it for gaming and schoolwork. I got very interested in Linux recently because of it, and now I am trying to learn it. For now, I could use and install everything I used on my Windows PC (mainly writing software and some video/audio editing). I love it, especially the privacy and security I have after that horrible Windows 11 update.

[@STONE69_]

For new Linux users, I recommend, 1-Linux Mint, 2-ZorinOS, 3-MX Linux, 4-Fedora Silverblue (immutable).

[@Joker71219]

What about Ubuntu ?? I just install it yesterday (watched tons of videos ) and I am totally new to linux 😅 Should I install l mint , because I don't know why , the app store is not working , it just hangs when I click on some software😢.

[@STONE69_]

@@Joker71219 Ubunto is no longer good for beginners as it used to be. .. Install Mint or Zorin OS. .. They are both very good, and you will not have to use the command line to upgrade to next versions, they have a tool for that. If you have any questions, let me know.

[@bogdanandrei9803]

ubuntu is great tbh, a lot of flavours are made from ubuntu@@Joker71219

[@STONE69_]

@@Joker71219 Ubuntu would be my fifth, but it works great. The Company behind the Distro, can do some crazy changes, like snaps. I hope you enjoy Linux, so many people are leaving Windows now.

[@e002840]

Mint and Fedora are so wonderful to run, in my case. Just missed both of my dear brazilians distro: BigLinux and Regata OS

[@miroslavstankov7919]

Hopefully, Pop!_OS bounces back with a good 24.04... It was my first distro, and I'd love to see them back in the spotlight this year. They took a lot of time to develop the Cosmic DE, but I'll keep my fingers crossed that it succeeds. As for Manjaro, I'm very disappointed with how it's been (mis)managed. It had the chance of becoming the good version of Ubuntu for the Arch family, but I don't think the dev team knows what they want or what Manjaro is supposed to be anymore.

[@trilight3597]

I hope so too. I hope Cosmic is great as they are my current distro and something that checks my current boxes.

[@TheFeelTrain]

EndeavourOS is what Manjaro wishes it could be. Check it out if you haven't already.

[@ElJosher]

I use pop os on my laptop so i'm excited to see what is in store when these update finally come.

[@lolitbairiganjan2940]

I'm a student and I use manjaro KDE. I use it for kde's customisation/looks and pacman's speed. I have heard that pacman is the fastest of them all. I also like the minty green look of manjaro. I did come into issues but I had with other distros too. Using linux for 3 years. Happy to be a linux intermediate.😁😄😄

[@StephenHarry-b5w]

Love your content and presentation skills. I've recently switched from Windows to Linux, approximately 3 months now and use you videos as guides to help make distro and software choices. I have now plumped for Nobara 39, it needed a few tweaks but we got there

[@codinglikenoob4284]

I personally use Timeshift, timeshift-grub2 and timeshift-autosnap when using Arch Linux. They're just automatically snapshot when I update the system. If the system's broken, I will just have to select the working snapshot in the Grub menu in the most cases.

[@codinglikenoob4284]

Also thanks for Linux Mint team for developing Timeshift!

[@viamoiam]

I liked openSUSE snapshots best. It is even built into YAST if you change settings. I have setup timeshift (3 years ago I think) on mint, ubunut, fedora, and arch and it was pretty great once integrated into bootmanager, package manager, and regularly scheduled. Real Backup should be so easy.

[@STONE69_]

I would replace the SSD every 3-4 years if your a heavy user, because you are rewriting a lot.

[@codinglikenoob4284]

​@@STONE69_I forgot to mention that I'm using BTRFS option rather than rsync though I'm not pretty sure if CoW would be better

[@ripp102]

@@STONE69_ Not with BTRFS

[@atemoc]

With better documentation and package consistency, and maybe an official graphical tool to configure NixOS for beginners-ish, I would put NixOS higher up in my favourite distros. I still use it as my main and only distribution, but it does have its issues.

[@davecampbell257]

I can totally see a future where someone forks Nix and creates a UI to generate/maintain that config file so the user doesn’t need to learn the syntax, and I bet that would take off

[@atemoc]

@@davecampbell257 There are already projects that aim to let you graphically configure NixOS to some extent, like SnowflakeOS.

[@johnnymnemonic1369]

Linux Mint, like Pop OS, is also based on Ubuntu 22.04... but such a big difference in rating?

[@ClariNerd]

If you use LMDE it doesn’t have the Ubuntu issues. It is YAGNI purified and crystallized.

[@uberdonkey9721]

Yup. Mint and Ubuntu are quite different. Apart from Desktop Environment (which he's type of covering at the same time, which maybe isn't fair for Ubuntu) the main differences are (i) Ubuntu is commercial.. though they stopped ads within the OS, that threat is always there (ii) SNAP PACKAGES. Ubuntu compels you to use this snap bloatware which are around 100 times the size of a deb package. Yep it's easier for the developers, but for users on small laptops it sucks up valuable space and data (and everytime yoy update, even more data as it replaces whole package). Mint basically gets rid of all the Ubuntu aspects people hate, and make a leaner, faster and actually prettier, version.

[@AceMcCrank]

Curious how MX Linux fits on your scale here. I've settled on it nicely.

[@ivobrick7401]

MX does not fit the bill. It's windows 95 on fentanyl. Insane distro esp. xfce version.

[@loucipher7782]

@@ivobrick7401 lol ever heard of compiz? nub

[@christianzee5996]

when I switched to Linux, I tried several distros, but finally settled on Linux Mint. Never had a problem, and can do anything that I could do with Windows.

[@ZeDuck_]

linux mint is somehow a lightweight perfect distro

[@k0mp4k]

I've been running Gentoo since 2004 and love the control over my system. The distro doesn't force anything on you but is all about choice. As for the computers for my family members I've been running Manjaro on several computers for years as I find it faster to install than Arch proper. Never had any problems at all. I don't follow distro politics so I have no idea about the behind the scenes stuff.

[@yuryzhuravlev2312]

same, Arch it's ok if you don't need a specific version of app...

[@spacelem]

Gentoo was my first full time Linux back in 2003. But eventually I grew tired of fixing it and just wanted stuff to work, and moved over to Ubuntu then Mint. A few years ago I moved over to Manjaro, and have been pretty happy, but am thinking of moving back to Mint soon. But still, Gentoo will always be my first (full time).

[@JohnSmith-ev1sm]

Debian should be in "good" if not "great". Rock solid stability, huge amounts of forum and developer support, has zero drama, has flatpak support for keeping your required apps up to date, is very secure etc. Yes KDE/Gnome might not get new features, but that's a problem for when you do this in 2025 because as of now, KDE on Debian is "the latest version".

[@HurricaneSA]

I agree. Although KDE Plasma 6 just dropped two weeks ago there's nothing in it that requires an immediate upgrade. Debian 13 will ship with Plasma 6 next year after it has been thoroughly tested and incorporated so I honestly don't see why the average user needs to rush to get the latest version unless it has something they urgently need. Which will not be many people. It's silly to want to rank the most stable, easiest to use and safest distro as average simply because it doesn't allow you to break your OS with untested software. I'd love to know why someone who uses his daily driver to make content and run a business needs to have the latest bleeding edge desktop immediately upon launch, bugs and all. He seemed to be doing just fine with 5.27 at the time he made this video which, like you said, is the version Debian 12 ships with.

[@anonymous_opinions1924]

Yes. Debian is amazing for people that love Linux but don't want the stress of their computer that they use to do actual work being affected by all the drama and constant evolution/instability. Definitely top tier.

[@Tomas_F.]

As so called 'IT pro' I prefer stable OS with minimum news in it. So I love my Debian very much.

[@resignator]

Agreed. Cant really beat it for stability. Dont complain when it is 6 months behind the bleeding edge. That is exactly why it just works.

[@SriHarshaChilakapati]

For people like me who initially chose Manjaro but are too lazy to reinstall everything, switch it to testing branch. You'll get more frequent updates and will have almost no breakages that way. My installation was fine for more than an year that way now.

[@mc-not_escher]

Hmm, I might just try that. I’m running KDE + Wayland + BTRFS snapper + amdgpu. Updates sometimes are a bit off, but perhaps that’s because I’m on Stable with the latest non-experimental kernel. Yes I do have some AUR package issues, but this video and your comment makes me suspect that might be why some of these updates are a bit weird. I have old hardware and I don’t play games much these days, but perhaps edging closer to the bleeding-edge might solve those woes… I’m only lazy in the sense that I don’t make backups lol. Luckily searching the forums fixed any issues I’ve had so far after I switched from Windows 7 to it about five years ago. Minimal hiccups. Cheers!

[@LetsGoGetThem]

If you are going to do that just archinstall and use Arch Linux.

[@anonymouseniller6688]

A couple of points about Gentoo: 1. While you do gain a minor performance boost from compiling. The main reason why you do that is to customize the package. You may only need a subset of features, so you compile only that. 2. Why binary packages ? Because some things take a long time to compile, update frequently and aren't that customizable. So you just install the binaries for those specific packages

[@americo9999]

what is the best linux distro to do machine learning, GPT, stable diffusion locally that can support CUDA?

[@maoathanaric7862]

Can't wait to try out VanillaOS Orchid. Imagine a sudo free immutable system with every Linux-software there is and trace-free rollback support by design. :****** Yes, you said it, it was very subjective -- but it's always fun to watch your content. Stay the way you are!

[@Luc484]

You did not mention Kubuntu. I used it for years, both at work and at home. It is rock solid, decently up to date and user-friendly. Never had a problem with it in years of heavy usage.

[@jeepee2]

Completely agree!

[@U1TR4F0RCE]

He mentioned Ubuntu spins and KUbuntu is an Ubuntu spin.

[@Luc484]

@@U1TR4F0RCE I know, he also mentioned Linux Mint, which is based on Ubuntu. I think Kubuntu deserved a few words as well.

[@U1TR4F0RCE]

Kubuntu is stuck following rules Canonical sets up about Ubuntu spins, Linux Mint, Zorin OS, and Pop!_OS which are technically based on Ubuntu don't and are more their own thing.

[@Fireshot500]

I love Xubuntu most

[@amongousTitaniumBalls]

For me, after getting a good grasp of NixOS, I can't just go back to any regular distro. The documentation and learning process is painfully bad and needs some work as soon as possible, but putting that aside, knowing exactly what software my computer has in every moment, not collecting "shit" overtime and the ability to bring *temporally* packages into "existence" on demand is just wonderful.

[@cybernit3]

Ya, I notice with NixOS you can go back with OS Snapshots incase your system dies.... but looks like a very plain OS....

[@amongousTitaniumBalls]

@@cybernit3 That can be done with practically any distro out there. The real features of NixOS are the way it handles packages. To cite a few: - NixOS allows you to write down a list of "things I want in my computer" and the system will take care of it for you; you always know what things are in your computer, and collecting "shitty" packages (dependencies, packages you installed for just a thing and forgot...) is just not a possibility anymore - By using certain commands, you can download and utilize a package or a number of packages temporally until you close the terminal, moment where this packages "stop existing"; you can even set special configurations for this "temporal command shell" like having certain environment variables set during this period and ONLY for this period - Packages are stored in a different way than traditional distros, solving one of the major issues of Linux distributions: dependency hell - Things like changing your whole desktop environment becomes as easy as changing one or a few lines of the "things I want in my computer" list, knowing for sure no trace of the old DE is left behind as you don't have to be remembering which packages had you installed with the old DE

[@bevanfindlay]

I'm curious why MX Linux seems to rarely get mentioned? Is it just too small to get noticed? I picked it after asking around about a bunch of options and really like it, but it seems to fly under the radar.

[@RedSntDK]

I have to say I'm puzzled as well. Why even mention Chrome OS when we could've looked at a real contender with MX Linux.

[@bevanfindlay]

@@RedSntDK I've only recently returned to Linux - I ran Ubuntu about 15+years ago - and I'm loving MX, but being that it never gets much mention, I'm not sure what I don't know or what I might be missing. Would another distro be better, or did I get it right for my level of skill and use case? 🤷‍♂️

[@oldxebeche]

+1 I like MX using Xfce as it's the only distro I know w/ a vertical panel that works and that does not need a horizontal bar/panel. On wide displays, especially 16:9, this saves a lot of space. Also it's deb based, but that's just my personal pref.

[@oldxebeche]

@@bevanfindlay Maybe it's the secret insiders' tip!? :)

[@vulpo]

MX Linux is the most popular distro on Distro Watch and has been for well over a year now, so it is really strange that he didn't even mention it. It's like rating the best EVs in the world and not mentioning Tesla.

[@LurkingOwlbear]

On a few entries @TheLinuxEXP , you mentioned staleness of the DE as a breaking feature for you - particularly Pop!_OS. So the follow up question is, what in the GUI needs changing or is explicitly an issue from a user experience standpoint in those distributions? Are they unstable? Insecure? Do they break common software? Are they actually broken, or are they working well, and focusing on making changes when they are needed, not when they are fashionable? Because - coming again to Pop - there still aren't a lot of DEs which are implimenting tiling and float as seemlessly as Pop does: Gnome doesn't (In Ubuntu, Fedora, or Debian) and KDE doesn't have a spin with tiling that is as supported as Pop's spin of Gnome... so that being held seems to make sense, right?

[@alexandrosroussos]

Happy to see HoloISO on the list and actually well graded. I really like this OS I believe Valve should push it as a mainstream consumer Linux distro with the ability to default booting in Desktop mode for certain devices.

[@fk_tech]

Wait that logo is holoiso ? Lmfao unmaintained os is also in his top list. Such a useless list. It should be chimeraos there.

[@alexandrosroussos]

@fumangus69 what does it mean that the fact it's write only ?

[@BipX39]

After distro hopping for a year, Manjaro with Gnome made me fall in love with Linux. Been running this set up on an all AMD desktop for over 2 years and it's been rock solid for everything. My only complaint is that Adobe needs to start supporting Linux like good little humans. Linux is feaking awesome, Adobe can eat sh*t!!

[@dunkelklinge1]

Poor Manjaro. I never had a problem with it. As it is Arch based it also follows the Keep it Simple/Stupid principle and you really notice that once you dig into the system to change or fine tune stuff. The only thing, that I don't like is that it ships with a proprietary office suite by default. But you can just download the minimal version to prevent that in the first place.

[@CommodoreFan64]

When you install Manjaro Gnome it gives you the option to install Libreoffice, Freeoffice, or none at all, they don't force it on you. Also Manjaro Gnome has been really stable for me across 5 different systems, and I'm about to install it on a 6th system soon as my new Lenovo laptop arrives in the mail, as I love their keep it simple way of thinking. My only issues have been some minor wake/sleep issues on an oddball Chinese Erying Micro ATX board that has an Intel 12900H CPU originally meant for laptops, but I got it at a good price, and it's a lower power beast with 14cores/20 Threads.

[@fabiandrinksmilk6205]

Seems like you don't understand the criticism that Manjaro have faced. It's just that the developers seem to be incompetent. Many users have gotten a broken system because Manjaro allows users to use the AUR alongside their older packages, making Manjaro more unstable than Arch itself due to poor design choices. I'm not saying that you can't use Manjaro without experiencing any problems, but it is easier to break, especially when you don't know what you're doing. The developers also once DDOSed the AUR through a bug in pamac that made it send too many requests to the AUR servers. This happened not once, but twice. They've had their website SSL certificates expire and then just told users to set back their system clock as a temporary fix. This happened at least five times and has happened on different subdomains. They've shipped pre-release versions of open source software like Asahi Linux and OpenRGB many times, which caused those app developers to get issues from end users on Manjaro for work-in-progress software, which weren't supposed to be shipped in the first place. There has been send an open letter by the community saying that work-in-progress software should not be shipped to end users, obviously. I'd say that you're probably better off with Endeavor OS as a direct alternative to Manjaro. If you find Arch too hard, you can also try the arch-install script to install a working Arch desktop with a step-by-step guide. If you just want a stable rolling release that's easy to use, just go for OpenSUSE Tumbleweed like Nick already said in the video.

[@dunkelklinge1]

@@fabiandrinksmilk6205 I use Arch (btw) as my daily driver with KDE Plasma. :) But I often recommend Manjaro to other people when they want to get in touch with Linux just because I was using Manjaro as well back then. I also noticed that the developers make strange moves, but the OS in general is still great and in my opinion one of the best out there to start with. Oh and the AUR is by defaut disabled. Unexperienced users will first have to enable it to have a chance to destroy their system. But even with AUR packages, I never had an issue. Maybe I was lucky here.

[@Depado]

@@fabiandrinksmilk6205 I mostly use Manjaro as a way to install Arch with a properly configured desktop environment and LUKS drives. Basically the first thing I do is switching to testing branch and drop pamac. Done. I truly never faced the incompatibility issue between AUR/Manjaro repos, and I've been using it daily for literal years and installed a bunch of obscure things. Thanks for Endeavor OS, I never heard of it before and I'll have a look :)

[@anonymous_opinions1924]

Manjaro has no advantage over Arch - it's more unstable, and if you have the technical skill to deal with that then you have the technical skill to use Arch.

[@kyoudaiken]

I'm using Manjaro since 2 years now and I am overally pretty happy. The compatibility issues between the official packages and AUR can be an issue, but I managed to manage it pretty well. Some things might not ever going to work on Manjaro but most things run without any issue. Also it runs very recent kernels, which is great.

[@jpHasABadHandle]

Almost 4 years here. I find that the best/easiest way to manage Manjaro is to switch to the Unstable branch as soon as possible, no matter how much you leverage AUR (if at all). You'll be just hours behind Arch Stable, which means getting packages at a steady stream, instead of in piles of hundreds of different packages at a time. Which is always fun to debug when problems arise /s Yes, I know: "Just run Arch instead!". I'm just too lazy to fix what ain't broken. All in all, I'm still unsure if I'd want to recommend Manjaro to anyone. Today, if you're fine being a little bit hands-on, use Arch. If I knew 4 years ago what I know today, that's what I'd do. If you want a rolling release, but want things to "just work", look for something like Tumbleweed.

[@derekfurst6233]

Hey @TheLinuxEXP I sometimes don't understand your rankings. Can you explain why fedora is higher that opensuse? Open suse essentially is like fedora but with the fantastic yast admin tools you mentioned. What does fedora do to make it higher on your list? Also opensuse probably has the best kde implementation i've come across

[@TadeoDOria]

It's Ubuntu for me, I understand the hate for Snaps but on my specific use case (I'm a 3D designer) the snaps for Blender and Inkscape work great and have done so for years, plus I still have deb for the odd obscure software I need to use for work that doesn't provide any other Linux package.

[@cybernit3]

Surprised he put Ubuntu on average, but I think he did cause he uses Tuxedo OS (Ubuntu based) and has those Tuxedo laptops. With an SSD snap isn't that bad, I can understand if you used a HD. The main thing I like about Ubuntu is Canonical seems like a well organized corp and gives me a sense of stability. I am surprised Linux mint is on top, thought it was a good Linux newbie OS and for out dated cpu hardware.

[@APerson-tk8cw]

​@alexandertopic yeah, it used to be a distro, which would not work on recent hardware.. But this time, you can give a try for the edge iso which includes latest kernel, maybe that can help.

[@ZEMRALEX]

I used Pop OS for 6 months, and when i messed it up, i decided to switch to Debian, because of newer desktop environment and Wayland touchpad gestures on Gnome (i forgot about my mouse) Had to tinker to install Nvidia drivers, but once everything is setup, it works great for me I recommend separate /home partition if you have space on your SSD, it is better when you mess up and easier to distro hop

[@RealNutellam]

My Arch won’t boot and I’m thinking of switching to an Ubuntu-based Distro, is it possible to use my Arch /home directory to a new Distro without formatting it?

[@ZEMRALEX]

​@@RealNutellamyeah, copy /home to a backup drive, make sure that you have sufficient storage Then install distro with separate /home partition and copy user directory from backup to /home on freshly installed distro When installing new OS, make sure to set your /home partition without formatting and same filesystem

[@RealNutellam]

@@ZEMRALEX I see, thanks!

[@peterhanustiak]

Which nvidia drivers did you install? The one from repo or latest from nvidia website? I had some issues with nvidia on wayland so I had to use x11

[@haralambov]

I am genuinely curious about your negative Arch experience, problems and maintenance issues. Been using it for years and the ONLY time I've had issues after an update, was with Slack, which is proprietary software. And the issue was fixed within 2-3 days. That was back in 2018.

[@Clanps]

did you try to install arch following the wiki or did you only use arch install? (not saying that archinstall is bad but I know it has some security holes as well as some questionable ways of doing some things) I've been daily driving arch linux for nearly 3 years and I've never had any issues that I couldn't solve by looking at forum posts or the wiki

[@poutineausyropderable7108]

5 months late but Chatgpt 4.0 is awesome. I've been running arch for 1-2 weeks now and it's awesome. I got so much shit done just asking chatgpt for stuff.

[@poutineausyropderable7108]

Also yeah, Arch doesn't break due to depandancy

[@Mamiya645]

Would there be any distro more suitable than the rest, for putting on a 15.6" touchscreen all-in-one?

[@anonymous_opinions1924]

Anything with GNOME will work well for a touchscreen. Debian is the classic all-purpose Linux distribution and comes with GNOME by default, but if you are just getting started Fedora might require a little less learning to get going.

[@skywz]

Seeing as you ranked both Tumbleweed and Leap, have you considered Slowroll? AIUI it's basically Tumbleweed that (mostly?) automatically figures out which packages in Tumbleweed are stable or unstable and filters them accordingly. I'm assuming that the reason you put Tumbleweed in Good instead of Great was because it was rolling and therefore not stable enough, since you didn't explicitly state any downsides.

[@hunterrules0_o]

puts pop os in the avoid catagory. internal screaming. I love the gui in pop os. its really useful for me and better than modern gnome

[@SR567895]

Yeah, I found it really odd that he placed Pop_OS in "avoid" because the desktop hadn't changed in two years, but then put Linux Mint in the top tier! Surely Linux Mint is the epitomy of an desktop which hasn't changed?!?!?

[@tolpacourt]

pop will eat itself

[@ashokchoudhary8305]

I tried many distros, but I find pop the most stable OS. I'm a developer and I love this OS.

[@hunterrules0_o]

@@ashokchoudhary8305 Same pop seems to always work for me. ubuntu would always have its ui crash. pop os seems just well so good

[@GraveUypo]

i tried to use popOS 3 times and was disappointed in all of them. it just doesn't seem very well put together, it has a lot of weird hangs even from the liveboot. i gave up and for now i'm sticking with mint. but his argument for giving it a low score is really laughable. "2 years without change" to the desktop experience is a PLUS to me

[@callyral]

i like void linux because it's very minimal by default meaning you can shape your system how you want, while having an easier time doing that than installing manually like gentoo

[@MelroyvandenBerg]

And more stable than arch

[@randomperson9282]

Can someone explain y Ubuntu is considered average is not the latest what’s the issue with snaps vs flatpack? Etc etc

[@Xoman08]

Yeah, considering Ubuntu "average" makes me doubt of the impartiality of the judging. Ubuntu is super stable (both desktop and server ) and there is plenty of help and there are plenty of drivers and Apps that are designed for it.

[@MrCrispy1991]

I officially made the switch to Mint about two months ago. I have been dual booting with windows for years and used windows to game. With the advancements in compatability layers I can game on Linux with no issues. Linux Mint has the support I need and is super stable. I can't see myself switching to another distro for a long time.

[@caldemier5885]

Using MX Linux KDE on daily driver because it is stable and easy to use with default firewall sett. Got Gecko Linux Rolling KDE on second laptop to see how the Plasma 6 transition turns out before switching my daily driver. Gexko Linux has the benefits of Tumbleweed and is the only distro that handled all my hardware. I will need to learn how to setup UFW on my laptop for home and away, maybe that's something you could cover. Previously used Manjaro XFCE, Linux Mint, Ubuntu, Fedora,, Solaris, Mandeake, Corel Linux as daily drivers.

[@fearsmasher1299]

I'd never use MX Linux- super woke. The devs come from Anti-X Linux which puts links to all these sites about communism in the browser. No thanks.

[@Watchandlearn91]

Ubuntu has been my go to since 16.04 with me occasionally trying other distributions. It just works for me, all the programs are available for it, and it is the same OS as I run on all my servers. I have also used Linux Mint a lot and it is great for people who want a no-fuss intro to Linux.

[@vezquex]

Version 16.04 was brilliant. Booting the system and launching applications slowed to a crawl with Snap in 20.04, sadly.

[@Watchandlearn91]

@@vezquex Yes but you can quickly rip that out and install flatpack and add a file to make it where it won't auto download snaps with apt. Nowadays though, snaps startup pretty quick as they seem to have largely fixed that. Plus snap is really useful in the server environment for installing things like Nextcloud easily and backing them up.

[@fastrockproductions9788]

Honestly I just use a mix of flatpaks and snaps, for me it's definitely the best of gnome distros if you want long term consistency. I use fedora ashai, I don't have many gripes with Fedora but I don't really want to recommend the mainline release to people who want a consistent system. Also stock gnome is a bit hard to use or recommend to someone out of the box, however the list they listed was for Nick so I get why he hates ubuntu ​@vezquex

[@new-lviv]

Laggy snap updates and Logseq snap dropping plugins spoil them to me. I am using Kubuntu now, but I suspect I will jump to Tuxedo OS on the next one, as it does not use snaps.

[@Pravakar628]

Ubuntu is amazing for server. Snaps are very good for servers but for daily use they are inferior to flatpak. They should give us an option to choose if we want snaps or flatpak or whatever out of the box. So people who like snaps can use them and don't like don't have to use them or spend time removing them and risk kstuff breaking .

[@vaxryy]

You should rank wayland compositors :) hyprland would surely be great+++

[@flickowoa]

truly

[@TheFeelTrain]

Should wait until Plasma 6 releases for that since it has actual color management and HDR. Those two things along means it automatically blows anything else out of the water.

[@jshi3]

I've heard some chatter about phasing out KDE Neon for OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, but nothing official.

[@TheHangarHobbit]

I like Sparky Linux myself as it has something like 25 desktops you can choose from with just a couple clicks so I can have my laptop be as light or as fancy as I want while still having a nice stable underpinning.

[@ilmc922]

Do you have an opinion on MX Linux? I'm using MX Linux KDE with some tweaks (Liquorix kernel, change to systemd as default, etc.) and I'm very satisfied with it.

[@RedSntDK]

Not sure why you'd change to systemd, seems like one of MX Linux strong points that it doesn't use it. But I'd love to know what more people think of MX Linux as well, seems like such a great distro as a newbie. It has a lot of quality of life tools and utlities.

[@ilmc922]

@@RedSntDK Yeah, I changed to systemd because of personal preference. But I do appreciate that MX Linux has sysVinit as default, which also works fine, and that you can change it easily. Out of all distros I tried, MX Linux has for me the best out-of-box experience, especially in terms of hardware compatibility. And it also offers good and comfortable options for tweaking.

[@bramfran4326]

What about MX Linux?

[@MelroyvandenBerg]

Indeed. I also missed void linux. Mx linux any many more 😅

[@ВладимирДимов-л6р]

Also, @TheLinuxEXP hasn't mentioned this distro at all despite seems to be one of those being used and installed more often (maybe so much large as the System76's Pop!_OS). Strangely, despite on DistroWatch's being one of first top ranking distros, NO mention at all about EndeavorOS which I feels to be maybe best LinuxArch based distro currently, there's also no mention for Garuda (Linux Arch based as well) oriented to the gaming. Weird thing is majority of Linux PCs and laptops manufacturers are still lacking options for have especially MX Linux or EndeavorOS pre-installed (or requires additional cost). Some are even offering mostly Ubuntu-based only distros like Tuxedo and System76. (Actually StarLabs seems to be still THE ONLY manufacturer offering their devices with an option to have MX Linux pre-installed)...

[@StarfoxHUN]

After starting my Linux experiment (heh) with Fedora like half a year ago, as i had to reinstall it because Windows update form some reason breaks it for me sometimes (I use Linux for personal and Windows for work), i tried Nobara as gaming is my main use-case, and have to say the gaming experience definetly seamless, i just cant come to love KDE as much as i loved Gnome. Really want to give KDE more time, but i really miss Gnome, it fit my use style so much better.

[@Masta_E]

Started with cinnamon and now KDE, and cannot stand gnome anymore. KDE is the way.

[@StarfoxHUN]

@@Masta_E Yea, that is why its nice to have choices. I can luckly "stand" KDE, but i just loved the way Gnome worked for me much more.

[@Masta_E]

@@StarfoxHUN the good news is you can still use gnome. 🙂

[@Lumenified]

I don't understand one thing. Why is there no info about the no 1 ranked distro? Mx linux?

[@prgnify]

Nick, your opinions are always valuable - what I love the most is how upfront you are in that these opinions are what works for you specifically and how you limit it to only what you have actually used. IMO this is the ONLY correct way to make a tier list, so the greatest of kudos to you! If I could suggest something that is sorely lacking from your experience of 2023 (I mean "sorely" as sticking out like a sore thumb, not as a "deficient" or that this video is "inadequate") is "immutable" or "image based" OSs. If you could focus a bit of time this year to take a look at maybe Silverblue, EasyOS (a "pioneer" and too often forgotten distro), OpenSUSE Aeon (previously known as MicroOS), RLxOS, in addition to the ones you did try using and did include in the video, like VanillaOS and Nix (and reportedly SerpentOS as a base for Solus will be immutable, but I know how the whole project changes as the tide so who knows...), and other distros that absolutely do not fit your usage, but are cool projects nonetheless, like Guix and EndlessOS. Idk, it seems in recent years "immutable" was the main buzzword, which is why I noted it's absence from your video. I would also like to mention in passing those smaller and seemingly very nationality focused distributions, like BIG Linux and carbonOS. But I guess they are even more fringe than bangs. just so I disclose my interests, I don't currently use any immutable nor any fringe distros. A simple and very mainstream Tumbleweed install reigns in my Desktop and a good old Ubuntu LTS lives in my laptop (that I use like three times a month while travelling for work, so LTS is comfortable). So no conflict of interests to be declared.

[@The8BitPianist]

Currently on Debian and I would recommend you give Testing a shot for the list next year!

[@Ruiseal]

Im thinking to switching to debian when windows 10 no longer recives updates in a year or two. How is debian for everyday use with a bit of gaming thrown in?

[@AtariWow]

@@Ruiseal It would be doable if you are ok with tinkering with the OS. I switched from windows to Linux Mint and have been gaming with no issues so far. I've been playing Lethal Company, Baldurs Gate 3, some Minecraft, and Apex Legends (only games I've played on linux atm, no issues though and was really easy to set up).

[@milikest]

I like Linux Mint for sure but I still can't believe that you haven't reviewed Mx Linux in this list...

[@HaraldEngels]

Yes - the whole video is highly subjective and therefore quite useless.

[@gerrit6769]

I would love to see LMDE in that ranking next year. Or maybe a detailed video with your opinion of it.

[@pedrosantos3648]

I would love to see LMDE as main LM, completely dropping Ubuntu to focus all efforts on LMDE. Until then I use Debian with Cinnamon. I would also like a video about LMDE.

[@evenblackercrow4476]

I'd just add that bump Zorin17 into the good category for those moving from w10, and with hardware not supported by w11. I understand the kernel age criticism but similar layout and operation familiarity will be a big deal for those users.

[@LiveLife378]

@Nick, No mentions for MX-Linux 23.2 ?? ( XFCE, KDE) can run easily install flatpaks, other apps, and distrobox 1.5x off it as well.

[@Arfonfree]

I use Fedora for my mainstream computers, and I would also place it in great, but... I love Chromebooks because they're CHEAP! It's not hard to pick one up for less than $100 US. I'm using Bodhi Linux as I have found it easy to install on every machine I've tried. Have you looked at ranking specifically lightweight systems?

[@J3zu5]

I don't know about your experient with arch, It was hard for me at first, but after getting it done it's just perfect. (for me)

[@eminem992i]

+1 windows was for me is hard as F every time i trying to change something its just pain in the as* but Arch linux is sooo easy you can do everything in it as you like !!

[@patriciaverso]

I've kinda resisted Mint since 2014, which is when I found about it, I don't really know why, but I've decided to give it a try this year, and it really is a blast! I love Mint now!

[@F.Wormsworth]

Any good 32b distros? I have a lot of old xp boxes that I continue to use. I would like to my 64b windows system.

[@RedSntDK]

Debian based distros like AntiX and MX Linux and Q4OS all have 32 bit ISOs. I like them all, and am currently using Q4OS on a really old 1 GB Asus Eee PC. It's nice to look at and has that vintage Windows (NT, XP, 7) feel to it. It's not bleeding edge. I have considered giving Puppy Linux a look as well, which is also hailed as a great 32 bit low memory distro.

[@anonymous_opinions1924]

Slackware is great for old machines - requires some determination and technical skill to get it configured how you want it though. Also there are Debian based ones that could work like RedSaint said

[@roerd]

Isn't it also true for Mint that it's based on an older version of Ubuntu and therefore many packages in the official repos are very old? Why was Mint not criticised for this like those other distros for which this is also the case?

[@emperor4677]

I would just place Debian higher as it's the one distro, used for base for almost all others, but with less bloat. On top of that it's main disadvantage of being old is easily fixable by changing it to debian testing or debian sid, while preserving it's stability.

[@Ruiseal]

Im thinking to switching to debian when windows 10 no longer recives updates in a year or two. How is debian for everyday use with a bit of gaming thrown in?

[@MiningForPies]

@@Ruiseal gaming is ok if you want to play solitaire and minesweeper

[@RedSntDK]

@@MiningForPies Hey, you forgot about Gnome 2048!

[@te-wei]

@@Ruiseal Hi, I just migrated from win11 to Debian for a week. With the KDE environment it's literally Win7 on steroid, very comfortable to stay, and I can solve almost every problem by asking GPT and terminal console. About the gaming, people sais that Bottles/Wine can run most games in Windows, even steam, but I'm still trying to figure it out. It's no risk if you install it on a seperate hard drive, you will get a menu on boot to choose whether you want to boot into windows or debian. A $15 SSD can do the trick more than enough. The conclusion : I can boot back to win11 anytime, but I don't want to unless necessary, and the necessity is decreasing rapidly. When I figured out how to use Bottles/Wine, I might not returning back to windows anymore.

[@lesh4357]

Are you lumping LMDE in with Mint, or would you need seperate evaluation ? Given all the stuff you mentioned re Ubuntu which Mint is based on, I think they should make LMDE the primary distro. If not primary, at least equal billing with Ubuntu based Mint. What is your opinion on that ? Cheers

[@adjusted-bunny]

I am using Debian testing and it is great.

[@Ruiseal]

Im thinking to switching to debian when windows 10 no longer recives updates in a year or two. How is debian for everyday use with a bit of gaming thrown in?

[@user-dz3ph7dl4m]

​@@Ruiseal debian is a great community distro - you could create a partition on your PC now and put debian on (dual boot) to get used to it to make the transition from M$ to linux a bit smoother / less abrupt

[@carlgoranheintz3914]

If we leave large Corp and privacy aside, what pros do we have with Linux? I have an old computer that is running too slow but it seems like it is quite time consuming to even choose a distribution and then just hope the software you want can run. Sorry, it is a genuine question as I am curious

[@anonymous_opinions1924]

It's a good question. Debian (or Linux Mint Debian Edition if you're just getting started) is the distribution you're looking for - it has the widest software support, best stability, and will improve the speed of an old computer compared to Windows. Linux will also take up much less space and get bloated less quickly, plus most of the software you'll use on it is lighter compared to its closed-source equivalent (e.g. LibreOffice vs MS Office).

[@1pcfred]

Linux gives you choice. Which you've noticed. Choice is good and bad. Making choices can certainly be time consuming. If you're curious Linux has something to offer you then too. With Linux you get the full source and powerful utilities that allow you to examine the system in minute detail. That should satisfy the deepest curiosity that anyone may have. Few do, but you could. Talk about time consuming.

[@user-ic6xf]

Zorin OS is slow update but very stable. It is great for someone that just want's a Linux OS that just works. It also looks good with out any user effort. My number 1 recommended OS for new Linux users.

[@pfitz4881]

I had been using Ubuntu on one laptop, and Mint on another. Move from Ubuntu to Mint to avoid having to deal with removal of snaps. Currently have Mint DE5 on one and Mint DE6 on the second. Both rock solid daily drivers. I do still have a ultra small form factor Dell desktop running Win 10 just in case I need it to run software that isn't available on Linux.. but I rarely used it anymore.

[@richardclark7679]

The SNAPS. Unbelievable waste of time and space. Same here. Moved to Mint. Much happier now!

[@wcarcass]

I value stability, reliability, and driver availability above all so DEBIAN does it for me. It's been my daily OS for the last 2 years and never have a complain based on the criteria mentioned before.

[@anonymous_opinions1924]

Extremely underrated even despite its popularity. Everyone puts it down as "good for servers but not desktop", but it's honestly the best by far for people that don't want their real computer affected by all the drama and instability in the Linux world. Not everyone wants the very latest of everything.

[@jamesmurphy369]

I'm using MX 23 with Kde which comes with a wayland session option on login. It's solid. As for latest software, you always have the flatpack option as this distro is based on Deb stable. Flats are a baked in option in the discovery package manager.

[@oldxebeche]

I like MX as it's the only distro I know w/ a vertical panel that works and that does not need a horizontal bar/panel. On wide displays, especially 16:9, this saves a lot of space.

[@rsquaremedia-innovationlab]

great video! thanks for explaining the rationale for the rating. do you have a video for best distro for old hardware? is there a reason you didnt include antix linux? pls help thx!

[@nautnautnaut]

I’d be curious what you think of void. I was able to revive an old Chromebook with it, but it’s a bit odd- it uses runit instead of systemd and it uses XBPS package manager

[@darkpepito4438]

I daily drive Nobara and it's really cool, I didn't have any issues upgrading to Nobara 39 and everything works fine (except my highly customized hyprland config). And when you come from ZorinOS it's a real pleasure t have up to date software !

[@calicomorgan2408]

It looks so cool! I'm thinking about switching to this for my main desktop pc which is primarily for gaming once I can fully upgrade my pc.

[@OthoDaFe]

I don't get the hype for Mint. My experience with Cinnamon was quite poor.

[@НюськаАрбузька]

Same here🖐️ I encountered a lot of small, but very annoying bugs when I first installed Mint, and most of them was caused by Cinnamon. Also its interface looks kinda outdated for me (regardless of themes and icon packs)

[@uberdonkey9721]

I'm a long term Ubuntu then Mint user. You are right, cinnamon isn't great. But Mint MATE is perfect. Low RAM (indeed lower than xfce for me) but has all the functionality I need and as a long time computer user, the menu is intuitive. Try mint MATE.. I keep trying other stuff but always always come back to Mint MATE

[@mrparity]

I really think opensuse deserves to be more popular. I'm currently using tumbleweed and I love it. As for leap I think I would put it to the good category. I love tumbleweed but one thing that's kind of annoying is that I need to restart my computer for most of the updates. Leap doesn't have to. So if you're the kind of guy that likes to have kernel updates everyday then why not. I'm considering to switch to leap tho. As for debian I would put it to no thanks. Debian is just outdated for me. Mint is literally the green ubuntu. I don't understand why everyone is so hyped about mint. Maybe it does have some advantages over ubuntu but I would put it to good. I'm sorry arch users but I would put arch into hell no. I just don't want to spend hours to understand how to install my OS and repairing my OS in the bios. It can be really stable but it's just not for me. I just want my linux install to be simple. A few click and it's done. Can I have a respond from nick ;) ?

[@obake6290]

I don't understand why you would call Debian "outdated" while considering Leap. Leap takes packages from the enterprise SUSE distro. It is at least as outdated as Debian. Leap is a great distro, as long as your hardware is old enough to run on it.

[@mrparity]

@@obake6290 I just switched to leap and no it is not as outdated as debian is. Leap is for sure more outdated than tumbleweed but not as outdated as debian is.

[@theaveragecactus]

you dont need to restart for updates, its a setting in discover :]

[@gryg666]

I've love to use NixOS as a daily, but couldn't make vscode work correctly with all extensions I need. Also some other apps were having issues. Now landed on Arch with Hyprland after 10 years with ubuntu (without issues), and now nvidia is a problem :D

[@blainescroggs9268]

Why didn't OpenSuse Tumbleweed get a higher ranking? It's super solid and also super up to date. Personally, my only problem with it is that it gets too many updates. Great video, just curious!

[@Chr0n0s38]

Honestly I like Gentoo, not for some performance boost (negligible at best, in the past it was significant due to custom GCC patches but those were upstreamed a long time ago), but rather for the USE flags and it's keyword system. I get the benefits of Arch and Ubuntu basically. If I want to use the bleeding edge version of a package, I can. For other packages, I can use the stable release. It's not exactly a recommended use case by the Gentoo devs, but I haven't personally had issues with it. Being able to pick and choose what features I have available is nice too. With the addition of binary packages for a few painful packages (e.g. libreoffice) and flatpak and it becomes extremely flexible.

[@e8root]

Gentoo is an ultimate Linux distro which allows you to customize your OS like none other. This include seamlessly having packages compiled with the best compilers (including obscure ones like Intel oneApi or AMD AOCC for even greater performance boost!), selection of init systems and various hardening options and if you feel very adventurous even using obscure ISA's like x32 - which with some manual patching you can still use and get benefits out of in 2024! What it lacks is "it just works without me putting any effort to make it work" vibe which is I guess its biggest flaw. Even skilled Linux user who can figure things out quickly might quickly get overwhelmed by Gentoo if they lack proper attitude and in this case they will be like "if I want feature XYZ then there is a distro for that..." ignoring flaws of such solution and advantages Gentoo still brings to the table.

[@Chr0n0s38]

@@e8root In all fairness the customization comes at odds with "it just works."

[@MrAlhaines]

I've been using Mint as my daily for over ten years and it just keeps getting better. Kubububtu is my backup. I have four ssds in my PC and check out most new distros when they are reviewed. I have used Linux since Slackware 1.0 and Debian sincne 1995. I wiped Windows when the Solaar app managed my logitech mouse and keyboard.. Linux Rules!

[@User-actSpacing]

If you are used to Windows, use Linux Mint.

[@johnmclaren3221]

Which linux to use for total beginner? Need for playing games, web browsing and light video editing. Also i dont know any of linux commands

[@MadWasp01]

Linux Mint

[@anonymous_opinions1924]

+1 for Linux Mint - people will give you all kinds of different recommendations but Linux Mint has a very long history of outperforming other "beginner" distributions in about every way.

[@1pcfred]

I bet you know some Linux commands. Quite frankly you can get by with just a handful. That's all I ever really use. The most important commands to learn will be the ones for your Package Manager. Mint uses DPKG or Debian's packaging system. You won't know any of those commands. But you should learn them. Install aptitude if it isn't installed by default. I use aptitude a lot. aptitude search, aptitude show, aptitude install, etc. I haven't run Mint in a very long time. I run it's grandfather, Debian. So I know Mint's Package Manager pretty good. apt-file is useful for me too. Might not be for you. I build a lot of programs from source code though. Builds are always looking for this or that. apt-file allows me to find it.

[@johnmclaren3221]

@@1pcfred thank you very much for your detailed reply! Cheers

[@1pcfred]

@@johnmclaren3221 you're welcome. I hope my ramblings can be of some use to you. Linux is a lot easier today than it used to be. When I started there wasn't auto anything. No automount no autoconfiguration. We had to do all that stuff. None of it was too hard if you knew how to do it. But who knew? To get an Internet connection you had to write these scripts. Heck to get the backspace key to work took editing. Things are much better now.

[@ArcticTraveller-o7s]

I have tested these Laptop models and brands for compatibility with Linux Ubuntu and Linux Mint. Asus ROG G752 VSK I7 OC GTX1070, HP Zbook G4 Zeon CPU and Quadro GPU , Asus TUF Ryzen 9 RTX2060, Lenovo Legion 5 pro AMD Ryzen 7 RTX 3070 all worked with no issues, keyboard back lighting and secondary key functions worked for the most part otherwise a slider for screen and keyboard brightness was offered via the battery control settings accessable via task-bar. Linux Mint Cinnamon based on Ubuntu does have customisable keyboard shortcuts including keyboard backlighting and volume toggle options in settings.