My Top 5 Favorite GNU/Linux Distribution

Pranav K published on
3 min, 582 words

Categories: Linux

Just a list of my personal favorite noob friendly GNU/Linux Distributions. These lists are based on my experience using the distro.

1. Pop!_OS

Pop!_OS Desktop!

An excellent beginner-friendly distro. Personally used this as a daily driver for a couple of months. This distro is based on Ubuntu and major difference is that Pop!_OS has a customized version of Gnome called COSMIC (Computer Operating System Main Interface Components).

This distro is highly recommended for laptops/PC with hybrid graphics as the custom drivers provided by the system76 are really stable and works 'out of the box'.

The best feature in this distro is the pop_shell which make the Gnome a Tiling Desktop Environment. This can be used on any distribution with Gnome DE.

2. Zorin Os

Zorin Os Desktop!

Zorin Os is the alternative to Windows and macOS designed to make your computer faster, more powerful, secure, and privacy-respecting.

Used this distro for a week and found that it was stable and works really well with all my hardware. The Layout of this distro is really similar to Windows, So it's easier for new users to get the hang of it.

3. Linux Mint

Mint Desktop!

Linux Mint is an operating system for desktop and laptop computers. It is designed to work 'out of the box' and comes fully equipped with the apps most people need.

This was my first Linux Distro and personally loved the experience. Mostly everything works with no tweaks and for someone who used windows for a long time the switch was relatively easy.

Almost similar to Windows in looks. Since this distro is lightweight works well on lower end PC's.

4. EndeavourOs

Endeavour Desktop!

EndeavourOs is a lightweight Arch based distro with a user-friendly installer and an attractive Xfce environment that allows you to install online and offline editions. The online installer gives options to install other desktop environment.

Aside from Archcraft this is the only distro I felt almost similar to Vanilla Arch and is very minimal.

I haven't used this distro as a daily driver, but this was a good distro for a newbie or someone who wants to switch from a Debian based distro to an Arch based.

5. Garuda Linux

Garuda Linux Desktop!

Garuda Linux is an Arch based Linux distro with a focus on performance. Works really with laptops/PC's with a hybrid graphics (IMO).

This is my current daily driver and never had any issues. Some pros I can think of

  • Its use of Btrfs as the only file system, utilizing the filesystem's snapshot capability in conjunction with the Timeshift backup utility to allow bootable snapshots and system rollback, similar to openSUSE's Btrfs/Snapper.
  • Its use of fish as the login shell (only prior to the 210621 release) and default interactive shell, instead of the almost universal choice of bash in other distributions.
  • Its use of the performance optimized Zen (linux-zen) kernel, one of the officially supported, but not default, kernels of Arch Linux
  • Its inclusion of an extensive set of GUI convenience tools, collected in the Garuda Assistant suite of utilities, itself included in the Garuda Welcome application which also includes other GUI system configuration and maintenance tools.