A note! the desktop field is completely optional! You can install any other desktop you like, but the listed are the “main” ones, usually recommended by the distro.
Linux Mint
- Country: Ireland 🇮🇪
- Experience: Simple
- Desktop: Cinnamon
Best distro for beginners. has two versions: One based off of ubuntu (default), and another one debian (recommended, LMDE)
EndeavourOS
- Country: Netherlands 🇳🇱
- Experience: Intermediate
- Desktop: KDE/GNOME/XFCE
My second favorite :) Arch based, easy installer and updater, friendly community and beautiful themes. I recommend this distro if you are into arch based distros without wanting the painful part of it.
OpenSUSE
- Country: Germany 🇩🇪
- Experience: Intermediate
- Desktop: KDE
It’s mainly built around using the GUI, with tools like yast. Uses KDE.
NixOS
- Country: Netherlands 🇳🇱
- Experience: Advanced
- Desktop: KDE/GNOME
My personal favorite <3 Great for servers. It’s not for the faint of heart, though hah. It’s an immutable distro, where there is no package manager, or manually modifying config files; your entire system is created with .nix files, not commands. Reproducable.
Arch
- Country: Canada 🇨🇦 (Yes yes, it’s not european but how can you not mention arch???)
- Experience: Advanced
- Desktop: None
Most popular distro for dedicated users, and for good reason; bleeding edge, full power over your system. Though you have to manually set up everything, from internet to your deskop environment.
Void
- Country: Spain 🇪🇸
- Experience: Advanced
- Desktop: XFCE
Great distro if you want something like arch, but without systemd or slightly more stable (Also, musl support). Obscure but amazing.
Debian [Honorary mention]
- Country: Global 🌍
- Experience: Intermediate
- Desktop: KDE/GNOME/XFCE
An honorary mention. Isn’t suited for everyone, but is the golden standard for servers, and the grandfather of a huge family tree of distros.
That should cover a lot. Please heed the desktop warning, and please correct me/comment suggestions. This is not perfect, so please do criticize where possible c:
If it breaks more is because you are free to do more with it. Just try dual booting or even just via a live “install”. There’s nothing to lose and a lot to gain.