Hey, for my recommendations keep in mind I did not use Linux as a main os for some time now. It is based on me following Linux channels and news, but also my past experience and installing it on my laptop and my brother’s laptop.

Linux distros are different in the packages they choose to include for their environment, use and desktop. Some distros offer different desktop environments (which are different desktop softwares, with different handling of included apps, settings and theming).

Depending on how well you know how to search online and not follow outdated advice, some different distros can be interesting :

Beginner friendly for Linux :

• Linux Mint (cinnamon desktop)
• Pop OS (gnome desktop)
• Ubuntu (gnome desktop) (maybe, but I’d rather choose Pop OS due to snap packages of Ubuntu beeing forced and having lower quality compared to apt and flatpak)

All desktops can be themed. Tho cinnamon I don’t know how well it supports modifying the task bar.

Gnome can have extensions to do things, show a bottom task bar, start button, start menu…

For these 3 distros, the system package manager used (installer, app searcher) is apt-get (shortened to apt). It is a well k’ow package manager with plenty of tutorials online. All also include flatpak, which is a special package manager where apps Comme bundled with their own dependencies (software to make the main software work), and so reduce incompatibilities.

Ubuntu as a package manager called snap installed by default, it has the same objective as flatpak, but it is closed source, and already had issues with malware spreading through it.

Obviously all 3 package managers can have issues, as community is there to check the apps, but it may not always be safe. The safest package source is still the system one apt as packages are checked by the people maintaining the main distro repo. But many flastpaks and snaps are safe. (tho they can have some theming issues).

All of these 3 include a GUI store where you can search and install apps.

Another great distro which can work for beginner or advanced

• Fedora desktop (gnome) (It is also available with the kde desktop). Tho this one has a smaller community, and so there is less useful help online, and there may be more out of date advice you would have to navigate through.

Fedora has a pretty good documentation, but even that one seems to be a bit out of date on some things.

If you have an nvidia driver, this one doesn’t have nvidia proprietary drivers installed by default nor help at the beginning on automatically installing them. You have to enable at install (or after in the store settings) the nvidia closed repo and install the nvidia driver from the store.

Kde as a desktop is pretty great, tho it can be overwhelming with all it’s settings and options available to the user.

Gnome tho still requires an app to be able to control hidden settings like mouse acceleration and some other settings.

I wouldn’t recommend other distros for beginner or someone who just wants to easy setup and work.

Debian is pretty stable even in its “testing” branch (Debian stable = old bur rock solid, not recommended for gaming. Testing = newish, still not breaking. Unstable = unstable) needs to have a manual install or help through someone’s script.

Manajaro is a mess. On some devices it will work, on other it will just desintegrate after some months.

Or the communities are so small that packages may easily pass testing and break.

I recommend an Ubuntu fork, like Pop OS, just because Ubuntu forks seem to be more stable in my experience.

But if you want to do a lot of tinkering to get random weird hardware to work, then use an Arch fork, like Endeavour OS or Manjaro. Because normally if you find an obscure project on GitHub that you want to try out, it’ll probably need you to download, compile, and then install their package on Ubuntu. But if you’re on Arch they will likely have an AUR package that you can just go and install with a single command.