I. Don't. Knooowwww.
<li><p>Ubuntu is okay but there's too much crap they enable by default. I really don't like the theming or the GNOME extensions they enable out of the box, and the crash reporter, Apport, is trying too hard to be like Windows but it's buggy and intrusive. I also really hate the packaging on Ubuntu, since Snaps are still closed-down and have pretty bad boot times, and apt is so dated and slow it's an absolute chore to use. KDE Neon fixes some of this stuff, but it's still very Ubuntu under the hood.</p></li><li><p>Linux Mint is probably the easiest to set up but, and sorry if this is a hot take, Cinnamon is super ugly and, even with themes, it just feels like a more hideous version of Windows 7 with all the dated design that entails. I also think trying Linux should mean trying new things you can't usually get in Windows, but Cinnamon is just kind of a worse Windows experience imo. 
</p></li><li><p>Debian is super stable but if Cinnamon feels dated then Debian feels absolutely <em>archaic</em> with how old the packages are for it. I like Debian as a server distro but not as a desktop.</p></li><li><p>Fedora's third-party package repository support in dnf is basically non-existent and it's a huge pain in the ass to install Nvidia drivers (seriously, users just have to know that it's doing background tasks after installing the drivers and that they should wait five minutes to reboot? That's completely head-ass.) And, like, big points for having Flatpak enabled by default, but then only using the Fedora Flatpak repo by default that has utterly broken packages in it? Yeah no thanks. 
</p></li><li><p>ZorinOS is okay but it's still just heavily modified GNOME which is a DE that detests being modified, plus having paid aspects of it makes it kind of weird to recommend in the Linux space.</p></li><li><p>PopOS is alright but I think Cosmic is still too early days to recommend as a beginning desktop environment.</p></li><li><p>Bazzite still doesn't strike me as an operating system meant for a desktop even if it's primarily used for gaming. I think it also being an atomic distro based on Silverblue is really confusing to users who don't understand the concept, and that can present problems when people don't like the way Bazzite configures things in the system or want apps that aren't available in containerized packages.</p></li><li><p>CachyOS being a more stable Arch is cool, but I still think the setup process can be a little obtuse and overwhelming with all of the options it presents to users, and, as someone who really <em>really</em> likes the vanilla Arch experience, it's hard to recommend a distro that puts in its own repos even if it makes the distro better for beginners.</p></li>I dunno if I'm forgetting other distros that people usually recommend to beginners, but those are the ones I could think of.
But yeah, am I just being too picky or is it, like, *actually hard* to recommend something?
#Linux #FOSS
