I found this site a while back - basically it will ask you a bunch of questions on your usage of your PC, and will came out with a list of recommended distros, and a list of reasons why YOU could like or not like it.
There are some similar sites to this one, but since I’m not familiar with them, I won’t post them. They are simply DuckDuckGo-able though.
I appreciate distro chooser but I’d never recommend a newbie to use it. This just increases their choice paralysis, I chose beginner options and got recommended: Linux Mint, ZorinOS, Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS, elementary OS, Xubuntu, Ubuntu MATE, Pop!_OS…
And all of them had pretty much the same check marks. They’re good recommendations but this doesn’t answer the question, people will just look at the list and say “Okay… Which distro do I choose?”
I agree with the other comments that it isn’t a great tool for complete beginners. There’s a question that mentions systemd. A newbie won’t know what that means.
I personally disagree. Distrochooser is a great tool for distrohoppers who want to experiment and see what’s out there. it is a little less useful than DistroWatch’s ranking list, but that requires more reading to figure out if something would be diving into the deep end.
My recommendation is to either look at the top ranked beginners distro on distro watch, or to just recommend mint. Someone’s first distro should above all else get out of the way. It should be as stable as possible, have as much hardware support as possible, and be as default as possible (less distro customizations of packages). Troubleshooting info must be captured in an easily indexible knowledge base (nothing is worse than searching for help with something and all you can find is a stack exchange post marked duplicate or a forum post with one reply that says “did you try googling?”)
If people ask me what distro to choose I say Mint.
Unless you already know what you want and need it is simply the best distro out there to get your feet wet. It is very competent in what it is doing and can be used by anyone no matter the experience.
Even though I believe there are better distros out there this is the only one I would recommend to people new to Linux and it is still a solid choice for experienced users alike. You can use it forever or branch out from there, both are very valid choices.
In my opinion taking your time to find the Linux distribution you like the most, is not only a great learning experience, but also allows you to learn more about your own preferences.
I have lately experienced a problem with my family. We have good computers, kind of bad computers and really bad and old computers. I can install a really cool distro on good computers, but not on the bad ones. I need a lighter DE on bad computers and a distro ready for old computers. But my family can’t afford to learn how to use the 3 of them. So what is the solution here?
I’m thinking about installing the same distribution on all of them so that they don’t have to get used to a new one every time they jump from one to another computer. I think that will be antiX.
