My head tells me Linux Mint, but my heart says listen to your head. Why is this hard? 😂
Mint
Debian. I want that thing to be so stable they forget they ever had problems.
Arch, no gui. Let 'em rawdog it from the CLI
Linux from scratch you mean?
Gentoo FTW. Just give them a bootable USB key.
Pfff, when I was young we didn’t have package managers. You have it too good.
Back in my day we programmed with punch cards!
You had a punch? We had to lick the holes into steel plates.
Depends on the user. An older family member, Linux mint. A gamer, cachyOS. Otherwise fedora could also be an option. But in most cases, the person would choose and install a distro themselves if they are interested and that means that mint becomes the most common answer to the question.
Mint, without question. A polished, conservative, stable experience with Ubuntu’s broad compatibility baked in, and a familiar desktop experience. Few other distributions can deliver that. I’m very technical myself, but past the age of wanting to tinker with every little thing; I jist want an OS that is stable and gets out of my way to let me get things done - and Mint delivers.
Basic Debian
Yes, it is a bit behind the curve but it is solid, it works and can provide a solid environment for the average run of the mill user.
Something immutable and auto updating, likely Fedora based because that’s what I use.
I installed Aurora cause immutable and auto update so hard to break anything. And normal user only need Browser, LibreOffice and maybe Thunderbird
I think this what I came up with last time I considered this question, and I also wonder if I might want to use it for my next machine myself. Do you have a lot of experience using it? Do you feel like it performs pretty well? (I just have concerns that everything being containerized with flatpak and docker might affect that…)
Have Aurora on my thinkpad and so far it was super reliable. But I dont power use that its just for mail, libreoffice, browsing
My head tells me Linux Mint
my heart says listen to your head
My head tells me Linux Mint
Head says Linux Mint
Heart says listen to the head
Tiling WM Arch
I would definitely choose Linux Mint 100% :p
I started off with it and its learning curve wasn’t too steep. It uses Calamares for installation, features a built-in app store, and is very familiar to those coming from Windows.
I’d put LMDE on it, the familiarity of Mint with the stability of Debian and no fucking snaps.
Linux Mint Debian Edición if the laptop is not brand new.
There is a good reason Mint is recommended as the no nonsense beginner distro. For someone more technical and willing to learn I might recommend Fedora.
One you get past those two distros you are pretty much in the realm where someone should be technical enough to choose their own distro and know what that means.
I’m on maybe an old version of Mint at work and it is kind of miserable.
Icons don’t work right, the panel is weird, the software center is not very easy to use.
I’m hoping that new versions are better.
Hannah Montana Linux, obviously.
Nah fucking hit em with the temple os.
This is the only answer, regardless of the question.
Whatever you are comfortable with supporting.
