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)
Ubuntu
- Country: Britain 🇬🇧
- Experience: Simple
- Desktop: GNOME
Good distro, but has some controversies. Though it’s the most popular beginners distro by far.
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.
Manjaro
- Country: Germany 🇩🇪 / Austria 🇦🇹 / France🇫🇷
- Experience: Intermediate
- Desktop: KDE/GNOME/XFCE
Added because of popular recommendation. I recommend EndeavourOS more, since manjaro has a… history.
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.
VanillaOS [Honorary mention]
- Country: Global 🌍️
- Experience: Advanced
- Desktop: GNOME
VanillaOS is a debian-based immutable operating system, which can install packages from any other distro and is very hard to brick.
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:
NixOS supports more than just KDE Plasma and GNOME, the installer is in one of those (It has the options KDE Plasma, GNOME and minimal (No GUI)), but in it you get the choice to install any* DE (It has like 5 or 6 choices, otherwise you can still install any other directly from your config) :3
EDIT: Nevermind, i didnt read the note at the top of the post, although i’d consider NixOS as having no main DE :p
I love this list because it’s about open source software, but I also agree to what @Polderviking says because open source transcends the boundaries of countries.
Add cachyOS too. Arch based from Germany and one of the hottest risers.
I’m currently wondering whether this is going in the right direction. I understand that we are boycotting commercial products from the US, which makes perfect sense to me. But as someone who works on FOSS software myself, I wonder if we are hurting the right people by not using FOSS software that comes from the US. I think these are largely people who don’t support Trump.
Linux Mint is honestly amazing. I always read about it being labeled as “for beginners” or being “boring” almost as if that’s a bad thing. I just wanted something that works out of the box and not take on a new hobby… And I got just that with Linux Mint. Highly recommended
