Technology

This user to be Ubuntu. I think I see probably something like SteamOS maybe being a standard in the future since many who stay on windows are doing so for gaming reasons, and that's the best prebuilt distribution for gaming.

Mint. The answer is Mint.

As a windows user, that desperately wants Linux to be user friendly enough, Mint is the only one that comes close.

Last time I tried the switch, it was just miles ahead of the rest of the distros.

The future is riddled with choice. That's kinda the point and it encourages competition and results in better products. The choice may not be obvious now but will become with time. Leaving reddit? A year ago, the alternative was unknown, today the choice is clearer.

For the "I just want things to work because I got home and I don't want to deal with any troubleshooting" crowd like myself, should look to Ubuntu, Mint, and Pop!.

Different hardware combinations may work slightly better/worse on each, but they are all plug and play.

Mint is what I generally recommend

The thing is you won't find people discussing which service pack of windows to use. The cool thing about Linux is the diversity in environments. If win12 is a subscription based build, I will be joining the flock moving to Linux. After that moment linux will have all the saturation necessary for whatever is in store. I just hope it stays FOSS.

Windows is for the average person, but there's a linux distro for everyone.

Basic Internet-Browser/Email users should either get an ubuntu distro, or a debian distro, but not directly debian. Enthusiast Gamers and Power Users may prefer arch-based distros for their lightweight, and bleeding edge updates. Developers, and Power Users might prefer Debian over arch for it's intense stability over any other distro or OS.

If you're the type of person who wants a drop-in replacement where you don't have to learn anything new ever, and can just be 1:1 with windows, keep dreaming.

This isn't even the case between versions of Windows itself. This is a pipe dream and an excuse made up for some inconceivable reason.

It's an issue of culture not an issue of a clear choice. This is kind of the entire point of the Fediverse. Defaulting to the "Big Social Media" because it's easy and everyone knows it, and we know many people will go to it. But Once they're in, they'll begin to understand how the fediverse works.

It may seem entirely fascinating to us that people can't comprehend how the Fediverse works, but they eventually learn. Similarly we do have an easy Linux Distro that most people start with. Ubuntu.

Is ubuntu the best linux distro? no. Is Lemmy.world the best instance? also no. But looking for the best "x" in an ocean of choices is the wrong question to be asking. What we want to ask is "What is the best 'x' for them?" Ubuntu has the foundations of most everything linux. Most people know Ubuntu, some before they even know what linux is. Once they've gone through and learned more about linux they typically go through the phase of distro hopping for desktop environments, not understanding quite yet that those two are not married to eachother. Slowly they'll start to come to this understanding, but it won't click until they go to a distro originator like Arch or Debian. Where the install process includes selecting a desktop environment. Then from there more things will begin to click.

The best thing we can do is forward people along this path. Imo, the average user should probably start with installing debian in a virtual machine and installing every desktop environment. Allowing them to switch between them until they decide which one is the best for them.

I've been linuxing for about a year and a half now and have tried Manjaro, mint, Ubuntu, Kali. And fedora. I could not for the life of me get my graphics card working with it. So I moved on. Ubuntu ran like hot ass which lead to mint. Which just kind of did what it should. Manjaro was a g=st way to dio my toe into arch l, and I use it as a backup os on a spare ssd. Kali is occasionally useful when I want to do some digging or broaden my knowledge on infosec.

I guess my point is that there isn't really one flavour that does it all. For me anyway, there's just kind of a handful of daily driver candidates and ones for specific use cases. \ete I tk get back into gaming id imagine pop os would appeal.

And the average consume would probably rather have a piping hot ramen enema then learn or tinker with any of the above. Command lines are intimidating and most people will give up as soon as they see one.

OpenSUSE looks the most like Windows. The real problem is driver support being Windows first.