Ideally one that is forward-thinking, gaming-friendly, and efficient.
Mint w Cinnamon DM. Or Mint (Debian Edition) w/Cinnamon as desktop.
Ubuntu or Debian based. Beginner friendly, though not limited to just beginners. Cannot answer the g#ming focused questions because I’m not a g*mer, sorry.
Ubuntu has good documentation, lots of people use it. Fedora is the other choice. They’re both good.
I recommend anything Debian-based for the same reason I chose Debian first: If you have a problem, there will be somebody else that did as well and likely fixed it. If you are new, I would suggest Linux Mint or Ubuntu. Another plus is that non-free software is available for these distributions, like Zoom and Discord.
Gaming on Linux is an active area of development, almost single-handedly done by Valve, so this can be hit-or-miss. In general AMD graphics cards fare better with drivers, while nVidia has almost comically piss-poor “official” drivers.
i always just recommend Ubuntu for brand new users. Fedora seems good too but I have less experience with it. for people who want a bit more depth of customisation I would recommend kubuntu or Nobara. I’ve been using Nobara on my main machine for a few weeks and it’s really nice, it’s tailored for use on a gaming PC so a lot of nice out of the box stuff like NVIDIA drivers and proton compatibility stuff.
I used to recommend Ubuntu for newcomers, but the Snap nonsense makes for a poor experience with many major packages, such as Firefox. For the past few years I’ve been recommending stock Mint instead. I feel that it’s what Ubuntu used to be in terms of a frustration-free experience. A very gentle learning curve and extensive hardware support.
Linux Mint, Cinnamon DE, it’s Ubuntu based but has a Debian edition too. Also, in its official webpage you can download it with other DEs like XFCE or Mate if you need more lightweight options. Super easy to install and most windows users adapt quickly to it.
