There are better "gaming" distros, but unless someone uses their PC exclusively for gaming, when it comes time to install other kinds of software for school or work or whatever, they're going to get thrown in the deep ends of Linux.

But guess what does have two decades of software and tutorials to set up just about everything in existence? Ubuntu, and by extension Mint.

Sure you can squeeze more out of your games with something like Bazzite, but the general platform that anything Linux-native targets is usually Ubuntu. Sure there's distrobox and stuff that's like telling the average gamer to go set up WSL. It's not hard per-se but the amount of things to learn increases very quickly.

Thus, even though Ubuntu is very average these days, it's still a safe bet for new users.

When it comes to gaming I've found them to be mid at best, but I think that's exactly why they get recommended a lot. Stability (as in using old but not too old drivers) and a broad and easily accessible knowledge base in term of tutorials and answered newbie questions.

Mint is a straight swap. Knowing everything about your PC is so much work. I would rather just game and not have to be a programmer to not see ads every 5 seconds.

people asking for those recommendations are newcomers to Linux and Ubuntu and Mint (especially) are both very newcomer friendly with large support communities when any questions come up

once they become more familiar with their system, they can turn to the Arch Wiki and the Gentoo Handbook as they fine-tune things

but neither Mint nor Ubuntu are going to hit you with any big surprises – unsupervised access to AUR in Arch, long compilation times in Gentoo, obscure (and semi-documented) programming language in Nix, or dealing with commands that are a little bit different in BusyBox, musl, or OpenRC systems …

I've been usung mint for about a month now.

I want to get rid of Windows, but I don't want to spend my day sudo-ing my ass off.

Give me a gui for everything and doubleclick installers, and a release that is stable above all else.

I'm open to suggestions though! So shoot away which distro I should be using :)

My nephew uses arch btw.

As always the correct answer is … “it depends “

Ubuntu and mint are fine for new users…

If you hand a new driver a car, you’d want them to have a more simple reliable car. Key in , start, drive turn brakes… etc.

But if you want to: tune the fuel air mix; lower the rear tire pressure for grip; or adjust gear ratios… then you can give them Arch or Gentoo

Similarly to windows or mac; Ubuntu and mint mostly just work, and kinda just do what it says on the tin.

The reason for Ubuntu is that it's the distro corporations (like Valve and AMD) are most likely to officially support.

Ubuntu is the most popular and common distro

OEM vendors primarily use it as their reference distro when testing and supporting drivers, hardware, applications, games, etc.

It's the path of least resistance.

What are the better recommendations in your opinion?

Debian. Same base, no extra bs. Rock solid and reliable. Outdated packages are a non-issue for a casual user. Gaming needs a bit of configuration but it perfectly doable. Installation is apparently difficult but... I don't know where that comes from. It may not be Calameres-smooth but it's perfectly understandable even to a novice.

I'm still surprised how little attention Nobara gets when it comes to this. It's such a wonderful just works out of the box distro.

Microsoft has been radicalizing me more and more these days.

I have an i7-12700k and an RTX 3080. I heard Nvidia is tricky because of drivers, but any issues with using intel CPUs with Linux?

Where should I, a complete noob, begin? I’m intermediately technical, moderate/semi-intermediate with command line, etc. Is Mint the best way to go?

I tried pop_OS! a few years ago but my computer couldn’t run it well for some reason - lots of lag despite having an i7 7700k at the time and installing it on a separate spare SSD. Reinstalled it twice but still had issues with noticeable lag in the OS. My specs were great, but that OS turned me off unless it has substantially improved since then.

Mint and Ubuntu are easy to setup, and will generally work well out of the box, so great recommendations for people who have to ask.
Personally I use Manjaro, which also works out of the box, and I like the rolling release scheme, my wife uses Debian and both work great for games.

My wife had some initial problems with Debian and PipeWire sound system but it works fine now, and in fairness she is a musician and uses some weird audiosystem that can record 8/16 channels. So I bet "normal" systems wouldn't have noticed any problems.

I still use pulse audio because I'm lazy, and if it works don't fix it.

They're simple to get into for anyone with an introductory interest in Linux, although I haven't liked Ubuntu in ages. My Mint setup took a bit of effort but it does game pretty well. Fedora could be a good recommendation too, I liked that when I tried it out. There's some gaming focused distros like Bazzite or Nobara, but I feel like I can get a "normal" distro working to a similar state for games, and I don't have to hope that a small team doesn't fold and my distro loses updates support.

I'm trying out OpenSUSE Tumbleweed this week, wanna see if it's a good alternative to Fedora.

I don't dare try Arch yet, and thus I also wouldn't recommend it to any new user.

I made the switch to Linux just some days ago, and landed on bazzite. It is fairly idiot proof with an option to roll back the entire system and is generally focused on gaming and ease of use.

So far i am having a blast, almost everything works right out of the box, and the things that didn't were very minor and fixable with a bit of web search or asking on a relevant discord. I didn't have to use the dreaded CLI much either yet - maybe 4-5 times - and when I did, I just followed a step by step guide to do something.

My personal recommendation would be choosing gnome as the DE, going with plasma seems more logical coming from windows, but I find it a lot simpler getting used to the differences by using an entirely different ui than windows. Forming new mental pathways is easier than adjusting something practiced a particular way for years.

For reference: bazzite.gg

E: meant to reply to the guy asking for better choices

I've used Mint for close to 6 years on various desktops and laptops and it's rock solid reliable. My main computer runs LMDE 6 without any issues.

I'm using Tuxedo OS. Based off Ubuntu, but without snaps, and using a up-to-date KDE desktop environment. I don't like Cinnamon.