My head tells me Linux Mint, but my heart says listen to your head. Why is this hard? 😂
Mint
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.
Debian. I want that thing to be so stable they forget they ever had problems.
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.
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
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.
This is the only answer, regardless of the question.
Nah fucking hit em with the temple os.
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.
Linux Mint is by far the smoothest experience I’ve had so far in trying Nobara, Debian, Manjaro otherwise.
At my work, I convinced my boss to let us use Linux on a couple machines and, you guessed it: Mint. Everyone pretty much knows where to find things and it’s stable as a rock.
What is the persons skill level and are both of you OK with you picking up the slack?
She’s a pretty proficient windows user who mentioned looking at kbuntu. She can probably handle some rough edges on her own, but I have no interest in long term support. So probably mint 🤣
Whichever one you wind up with, Dolphin as a file manager blows the monstrosity that windows has out of the water. For someone who’s eeked out some power/efficiency out of windows usage it should be very pleasant finding out the standard software available for Linux these can almost always make you more efficient with less effort.
I use kubuntu. It’s a good choice for people who don’t have experience but are able and willing to search for answers.
KDE defaults are solid and utilizes a lot of Windows muscle memory, and being based on Ubuntu means that it’s really easy to search for answers on virtually any question you might have. Plus widespread package support
I was going to recommend a kubuntu lts, maybe help install flatpak support
I’d put LMDE on it, the familiarity of Mint with the stability of Debian and no fucking snaps.
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.
Bazzite for young people, Mint for old people would be my first thought
OK I’m nearly 40 but you don’t gotta remind me I’m old 🤣
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.
