'it came to me in a dream' has got to be a pretty unique reason for switching to Linux

Anytime someone new ask for recommendation, I'd give Linux Mint.

You don’t need to be a programmer to use Linux. I’d probably recommend you go with something like mint. Avoid things like Arch or Gentoo or NixOS for now as they involve a lot more manual configuration and it’s probably best to understand the landscape of things first.

What was your dream about windows?

Many people have asked me this (I'm the certified neighborhood tech guy :P), I always recommend Linux Mint, with the Cinnamon desktop environment, or KDE. Ubuntu used to be the best one and it's still very good, but pretty heavy on hardware and they keep adding frustrating features nobody asked for.

Please please please, at the start, stay away from Arch and it's derivatives. I daily Gentoo, but you need a decent knowledge of Linux to use both. If you need help, post to the Linux community or DM me :)

Clear vote for Fedora,

I'd recommend against Ubuntu. It uses snaps and it'll teach you that the hard way eventually by having very weird issues.

Mint is based on ubuntu but says no to snaps, so that's a good place to start.

https://distrochooser.de

You didn't give much info to go on, so maybe try Distrochooser. Honestly, most distros should work out fine. If you like Ubuntu, maybe try Mint.

Really recommend mint, or ubuntu. Please for the love of god stay away from arch and all of it's derivatives, or at least try Ubuntu/Mint first. Also do NOT use manjaro it sucks, it is not maintained well at all

Pop os

Do yourself a favor and just go with Debian Stable

My vote is for mint. If you've been a long time windows user it should be the easiest one to get used to. PopOS is also newbie friendly if you're not into the feel of Mint for whatever reason.

My biggest recommendation though is to spend some time with a few different OS's and try setting things up different ways. Like if you start with Mint, try something new a month or two later. It's a good way to get used to the way linux OS's work under the hood.

I'm not a programmer at all, but if you have some background with computers and are willing to sink some time into learning and setting up a new system you'll be fine.

Mint is currently my recommendation for Windows refugees and has been for a while.

• Cinnamon desktop environment works like Windows' UX
• Ubuntu-based, so you'll find help online for basically anything
• Not just Ubuntu; follows more popular, community decisions rather than Canonical's (e.g. things like Flatpak instead of Snap) which will help you in the long run since you'll be using what everyone else is using
• Ubuntu-based, so Debian-based, so pretty stable with lots of available software (even outside of Flatpak)
• Significant amount of work put into UX with less you have to do

If you're not worried about high-performance gaming, you'll be fine with whatever. For developers, any Linux distro is gonna be leagues better than what you're used to on Windows. For Assembly, NASM + VS Code will be great.

I recommend Pop! OS.

Don't overthink it. You're not likely to pick the best first distro for you out of the gate, because the best distro for you depends on a whole pile of factors. Like -- what hardware do you have? Did you win the hardware lottery and you just by chance have a fully working setup with libre drivers out of the box? In that case, you could use most anything and be up and running without much difficulty. Have some device that needs proprietary firmware or just a third-party, closed source driver? Might want to start on one of the more beginner-friendly distros, like Mint or PopOS. These won't give you a great view of the possibilities of Linux, but they will get you up and running fast.

Best approach is to take a guess, install it, try it for like a week, and if you're more angry at the end of the week than you were at the beginning, try a different distro.

Popular first choices are Ubuntu, Mint, Pop_OS or Elementary, I'd recommend trying Kubuntu as the UI is the most similar to Windows and it has a different development team than mainline Ubuntu. There are annoying things about Ubuntu that are less awful on Kubuntu.

Red Hat was bought by IBM a few years ago and they're quickly moving to kill off everything that made the Red Hat ecosystem cool and useful for end users, so tbh I'd avoid Fedora or anything Fedora based. There's a risk you'll get comfy and then have the rug pulled out from under you.

Canonical, Ubuntu's parent corporation, is drawing closer and closer to Microsoft and I honestly don't trust that, especially with some of the decisions they've been making around software management, but using Ubuntu will get you ready to try Debian, which is the cool and community-oriented distro Ubuntu based itself off of.

Just use Ubuntu/Mint, because that's what everyone uses and has the most support forums.

Linux Mint or Garuda Linux

Since you're just starting out, I would probably recommend mint. I think it's the most stable of the "mainstream" distros and you'll have less frustrations. If you want to have a great experience with managing packages, I think installing and using the nix package manager is the best way to manage packages on any distros (and who knows, maybe in a year or 2 you'll want to try nixOs!)

I swapped from windows to Opensuse Tumbleweed recently. Seems like a really nice distro. Frequent updates and easy rollbacks if something breaks. Luckily I haven't had to use that feature yet but it's nice knowing I have it. Yast is also great for changing system settings with a gui instead of using konsole for all that.

Counter Strike 2 and WoW have been running great.

Ubuntu is a good starting point.

You can follow the general idea of: "Are you new to Linux? If yes, use something you know other people know too. If no, use whatever the fuck you want, heck, make your own distro if you want".

I'd say try whatever looks good to you, you can always install something else if you don't like it, as long as it isn't Manjaro. (backup your data before you install something new)

Some distros that I think are a pretty good choice for starters (no particular order):

• Pop!_OS
• Ubuntu
• Fedora
• Endeavour OS
• Linux Mint
• openSUSE Tumbleweed

You can also use Distrochooser to maybe help you make a decision.

Not a great programmer but I’d like to learn.

That's alright, you don't have to be a programmer to use Linux. You don't even have to use the command line if you don't want to (tho I recommend it, getting good at it feels pretty great).

Do you got NVIDIA?

I've been using arch for years, but finally removed my windows install a week ago and ended up on opensuse tumbleweed. It's rolling release like arch (so there's never a need to reinstall or have a big update once a year) and it has some extra fail-safes for when updates go wrong (there's an automated QA that tries to find package breaks before they're pushed for updates, and they have a tool called snapper that let's you revert back to a working state if you run into problems)

I use my PC for gaming. Ubuntu works well for me with my new hardware: Intel 13gen, Nvidia 3080, Steam.

EndeavuorOS. It's a seamless base configuration of Arch which has a wonderful wiki that has a ton of stuff to tell you.

You can install pamac for a GUI for the package manager. Do yay to search for any package and install it; do yay (nothing else) to upgrade everything, and yay -Rcns to remove stuff and all their unused dependencies. I also recommend chaoticAUR

For the DE I recommend MATE but you can select any of the major ones in the installer. For me Steam didn't work when xdg-portal-gnome was installed though and firefox-like apps booted real slow, so you may or may not want to try GNOME.

Get synapse for a spotlight-like search; it uses the alt+space keybind by default

I still think Ubuntu or a flavor of it is the right answer for people new to Linux.

Fedora is great with gnome for beginer and don't get in way to much like Ubuntu when used daily