Bazzite, Linux Mint, CachyOS

Try each of them out, see what you mesh best with, join their respective discord/matrix for further help and details 👍

Mint is beginner friendly. The Cinnamon desktop is very Windows-like. But if you want HDR support I don’t recommend Mint because its desktops are mostly on X11. It updates the kernel less frequently, so it’s more stable, less cutting edge.

Pop!_OS is also beginner friendly, gaming oriented, makes installing NVIDIA drivers easy, and since its desktops are on Wayland, you can get HDR support. Its kernel updates more frequently, so newer hardware gets support sooner.

One thing to note is that Linux can read your Windows partitions. If you have data on drives you’ll still need, you can leave them and Linux can access them fine. (Windows can’t read most file systems though, so the other direction of this mostly doesn’t work. Windows can’t read most Linux partitions).

If you’re reasonably technologically competent, I’d recommend CachyOS or Garuda. These are Arch based, so the Arch wiki and Arch User Repository are available, and great resources. They come with everything you need for gaming though, unlike base Arch. You don’t need to fiddle with things or set things up. They just work out-of-the-box.

If you’re not really technologically competent, but want to learn, the Mint recommendations are fine. It’s one of the most used distros, so there’s still plenty of help available. Alternatively, and I think better, there’s Fedora. For either of these, choose KDE versions, not Gnome or anything else. KDE is more customizable and closer to Windows too. (Though it can be customized to be more like anything else, or whatever you want too.)

If you really don’t want to learn, Bazzite or maybe Zorin are there.

gentoo!!

no but actually, linux mint is very good for newcomers, especially as its desktop has resemblance to windows. Pop!_os is also really good and better for gaming maybe? I would avoid ubuntu (slower and a lot more bloated) and especially manjaro (breaks a LOT without you even doing anything).

I might also cautiously suggest arch? It’s kind of a meme in the community because of its own community being seen as a bit toxic, but once you’ve got past the install and customization process (which does admittedly take a lot of time and reading), you have a system that is entirely your own in almost every way. For example, in the case of desktop environments, you can use cinammon from mint or gnome from pop!_os or even a more lightweight one like xfce. You also tend to have a more stable system, as you won’t have unknowingly have some unstable packages hidden in the bowels of your system that get relied on by 73 other packages and could break at any moment.

Pick something with a good window manager, typing into a terminal without fingers and thumbs is going to be tricky.

Try this: https://distrochooser.de/en

I’m just glad that someone FINALLY asked this question!

From what I hear, gaming = bazzite.

Also you can check compatibility of your games with ProtonDB.

I usually recommend Linux Mint. Its based on Ubuntu, so when searching for help online everything that works for Ubuntu should work for mint. Another Advantage mint has is, that it has quite a lot of UIs for a lot of applications/settings. This means, that you dont have to work with the terminal that much when doing something. However, I Am highly recommending that in the long term you should try to find your way around in the terminal. A lit if help that you will find online is based around the terminal, and knowing what commands do is quite valuable.

This question is useless, especially here where you’re going to get a million different answers from some of the most opinionated experts on the Internet.

They are all effectively the same with very minor (and shrinking) differences. The actual biggest difference is the type of release cycle (atomic, rolling, etc) and you can find multiple of those in the same distro. Again… It’s all effectively the same.

I’m gonna recommend what works for me, but it might not work for you. I like these because (again, in my specific use case) they “just worked” with little to no problems: Fedora for a desktop/laptop and bazzite for a handheld. Again… YMMV.

Go check distrowatch and try a few different distros until you find one you like. The more popular, the more likely you can find a community to support your questions.

They’re all pretty much the same except for a couple, like nix, Gentoo, slackware, etc. maybe stay away from those. fuck around and find out is the best way.

I don’t think you can install Linux on a cat. Please do not the cat

I’m going to go out on a limb here… If you have no Linux experience, download virtualbox and a handful of distros to try out in your current machine.

CachyOS is great for gaming, I’d suggest the KDE desktop PopOS is also a great choice, their native cosmic desktop is nice. Mint with cinnamon is also a good choice for gaming and daily use Bazzite is also a popular gaming distro that also uses KDE Xubuntu is also a great choice, Ubuntu base with XFCE desktop, great for gaming and a big supportive community

Try these and maybe a handful others to play with until you find a desktop that you find intuitive and easy to find what you need. Once you play with a few of these pick one and try to stick with it as you learn Linux in a full native install.

Kubuntu is the best. It’s Ubuntu with KDE tools and programs. You have Plasma as a desktop environment, which is very close to Window but that you can customize to your need.

Ubuntu is very popular so you get pretty much everything available and with tutorial, ressources and everything. KDE really push it to the most user friendly, GUI for everything kind of state.

Steam is easy to install, take charge of Proton or anything needed for your games to run.

I was very frustrated by Gnome (the default desktop environment for Ubuntu), failing miserably to make it more like Window. I guess Gnome is more for Mac users.

The only thing I recommend is deactivating Snap and installing Flatpack. It’s easy to find tuto on how to do that. Both Snap and Flatpack are doing the same idea, to bundle a program and it’s dependencies in a format that allows easier distribution to many distro. But Snap is not as good as Flatpack. You are free to leave it or to use both.

Either way, you can also install program made for Ubuntu or Debian. And with KDE come Discover that is like an App Store and updater.

Linux Mint is also good but I really think Plasma is the best desktop environment. Good thing to know you can always install more desktop environment then the one already installed, so don’t hesitate to try other.

If you are already engaged in a very pro open source stance, you might look at Fedora.

Anyway you choose, there are community of people passionate with Linux that can help you every step of the way. LLM can also help you get the basic. Good luck and welcome 🤗

I’d love to help you, but unfortunately I can’t think of a single distro that would run on a cat.