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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Distro is irrelevant. DE/WM choice is all that matters as far as GUI goes. Also, if you want a GUI that looks or feels like windows then KDE probably has you covered in that you could probably customise it to mimic windows.
I quite like the Desktop Environment in elementaryOS. I think it's called Pantheon Desktop? It's very polished. Or InstantWM from InstantOS is also interesting and has some nice animations and effects.
Personally, I use simple and minimal Openbox
Yes, exactly. haha, the distro has nothing to do with the GUI. That's your Desktop Environment. On almost every single popular distro you can get teh same DE's either through official offerings or community versions.
Linux Mint Cinnamon. Stable, yet tons of customizations possible and makes the jump from Windows a whole lot easier (I jumped 1.5 years ago and will never look back).
Linux Mint with Cinnamon ... but I am old. 😁
I also enjoy Mint. Simple and easy to use. I wouldn't consider myself old, so I think you shouldn't either!
You can use most desktop environments on most distros.
If a distro has its own GUI and it doesn't exist on other distros, usually that means either it isn't free software or it's not good enough that anyone has bothered to package it for other distros.
The real question is what Window Manager has the best GUI... you can run any window manager on any distro - it just takes a little work.
If you're talking about out-of-the-box without any user customization, I'll make a couple suggestions that I think work for new Linux users - not that I'm saying you're green, but most power users know they can fully design the OS from the ground up if needed.
PopOS - In between - GNOME-like with some PopOS customizations under the hood.
ElementaryOS - MacOS-like WM thats clean fresh and easy to understand
Mint - Cinnamon DM, Windows-like with some customization possible
I'm using Fedora with GNOME now and enjoying it. If you want a more Windows-like experience, go with Fedora KDE spin.
Personally I'm a KDE Plasma person, it's easily customizable and very windows like (though I'm pretty sure in some ways Microsoft has been taking design ideas from KDE)
I don't see why distros should be married to a specific GUIs. Any distro can support any number of GUIs. It just seems like a huge waste of effort to make a distro just to support one GUI.
I would encourage people who want to implement their unique vision for a GUI to make their effort easily packagable by any distro and to work with an existing community distro to make their work available widely.
i really like gnome, especially with extensions like dash to dock, transparent top bar, etc. really nice, simple, and clean ui imo.
Yup, I tend to recommend fedora to my newbie friends because Gnome is simple to switch to and works really well.
Gnome with pop's cosmic extensions is great. Excited to try their rust based replacement once it's ready
This is subjective. For me, anything with Mate as desktop environment. Currently using Ubuntu with it.
I'm a conservative user. I don't really care about whistles and bells, nor appeal to novelty. I want something that works and that I'm used to.
Is mate being ported to Wayland? I will die on the hill that gnome 2 was peak gnome.
Distro? Probably Debian, because it has all the desktop environments. If you want, you can have Plasma, Gnome, Xfce, Cinnamon, and MATE all installed at the same time and switch between them at will. Most distros seem focused on one specific DE, which if I'm not mistaken means switching to another involves reinstalling the whole operating system.
The big downside of Debian is that the software in it tends to be very out of date. You'll get security updates and the occasional bug fix between Debian releases, but that's about all you'll get.
You can get a rolling-release experience by running the “unstable” version, but as the name implies, upgrades will sometimes fail or break something, and you need to know your way around the system in order to recover from that. Not a problem if you want to learn to be a Linux sysadmin anyway, but if you want your system to Just Work™, then unstable Debian is unfortunately not for you. It's a trade-off, as with most things in life.
Feodora and Debian have a GNOME experience that has not been ruined to make less innovative in favor of making the UX more similar (and therefore familiar) to that of the worst desktop operating system available (windows).
If you've seen but never really used GNOME in a daily workflow it looks and feels alien. Thats becausethey devs are trying to make something that is friendly to the people who actually use it and intuitive to the people who are new to desktop computing, and they are making no attemt to appease thoes who believe that it is impossible to do better than Microsoft has with Windows.
If you've never really used it (and have used ms windows), Vanilla GNOME is alien to you. If you have really used it, nothing else is yet on its level.
Imo, I really like linux mint's cinnamon, its so clean and pretty.
i3, and swaywm , I have used almost ... All Linux/BSD/Windows/Osx/Unix Desktop Environments. I really like #enlightenment but it can be pretty buggy especially on wayland.
Im honestly a GNOME person. Part of that is due to me needing magnification and a screen reader to use a computer for sure, but its also very keyboard driven and that is how i use computers
Ubuntu Budgie
Note: a lot of people seem to use the Mac inspired app dock and that seems to be the default. It's customizable though so you can get a taskbar if you prefer that.
I think the whole point of Budgie is to make the interface a little more welcoming if you are coming from Windows or Mac.
I like to use good ol' stable Debian with i3-gaps as a window manager.
You can change the DE (desktop environment) as you like but I really like Budgie from Solus. My daily driver is Plasma and find myself on openSUSE Tumbleweed. It's by far the most crash-free and freeze-free experience I've had while using Plasma. Note: Installing Nvidia Drivers is at your own risk, though.
I just switched to Fedora 38 with KDE and it's been great! It's using Wayland now too, so it's been really smooth and stable. My last distro was Manjaro with KDE, but I started having issues with the lastet round of updates and wanted to switch to something more stable. I really don't like gnome as it feels to "basic". Sure it looks nice, but for me it feels like it's missing some important features that are just there with the default KDE layout.
Desktop environments are a pretty subjective topic. You probably gonna like KDE plasma or cinnamon..if it's just about looks and feel you're good to go..just find a distro with one of them and test it.
I used the Pop Os default for a long time and just recently switched to i3 Manjaro, it’s been pretty nice once you get past the learning curve of i3
I'm pretty sure I'm legally required to post this anytime someone says they use Manjaro.
Manjaro was the first thing to get me to stop distro-hopping, so it pains me to admit that historically, it's been a very messy project. I've since moved onto openSUSE Tumbleweed and love it (I've also dabbled in NixOS, but it's a lot more hardcore).
If anyone wants the ease of Manjaro, with an Arch base, my understanding is that you should consider EndeavourOS.
Also, if you like i3 but want to use Wayland for any of its superior features, consider SwayWM.
GNOME with Dash to Panel is my favorite GUI, but I've been warming up to KDE since their Wayland VRR implementation is complete and working while GNOME keeps waffling over something as stupid as "omg what if we have to show a VRR toggle in the settings??? our users will be CONFUSED!!!!". While GNOME is very smooth and functional with extensions, this stupid limited mindset of the core developers prevents it from being a good choice for gaming. Mutter-VRR fixes it and actually works very well, but they keep breaking it with updates.
Distro doesn't really matter nowadays. You can get all desktop environments to work on most distros. Especially the big players like KDE, Gnome, Xfce have hundred distros they are shipped with by default. Most big distros have versions for each of the most popular desktop environments. Therefore, I would suggest that you look for the distro which fits your needs best and then install the desktop environment you want to work with afterwards, if there isn't a flavor of your distro that ships with it already.
I tried many but for me, Linux mint cinnamon worked. It was traditional, but still had pkeyof customisation options. Also, to top it all off, it's light enough and works on a 13 year old pc I've got here.
@bigbox with ZorinOS you won't feel the difference when coming from spydows. As soon as I made the switch to Linux I tested over 15 distros and I ended up with ZorinOS Core.
The distro which comes with the best customization in my opinion is Pop!_OS. Simple, clean, straightforward and comes with the POP SHELL which basically simulates a tiling window manager
I really like the GUI in Pop!_OS. It's a custom GNOME installation with some sort of window tiling manager I don't know what it's called. I really like it, and I like their system themes, too. It's very macOS-like. Simple, clean, and functional with a lot of little custom tweaks put in by system76 to cover some gaps in GNOME's basic configuration and things that are missing from Ubuntu (Pop!_OS is an Ubuntu variant).
Others have mentioned Linus Mint with Cinnamon. I haven't used it in several years, but I recall it being very nice and simple. It's very Windows-like, which I'm not a fan of, but the interface was quite pretty, as I recall.
You might be looking for a KDE desktop. Many of Windows's better more modern desktop features are copied from it, and KDE is very customizable out of the box without needing to install a bunch of extensions like you do with Gnome. KDE can be customized to fit many different desktop paradigms, with the default being like Windows 10.
I've been enjoying Gnome using !pop_os@lemmy.ml. It's not perfect, but good enough. The preinstalled tiling extension also makes using a full DE bearable without spending hours customizing a WM.
I'm looking forward to trying out Cosmic, which I have high hopes for.
I love the versatility of KDE and you can make it look amazing but at the end of the day I always end up with a Gnome-based distro for some reason. The simplicity is just so beautiful. Fedora has been my distro of choice for a few years and I don't see that changing any time soon...it just works! With gaming via Steam/Proton I don't see myself ever returning to Windows.
Fedora with Gnome
I've been using linux on and off since my first experiments with zipslack back in 2000-2001, and full time since 2006. I've bounced around distros, tried countless DEs and WMs, and I have to say, Mint Cinnamon was the first where I didn't have to immediately change the theme/icons/color schemes/etc. to make it look decent (in my opinion). And add to that a more traditional desktop paradigm at a time when others (unity, gnome 3) were trying something else, and I was a convert, and still use it to this day, some 8+ years later.
I recently started using KDE with i3 as the window manager - I've long been looking for a full-fleged DE with good window tiling, and KDE + i3 does that so well and is so easy to set up it's like they were made to work together.
It thoroughly depends on how much you're willing to configure
I think right now EWW + hyprland is the new hotness, if you're willing to edit text files and scripts
If not, go KDE if you like windows, gnome if you like mac.
I like GNOME a lot (currently using Fedora GNOME with a bunch of extensions), but I'm eagerly awaiting the release of System76's COSMIC since it seems like it's basically GNOME with all the customisations I end up making anyway, and will be far more modular and customisable.
Absolutely love GNOME on Fedora. Workstations + Hotkeys are amazing. I really dig the minimalism and compartmentalisation it offers.
Good old Debian stable with JWM, IceWM or Trinity Desktop for me. Its very efficient, clean and gets out of the users way. Will probably move to LabWC on Wayland when its ready.
Any distro where I can easily replace the default with sway.
Sway is awesome! Recently started using it, and being able to customize literally everything with simple CSS gives you so much control. Though it is a bit of a double edged sword, as if I don't catch myself I'll never stop tuning it.