Your hardware is supported; consider to check driver support over at linux-hardware.org. Honestly, most hardware should be well-supported, unless it has been released very recently or is hardware from known troublemakers (i.e. Nvidia GPUs or Broadcom etc).
Your ‘computer-literacy’ is at least (slightly) higher than average.
You’ve primarily used Windows in the past.
You prefer asking others instead of finding it out for yourself; the existence of this post supports that. (It’s either that or you like to have a second opinion in all cases; but I would have expected more input from you if that was the case 😅.)
Your hardware is somewhat modern.
You will mostly stick to defaults (at least initially).
You’re aware that while hundreds of actively maintained distros exist, most of them are either niche or not worth your time in the first place. If, from the remaining ones, the less impactful derivatives are surgically removed, followed by the removal of newbie-unfriendly distros, then only 10-20 distros would remain; most of which have been named in this thread already. And your needs dictate which one out of these would suit you best.
You will educate yourself regarding desktop environments like GNOME, KDE Plasma, Cinnamon, Xfce etc. Perhaps you will even boot into a live environment to check them out for yourself; loading a bunch of distros on your USB through Ventoy is excellent for that. This is important as they’re arguably the biggest contributor to how you perceive your Linux system. You should also be aware that in almost all cases a second (or heck; even third, fourth etc) desktop environment can be installed on your system and you should be able to switch between them relatively easily. However, in most cases, the one provided on first installation works close to flawless while others that have been tacked on later on are generally less polished.
You will educate yourself (eventually) regarding universal package managers (read: AppImage, Flatpak, Nix and Snap) and Distrobox as collectively they’ve (mostly) ridden the Linux ecosystem of problems related to software not being packaged in the native repos. Don’t feel the need to indulge into all of them simultaneously from the get-go. But be aware that they exist and that they enable one to install (almost) any package that has been made available to Linux regardless of their chosen distro.
Any distro I should use?
Typically, distros like Arch, Debian, Fedora, Linux Mint, openSUSE, Pop!_OS and Ubuntu (or their derivatives) will be mentioned in these kinds of queries. And it becomes mostly a popularity poll that measures what the community thinks is the preferred distro for beginners. And honestly, I don’t blame them as you haven’t really given us a lot to work with. My entry to that popularity poll would be Linux Mint. If you prefer to use GNOME or KDE Plasma instead, then consider either Fedora or openSUSE Tumbleweed. Additionally, Pop!_OS should be considered if Nvidia causes problems on all the others.
Feel free to inquire if you so desire!
EDIT: I just noticed how you mentioned to someone that your use case will be primarily gaming. First of all, gaming is somewhat equal on most distros; especially with the likes of Bazzite-Arch and Conty providing excellent environments for gaming regardless of installed distro. Though, these containers do still rely on the hosts kernel, therefore any perceived difference on same hardware but different kernels might be attributed to said kernels. Newer kernels generally come with improved performance; at least for newer hardware*. Though, perhaps more performance could be gained through other means as well. I will spare you the details, however, as this is potentially another rabbit hole within the initial rabbit hole. Therefore, instead, I will name a couple of distros known for being excellent for gaming purposes: Bazzite, Garuda Linux, Nobara Linux, PikaOS and RegataOS. If you want a no-nonsense system, just go for Bazzite; while initial setup might seem slightly more involved, it’s by far the most robust system out of these. This does come at the cost of being ‘unique’ amongst the others, but I believe it’s a great fit for your use case.
sorry for being inactive here, I have other things happening at the moment. i’m just gonna put some stuff here
You will mostly stick to defaults (at least initially).
Kinda, I recently started to get interested in modding! It isn’t stuff like homebrew (although I was planning to root my phone, until OEM unlock was disabled. Thanks wiko.), I mostly just use something like vencord and Bloxstrap (just tweaks the Roblox client a bit, no exploits tho) This might be not seen as modding, but who cares.
Your ‘computer-literacy’ is at least (slightly) higher than average.
slightly, I do know how to use HTML to an extent, and can know whats the difference between RAM and hard drives, I still have a long way to go.
Ok here are some of the specs that I can remember (I’m currently not home as of typing this)
I have a HP 2022 Laptop, decent enough to play games
I have a 512 hard drive and 12 GB of RAM
only has 2 USB ports, most of it was replaced by type C, so dual booting with.something USB related might be hard
Dabbled a bit into linux with a VM (a few years ago tho, it was Ubuntu)
and thats all I could remember, I do plan to do an update post after trying out some distros on a VM, hopefully it works!
Completely agree that these kinds of threads end up being more a popularity poll than anything more actionable and usable. Everyone has their own opinions and preferences (which is great!), but that can end up being extremely overwhelming for a newbie.
A couple of assumptions I will be making:
Typically, distros like Arch, Debian, Fedora, Linux Mint, openSUSE, Pop!_OS and Ubuntu (or their derivatives) will be mentioned in these kinds of queries. And it becomes mostly a popularity poll that measures what the community thinks is the preferred distro for beginners. And honestly, I don’t blame them as you haven’t really given us a lot to work with. My entry to that popularity poll would be Linux Mint. If you prefer to use GNOME or KDE Plasma instead, then consider either Fedora or openSUSE Tumbleweed. Additionally, Pop!_OS should be considered if Nvidia causes problems on all the others.
Feel free to inquire if you so desire!
EDIT: I just noticed how you mentioned to someone that your use case will be primarily gaming. First of all, gaming is somewhat equal on most distros; especially with the likes of Bazzite-Arch and Conty providing excellent environments for gaming regardless of installed distro. Though, these containers do still rely on the hosts kernel, therefore any perceived difference on same hardware but different kernels might be attributed to said kernels. Newer kernels generally come with improved performance; at least for newer hardware*. Though, perhaps more performance could be gained through other means as well. I will spare you the details, however, as this is potentially another rabbit hole within the initial rabbit hole. Therefore, instead, I will name a couple of distros known for being excellent for gaming purposes: Bazzite, Garuda Linux, Nobara Linux, PikaOS and RegataOS. If you want a no-nonsense system, just go for Bazzite; while initial setup might seem slightly more involved, it’s by far the most robust system out of these. This does come at the cost of being ‘unique’ amongst the others, but I believe it’s a great fit for your use case.
sorry for being inactive here, I have other things happening at the moment. i’m just gonna put some stuff here
Kinda, I recently started to get interested in modding! It isn’t stuff like homebrew (although I was planning to root my phone, until OEM unlock was disabled. Thanks wiko.), I mostly just use something like vencord and Bloxstrap (just tweaks the Roblox client a bit, no exploits tho) This might be not seen as modding, but who cares.
slightly, I do know how to use HTML to an extent, and can know whats the difference between RAM and hard drives, I still have a long way to go.
Ok here are some of the specs that I can remember (I’m currently not home as of typing this)
I have a HP 2022 Laptop, decent enough to play games
I have a 512 hard drive and 12 GB of RAM
only has 2 USB ports, most of it was replaced by type C, so dual booting with.something USB related might be hard
Dabbled a bit into linux with a VM (a few years ago tho, it was Ubuntu)
and thats all I could remember, I do plan to do an update post after trying out some distros on a VM, hopefully it works!
Completely agree that these kinds of threads end up being more a popularity poll than anything more actionable and usable. Everyone has their own opinions and preferences (which is great!), but that can end up being extremely overwhelming for a newbie.