this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2023
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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).

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I found this site a while back - basically it will ask you a bunch of questions on your usage of your PC, and will came out with a list of recommended distros, and a list of reasons why YOU could like or not like it.

https://distrochooser.de/

There are some similar sites to this one, but since I'm not familiar with them, I won't post them. They are simply DuckDuckGo-able though.

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[–] [email protected] 113 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I appreciate distro chooser but I'd never recommend a newbie to use it. This just increases their choice paralysis, I chose beginner options and got recommended: Linux Mint, ZorinOS, Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS, elementary OS, Xubuntu, Ubuntu MATE, Pop!_OS...

And all of them had pretty much the same check marks. They're good recommendations but this doesn't answer the question, people will just look at the list and say "Okay... Which distro do I choose?"

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah it should really only give me 2, maybe 3 options. Distrochooser is supposed to be the one choosing, not the user

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

It should display the distros just like stemwijzer (Dutch site) displays its results in the end.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

Yep, this was me when I first started out. The chooser was cool but didn't really answer the question of which one I should use first.

I eventually settled on Mint. Cinnamon left a lot to be desired imo, but otherwise it worked quite well and I'd recommend it as a first distro.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Showing all results it's fine IMO, they just need to make obvious the results are ranked with the "best match" at the top, so if the user doesn't know better or doesn't have any objections, they'll pick the top one.