How to Choose Desktop Suitable Linux versions and Distributions ?

                                  

      There are hundreds of Linux distributions and according to some people there are too many. I don't subscribe to this theory.

For people new to Linux however it is possibly tricky to know which Linux distro is best for them.

  This Article goes through the top Linux distros as listed at Distrowatch.com and gives a short description of each one as well as a table showing how easy they are to install, who they are for, level of expertise required and the desktop environment that they use.

Linux Mint

Linux Mint provides a modern take on what many people have become accustomed to over the years. If you have ever used Windows XP, VIsta or Windows 7 then you will appreciate that there is a panel at the bottom, a menu, a series of quick launch icons and a system tray.

It doesn't matter which desktop environment you end up deciding on (of which Linux Mint provides many) they are all designed to look and feel the same way.

It is easy to install, comes with all the applications you need for general home computing and provides straight forward computing for the masses.

Level Of Expertise Required	Low
Desktop Environment	Cinnamon, MATE, XFCE, KDE
Purpose	General Desktop Operating System
Download Link	https://www.linuxmint.com/download.php
Based On	Ubuntu, Debian Debian Debian is one of the oldest Linux distributions and is the base for many of the other distributions that exist including Ubuntu and Linux Mint. It is a community distribution and only ships with free software and free drivers. The Debian repositories have thousands of applications and there are versions available for a large number of hardware devices. It isn't the easiest to install and there are various steps you need to go through post installation to get all of your hardware working. Level Of Expertise Required Medium Desktop Environment GNOME, KDE, XFCE. LXDE (+ others) Purpose Community distribution which can be used as a server, general desktop operating system, base for other distribution. Truly multipurpose Download Link https://www.debian.org/distrib/ Based On N/A Ubuntu Ubuntu is a modern desktop operating system designed for the masses and is meant to be every bit as easy to use as Windows or OSX. With full hardware integration and a complete set of applications, most beginners see this as the first step onto the Linux ladder.  If you want to try something other than Windows and you are worried about Linux relying too hard on the command line try Ubuntu because you won't need the terminal window at all. Easy to install and easy to use with great support. Level Of Expertise Required Low Desktop Environment Unity Purpose General desktop operating system Download Link http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop Based On Debian Manjaro Manjaro provides an easier method to install and use an Arch based distribution. Arch is a forward thinking rolling distribution which many expert users swear by. Unfortunately, Arch is somewhat less forgiving on new users and a level of expertise and a willingness to learn and read is required to get up and running. Manjaro bridges the gap by providing an operating system that intermediate users can use to get a taste of Arch without the hassle. Fairly lightweight which means it will work well on older hardware and machines with low resources. Level Of Expertise Required Medium Desktop Environment Cinnamon, Enlightenment, XFCE, GNOME (+ others) Purpose General Desktop Operating System Download Link http://sourceforge.net/projects/manjarolinux/ Based On Arch openSUSE A great alternative to Ubuntu and other Debian based Linux distributions. openSUSE provides a stable environment for home users with a decent set of applications and a decent level of support. Installation can be a bit tricky for new or inexperienced computer users but once set up there is a decent set of documentation. Not quite as straight forward as Mint or Ubuntu. Level Of Expertise Required Low / Medium Desktop Environment GNOME, KDE (+ others) Purpose General desktop operating system  Download Link https://software.opensuse.org/distributions/testing?locale=en Based On N/A Fedora Fedora is a community distribution based on Red Hat. Designed to be cutting edge, Fedora always comes with up to date software and drivers and was one of the first distributions to introduce both Wayland and SystemD. Straight forward to install and comes with a good range of software. Can be temperamental due to the fact that it is so cutting edge and not all packages are stable. Level Of Expertise Required Low / Medium Desktop Environment GNOME, KDE (+ others) Purpose General desktop operating system, experiments with new concepts Download Link https://getfedora.org/en/workstation/download/ Based On Red Hat Zorin OS Zorin is based on Ubuntu and has been designed to look and feel like other operating systems such as Windows 7 and OSX. (The user chooses the theme to make it look like one thing or another). It has a complete set of desktop applications such as office suite, graphics application, audio player, video player etc. Zorin also has a lot of visual effects. Level Of Expertise Required Low Desktop Environment GNOME, LXDE Purpose General Purpose Desktop Operating system designed to make users of other operating systems feel at home. Includes a lite version for older hardware Download Link https://zorinos.com/download/ Based On Ubuntu Elementary It is hard to believe that Elementary is so low in the rankings at the moment. Designed to be lightweight yet easy to install and use with the emphasis on a clean and elegant user interface. It is based on Ubuntu and so provides access to a large repository of applications. Level Of Expertise Required Low Desktop Environment Pantheon Purpose Lightweight yet elegant desktop operating system Download Link https://elementary.io/ Based On Ubuntu Deepin Deepin heralds from China and is based on Debian. It has its own desktop environment based on QT5 and includes its own software manager, audio player, and other tools. Level Of Expertise Required Low / Medium Desktop Environment Deepin (based on QT5) Purpose General desktop operating system Download Link http://www.deepin.org/en Based On Debian CentOS CentOS is another community distribution based on Red Hat but unlike Fedora it is more mainstream and built for the same sort of audience as openSUSE. It uses the same installer as Fedora and so it is straight forward to install and there is a decent selection of applications. Level Of Expertise Required Low / Medium Desktop Environment GNOME, KDE (+ others) Purpose General desktop operating system Download Link https://www.centos.org/download/ Based On Red Hat Antergos Antergos like Manjaro aims to provide an operating system that anybody can use whilst also providing access to Arch Linux. Not quite as polished as Manjaro but it offers the choice of multiple desktop environments and is fairly easy to use. The way you choose the desktop environment is during the installation stage and through the installer, you can choose all manner of features such as the applications you wish to install such as LibreOffice. Generally speaking a very good distribution but not so easy to dual boot. Level Of Expertise Required Low / Medium Desktop Environment GNOME, KDE (+ others) Purpose General desktop operating system Download Link https://www.mageia.org/en/downloads/ Based On N/A Arch As mentioned previously Arch is a distribution that intermediate and expert Linux users swear by. It provides up to date software and drivers but requires more maintenance than other distributions and it requires decent knowledge and a willingness to read the manual. Level Of Expertise Required Medium High Desktop Environment Cinnamon, GNOME, KDE (+ others) Purpose Multipurpose desktop operating system Download Link https://www.archlinux.org/download/ Based On N/A PCLinuxOS It is unbelievable that this distribution is so low in the rankings. As easy to install and use as Ubuntu or Mint and has a great set of repositories and a good community. This would be my true alternative to using Ubuntu or Mint. What is more is that it is a rolling distribution meaning that once it is installed you never need to upgrade as it is always up to date. Level Of Expertise Required Low Desktop Environment KDE, GNOME, LXDE, MATE Purpose General purpose desktop operating system Download Link http://www.pclinuxos.com/get-pclinuxos/ Based On N/A Solus Solus is a fairly new distribution which focuses on providing quality over quantity. Whilst this makes a great distribution on the surface certain key applications aren't available. As the distribution evolves it could become a major player but for now I would doubt the average person could use it as their only operating system Level Of Expertise Required Medium Desktop Environment Budgie Purpose General purpose desktop operating system focusing on quality Download Link https://solus-project.com/ Based On N/A Linux Lite Linux Lite is another Ubuntu based operating system designed to be lightweight. It is easy to install and comes with a full suite of applications. It isn't an official Ubuntu spin off but it has been going for a number of years now and it is definitely worth checking out. As it is based on Ubuntu it is easy to install and use. Level Of Expertise Required Low Desktop Environment XFCE Purpose Lightweight Desktop Operating System Download Link https://www.linuxliteos.com/download.php Based On Ubuntu Mageia Mageia rose from the flames of the Mandriva project when it briefly ceased to exist. A general purpose distribution similar to openSUSE and Fedora with a good range of software and a simple to use installer. There are a few quirks but nothing insurmountable. Level Of Expertise Required Low / Medium Desktop Environment GNOME, KDE (+ others) Purpose General desktop operating system, experiments with new concepts Download Link https://www.mageia.org/en/downloads/ Based On N/A Ubuntu MATE Before Ubuntu started using the Unity desktop it utilized the GNOME 2 desktop which was a popular desktop environment which was both lightweight and customizable. The MATE desktop environment provides a desktop very similar to the old GNOME 2 desktop although it utilizes GNOME 3. What you end up with is all the goodness of Ubuntu with a good performance and a highly customizable desktop environment. Level Of Expertise Required Low Desktop Environment MATE Purpose General Desktop Operating System, will work well on low powered computers Download Link https://ubuntu-mate.org/vivid/ Based On Ubuntu LXLE LXLE is basically Lubuntu on steroids. Lubuntu is a lightweight version of the Ubuntu distribution utilizing the LXDE desktop. LXLE is a respin of Lubuntu with a more complete set of applications and tools included. The fact that LXLE is more popular than Lubuntu shows that the extras added do provide good value. Easy to install and great for older computers and netbooks. Level Of Expertise Required Low Desktop Environment LXDE Purpose General Desktop Operating System for machines with low resources Download Link http://www.lxle.net/download/ Based On Lubuntu Ubuntu and Linux Mint Suitable for: Beginner to Advanced/Server Ubuntu is currently the most popular of the Linux Distributions. It is built on a Debian core, but has a more regular release cycle, is more polished, is easy to use and has major financial backing. It is a completely free distro, therefore copyrighted materials such as DVD playing software do not come as standard with Ubuntu, you must download and install it separately, but can be done easily. If you don’t like the look and feel of the latest Ubuntu desktop (called Unity), Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu, is made for beginners and still offers a GNOME or KDE version. Red Hat/CentOS/Fedora Suitable for: Beginner to Advanced/Server Used to be very popular, easy to use, good installer. Has some annoying quirks, RPM software packaging can suffer from dependency problems, even with YUM system. RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) is the non-free Enterprise version offering of this distribution, it comes with full telephone based support and is backed by rigorous testing. CentOS is the free version which is derived from RHEL but usually trails behind it and of course does not come with enterprise support, then there is Fedora Core. Fedora is the bleeding-edge fork of Red Hat which has all the latest bells and whistles but as it is bleeding-edge, it can also suffer from less stability than their enterprise-grade counterparts. SuSE Linux Suitable for: Beginner to Advanced SuSE was once an independent German Linux distribution, which later was purchased by Novell, who later sold it to VMWare. It’s now an excellent all-rounder which is geared up for the Enterprise. good manuals & docs, masses of great software, brilliant support. Enterprise version great for corporate use with business support and has partnered with companies such as SAP (and of course VMWare). Software Installer still relies on RPM system from RedHat which can suffer from dependency problems however this is mainly a thing of the past. Slackware and Arch Linux Suitable for: Advanced to Server Users Slackware was probably the first linux distribution. Targeted at geeks who like to tweak or for the server market looking to get every little ounce of server performance. Quite hard to install and use, Uses .tar.gz packages rather than more popular .deb or .rpm systems. If you fall into the more advanced camp, but don’t like the sound of compiling everything, perhaps Arch is for you, as it still offers similar levels of customisation as Slackware. Debian Suitable for: Intermediate to Advanced Users Very established Linux distro. DEB packages combined with apt-get system solve the tedium of the RPM software packaging in Redhat/Suse/Mandriva. Traditionally known for being further behind than some other distros, but rock solid. Is now the basis for many modern, easier to use distributions such as Ubuntu and Linux Mint. Note: If a distribution is at release 10 (ie: Slackware), but another distribution is only at 4.1 (ie: Debian), this does not indicate that Debian is an old version of Linux. The release numbers are only an indicator of how many releases that particular vendor has made. For example it is quite likely that Debian 4.1 and Slackware 10 share the same major kernel version and many similar software titles.