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16:09 It's not mentioned in the video because you might have missed it, but Nobara has actually switched to using KDE as its main DE, and while the Gnome version exists it currently ships without any extensions so it's just the default experience. The dev talked a lot about it in a post, but be aware that it doesn't look like this anymore.

Subjective videos are a very good strategy to get lots of comments. 😂

I switched to Linux Mint around a seven years ago and have never looked back. Why would anyone pay for Microsoft spyware?

When I installed Arch, I expected almost daily problems. Yet, months after I switched to it, I have had only a single problem, which was because of KDE, not Arch itself. I am very surprised to this day.

We're glad to see Fedora so high up on the list! Constant improvements and innovation always! 💙

For elementaryOS, I will say that for anyone whose use case requires accessibility functions, the developers have really excelled in providing toggles for dyslexia, various types of colorblindness, and speech-guided installation, in addition to the usual accessibility apps that you can find in general distros. This is obviously not part of Nick's use case, but is worth trying out for anyone who might need additional accessibility options

5:24 I think it's worth mentioning, too, that elementaryOS doesn't offer an upgrade path between major versions; you MUST reinstall. This is a nightmare for regular end users, something I couldn't offer to someone, say, my mom. Aside from that, my only other gripes keeping me from it is the lack of a tiling window manager (only splitscreen tiling) and the AppCenter is it's own store so it's missing a LOT of packages, even common things like Discord and Spotify. It's such a shame because I find eOS beautiful and I love their design language and philosophy for the most part. I hope new things come soon!

I'm rooting for Solus to succeed so much; they really have something special there and it'd be a shame for it to not get the support it deserves

I understand your reasoning for arch and we all have different experiences with computing but if I were making the list arch and endeavour would go to good category, I'd never in good faith say it's great for everyone or is my go to distro for recommendation but it's what I use daily and ironically the one I've had least problems with.

I love Gentoo (and Portage and OpenRC) but I only recommend it for people who wants to understand how a Linux system is working (great documentation on their website). For the others, I recommand Linux Mint.

Given the problems from a year ago, I understand your reluctance to recommend Solus. They have changed their organizational structure, adding much needed redundancy so they are no longer dependent on a single person. There is new management, a plan that has shown fruit and the future is bright there.

As a Tumbleweed user I would put that Distro in the Best Category. It has YAST, has a out-of-the-box graphical installer included and has a European/Germany based Company with a Enterprise foundation behind it. Its a Rolling Release which might be second fastest to deliver new packages behind Arch, but thats because its better tested imho. The Distro is much more stable than Arch. But I might be biased with my Daily Driver Distro ;-)

NixOS mentioned! update: davinci-resolve has been broken in nixpkgs for months but nvidia drivers do work, you just need to setup correctly. I've been using NixOS with nvidia drivers for over a year now, it only crashed like 5 times (with hyprland).

With better documentation and package consistency, and maybe an official graphical tool to configure NixOS for beginners-ish, I would put NixOS higher up in my favourite distros. I still use it as my main and only distribution, but it does have its issues.

Fedora has always been my go to. It brings new features quickly and is quite stable overall. Love it!

puts pop os in the avoid catagory. internal screaming. I love the gui in pop os. its really useful for me and better than modern gnome

I would like to see MX Linux added to this list. I have been using it for a while and I really love it. I even have it on a rescue USB because it has disk tools that work in the live environment.

Can't wait to try out VanillaOS Orchid. Imagine a sudo free immutable system with every Linux-software there is and trace-free rollback support by design. :****** Yes, you said it, it was very subjective -- but it's always fun to watch your content. Stay the way you are!

The simple trick to Arch is not to update everyday. Just update once a week or once few weeks.

Debian should be in "good" if not "great". Rock solid stability, huge amounts of forum and developer support, has zero drama, has flatpak support for keeping your required apps up to date, is very secure etc. Yes KDE/Gnome might not get new features, but that's a problem for when you do this in 2025 because as of now, KDE on Debian is "the latest version".

Mint and Fedora are so wonderful to run, in my case. Just missed both of my dear brazilians distro: BigLinux and Regata OS

I've been running Gentoo since 2004 and love the control over my system. The distro doesn't force anything on you but is all about choice. As for the computers for my family members I've been running Manjaro on several computers for years as I find it faster to install than Arch proper. Never had any problems at all. I don't follow distro politics so I have no idea about the behind the scenes stuff.

I don't use Mint but I feel like it's really the gold standard for what a general-purpose, beginner-friendly distro should be. I've never heard of anyone having a bad experience with it

I had been using Ubuntu on one laptop, and Mint on another. Move from Ubuntu to Mint to avoid having to deal with removal of snaps. Currently have Mint DE5 on one and Mint DE6 on the second. Both rock solid daily drivers. I do still have a ultra small form factor Dell desktop running Win 10 just in case I need it to run software that isn't available on Linux.. but I rarely used it anymore.

I personally use Timeshift, timeshift-grub2 and timeshift-autosnap when using Arch Linux. They're just automatically snapshot when I update the system. If the system's broken, I will just have to select the working snapshot in the Grub menu in the most cases.

Ubuntu has been my go to since 16.04 with me occasionally trying other distributions. It just works for me, all the programs are available for it, and it is the same OS as I run on all my servers. I have also used Linux Mint a lot and it is great for people who want a no-fuss intro to Linux.

Mint is what made Linux fun for me and I've been using it on my main PC since. I tried Manjaro and Arcolinux, Fedora and handful of other mainstream distro, but Mint is just really enjoyable to use and tweak.

Fun fact: I had more issues with OS breaking or bugging on Fedora than I ever had on vanilla Arch

As a recovering Windows user, I really like Linux Mint with the Cinnamon desktop environment.

Using MX Linux KDE on daily driver because it is stable and easy to use with default firewall sett. Got Gecko Linux Rolling KDE on second laptop to see how the Plasma 6 transition turns out before switching my daily driver. Gexko Linux has the benefits of Tumbleweed and is the only distro that handled all my hardware. I will need to learn how to setup UFW on my laptop for home and away, maybe that's something you could cover. Previously used Manjaro XFCE, Linux Mint, Ubuntu, Fedora,, Solaris, Mandeake, Corel Linux as daily drivers.

Love your content and presentation skills. I've recently switched from Windows to Linux, approximately 3 months now and use you videos as guides to help make distro and software choices. I have now plumped for Nobara 39, it needed a few tweaks but we got there

Hopefully, Pop!_OS bounces back with a good 24.04... It was my first distro, and I'd love to see them back in the spotlight this year. They took a lot of time to develop the Cosmic DE, but I'll keep my fingers crossed that it succeeds. As for Manjaro, I'm very disappointed with how it's been (mis)managed. It had the chance of becoming the good version of Ubuntu for the Arch family, but I don't think the dev team knows what they want or what Manjaro is supposed to be anymore.

i like void linux because it's very minimal by default meaning you can shape your system how you want, while having an easier time doing that than installing manually like gentoo

I used Pop OS for 6 months, and when i messed it up, i decided to switch to Debian, because of newer desktop environment and Wayland touchpad gestures on Gnome (i forgot about my mouse) Had to tinker to install Nvidia drivers, but once everything is setup, it works great for me I recommend separate /home partition if you have space on your SSD, it is better when you mess up and easier to distro hop

thanks a lot for this new great review!! I have more info to make my future choices 👍 Can you please tell me what is the software you're using at 0'14 please ?

I don't know about your experient with arch, It was hard for me at first, but after getting it done it's just perfect. (for me)

For people like me who initially chose Manjaro but are too lazy to reinstall everything, switch it to testing branch. You'll get more frequent updates and will have almost no breakages that way. My installation was fine for more than an year that way now.

did you try to install arch following the wiki or did you only use arch install? (not saying that archinstall is bad but I know it has some security holes as well as some questionable ways of doing some things) I've been daily driving arch linux for nearly 3 years and I've never had any issues that I couldn't solve by looking at forum posts or the wiki

Which of this would you recommend for an out of the box working with latest hardware. Specifically Ryzen 7000 series. Yes I am aware I could update the kernel of Mint and other great distors. (mint been usually the one I always go back to) But Id like one I don't have too. To test for a bit.

I would just place Debian higher as it's the one distro, used for base for almost all others, but with less bloat. On top of that it's main disadvantage of being old is easily fixable by changing it to debian testing or debian sid, while preserving it's stability.

Happy to see HoloISO on the list and actually well graded. I really like this OS I believe Valve should push it as a mainstream consumer Linux distro with the ability to default booting in Desktop mode for certain devices.

Thanx for the video. I've tried quite a few over the past 12 month on a VM and have settled on Linux Mint.

Hey Nick, do you know if Mint OS installs Nvidia drivers on installation? I use POP_OS only because it does, and my Laptop with a built in Nvidia card will not boot a Linux OS that won't install the Nvidia driver on installation. I've tried installing older Mint OS's and only get a blank screen...So I can't add the driver after installation..

I would love to see LMDE in that ranking next year. Or maybe a detailed video with your opinion of it.

I'm a student and I use manjaro KDE. I use it for kde's customisation/looks and pacman's speed. I have heard that pacman is the fastest of them all. I also like the minty green look of manjaro. I did come into issues but I had with other distros too. Using linux for 3 years. Happy to be a linux intermediate.😁😄😄

anyone knows if Tuxedo Control Centre works with machines of other brands too? and in Endeavour, Tumbleweed and Tuxedo, which one works best with NVIDIA drivers? thanks

For me, after getting a good grasp of NixOS, I can't just go back to any regular distro. The documentation and learning process is painfully bad and needs some work as soon as possible, but putting that aside, knowing exactly what software my computer has in every moment, not collecting "shit" overtime and the ability to bring *temporally* packages into "existence" on demand is just wonderful.

You did not mention Kubuntu. I used it for years, both at work and at home. It is rock solid, decently up to date and user-friendly. Never had a problem with it in years of heavy usage.

It's Ubuntu for me, I understand the hate for Snaps but on my specific use case (I'm a 3D designer) the snaps for Blender and Inkscape work great and have done so for years, plus I still have deb for the odd obscure software I need to use for work that doesn't provide any other Linux package.

Nobara has a discord server and has a channel specifically for technical help. The response times are fairly quick, and the people who do respond to you tend to stick with you till the end of your problem. Nobara definitely deserves a spot in the top tier place.

Been daily driving Nobara for a few months now, and it's been a rock solid experience for my hardware. If there's any need of help, GE has his own Discord that's pretty active, so if you need help there's usually someone around to help you.

Do you have an opinion on MX Linux? I'm using MX Linux KDE with some tweaks (Liquorix kernel, change to systemd as default, etc.) and I'm very satisfied with it.

Curious how MX Linux fits on your scale here. I've settled on it nicely.

The one thing I liked about Zorin OS 17 was it installed and EVERYTHING hardware wise worked great on my old mid 2011 quard core imac. It brought and old system I thought I was going to throw away back to life and now my son uses it in his tattoo shop.

I believe the strongest point in arch is not using it by itself, but basing another distro of of it. Imagine you have a company that has a lot of computers that don't really fit any mainstream os i.e. routers, cash registers etc. A distro that perfectly fits your uscase, that you don't have to develop from scratch seems wonderful.

I love Feren OS. Only thing is it has a small dev team, and the next major version has been delayed since July. I hope they come back and get it updated.

I am using Debian testing and it is great.

Good point on Wayland. My Jaguar core AMD laptop (spare became main) needs to pick and choose carefully for full hardware support. Maybe come 6.9 LTS I'll browse the slterkatives again. XFCE or whatever performs better is what I need.

Nick, your opinions are always valuable - what I love the most is how upfront you are in that these opinions are what works for you specifically and how you limit it to only what you have actually used. IMO this is the ONLY correct way to make a tier list, so the greatest of kudos to you! If I could suggest something that is sorely lacking from your experience of 2023 (I mean "sorely" as sticking out like a sore thumb, not as a "deficient" or that this video is "inadequate") is "immutable" or "image based" OSs. If you could focus a bit of time this year to take a look at maybe Silverblue, EasyOS (a "pioneer" and too often forgotten distro), OpenSUSE Aeon (previously known as MicroOS), RLxOS, in addition to the ones you did try using and did include in the video, like VanillaOS and Nix (and reportedly SerpentOS as a base for Solus will be immutable, but I know how the whole project changes as the tide so who knows...), and other distros that absolutely do not fit your usage, but are cool projects nonetheless, like Guix and EndlessOS. Idk, it seems in recent years "immutable" was the main buzzword, which is why I noted it's absence from your video. I would also like to mention in passing those smaller and seemingly very nationality focused distributions, like BIG Linux and carbonOS. But I guess they are even more fringe than bangs. just so I disclose my interests, I don't currently use any immutable nor any fringe distros. A simple and very mainstream Tumbleweed install reigns in my Desktop and a good old Ubuntu LTS lives in my laptop (that I use like three times a month while travelling for work, so LTS is comfortable). So no conflict of interests to be declared.

What about MX Linux?

After years of using arch, I had update issue only once. And it was not a big deal: npm got updated but another important package I use could not handle it yet. But I have pretty minimal setup. No grub, desktop environments, qt apps... so I might be just lucky. Manjaro on the other hand caused me quite some headaches in less than year.

great video! thanks for explaining the rationale for the rating. do you have a video for best distro for old hardware? is there a reason you didnt include antix linux? pls help thx!

when I switched to Linux, I tried several distros, but finally settled on Linux Mint. Never had a problem, and can do anything that I could do with Windows.

Linux Mint, like Pop OS, is also based on Ubuntu 22.04... but such a big difference in rating?

You should rank wayland compositors :) hyprland would surely be great+++

Any good 32b distros? I have a lot of old xp boxes that I continue to use. I would like to my 64b windows system.

For curiosity, which distro you chose instead of Fedora and why you made the switch?

Poor Manjaro. I never had a problem with it. As it is Arch based it also follows the Keep it Simple/Stupid principle and you really notice that once you dig into the system to change or fine tune stuff. The only thing, that I don't like is that it ships with a proprietary office suite by default. But you can just download the minimal version to prevent that in the first place.

I like Linux Mint for sure but I still can't believe that you haven't reviewed Mx Linux in this list...

I have been using Fedora on my 2011 MacBook Pro after seeing your video about Plasma KDE and love it. It's breathed new life into that old Mac and amazingly everything just worked- even the fickle Wifi adapter Apple used (b/c of course they used something difficultly unique).

I like Sparky Linux myself as it has something like 25 desktops you can choose from with just a couple clicks so I can have my laptop be as light or as fancy as I want while still having a nice stable underpinning.

I use Fedora for my mainstream computers, and I would also place it in great, but... I love Chromebooks because they're CHEAP! It's not hard to pick one up for less than $100 US. I'm using Bodhi Linux as I have found it easy to install on every machine I've tried. Have you looked at ranking specifically lightweight systems?

Currently on Debian and I would recommend you give Testing a shot for the list next year!

I enjoyed the video, I've got my three distros I use. So nice to hear about other distros I haven't touched in a while if ever. I mainly use Fedora, Ubuntu and Gentoo and I thought the rankings of each were perfectly justified. Fedora I like for my laptop, cause it mostly works without too much fuss and you get regular updates. Ubuntu for my server everything works with minimal setup time. Gentoo while it's my favorite for my desktop to mess around on, I frequently blow days at a time when I'm installing/making major changes.

Waiting for the "new" pop os on my hybrid graphics laptop! Running Zorin now because it looks smooth and finished!

I think I owe you an apology! After I complained about your ranking of Ubuntu, I temped the fates and my Ubuntu system went belly up this afternoon. LOL. I stand corrected!

I value stability, reliability, and driver availability above all so DEBIAN does it for me. It's been my daily OS for the last 2 years and never have a complain based on the criteria mentioned before.

As a long-term Manjaro user (KDE) I'd say that we've had long periods with no real issues with updates, although recently there have been a few requiring my intervention to fix. For this reason I wouldn't recommend it to newbies; we have Mint for that. I actually like a bit of a challenge now and then, keeps the grey matter going.

This video went live as I was dealing with a strange Dolphin related issue. I found a work around. Garuda is still my work (UKposts video editing) OS.

The Tier List Experiment

I'm using Manjaro since 2 years now and I am overally pretty happy. The compatibility issues between the official packages and AUR can be an issue, but I managed to manage it pretty well. Some things might not ever going to work on Manjaro but most things run without any issue. Also it runs very recent kernels, which is great.

On my aging laptop, I have really been happy with Mabox. It's based on Manjaro, but it is a very solid and stable spin of it.

I have already macbook air 2020 i3...which distro can u recommend

I'm using MX 23 with Kde which comes with a wayland session option on login. It's solid. As for latest software, you always have the flatpack option as this distro is based on Deb stable. Flats are a baked in option in the discovery package manager.

Where is MX Linux ?

Hey @TheLinuxEXP I sometimes don't understand your rankings. Can you explain why fedora is higher that opensuse? Open suse essentially is like fedora but with the fantastic yast admin tools you mentioned. What does fedora do to make it higher on your list? Also opensuse probably has the best kde implementation i've come across

I loved seeing the 40k book in the background when you were talking about Asahi 😂

I'm curious why MX Linux seems to rarely get mentioned? Is it just too small to get noticed? I picked it after asking around about a bunch of options and really like it, but it seems to fly under the radar.

I daily drive Nobara and it's really cool, I didn't have any issues upgrading to Nobara 39 and everything works fine (except my highly customized hyprland config). And when you come from ZorinOS it's a real pleasure t have up to date software !

I've had no issues with the AUR and Manjaro so far, and it's the only distro with a rolling release I've tried that doesn't have issues with my fingerprint scanner.

I tried TUXEDO- but it won't run on my computer-- messages say my VIDEO card won't carry it-- for some reason...

After starting my Linux experiment (heh) with Fedora like half a year ago, as i had to reinstall it because Windows update form some reason breaks it for me sometimes (I use Linux for personal and Windows for work), i tried Nobara as gaming is my main use-case, and have to say the gaming experience definetly seamless, i just cant come to love KDE as much as i loved Gnome. Really want to give KDE more time, but i really miss Gnome, it fit my use style so much better.

After distro hopping for a year, Manjaro with Gnome made me fall in love with Linux. Been running this set up on an all AMD desktop for over 2 years and it's been rock solid for everything. My only complaint is that Adobe needs to start supporting Linux like good little humans. Linux is feaking awesome, Adobe can eat sh*t!!

You should try Debian Testing, which is the preparation area for the next release of Debian, and is where unstable packages end up after they pass a bunch of automated tests.

Hey, how do you feel about LinuxFX and Big Linux (a Brazilian project,)? Thanks in advance

Seeing as you ranked both Tumbleweed and Leap, have you considered Slowroll? AIUI it's basically Tumbleweed that (mostly?) automatically figures out which packages in Tumbleweed are stable or unstable and filters them accordingly. I'm assuming that the reason you put Tumbleweed in Good instead of Great was because it was rolling and therefore not stable enough, since you didn't explicitly state any downsides.

I've been using Mint as my daily for over ten years and it just keeps getting better. Kubububtu is my backup. I have four ssds in my PC and check out most new distros when they are reviewed. I have used Linux since Slackware 1.0 and Debian sincne 1995. I wiped Windows when the Solaar app managed my logitech mouse and keyboard.. Linux Rules!

I've been using Manjaro with Wayland for some time now and I have to say I have yet to face any major trouble.

I did a recent review of existing distros for my use case: I want a light distro, small footprint with a good desktop and large package base and long term support & stability. In the past, I was using Xubuntu or Ubuntu Mate (before the snap debacle) but I found that the best distros for this use case are MX Linux (XFCE or KDE, both are slick) for the smallest "usable" distro and Mint Debian edition (Cinnamon) or Mint XFCE (but slightly larger). I was really impressed by how well those distros work out of the box and how good the user experience is (many utilities to manage teh system, robust fundation). Mint is well known, but MX Linux deserves more publicity !!