What Linux distro is best as a daily driver for a beginner?

USS-Privacy

DeletedUser433 I prefer Zorin OS because it's the most aesthetic compared to mint with many of the same features, but Mint, Ubuntu, and Kubuntu are all great too

DeletedUser410

DeletedUser433

IMHO
I will take into consideration the main distros based on the fact that you mention that you are a beginner
1-ZorinOS: very nice and polished, easy transition to Linux from a windows environment. Has nice software out of the box and doesn't require much setup. Very lightweight,is not resource hungry, runs on old machines quite well
Cons: in my personal experience sometimes with old hardware (wi-fi in particular) can have issue and requires manual installation from CLI
2 - Mint is also very nice and simple to use, it is designed to have a windows 7 look, but can be easily customized.
Can install from flatpack but apt as well, very solid and well maintained.
Cons: as mentioned before even in my experience it can have issues with vpns, especially kill switch
3 - Ubuntu comes in different flavours depending on your goals. It is more resource hungry but if you are in web development it is a solid choice. Very well maintained, lots of updates and LTS are supported for a long time.
I would say that the best options based on what you said are the 3 afromentioned , since other distros are more "advanced" in terms of setup: arch / debian or are developed with very specific goals in mind (I.e. tails for privacy etc..)
Just my opinion, hope it helps.

DeletedUser433

DeletedUser410 Is there a way to add an additional firewall/kill-switch in the desktop in case the main one fails? I use public WiFi so I can't configure the router

Toiletterider I suppose you're telling me to boot from my USB drive whenever I want to surf the internet? It's a bit troublesome, how about using a VM?

BeepBeep

Only mentioned once, and only in passing, so I'll add that PopOs! also meets your description.

And, I'll add that unlike Windows vs Mac, with Linux people don't seem to get canalized into one path indefinitely. Rather, Linux users seem to change their distros more often than underwear. (Although, sometimes, that ratio might be more about the underwear... ;)

[Just know that this isn't a one-way, permanent decision.]

TheGodfather

DeletedUser433 default settings like no metadata when taking pics

That's the responsibility of the program storing the file. You can use metadata remover apps to remove them after the fact.

DeletedUser433 Pre-installed apps (veracrypt

I know of no distro which ships veracrypt by-default.

DeletedUser433 low resource usage (RAM

All Linux distros have low resource usage compared to Windows

DeletedUser433 VPN leak protection

No Linux OS does that by-default. Your VPN app needs to do this properly.

DeletedUser433 Brute-force protection?

Most have rudimentary protection, but no hardware-backed throttling by-default

Would recommend to start with Fedora KDE.

FOSSOS

I also want to switch back to Linux for the privacy and the OS choice is overwhelming. I game a lot so my use case is different as yours and I'm debating if I should go for PopOS, Fedora or to just go for Arch. I often mod games with mod managers so that's something I need to consider in my choice.

You can harden each distro in various ways, each distro usually has a wiki detailing how this is done. Installing packages such as media players is usually easy to do through built-in package managers and most of them have FDE tools that are brute force resistant if your password is strong enough. Some VPN providers have native apps that block IPv6 and route your traffic to prevent leaks.

DeletedUser433 VPN leak protection

Byteang3l flatpaks can occasionally circumvent your vpn connection which means anything done in those applications will be outside of the VPN tunnel,

TheGodfather No Linux OS does that by-default. Your VPN app needs to do this properly.

It might be stupid of me to ask but can't they use iptables or nftables to build a killswitch on top of whatever the VPN client program uses and force all traffic through tun0?

ryrona

TheGodfather I know of no distro which ships veracrypt by-default.

Tails does. It has support for opening VeraCrypt volumes using the graphical file manager by default.

Technically all Linux distributions have VeraCrypt support by default, since the command line utility "cryptsetup" has support for it, and it is included in all Linux distributions by default. But really, one should use LUKS2, it has stronger encryption than VeraCrypt and is the default in all Linux distributions, and support for it is well integrated.

DeletedUser433

pit2p Wouldn't read-only mean that I can't write new files?

WestQuester Yes, I have heard of those issues with Fedora, which is why I was hesitant initially. I'm not a fan of tinkering with stuff

TheGodfather All Linux distros have low resource usage compared to Windows

Do you mean to say that a distro like Qubes is less intensive than Windows 11? I don't know much but the sites I checked all mentioned that it was resource-intensive

TheGodfather No Linux OS does that (VPN leak protection) by-default. Your VPN app needs to do this properly.

Doesn't Whonix run all traffic through Tor? I mentioned leak protection because iirc GOS has this feature and hoped that some distros would have it

spl4tt I'm not a computer guy, I have used the command line before but generally avoid it because I'm afraid that a typo would ruin something

I watch movies occasionally so codec support is quite important, I heard Fedora doesnt come with ffmpeg

TheGodfather

FOSSOS It might be stupid of me to ask but can't they use iptables or nftables to build a killswitch on top

That's what they usually do or usage of namespaces.

Eirikr70

FOSSOS After some reading, I have installed a Fedora computer for playing. It has been easy to configure my Nvidia graphics card and to install Steam. Since I'm happy with that, I didn't try any other distro.

Byteang3l

FOSSOS they could as far as I know, I just didn't regard that as being the most beginner friendly task.

FOSSOS

TheGodfather yes, I think setting some firewall rules should prevent all leaking, including that of flatpacks. Doesn't it? It is some extra work but a simple AI could generate the rules if the task is too complicated or a GUI could be used on some distros

BeepBeep

Eirikr70

Haven't ever tested it myself, but from what I've read, there's a high degree of cross compatibility for Steam across various distros, so it probably doesn't matter. But, if you do run into compatibility issues and gaming is a priority, SteamOS runs on Arch, FWIW.

DeletedUser433

DeletedUser396 Are u able to run distros like QubesOS?

Eirikr70 Does ur driver update automatically?

Are Rufus, Ventoy and Yumi safe for setting up multiboot thumb drives?

ZoraIsHere

Eirikr70 exactly the same happened to me.

Toiletterider

Just a tip,

Use QubesOS if/when you have to interact with the internet.
Use a air-gapped encrypted linux device (can be Qubes or whatever), for storing personal files or work. Never connect it to the internet.

In this case you dont have to worry so much about ur "daily device". You can assume it will be hacked or compromised in the future. But as long as you are not storing anything of value like work, personal, etc it is fine.

TheGodfather

ryrona Tails does. It has support for opening VeraCrypt volumes using the graphical file manager by default

Well, TailsOS is a OS for a very specific use case and not an everyday distro

ryrona Technically all Linux distributions have VeraCrypt support by default, since the command line utility "cryptsetup" has support for it, and it is included in all Linux distributions by default

Cryptsetup does not cover the whole functionality of veracrypt. I had some older encrypted content which was only accessible with veracrypt, not with cryptsetup.

TranceSeven

Byteang3l Mainstream, in this case, was meant to refer to something that would be recommended to a Linux newcomer. For that reason I didn't mention Qubes. I've not tried Zorin and didn't know it sandboxed stuff, so thanks for the info.

TranceSeven

pixelfairy My mistake, I meant to type "other (Linux) distributions". Specifically where you can invoke a browser specifying a separate profile. No doubt this can be done on Windows and Mac too.

spl4tt

It depends if you're generally a computer guy or just don't really have a lot of experience with it. I was always a computer guy, and I started directly with arch distros like manjaro back then. I quickly switched to vanilla arch then and still am running that.

If you're a complete newb and just want a running distro, mint is cool, but I'd definitelly recommend fedora. It's the new ubuntu for me. Bazzite if you wanna play games, cachyOS or endeavourOS if you wana dare a bit more.

But in the end, just pick something with gnome. Do yourself a favor and don't touch kde plasma. It's total overkill for most people, even coming from windows.

mmdrsmr

I was a Mac guy for years but have abandoned MacOS for Zorin. I've tried several Linux distros and find Zorin to be the best. Very lightweight and very fast on old hardware! Based on Ubuntu so gets software updates very regularly.

DeletedUser396

DeletedUser433
my laptop has 16GB RAM and runs VirtualBox, no problems.

TheGodfather

DeletedUser433 Do you mean to say that a distro like Qubes is less intensive than Windows 11?

QubesOS is not a Linux distro.

DeletedUser433 Doesn't Whonix run all traffic through Tor?

Yes

spl4tt

DeletedUser433 Then go with fedora That one just works 👍

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