I think it really depends on the person (and a few other “luck” factors). Like, if they are truly generically computer savvy enthusiasts, they might actually have better luck on an Arch derivative. I’ve seen hardware compatibility issues plague a machine until it got Arch on it - sometimes that bleeding edge has what you need already and you don’t have to hunt for it.
I still like the play of suggesting new people download every distro that piques their curiosity, put them all on thumb drives, and spend a weekend giving them a go. But, if they aren’t willing to do that, then throw Mint or Bazzite at them and hope all their hardware just works because they probably don’t fit into the category above.
Except Manjaro. I feel like at least 70% of the Arch family hate is actually Manjaro’s fault. I’m glad it works for some people and they can use and enjoy it, but I just don’t have the faith in it to recommend it.
Mint, Fedora, Pop_OS!..these are good distros to start on. Some people start and end on these.
CachyOS, Arch, Manjaro…these are not what you throw at a newbie.
I found Cachy to be a nice intro to Arch based distros, things worked well out of the box
Get them some nix
I think it really depends on the person (and a few other “luck” factors). Like, if they are truly generically computer savvy enthusiasts, they might actually have better luck on an Arch derivative. I’ve seen hardware compatibility issues plague a machine until it got Arch on it - sometimes that bleeding edge has what you need already and you don’t have to hunt for it.
I still like the play of suggesting new people download every distro that piques their curiosity, put them all on thumb drives, and spend a weekend giving them a go. But, if they aren’t willing to do that, then throw Mint or Bazzite at them and hope all their hardware just works because they probably don’t fit into the category above.
Except Manjaro. I feel like at least 70% of the Arch family hate is actually Manjaro’s fault. I’m glad it works for some people and they can use and enjoy it, but I just don’t have the faith in it to recommend it.
A new distro every day… that was me last year when switching over to Linux
Fedora for my desktop, cachy on my portable is what stuck around, debian for all the homelab stuff