Share Your Favorite Linux Distros and Why You Love Them
So we can clearly see the most popular distros and the reasons why people use them, please follow this format:
- Write the name of the Linux distro as a first-level comment.
- Reply to that comment with each reason you like the distro as a separate answer.
For example:
- Distro (first-level comment)
- Reason (one answer)
- Other reason (a different answer)
Please avoid duplicating options. This will help us better understand the most popular distros and the reasons why people use them.
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Comments378
Arch, BTW
Great wiki
The AUR
I was distrohopping for like a year or two when I first got into Linux desktop. As soon as I installed Arch for the first time that stopped. Now the thought of a distro pre-installing packages gives me the heebie jeebies. You don't get to tell me how I sync with NTP servers!
I do real work. Dont have time to waste
Maybe don't fiddle with your install non-stop then.
Isn’t that the reason to use arch? I remember last time I installed arch, about 5 years ago now I had to fiddle with everything just to get it working lol.
pacman goes brrrr
PKGBUILDs
Debian
I love debian because it's always there for you.
Lightweight.
The new release bookworm solves most hardware/software problems
Low resource footprint — smaller than EndeavourOS on my laptop. Stability is fantastic. Bookworm practically just came out, so the packages are all much newer than they were in Bullseye, making it a viable option for someone who wants an uneventful Linux distro that fades into the background and lets you get stuff done.
EndeavourOS
Easy to set up, very helpful community. If you liked Manjaro or think Manjaro is sketchy but like the idea of a slightly pre-configured arch, check it out.
It's arch. It just happened to be the composition i had my previous arch setup as. Yay for AUR stuff, KDE Plasma for DE. Includes a couple of useful tools and makes for a very solid OS.
Anyone who has been in the Ubuntu sphere of things with Linux, should take a moment to try arch. EndeavourOS is perfect for these people.
This, basically Arch but quick to install with all the most important things installed and ready without being bloated.
Same. I’ve done the vanilla Arch thing and it’s alright, but the quality of life enhancements that come with EndeavourOS make it a great daily driver.
It’s the only distro I could get DaVinci Resolve Studio, Blackmagic Intensity Pro 4k, and my Radeon RX 6750 XT working with, consistently.
openSUSE Tumbleweed
The big advantage IMHO, is the out of the box BTRFS set up that lets you simply roll back to a non-broken state, right from the grub menu, should an update break your system. I haven't had to use it yet, but it is a huge source of comfort knowing it is there.
Also, many people coming to opensuse remark how much snappier it is than other distros.
Garuda uses this feature on an Arch base, it's saved me a couple of times. Props to openSUSE for developing the way to make that happen!
Glad to hear someone else uses this awesome tool. I think unstable debian based Siduction uses that too.
BTRFS has saved my life a bunch, I'm the kind that enjoys experimenting and changing stuff just to see what happens
I had to scroll waaaaay down to find this. Mindboggling how underrated this distro is!
It's getting 3/4's of the votes of Debian. I think their profile has increase a lot in the last year or so.
Security by default. Firewall is set up blocking ports for UDP etc. soyouu are protected out of the box.
YaST
It is up to date so you can often get newer hardware working due to newer kernels.
It's incredibly well put together
It's rolling and reliable
Everything just works
Fedora
Stable
Only FOSS software and repositories unless otherwise enabled
Uses the latest tech in linux e.g wayland and pipewire.
Cutting edge application releases so I get the newest toys after they’ve been decently tested
Applies patches for better programs work under Wayland (SDDM with git patches before long awaited 0.20.0 release).
Pop!_OS
I agree, it's great!
I’ve been using Pop for about 2 years. I have yet to run into an issue that I couldn’t fix. It’s the first distro that made ditching windows easy.
I feel the same coming from Mac. Things seem to just work. I'm not a Linux wiz so minimal headaches while learning to tinker make it perfect for me.
Arch. I can't live without the AUR at this point.
We cannot forget about the wiki, which is a great resource for not only the Arch distro, but for any Linux install.
Seriously, the ease of installing any and all programs from the main repo's or the AUR is such an extreme advantage over all other distros!
And it makes keeping your system and programs updated a breeze.
It is nice to install much normally harder to install crap, but there are so little trusted devs on there, that i rather not install something than getting it from a untrusted source.
It is nice to play around, but i also switched from Windows to have a more secure platform. I switched to flatpaks from official sources.
Seriously, I realize this every time I have to install something on my server (running AlmaLinux). Now I've manually set up a personal LURE repo for some software that I use.
NixOS
Easy and fearless updates
I wish PiKVM were based on NixOS. As it's used like an appliance, people are not expected to customize the image. Or even regularly install updates. I always fear it'll break and sever my connection to my server. I'd have a lot more peace of mind if I could just redeploy my custom wireguard-enabled config.
Rollbacks
declarative configuration
Dependency Hell, begone
Very good with containers and VMs
Ez dev shells
Home Manager + Stylix
Can turn basically any distro into nixos in minutes
Single command to compile & install packages from many git repos
Reproducible
You get it for the low price of loosing all fun/motivation in setting up, customizing and mintaining machines with other distros
Makes me feel cool again 😎
A cool logo, meaningful rolling release version names and stickers
immutability
Do it once, do it right. Save work be redeploying the same configuration (or submodules) on mutiple machines or the same machine multiple times.
Overlays
Easy to mix and match package versions with different dependency versions
As stable as you need it to be
Easily build packages with custom compile flags
A great selection and amount of packages and modules to build/install/enable
Many different and interesting community projects
I have been thinking to give NixOS a spin but feel like it's above my brain capacity for me to handle. Do you also use homemanager and Flakes? Homemanager kinda makes sense (manage packages for non root users) but what does Flakes do?
I am already trying it and I am still no expert. How I understand flakes is that it is a file with inputs, like nixpkgs and other flakes or repos you might depend on and some outputs that can be things like a nixshell with packages and environment variables, custom packages and configs like your NixOS configurations and home manager. When you use your flake for the first time, by entering a nix shell with nix develop, building a package with nix build, rebuild your NixOS system with nixos-rebuild --flake .#, etc, nix will generate a flake.lock file that stores the hashes of all of your inputs and thus pinning the input versions. This means that if you ever run any of those commands again, you should get the same result because the inputs are pinned and the same version. If you want to update, you just run nix flake update and it will regenerate the flake.lock file with new hashes for the newest version. The advantage with flakes is that it is fully reproducible, even if one of your dependencies changes, because the hash is specified and centrally managed in the inputs of your flake.
Nix flakes can be used for your NixOS system by adding the nixos configurations in the outputs of your nix flake and adding the dependencies like nixpkgs to the inputs. You can also combine it with home manager by either specifying it as a separate output or adding it as a nixos module inside the nixos configurations output. You just copy your existing nixos and home manager config to the folder with your flake and reference them inside the flake.nix. If you added home manager as a nixos module, you only need to run nixos-rebuild switch --flake .# and it will automatically rebuild both your NixOS configuration and home manager configuration. You can then backup the folder with your flake and configurations by uploading them to GitHub for example.
The best resource I found was this 3 hour video by Matthias Benaets: https://youtube.com/watch?v=AGVXJ-TIv3Y&feature=share7
Thanks a lot for the detailed answer. It does sound complicated haha. I should probably follow along the YT video. Thanks again!
Garuda Linux
Bootable Snapper snapshots enabled by default
This really is my favorite Garuda feature - it's saved my install more than once so that I can roll back a messy update, figure out what broke and why it broke, and then make sure the next update works
Besides Wiki and AUR that all Arch derivatives share, they have their own wiki that documents the changes they're made to Arch and a very good forum for help
Post install wizard for easily adding common applications
Fish shell by default with auto-complete previews as you type and lots of great aliases
You can get pretty much everything Fish Shell does with a well configured Zshell pus more. Fish also smells.
And you can get pretty much everything garuda with a well configured Arch plus more but that would take ages to do
That why i like garuda, its roughly where id want my arch settup without the hassle.
A lot of people think it's just Arch with an installer and lots of bloat and a neon theme but it's a lot more than that.
Nvidia driver installation options that correctly set the mode setting, dkms drivers installed ootb, common apps like GreenWithEnvy ootb, great Nvidia support
Ugliest unicorn poop default theme, most solid arch based distro for everything else
Ubuntu
A lot of proprietary software is easier to install here
I don't have time to fuck about, I use ubuntu mate because it gets out of my way and does what I expect it to do.
easy enough to use for me (I'm a linux newb) and I can setup steam on it!
edit: forgot to mention I can get hibernation working on Ubuntu when I couldn't figure out how to do that in Fedora
Are you playing steam games that have Linux versions? Or is the "comparability mode" stable and fast enough that you don't really have to think about it?
Shit just works
I can use the same OS on my servers
I love the stability of LTS
Because it just works. Because it's based on free Debian and not corporate RedHat. Because mainstream Linux needs a flagship distro and that distro needs to be used and supported.
but Ubuntu is corporate, no?
I love the dock
It's easy to use
For when I can't get stuff to work on nixos 😅
Arch Linux
The Arch Wiki is in a language made by users for users. Meaning that its easy to understand because the wiki allows to talk about issues, alternatives and more hints about each small topic, every other wiki has some structure where important details are missing or not taken seriously.
I always am going to run into heavy issues when using Debian, Ubuntu or Fedora. On Arch, things also aren't always smooth, but the issues are mild, always solvable and transparent.
Starting with a blank slate is so refreshing. It takes time to build everything up from scratch and I understand that you can get a great experience out of the box with other distros, but I love the simplicity of not having any bullshit I didn't install myself.
True, yeah, didn't think about the downside that you need to build it up from scratch. But people could use arch based distros I guess? Never used them.
Arch and KDE as a DE because I'm a borderline-obsessive tinkerer.
Although NixOS is tempting me, but I haven't moved past the virtual-machine-specimen-jar phase with that yet lol.
Manjaro. It just worked on any device I installed it on. And wifi just worked with no fiddling.
Then I installed it on surface tablet. What didn't work, I found kernel fixes I could implement.
Of all the distros, for me, it was the easiest to use, install and manipulate!!
Manjaro is my main distro too! The package manager is great!
Manjaro friends unite!
Switched to Manjaro after running vanilla Arch for several years and haven't looked back. I appreciate the slightly less bleeding edge updates and extra added stability around it.
Easy installs are probably less of a big deal nowadays after Arch overhauled their installation process.
Nixos. For all its complexity and dilemmas and issues it has given me, it's the comfiest for me and gives me really cool features
It still blows my mind that with nixos, setting up and continuously renewing an ssl cert is literally just two lines in the config file. I use nixos on my homeserver, thinking about switching my laptop to it too (currently Void linux).
@amanwithausername got an older laptop celeron processor running xubuntu? Any better ideas?
Hmmm never used xubuntu per se, but XFCE already seems like a good option for a low-spec computer. You could probably chip away at the resource usage some more by building your own desktop environment around a bare window manager, but honestly at this point the gain is negligible. If anything, you might want to look into tiling window managers just because they can offer a much more fluid and customizeable desktop experience as opposed to floating WMs. I'm using BSPWM right now, but considering switching to wayland with hyprland or qtile.
As for choice of distro: Not sure if NixOS would run well on your machine -- my homeserver is also a pretty low-spec computer (dual-core Intel Atom), and
nixos-rebuild switchtakes ages to run. Otherwise, go for Debian Testing if you want stability, Void if you want to not have systemd. There's also Devuan, which is basically Debian without systemd, but iirc it's not as popular as Void. But honestly if xubuntu works for you, then it's fine.Also, some miscellaneous tweaks for improved performance:
lazytime,noatime,autodefrag,compress=zstd:3,discard=async,space_cache=v2,ssd. Again, not sure how well these translate to a low-end system, you should do your research.Since you mentioned slow build times...
You can do
nixos-rebuild --target-hostto build locally and deploy over ssh. You can also use something likenixops.No way, that's awesome! I'll give it a try for sure!
@amanwithausername comprehensive and good advice. Thank you. I tuck a look at linux, because other laptop isn't win11 compatible "soon".
Congrats for making it to the treasure! I'm like half way in and not sure if I can fight through...
just keep on going. i cant be happy on any other distro, so i have to use nixos
Mint. Easy to setup, fast to run, and very reliable.
Yeah, but I rarely if ever leave those constraints, so it does not matter to me at all. Day to day, I use macOS anyway, and Mint only comes on my desktop PC.
Linuxmint.
Rock solid.
Slackware
Slackware gets a lot of hate, especially from the btw bros. People are spooked about having to manage their own dependencies. But I couldn't agree with you more on simplicity and stability. I've been daily driving slackware since 99 or 00, and I don't think I've ever broken something I couldn't immediately roll back and fix.
I tried to install Ubuntu on a sbc recently. And within an hour of installing this and that with all the different dependencies, I had a completely unusable system. And I had no idea how to fix it. It was totally my fault but reminded me what I love about slackware.
Slack got me through undergrad on an IBM 600e ThinkPad (which was really old even then --- around the time of the early 2.6 series kernels iirc). Great distro, fond memories.
Debian
Arch (BTW)
And with
archinstallI'd argue it's about as easy to install as most "normal" distros these days.I'd also agree... but everytime I tried to use archinstall, it always failed, felt impossible for me to install arch
dupe
I'm currently happy with it
So many powerful tools that are not easy to find on other distros.
Basically, have fine tuned my setup so much that it's almost impossible to think of another distro.
Debian
-Simple distro free of too much bloat without being too bare-bones
-Stable, but can also be changed to be a bit more updated if you want that instead-
Now now, saying Debian is free of too much bloat is going way too far, dude, even as as Debian enjoyer I cannot allow such statements to pass.
Haha fair, I guess that is a pretty objective statement. In my opinion, compared to some other distros and operating systems, it's pretty bloat free, but I guess if you're used to something else that is even more bloat free that you would probably disagree.
Arch Linux
NixOS
Reproducibility is a blessing for both software development and daily use.
Backing up NixOS is very straight forward and easy. It's kinda the same as docker-compose in that respect.
This is the way
This is the way
Gentoo
Control
Out-of-box security configurations supported by the organization (SELinux, hardening)
Excellent package and dependency management with a wide variety of up-to-date software
Encourages hardware-based optimization and kernel specialization
Yep, these are all true. Throw in overlays and the package availability is unbeatable.
Absolutely! I haven't had any problems setting up dependencies for various projects and have only needed overlays a few times. Sometimes USE flags can be tricky but most things are pretty well documented
There are dozens of us! And you can join us at ![email protected] if you haven't yet!
I love it because it's super configurable, lets you choose compiler optimizations (and through USE flags, features that you need in your packages - you don't have to include everything).
My Linux knowledge has skyrocketed compared to before I used Gentoo. Which of course means it's NOT the distro for people who want something that just works, but honestly, now that it's working properly, I feel it's actually pretty hard to break, and when it does break, I know how to fix it! Versus with Linux Mint a decade ago, if I broke it, I had no idea where to get started and just reinstalled it.
Of course, about half a year ago I decided to move from x11 and OpenRC to Wayland and systemd. And I use KDE. And have Nvidia graphics. Soooo it was a fun ride both relearning how my init system works, and also running into problems with Steam, etc.
I also try to keep my kernel in single digit megabytes, but occasionally I find something missing and have to recompile with more "bloat". So right now I believe it's around 11 MB, but I'll see about improving it over my next vacation. Not that 11 MB takes long to load off a gen4 NVMe drive, but the ePeen needs to be stroked! Also no initial ramdisk, to save even more boot time.
I just reinstalled Gentoo and switched to a Systemd setup as well. I held off for as long as I could but it's just so nice!
I'm using the binary kernel for now, but I'll compile my own when I find the time. 11MB is nuts!
Great to hear! Though I will admit that it took me HOURS of reading the kernel config options I was disabling. But it was also very informative so it didn't feel like a waste of time at all.
I usually run some commands while running the binary kernel that will disable every module not currently running in the config file, and then build the kernel from that.
I’m guessing you prefer building everything as a module if your kernel is that small?
Debian.
Rock solid.
Lightweight.
EndeavourOS
I've been trying to convert to linux since the mid-2000's. Ubuntu and derivatives, fedora, and SUSE. Gaming and my lack on knowledge always brought me back to Windows.
In 2018 I tried Manjaro and loved it. But I broke it without the knowledge to fix it multiple times. The Arch BTW memes were strong at the time so I took the plunge and studied the wiki, and documented my own installation process and really learned a lot in the process. Proton was released and suddenly gaming got WAY better. I didn't remove my windows install completely until 2022 but Arch has been my home on my main machine.
I have since put together a proxmox cluster and run many distros for various things but that's a whole other rabbit hole!
Fedora
I want to preface this by saying that Red Hat absolutely deserve your ire in light of the recent news.
I appreciate that Fedora has relatively recent packages for a fixed release distribution. I really appreciate how they've pioneered in desktop-oriented technologies to help make Linux a more palatable experience for regular users, and I'm glad to see these gradually be adopted by others over time.
I'm happy to hear that the Fedora project still mostly operates Independently under redhat / IBM, but I'd be lying if I said the IBM acquisition didn't worry me to the point of looking into alternatives.
Agreed. I've been using Fedora Silverblue for about a year. I love the immutable OS paradigm but IBM/Red Hat's recent actions have left me feeling uneasy and I want to find an alternative.
I've also been using silverblue for about a year, it works well. Didn't know about IBM acquiring Rad Hat, sad news.
For a similar experience there is Vanilla OS that I tried briefly and that seams to have similar immutability features and hastle free setup with a vanilla gnome desktop. It's based on Ubuntu.
There is also NixOS which takes the immutability to another level. The entire system with all packages are configured in a config file. Which is nice if you want to have an identical setup on multiple machines but makes it a bit less user friendly imo.
Silverblue is cool. I've been playing around with it on a portable NVMe drive. Planning on making the switch soon (whether that's Silverblue itself or another immutable option).
It's a really intriguing concept. One interesting point I saw someone make the other day is that you don't necessarily need an explicitly immutable distro to achieve the affect. It's more about your user habits and workflows. If I can't find an alternative to Silverblue that I like, I'll probably just go to Debian or Arch and make it "immutable" by not touching the base system at all and running apps with Flatpaks or distrobox containers.
Huh, never thought about it like that. Please let us know how you get on if you decide to move away from SB.
Gentoo
Huge range of supported architectures
I think they’ll be okay with the Wayland think. When they do switch, most of the kinks will have been worked out (getting closer) and it will likely run very smoothly. Time will tell though.
This is subjective, but after distro hopping, Linux Mint XFCE requires the least amount of post install configuration for my use case and personal preferences.
Also, they show a preference for flatpack over snap but don't lock you in/out of either.
Arch
Void
Supports musl on every architecture I have. ARM, AARCH64, x86_64 - no problem.
Stable rolling release
xbps
• Rolling release that is remarkably stable. • Supports a wide variety of architectures. • XBPS package manage • Lightweight, systemd free.
Very KISS. Runit is amazing once you get used to it.
Fedora
Arch Linux
Manjaro
I don't need to install anything manually because of how extensive the AUR is.
AUR is amazing
Rolling release model.
more out of the box than what Arch comes with.
Nice default configuration. Good choice of gnome extensions and themes pre installed
Gentoo Linux
NixOS, I have a fetish for configuration files
Alpine -- In praise of Alpine and apk
Arch linux (btw). Because it's easy to install and has the most accessible package manager of em all.
...
...before you shoot rocks at me and try to burn me alive.... download an arch iso, run it, and then type "archinstall". Thank me later.
"Oh, but its still veeeeeery hard to inst-"
LMDE
PostmarketOS
Garuda
EndeavourOS
An installer of Archlinux with sane default but also has all of Arch Power
MX Linux
The MX Snapshot utility & other built-in tools make it instantly functional as a daily driver, even for people new to Linux, and the Quick System Info is such a handy baseline for troubleshooting if you run into problems and need help from the community. All the stuff that's provided out of the box just makes it a really practical distro to learn on!
Fedora Silverblue
Debian.
Universal Blue / ublue-os
Based on Fedora
why your comments are all over the place
Nvidia support
Clean separation
Cloud-native approach
Built-in container tools for developers
Have used it before but am not currently running it. Absolute treat for someone who wants to start digging deeper into the inner workings of Linux. The tutorial videos are pretty clearly a labor of love.
Fedora Workstation
Artix Linux
No Systemd. It uses real init
Bleeding Edge
Bloat free
Nobara
dupe
Also, gaming works out of the box on my hardware (my gfx card wasn't fully supported by 5.x kernel)
Another reason to use :)
Garuda Linux
Kubuntu LTS
Has a clean interface, easy to customize if you feel like it, but not necessary. Works great on a 10 year old desktop.
Debian
Linux From Scratch
Fedora KDE.
hardUnix way). I wouldn't recommend it these days but it's kind of like the granddaddy of all Linux distros, and it was awesome in its prime. I'm sure it can still be used today but it's gotten quite niche.KDE Neon
Based on Ubuntu, is KDE's "flagship" OS (so I trust they know what they're doing with their own DE), and is the first to get bleeding edge KDE updates. Everything else is pretty much standard Ubuntu.
I installed this on my wife's aging laptop to breathe some new life into it. She's not tech savvy but gets along with it just fine. Mission accomplished.
Funny side note though, because Linux doesn't force you to update unlike Windows, it means she just doesn't ever update the thing. I've opened it up a couple different times to see pending security updates ready to download. 😆
zorin os
I've been a Mint faithful for a few years now
Nobara
Based on Fedora
Stable and easy to set up
Built for gaming
Lubuntu
intuitive
small
good documentation
lightweight
supported
lightweight
beautiful
stable
EndeavourOS
basically Arch, including the AUR
Genuine interest, being an Arch user myself: why pick EndeavourOS over Arch? What does it do extra/differently?
I picked Endeavour because some friends were waiting for me to get online, so I had to hit the ground running with some good defaults. I could really have picked any distro, I'm flexible but Endeavour was lauded for a quick install and I wanted to try an Arch distrib. I was up with KDE, Steam, NV drivers and Discord in 20min so it was good.
I customized it more in the following weeks, like I'd do with any distro. Now I've heard about Garuda I kinda regret I didn't go that way. I'd like that BTRSF+snapshots option but I don't have patience to set that up for the time being - either converting the FS and setting up grub myself or reinstalling with Garuda, seems like a hassle for now.
Void Linux
It has it's own package manager which is nice and performant, it has another script similar to the AUR to an extent, runit is simple and sensible.
crux
The user repositories are decentralized, and very straightforward to setup, meaning anyone can package something, and share it with the community.
It does not use systemd.
The packaging system is the simplest I've ever found in a distro, meaning that making your own package is a very simple and quick process.
The setup and configuration is really simple and friction less (for example, daemon start/stop scripts are standalone and sit in
/etc/rc.d).Uses a port tree system for packages similar to openbsd.
.
I'm curious, do you intend to put up the results somewhere?
YiffOS
DietPi on my ARM devices
Void Linux
Fedora Workstation
Lubuntu with lxqt desktop environment and i3 window manager.
BTRFS Snapper GUI preconfigured
Arch. It's a "build-your-own" distro without the hassle of compiling everything from source, like with Gentoo (still love Gentoo, though). Also, it has pretty big repos with the AUR on top of that.
And no, it's not unstable, if you can read. My oldest Arch install was 5 years old and even then, it didn't break. I just wanted to do a fresh install for no particular reason.
NixOS. Reproducible, Wide Package selection, Hard to fuck up + Not yet another Arch based distro
Siduction
CachyOS
Linux Mint
1a. If I need to do something more complex that requires the terminal, there are plenty of sites that explain it step by step. So, I don't need to become a programmer to tweak my system.
Arch, antix and linuxmint
-- Debian Testing
Arch.
I don't love it, like at all. But it's the least buggy and easiest to use one I've tried.
I really wish there was a simple plug and play, everything just works and doesnt break on updates distro.
Solus
Started on SuSe, but Ubuntu stuck with me since the early releases... Just very familiar to me at this point. Been my goto os on my laptop for ages....
@InternetPirate Fedora it is has all the good and new stuff without being unstable. Will switch to Silverblue for an even more stable experience sometime soon.
OpenSuse, Fedora second.
its a tie between linux mint and garuda linux, linix mint for stability and garuda for being an arch based linux for people like me that are too stupid to get arch running by itself
As a daily, linux Mint/Mate all the way.
Manjaro, it's just very stable, has access to the AUR, actually looks good and feels like a modern OS should feel.
Manjaro
@InternetPirate I've been happy with Ubuntu since 2007, I don't always like Canonical's choices, but they're easily changed. Recently tried Vanilla OS, easy install and seems solid, good alternative to Nix I think.
Once I started using Manjaro KDE I found no real reason to leave. -Reason: It just works. I'm not a developer, just a user. I don't like tinkering and Manjaro just kind of takes care of everything for me.
Manjaro. I love it's simplicity and ease of use. It's the closest I can get to Windows without actually using Windows. I'm glad it makes using an Arch distro easy and accessible. KDE is a godsend as well.
Another vote for Pop OS. I was already somewhat familiar with Ubuntu, and the nvidia drivers included in Pop as well as its gaming support drew me to it. It's worked very well for the most part.
Ubuntu