opensuse always had a special place in my heart. it was the first “linux” i successfully installed 17 (welp) years ago. with kde desktop, wich became my goto desktop. both are based in germany, which makes it easy for me to support local open source organisations.

my notebook is running tumbleweed for over 2 years now and i had no problem at all.

for the switch, tho, i’d stick to an ubuntu based distro. there are ubuntu tutorials for litterly everything. i guess mint might be a solid choice. the debian edition is also cool. for the moment, you don’t need a rolling release. you’ll install another distro before eol either because you wrecked your current one, or you want to “try something else”.

if possible, have a sepperate disc (at least partition) for your home folder.

and always keep in mind:
no backup, no merci. =]

Just gotta crank the desktop effects up to 11 on kwin

If you want to create a Hannah Montana branded version of ublue kinoite plasma 6, that would be as neat as it gets.

Also there is Cosmic, I am just gonna say

Rust

I think what you mean with “neat” is the desktop environment (DE), which hugely defines how a distro looks like.
Most major distros (e.g. Fedora, Ubuntu, Arch, etc.) have have the most major ones.

Here’s my post about distro choices if you’re interested, since it’s mostly more about DE choice: https://feddit.de/post/9087676

OpenSUSE just feels all cool and enterprisey and I feel like I’m doing important things when I use my computer

Fedora just documents itself incredibly well, plus all the pushes they’re doing with immutable distributions and somehow making it seem simple is a wonderful thing.

For me it’s just Linux itself that’s cool. I mean, I get the different distros have different opinions and things that make them neat, and that in and of itself is what’s so cool. FWIW I use Ubuntu (server) and desktop.

I used Fedora on my laptop for like 4 years. It came with gnome, and was very stable. I didn’t know a lot about Linux at the time, but it treated me well.

Eventually, I was learning graphics and the mesa drivers in fedora’s repos were lacking specific OGL support I wanted to try out. I tried installing mesa from source, but it didn’t go very smoothly.

This is when I learned about arch’s rolling release model. I ran antergos for a while, then manjaro, and now endeavor, and more recently I’ve heard arch has a fancy installer wizard so I might just do that next.

I would still recommend Fedora (or Mint) as someone’s first go at Linux. I don’t think you need to try arch until you know why you’re using it.

Mint is super comfy. Garuda is cool. Pop_OS! is as annoying to use as it is to type.

Let me start with my unbiased opinion. There’s something for everybody in the Linux land. You have to try different distros out and settle with the one you like most. I usually advocate for the path of least resistance - ie, to start with the easiest distro. Mint is a good first distro. Fedora and Debian are also reasonable choices. But I have also seen a rare few cases where people start directly with a high effort distro like Arch - so it’s not impossible.

For a lot of people, Mint may satisfy their needs - a user friendly distro that needs no tinkering and meets all of their needs. Some people though, like to tune everything. Such people can eventually grow into something like Arch.

I personally like Gentoo. Not because it’s compiled from source, but because it’s easy to work with its Portage package management system. Another one worth trying out is QubesOS, if you’re into security.

I usually don’t order my distros on the rocks, so they’re all neat.

I have a tendency to use “DIY” systems, basically systems that leave the administration up to me, and either have a minimal base or a customizable, powerful but convenient installer. Then comes the package manager’s strengths and weaknesses, and the package repository and its release cycles.

My favorite OSes of all are:

• NixOS
• FreeBSD
• Arch/Endeavour
• Debian
• To some extend Alpine

I never used Gentoo so I don’t classify it, but i believe I would like it a lot if I used it.

And yeah, I have a logo bias lmao. NixOS, FreeBSD and Debian have amazing logos. Something that is neat is when a distro has multiple kernel versions in the repository.

Arch. Neat logo, and adding IAmCandy in pacman’s config file enables a pacman when downloading packages

But the real reason is that it’s on the bleeding edge… if there’s a new feature in a program, I can use it today.

And if (when) something doesn’t work, I can raise a ticket or even contribute to the work, get it fixed and get on with my life.

Debian and all it’s derivatives are still using applications from <insert vague hand waving gesture> “years ago”.

NixOS has a cool logo.

There, I said it.

I find it really fun to browse the Debian repository and its source code with their dedicated websites for doing so ( https://packages.debian.org/ and https://sources.debian.org/ ), to find all the obscure utilities, and silly code comments.