linuxmemes

Gentoo obviously :
To install, easy just get this iso, with no GUI, then whip your hard drive, create partition, copy the Linux core, config your core based on the hardware technical details of every components you have and will use, compile it, add extra core drivers, compile them, add all the software you'll use to get a GUI (Desktop environment), compile them,. Now you can finally restart without usb stick! Add all the software, configure and compile them. And for every update of every software you may check the details to be sure it doesn't break your config.
Easy no? It just took you a month to get all the steps right!

Ya there's Arch. There's NixOS. There's still Slackware.
But have you heard of 9front?
9front is useless. You won't be gaming or working with it.
Mostly, you'd learn how operating systems are constructed.

Or DoomOS or DoomLinux. It's a basic linux system where DOOM is the shell.
I forked this and tried to get it running. Learned some interesting things. Still doesn't work for me. :]
https://github.com/fl64/DoomLinux

Hannah Montana Linux or Biebian

Brodie's beard is pretty yikes in this picture

LFS

Is that a really young Brodie Robertson on the right??

No grey in beard? Shame 🤓

NixOS

Arch is fine... It has good documentation.

NixOS or Gentoo is probably my pick.

To scare them? Windows.

It's the absolute best way to make someone become a Linux user for life.:-)

NixOS:

Gentoo:

The nixOS slander in these comments would be valid if nixOS were simply a distro and not a cult…

When I was first looking into Linux I asked the only friend I knew who used it and he unironically recommended me Arch...

A year later I actually gave Arch a try, but by then he apparently hated Arch and switched to Gentoo and I stopped asking him for advice at that point.

Neither existed when I installed Linux the first time.

Don't? Arch is less scary and more annoying.

Who TF is scared by Mint?

Did a clean upgrade/install of Mint about 10 hours ago. I'm back to business as usual. Minor tweaks, no tinkering.

gnu guix?

https://archiveos.org/hannah-montana/

NixOS: How do I install OBS?

edit /etc/nixos/configuration.nix

locate environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [

and add

linuxPackages.v4l2loopback
(wrapOBS {
  plugins = with pkgs.obs-studio-plugins; [
    obs-backgroundremoval
    obs-shaderfilter
    obs-vintage-filter
    
  ];
})

Then you need to install the kernel driver

you can find the instructions here:

https://nixos.wiki/wiki/OBS_Studio

make sure you follow the part about boot.extraModulePackages = with config.boot.kernelPackages; [ v4l2loopback ];

if you want to use the virtual cam driver.

You may find out that you want to install this in home-manager or flakes instead, but those are novels themselves.

edit: ohh yeah almost forgot run

sudo nixos-rebuild switch

after you edit the configs to install

NixOS: How do I update the version of OBS after it's installed?

sudo nix-channel --update

sudo nixos-rebuild switch

If it breaks, the errors are mostly unhelpful, you need to poke around and make educated guesses.

If it bricks you can go back to the previous version in grub by selecting the second to the top entry

make sure you garbage collect every now and then or the app store gets huge.

Slackware still exists, if they survive they'll be nigh immortal.

Nyarch

I honestly don't think Arch is that bad or complicated. It's just that you have to go into it knowing that you're in for some reading, tinkering and following step by step instructions along the way. I'd start with something like Mint or Ubuntu for a first look for sure. But once you're ready to learn a bit more about how the Linux system works and is put together, Arch would straight up be my first recommendation. Even if it's something you play with on the side in a virtual machine, for me at least, starting on Arch was when my Linux experience went from clicking at things and copy pasting commands into the terminal to still copying and pasting commands lol, but actually learning why and how and what too.