 In the Linux community, we tend to talk about how we can take Linux from where it's at right now and bring it more into the mainstream. And there are many solutions to this so-called problem, some of them ranging from making it easier to install to doing marketing or whatever. There's just a ton of solutions to the problem. And for the most part, they're probably all equally right and equally wrong. And we can even debate whether or not we want Linux to go into the mainstream or not. But all of that is really beside the point because really, Linux has one fundamental flaw when it comes to being inviting towards new users. Not even just new users that are just random people, but people who are actually interested in Linux and have gone searching for Linux to install it. And that problem is discoverability. And there are several ways I could take this argument because we could look at things like the Debian website or the Arco Linux website and say that those websites are overly complicated and it's hard to find an ISO. But really, for the most part, broadly speaking, finding an ISO of a particular distribution is fairly easy. You go to Ubuntu.com and the download link is right there at the top. It's really simple. You can't miss it. Same thing with Linux Mint, same thing with Zora and all these distributions, elementary, they all have the download links front and center. So for the most part, finding an ISO is actually fairly easy. The question becomes and where discoverability becomes a real problem is that how do you choose which distro is best for you? There's no single guide out there on the internet that will tell you what the best distribution for a new user is. Whether you're a highly experienced technical computer user or just a random noob off the streets, there's no guide out there that will tell you which distribution is honestly the best for new users. And that's a problem because if we want Linux to become a little bit more popular, we have to make it easier to find the distros that are good for you. And if you do a Google search, you can do a DuckDuckGo search if that's more what you're into and for best Linux distro for new users, you're going to get a different answer on every single website that you go to. Some of them will name Ubuntu. Some of them will name Linux Mint. Some of them will say Zorn is the right one. Some will say elementary OS is the right one. Some people will say Manjaro is the right one. I've seen some people saying you should just use Arch Linux, which don't listen to those people. New users shouldn't just install Arch Linux. An Arch derivative may be fine. Don't send new users to install Arch, vanilla Arch Linux. That's just a terrible idea. So every website you go to is going to give you these different answers. So the question is what's the right answer and the right answer is that there's not a right answer. So that's where the problem becomes because depending on where you're coming from, the answer might be different. If you're coming from Mac OS, the best solution for you probably is elementary OS because they look similar. If you're coming from Windows 10, the solution is a little bit harder because there are several different options. You could try Zorn, which tries to very hard to emulate Windows 10. You could go to something like Ubuntu Mate, which has a similar look and feel. Ubuntu, you could go to regular Ubuntu if you wanted to, even if the UI is completely different. I mean there's just tons of different options. And that's the problem is that we can't seem to come together as a community on which one's the best and which one we should shill to new users because we're not going to get rid of all the other distros and I'm not saying we should. We should just somehow be able to agree upon which one we should kind of funnel new users towards because the choice for new users isn't as good as it is for the rest of us because for the rest of us who've used Linux for a long time, choice is fantastic. It means when something goes wrong and we can't fix it, we can distro hop and move to something different. Or if we get sick of a certain package manager, we can go try something different or whatever. For new users who have no clue what they're doing, they have to decide without any knowledge whatsoever what distribution is best for them. And they go looking for help on that subject and they get 90,000 different answers. Well, what's a new user to do? Well, the answer to that question is to simply try one and it's a it's a it's a shit answer because I can't very well tell anybody what the best new user distro is. I can make suggestions based on certain facts. Like I said before, if you're coming from Mac OS, Elementor OS is probably the best for you because they look similar. If you're coming from Windows 10, personally, I would probably suggest Linux Mint because Cinnamon is very close to Windows 10 as well. Zorn is also a good option for that. Something like Ubuntu Budgie is another good idea. I probably wouldn't recommend Ubuntu these days because they don't look anything like Windows 10. They look completely different and most new users are probably going to be more comfortable in a desktop environment that looks similar to what they're used to. So those would be my answers. But again, that's going to be my answers. You go down the road and ask 12 other YouTubers, you're going to get 12 other answers. So the best solution is to just try one as crappy of an answer that is. For the Linux community, the solution to this problem is probably going to be something that we can't come up with because we're never all going to agree on what the best distro is for a new user. In some ways, the new user friendly distros kind of compete with each other for new users. While it's not a fierce competition, they do kind of compete for each other for attention from new users. Whether that's a healthy system, I can really say. What I do know is that if you're a new user searching for a distribution, Linux can be as confusing as fuck. And that's not just installing Linux. Before you even get to the whole burning of an ISO and dealing with a secure boot and UEFI and installing whatever distribution you've chosen, you have to choose a distro. And that's the biggest and probably the hardest step because there are innumerable number of tutorials on there on how to install Linux, whether it's UEFI or legacy, BIOS, whatever. You can find the tutorials very easily. What is not out there so well is what distro to choose because, like I said, there are several different choices that you could choose and be perfectly happy with. So that's the problem and probably solve that. I don't know. I don't know, but it is a problem. So discoverability on Linux is just kind of trash. And it's something that we're just going to probably have to live with. And like I said, I don't know how we can make it better. If you are new users, like I said before, just try one, pick one. Even if you just choose Ubuntu because it's the most popular and you could make the argument that Ubuntu is the best one out there for new users, even if the UI isn't very similar to any other existing operating system. And the reason why that argument would be good is because there are a ton of tutorials out there. All of them are going to default to telling you how to do something on Ubuntu because Ubuntu is the most popular. Therefore, that has the most tutorials for it. So that's a good argument for Ubuntu being the distro for new users. Personally, I don't really fly by that argument simply because I don't care for the way the Ubuntu desktop environment looks. I'm not a GNOME guy. And while I think that they've improved upon GNOME, it's still just not my thing. So but I'm not a new user. So it doesn't really matter whether I like GNOME or not. That has no bearing on anybody else's choices whatsoever. So if you're totally completely and utterly new, Ubuntu is probably the best choice simply because of the dearth of information out there for document in terms of documentation and tutorials and all that stuff. So I know this was kind of a rambly video, but what the hell, I don't care. So if you have an idea for how we can make discoverability for Linux better, you can leave that in the comments below. If you have other thoughts, also leave those in the comments below. I love our conversations. You can follow me on Twitter at the Linuxcast. You can support me on Patreon at patreon.com slash Linuxcast. Before I go, I'd like to take a moment to thank my current patrons. Devon, Chris, East Coast Web, Gen2 is fun too. Marcus, Megalyn, Sven, Jackson, Iferjul, Joshua Lee, Mitchell, Arch, Sinner, Merrick, Camp and J-Dog. Thanks everybody for watching. I'll see you next time.