 With the introduction of Windows 11 there are a lot of people who can't install it because of hardware limitations and There are a similar number of people out there who aren't interested in it at all Some of those people will maintain their Windows 10 installs But some of them are interested in finding a different solution and for those of you who are interested in trying out Linux There are several distributions that are really really good and that will make easy Transition from Windows to a Linux based operating system So what I'm going to do today if I don't bump my mic and start making a lot of noise So what I'm going to do today is talk about five Linux distributions that are Well suited for past Windows users. So let's go ahead and jump in The first one on the list is called Elementary OS now this doesn't look anything like Windows. This is actually something that is more Mac OS like But out of all of them This is probably the best looking distribution that Linux has to offer in terms of aesthetics You really can't beat this and elementary OS 6 does look really good Now I have my own problems with elementary OS if you've seen any of my other videos You'll know that I'm not a big elementary OS fan, but it is very well put together It's very stable and if you're familiar with the Mac OS aesthetic You'll get around just fine And because it's based on Ubuntu You do have a wide variety of software that you can install now Not all of it will be available through the app center You may have to install some through the terminal But overall This is a very good new user distribution So elementary OS is the first on the list and if you Do try it out There are a few things you should know The first thing is in a recent release they switched to flat pack as their method of distributing software Ignore the stupid error that keeps coming up. It's because I'm on an ISO Really, you don't have to go through and worry about the this fact that they've switched to flat packs too much Just know that their breadth of software available inside the store isn't as Vast as it used to be that doesn't mean you can't go through and install things from The terminal using you know something like apt or snap or whatever if you wanted to But you should just keep that in mind going in So that's the reason why i'm mentioning it first because this is probably the one that I'd choose least But I did put it on the list because it's very very good looking So if you're interested in more in the aesthetic side Of using linux element throw s6 is Really really good. So definitely give it a try if you're interested in that. So let's move on to number two The next one on the list is called zoren os and if you're coming from windows 10 This is probably the distribution out there that looks the most like windows and They do that on purpose. This is very much a new user focused distribution that is trying to pull people from windows And please them the most so you have the traditional start menu down here at the bottom Even though it's you know, obviously looks a little bit different and then the icons along the side and everything It looks like windows and it's meant to now. There is a lot of options here for customization. Just like there is on every Linux distribution and zoren does a really good job of allowing you to choose dark modes change accent colors Change themes in some cases And there's just a ton of stuff that you can do and if you don't prefer this Layout of the operating system You can go through and change it to a more mac like system or You can move the bar to the top if you wanted to there's just a ton of stuff that you can do with zoren now The downside of zoren is that they do heavily promote their paid Version now as with every Linux distribution out there or at least most Linux distributions out there There is a free version that you can use and you can use it forever And you never have to pay for and it just works like any other Linux distribution out there What you get with the paid version is that you get support for installing it So whether or not you want to pay the $40 to have that support is really up to you You don't have to have that if you know how to install linux choose the free version You can always install the software that they include for premium users by yourself It's really easy. This is again based on a boon to so you can go through and use the apt package manager If you want to they also have the Software center here that is primarily using most of boon to distributions So if we just go ahead and click get shopping here You'll see that you have a vast variety of software that you can actually use Similar to elementary os this does pull from flat packs But I believe they use snaps as well, but I could be wrong about that None of that technical details you actually have to worry about once this actually loads It will go through and show you a whole bunch of software including all the ones you'd want to use You know like discord and telegram and whatever They'll all be here right in the graphical app store if you will so That doesn't actually look like it's going to load anytime today Sometimes with the isos that I'm on because I'm not actually installing these the Loading is a little bit weird. Oh, here we go. That's cool So, you know, it allows you to just install applications just like you would on any other computer So it's really cool. So that is zorn os if I had to choose The best distribution for windows users and tell them Which one is the most similar to windows 10 zorn would be it So this is the one that is most like windows 10 And it is very customizable and very good and also because it's based on ubuntu You'll get that stability that everybody preaches about when you talk about ubuntu and devian based distributions The third distribution i'm going to be talking about today is linux mint cinnamon edition and linux mint has a couple other desktop environments And they're both really good. They have xfc and mate and you could definitely give those a try But linux mint cinnamon edition is Is probably the one that is closest to windows 10 in terms of appearance now It's not going to be exact and it's not as close as zorn was to windows 10's appearance But it is close it follows the same paradigm of having a bar along the bottom a menu here at the side and Icons here and then a task bar down here at the bottom So it's very windows ask if you will Again, this distribution here is based on ubuntu. It's based on the last lts Which it stands for long term support, which means that you'll get support for Many many years probably up to 10 years if you really wanted to use this Version of linux mint for a long time. You could definitely do that Unlike the other two distributions linux mint tries to do their own thing So a lot of their stuff Seems more unique and original than the other ones They go through and develop a lot of their own software they go through And do their own thing in terms of application stores I think I can bring up the app store here Yeah, they call software manager as you can see just because this is based on ubuntu doesn't mean they use the same store And as as is usual The software manager is taking forever to load up. There we go This is an older version of what we saw in zorn, but it's basically the same thing But they do do things a little bit differently in terms of curating Software and stuff like that. It's they don't use snaps or flat-poked packs or anything This stuff comes straight from the ubuntu repos And it's really good and there's just a ton of software there So you'll be able to download pretty much whatever you want Including the main stuffs like vlc steam spotify Gimp things like that so that is Linux Mint Cinnamon It is also very customizable just like any Linux desktop environment outside of gnom And it does a ton of stuff right so you can go through and choose dark mode light mode install themes Honestly of the ones I have for you today outside of kabuntu, which we'll talk about next This is probably the easiest one to install themes because you can actually go through and install them right from the of the settings manager Whereas things like zorn and stuff like that you'd have to probably install gnom tweaks or something like that if you wanted to install theme So that is linux mint cinnamon edition Okay, the fourth one is called kabuntu now as the name implies this is again based on the buntu And I promise not all these are based on a buntu the next one will the in the last one that we talk about will be based on gnom That being said kabuntu is different from all the ones that I've shown you previously All the ones previously were based on a Kind of toolkit called gtk and you don't really need to know the technical Regions behind that but they're all similar in that they're all designed in the same Style and you know they have different themes and stuff like that and they look different, but they're all themed using the same kind of toolkit And though that toolkit is kind of based off what gnom does So if you don't know gnom and kde plasma are kind of the two main Desktop environments out there one is based on gtk and uses the gtk toolkit in order to go through and Draw windows on the screen the other one uses qt or cute And that's what kabuntu uses it uses kde plasma which uses cute Like I said the technical details don't really you know need to be discussed. I'm kind of getting the weeds a little bit Kabuntu itself Like I said uses kde plasma and it's completely different than all the other ones of all the desktop environments and distros that i'm talking about today Kabuntu is the most customizable out of all of them so much so that if you're really new to linux and you never used it before I probably would not recommend this to you as your first distro Unless you're willing to actually learn stuff if you're willing to get into the Grinding of you know learning stuff about linux and learning how to customize stuff There's no better distro for you to learn stuff on than kabuntu because it will allow you to go through and tweak your desktop environment In ways that no other desktop environment allows you to do Just to show you this i'm going to show you the settings application This is the kde plasma settings and you can see now it doesn't I mean there's a ton of stuff here Just on the first level, but if you go into each of these each of these Categories have a ton of different things on them if we just look at the desktop effects area here You can we can just scroll through a ton and ton of these things and We don't have to get into the specifics of what these things are but as you can imagine There's just a ton of stuff here with kde that you can do Because there's so much it's very easy to get overwhelmed So if you're the type of person who doesn't like getting in and tweaking the little bitty things I would stay away from kabuntu and use one of the other ones The other ones have ability to customize stuff, but it's not so terribly complicated like plasma is And which is what this is this is kd kde plasma The great thing about kde plasma is that it's really easy to theme you can actually go through and get a whole bunch of themes Right here in their store, which is directly inside the ui A lot of the other ones don't actually let you go through and do that and you can it comes with several that are You know right here are already pre-installed, which is cool So if you're into tweaking stuff kabuntu is definitely the one to go with I think it's the it's definitely the most Customizable of any desktop environment out there and kabuntu is a buntu's flavor that uses kde plasma So in terms of being like windows 10 out of the box it looks a lot like windows 10 You know it has the menu along the side It has a similar menu to what windows 10 has has the buttons here and a taskbar here So it looks like windows 10 out of the box But because it's so customizable you can literally do anything with kde plasma and on kabuntu. It's awesome So uh of the ones that i'm talking about today. This one here is my favorite. I love kabuntu a lot There there's just because i'm a you know, I like tweaking stuff. I love ricing and theming stuff It's great. So if you're that you're that type of person this one's the one to try moving on to the last one As promised the last one is not based on a buntu. This is based on arch linux It's called manjaro and this is the manjaro xfce edition And i've chosen manjaro xfce edition because it looks most like windows out of the three main desktop environments that manjaro offers Well, I suppose it's not true because they also have a kde edition that would look similar to what kabuntu looked like that We just looked at But I didn't want to do two kde ones right in a row because they look out of the box very similar They they're just going to use a different theme. So I chose the xfc edition and The good thing about the xfc edition of manjaro is that it's going to use a lot less resources than any of the previous desktop environments slash distros that i've Shown you so far Those are all going to use about a gigabyte out of the box probably because they're At least around this that spot kde may use a little bit less than that But still if you're looking for one that's a little bit lower on resources The xfc version of manjaro is a good choice for you now Let's talk a little bit about What this is based on this is based on arch linux now the difference between arch and a buntu Is something we could make a whole video about and if you want to get into the nitty gritty details of what those two things are Definitely give that a search on google because there are a ton of articles tons of videos That have already been made about that briefly basically what ubuntu is is a stable release meaning that they have a release every few months and smaller like security updates in between those but Your software is basically going to stay the same until the next major release With something based on arch Like manjaro you're going to get software updates every week So if there's a new version of firefox or a new version of chrome, you're going to get that right away That's called a rolling release. It just means that you're going to get software updates more and more Often than what you'd get On a stable release like ubuntu now Like you might imagine there are pros and cons of using stable or rolling release Distributions with stable releases you get more Stability they tend to break less often. It doesn't mean they don't break It just means that they break less often now on rolling releases like manjaro that are based that's based on arch a rolling release Things tend to go wrong a little bit more often now. I have used an arch based distribution for Going on two years now almost full-time. I very rarely switch away from a rolling release distribution these days It's either arch or arco based distro or something like that I can tell you that Very rarely do I come across a system bug that actually breaks the whole system In fact, I don't think I've ever come across that now There are some instances where updates break But usually those things are fixed either the next day or within a few hours So when you do an update or something like that, maybe a package will break or something like that You'll come back up, you know a few a few hours later and it'll just be fixed So just keep that in mind if you do choose manjaro xfc edition that you're using rolling release and you're taking a little bit more of a risk in terms of system stability now It does mean you have more access to up-to-date software meaning you get the Most up-to-date software you possibly could Which is not the case of any of the other ones that I've shown you those ones will always be behind when it comes to software In terms of you know versions of software now another cool thing about manjaro is it has access to the aur the aur is this vast User repository of software that you can just install stuff from the aur is awesome. It's one of the key differences you'll see between An ubuntu based ish show and an arch based ish show and it it's really really cool It just had basically any piece of software you can imagine It's in that repo in is in that repository and you can just install it where you might find those pieces of software on other distributions like ubuntu or ubuntu based distros you'd have to go through some hoops in order to actually install them Whereas in something like manjaro you just be able to install it from the terminal or from the the graphical file manager so In this specific edition i've chosen this because it does look like Windows a little bit it has the menu along the side You can go through and put icons here if you want if you had something open There'd be icons here and then you have the taskbar down here along the bottom Looks like windows just like all the other desktop environments that i've shown you through those distros This one here can be customized just as much as those can you can choose themes you can go through and change the panel So it's up on the top or along the side whatever you want. It's very easy Xfce is also very stable. It doesn't get updated very often once every couple years And that means that things don't change a lot You're not going to have to worry about them moving the start menu to the center And if they did which they're never going to you can move it right back You wouldn't have to go through and actually sign up for an account in order to do that or pay for it or whatever You could just you know Move it back just like you you'd want to anyways, so Those were the five distributions out there that I think are the best for new users and I know I threw a lot of technical stuff Out there and I could have gotten a lot deeper on every single one of these I could have spent an hour on each one if I wanted to But i'm already getting close to 25 minutes or so and it's probably a little bit too long as it is Any one of these distros would be a good first start for any new user Some of them have more pros than Others like zorno s probably is the simplest ten stall It's probably the the one that is the closest to windows 10 if You are interested in customizing and tweaking your operating system a lot The kabuntu one is probably the best option for you If you're interested in the most updated software manjaro is the one that's going to be the one that you want to choose And if you want to just say you want to i'm so sick of windows I want something that looks completely different choose elementary os because that looks really pretty and looks like a mac You could always fool people into thinking that you've spent thousands of dollars on your laptop Because it looks like a mac when you're really just using your own netbook or something So that is it for this video if you have questions you can leave them in the comments below I'll try to answer them You can follow me on twitter at the linux cast where you can also answer Ask questions there if you want and you can support me on patreon at patreon.com slash linux cast before I go I'd like to take one thing with current patrons Devon chris east coast web gen 2 is fun to patrick l marcus maglinds fen jackson effin tool steve Mitchell art center merit camp josh will lead j dog and the bsd is rock. Thanks everybody for watching. I'll see you next time