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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Distro is irrelevant. DE/WM choice is all that matters as far as GUI goes. Also, if you want a GUI that looks or feels like windows then KDE probably has you covered in that you could probably customise it to mimic windows.
I quite like the Desktop Environment in elementaryOS. I think it's called Pantheon Desktop? It's very polished. Or InstantWM from InstantOS is also interesting and has some nice animations and effects.
Personally, I use simple and minimal Openbox
Yes, exactly. haha, the distro has nothing to do with the GUI. That's your Desktop Environment. On almost every single popular distro you can get teh same DE's either through official offerings or community versions.
The real question is what Window Manager has the best GUI... you can run any window manager on any distro - it just takes a little work.
If you're talking about out-of-the-box without any user customization, I'll make a couple suggestions that I think work for new Linux users - not that I'm saying you're green, but most power users know they can fully design the OS from the ground up if needed.
PopOS - In between - GNOME-like with some PopOS customizations under the hood.
ElementaryOS - MacOS-like WM thats clean fresh and easy to understand
Mint - Cinnamon DM, Windows-like with some customization possible
As a caveat to this, System76 is working a brand-new DE that they're writing from scratch in Rust called COSMIC Desktop, so they might become less GNOME-like fairly soon. Although presumably you'll still be able to install GNOME on it if you really want to.
i3, and swaywm , I have used almost ... All Linux/BSD/Windows/Osx/Unix Desktop Environments. I really like #enlightenment but it can be pretty buggy especially on wayland.
Feodora and Debian have a GNOME experience that has not been ruined to make less innovative in favor of making the UX more similar (and therefore familiar) to that of the worst desktop operating system available (windows).
If you've seen but never really used GNOME in a daily workflow it looks and feels alien. Thats becausethey devs are trying to make something that is friendly to the people who actually use it and intuitive to the people who are new to desktop computing, and they are making no attemt to appease thoes who believe that it is impossible to do better than Microsoft has with Windows.
If you've never really used it (and have used ms windows), Vanilla GNOME is alien to you. If you have really used it, nothing else is yet on its level.
I like to use good ol' stable Debian with i3-gaps as a window manager.
I don't see why distros should be married to a specific GUIs. Any distro can support any number of GUIs. It just seems like a huge waste of effort to make a distro just to support one GUI.
I would encourage people who want to implement their unique vision for a GUI to make their effort easily packagable by any distro and to work with an existing community distro to make their work available widely.
I just switched to Fedora 38 with KDE and it's been great! It's using Wayland now too, so it's been really smooth and stable. My last distro was Manjaro with KDE, but I started having issues with the lastet round of updates and wanted to switch to something more stable. I really don't like gnome as it feels to "basic". Sure it looks nice, but for me it feels like it's missing some important features that are just there with the default KDE layout.
Distro doesn't really matter nowadays. You can get all desktop environments to work on most distros. Especially the big players like KDE, Gnome, Xfce have hundred distros they are shipped with by default. Most big distros have versions for each of the most popular desktop environments. Therefore, I would suggest that you look for the distro which fits your needs best and then install the desktop environment you want to work with afterwards, if there isn't a flavor of your distro that ships with it already.
The distro which comes with the best customization in my opinion is Pop!_OS. Simple, clean, straightforward and comes with the POP SHELL which basically simulates a tiling window manager
I believe they plan to switch "soon™" to a new Rust-based desktop environment they are developing.
I'm actually quite excited about this, even though I don't use Pop!_OS, since I'm not really a fan of either Gtk nor Qt, and I believe Rust has a lot of potential to make a clean, modern and stable framework for OS development that isn't over-complicated by layers and layers of abstraction & technical debt.
A new major and modern desktop enveroinment would finally bring some fresh air to the whole *Nix desktop world!
I used the Pop Os default for a long time and just recently switched to i3 Manjaro, it’s been pretty nice once you get past the learning curve of i3
I'm pretty sure I'm legally required to post this anytime someone says they use Manjaro.
Manjaro was the first thing to get me to stop distro-hopping, so it pains me to admit that historically, it's been a very messy project. I've since moved onto openSUSE Tumbleweed and love it (I've also dabbled in NixOS, but it's a lot more hardcore).
If anyone wants the ease of Manjaro, with an Arch base, my understanding is that you should consider EndeavourOS.
Also, if you like i3 but want to use Wayland for any of its superior features, consider SwayWM.
Good old Debian stable with JWM, IceWM or Trinity Desktop for me. Its very efficient, clean and gets out of the users way. Will probably move to LabWC on Wayland when its ready.
You might be looking for a KDE desktop. Many of Windows's better more modern desktop features are copied from it, and KDE is very customizable out of the box without needing to install a bunch of extensions like you do with Gnome. KDE can be customized to fit many different desktop paradigms, with the default being like Windows 10.
You can use most desktop environments on most distros.
If a distro has its own GUI and it doesn't exist on other distros, usually that means either it isn't free software or it's not good enough that anyone has bothered to package it for other distros.
I use KDE Plasma on RebornOS (an arch spin).
Absolutely love GNOME on Fedora. Workstations + Hotkeys are amazing. I really dig the minimalism and compartmentalisation it offers.
Linux Mint Cinnamon. Stable, yet tons of customizations possible and makes the jump from Windows a whole lot easier (I jumped 1.5 years ago and will never look back).
Fedora with Gnome
Imo, I really like linux mint's cinnamon, its so clean and pretty.
Distro? Probably Debian, because it has all the desktop environments. If you want, you can have Plasma, Gnome, Xfce, Cinnamon, and MATE all installed at the same time and switch between them at will. Most distros seem focused on one specific DE, which if I'm not mistaken means switching to another involves reinstalling the whole operating system.
The big downside of Debian is that the software in it tends to be very out of date. You'll get security updates and the occasional bug fix between Debian releases, but that's about all you'll get.
You can get a rolling-release experience by running the “unstable” version, but as the name implies, upgrades will sometimes fail or break something, and you need to know your way around the system in order to recover from that. Not a problem if you want to learn to be a Linux sysadmin anyway, but if you want your system to Just Work™, then unstable Debian is unfortunately not for you. It's a trade-off, as with most things in life.
I think i3 looks really pretty
I'm going to hop in here and suggest you try out Linux Mint. This is a distro designed for people who are coming over from Windows or Mac. It "just works". The UI doesn't throw away thrity years of convention simply to be "linux". Everything is exactly where you expect it to be and most of what you need is already installed.
Mint offers a choice of different desktop environments which are all laid out exactly the same, but have differing degrees of polish. If you're using a very old PC, you may want to choose XFCE because it is very lean, but lacks some of the nice graphical touches. Most people just use the Cinnamon desktop environment, which is highly customizable and polished.
I fully switched to Mint many years ago and never looked back.
Fedora. It ships vanilla GNOME which is just a very pleasant experience. Vanilla GNOME is just something else man.
I liked zorin os
I am into KDE Plasma, it works quite well on my distro (Fedora by the way) and one thing that I like about is is that I can make it truly mine. Defaults are nice, however sometimes I think I don't need that or need something else, and quite often I manage to do it to be the most comfortable for me. It's also very customisable and with enough learning you could rice it into quite a lot of stuff, even though I myself don't really know a lot how people do it.
You can change the DE (desktop environment) as you like but I really like Budgie from Solus. My daily driver is Plasma and find myself on openSUSE Tumbleweed. It's by far the most crash-free and freeze-free experience I've had while using Plasma. Note: Installing Nvidia Drivers is at your own risk, though.
Fedora or OpenSUSE with Gnome. Stable, GUI friendly, and simple.
Opensuse because of Yast; Yast does not have the best UI, but for some settings it's the only option if you don't want to use terminal.
For me, it's Fedora + KDE when I need a GUI. I used to be an AwesomeWM guy for a very long time but I needed a proper GUI for my 5 year old. I'll convert her to i3 or Awesome one day....
If you’re interested - XFCE has many keyboard shortcuts to achieve tiling-like behavior. Might be a good compromise.
I've been enjoying Gnome using !pop_os@lemmy.ml. It's not perfect, but good enough. The preinstalled tiling extension also makes using a full DE bearable without spending hours customizing a WM.
I'm looking forward to trying out Cosmic, which I have high hopes for.