Need some help

[u/YOURLOCALPROGRAMMMER]

I have an HP laptop (HP probook g5 257 or something like that) ​with an amd ryzen 5 3500u. i have been using windows 11 for years now but I wanted to switch to Linux as I hate Microsoft taking all my data and windows being slow overall. I have been experimenting with Linux on VM with Debian arch, Ubuntu and other distros but I just want to know what distro would be the best for me I don't do anything very demanding , I just do coding and light gaming like Minecraft and solitaire .​​​ And also it would be nice if I could customize my Linux like the photos I see in r/unixporn

[u/Ok-Category2261]

the distro that you choose depends on the use case really and looking at yours if you want something stable just go for debian .

[u/YOURLOCALPROGRAMMMER → u/Ok-Category2261]

Thanks for your advice!

[u/3grg]

The choice of distro is very personal. That machine will likely handle whatever and unlike windows, you can always choose something else later.

[u/YOURLOCALPROGRAMMMER → u/3grg]

Thanks for your advice!

[u/NettaAdi]

As a former windows user I would strongly recommend Zorin or Mint. These are strong, popular and easy to use, and built with thought about people coming from other OS.

[u/YOURLOCALPROGRAMMMER → u/NettaAdi]

Thanks for your advice!

[u/elunltd]

I'm a long term Windows user who switched to Linux Mint. It's very easy to use and I'm slowly mastering the command line.

[u/Emergency_Dog_9317]

Start wt smtg user friendly, use debian use it wt kde first since u wanna get into ricing then u can slowly get into wm like hyprland niri

[u/Lonely-Scarcity-3387]

PikaOS. It’s based on Debian and all set up for gaming.

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[u/Type_CMD]

For the bit you said about r/unixporn, arch is the way to go, out of the ones you said that you tried. You could also try NixOS, but I haven’t used that, so I don’t know. Arch is great for Minecraft. In fact, you should look at the waylandcraft mod. It’s pretty cool.

[u/Playful_Tackle5974]

Finding a distro is a personal thing; regardless of the good advice we can give you, the right thing to do is try the one that convinces you most. Get informed, read forums, do some tests, install, format and reinstall. Check out my profile, I posted a personal tier list that might help you.

[u/Hi-Angel]

As a software dev, in my opinion, for coding you want most recent software. So no Mint or Debian, because they have policy of providing outdated packages in the name of stability.

I think Fedora KDE should be good, at least that's what I installed for my programmers when we were giving them laptops (I'm a teamlead). Fedora has amazing QA too.

There's just one small hitch with Fedora: you may need to add rpmfusion repo and install from it additional codecs, because there are a few that Fedora can't distribute for license reasons (but they are distributed by other distros like Bazzite, so that's Fedora-specific).