Linux

I'll drop this: https://www.techradar.com/best/best-linux-distros It's written by an actual journo and not a bunch of nerds in nerdville!

Getting into Linux is a bit like Windows back in the day - interesting and a lot of fun ... and rather nerdy. My first Windows version was 1.0 and my last was 7. Mind you I do run a MS Silver Partner and worry about a lot of Windows servers and desktops but my daily driver is Linux.

Mint is a great choice, even though it isn't mentioned in the article I linked because you get a great community, which is pretty important. Its basically Ubuntu and therefore Debian too, so a lot of howtos will work.

I personally rock Kubuntu but I have a requirement for enterprisey stuff - ESET and Veeam and AD integration and all that. I also get Secure Boot out of the box and not all Linux distros work with that.

Your smart new laptop will have Secure Boot enabled so you will have to deal with that if you deploy a distro that doesn't. So with say Arch, you will need to turn it off or learn how to sign your kernels etc and that is not a beginner topic! I suggest you turn off Secure Boot if your chosen distro doesn't support it, rather than insisting on it. Its a nice to have but not the most important security feature ever.

You might want to show a bit of ankle and try out a few to start with. Most distros have a live CD that you can boot and try out first. I suggest trying out Mint, Ubuntu and Kubuntu. That gets you three modern interfaces to play with.

If you are into gaming then it kooks like Pop!OS would be a good place to start instead.

There is no real best option - it's what suits you and you have choice.

I really like Fedora. Swapped to it a few months ago, my first time using Linux, and I've since only been using the Linux machine. With the KDE Plasma spin, it really is a near 1:1 UI to Windows.

What spec of laptop are you thinking of getting?

I’ve been using Mint and Pop!_OS on two different machines for a few years.

Neither has really required much from me as the user, although I have needed to use the terminal once on each of them.

Personally, I really like the way Pop does window tiling and workspaces.

Ubuntu. There are mixes of it but out of the box Ubuntu is about as straightforward a dist to install as possible and it is well supported.

That said "new laptop" and Linux are not always a match made in heaven. You might try it from a boot stick and confirm that things like the GPU, touch screen, touchpad, fingerprint reader, USB C / Lightning all work properly.

mint is probably where you want to be. if you have performance issues with mint, consider MX Linux, AntiX, and EndeavourOS, in that order.

I can’t disagree with mint being a good distribution, because it is.

I personally think for someone just starting out in Linux that an immutable distribution like fedora silverblue (gnome) or kinoite (kde) is the safest route to take. They’re difficult to break. I personally use bazzite on my framework laptop and it’s basically hassle free. Not for everyone, but they work well.

Debian all day...

All these shiny new distros promising to make things easier and better... But nothing is easier and better than 30 years of rock solid stability and support.

Depending on how new the laptop is, it might not work on debian stable. Check your compatibility

From personal experience with a new laptop, the intel meteor lake platform didnt work well with debian stable

Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora or one of the offshoots like Mint or Pop.

As long as you don't go too far into the weeds with Arch, Silverblue or NixOS, You're probably going to have a pretty decent experience, as long as you don't dig too far under the hood too early most things that you're going to want to try are just going to work out of the gate.

Don't get mint if you'll get a remotely capable laptop or plan to game on it. Its so called 'modern' desktop environment (wich still defaults to the old X window system) feels awful to use imo and while the 'retro' ones are better there's no point in using them on a new laptop. Choose a distro that ships with KDE, GNOME, or a wlroots based desktop environment.

I've also had driver issues with it that didn't happen with Ubuntu or arch.

Pretty much every distro has a caveman compatible installer.

I usually recommend Zorin OS to noobs, but personally I prefer arch based

I've never noticed any hate for Mint, it seems to be a pretty good option. It'll easily run on anything that was able to run Windows 10 (probably 8 too) and the default desktop environment Cinnamon is easy to navigate if you're coming from Windows. Even if you have some obscure piece of hardware with Mint being based on Ubuntu there's probably a tutorial you can follow to get it working.

Install a few and see which one you like the most. You can install several distros at the same time and they'll all appear in the boot menu. When I was deciding which distro to use on my laptop, I was dual booting Debian and Fedora, with one /home partition shared between both of them.

Mint and Fedora are good choices IMO. Everyone is different though :)

Mint was my beginner distro and is what I recommend. In my experience I was able to find a solution for most of my beginner problems by searching for a solution for mint.

to those suggesting mint, any particular reasons to choose between Cinnamon, MATE, and Xfce versions?

Any Debian/Ubuntu or fedora based distro will do you fine. I personally ran PopOS when I built my computer earlier this year and didn't have any issues with it

Linux mint (Cinnamon is my fav). You can never go wrong.

Maybe

Mint, Fedora

Run KDE if you consistently game, otherwise Gnome is good since you can leave every setting after setup with it

Debian is one of my favorites and one of the easiest to use if you are new. i haven't tried mint but they are very similar.

FedoraKDE, or Mint.

Either way you'll probably be able to search and find answers to your problems (and answers for ubuntu may work), and with mint you know your friend can possibly help if need be, and they work well.

https://ultramarine-linux.org/ Linux ultramarine is based on very popular fedora distro. Let me quote some fedi post:

1. Just like Microsoft Windows, you do not need to configure your firmware, drivers, media codecs, and sources. That is already taken care of for you.

2. Just like Windows, you can have automatic update, update notifications, or choose not to update. By default, update notifications is the default, allowing you to choose when and what to update. And you can update with a click of a button (point and click), just like Microsoft Update.

3. Installing, updating, and removing apps through the app store is point and click easy.

4. Go ahead and download an RPM setup file, and double-click to install, just like you would a Windows setup file. Updating and removing that program, can also be done through the app store, which doubles as the app manager.

5. Point and click settings. No matter if you want to add users, manage a VPN, add a printer, etc.... etc... A simple-to-use control panel is what is offered.

6. Friendly support - Based on Fedora Linux, means you have 20+ years of documentation, live help, support forums, and chat groups, both from Fedora and Ultramarine. Source: https://kitty.social/notes/a12bji4hf8zb0332