Kubuntu offers a windows-like experience with KDE Plasma and lots of options for customization and a simple UI. Includes the Discover store for easy installation of packages and apps.
Desktop environment - KDE Plasma 5
Package manager - apt, snap
Difficulty - Easy
Overall rating: 7.6/10
Pop!_OS comes with a special nvidia version, with drivers included out of the box. The installer is pretty straight forward, and the distro includes the Pop!_Shop for easy installation of packages/updates.
Desktop environment - Cosmic / Gnome
Package manager - apt
Difficulty - Easy
Overall rating: 6.9/10 (nice)
Offers a windows-like experience with cinnamon. Nothing fancy, which can be considered a pro.
Note: Linux mint mixes Ubuntu and Debian packages, which is considered bad practice. See: ?debwiki Dont Break Debian
Desktop environment - Cinnamon
Package manager - apt
Difficulty - Easy
Overall rating: 7.3/10
A gayming version of fedora. Offers nvidia drivers ootb like Pop!_OS. Advertises itself as a content creation, gaming and streaming distro.
Desktop environment - Gnome
Package manager - RPM (DNF)
Difficulty - Easy
Overall rating: 7.2/10
The most popular distro out there. Very solid, although there are some issues with snap packages. Ubuntu also uses a modified version of the Gnome desktop environment, which might pose some problems.
Desktop environment - Modified Gnome
Package manager - apt, snap
Difficulty - Easy
Overall rating: 7.5/10
If you like Arch but don't want to suffer through installing it, endeavour is definitely a good option. The installer comes with many customization options
Desktop environment - User decided
Package manager - pacman
Difficulty - Moderate
Overall rating: 7.8/10
Old reliable, father of most linux distros. Not recommended for users who want the latest and greatest, since debian focuses on stability, not fast updates.
Desktop environment - User decided (default: gnome)
Package manager - apt
Difficulty - Moderate
Overall rating: 6.8/10
The real linux enterprise experience. Fedora is essentially a non-server version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Comes with SELinux out of the box, which some users consider a security feature, and others an NSA backdoor.
Desktop environment - Gnome
Package manager - RPM (DNF)
Difficulty - Moderate
Overall rating: 7.0/10
Provides a minimal system for power-users who want to customize every aspect of it.
Note Everything needs to be installed manually. like, you dont even get a gui. look at the image below.
Desktop environment - None, kek (user decided)
Package manager - pacman
Difficulty - Hard
Overall rating: 6.7/10
Highly customizable distro, mainly because of USE flags, overlays, and patches. The only drawback is that its source-based, which means every program has to be compiled from source code at install time. This means that if you want to install firefox, you have to compile firefox, which takes a couple hours, or if you want wine or steam, you have to recompile half of your system with x86_32 support :3
Desktop environment - None, kek (user decided)
Package manager - Portage (emerge)
Difficulty - Hard
Overall rating: 5.1/10
Great CLI installer (it said 'have a nice day' to me). Alpine linux provides an extremely minimal base system for old hardware, power users, and containers.
Note: Nvidia GPUs are NOT supported, due to the use of musl
Desktop environment - None, kek (user decided)
Package manager - apk
Difficulty - Hard
Overall rating: 7.2/10
Editor: kenzie <@kenzie.webm>
Some screenshots: breadtard <@breadtard>
Peer review: #linux
You: the reader