Ranking Linux Distributions for 2023: not your average tier list!

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#linux #linuxdistro #tierlist

00:00 Intro
00:35 Sponsor: Take control of your network traffic with Portmaster
01:33 Ubuntu
02:44 Linux Mint
04:08 elementary OS
06:08 Arch Linux
08:12 Solus
09:30 Fedora
10:54 Deepin
12:19 Manjaro
13:51 Debian
15:20 PopOS
16:46 Gentoo
17:45 ZorinOS
19:01 KDE Neon
20:11 Sponsor: Get a PC that runs Linux perfectly
21:02 Support the channel

I've had a love / hate relationship with Ubuntu over the years, when I started with Linux, it was basically the best. But nowadays, I would put Ubuntu in Decent.

Mint, nowadays, I feel it's really one of the best options for a lot of people. So, I'm going to put it in Great.

elementaryOS is polished like nothing else, and I love what they're doing, but if we look at where it is today, it's lagging behind GNOME in most areas. So, as it stands today, elementary OS is only Decent.

Arch is a distro I've used for a while. It's a wonderful learning experience. But Arch requires more manual intervention than most distros to keep running smoothly. So, Arch is going in Good, but only if you know what you're doing. If you're a Linux beginner, it's going into the No Way category.

Another distro I used for a while is Solus, and I liked it for the Budgie desktop, and for its approach of building a Linux distro from scratch, without using Ubuntu as a base for example. But Solus is going in No Way, because it pretty much feels like a dying distro these days.

Fedora is the distro I use everywhere these days. And yet, I'm still only placing it in Good, not Great. Because while I feel this is the distro that is pushing the Linux desktop forward these days, I also feel they miss the mark in some ways. The terrible installer, no Nvidia drivers at install, and no Flathub one click install (for now) are things that prevent it from reaching "great" status.

Ok, let's talk Deepin. It's a basic desktop environment, but it's also a distro. And it's a distro I'm putting in No, Thanks. The Desktop environment looks beautiful, but the default apps are way too basic and can't handle half of the tasks I need from them. Installing anything else results in that nice unified look being completely broken, and as such, isn't a good experience.

Now, let's talk about Manjaro, and this one is going into No, Thanks. It's a distro I used a lot on my desktop, but I just can't recommend it anymore. The distro itself isn't necessarily bad, but the way it's being run absolutely is.

Debian Stable is rock solid, tested to perfection and the repos are huge and well maintained. So I'm putting it in GOOD, but personally, I would never run Debian Stable on anything other than a server, because it's way too outdated.

Now let's move on to PopOS. For now, I'll only put PopOS in Decent, because it's in a limbo while they develop their new Cosmic desktop shell. No updates for a year, and no word on a version this year either, it's just not good enough for a desktop distro.

Gentoo isn't for me. I tried it, I understand why it exists, but I also don't really feel the need to have almost everything I install be compiled for my hardware. I don't need this level of control over what I install. Still, Gentoo is going in Good. Not for me, but I'm not going to criticize it just because I'm not the target audience.

Zorin OS looks cool, it has tons of layouts, it includes a bunch of tools, but Zorin OS will go into No, Thanks, though. Because it also suffers from the "not updated often enough" problem.

Now, KDE Neon, that's a good one. It also uses an older Ubuntu LTS base, which can be a problem, but it has all the latest software from KDE, from the desktop to the apps, and that's a very good mix, so it's going in Good.

[flipmarley]

Linux Mint started out as Ubuntu with green theme and media codecs installed by default. It gradually improved. And when Ubuntu thought that it would be great to reinvent the desktop paradigm, Mint said "no way" and created The Cinnamon Desktop. Later, when Ubuntu decided that forcing Snap packages on everyone would be great, Mint said "no way" and maintains all mint packages as regular apt packages and no snap by default. Mint benefits from the popularity of Ubuntu, is nicer to use, and it's friggin beautiful.

[randomname]

In my opinion, Solus isn't a dying distro. It's a dead distro. At this point their focus is the budgie desktop environment.

[Diggy]

I'm happy to see Mint getting love. When I first got into Linux, I used to get teased for using Mint, but it helped me get the feel for Linux at my own pace. The accessibility made a big difference.

[doncosner]

Mint checks all the boxes for me. Clem actually listens and meets the needs of his user base. I like the simplicity and reliability.

[Zobbster]

Distro hopping always brings me back to Mint. It really is an excellent OS.

[KuruGDI]

In my opinion the huge problem Ubuntu has is that so many other distros and system infrastructure (like servers) depend on it working and staying somewhat consistent. It is just not possible for them change any core element and not get a huge amount of hate for it.

[jennyd]

Nice summary. I ran Open-Suse Tumbleweed for about nine months, and even though I have now returned to Arch I found pretty decent, and it run really well out of the box on Dell laptops (which was why I ended up using it for so long). So I would certainly say it deserves a video. The other distro which I have recently stumbled upon, and been impressed by is Voyager. It is basically a tweaked Ubuntu - but it looks and feels really modern, so just for the aesthetics alone it gets an honourable mention from me.

[ell_kapitano]

I went from windows straight to arch. Was a difficult experience but I love it. Aswell the community around arch is amazing and really friendly for when you inevitably break something.

[naseef]

This video couldn't have come out at a better time for me. I've been looking for an update on the state of Linux distros, haven't been able to keep in touch with the Linux world much lately since my OpenSUSE Tumbleweed install has been going strong for over 2 years.

Thanks for the tier list, Nick,
Keep the awesome Linux content coming!

[munkycoolgaming]

openSUSE is an amazing distro (especially Tumbleweed), and it's honestly kinda sad that it isn't talked about much

[Hossimo]

Great list. My first distro was building Gentoo from source, it took days on my hardware in the 90s but I learned basically everything I know about Linux today and way more about how my hardware worked.

Today I basically use Debian or most every server I can, I normally don't install a DE but I have one have one desktop system that also uses Debian, it's not used as a normal desktop so it's been fine for my needs.

[doctorc-ton]

I love trying out different distros. A video like this is great to give people clues on what to try. There are so many out there, and I have had some fun on a some of the lesser known ones.

[philipw]

NixOs' single file config and their take on preventing dependency issues by making each dependency version a hash and using symlinks to let apps use different versions on the same system at the same time is cool!

[leadlearner]

I always enjoy your honest and transparent Linux user experience :-) I volunteer in the community and support those with lack of access to tech; I source older laptops (7-10yr) primarily ThinkPads; upgrade the ram & install an ssd whilst 'cleaning' & thermal pasting. I use MX-Linux, and so far it has been great.

[ClokworkGremlin]

Wow. I've always liked Mint because it includes a lot of hardware support out of the box that other distros require you to install manually (and thus makes for a really good utility liveOS, since you don't have to worry about installing drivers for whatever hardware you're trying to fix), but I didn't expect it to be ranked any higher than just "good."

[CasualLinuxGaming]

I'm using EndeavourOS the past year, which is based on Arch but with calamares installer. You get to pick from a lot of DEs on installation, which is super cool. Still needs some tweaking after installation but still way less hassle than Arch. The repos used are the Arch repos + a small side repo of Endeavour for the few apps they maintain. It is a very good distro i'd say, but not for total beginners.

[Winnetou]

So pleased to see Gentoo ranked as good. It's so versatile. But, indeed, it has a pretty daunting learning curve, and it only makes sense in the first place if you want to spend time to learn how to make use of it. One thing that is not mentioned, though probably it's out of scope, is that it is very good for very specific use cases. Niches. Like, running the latest Linux on a 486 from 30 (yes, thirty) years ago. Because it gives you so much power, it can also be extremely minimalistic.

Going forward, knowing that you focus on practical stuff in general, I'd say the top pick for what distro to check next has to be openSuse, by a large margin. It's the underdog of distros, seemingly always in the shadow of Fedora. Plus, you gotta show some more european love (if I'm not mistaken, they're from Germany).

I'm also personally interested in NixOS, but I don't think it's a good everyday distro, at least not yet. But their package manager is very interesting.

[rockoman]

I would definitely put Pop OS higher. System76 has done a bad job communicating this, but the reason Pop OS hasn't gotten a point release in a while is because they are actually treating the distro as a rolling release built on top of Ubuntu 22.04. All of the packages related to desktop graphic performance like drivers and kernels and libraries are all up-to-date, unlike Ubuntu or Zorin OS.

[LeeMaiden]

I started using Linux Mint in 2011, looked at many others over the years, but Mint always comes out on top for me.

[adamnejm]

Should consider EndeavourOS as Manjaro substitute for the next tier list video. Used it before I switched to Arch, been hearing good things about it ever since.