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Choosing a Distro
Although it may seem like a daunting task to select your first distro out of the vast array of choices, it's actually rather simple. You want a major distro that has a large community, a good track record, and regular updates. Secondarily, you want something that will support the software you want to use with the least headaches.
Before researching and choosing the right distribution for you, you must have in mind what you want to use it for. Facebook machine? Programming? Gaming? A secondary consideration is hardware. Linux generally tends to play well with underpowered or aging computers, but you may want to try lighter distros.
In summary, these are the things you want to compare when distro shopping:
1. Distro quirks
2. Software availability
Distribution Families
For more information, visit each distro's homepage, Wikipedia, and DistroWatch.
Debian
A community-developed distro focused on stability. Has the biggest user base if you include distros based on it. Comes in various releases with different tradeoffs of stability/up-to-datedness. More or less the most important distro in the GNU/Linux ecosystem today.
Crunchbang
Takes Debian Stable and rices it for you. Openbox, Tint2, the works. Comes with drivers. Uses stable and backport Debian repos.
elementaryOS
Takes Ubuntu and makes it look like OS X by developing the Pantheon desktop environment and in-house programs. Uses Ubuntu repos.
Mint
Takes Ubuntu, removes spyware, adds proprietary shit like Flash right in the iso. Developed the MATE and Cinnamon desktop environments. Uses Ubuntu repos.
Ubuntu
Takes Debian Testing, makes sure its packages are usable, adds drivers, adds handholding, and adds spyware. Not to fear, it's easily removable ([fixubuntu.com]). Comes with Unity by default. Repo is supplemented with user-maintained PPAs, so if it's available for Linux you can probably find it here. The most popular desktop distro with the most guides and solutions on various forums.
Developed by Canonical, the evil empire of the free software world.
Fedora
Developed by Red Hat, probably the biggest corporate backer of GNU/Linux, as a testing bed for its commercial RHEL distro. Bleeding edge; usually the first widely-used distro to start shipping with new developments such as Wayland.
Arch Linux
A community-developed distro focused on simplicity and vanilla-ness of its underlying parts. No hand-holding or preconfigured defaults; setting up the system is left to the user. Great for learning how a GNU/Linux system comes together. Repositories hold bleeding edge packages.
Manjaro
Takes Arch, preconfigures everything, and gives it an easy graphical installer. Also maintains its own repository of more stable packages in addition to the Arch repositories.
OpenSUSE
Developed by Novell as a testing bed for its commercial SUSE distro. Best implementation of KDE, and great GNOME integration. Has a well-regarded integrated configuration tool called YaST. OBS repositories are nearly comparable with Debian's PPAs.
Gentoo
Install it. A distro with zero hand-holding, has to compiled by the installer pre-use.
- Unconfirmed reports of granting magic powers: i.e the ability to roll turds into gold, vibrate through walls, etc
Slackware
Quite possibly the oldest distro in the books.
Made for the purist at heart.
Other
Nothing here suit your fancy? Check out List of GNU/Linux Distros or DistroWatch and browse around for something pretty.
Desktop Environments
Found a distro you liked? Great! If it doesn't have a natively developed desktop environment, go on to Desktop Environment.