Linux distros get in a variety of sizes and forms. Literally. From little ones that weigh only over 100 MB and can be carried in USB discs to 4GB behemoths that perform best when run on portable SSDs, there’s something for everyone.
Several specialist distros are intended for a specific purpose, in addition to the best linux distros that are intended to attract a wide range of users and can be adjusted to meet individual requirements.
Are you switching from Windows? There is a distribution that will make the transfer easier. A update Windows messed up your boot loader? There’s a linux distro out there that can help you solve it in no time. Do you want to bring an outdated computer back to life? Do you need to connect drives to a NAS? Do you want to set up a firewall to protect your entire network? Do you plan to set up a tiny home office? how to download linux operating system?
Whatever your needs are linux best distro, the open-source community has a distribution for you. We’ll look linux top at a few of the top picks get linux version put up for various jobs in this tutorial.
18 Linux best distro in 2021
1. Pop!_OS
Pop! OS is created and maintained by hardware company System76, and it is also accessible as a linux best distro free download and deployed on its hardware. The distribution includes several appealing characteristics that make it an appealing option, particularly for gamers.
The distribution is based on the Ubuntu list users LTS version and features Pop Shell, a Gnome-based user interface.
While there are various other Linux gaming distros, Pop! OS is unique because it comes pre-installed with all of the necessary gaming software. For example, its creators ensure that hybrid visuals run well on the platform linux operating system.
The linux best distro will provide a context menu option to start games on the GPU if you’re a hybrid GPU. You’ll be able to switch between battery-saving and high-powered visuals with ease.
Pop! OS is available in a few different editions. In addition to the standard edition, there is something built exclusively for users using Nvidia hardware and includes the chipset’s proprietary driver.
Pop! OS also secures your installation by default, and while it comes with a small set of apps, you can expand it with its intuitive app store, Pop! Shop, which offers Steam, Lutris, and GameHub in addition to the standard desktop software linux os.
2. Kodachi
Kodachi is a safe, anti-forensic, and anonymous distribution for anyone concerned about their privacy. The most recent distribution version is centered on Ubuntu and features a modified Xfce desktop.
Kodachi comes with a wide range of security and privacy-enhancing tools, as well as a large number of standard apps, allowing you to use the distribution as your everyday driver. Its bespoke desktop is designed to make it easy for first-time users to access all programs while remaining intuitive.
The distribution sends all Internet connections through a VPN to protect users’ anonymity before sending them to the Tor network. If you know what you’re doing, you can easily change the settings to connect to your VPN provider.
Similarly, Kodachi isolates apps with AppArmor to improve security. VeraCrypt, zuluCrypt, KeePassXC, and the Metadata Anonymization Toolkit (MAT) for eliminating metadata information from files are among the privacy-protection technologies included.
Its anti-forensics abilities are realized by various techniques, one of which wipes the RAM. The distro also contains a password generator that, once entered, will securely wipe all data of your fast Kodachi installation.
3. Nitrux
If you’re just getting started with Linux, Nitrux is an excellent place to start. The distribution focuses on some of the most reliable and well-respected open-source software to create a distro that caters to new Linux users’ sensibilities.
Instead of creating a separate desktop environment from the ground up, Nitrux takes advantage of KDE Plasma’s legendary malleability and specific modified components to make the workflow easier for new users. It has a couple of desktop layouts to help users make the most of the given screen space.
Nitrux has even redesigned several administrative programs to make operations like firewall and backup accessible to non-technical users. It comes with a plethora of programs for various desktop chores.
AppImages, which make it simple to install additional apps, are supported and encouraged by the distro. Nitrux intends to use AppImages for all of its graphical apps in the future. Nitrux is safer out of the box than your regular desktop Linux since all of the AppImages are run in a firejail sandbox.
The distro has a vibrant community with whom you may communicate on all major social media platforms. The lack of a separate documentation area, on the other hand, is a downer. Nitrux is only available for 64-bit computers. However, it can boot older PCs with the Legacy BIOS and newer EFI ones.
4. Zorin OS
Zorin OS was founded in 2008 with the primary purpose of making Linux more user-friendly. Its creators sought to make Linux more approachable to everyday users. Therefore they made the user interface more familiar.
The distribution is aimed at first-time Linux users accustomed to proprietary operating systems like Windows and macOS. It accomplishes so thanks to its proprietary Zorin Appearance software, which modifies Zorin’s Gnome desktop environment to look and act like Windows.
Zorin is available in a variety of editions. Three of them, Core, Lite, and Education, are available for download for free. Zorin is built on Ubuntu, and the Core version is the most basic version, with all of the apps you’d need on a conventional desktop.
If you have an outdated computer, you must use the Lite edition, optimized for low-end systems. The Education edition best linux distro is focused on education and includes all of the most renowned open-source educational programs and utilities.
While interest to these three, there is a fourth version dubbed the Ultimate Edition, which costs $39. It comes with support and also a few additional features, like the ability to use interfaces that resemble macOS and a plethora of programs and games.
5. Rescatux
If you get into an error on a Linux or Windows machine, there’s a linux news good chance you’ll be able to utilize Rescatux to get yourself out of it.
Rescatux includes all necessary tools for troubleshooting non-booting Linux and Windows systems. The distribution uses the LXDE desktop, making it useable even on low-powered PCs.
The distro’s proprietary assistance application, Rescapp, starts up immediately when it boots up. Easy to use this program and makes the whole process of correcting errors accessible to even inexperienced users.
Resc app has several buttons organized into categories, including Boot, Grub, Filesystem, and Password. On both Linux and Windows install, you can use these to fix basic repair chores including restoring bootloaders, fixing filesystems, updating partition tables, and resetting passwords.
The buttons within each category are labeled with descriptive labels that explain what they do. When you click them, you’ll be taken to the relevant documentation, which will detail the distribution’s measures to resolve the problem.
To save time, you can skip Rescapp and execute the recovery tools directly from the command-line console if you’re an expert user. In addition, the Rescatux project has numerous guidelines and instructional films to assist inexperienced users.
6. Parrot Security
Parrot Security is a fantastic penetration tester and vulnerability scanning distro that can perform more than its more well-known competitors, such as Kali Linux.
You can build a permanent partition and save your changes if you boot Parrot from a USB device. The developers were very clever in allowing you to secure this permanent partition for optimal security.
The distribution includes many tools that are properly organized in a classified menu. Information Gathering, Password Attacks, Vulnerability Analysis, Digital Forensics, and various other technologies are included in these categories.
Surprisingly, Parrot wants to be useful for regular computer users who require a secure and privacy-focused distribution, such as hackers and journalists.
7. OpenMediaVault
Open Media Vault (OMV) is a Debian-based distribution that you may use to turn an old, underutilized machine into a network-attached storage (NAS) device.
Thanks to its user-friendly browser-based management interface, the distribution is simple to set up and manage. You can use OMV to bind several discs together in various degrees of software RAID or just utilize them as primary storage silos that you can reach over the network using SSH, SMB/CIFS, FTP, Rsync, and other popular network protocols.
Most importantly, you can expand the functionality of your OMV NAS server by adding and activating numerous plugins.
8. Manjaro
Arch Linux is among the most adaptable rolling release distros available. It also has the most challenging and time-consuming installation procedures. Manjaro encapsulates all of Arch’s best features in a distro that’s simple to set up and use right away.
The distribution comes in various official and community-supported variants, each with its own set of desktop environments. All versions come with all of the standard desktop apps and, as well as some bespoke apps to help with various administrative duties. Ample documentation and a very engaged and helpful user community round out the distro.
9. Porteus
While almost every Linux distribution may be carried and used from a Flash drive, Porteus is among the few created expressly for this purpose.
The distribution comes in various variants, each with its desktop environment, and most of them are around 300 MB in size. These are all proposed to be used with detachable, rewritable media like USB drives and SD cards. The distribution is quick to boot and has persistent storage enabled by default.
The only drawback is that the program isn’t updated regularly. Even though the most recent stable release was in 2018, it is still totally usable, and the developers are presently working on the next major update.
10. Puppy Linux
Puppy Linux is one of our popular best distros for recovering old devices and bringing them back to life. The project is a collection of distros, each of which is based on a different underlying distribution. For example, best linux distros one is based on Ubuntu, while the other is on Slackware.
Despite its small size, Puppy is unrivaled in terms of out-of-the-box capability, and there are apps for almost any operation that can be performed on a desktop.
On the other hand, Puppy avoids mainstream programs in favor of lightweight alternatives, unsurprising. The use of Joe’s window manager and the fox-filer file manager, which give its distinctive design, is the most iconic.
11. Arch Linux
Arch Linux is among the most popular distros best linux distro 2020, popular linux distrobutions and it’s aimed at advanced Linux users that wish to create their customized setups.
While most Linux distributions come with a pre-installed collection of software, Arch allows users to build their system from the ground up. However, Arch’s installation is a time-consuming operation because of this skill. Even though the procedure is widely described, it is nevertheless time-consuming for the average Linux desktop user.
However, Arch’s large package repository, package management software, and rolling release approach have spawned several projects, such as Manjaro, that encapsulate its benefits in easy-to-understand distros.
12. NethServer
If you don’t have time to set up and deploy a server manually, the NethServer distribution can automate the deployment of several standard network services with a single click.
For example, versions of linux NethServer can be used to set up a browser filter, a mail server, a file server, a web server, a firewall, a VPN, a Slack-style team chat, and a variety of other services. The great part is that you can use a simple browser-based interface to deploy and customize almost every server component.
These capabilities are available for free best linux distro for beginners on the CentOS-based distribution, making it an excellent alternative for small enterprises. The initiative also offers different layers of professional help for larger businesses, starting at €250 per year.
13. Solus
Solus is a general-purpose new linux distros rolling release distribution that you may use for various everyday tasks on the desktop. In reality, it promotes itself as a developer-friendly platform.
The distro touts its support for powerful editors and integrated development environments (IDEs) like Atom, Idea, and Gnome Builder on its website. You can also use best graphical tools such as GitKraken and git-cola to manage code in many version control systems like Git, Bazaar, and others.
According to the distro’s website, the OS supports various programming languages, including Go, Rust, PHP, Node.js, and Ruby, and you can get a variety of other development libraries and tools from its repository.
14. Raspberry Pi OS
There are various Raspberry Pi distros available, but the best place to start is with the Raspberry Pi OS, which is the Raspberry Pi’s official distro for a good reason.
The Debian-based distribution, formerly Raspbian, combines a lightweight modified LXDE-based desktop environment with the Openbox window manager. The personalized desktop frees up resources for more critical work and looks sleek and welcoming.
The latest Raspberry Pi iteration may now be used as a powerful computer. The distribution developers ensure that it works linux distros smoothly with powerful video conferencing software like Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom.
15. DebianEdu/Skolelinux
Linux best distro Open-source software is used in several of the best educational programs today, and DebianEdu/Skolelinux combines the best of the bunch.
The distro’s name comes from a partnership between the two projects that gave it its name. Aside from instructional features, the distribution has a full suite of desktop programs, allowing you to use it as your primary operating system.
However, linux distrobution one of the distro’s strengths is that it comes with a pre-configured terminal server that is tailored to the wants of a standard educational institution. You may efficiently linux distributions the distribution across numerous computers in a lab in addition to installing it on your machine.
16. EasyOS
Best linux EasyOS is a research and development initiative by the creator of Puppy Linux. While it may appear to be just another Puppy variant, the distro was built from the ground up to investigate container use on the desktop.
EasyOS is a container-based operating system that is secure and simple to use and operate. Instead of opting for its custom solution, it also doesn’t use any established container technologies, such as LXC or Docker. This allows it to segregate individual apps and potentially run entire distros with no overhead.
The best part about the distro is that you don’t need to know anything about containerization to utilize it.
17. Ubuntu Server
The Ubuntu Server edition is almost as famous as the desktop version in some ways. The best linux distro 2021 server, like the desktop, is available in both LTS and non-LTS versions. Ubuntu Server is available for x86-64, ARM64, POWER9, IBM s390x, RISC-V, and other architectures.
The project additionally offers cloud images for AWS and Azure, and the distribution is helpful helpful in developing cloud computing platforms. Canonical says that over 55% of OpenStack clouds are now running on Ubuntu, and it will set up a controlled OpenStack cloud for your organization for a price linux linux distribution software.
18. OPNsense
OPNsense best linux is one of the most excellent firewall distributions available, owing to its inline intrusion protection mechanism. Furthermore, it provides not only a stateful firewall several other network functions.
You may use OPNsense to create a captive portal, shape traffic, prevent and detect intrusions, and set up a Virtual Private Network (VPN), among other things. These services may be managed using an easy-to-use, modern, web-based, multilingual, and well-documented user interface.
OPNsense, on the other hand, isn’t a Linux best distro; it’s based on HardenedBSD, a security-oriented clone of FreeBSD.
