Best Linux distro in 2025 for non-experts

This is about finding a good linux distro for my parents to use. Apparently, Windows now requires an outlook account in order to log into your computer. Well - his outlook account has been hacked. (In fact, it's the second time he's had a Microsoft account be hacked. He's pretty savvy about scams and phishing, but we can't figure how how this keeps happening.) Anyway, understandably, he's pretty freaked out about what they might have access to on his computer and will probably end up just reformatting it.

He's open to switching to linux, but I've been out of the game for a while and not sure what to recommend. In olden times, Ubuntu was my go to - is that still a reasonable default or is there a new game in town?

They primarily use the internet and I guess they might need to print sometimes (which I'm assuming is going to be a hassle no matter which distro we pick).

Aurora [1] - it's based on KDE and has a familiar UI, somewhat similar to Windows 7. My mum has been using it for a while now without any issues, and she does everything an average PC user would - web browsing, document editing, file/photo backups etc.

The main reasons I recommend Aurora is that it is immutable, atomic and semi-rolling.

- Immutable means your core system files are read-only, making it resilient to accidental file deletions and corruptions.

- Atomic means updates are done as atomic transactions - they either apply or don't, there's no chance of a partial/failed state, no scary "black screen" after upgrades.

- Semi-rolling means you'll always be on the latest version of the OS, with major versions pushed out every 6 months. The main difference compared to other distros like Mint is that you don't need to worry about doing a big and scary OS upgrade, as not OS updates AND upgrades are image-based and atomic, with no chance of dependency issues or conflicts. So as an end user, a major OS upgrade is treated like just another normal update and it makes no difference to them, providing a seamless update experience.

By the way, I would strongly recommend against Ubuntu and Ubuntu-based distros like Mint, because they all tend to fail at upgrades [2]. Atomic distros don't have this problem.

[1] https://getaurora.dev/en

[2] https://ounapuu.ee/posts/2025/02/05/done-with-ubuntu/

10 days agoby d3Xt3r

Manjaro

9 days agoby ensocode