Top 5 BEST Linux Distros of 2021

hello everybody this is tech guy about a year ago or so i released my video of my top five favorite linux distributions for the year 2020 now a lot has happened in the last year i've had time to play around and experiment with a lot more linux distributions a lot more different desktop environments there have been a ton of awesome distribution releases and here and there i forced myself to use a lot of different things that i just didn't like so after all that my opinions of a lot of things have actually changed so this is going to be my refresh list of my favorite linux distributions this time for the year 2021 now this is not gonna be in order by most to least favorite uh because that's very hard i like and dislike some of these distros for different reasons so i'm gonna simply order these by the time in which i spent actually using these linux distributions throughout the last year and getting right into this list we have endeavour os this is the linux distribution i've definitely spent most of my time in and out of all of the arch-based linux distributions that i've tried this one is still and probably will remain my favorite for some time i've tried manjaro reborn arco linux a whole bunch of them but i always wind up coming back to endeavor and there truly is a good amount of reason for this and one when it comes to just installing an arch based linux distribution this is probably as easy as you're going to get in combination with the lightweightness and basically as close to just vanilla arch without actually going through the process of installing arch when it comes to actually downloading endeavor os you have one disk image iso file you don't have to go and pick your desktop environment prematurely you just get that single iso image put it in your system and there's an offline xfce installer and if you have an internet connection then you can go ahead and pick whatever desktop environment you prefer the actual package selection throughout the installation process is not too complicated you're really only picking those base packages that you need the desktop environment and some other drivers and printer support and things like that and then when you first boot into the system like i said you don't have too much bloat there's not a whole bunch of extra tools software or anything like that you get a simple startup dialogue that will help you do things such as update your mirrors update your system change some system configurations and do some things you're going to want to do anyways and with that the main reason why i like it is it's simply arch um you have access to the aur and endeavor os ships with ea so that makes it really easy to go ahead and pull other packages that you're going to want to need and truly set up and configure your system how you want and in addition when you actually install it there's not too much theming or extra extensions or anything but there is just a nice little light touch of their kind of endeavor os purple scheming depending on the desktop environment that you choose and overall i just think it's a beautiful system and if i had to pick one linux distribution that i had to stay in for ever it would probably end up being endeavor os now this next linux distribution isn't technically part of this list of five this is kind of a bonus for you and it's one that i've definitely spent a very large chunk of time in the year and that is ubuntu server it's not a desktop distribution obviously but when it comes to the actual time framing of me in linux a lot of that time has been spent in ubuntu server whether that be setting up jellyfin servers playing with nexcloud doing things to build the techhut form that i've been working on i've definitely spent a lot of time in ubuntu server and out of all of these server distributions i will continue using ubuntu server because it just is super easy to use i'm incredibly familiar with it when you actually install ubuntu server there's a huge list of snap packages that you could go ahead and pull including docker next cloud just a whole bunch of things it really makes it easy and the snap support in ubuntu server is awesome and i use uh ubuntu server to host my next cloud instance and speaking of hosting my next cloud server i actually do it on an ubuntu server through the node which happens to be the sponsor of this video the node is awesome because it is one of the largest independent cloud service providers out there and being that they're independent you're not really dealing with some huge tech giant but also due to their size you're going to get fantastic service the customer service has been fantastic in my time using it they've replied rather rapidly to any issues that i've had and actually spinning up your the node server is incredibly easy you just go you create your the node you select whatever linux distribution you want and they have a lot they have sent os they have ubuntu servers debian servers they have arch servers just a whole lot you pick how much ram and storage you want to give it and that's where the prices vary it's really easy to figure out and then even if you don't just want a plain server you could go ahead and use their one-click marketplace where you can install things such as game servers discourse forms media servers you could host your apps on it and if you go ahead and use the link in the description or you travel over to leno dot com forward slash tech hut you can get a hundred dollar sixty day credit to go ahead spin up some of the nodes play around with it and really experience for yourself how powerful and how wonderful of a hosting platform this is so with that said we're gonna go to number two on this list and this is one of those linux distributions that i forced myself to use for a long term to do a review on it and i ended up loving it a lot and actually switching back to it a few times throughout the duration of the year and that linux distribution is fedora most of my time was spent in fedora 34 when that was first released but i dabbled around in fedora 35 a little bit within the last couple weeks or so and it is just a great linux distribution i went into my fedora review being an absolute lover of kde plasma and i absolutely just despised the gnome or gnome desktop environment but after forcing myself to use fedora and the gnome desktop environment for that chunk of time after about a week or so the gnome desktop environment really started growing on me and that's because fedora just gives you a really vanilla pure gnome experience and i really did learn a lot about how a gnome actually works the actual configurability and customization of gnome is way more extensive than i thought it was going to be and even with that like right now on my main computer it's not fedora but i'm running gnome because of the experience that i had with fedora and with that running gnome on other platforms i can see why fedora is one of the best linux distributions to use with gnome one because of how closely related it is to the known project and two it just gives you the experience you're supposed to get and with that looking at just fedor i really like the update structure that they're using in one hand you have a really up-to-date software the repositories are incredibly up to date but you still get the stability of individual versions with a very predictable update cycle and actually picking between endeavor os and fedor for me is really difficult in what i would pick if i had to pick uh endeavor os barely gets it but fedora it would would be a pleasure to use on a full-time basis so now we're gonna go to number three on this list and this next distribution had a major update this year one that i made a couple different videos on and that i was very excited for and excited for good reason and that is zorno s the 16th version now if i had no background knowledge on somebody's experience with computing with linux with windows with anything and they asked me to recommend them a linux distribution with no hesitation i would recommend zorn os and that's because zorn os just gives you an incredibly user friendly experience especially to users who are familiar to the windows ecosystem and even if you're an advanced linux user there's going to be some features and customization options you appreciate one of them i love their store and you can choose what sources you're downloading from whether that be the flat hub repo just your apt it's an ubuntu based linux distribution so with that ubuntu base one you can completely change anything you'd like to and two if you're a new user you're gonna have that community support backing you up if you happen to run into any problems or issues now there's a couple of features that really make zorn os great and the most notable one for sure is their layout switcher you can easily switch between various layouts whether that be they have a couple different windows style layouts so they have like windows classic they have the windows 10 style layout and if you have the pro version you could get that kind of centered dock windows 11 style layout if you'd like to or a mac os layout on the pro version but then they have a bunch of linux layouts so if you're more familiar working in something like an ubuntu system you could get that with the dock on the side if you're familiar with just kind of a stock gnome they have a really nice custom stock gnome layout that you could go and choose from and then when it comes to theming they have really nice color schemes to pick from you could go light dark or mixed depending on the time of day and whatever settings you choose for that and then another absolutely wonderful feature especially if you're somebody who's coming over from windows who might not be too familiar with linux vs window package management is the windows side loading features if you go ahead and download an exe off the internet and try to install it just double click the exe on zorn it's going to give you a little pop-up that says whatever software is an unknown windows app and then it's going to recommend you to either install an alternative linux version or a similar application on your native linux repositories and if there's no options available for that it's going to give you a easy way to try to install it through line lutrus or whatever you may need to actually install that piece of software and when it comes to kind of going over these linux distributions i'm just kind of scraping the surface with some of the things they can do there's a lot more features in zorn i'm going to go ahead and link down below to an article which will feature links to more videos if you're interested in learning more about any of these linux distributions and next up on this list coming in at number four we have farron os now i've been running fair and os since their july snapshot release on my thinkpad laptop and overall it has been a fantastic experience just like zorn os this is another ubuntu lts based release so again you're gonna get that community support it's gonna work it's ubuntu basically but this one instead of using a known basis is using kde plasma and i've tried a lot of different ubuntu based kde plasma distros i've tried kubuntu and a few other of the plasma counterparts and out of all of them if you are interested in using a kde plasma distro fern os is magnificent one of the reasons why i like it it has a lot of the features that are kind of similar to zorin but with the kde plasma base the customization options are basically endless with what you can actually do with it and like with azorn they really try to limit you to those predefined themes and layouts and things like that while fahren os has some magnificent predefined layouts themes you're not really defined to it because you have the plasma system settings and you can change anything incredibly easily and fern os has some pretty cool tools that you could get it is one of those browsers that ships with fill validity but if you don't like that they have a web browser manager tool where it will give you a list of some of the popular linux compatible web browsers you click install and that will go ahead and install that browser for you and replace the icon on the bottom and more in depth to those layouts and accents it's a little bit more in-depth than zorn because you're gonna first pick your layout so you have doors which is uh it's a the doors layout is a windows layout basically you have mac and cheese which is mac os you have human which is kind of the ubuntu style layout and then you have classical in the fair no as default but once you pick your layout you're going to want to head over to global theme and then from there you're going to want to select the theme that properly matches that layout and most of these layouts have both light and dark variants and that's generally what's recommended but due to the fact it's kde plasma you can pick whatever color scheme whatever global theme that you would like to with whatever layout you want and there's no premium version so you're not going to have any of these layouts locked behind the paywall so that alone is awesome and then there are other tools such as there a transfer tool if you want to easily transfer files from a windows system and just overall i know the developer dominic personally and he spends a lot of time making sure everything looks good and there are some exciting features that are going to be coming out to zorn soon these pictures that you're seeing right now are just mock-ups but he's really spending a lot of time to make the fair and store an absolutely pleasurable experience when it comes to just overall software management so on a long-term basis i'm really looking forward to the growth and development of fern os and from there that is going to take us to pop os popos is another one that i ran on my thinkpad laptop before fahren os so for like the first half of the year i was running popos and then i played around with it off and on especially after they released the i think it's 21.04 version i could be wrong uh with their cosmic desktop environment basically when you use pop os it feels like the team over at system 76 took the ubuntu project and made it into a good operating system with popos you get the perfect amount of just basic configuration options it's strong it's stable and it's a highly compatible platform now there are a lot of things that make popos stand out and one of the most recent things is their cosmic desktop environment it's really just gnome with a lot of extensions but this is their first step in kind of making their own thing and overall there's just a whole lot of configuration options you can actually change the dock whether if you want it floating in the middle extending to the edge you can put it on whatever side of your monitor you would want up in the top you can enable or disable your workspaces and application options if you hit the actual windows or super key you get an awesome little search dialogue to both manage your actively open windows and search your applications or files to open up new windows and then on top of that you have some awesome workspace options as well as some really nice appearance options the pop shop is a fork of the elementary store but their configurations and customizations to it make software management within popo as an absolute pleasure and probably one of the best things about popos especially if you are somebody with a nvidia card is there just out of the gate nvidia support now you can download the regular iso or you can download the iso from the website that features those integrated nvidia drivers and then better yet if you're somebody who has a laptop with hybrid graphics you're gonna get really nice support for that hybrid graphics system and they even went as far to integrating the selection between integrated and those nvidia graphics within the actual gnome shell and when it comes to pop os i could make a whole 10 minute video they have the uh the pop shell tiling there's just a whole bunch going on in pop os that i absolutely love and pop os is one of these systems as well as any of the other linux distributions i mentioned previously that i can install on any machine and have a wonderful time with if i was somebody who owned a laptop with hybrid graphics it would definitely be running popos on it so with all that said my question to you is what is your favorite linux distribution you could give me a list kind of like i did or you could give me the one linux distribution that has just been rock solid for you throughout the last year i'm curious to what it is that you guys use on a daily basis and what you've had the best experience in with all that said i would love to thank our youtube members and patreon supporters mitchell valentino philmak kyle and teemo anthony thank you guys and thank you to all the other techie and techie plus members for supporting the channel and of course thank you to the node for sponsoring this video if you're interested in playing with ubuntu server and you don't really have the hardware or the means to do it locally firing up an ubuntu server on the node for five bucks a month is a really easy way to do that and you could go ahead and use that credit to do it basically two months for free depending on how much system resources you actually want to give your uh the node instances so with all that said i do hope you have a magnificent day uh please subscribe ring that bell so you do not miss any future uploads i got a lot of cool things coming to the channel that you're not going to want to miss like this video if you did leave that comment telling me what your favorite linux distribution is with all that said have a beautiful day and good bye

Channel: TechHut

Views: 145,016

Keywords: linux, linux tutorial, linux distros, arch, ubuntu, zorninos, fedora 35

Id: CDNMMskLp6I

Length: 17min 39sec (1059 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 03 2021