A note! the desktop field is completely optional! You can install any other desktop you like, but the listed are the “main” ones, usually recommended by the distro.
Linux Mint
- Country: Ireland 🇮🇪
- Experience: Simple
- Desktop: Cinnamon
Best distro for beginners. has two versions: One based off of ubuntu (default), and another one debian (recommended, LMDE)
Ubuntu
- Country: Britain 🇬🇧
- Experience: Simple
- Desktop: GNOME
Good distro, but has some controversies. Though it’s the most popular beginners distro by far.
EndeavourOS
- Country: Netherlands 🇳🇱
- Experience: Intermediate
- Desktop: KDE/GNOME/XFCE
My second favorite :) Arch based, easy installer and updater, friendly community and beautiful themes. I recommend this distro if you are into arch based distros without wanting the painful part of it.
OpenSUSE
- Country: Germany 🇩🇪
- Experience: Intermediate
- Desktop: KDE
It’s mainly built around using the GUI, with tools like yast. Uses KDE.
Manjaro
- Country: Germany 🇩🇪 / Austria 🇦🇹 / France🇫🇷
- Experience: Intermediate
- Desktop: KDE/GNOME/XFCE
Added because of popular recommendation. I recommend EndeavourOS more, since manjaro has a… history.
NixOS
- Country: Netherlands 🇳🇱
- Experience: Advanced
- Desktop: KDE/GNOME
My personal favorite <3 Great for servers. It’s not for the faint of heart, though hah. It’s an immutable distro, where there is no package manager, or manually modifying config files; your entire system is created with .nix files, not commands. Reproducable.
Arch
- Country: Canada 🇨🇦 (Yes yes, it’s not european but how can you not mention arch???)
- Experience: Advanced
- Desktop: None
Most popular distro for dedicated users, and for good reason; bleeding edge, full power over your system. Though you have to manually set up everything, from internet to your deskop environment.
Void
- Country: Spain 🇪🇸
- Experience: Advanced
- Desktop: XFCE
Great distro if you want something like arch, but without systemd or slightly more stable (Also, musl support). Obscure but amazing.
Debian [Honorary mention]
- Country: Global 🌍
- Experience: Intermediate
- Desktop: KDE/GNOME/XFCE
An honorary mention. Isn’t suited for everyone, but is the golden standard for servers, and the grandfather of a huge family tree of distros.
VanillaOS [Honorary mention]
- Country: Global 🌍️
- Experience: Advanced
- Desktop: GNOME
VanillaOS is a debian-based immutable operating system, which can install packages from any other distro and is very hard to brick.
That should cover a lot. Please heed the desktop warning, and please correct me/comment suggestions. This is not perfect, so please do criticize where possible c:
NixOS supports more than just KDE Plasma and GNOME, the installer is in one of those (It has the options KDE Plasma, GNOME and minimal (No GUI)), but in it you get the choice to install any* DE (It has like 5 or 6 choices, otherwise you can still install any other directly from your config) :3
EDIT: Nevermind, i didnt read the note at the top of the post, although i’d consider NixOS as having no main DE :p
I love this list because it’s about open source software, but I also agree to what @Polderviking says because open source transcends the boundaries of countries.
ultimate neckbeard moment
I’d just like to interject for a moment. What you’re referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.
Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called “Linux”, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project.
There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine’s resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called “Linux” distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.
Nah i agree :) FOSS software’s location matters much less than corporations. It does not matter much at all, really. Now that i think about it i should’ve added a disclaimer about this, i even agreed with this point from before. I was just inspired by blaze’s OpenSUSE post and decided to make a comprehensive list of european distros.
In my opinion, it is unfair to judge a distribution by it’s origin country. Because it’s an international effort regardless.
