Windows 12 could be another costly upgrade for supporters of Microsoft operating systems. A new report reveals that the AI-dominated OS will require AMD and Intel CPUs with a dedicated NPU. Possibly surfacing in late 2026, the follow-up to Windows 11 may also rely on subscriptions.
Newbies
https://linuxmint.com/
https://ubuntu.com/
Experienced
http://fedoraproject.org/
http://www.debian.org/
Advanced
https://www.kali.org/
http://www.archlinux.org/
Or just shop around. Its free and its better than windows
Also a raspberry pi with raspian is a great place to start for cheap. https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/operating-systems/
This is a very bad framing. We (as a group) need to stop ranking distros based off ease of use, and start considering actual use cases.
For example; I would never use Arch for anything I use to make money. Rolling distros aren’t well equipped for absolute top level reliability that I’m looking for to do my job or run my servers.
It is, however useful for people who love to experiment, want the bleeding edge of software, and are less uptime dependent.
Furthermore, kali is built almost purely as a pen testing environment, and not for generic use.