3d ago

List of European Linux Distributions (inspired by blaze's post)

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)

https://www.linuxmint.com/

Ubuntu

Country: Britain 🇬🇧
Experience: Simple
Desktop: GNOME

Good distro, but has some controversies. Though it's the most popular beginners distro by far.

https://ubuntu.com/

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.

https://endeavouros.com/

OpenSUSE

Country: Germany 🇩🇪
Experience: Intermediate
Desktop: KDE

It's mainly built around using the GUI, with tools like yast. Uses KDE.

https://www.opensuse.org/

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.

https://manjaro.org/

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.

https://nixos.org/

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.

https://voidlinux.org/

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.

https://www.debian.org/

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.

https://vanillaos.org/

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:

79 comments

one word about SuSE - one of the oldest still active distros. Is one of the few "real" enterprise distros with features like SAP certification. 10+ years support for SLES releases (Suse Linux Enterprise Server). Has Tumbleweed as rolling release like Arch and Leap for non-rolling. Also Micro OS (which is IMHO the future), and desktop is of course not only KDE but also GNOME and every other major and minor DE available. Don't get discouraged by the Installer, it's very powerful but also not simplest point and click. Also zypper and YaST take getting used to if you come from apt or pacman lands. Disclaimer I use Tw ;)

Thanks for this post. Here's my contribution:
Search results for Lemmy communities for these distros:
Linux Mint
Ubuntu
EndeavourOS - no results at time of this post
OpenSUSE
NixOS
Arch
Void
Debian
Others mentioned in the comments (I can't vouch for their "Europeanness"):
Arcolinux (Belgium?) - home - lemmy search - no results at time of this post.
CachyOS (Germany?) - home - lemmy search
Mageia (France?) - home - lemmy search - no results at time of this post.
Manjaro - home - lemmy search
OpenMandriva (France?) - home - lemmy search
PearOS (Romania?) - home "adblock detected" k bye - lemmy search - no results at time of this post.
VanillaOS (Italian-led I believe) - home - lemmy search - no results at time of this post.
Zorin (Ireland) - home - lemmy search - no results at time of this post.
Others (I can't vouch for their "Europeanness"):
Antix (Greece?) - home - lemmy search - no results at time of this post.
MX Linux (Greece?) - home - lemmy search
Q4OS (Czech Republic) - home - lemmy search - no results at time of this post.
Slax (Czech Republic) - home - lemmy search - no results at time of this post.
Solus (Ireland?) - home - lemmy search
At this point I remembered Distrowatch and realized you can search by country of origin. E.g. Distrowatch search for active distros from Austria. And Italy.
Too many European countries and too many distros for me to do them all. If anyone else wants to chip in, e.g. pick a country, feel free.
And if one neighbouring country (Canada) being threatened by that f$#king guy can get an honorary mention here, let's include another, too: Mexico.
Nitrux - home - lemmy search - no results at time of this post.
Mexicans also started the GNOME desktop environment, but I don't think the upcoming GNOME OS is based in Mexico.
- Thank you! Sorry for ignoring my inbox for some time, i've been slow these couple of days. I tried to avoid more obscure distros/forks since they're harder for users. I've gotten multiple manjaro recommendations, and i wanted to add vanillaOS but it's small (though why not lol) I'll add them, thank you :^)
  
  You're welcome :)
  Obscure distros vary in difficulty, some are quite easy, but generally the more obscure they are, the less chance of support through forums, chat rooms etc. That's the main reason why I personally moved from more obscure to more popular (Mint).
  Vanilla OS is still pretty obscure (it has Wikipedia pages in only 2 languages, Spanish and German), but I think it's designed to be pretty unbreakable by noobs. (I haven't tried it yet, so can't vouch for that.)
- Manjaro is German, French and Austrian.

I'm currently wondering whether this is going in the right direction. I understand that we are boycotting commercial products from the US, which makes perfect sense to me. But as someone who works on FOSS software myself, I wonder if we are hurting the right people by not using FOSS software that comes from the US. I think these are largely people who don't support Trump.
- Also i find "Europeaness" a bit sketchy, if things are developed globally. We should embrace global cooperation rather than mimicking US nationalism with a new "European" nationalism.
- I completely agree. I think FOSS software is way harder to control by a corporation (especially licensed copyleft) Personally i don't think it's harmful to use OSS software from any country at all. Whether by chinese, belgian or american as long as it is open source, it's fair game i think.
  I shared this post since i thought this community might enjoy it, but all distros are fine.
- If you look at a lot of the other posts they're more along the lines of "these companies are based in the EU".... and that's it. Not why they're better than the US based equivalents or why the US based ones are worth boycotting.
  And to a certain extent I understand that. But the signal to noise ratio has lowered considerably in the past few weeks.

Linux Mint is honestly amazing. I always read about it being labeled as "for beginners" or being "boring" almost as if that's a bad thing. I just wanted something that works out of the box and not take on a new hobby.. And I got just that with Linux Mint. Highly recommended
- Good to know! Being a Canadian, I'm pretty determined to transfer over to linux before Microsoft stops supporting windows 10 but have been pretty intimidated by various horror stories etc.
  
  It will be an adjustment, but for most people it's really not a difficult thing to get used to. Just need to wrap your head around different installation methods, different file system layouts, and just the fact that you have so much freedom available to you.
  Feel free to DM me if you have any questions about adopting Linux! Even if you think it's a stupid question.
  
  The honest truth is that it takes some time to get to an 'expert' level where you can be confident about what you're doing, but simply setting it up and using it for basic tasks (following some guide) is pretty darn straightforward. Most people that have issues tend to have them with use cases (eg. someone wants to edit photos but can't get the same results as with Adobe Lightroom with alternative applications) or with specific bits of hardware (maybe they have a laptop which requires specific windows-only drivers to get the full functionality out of the trackpad, WiFi card or battery optimisation). So if you set it up and the hardware all works, you'll probably be fine for all the basic tasks most people need, and you will gradually pick up advanced knowledge as you go along.
  
  Canadian person! If you break it, ask me and I will do my best to non-snarkily assist. I am working on becoming less snarky, so it's practice!
  
  I broke my system several times and probably will continue to do so. Linux really shoehorned it into my thick skull to make backups xD
  Apart from that I can recommend saving any important data on a seperate drive or partition from the OS and keeping a thumbdrive with the live OS around. If the system is truly borked, you can boot the liveOS and do some damage control, like getting important data out, before reinstalling the system.
  Best of Luck on you Linux journey. :)
  
  If it breaks more is because you are free to do more with it. Just try dual booting or even just via a live "install". There's nothing to lose and a lot to gain.
- I've been distro.hopping for years. I am now setting up my new home server and because I plan to also use it as a daily driver, Linux Mint is my choice. It just works. I like KDE, but it gives me too much choice, so Cinnamon it is.
- I just wanted something that works out of the box and not take on a new hobby…
  That's it, I have plenty of things to tinker with but, on my laptops and desktops, I really don't want to have to do much messing about. I just need to install and go. I'm currently on Ubuntu but it'd be rude of me not to try Mint, especially now I know it is from Ireland.
  
  Mint really is simple to use. Other than the desktop (layout, look and feel), and a few changes in system apps (the backup app, etc.), you won't need to change much about how you use it. Even the bare, raw internal config files would basically be the same (if you copied your user profile over), because Mint is Ubuntu under the hood.

Whaaat linux mint my beloved is Irish! Awesome!

I’m pleasantly surprised by the country origins of Arch and Mint.
- Yep. Honestly i'm just happy i got to recommend them here lol
- I chose Mint basically because it is European distro. Secondly because it uses Cinnamon and apt. It’s just a great way to replace Windows. Works like a charm, very easy to use and maintain.

I've been using Mint for ages and never realized it's Irish

Hooray!

Wait Arch is Canadian?

What about Ubuntu? Canonical is based in London (registered in the Isle of Man iirc).
- True. I know a lot of Linux people hate Ubuntu but I think it's a decent distro especially for beginners, and like you say, Canonical is based in London.
- I'm guessing because Ubuntu is not as "hip" as it once was. Don't see Fedora there either and those two would be the largest, right? I know it's main sponsor used to be red hat and that's what it is based on, but it too could be in the honourable mentions section.

Seems remiss not to mention Ubuntu, which is British.
- I've added it, thanks

You should probably classify a lot of these as global. Like Arch: sure it was founded by a canadian, but nobody in the current dev team is from Canada.

Isn't Canonical (Ubuntu) a UK-based company?
- I don't really know anything about them, but I've always thought "Canonical" was a cool name for a company.-
  
  As with Oracle.
- Added

There's Mageia and openMandriva from France !
PikaOS is from UK I guess.
It's hard to enumerate all of arch based distro but CachyOS is German (not sure ), and archolinux is from belgium.
Europe work on open source in general is strong, I love it !

Manjaro was originally German/French. It is more international now, but still:
The Manjaro project is backed by Manjaro GmbH & Co. KG, an open source driven company.

Desktop: None
lmao
Also I never knew NixOS was European! Good post
- Thank you!

Nooooooo I use elementary 😭
- Unless you're paying for it somehow, I think ur good 😭 FOSS doesnt tend to be included in economic boycotts
- Never used elementary but always admired it. A shame :(
  
  The good thing about Linux is that you don't buy it

Arch based Manjaro - German: https://manjaro.org/

Can Debian not be added here? Linux Mint is based on Debian, and no company owns Debian.
- Added!
  
  edit: wrong info

Is LMDE also the one that would be recommended for beginners or, as one, should I stick to the Ubuntu-based?
- Because its been Mint-ified, there's not a huge amount of difference apart from the positive step of not shipping with Snap. I use LMDE and if you stick with Cinnamon you're not going to notice much difference at all. You can trial it on a live usb if you want.
  
  Snap and Cinnamon being UIs, right?
  Sorry, but I am THAT much of a beginner.

What about Zorin? I think it is one of the best to Show Windows users a Linux experience.

Would also mention (have not ...yet... tested it myself) PearOS, an Arch Linux flavor from Romania.

Some weeks ago Mint and GraphyOS seemed to be one of the bigger suggestions.

Mint has a few desktops, including KDE
https://linuxiac.com/how-to-install-kde-plasma-on-linux-mint-22/
I have Cinnamon Mint on my laptop, was thinking of checking this out as I do like the KDE desktop.
- I keep a Mint XFCE installed (not installer, installed) on a thumb drive that looks just like a mouse dongle. It's rescued so many computers... Like, at least six.

Add cachyOS too. Arch based from Germany and one of the hottest risers.
- Arch is not based from Germany.
  
  But cachyOS is. It is an Arch based distro.

Curiously, Debian images/ISOs are hosted on servers in Sweden.

I really appreciate these lists.
I would like to point out, however, that some of these distros are not that user friendly. Arch is notoriously not beginner friendly, endeavouros is slightly better but I would still not recommend if you are just fresh off the boat from Mac or Windows. Opensuse is great but its very professional based.
Pick a distro that works for you. If they are open sourced thats already most of the way there! Even devs based outside of the EU will likely share our gripes against the US's authoritarian shift and anti-big tech vibes.

79 comments