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.
Honest question. As someone who has used and loved MacOS for many years, what would be the best Linux distro for me?
For a new user, the most important things are usually a familiar feeling desktop environment, comprehensive default hardware support, and plenty of documentation in case you need it. The most important anti-things are needing to learn a bunch of new concepts right away and needing to use the command line, and experimental things that are know to break regularly.
Since you’re a Mac user, I would suggest KDE over Gnome for a desktop environment. Even though the default Gnome application bar looks very Mac-like and the default bar on KDE looks very windows-like, the rest of the KDE desktop feels much more Mac-like.
For the rest, you will want to use a common distro with a wide user base and a long history targeted at desktop users.
For those reasons, I would suggest either Kubuntu, or Fedora KDE.
elementary os.
Stick with MacOS, Apple isn’t shitting the bed nearly as hard as MS(lop). If you really want to switch, Mint is nice as a starter, and Bazzite, while intended for gaming, is mich, much more solid than I expected and is totally usable as a daily driver.
Have you used the latest macOS 26? The UI is terrible and constant bugs and glitches with the new liquid glass look.
I would sugest debian, it has the same “just works”-feel to it, and the gnome desktop environment shares some design philosophy with macos. The main downside is that it is often a couple of years behind on software updates. Is this is a dealbreaker, I recommend mint for all, fedora when you need redhat-only software and debian-sid if you feel adventurous.
All that said, if you have a good mac currently, it has the same UNIX-benefits as linux. Using “homebrew” as a package manager and “better touch tool” for the desktop tweaks solves most problems, this is what I do. You may of course want to run linux only software, if this is you then double check if you also need an x86-64 cpu (as opposed to arm) before reinstalling.
If you’re used to the UI and UX of Mac OS and not Windows then almost any distro will be rough. There’s Elementary OS that at surface level looks like Mac OS, but then you use the actual Linux programs and they’re just Linux programs.
I think the most popular one is similar- Ubuntu