i had past nightmares with ubuntu but i still want to stay away from windows, any recommendation?

What part of it disturbed you exactly? What particular nightmares did you have?

Hard to recommend when we don't know what exactly burnt you. I've heard a lot of nice words about Mint though.

Anyone who knows me knew this was gonna' come...

Try elementary OS, it is based on Ubuntu but it really doesn'y feel like it, it feels more like just debian based rather than ubuntu

@lxmcf not sure how "debian-based" is perceived better than ubuntu-based

ubuntu with a Windows like theme 😏

@Taqriaqsuk far less bloat from personal experience, ubuntu on it's own is super bloated

@ilPinguino it just crapped on itself and never restarted ever again(no error message or anything). just died on a perfectly new ssd. while im on the middle of a tight schedule project.

@elitedawn Nothing in the logfiles? If something bad happens, you'd usually find some clues there...

Anyway, I'd say try LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition) for size - more stable (but older) packages, very active package maintainers... Use Cinnamon if you're new and used to Windows or LXDE / XFCE if you're low on ressources...

And have fun!

@Jilano Just going to hotkey that quote, it essentially what comes out of my mouth every time someone asks anything distro related ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

https://distrochooser.de/en/
https://librehunt.org

You can skip questions you don't care or don't know anything about

@Charmesal I tried both... Use Distrochooser.

Distrochooser hooked me up with Devuan, Arch or LFS (fine by me, I prefer Debian because I have no problem with systemd, but I don't mind anything else either. LFS have always been pet projects of mine, not real working ones though).

librehunt recommended Kali for everyday use because "I like Privacy/Security" and "I'm an advanced Linux user". Can't say I'd recommend it to anyone who doesn't do pentests (or to anyone who does for that matter) - and no, Kali is not designed with security in mind (not my statement, it comes from Offensive Security, the creator of Kali). It's designed for minimal interference with user actions, whatever they may damage. It therefore lacks many security features one would expect in day to day use (SELinux, Firewall etc), trading them in for compatibility with attack tools.

you probably just hated gnome3/unity. we all did. but Ubuntu is better now I'm told. otherwise Debian based distros (or just vanilla Debian) like mint are great.

if you actually liked the Debian repos, the apt manager, Deb files, but just found it bloated and unfun, definite look at mint. or just use cinnamon on Debian. makes it way better.

Hello all! I'm the creator of LibreHunt! ilPinguino, could you please file an issue on GitHub about this, or maybe email me at least? I have exams coming up but I could probably fix these issues after a month or so! And, LibreHunt always displays 14-20 results, so Kali Linux / BlackArch (these two are known problems in the system) would just be the odd ones out, besides the rest fair options :D

@Avi-Wadhwa

Hi, I could send you an email with the issue if you'd like.

Sorry, it never really struck me to do that. I just got too used to dealing with proprietary software or some homegrown developments that refuse to change things (even in the face of outright security issues the scale of a bank limiting user password length to 5 characters, alphanumeric)...

Blame my job, I guess.

@elitedawn One word. Debian.