I have played arround with pretty much any distro you could find on distro watch etc. And if i have to give a recommendation, simply stay with one of the bigger dogs in game. Those bigger distributions that are allready there for manny years have a huge support base, and there is allot of help to be find if needed.
so the issue i have with the Linux "community" is the same issue i have with other online communities. things are created specifically for new users, new users come in asking "hey, what thing should i be doing/using?" and are then quickly snowed under by people claiming that the specifically new user thing is shite, because they are not new users and have moved on to X or Y, and X/Y is sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much better than Z because [insert advanced user things]. and then the new user takes them at their word, DOESN'T use the new user thing, and ends up running into problems. they then ASK the advanced users "hey, this thing you told me to use is hard!" and either gets a load of complicated answers which they don't understand, OR gets referred back to the new user thing they were persuaded not to use in the beginning. they most likely then proceed to ragequit, which brings mockery and self masturbation all around. helping exactly no-one.
tl;dr: no. not really. people should be given as much of a head start as possible. a non frustrating experience will then not only lift up the people who're predisposed to charge into challenges and learn the hard way, but also the people who're just mildly curious and a positive experience will help FOSTER an attitude of wanting to learn. imo.
Honestly, Manjaro has been my go-to recommendation in person lately. I keep finding my way back to it because of the AUR and the "stability" of if. I've seen less problems coming out of Manjaro than many other distros lately.
It's definitely got a learning curve, but once you get through the first week or so (assuming you're already comfortable with a terminal) you're off to the races.
@Goblin, That's why I always try to be up front about the learning curve and difficulty. Sometimes I've got my head so deep in the rabbit hole that I forget what the sun looks like though.
I fully understand and get your point. You are making a good and valid point. I agree with you.
BUT
As is get it the Question is: What is a good Distro to operate and use as daily driver WHILE learning GNU/Linux.
And when, in my opinion, you look for a distro under those parameters you do want a robust, well used, well documented, well featured distro. I really dont wanna go with the storys but i started with ubuntu and loved ubuntu for exactly the thing it does so good: look very friendly and good for begin ners.
Well, we are not talking about the average citizen here. OP knows his stuff, works and learns in this field and WANTS TO LEARN how to OPERATE GNU/LINUX.
In my eyes you have to come up with a distro that does that and in its essence that means go enterprise distro.
So i conclude that FEDORA will make a very fine choice. Even comes with Gnome3. I use it on my machine and on my MacBook, very nice. I even use it in my LPIC-1 Certification Workshop Seminar whatever you call those things. The machines run win10 with Debian 8.7.1 in an OracleVM, its madness. What do i use!? Well, Fedora25 with fucking pre-installed Boxes as VM for Debian 8.7.1 and do most things on both Distros.
Maybe im a bit biased, but given that you have a capable young human who wants to learn GNU/LINUX i say: get the best tool! And not giving this person the most shiny, fluffy and squanchy tool.
BUT:
@anon18276093 : Im glad you wanna learn GNU/LINUX, please do so. Choose any Distro you like and then work with it. If you have question, please please ask, we all wanna help out.
Yeah the new Manjaro 17.0 release is really nice. Till now tried out the XFCE flagship and the Cinnamon community version. Both are pretty nice indeed..
Yeah the i3 version is blazing fast. Cinnamon in particular doesnt run as smoothly in a virtual machine. But thats also a thing with Linux Mint Cinnamon basiclly. Its really ment for installing on hardware, with a reasonable gpu basiclly. What i like about Cinnamon is that indeed users that come over from Windows7, should really not have much issues to get used to Cinnamon. The Linux Mint team does a pretty good job on that. They have allot of settings at the right places and what not. And its pretty much good to go out of the box. Also their own Xapps forks are pretty neat.
XFCE is basiclly allways a sollid choice, its a slow developing desktop. Their Whisker menu is great, the only thing is that settings arent allways in the places you expect them to be. So it needs a littlebit more time to poke arround to find certain things. It takes a little bit more time and afford to tweak and get used to.
I al can say is avoid the politics of the distro wars and just use what is best for you. I like Manjaro,Opensuse,Fedora. I have use Mint. Mostly, it is all better than windows but with a learning curve.
I second that. More people around who can help or point you in different directions, the better. @MisteryAngel has made a nice survey here.
As to specific choices - - ? Depends on what you want to do. For software development, I started with Linux with pre-Fedora Redhat and rode with that through Fedora 10, then migrated to Gentoo. Why? I wanted to be able field strip Linux down to its essential bits and then reassemble it the same or differently, in the dark. I found Fedora/Gentoo very supportive for that particular arc - both have big, engaged and helpful communities. However, not everyone wants to take apart and put together operating systems as a hobby. If, instead, you just want to use Linux and have a straightforward, uncomplicated existence with it while you pursue other interests in Life, then any of the main stream distros are good. Read the distro support forums - try to see which ones have useful content, and are not too much wrapped up in distro politics and other noise. At the end of the day, the folk in these support forums are the ones who are going to be there for you when it's midnight before the paper is due and the damn box doesn't boot.
Its the Sapphire Fury Nitro I'm going to bundle it with a PNY 480GB SSD and see what I can get for it on ebay... Its looking like $250-$280 based on similar.