What linux distro?

hey guys newfa/g/ here, I finally decided I want to make the "big" switch from windows to linux, though i'm having a difficult time deciding on which one. People say as a beginner I shouldnt go straight into Arch so is there any similar distro that are newbie friendly?

Also I should probably mention that I want to get into coding sooner or later a distro that is good with that aswell?

Linux Mint
also if you have an AMD card just switch back to Windows, you'll waste your time because gaming is shit on AMD Linux

I'm using Elementary and it's awesome. It looks great out of the box and it's very easy to use.

The distro doesn't have to be like Arch btw that's just one of the distros i've seen quite often on ricing threads and recommended.

I'm on Intel but I have a seperate laptop for gaming so I'll be fine. Maybe I'll try Mint but I'm going to wait on more suggestions to decide.

but before using Linux Mint make sure to verify the ISO's checksum, you should do this for every distro btw.

use ubuntu gnome

I also advice Linux Mint, has good presets

this. Don't listen to others

The differences between distros are pretty small. The largest ones are the default software it ships with and package management. Arch, Gentoo etc come with very minimal default packages, so you have to know what you're doing if you want to use those (there are guides you can follow to install and configure everything, but it doesn't make sense to jump to the deep end when you have no Linux experience). Different Debian and Red Hat based distros (Ubuntu variants, Mint etc) would be a safe bet, since they're easy to maintain and come with sane defaults.
I'd recommend checking out different Ubuntu variants (vanilla, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Mint) on Live CD to see test different desktop environments and go with whatever you like the most.

Arch is definitely not newbie friendly. Well at least not the installation and ricing part. I would suggest Manjaro (Arch like, has separate repository) or Antergos (basically an Arch installer) as an alternative. Pacmam is still my favorite package manager, so I would recommend Arch or those mentioned.

Also, it may surprise you and others to hear but I've had generally much less issue with Arch than other popular Distros like Ubuntu, Debian or Fedora mostly because of their excellent straight to the point wiki which DESU is the best place to get help for ANY distro.

The wiki is one of the things that keeps pulling me back into Arch.
That thing is so good

only the wiki, any netinstall has probably the same advantages but none of the flaws

xubuntu

I am using Debian Gnome. It took too fucking long to install even on my SSD but I never had to install anything else since it comes packed with a lot of software out of the box. 10/10 would recoomend.

ubuntu and linux mint are the most newbie friendly

Linux Lite if your PC is shit, KDE Neon if it isn't.
ZorinOS if you have a boner for windows.

PClinuxOS

manjaro, then when you're ready, arch

GalliumOS