**“Is Ubuntu a good Linux distribution for someone who has never used Linux before?”**

I recently came across this question on Quora and decided to weigh in.

If I had come across this question 15 years ago, I would have said “Definitely!”, without thinking twice. Back then Ubuntu was arguably the most user-friendly GNU/Linux distribution around (at least for free distributions). It was not as resource-intensive as it has grown to be — Ubuntu 5.04 needed a minimum of 32MB of RAM and 110MB of disk space; I bet the rampant telemetry hadn’t been snuck into it that much yet. Compare those system requirements of Ubuntu back then to Ubuntu’s system requirements today. So, yes, for a new Linux user, Ubuntu would have been the best choice of distribution, 15 years ago.

Fast forward a decade and a half, Ubuntu has become easily one of the top 5 resource-intensive Linux distributions, and it seems its focus has shifted more towards gathering as much information about the user as possible. Couple that with questionable additions to the core system like making Snap the default package manager, and one would say Ubuntu has lost its open-source track (Snap’s code is not open-source). Snap packages generally occupy more disk space, also, Snap packages don’t go through normal community vetting, and that has proven to be risky in the recent past.

Among other plusses of switching to Linux, a new user would most likely be looking for the following:-

1. A user-friendly user interface
2. Better or normal system performance
3. A more secure operating system
4. Cost-effectiveness (free and/or affordable software), etc.

But with today’s Ubuntu, only 1.5 or two of the four points above seem to be satisfied.

Check out this list for the top ten Linux distributions for beginners — Ubuntu still made the list though.

All that said, Ubuntu is still by far the most common Linux distribution, arguably because Linux beginners find it more user-friendly (or maybe they just haven’t seen other variants[?]). And of course, there are reasons for all the “questionable” shifts in direction and new additions to Ubuntu, valid reasons I believe.

So, no, Ubuntu is not a good Linux distribution for someone who has never used Linux before. It might give you the wrong idea about GNU/Linux operating systems.