A note! the desktop field is completely optional! You can install any other desktop you like, but the listed are the “main” ones, usually recommended by the distro.

Linux Mint

  • Country: Ireland 🇮🇪
  • Experience: Simple
  • Desktop: Cinnamon

Best distro for beginners. has two versions: One based off of ubuntu (default), and another one debian (recommended, LMDE)

https://www.linuxmint.com/

Ubuntu

  • Country: Britain 🇬🇧
  • Experience: Simple
  • Desktop: GNOME

Good distro, but has some controversies. Though it’s the most popular beginners distro by far.

https://ubuntu.com/

EndeavourOS

  • Country: Netherlands 🇳🇱
  • Experience: Intermediate
  • Desktop: KDE/GNOME/XFCE

My second favorite :) Arch based, easy installer and updater, friendly community and beautiful themes. I recommend this distro if you are into arch based distros without wanting the painful part of it.

https://endeavouros.com/

OpenSUSE

  • Country: Germany 🇩🇪
  • Experience: Intermediate
  • Desktop: KDE

It’s mainly built around using the GUI, with tools like yast. Uses KDE.

https://www.opensuse.org/

Manjaro

  • Country: Germany 🇩🇪 / Austria 🇦🇹 / France🇫🇷
  • Experience: Intermediate
  • Desktop: KDE/GNOME/XFCE

Added because of popular recommendation. I recommend EndeavourOS more, since manjaro has a… history.

https://manjaro.org/

NixOS

  • Country: Netherlands 🇳🇱
  • Experience: Advanced
  • Desktop: KDE/GNOME

My personal favorite <3 Great for servers. It’s not for the faint of heart, though hah. It’s an immutable distro, where there is no package manager, or manually modifying config files; your entire system is created with .nix files, not commands. Reproducable.

https://nixos.org/

Arch

  • Country: Canada 🇨🇦 (Yes yes, it’s not european but how can you not mention arch???)
  • Experience: Advanced
  • Desktop: None

Most popular distro for dedicated users, and for good reason; bleeding edge, full power over your system. Though you have to manually set up everything, from internet to your deskop environment.

Void

  • Country: Spain 🇪🇸
  • Experience: Advanced
  • Desktop: XFCE

Great distro if you want something like arch, but without systemd or slightly more stable (Also, musl support). Obscure but amazing.

https://voidlinux.org/

Debian [Honorary mention]

  • Country: Global 🌍
  • Experience: Intermediate
  • Desktop: KDE/GNOME/XFCE

An honorary mention. Isn’t suited for everyone, but is the golden standard for servers, and the grandfather of a huge family tree of distros.

https://www.debian.org/

VanillaOS [Honorary mention]

  • Country: Global 🌍️
  • Experience: Advanced
  • Desktop: GNOME

VanillaOS is a debian-based immutable operating system, which can install packages from any other distro and is very hard to brick.

https://vanillaos.org/

That should cover a lot. Please heed the desktop warning, and please correct me/comment suggestions. This is not perfect, so please do criticize where possible c:

  • EuropeanMade@feddit.uk
    1·
    3 hours ago

    I love this list because it’s about open source software, but I also agree to what @Polderviking says because open source transcends the boundaries of countries.

  • Polderviking@feddit.nl
    7·
    3 days ago

    Maybe I’ll get down-voted so hard I end up below earth’s tectonic plates but I’m against this, in the context of open source software.

    The whole point is that it’s worked on by everybody from everywhere and we really need to not tarnish that ideology. Very little money changes hands in this desktop OS landscape and there’s thusly more to lose than to gain here.

    You’d literally only be caring about the location of the entity behind any distribution because all the packages that make up the vast majority of Linux distro’s are still going to be coming from the same places as, again, that’s the whole point.

    • fxomt@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
      2·
      3 days ago

      Nah i agree :) FOSS software’s location matters much less than corporations. It does not matter much at all, really. Now that i think about it i should’ve added a disclaimer about this, i even agreed with this point from before. I was just inspired by blaze’s OpenSUSE post and decided to make a comprehensive list of european distros.

  • coldsideofyourpillow@lemmy.cafeEnglish
    3·
    3 days ago
    ultimate neckbeard moment

    I’d just like to interject for a moment. What you’re referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.

    Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called “Linux”, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project.

    There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine’s resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called “Linux” distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.

  • kaidezee@lemmy.ml
    4·
    8 days ago

    In my opinion, it is unfair to judge a distribution by it’s origin country. Because it’s an international effort regardless.

    • 0x0@programming.dev
      2·
      3 days ago

      True, but if there’s some sort of legal body representing it, like a foundation or something, then the distro is legally bound by those country’s laws.

  • klu9@lemmy.caEnglish
    2·
    10 days ago

    Thanks for this post. Here’s my contribution:

    Search results for Lemmy communities for these distros:

    Others mentioned in the comments (I can’t vouch for their “Europeanness”):

    Others (I can’t vouch for their “Europeanness”):

    At this point I remembered Distrowatch and realized you can search by country of origin. E.g. Distrowatch search for active distros from Austria. And Italy.

    Too many European countries and too many distros for me to do them all. If anyone else wants to chip in, e.g. pick a country, feel free.

    And if one neighbouring country (Canada) being threatened by that f$#king guy can get an honorary mention here, let’s include another, too: Mexico.

    Mexicans also started the GNOME desktop environment, but I don’t think the upcoming GNOME OS is based in Mexico.

  • RambaZamba@feddit.orgDeutsch
    1·
    12 days ago

    I’m currently wondering whether this is going in the right direction. I understand that we are boycotting commercial products from the US, which makes perfect sense to me. But as someone who works on FOSS software myself, I wonder if we are hurting the right people by not using FOSS software that comes from the US. I think these are largely people who don’t support Trump.

    • Saleh@feddit.org
      2·
      10 days ago

      Also i find “Europeaness” a bit sketchy, if things are developed globally. We should embrace global cooperation rather than mimicking US nationalism with a new “European” nationalism.

    • mannycalavera@feddit.uk
      0·
      11 days ago

      If you look at a lot of the other posts they’re more along the lines of “these companies are based in the EU”… and that’s it. Not why they’re better than the US based equivalents or why the US based ones are worth boycotting.

      And to a certain extent I understand that. But the signal to noise ratio has lowered considerably in the past few weeks.

      • ehh@lemm.ee
        11·
        3 days ago

        the idea is to damage the american economy in a sign of protest against Trump’s policies mostly

  • FatsoJackson@lemmy.ml
    1·
    10 days ago

    one word about SuSE - one of the oldest still active distros. Is one of the few “real” enterprise distros with features like SAP certification. 10+ years support for SLES releases (Suse Linux Enterprise Server). Has Tumbleweed as rolling release like Arch and Leap for non-rolling. Also Micro OS (which is IMHO the future), and desktop is of course not only KDE but also GNOME and every other major and minor DE available. Don’t get discouraged by the Installer, it’s very powerful but also not simplest point and click. Also zypper and YaST take getting used to if you come from apt or pacman lands. Disclaimer I use Tw ;)

  • LimpRimble@lemmy.caEnglish
    1·
    11 days ago

    Manjaro was originally German/French. It is more international now, but still:

    The Manjaro project is backed by Manjaro GmbH & Co. KG, an open source driven company.

  • vga@sopuli.xyz
    1·
    11 days ago

    You should probably classify a lot of these as global. Like Arch: sure it was founded by a canadian, but nobody in the current dev team is from Canada.

    • mannycalavera@feddit.uk
      0·
      11 days ago

      I’m guessing because Ubuntu is not as “hip” as it once was. Don’t see Fedora there either and those two would be the largest, right? I know it’s main sponsor used to be red hat and that’s what it is based on, but it too could be in the honourable mentions section.

      • 0x0@programming.dev
        11·
        3 days ago

        Canonical might be in London but it’s just a UK version of Red Hat as far as i’m concerned. That’s why a lot of people don’t like Ubuntu.