Linux Mint

Cinnamon edition The closest Linux gets to a familiar Windows desktop that never stopped improving. Cinnamon keeps the menu at bottom left, open windows on the taskbar and the clock and tray at bottom right, so muscle memory works from the first boot. Version 22.3, released in January 2026, is a long-term support release maintained until 2029, and its Update Manager and built-in system snapshots make it hard to break anything by accident. It is built on Ubuntu, so most Linux how-to guides apply to it. The next major version, Linux Mint 27, is planned for Christmas 2026 on the newer Ubuntu 26.04 base; until it ships, 22.3 is the one to install.