Linux Lineup.

The Dell Latitude E5440:

This laptop being an enterprise machine from Dell, it meant it came with support for Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. This has made it fairly compatible for any Linux Distribution that you want to put on it. Inside, I have upgraded to a 250GB SSD with a 4th Gen Core i5 paired with 8GB of RAM. Not the newest specs, but enough to make a fair comparison. 

1. Kubuntu 16.04

Kubuntu has come a long way since it's predecessor versions. For me, looks is important and the new Plasma is very easy on the eye. Not only that it looks good out of the box, but it really open for customisation - it's easier to download themes and icon sets without any of this extracting them in a folder business. 

On a performance side of things, I've not experienced any lag or stuttering. RAM management is great, as expected with any Linux. Kubuntu is just an all round winner for me; it's snappy, looks sleek and has some really useful tweaking features built in. 

Download link: http://www.kubuntu.org/getkubuntu/

2. Linux Mint - Cinnamon

Not my screenshot. Cinnamon edition is basic and simple, for some people that works. 

Linux Mint is all-round great and with all the flavours it comes in, your bound to find one you like. On their website, you can download it with KDE, Xface and Mate environments. If that hasn't already gotten your attention, my favourite thing here is the amount of widgets that you can put on your status bar. Although that being said, it was touch and go with some as some do crash. As an interface, I didn't find cinnamon making me go 'wow' but it's good if you like simple. Battery life was great and a little bit better when compared to Kubuntu and an extra half an hour could make all the difference. 

Download link: https://www.linuxmint.com/download.php

3. Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

As you can see by the system specs, this isn't a screen shot I did

Straight out of the box, you can see that Ubuntu a nice design. Although 14.04 isn't actually the current LTS release, for some reason, my laptop refused to update to 16.04. It's a nice experience and you've used Ubuntu before, there isn't a huge change. It's clear to see that the software is full of Amazon Marketing when you use the search feature (as it also searches the item in the text field on Amazon) but I think that's an okay exception when you realise just how good and helpful that search tool is. If you want to tweak the environment, you'll end up needing to download unity-tweak-tool, I can see this prevents people from fiddling about with things they shouldn't. I often think that if my Mum woke out of bed and exclaimed she wanted Linux on her laptop, I'd give her this; it's so nice and easy to use. 

Download link (to the latest LTS): http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop

4. Xubuntu

Don't use this distribution if you're scared of mice

If you're looking for the balance of compromising features for a small lightweight OS; this is it. Xubuntu is a stripped down version of Ubuntu above. The system consumption is nice and low and I use it as a daily driver regularly on my Chromebook. Sure, it's pretty basic and it doesn't really come with that much, but that pays off if battery life is you thing. I'd use this on machines that don't really have a lot over power in them and are quite dated. 

Download link: http://xubuntu.org/getxubuntu/

5. Apricity OS - Gnome

Taken from the Apricity website

I've got to be honest here, this only just makes the list for reason: it's looks. I haven't come across anything that looks as pretty as this. For me, that comes at too much of a cost for my everyday use as its base is Arch Linux. Again, like Kubuntu, Arch has come a long but it comes with a completely different package software that makes no sense to me. If you're used to your normal 'apt-get install' install command, then using PacMan might be a little tricky. Of course, if I could be bothered to learn how to use it, with the rest of Arch, it would probably make number 1. 

Download link https://apricityos.com/

6. Cloudready

The blue chrome symbols  show the open source version of chrome unlike the usual colours

Cloudready is basically chromium, the developers version of Chrome-OS. I don't find Chrome-OS a useful OS from a Linux perspective. It lacks tons of features and limits you to what's available in the Chrome Web Store. You get a few inbuilt commands like top, ssh and bash shell, but not a lot else. It makes the list as it's so simple to use, being a glorified browser and all, and is good on the battery life front. If you have some really really old hardware, like back when Miley Cyrus was Hannah Montana - this is probably a good choice.

Download Link: http://www.neverware.com/#customerquotes

Got any other suggestions? Comment below: