With a heavy focus on user choice and freedom, jumping into the world of Linux distros can be quite disorienting – especially when taking into consideration the sheer scale of options on offer.

PCWorld’s guide helps users navigate the overwhelming choice of approximately 250 Linux distributions by focusing on five main strains: Debian, Red Hat/Fedora, Arch, Slackware, and Gentoo.

I've used Linux for 30 years - here's how I'd rank DistroWatch's top 10 ...

How everyone else ranks Linux distros doesn't have to be how you rank them.