The BEST Linux Distro for Windows Users? - AnduinOS

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:00]Hey guys, it's Bub here. In this video, we're taking a look at Anduin OS. Now, Anduin OS is a custom modification of Ubuntu that really makes it look and feel like Windows 11 without being a clone of Windows 11. I know that might sound a little confusing, but a few weeks ago we took a look at Linux FX and that was a clone of Windows 11. But, this OS is a modification of Ubuntu that's designed to make the OS look familiar to Windows 11 users while not imitating Windows 11. I thought it was really interesting. I'm excited to take a look at it because we don't take a look at that many Linux distributions on this channel. So, whenever I get a chance to, I definitely want to take a look at more Linux operating systems.

[00:00:41]So, let's boot this up and let's see what we can get ourselves into. All right, and here we are in the operating system. So, what we'll do is we'll go ahead and double click on the install Anduin OS on the desktop here and it is giving me a hard time launching that. It's actually giving me a hard time launching anything. Here's the installer. Doesn't look like there's too much customization from the default Ubuntu installer, but we'll just go ahead and continue through this. And of course, we want to erase disk and install Anduin OS and that should be it.

[00:01:13]So, we'll go ahead and continue with that. We are in the New York time zone and we'll go ahead and pick a name. So, we'll just go ahead and name this Anduin and password will be all lowercase hello. That's a very safe and secure password.

[00:01:28]And here we are. So, Anduin OS is a Debian-based operating system that is Ubuntu software repos designed to provide you with a better desktop experience. Let's go through this slideshow while we wait. We have our favorite apps. We have it's a good partner for developers. You can run Docker locally without any virtualization.

[00:01:48]Full open source. It is on GitHub. I did verify that.

[00:01:52]Privacy is in your hands. So, you can it won't collect any of your user information. The users have their own privacy.

[00:01:59]Steam is on here.

[00:02:01]For advancements in projects like Steam, Wine, and Proton, this situation is changing. More and more games are receiving support on Linux. That's something I had no idea.

[00:02:12]The official documentation for Anduin covers a wide range of issues. Oh, yeah, there is documentation I was reading on that. So, that's pretty cool. But, let's get this installed and then we'll be back. All right, and here we are on the desktop of Anduin OS. It looks very much like the Ubuntu login screen, rightfully so because that's what it's based off of. So, we'll go ahead and log in.

[00:02:33]And here we are in our desktop. Now, the reason you saw that lag there was simply because this is running in a virtual environment with really no graphics drivers. So, this OS shouldn't lag that bad in production. But, here we are.

[00:02:47]Starting on the desktop, we have two icons. We have our home folder, which just opens up our file explorer. We'll take a look there in just a minute. Then we have our trash icon, which also takes us into the file explorer.

[00:02:59]Moving down to the task bar, this is what really looks like Windows 11 and what I really think will help a lot of Windows users migrate to an operating system like this. Over on the right side, we have a show desktop button. We have our system time. We have a volume and our networking settings that are all joined together just like they are in Windows 11. So, that's very convenient for people that got used to that change, they can do the same thing here in the new version. Over to the left side, we have our software center, which I would assume is just the Ubuntu software center, but let's go ahead and take a look here. Does seem to be stuck here on refreshing data, but I trust this is the Ubuntu software center.

[00:03:38]We have our file explorer, which we were just in. We'll revisit that. We have Firefox web browser as most Linux distributions typically come with. And if we go into our about, let's just see what version of Linux or what version this is. So, we are running version 140.60 ESR, pretty cool nonetheless.

[00:04:01]And then we have our start menu. I'm not actually sure what it's called in Indeo OS, but again, this is really what makes it look like Windows 11 in my opinion and what would be really familiar for Windows 11 users to switch to an OS like this. So, starting at the bottom working our way up, just like in Windows 11, we have our username in the bottom left.

[00:04:19]And then over on the right side, we actually have more than what Windows 11 by default gives us. We have our power button, a settings icon, a terminal icon, and then a file explorer icon.

[00:04:29]Moving up to the middle section, we have our pinned applications, which by default there are quite a few Linux applications here including terminal, Shotwell, document viewer, Qualculate, which is just a different version of a calculator basically, Rhythmbox, disk usage, a bunch of pinned applications.

[00:04:48]And of course, these can be customized that you can unpin them from the start menu and change things around.

[00:04:54]But then we go into all apps, you can really see that this looks like Windows 11 here because we have all of our apps listed listed in a top-down alphabetically sorted list. Let's scroll through this list here.

[00:05:05]Calendar, camera, characters, chess, clocks, disk usage, disks, document viewer, document scanner, extensions, file roller, which is just an archiving tool, files, Firefox, help, logs, network tools, passwords and keys, power statistics, Qualculate, Remmina, which is remote desktop. I've actually never heard of that before. That's pretty cool. So, we have that remote desktop application. We have Rhythmbox, settings, Shotwell, software, sound recorder, startup disk creator, system monitor, terminal, text editor, transmission, videos, and weather. One thing I want to call out here is that there is really no bloatware on this operating system like we would see in Windows 11. So, all All I would say are nice to haves or necessary tools in the operating system, but there's nothing like bloatware like Windows 11 has. As I mentioned, let's get back into the file explorer here. We can see that I mean it looks like a standard Linux Ubuntu file explorer, nothing too crazy. Left side we have all of our locations. Then when we actually click in we have our individual folders. So again, it would take a little bit of getting used to if someone's used to Windows, but honestly this might be more simplistic for some of those users because there's not that many things you can up in this file explorer.

[00:06:17]We'll take this opportunity to look at the window borders here. So just like Windows, minimize, maximize, our exit button all over on the right side. I remember at some point, I don't know when, I don't think they do it anymore, Ubuntu had those buttons over on the very far left side. You know, now I think they're on the right side now, but at one point they were over on the left side.

[00:06:36]Pretty cool there.

[00:06:37]Let's go ahead and take a look at our system settings here. Looks pretty much like a standard Linux distribution settings pane here. Displays, sound, power, multitasking, appearance. It all looks very normal here. And we can change between light and dark theme. So wow, that even does look more like Windows 11. That's pretty cool. And then we can go to a dark theme, even changing our accent colors, but we'll stick with blue for now.

[00:07:02]I do also want to call out this wallpaper because this wallpaper is truly looks like Windows 11 at a glance.

[00:07:08]I mean obviously it's not, it's got the more sharper corners, but you can tell what they're trying to imitate. Lastly, let's go into our system monitor to get CPU and RAM utilization statistics. So looks like we're using 20.8% of our RAM, so 1.7 gigs, and then we are using, let's see, 2 3 2% of our CPU. So that being said, this is a brief overview of Anduin OS. Definitely let me know what you think about this ISO down in the comments below. And if you have any other ISOs you want me to take a look at, please also leave them in the comments below as I love doing viewer recommended videos. That being said, if you like this video, make sure to drop a like and subscribe if you're new on here, as I do all kinds of different technology videos, including device restorations. And with that being said, I'll see you all in the next one.