AnduinOS is Windows without the frustration, and it just cracked the top 15 distros

Published Aug 17, 2026, 1:30 PM EDT João has been covering the tech world for over 7 years, with a heavy focus on laptops and the Windows ecosystem. I also love all things tech and videogames, especially Nintendo, which he's always happy to talk about. Prior to joining XDA in 2021, he worked at Neowin: https://www.neowin.net/news/poster/jo%C3%A3o-carrasqueira/ There's no shortage of Linux distros to choose from out there, and with so many users coming from Windows, a good handful of them try to make that transition easier. Linux Mint and Zorin are popular options, but if you look at the charts on DistroWatch, you'll see a relatively new contender rising through the ranks: AnduinOS, which is the 11th most popular distro for the past 12 months. I've actually tested AnduinOS in the past, but since my last experiment, the project's scope has grown quite a bit, and it's looking much more sustainable, in addition to featuring a bit more polish. It's easy to see why its popularity has been growing. Easing the transition Windows users are most welcome here Since its inception, AnduinOS seemed to have a very clear goal to make the transition to Linux feel as painless as possible, and it delivered on that well enough. But the extent to which it tries to do that in version 2.0 has grown somewhat. When you first boot into AnduinOS, you're guided through a setup process that makes things feel more familiar. You can customize the taskbar to use the Windows 11 style or something more akin to the classic style of Windows taskbars, you can install a handful of popular apps, and even install a special driver (xpadneo) for the Xbox Wireless Controller, offering better integration and compatibility than the native support. You can even set up Bottles, allowing you to run Windows apps more easily with containerized Wine configurations. That being said, AnduinOS feels less like a Windows clone now. While the theme is still very much present, some work has been done to make AnduinOS feel more unique, including a new wallpaper and some polish to the overall UI. Like Windows, but quiet None of the ads, all the customization What makes AnduionOS particularly appealing to me (and maybe why it's so popular) is that it only tries to replicate Windows where it matters for familiarity. The overall desktop layout is similar, and with tools like Bottles and an easy-to-use app store, things feel familiar enough for anyone. But after that, you still get all the typical benefits of Linux that make it even better than a typical Windows experience. For one thing, the ads, or rather, the lack of them. AnduinOS skips all the things that make Windows so frustrating, whether it's forced online accounts, constant prompts to try this or that feature, or apps you can't easily remove. GNOME does occasionally prompt users for donations (that's outside the developer's control), but otherwise, this is a peaceful experience that Windows users haven't known in years. At the same time, AnduinOS offers a level of customization that Windows can only dream of. Sure, the default ArcMenu looks a lot like the Windows 11 Start menu, but you can tweak it to look like almost anything you want, adjust the size, spacing, layout, and so on. Colors and transparency can also be tweaked to your heart's content. And really, this goes for everything. A ton of GNOME extensions make AnduinOS look more like Windows, but you can mess around with these settings to make it look radically different if you're so inclined. It's the best of both worlds, because while the freedom of Linux is great, it can be intimidating when the starting point is radically different from what you're used to. That's why I'd never recommend something like the Hyprland desktop or Arch Linux if you want an easy transition from Windows. It just works By Linux standards, anyway Aside from making the transition to Linux a little easier in terms of the initial setup, AnduinOS is an operating system that works about as well as you could expect it to. I didn't have any issues with Bluetooth, internet, or audio on my machine, so I was able to jump right in and start watching YouTube videos. AnduinOS actually ditches built-in support for Ubuntu's Snap packages and packages an app store that feeds off Flatpak, which I much prefer. I installed Vivaldi with no issues, along with Lutris and a couple of other apps that all worked fine. I also installed Steam, though this part wasn't without its hurdles. The official Steam download didn't seem to work for me out of the box due to missing dependencies, so I had to go with Flatpak, and that version took a while to launch for the first time. Once I got past that, though, things were up and running as you'd expect. A more solid foundation It may last longer than I thought Part of my initial concern with AnduinOS was its longevity, since a lot of niche distros and open-source projects tend to be abandoned after some time. This is something even the creator of AnduinOS acknowledged last year, but things look a little more solid these days. For one thing, while the AnduinOS creator was a Microsoft employee, that seems to no longer be the case, and it would appear that more time is being dedicated to the project. There seems to be a bigger attempt to monetize it and make it sustainable, with the official website encouraging donations, but also offering paid enterprise support for businesses wanting to deploy AnduinOS to large numbers of devices. If there's money coming in, that's a big incentive to keep things running. On top of that, AnduinOS 2.0, released earlier this year, seems to have introduced some significant changes, so it's not just Ubuntu with some GNOME extensions installed on top of it. The OS is now built on a declarative model with a clear intent to be an easily maintainable platform. And while the scope of the declarative model isn't on the level of something like NixOS, the team eventually wants to expand this to provide an even more reliable and consistent experience. The team also claims the current version will be supported until 2041, which is a bold claim for such a recent project. AnduinOS is worth checking out A year ago, AnduinOS looked like an interesting project that probably shouldn't be touched by most users, but today, the OS seems to be much better positioned for a long-term future, and I hope that turns out to be the case. It may not be my favorite in every way, but it's a great stepping stone for Windows users wanting to make the move, which explains its popularity. AnduinOS