Linux is free, and the real copy is always on the distro's own website. This page gives the official home of each distro the video touches, explains what Desktop, Server and LTS actually mean, and shows when a mirror or a torrent is genuinely official.
Linux has no single owner, so there is no single Linux download page — each distro is its own maker. That is not a problem; it is the rule that keeps you safe. If the file came from the distro's own domain, or from a mirror that page itself lists, and its checksum matches the published one, you are holding the genuine release.
👆 Type these addresses yourself instead of following ads, blog buttons or video-description shortcuts.
On every distro's home page, the download section sits one click away. The habit that matters is arriving there by typing the address yourself. Search results place ads, copycat blogs and download portals above the real site, and those middlemen are where bundled junk and wrong files creep in.
Big projects spread downloads across mirror servers around the world so files arrive faster. A mirror listed on the official download page is vouched for by the project itself, and the checksum lets you prove the mirror served the genuine file. A mirror advertised by a random blog or portal carries no such promise — go back to the official page and choose from its list instead.
Several distros offer a torrent on their own download page to save bandwidth. That torrent is official because the project published it, and the checksum check still applies afterwards. A torrent of the same name found on a general torrent site is a different animal entirely — nobody vouches for what its seeders are serving.
Every distro here publishes SHA256 checksums beside its images. Download the checksum file from the same official page and compare it with your file using certutil -hashfile, exactly as the hash guide in this set shows. Two minutes of checking turns a hopeful download into a proven one.
Choosing a Linux family, a distro and its version type on screen — the full walkthrough is in the video.
▶️ Watch Full VideoUbuntu's LTS Desktop release. It has the largest community and the most written guides, so almost every problem you meet already has an answer. The others are excellent too, but Arch in particular expects you to enjoy reading documentation.
Yes. These are open-source systems; downloading and using them costs nothing and needs no key or activation. If any website asks you to pay for an Ubuntu or Debian download itself, you are on the wrong website.
Look for the file ending in .iso in the Desktop section — names usually include the version and amd64, which simply means a standard 64-bit PC. Files named SHA256SUMS are the checksum list, not the system.