Linux Mint is pretty standard now and one of the most popular distros out there.

Ubuntu works fine too. You can get Xubuntu (Xfce4 ubuntu) too.

99% of distros I've tried haven't had any problems... except Linux Mint was a PIECE OF CRAP with LXDE years ago. But it's gotten better. Just don't use LXDE. It sucks.

Just pick Ubuntu, or a popular derivative of Ubuntu (like Xubuntu or Mint) and you can't go wrong. You can always change your Window Manager to be whatever you want later (though that can be a PITA to get working).

I use Ubuntu with the "dreaded" Unity window manager and I absolutely love it on this Chromebook. I can set the fullscreen negative colors, or, INDIVIDUAL WINDOWS so I can keep only some windows negative while videos playing stay normal color. It makes great use of screen space.

I just got a new Chromebook (I'm going to return) with an XFCE4 installation. It mostly works great. It can negate all, but I'm really missing the "negate single" because I use a great app called Guake.

Guake is a terminal host, but it's a drop-down terminal. Like Quake and otehr video games. You press it and it drops down from the top of the screen. So you can have 4 workspaces all with apps (one for gimp, one for an IDE, one for e-mail, ...) while Guake stays the same and has a series of tabs. I normally have htop for CPU/memory/process details in one tab, then "wavemon" which is an excellent wifi statistics one, and then a bunch of other tabs related to coding or building stuff.

Linux absolutely rules. The more you play with it, the more Windows feels like being handcuffed. You're like "Oh crap. All I want to do is remove all non-ascii printable characters from this document. It'd be a single line in terminal on Linux. Now I've got to find a damn program that can do it, and MANUALLY install it, and figure out how it works and ..."

Also, yeah, Windows 10 IS SLOW AS PISS on a slow hard drive. I've literally waited 30+ minutes before for it to become responsive on a FRESH INSTALL system. It's absolutely disgusting.

If you can get away from the windows-only games or music software/etc (or your games work in Wine), hell yeah, LINUX ALL THE WAY. My wife actually likes Linux. It used to be "scary" or "different" but nowadays if you can use an iphone and android phone, windows vs linux is really no different. All most people do is load up Chrome and use the internet.

Has anyone tried out the Windows 10 Linux subsystem? I like it.
Not good for game development, though.

I haven't used fullscreen on Ubuntu in a while. Maybe you need
ALLEGRO_FULLSCREEN_WINDOW?