Pdflatex is mature and has been availble in linux for many years.
On a recent linux systems with texlive from 2021 or 2022, lualatex, although new, is mature enough for routine use and will also make pdf directly. Unlike pdflatex, lualatex was designed to support unicode fonts. Users outside Western Europe and North America are often discouraged by difficulties using pdflatex with names of people and places in .tex files.
Pdflatex is mature and has been availble in linux for many years.
On a recent linux systems with texlive from 2021 or 2022, lualatex, although new, is mature enough for routine use and will also make pdf directly. Unlike pdflatex, lualatex was designed to support unicode fonts. Users outside Western Europe and North America are often discouraged by difficulties using pdflatex with names of people and places in .tex files.