Entropy is an important tool to describe the degree of uncertainty of fuzzy sets. In this study, we first define a new entropy and distance measure in the linguistic q-Rung orthopair fuzzy (LIVqROF) environment, and verify its correctness and rationality. Secondly, in the LIVqROF environment, the new entropy formula is effectively applied to the multi-attribute decision making (MADM) with unknown attribute weights, which provides a new idea for solving the MADM problems. Finally, the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method are verified by a numerical example.