Linux

I'm well past the age where distrohopping is "cool" (and I don't have the time for it anymore). So I take a pragmatic approach to choosing which distro to install on my systems.

• Fedora Workstation on my main laptop because it's the distro that works better on it, it has reasonably up-to-date software without the hassle and problems sometimes present with rolling releases, and I really like the native GNOME workflow.
• Linux Mint XFCE on my spare laptop because it only has 6GB of RAM (I plan to upgrade it, but it's not a priority right now) and sometimes I lend it to my mother and nephew, and XFCE is a very easy to use DE. Also, LM is stable and does not cause unnecessary problems, and has support for the laptop's touchscreen right out of the box.
• Debian 12 LXQt on a netbook which I use occasionally, mainly when I'm feeling like just browsing Gopher and Gemini.
• Debian 12 32-bit headless on my home server, which is just an old netbook I got for free. I have my music collection on it, which I listen to via MPD. It also serves as the main node of my Syncthing setup.

I've used many others in the past (Arch, Endeavour, openSuse, Slackware, Slax, etc.), but right now I think that the Fedora-Debian-Mint combo is the best for my needs.

CachyOS, because I wanted something arch based due to the archi wiki and rolling releases.

My media boxes run Ubuntu, but that will change when they get rebuilt/replaced at some point, most likely to Debian

Every single time I try something new I reinstall Fedora within a day, pretty sure it's just Stolkholm Syndrome at this point

Over the past few years I went from using Debian Stable, to Debian Testing-Unstable mix (this is a supported way of using Debian look it up), to Debian Unstable/Sid on my main PC.

I think they all can be used for different purposes, and because they all use basically the exact same tools and utilities I don't have to fiddle with figuring out the specific commands I need to run if I need to tweak a server.

I've been using Arch since October 2019 and I've stuck with it because it has been a really comfortable experience. I really love the package manager. The packages are usually new enough to not cause me any major problems but are tested enough to not break anything. Regarding the latter point, mileage might vary. I have never had anything break on me that I haven't broken myself (and I don't update very frequently) though I know not everybody is sharing that experience.

1 year ago I also started using NixOS on my desktop and it's been a very interesting experience. Design wise it's pretty good but there are a number of things that really annoy me. Some days I'm really considering putting NixOS on my laptop and some days I'm leaning more to putting Arch back on my desktop.

Ubuntu. Started in the Slackware days, tried a lot of distro's. Got used to debian commands/layouts etc. still happy to move to Centos for security focused installs. I find Ubuntu has a ton of support and general updates that fix anything I can find broken.

Why do you use the distro you use?

I've used many distros over the years (and test spin up many in virtuals to see what they are like) but keep coming back to Debian. I also like vanilla ice cream.

I dual boot Fedora and Arch. Fedora was just a fluke because it seemed like one of the most mainstream distros, and I was a Linux noob.

I liked Arch though because the Arch wiki is so useful for a beginner to learn from, even if you're not on Arch. At first, Arch seemed too complex and difficult for me, as a beginner, but when I kept finding myself at the Arch wiki when troubleshooting, I realised how powerful good documentation is. I installed Arch with a "fixer-upper" type mindset, with the goal of using the greater power and customisability that Arch offers to build a config/setup that worked for me (learning all the while). It was a good challenge for someone who is mad, but not quite so mad as to dive into Gentoo or Linux From Scratch

Arch on the Desktop, Debian on the servers for peace oft mind.

Primarily Garuda these days. It's basically Arch with some user-friendly additions. The major reason I tried it on a then-new gaming laptop was the actually really good IME hardware detection and minimal fuss NVIDIA setup using their latest drivers.

I was having enough headaches trying to get graphics actually working properly on the Debian-based distro I had been using, that I said fuck it and tried something that would hopefully get things working for me so that I could at least see that configuration to figure out where I'd been going wrong. Then I liked it enough that I have mostly just stayed there on this machine. (Did finally get things fixed on the other side, though.) But, I was already fine with Arch, which probably helps.

The amount of software available in the package manager, without adding external repositories, exceeds that I've seen in any other distro I've used. Even with epel, I feel like others fall short.

The ability to modify the build time flags of software while still using the package manager is also huge. I hate when ffmpeg doesn't have speex support because some upstream dev figured it was a corner use case.

It's me, I'm the target demographic. I'm the one asshole who wants to build ffmpeg with speex support, clamav without milter support and rxvt WITHOUT blink support.

There are some pretty great userspace helpers too. Things to ensure your kernel is always built with the same options. Things to upgrade all your python or perl modules to the new interpreter version for you. Tools for rebuilding all the things based on a reverse dependency search.

Slotted installs are handled in a sane, approachable, and manageable way.

The filesystem layout is standards compliant.

I recall someone on /r/Gentoo saying something like "Gentoo is linux crack, when you get a handle on it, nothing compares."

When I boot my laptop into fedora/arch/mint/etc (or really any non-bsd based distro), I feel like I'm using someone else's laptop. There are a bunch of git repos under /usr/src for the software I wanted that wasn't in the package manager. I need to manage their updates separately. Someone else has decided which options are in this very short list of GUIs. I'm using whatever cron daemon they chose, not the one I want. Why is there a flat text log file under /var/db/? Why won't you just let me exist without any swap mounted? $PATH is just a fucking mess.

I use bazzite. I prefer fedora (that's what I have on my laptop) but the Nvidia drivers consistently give me trouble with fedora on my desktop. I'd get it stable for a little bit then something broke. eventually I got tired of it and tried bazzite since I had heard it was better in that regard. I love the out of the box Nvidia support as well as the HDR support with no extra steps. I'm really not a fan of immutable distros in general, I think rebuilding the ostree everytime I need to install a system package not available in any other way is super annoying, but it just works and that enough for me right now. I also enjoy some of the software it comes packaged with, like btrfs snapper and a very comprehensive ffmpeg build. I'll probably switch away from it to try something new this summer, but at least until my finals are over I just need it's stability.

I've been using Garuda for... Two or three years? I've done a lot of distro-hopping looking for something that won't just break on me. I used Ubuntu for a long time but kept running into situations where it would break, such as boot loops. Eventually I settled on Garuda because it ships with newer software and Nvidia drivers, which is helpful because I use my PC for gaming. I have stuck around because it's garuda-update command automatically makes a backup of your system out of the box, and you can select to boot into a backup in grub then restore it really easily. There have been a couple times where something has broken on an update, but when that happens I can immediately restore the backup, and I don't even need to remember to run a backup manually. I do feel that the default theme is a bit gaudy so I swapped it to a default KDE, but other than that I've had pretty much only good experiences with Garuda.

PC: Cachyos love the aur and the compiler optimizations + they compile or put aur packages in their repos which saves time by not making you compile anything

Laptop: Linux mint easy to use and stable

Phone: Android (does it count??)

OpenSUSE Tumbleweed because it's very up to date yet reliable, package management doesn't require me to get my head around anything complicated, automatic btrfs snapshots allow me to rollback if I mess anything up, and I like KDE Plasma and the YaST utilities.

I primarily run Linux server distros for what I like to do. I usually do Debian since it's a nice base to just add whatever on to (sudo isn't even installed out of the box) so I have been working on a customized install script but if I don't feel like messing around too much I just go with Ubuntu and avoid using snaps for anything I care about (especially Docker, like wtf is with the snap version of Docker). I like the default toolset of Debian based distros and not having to screw with SELinux.

I started on Ubuntu, tried 8.04 and went back to windows XP, tried 10.04 and stayed.

20.04 was my last Ubuntu, bounced around for a while, but I have settled on Mint. Been running it for 3 years now.

Mint isn't too fancy, it is just there and lets me get my work done, very much the way Ubuntu used to be.

I'm running the 6.14.2 kernel, to get the latest drivers for my RX 9070, I'm playing around with local AI.... Mint isn't fancy, but you can do almost anything you want.

Steam OS on Steam Deck. Fedora on Framework13 cause reliability. Garuda Mokka on Framework16 cause pretty and it just works.

May move from Garuda back to OpenSuSE Tumbleweed or CachyOS at some point.

Pop OS

Lots of people were hyping it in 2019/2020 so I thought I'd give it a try as my first real Linux experience. It works great and has a Nvidia driver option when I need that. So I never really tried to switch.

Distro hoping never appealed to me, but I did try Fedora, Manjaro, Mint, Ubuntu, and Debian 12.

I use Kali for work and considered swapping to XFCE DE but pop is fine.

Variants and derivates of Debian on my servers and other headless devices because no reason except I know it, it is stable, it works.

Been trying linux for desktop every five-ten years for the last twenty odd years and went back to Windows every time because it was too bad experience despite I really tried to like it.

Except this time.

Fedora KDE on my laptop, soon on my stationary as well. No more Windows for me.

I jumped from Ubuntu over to Arch because I was getting fed up with all the things I wanted to do being unavailable in Ubuntu, but all in the Arch repo or AUR.

I've been using Debian-based distros for like 25 years, so it was definitely a bit of a change, but it didn't take long to adjust. I'm glad I made the change.

PopOs! Familiarity, stability and the fact that it fulfils 95% of my needs perfectly.

Long time user of Fedora. Tried Ubuntu but came back to Fedora. But now almost migrated to Almalinux. For software app, use flatpak, which has the latest and no library dependencies. Using Wayland too on Almalinux. So not missing anything since moving to away from Fedora to Almalinux.

I was running only arch on my surface pro 7 and my amd desktop, then last week after an update it seemed gnome and Linux surface kernel weren't playing nice and had bricked the install. I have switch the laptop to Debian but I tend to stick with arch, like op as I am used to it, I now run Debian as it is known to be stable.

I would love to find a new distro but for me its the sunk cost fallacy, I have put so much time into learning arch and to repeat all that - this new distro would need to offer something wildly different.

I use Devuan on my servers, changed because I was annoyed that systemd was forced on me. (I have mellowed a bit since and accept that systemd is here to stay)

I chose Mint for my laptop, because I just want a OS that works and still gives me a taskbar. (Here I got fed up when Ubuntu switched away from gnome)

All of them are apt based Linux because it just works and when apt shoots itself in the foot during dist upgrades you can still wrangle it back in working order.

Cachyos, since I like archlinux and the things it comes with I would install on arch. There's even a few things that would have to be compiled from aur that's in their repository pre-compiled.

I have been using Tuxedo OS for the past few months.

I just wanted to use something that was Ubuntu based with KDE.

KDE Neon sounded a bit too bleeding edge to be used safely as a daily driver. And Kubuntu is maybe a bit too conservative for me.

Tuxedo OS seems nicely balanced between that and so far it's been great.

EndeavorOS;

Gives the benefit of having latest up-to-date packages for gaming, while negating the downsides of having to configure the OS or graphics driver upon installation.

Honestly, if think EndeavorOS comes with full UI support to download stuff from AUR and Flathub, I think it would become a pretty solid OS for any casual user looking to get into Linux. (Well, unless they are religiously against Arch. Then again your casual user probably don't even know what 'Arch' is or care enough to be religious about it.)

Also yea, usually you run Ubuntu LTS or Debian Stable on servers unless your company paid for some licensing.

Laptop is Linux Mint, because my wife also use it and i want my laptop to be as easy to handle as possible.

Servers are Debian, because it's very light on my hardware. Mostly used for containers.

Arch has a combination of great documentation and great packaging. I use Debian on a server but for daily use, everything I need is on Arch.