Linux

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.

OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. Recently I bought cheap Surface-like x86 tablet on a rather recent hardware, and running Debian and its cousins required more tinkering than I was willing to do, so I decided to go with a more modern rolling release. Tried Arch for a few months, bricked it from mixing stable and testing branches, tried Fedora, and finally settled in Tumbleweed. I like it for being on the bleeding edge and exceptionally stable at the same time, perhaps thanks to robust OpenSUSE Build Service automated testing. And it is from a European company, that can't hurt.

i been linux only for over 30 years now.

I tend to use Debian stable. At least for the last 15 or so.

The reason is simple. I use it as my main PC and the stability is my main priority.

The only negative is software in the repos is often out of date.

But honestly while that was a pain in the past. Now for the vast majority of things I use. I find flat pack or appimage downloads work perfect ally.

The only exception is ham radio software. Here I tend to compile later versions if I need/want them.

Other negatives

I'm really not hugely into gaming. But use blender a lot. Due to this I use Nvidia cards as they are far better supported by blender.

Installing the proprietary Nvidia drivers is a bit of a pain on Debian for newbies. But once you know the process its simple enough. Just not obvious for beginners. The community drivers are still very limited thanks to Nvidia s weird ideas.

I recently moved to Fedora KDE Plasma after years on W10, simply because I don't want to use W11 and its AI bullshit. So far, it's been a great time, and I haven't noticed any major performance issues, so I'm happy with it. Having to update everything every few days is pretty novel though, and 'sudo dnf update -y' makes me feel like Hackerman, king of all Hackers. I think I like the customization options most though. I get way more control over what happens on my PC than W10 ever gave me, and it's all wrapped in a very user-friendly GUI. Overall 8.5-9/10.

Slackware: because I'm old and arch is too trendy.

Debian, on servers and a desktop. I spent a long time using Ubuntu so I'm used to APT and Debian is suitably lightweight for my not amazing hardware. I also like the non rolling nature of it.

Linux Mint is a nice and easy distro that is quite good :D

Debian stable:

• Works on all of my devices, none of which are newer than 2019
• Compatibility with all of the software that I use day to day
• I like my system set up in a very particular way and the stability makes upkeep simple
• I was a holdout on older Windows versions before I moved to Linux, so getting new features at all is already exciting

i use gentoo because i love the package manager and how in control i am of my desktop and for servers even though not linux ive been using open bsd because of secure it is and lightweight helps squeeze out little bit more performance from mt shit vps lol

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.

I'm relatively new to Linux, so I'm testing a few distros via VMs right now. My main desktop runs OpenSUSE Leap with KDE Plasma and I love it so far. I'm also trying Fedora 42 with GNOME, but I'm realizing I don't like GNOME. I'm running Linux Mint Cinnamon on a 2016 MacBook Pro, which is pretty nice too. I also ran Debian stable for a bit. OpenSUSE is my favorite of the ones I've tried.

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.

Why do you use the distro you use?

People said Ubuntu is easy, but I prefer green to orange so I went with Mint.

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.

Finally time to bust this out again.

Guix because I love the idea behind Nix but Nixlang is the most painful language I've ever had to type out.

I run SteamOS on desktop hardware because I hate windows and it solves almost every Linux gaming problem out of the box...

• SteamOS: because it came with my Steam Deck.
• LinuxMint: because it is an Ubuntu-derivative and widely used which makes finding solutions and packages easier and I like MATE.

EndeavourOS because of the AUR

Arch. Why?

1. Arch Wiki
2. Pacman
3. Community (therefore AUR)

Arch and Fedora; package managers and repositories.

My gaming rig is on arch because i need the aur. I use my gaming rig for a bit of development too, dependencies are super easy on arch.

All my laptops, work and personal, run fedora kde because its rock solid and has the best "just works" features while still being a technical distro.

My servers are either alpine because its lightweight and easy to harden, debian for the stability and minimalism. I do have a few arch servers, but those are for testing and they get spun up, do the work they need and then killed.

DietPi for my raspberry because its debian based and has a plethora of automations to do what ever you like with your raspberry. Works on desktop too, well.

Lastly, mint, on my surface pro 5, because it is my obe device that is meant to just browse and be a portal into the internet or to play some movie or something while we are out for vacations or stuff like that.

There are many other distros that I like and use, but I use these the most. I love how each linux distro has its stregths and weaknesses, each their own usecase, you get to finetune what you need to make your life easier.

Arch, moved here from Ubuntu when I realized I have a good idea of what I want installed and have no need for a bunch of things to get bundled into the OS

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.

Debian for everything since it's one of the few distros that has always been there. It's one of the second distros to come after after SLS. Distros come and go, but Debian marches on.

Because it's not Windows. So fed up with it. Used Debian. But as of late gotten annoyed with them and everything seems to lead me towards Arch. Dunno. We'll see. Just a bit scary to switch as I'm used with apt and not Pacman or whatever it's called :P Need to learn to make backup on the system in case something breaks etc

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.

Bazzite, Aurora, Proxmox and Ubuntu Server.

It's Debian. It's well-supported by software and super stable and open.

Arch. Purely because of the Arch Wiki. I honestly think it’s the easiest OS to troubleshoot as long as you are willing and able to read every now and again.

Fedora because it just works and I don't have to mess with it.

EndeavourOS. It's the only one I tried that worked with my sound card out of the box strangely enough...

@aleq

I'm using #endeavouros with Gnome on my Desktop at the moment, just because I wanted to try Arch with all the priorly mentioned arguments, rolling release, Wiki and so on.

I started with Slackware in the early 90s, SuSE and Red Hat (Fedora today) just for fun and self-education, even though Slackware wasn't fun at all. This distro brought me nights without sleep and full of tears. 😂🫣

I tried a couple of times to switch to Linux on the desktop but never got it to work satisfyingly like Windows with all my private and business applications and games.
So Linux and I had an on and off relationship over decades. I wanted to love Linux so badly, but it was never reasonable to run it on the desktop.
Let's see how we're going to end, Arch/Endeavour and me.

On a server I would not switch from a Debian-based distro, just because I'm used to it and I would also prefer stable instead of rolling releases.