Linux

For beginners, and rolling distribution. A beginner should start with something that doesn't break while you don't understand if it's your or the shiny new program that broke the system. But then, I have been using Debian for more that 20 years. For me it's a tool, not a game.

I'm noy going to say I dislike it, but I don't see the point in a source based distro like Gentoo anymore.

I learned a lot from using Gentoo when I was just getting into Linux 20 years ago, but now looking back on it, why would I want to juggle with everyones build systems and compiler flags? Especially now hardware is so homogenous.

Fedora, mostly because of the decisions they make are mostly for corporate areas;

The kernel selection they make, packages and etc;

Sometimes need to deal with kernels they select that don't work well with my hardware

Fuck Ubuntu. Buggy as shit updates, forced snaps, always had problems whenever I was forced to use it, which I've never had again when I switched to Debian.

Debian >>>>>> Ubuntu

Ubuntu. Package organization is annoying, versions are out of date, managing multiple versions isn't consistent, and distro upgrades always have unintended consequences. Often ones that aren't easy to figure out. Their reputation for being beginner friendly should have died around a decade ago.

Manjaro because in the few months I've used it, it happened twice that my system didn't boot anymore after I updated it. The second time I didn't reinstall but installed EndeavourOS instead. Been using that for like 2 years and never had that issue again.