Linux

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.

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.

@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.

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

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.

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

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.

Arch because I wanted to see what the hype about installing it was about and then i just kept it

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

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

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.

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.

Mint here. It looks like Windows and runs the software and hardware I want. Simple as that.

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'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.

I use openSUSE because I want to see the license used with a package before installing it, and I can do that by using YaST. Also, it seems that version numbers are used consistently which enables elegant downgrading (I found that the pacman system is probably capable of supporting this too, but the operating system(s) that use it don't seem to use version numbers consistently and I've had a bad experience with downgrading in the past). I reviewed packaging systems other than rpm but it seemed that rpm while used with openSUSE was the most robust.

I also like having a bootable image with a streamlined installation process that is clearly supported by the operating system maintainers: I was tired of worrying about whether I set up LUKS correctly while setting up Arch Linux, and just having a checkbox for "encrypt the disk" makes me a lot calmer. Knowing that I can use a guided process if I want to reinstall the operating system also gives me some peace of mind.

It's also nice to get practice with an operating system that is more similar to "enterprise" Linux distributions: it's probably useful to get practice managing my personal computer(s) and at the same time get knowledge that is probably re-usable while interacting with Red Hat Enterprise Linux or SUSE Linux Enterprise itself. However, this was not a primary consideration for choosing an operating system for myself.

Luckily, my choice can currently also get some support from https://www.privacyguides.org/en/desktop/

I also like NixOS, but it doesn't seem to use secure boot by default, and I'd prefer to have that handled without needing input from me, so I only use it when that feature isn't available at all.

Depends on the use case.

I use Nobara on my gaming rig because I wanted up-to-date packages without being on the cutting edge like Arch. And I also wanted all the lower level gaming optimizations without having to set it all up manually. Plus, KDE is soooooo nice.

Debian on my servers because I want extreme stability with a community-driven distro.

Linux Mint on my personal laptops, because I like having the good things from Ubuntu without all the junk. Plus the Cinnamon desktop environment has been rock stable for me. It's my goto workhorse distro. If I don't need something with a specialized or specific use case, I throw Mint on.

Arch on my old junker devices that I don't use much because I like making them run super fast and look sexy and testing out different WM's and DE's.

Void on my junkers that I actually want to use frequently because it's super performant and light on resources without needing to be built manually like Arch.

Ubuntu server if I am feeling stanky and lazy and just need something quick for a testing VM or container host in my home lab.

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.

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

CachyOS is making my old ass 2012 desktop feeling snappy again. I'm by no means a pro user and everything seems to work and god damn installing and updating stuff is easy and fast!

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.

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.

Garuda on desktop:

• wanted to try Arch
• is rolling
• has a custom KDE theme that I happen to like
• gaming edition preinstalls a number of tools that I would install anyway

Fedora on work laptop:
20 years ago it was easier to find rpm packages for some enterprise apps, then just stuck with it

ChimeraOS on minipc:
does couch gaming well

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.

Arch (EndeavourOS but it's the same with an installer, basically): AUR, great Wiki, great community and fresh packages. I'm always open to new stuff but all of this is really hard to beat.

Debian Sid, the unstable rolling release branch of Debian. It has the worst of both Debian and Arch!

On a more serious note, it allows me to have a somewhat standard Debian system with bleeding edge tooling.

I use Arch (btw) because CachyOS was giving me issues.

It was the first one using Wayland by default that worked on my machine out of the box.

I use opensuse (tumbleweed and slowroll) because I just wanted to try it out a few years back and it mostly just works.

If I were to reinstall today, I'd probably use fedora again, since it's much easier to use things like Waydroid.

I favour Arch because I prefer everything I want to install to be in the package repo and for it to be a version actually new enough to use.

But I actually use EndeavourOS because it is 99% Arch but installs easily with full hardware support on everything I own (including a T2 Macbook). It never fails me.

And now I have realized that I can use Distrobox to get the Arch repos and the AUR on any dostro I wish.

So, I now have Chimera Linux on 4 machines because it is the best engineered distro in my view. The system supervisor, system compiler, and C library matter to me (not to everyone). All these machines have the AUR on them (via distrobox). Best of all worlds.

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.

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.