Linux

PopOS. It was the easiest to get my Nvidia GPU set up and plays all the games that I wanna play without too much pain. I've been meaning to try something like Arch with KDE, something like what my SteamDeck is using... but I don't wanna fuck around setting up Arch.

I like Manjaro

• I like it
• Its user friendly if you don't want to spend a month fiddling with it
• Feels comfy and relatively lightweight

• If you are living on the edge of latest and greatest versions, it can be a pain to wait for official repos to be updated. Though I only noticed this problem with Discord desktop app, however since I realised that it spies on every process that runs and you cannot turn that feature off. Uninstalled. Problem gone. Happy me.

Devuan because I don't like systemd

I started with mint cinnamon and then tried out bazzite and nobara but they both gave me issues so I'm back to mint because it really does "just work"

My server is running mint currently, but I'm going to switch to fedora at some point soon. Mostly because I have to deal with RHEL at work and I'd like to better familiarize myself with it.

mint cinnamon because on my system it has no major issues and everything is easy to configure. i don't have a lot of spare time so i can't spend hours or even days troubleshooting why something won't install or run. most other distros have been annoyingly buggy or too difficult to set up.

Pop. I just need ubuntu without snap, distro's default look doesnt matter since I'll just use sway/i3wm.

Though the fact that they're building their own tiling DE could make me stick with it fully when it comes out.

Linux Mint, because I don't like to tinker with the system, I like good defaults (and Mints has them).

Previously arch now NixOS, just love the reproducibility.

I have Bazzite on a laptop for the ease of use and general resistance to breakage, and Spiral Linux in a VM. The latter works flawlessly that way, like it was always meant to be in a VM.

NixOS because it’s easy to understand—I can pop open any .nix file in my config and see exactly what is being set up, so I don’t have to mentally keep track of innumerable imperative changes I would otherwise make to the system, and thus lose track of the entropy over time.

Debian and derived is my go up generally, stable and I like apt, great out of the box on every machine I've used and personally found pretty much everything I want to use or run has debian and Ubuntu explicitly called out in their setup documentation. I use Ubuntu server a lot for work, I'm comfortable with it and it's supported in every cloud environment I've touched. Debian on my laptop, bench machine, armbian on my 3d printers, Ubuntu server on my home server (though I kinda want to move that to debian too, just lazy and it works)

I've got arch on my desktop, could have probably gone for debian unstable, but figured I'd go for it. I use aura for package management. Linux is linux though, be real that I personally don't find much of a difference beyond package management.

Debian on most my machines. Can’t trust commercially backed distros any more. I’m tired of chacing cutting edge stuff. Like things to just work.

EndeavorOS. Because I wanted to have a rolling release distribution that is always up to date, and one that is good supported by maintainers and community. Good documentation is very important to me. And I trust the team behind EndeavorOS and Archlinux.

Also the manual approach of many things and the package manager based on Archlinux is very nice. I also like the building of custom packages that is then installed with the package manager (basically my own AUR package). The focus on terminal stuff without too much bloat by default is also a huge plus.

Fedora Silverblue

• I like Gnome
• I like that Fedora adopts new technology quickly
• I like how it makes updates more reliable
• I like flatpak

Gentoo because I like it.

And portage.

Arch because it helped me understand the os better and i like tinkering. Also pacman and the aur

Arch. I had some tinkering with other distros in the past but wanted to configure pretty much everything. Running it with Cinnamon. I love pacman and AUR and have been able to not break it so far after a year of being installed which is a new record for me 😂

• Debian + Xfce on the desktop, because it (mostly, see below) just works, it's snappy, reliable, and I don't need my apps being constantly updated (I have very simple needs and use cases)
• Mint + Cinnamon on the laptop, because it's still debian-based and because unlike Debian, Mint was able to connect my AirPods out of the box and I use them a lot when on the laptop... I also quickly learned to appreciate Cinnamon, I must say.

edit: typos

NixOS for most things, Debian on some servers as a docker host

Ubuntu for my servers, and Linux Mint for my Workstation.

I grew up using Debian-based distros, so it's what I'm comfortable with. I like how Mint seems to "just work" most of the time, especially with samba shares and usb peripherals.

Ubuntu server is primarily because it's incredibly easy to get support when you need it.

CachyOS. I use it because I am a fan of Arch based systems, rolling releases etc, but CachyOS is optimised for my generation of hardware, and has lots of good default configurations for various apps. They have a customised proton version, a good default fish profile etc.

tl;dr It's Arch, but optimised, and slightly more pre-configured out of the box.

I use Fedora simply because I got a Framework and the fingerprint reader didn’t work in (K)Ubuntu so I tried Fedora as a little test. It worked, so I just stuck with it - everything else worked as I wanted, and it gave me the opportunity to try a completely new distribution.

Fedora.

Most of the others either booted to a black screen after install, or the track pad was somewhat uncontrollable when scrolling. Older Asus laptop with separate GPU.

I use NixOS, Gentoo, and Debian:

• NixOS because I like declarative configuration files.
• Gentoo because I enjoy compiling from source.
• Debian because the other two are more difficult to use.

After quite a bit of agonizing, I eventually landed on openSUSE Tumbleweed. I chose a rolling release distro because on my desktop I want to be up-to-date. Having used Gentoo a long time ago, I didn't want a distro that takes effort to install and set up. openSUSE is somewhat popular with an active community and decent documentation in case I run in to issues. I also considered the fact it's based in Germany, because EU has at least some decent privacy laws. I was put off by the fact its backed by SUSE, but that's a two-edged sword.

Right now I'm content with Tumbleweed, but I'm keeping an eye on OpenMandriva Lx if I feel like switching.

I use EndeavourOS Xfce because it's Arch with pacman and not Flathub or Snap. Plus, I love the simplicity and the performance boost you get with Xfce (even if it's a small boost with a modern gaming PC).

I've hopped distros alot and then just felt most comfortable with arch linux. I try other distros and then just go back to arch linux everytime. I just love the AUR and the utilities that are available to arch linux. The wiki is also very good.

Fedora, it has KDE spin and quite recent packages.

PopOS but I'd like to switch to NixOS