I use ArchLinux BTW, because
- It's very minimal, no bloatware
- AUR
~~3. I feel superior~~ - It just worksβ’*
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I use ArchLinux BTW, because
I'm still using Windows 10 on my personal computer. Oh I'll probably have to upgrade someday, some game or other program will come out with exclusivity of some kind and I'll eventually install Windows 11. But for the most part, I don't want to fuck with it, everything works and I really just don't want the hassle.
Running Linux Mint on an old laptop, mostly because it's too old to decently run Windows 10. Don't use it for much, mostly troubleshooting things.
At work the laptops are Windows 10 and I don't think there's a push to update. Of course all the servers are Redhat Enterprise Linux, and that's where the majority of my work takes place.
Arch+Plasma+Wayland+GTX1660Ti+Samsung monitor with freesync120Hz. Great freedom. Great custom. Nice performance in gaming. Great software management. Awesome usability for technical user. I had also install apparmor and firewalld for security and timeshift for btrfs snapshots. I think, for me, there is no sense to switch back to windows.
Fedora is the most solid thing I've ever used. I use the KDE version on my desktop and silverblue on my laptop. Never have any problems
Had Ubuntu for a decade then got bored and turned my hp Spectre laptop into a Hackintosh and got hooked. So it's macOS now.
I use Pop!_OS on my desktop PC because i'm tired of microsoft deciding everything of my digital life and also because I just find myself really comfortable with GNOME and the POP!_Shell
Arch.
One day several years ago I had to replace some hardware and the copy of Windows that I had installed decided that I was no longer authorized. I got fed up and left Windows behind for good. For a few years I had Manjaro installed, but eventually I needed a change and wanted to start fresh so opted just to go straight to Arch.
Arch here as well. For me it's rolling release that's the selling point. I've maintained the same arch install on my desktop for five years with minimal maintenance required. The only reason it's not ten years is I built a new PC and didn't carry forward my old root drive. Arch is much less work than is advertised once it's up and running. No dist upgrades or reinstalls when a new release comes out. Just keep it updated and pay attention to the website in case something requires manual intervention to update.
This is similar to my situation. It's out of laziness at this point because my two installs just keep working.
Windows 11 as my daily driver/gaming machine, Debian for my proxmox cluster/vms.
Fedora work station, it just works.
I currently use fedora. I am absolutely fine with Ubuntu, but the setup process is a bit too much for me, as I prefer flatpak and vanilla gnome, so it takes a bit of work for Ubuntu to get there. Also I feel like ubuntu use a different gui for different purpose, it is a bit annoying (for example, there are three app, one update apt, one flatpak, one drivers.) It is not a big deal, but a bit annoying.
Mostly all I need is just a stable os that I can work in, and I don't really want to mess with my os. So I don't choose more cutting-edge/interesting distros like suse, arch, or Nix.
There are also distros like pop and mint, but they don't support gnome well, and I haven't get into the habit of cosmos or cinnamon.
NixOS, because all of the config in my system is declared in a few files on GitHub and it has a huge package repo.
Also it has all of the other advantages of a Linux distro, like privacy, speed and customisability.
I actually have all 3.
A windows PC for gaming A macbook for my laptop An Arch Linux PC/Server that I use for most of my work and that hosts all my services
The "why" for each is probably pretty self-explanatory for each. I'm a firm believer in using the right tool for a given job, and I think Windows has the best gaming experience, Mac has the "best" laptops (for my own subjective value of "best"), and linux is the best for software development and service hosting.
In a perfect world I'd use linux for all 3, but while gaming on linux has gotten a lot better, it's not quite "there" yet, and I just love the new Apple chips for laptops in terms of battery life, speed, and heat management
Endeavour OS KDE. It just works and you have access to the AUR repository, which is huge.
Yes! Same here. I'm new to both arch-based distros and KDE, so I figured I'd give endeavour OS KDE a shot. So far, it's been amazing! I have it installed on a laptop and it's been great. I love how fast pacman is and I can't believe I've been living without all of this customization KDE has to offer.
Linux, OpenSUSE Tumbleweed to be precise. Best rolling release distro in my opinion.
What's up, fellow LMer?! LM is the best OS I've tried so far. I'm not tech savvy, so I appreciate how easy it is to set up, maintain, and tailor. On the few times I've had any difficulties, the LM forums have already solved the problem, so troubleshooting is a matter of spending a few minutes following instructions.
I was running Gentoo Linux, but I've sadly had to switch back to Windows due to grad school software I need to run.
macOS on my laptop, windows on my PC. Also got a few servers running linux though.
NixOS, mostly for the declarative configuration for almost everything. Atomic updates and independent installations of software for different projects are some other notable reasons.
Manjaro XFCE on all my desktop and laptops. Debian on my servers.
MX Linux. It is a debian based, but uses custom scripts and programs from Antix and Mepis that make it super lovely to use.
It strips out systemd and does a lot of work to make popular programs usable that requires it.
Yet, I can still boot into it with systemd turned on, which is useful and more necessary than I like, increasingly so.
I think systemd is fine though. Linux is not unix, variation is healthy and despite what people say I always found it solid.
MX uses XFCE, which I love, and the desktop has some really smart defaults like putting the panel on the side instead of top or bottom, which gives back vertical real estate.
EDIT: I also use macOS iOS. My mom is a dedicated Apple user and I inherit her stuff whenever she upgrades, which is less frequently because I convinced her that what she has is basically overkill for her use cases, ans she does not need the newest thing.
Anyways, I love my iPad Pro. I don't care if Apple is evil, I got it for free and I reading PDFs on it is a goddamn pleasure.
The MacBook Air is the perfect laptop. Large laptops are just heavy and makes me not want to take them anywhere. Glad I learned that lesson.
I've been running Manjaro for 4 years now, never looked back. I know people have their thoughts on Manjaro, but I haven't had any issues and it comes with some great features out of the box that I'd rather not have to problem solve on another distro. That said, I've been having fun with Endeavor on my extra laptop, it's worked pretty well for me and can see why it has such a thriving community
I use Gentoo on my desktop/file server. I like the freedom to set up things EXACTLY how I want them. Compile times are no worry with a Ryzen 5700x and I do major updates overnight.
I use FreeBSD on my laptop. It is super stable, resource efficient and soooo much more neat and organized than Linux. Core software does not change every other year and everything feels right at home. I highly recommended giving it a shot if you haven't already.
Manjaro KDE for years. I've tried ubuntu, Fedora, Mint, Debian, Antergos and plain ol' Arch. I've stuck with Manjaro for simplicity sake, going through the motions of installing and setting up Arch was great from a learning perspective. It gave me a much better understanding of what's under the hood. In the end though, I wanted a simpler process of getting an OS going.
Debian on desktop pcs, Ubuntu on laptop pcs. I know, I know, we aren't supposed to use Ubuntu because it's bad but it's infinitly easier to get laptop drivers working on Ubuntu for some reason.
One of these days I'll try out arch but I've been using apt for so many years and don't want to learn pacman because I'm lazy.
I use Windows 10 and Linux, but mainly use Linux for general tasks, and Windows for gaming
Fedora! Have been super not a fan of Windows for years now so I avoid it hardcore when I can.
Linux in general is a lot easier to set up programming environments on, and also just generally it's a lot more flexible when it comes to customization, which is definitely important when you're a big picky bitchbaby like I am.
Fedora specifically I like because there's something I just really like about RHEL-related distros (to the point that i use Rocky Linux on my server also). They feel really polished and dnf is probably my favourite package manager of all the ones I've tried so far. I do have a few issues with it, and I miss having access to the AUR when I used various Arch-baseds over the years, but all in all I'm very happy with it and I don't see myself switching distros for desktop use any time soon.
I use Arch on my main gaming PC. I did choose to install it a couple years ago based on the chatter and memes around it, but learning to install it taught me a lot about linux and so it just feels like home using it.
I'm using Linux Mint rn on my laptop. I am using it because I have used other Debians for 15 years and they are easy to use, and easy to tweak. And same commands!
NixOS unstable in my workstation and my laptop. Using sway on Wayland on top of all-AMD hardware. I play games with this setup and I write Rust and TypeScript for living. I love the customizability and the reproducibility of NixOS: I just clone my config and I have exactly the desktop I've always had, every little tool and customization included. If my hard drive fails, I just plug a new one and I am productive in about 15 minutes.
My sway desktop has been looking and working similarly for years, and before that I used i3 on Xorg for almost a decade. I like how the UI doesn't really change that much.
I really enjoyed the simpleness of PopOS. Got that familiar Ubuntu feel but looks better and runs great on my poor hobby laptop.
You must get a completely different view than "normal people" here. I use Alma Linux 9 (RHEL9 clone) because it's what we use at work, and I've known RedHat since 1999. I use it because it generally is exceptionally stable, and can easily go 6 months without forcing a reboot. It also is much less likely to spy on me, and does most everything I need a computer to do.
Also, using XFCE for my DE means I don't have to relearn something every release version (XFCE has stayed the same all through v4 more or less, which is like at least since 2012. Some new icons here or there.
No forced cloud integration, my account is local, the way I like it. I also am much less concerned about malware (maybe this is unjustified in 2023, I guess IDK).
I got fed up with Microsoft with the rollout of Win10, and switched to Scientific Linux 7 at that time (RHEL7) and just migrated this year to Alma 9 and a new PC. I actually ran the same workstation for 12 years before that. Somehow, even with updates Linux doesn't seem to bloat the way Windows did / would. I.e. I haven't had a Linux install get slower over time for no reason like every Windows install.
We're an all-linux household.
I mostly use Arch Linux, as the customizability and package selection is excellent.
On the rare occasion I need to use a piece of software that doesn't play nicely with Linux (even with Wine/Proton), I boot up onto a secondary drive that has Windows 10 installed on it.
I use Windows 10 LTSC 21H2. It's the most up-to-date LTSC version.
LTSC = Long Term Servicing Channel, which is a special verson of Windows Enterprise that doesn't receive feature updates, doesn't come with all the extra bloat (onedrive, store, xbox game bar, candycrush, office trials, etc).. It's meant for special support enterprise systems like MRI scanners, industrial use, etc..
The reason that I (legally, but for the wrong usecase) use it is that I don't want to switch to Windows 11 or be nagged about it, nor do I want all the extra bloat on top of my OS. But I do want to stay secure, and I get security updates without trouble.
I would rather run a Linux distribution, sadly I do play a few games that are still not working on Linux, even with Proton and lots ot manual trickery. And I play them for about 40 hours a week.
Windows 10 because I don't want to deal with the hassle of anything else.
I've been distro hopping lately and landed in fedora gnome, it seems to be a nice, stable OS, good for personal PC use (might try the kde version on my laptop, seems like a better experience). I haven't even checked on gaming tho, haven't touched the pc for that since I got the steam deck