Linux

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've been using Garuda for... Two or three years? I've done a lot of distro-hopping looking for something that won't just break on me. I used Ubuntu for a long time but kept running into situations where it would break, such as boot loops. Eventually I settled on Garuda because it ships with newer software and Nvidia drivers, which is helpful because I use my PC for gaming. I have stuck around because it's garuda-update command automatically makes a backup of your system out of the box, and you can select to boot into a backup in grub then restore it really easily. There have been a couple times where something has broken on an update, but when that happens I can immediately restore the backup, and I don't even need to remember to run a backup manually. I do feel that the default theme is a bit gaudy so I swapped it to a default KDE, but other than that I've had pretty much only good experiences with Garuda.

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

I've been using Arch since October 2019 and I've stuck with it because it has been a really comfortable experience. I really love the package manager. The packages are usually new enough to not cause me any major problems but are tested enough to not break anything. Regarding the latter point, mileage might vary. I have never had anything break on me that I haven't broken myself (and I don't update very frequently) though I know not everybody is sharing that experience.

1 year ago I also started using NixOS on my desktop and it's been a very interesting experience. Design wise it's pretty good but there are a number of things that really annoy me. Some days I'm really considering putting NixOS on my laptop and some days I'm leaning more to putting Arch back on my desktop.

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

Mint on my work PC, because my dear IT colleagues made the effort to provide standardized installations for us that are mostly carefree and can just be used; you can even get them preinstalled on a laptop or VM.

Debian on my work servers, because everyone is using it (we're a Debian shop mostly) and there's a standardized self service PXE boot installation for it. Also, Debian is boring, and boring is good. And another thing, Debian is the base image for at least half of the Docker images and alliances (e.g. Proxmox) out there, so common tools. The .deb package format is kinda sane, so it's easy to provide our own package, and Debian has a huge community, so it's going nowhere in the near future.

Ubuntu LTS latest on my home servers, because I wanted "Debian but more recent packages", and it has served me well.

Not yet, but maybe Fedora on my private PC and laptop soon, because I keep hearing good things re hardware support, package recency, gaming and just general suitability for desktop use. There's still the WAF to overcome, so we'll see.

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

I eventually decided on openSUSE Tumbleweed for a few reasons: rolling release, because I like to stay up-to-date; non-derivative, not a fork or dependent on other underlying distros; European, for (perceived) privacy reasons; a relatively well known and large distro with a decent community, for troubleshooting reasons; backed by a company, though that has both its ups and downs; lastly, support for KDE Plasma.

I actually had trouble finding a distro that suited all my criteria at the time, but openSUSE is good enough for now and I am pretty much satisfied.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

For my main desktop I use Mint because it just works, widely supported and Cinnamon is good (sadly no Wayland yet. ;_;). I also use Home-manager for my configuration because it allows me to easily just specify my config as a set of files I can check into git.

For my server, I use NixOS, because having all my configuration in a few text files is very nice to get an overview of what my server is doing.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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!

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.

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.

PC: Cachyos love the aur and the compiler optimizations + they compile or put aur packages in their repos which saves time by not making you compile anything

Laptop: Linux mint easy to use and stable

Phone: Android (does it count??)

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.

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

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