I'm a Slackware user, it does what I need without interfering and I can customize everything to my needs, no need to be forced to use systemd dbus pulseaudio and all those stuff.

Not sure if KDE Neon counts as a "less popular" distro, but it's what I've been using for around the last half year. I appreciate the stability of being based on the latest Ubuntu LTS along with the package availability of a Ubuntu-based distro, while also getting all the latest updates to KDE software and enough updates to other software to keep me satisfied. Snap is installed but not default (my system uses very minimal numbers of snaps as a result) and Flatpak is installed so I can also easily install software that's not in the Ubuntu LTS repos as a binary.

I’m curious if anyone dailies Alpine for desktop use. (I don’t.)

NixOS

Bodhi Linux. I have an old hp desktop and it only has 2 gb of ram and 2 cores. I wanted a real lightweight distro and settled on arch linux but one day i tripped and knocked the tower over. When i booted it back up i had the infamous blinking underscore. I tried reinstalling arch multiple times and it kept failing, so i tried a lightweight arch based distro called archbang, same issue. I tried manjaro same issue.

At this point i wanted to try something not arch based but wanted something that came with minimal preinstalled programs like arch. Research led me to bodhi which is a light weight distro based on ubuntu. Installed with no issues and been using it ever since, about 3 years now.

Don't know what i damaged on the motherboard but it must have been something integral to arch based distros, but i'm kind of glad it happened because i love bodhi now

It has allowed an ancient computer to do so much. I've run matrix servers and web servers, written my own webapps to run on it and so much more

I guess SteamOS? It's immutable and... well runs on the SteamDeck which is pretty cool. I use it to play, obviously, but also to work. Love it.

I used to be a huge fan of Crunchbang Linux for the minimalism

Manjaro.

I wanted a rolling distro that had up to date software because I got tired of Ubuntu's 6 month upgrade cycle. But I also didn't want to deal with source packages because I value my time.

Don't get me wrong, I still use Xubuntu, CentOS and RHEL at work, but for my home system I want something that does not give me any major problems so I can unwind after work.

I know about the issues with the site certificates and sometimes the package certificates. He who never messed up big time can cast the first stone.

Manjaro has been on my games machine for nearly 3 years and it has been a smooth experience.

Artix, Systemd.

Not my daily but I carry around a usb with slax linux as a portable work environment as well as a recovery tool.

Manjaro.

It does what I need it to in a way that is convenient and accessible to me.

I agree with pretty much all of their design decisions and am just looking for a preconfigured Arch.

Been running it exclusively for the past 3 years and have no inclination on switching.

I'm on Garuda, primarily becausei built a new machine with a (then) bleeding edge GPU, so I needed something rolling release that could make use of it. I tried a few others, including Endeavour and Nobara, but Garuda got me farthest along on its own.

Today im an Arch user, however in the past i was a Big Linux user. Even more in the past, i was user of Kurumin Linux

Don't know if this counts - used Fedora KDE for about a decade and then last year moved to Fedora Kinoite. It's essentially the same, but is OSTree based and immutable. I like the solid base, the rebasing function and containers

My fav obscure distros are: 1. Sparky Linux, Debian based simple stable system. It has many flavours with a lot of desktops to choose from. Also has stable and semi-roling iso. Now I never installed Debian itself, so can't compare sparky with Debian. But it is very much better than any other distro I used. I don't know why it is not popular. 2. Reborn OS. I used to love it when running. Arch based lovely project. This is the very much successor of Antergos.

Back in the day I used some smaller distros. Sabayon and Archbang both come to mind.

Artix, YouTube "influences". Still maybe will transfer over to mainline Arch to avoid having to go crazy anytime something requires systemd

Parabola GNU/Linux-libre user since its inception more than ten years ago. It Is Arch Linux minus every bit of non-free software, which Is carefully left out.

I use MX, formerly know as Mepis. Super stable and kept up to date. It used to be Debian based and they still use some Debian repos but it's largely independent now

Artix Linux (w/ Runit) & Void Linux. Interestingly although I started using Linux from Jan 2022, I have used these 2 distros 95% of that time. The rest 5% being Endeavour OS on which I started my journey into Linux.

Due to older hardware and my natural curiousity to learn more about the System. I switched to Artix very early into Linux. The Runit Init system and the fact I chose a base iso (i.e. everything in the system apart from the Core was hand picked and configured by me) made my PC very fast and flexible. I found it quite inconvenient to work and learn w/ and in EndeavourOS. Artix provided me that canvas and it helped me a lot. One possible future con might be that I find it a bit more effort to troubleshoot more popular Distros, in case I need to, because I rarely use non-tui or non-cli programs and I have never worked on Systemd. Fortunately there are always the Arch Wiki or the Program Manuals.

I switched to Void Linux from Artix because Artx, being Arch-Based was a bit unstable whereas Void is a stable-rolling release, sort of like a middle ground between Debian and Arch and so it fits my dynamic. Otherwise it is as good as Artix in other cases.

Garuda Linux, if that counts. It's the best and most beginner friendly arch based distro imho. I need wine-staging and it comes packaged for arch which is very nice since I keep having troubles with it on non arch based disteos. On debian for instance it broke with every update, damn winehq install.