Mint (MATE). It's preconfigured closest to what I want, with just a couple tweeks I can do whatever I need with utilities and a GUI I'm familiar with.
If Its a headless machine Ubuntu or Debian. Again familiar with both can do whatever on both without having to relearn low to build a wheel.
Primarily a windows user but I do use Linux for some applications.
Nixos.
The ability to have my whole system in a git repo is what i have been looking for when i did not know it.
Steep freaking curve though and the documentation kinda blows. But its the distro ive spent the longest on apart from Arch, and i feel quote at home even though most stuff is done differently.
Servers I run Debian, I do not want flashy I just want stable and tested security fixes.
I could not hack being that far behind for my desktop OS however (which I run on three different devices), so I run Ubuntu, which I remove as much Ubuntu and Gnome baggage as possible such as snaps and by running Sway.
I should really swap to a different distro that also has Debian as its root but without the stuff I don't want and Sway by default. However I also want stuff to be simple and up to date, as I make my money on my desktop PCs, I cannot afford for it to be a PITA every time I try to install patches.
I do have one PC running arch, but its mostly for the memes (and for PIKVM)
I did used to be Red Hat through and through. I started with Linux back in 98 using Red Hat CD ROMs, but I left for Debian over some previous controversy that I do not remember now, years before the Centos stuff.
Debian. On servers, on laptops, on desktops, even on my high speed camera. It's simple, it's reliable, it doesn't push updates that break my stuff.
Short answer: Custom Fedora Silverblue image through uBlue's template, because it offers a relatively mature and easy to use distro with unique features in terms of stability and security that's (almost) unmatched within the Linux space.
Long answer:
spoiler
which distro and why do you prefer it over others?
Personally, I'm very fond of atomic^[1]^ distros. What they bring onto the table in terms of stability and "It just works."^[2]^ can't be understated^[3]^. I've been running Fedora Silverblue^[4]^ for the last one and a half years and it has been excellent barring some smaller issues^[5]^. While on the other hand, the distros^[6]^ I've experienced in the mean time through dual-booting happened to be a mess and I eventually couldn't continue to use them as they accumulated issues all over the place.
So far, it should be pretty clear why I prefer atomic distros over traditional ones. However, why do I favor Fedora Silverblue over the other atomic distros? Well, I try to be very security-conscious. And, unsurprisingly, this has influence on my choice. In this case; Fedora is the only one (together with openSUSE) that properly supports SELinux. While AppArmor is also excellent, it's not ideal for the container workflow atomic distros are known for; which is probs one of the reasons why openSUSE has only recently started supporting SELinux while they've been supporting AppArmor for a long time. Furthermore, while both Fedora's and openSUSE^[7]^'s offerings are excellent. Fedora has been working on theirs considerably longer and therefore their atomic distros are more mature. Thus, I ended up with Fedora. Silverblue, however, wasn't actually initially preferred over Kinoite. I started on Kinoite, which I was attracted to for how KDE Plasma was relatively similar to Windows^[8]^ and for how it allowed easy configuration out of the box. At the time, Kinoite wasn't that polished yet. So I had to rebase^[9]^ to Silverblue and the rest has been history.
There are actually atomic distros that don't heavily rely on the container workflow to do their bidding and thus don't necessitate the use of SELinux over AppArmor. Those distros would be NixOS and Guix. These are on my radar and I might even switch to either one of them eventually^[10]^. Heck, I've even installed the Nix package manager on Fedora Silverblue through Determinate Systems' Nix installer. But, to be honest, I'm most interested in Spectrum OS. Which I would define as the love child of NixOS and Qubes OS^[11]^.
Void Linux
The name is really cool
I'm a Linux noob so I don't have a distro preference yet but I'm currently using Fedora KDE spin. It's pretty nice.
OpenSuse Slowroll (rolling release with constant updates plus an update burst every two months)
Nobara bc my first year of using Linux had some rough patches, and I just wanna turn my brain off and game for a while with minimal troubleshooting.
I'll start distro hopping again soon tho
Debian because the swirl looks cool and the installer makes me feel old and sophisticated without having to be old and sophisticated.
Debain on servers because it just works.
Arch on desktops because you got basically every software package you'd ever need in the AUR and it's somewhat stable.
Arch because I'm too lazy for a non-rolling distro. I should really set up snapshots and my dotfiles repo on my new laptop though (:
Kubuntu. The support and stability of Ubuntu but with KDE Plasma 5 (not a huge fan of gnome), and probably one of the more straightforward distros to use in my experience alongside Linux Mint or Pop!_OS
Debian Unstable. Because I know my way around Debian more than any other distro, but I need the newest Gnome for proper support of tablet mode on my convertible and that's something you can't install via flatpak or backports.
Downside is that it pushes package updates that weren't tested for compatibility with each other, so you need to know if what apt suggests makes sense before you hit "Y".
I've tried Arch and OpenSUSE Tumbleweed in the past, but both rely too much on packages built by users without proper integration with the main repo.
I started with LinuxFT from a magazine coverdisk. I also installed it on an old 486 at the office. It became the "internet box". The company director at the time believed Bill Gates that the internet would be a fad and wasn't worth investing in and would not put any money into the company internet connection. So, it was an old 486, running LinuxFT, with a modem calling out on demand, squid proxy, email boxes etc. But it worked.
After that I moved to Redhat (before it was paid for). I remember for sure installing RH5. It was definitely a smoother experience.
Server wise, I went through various distros. Once I got to debian, for servers I never really left the "apt" world. Management wise, it's just too easy to work with. Hopping between Ubuntu and Debian even now.
For firewalls I've been through ipfwadm (Kernel 2.0.x), ipchains (Kernel 2.2.x) and iptables (Kernel 2.4.x). Now, there is some newer stuff now. Nftables, but there hasn't been a "you must change" situation like the other two and as such, I've generally stuck with iptables, mainly because when I did try nftables I had a real problem getting it to play nice with qos. Probably all fixed now, but I'm too lazy to change.
Desktop wise. I dual boot windows/linux. Linux is Manjaro, and I like Manjaro, for the fact that gaming generally just worked. However, I feel like every major upgrade I am chasing broken dependencies for far too long. But, when it works, Manjaro is great. However, I have had several failed desktop experiments. I ran Gentoo way way way back, I think I had an AMD Athlon at the time. I thought it was great, I mean building stuff for my specific setup, nice idea and all. But upgrades were so damn slow compiling everything! I tried Ubuntu, but I never found the desktop to be any good. I did also have Redhat way back in the late 90s. But the desktop was just poor back then.
Arch. It has pretty great documentation and I like having the safety of knowing what's on my computer. Other than those two things, I just like arch I guess. There isn't anything wrong with other distros.
Use whatever distro you feel comfortable with. That being said, there are definitely good ones and bad ones. I use Arch btw. That's the beauty of Linux tho. You can try a distro and if you dont like it you can literally install a new distro over the old one by blowing away everything but the /home partition. Did I mention yet I use Arch? I use Arch btw. The package managers are such a great tool to get a system up and running in a short time, but you can always compile everything from scratch if you want. You can config your programs with the default settings and let the OS do it for you, or you can micromanage every single config option and take a little more time to personalize your machine. I've told you I use Arch? I use Arch btw.
Yeah, Linux is great! And in case you were wondering I use a distro called Arch Linux.
I just distro hopped to nixos. I was unaware of it until I came to the fediverse. The declarative system, once you get over the small learning curve, I feel is very easy to understand and configure. Creating and being able to roll back system configurations is a great feature too.
Previously I was using void. I quite enjoy it too and am sure I'll revisit it. It's a light (no systemd) rolling release distro with an emphasis on stable packages.
Debian for me and Linux Mint Debian Edition for anyone I help with computers, because I don't want to configure a system more than once and to investigate why some stuff doesn't work.
I keep trying other distros, and then coming back to Debian unstable XFCE. Linux Mint Debian Edition is ok. At work I did lots of Enterprise Redhat, but I'm glad I don't have to use it after I retired.
NixOS. There are lots of great things about it (like atomic upgrades, easy rollbacks, no dependency hell, safely mixing stable and unstable packages, and more) but it's killer feature is that (almost) everything about the system is specified in a single config file
Arch, becaus AUR and rolling. Alpine, because lightweight. opensuse tumbleweed, because rolling and SUSE does cool stuff. NixOS because declarative. Guix, because declarative and bootstrapping.
Those are just the distros I use, I'm sure others are nice too.
I still have yet to see someone mention Hanna Montana Linux.
EndeavourOS. I like having a relatively bloat-free setup. It's also been nice because it's been easy to manage so far.
I like Void because it makes me quirky.
Just kidding.
I like Void because it makes me quirky, doesn't require me to learn how systemD works, AND it is lightweight! Plus it has literally never broken on me.
Artix with OpenRC, Arch with alternative init systems.
Linux Mint Debian Edition for reliability with some user-friendly additions, dual boot with Garuda’s gaming edition because it pretty much sets up everything on its own for that purpose and has the latest updates.
This has been beaten to the ground.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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