Title is quite self-explanatory, reason I wonder is because every now and then I think to myself “maybe distro X is good, maybe I should try it at some point”, but then I think a bit more and realise it kind of doesn’t make a difference - the only thing I feel kinda matters is rolling vs non-rolling release patterns.
My guiding principles when choosing distro are that I run arch on my desktop because it’s what I’m used to (and AUR is nice to have), and Debian on servers because some people said it’s good and I the non-rolling release gives me peace of mind that I don’t have to update very often. But I could switch both of these out and I really don’t think it would make a difference at all.
I favour Arch because I prefer everything I want to install to be in the package repo and for it to be a version actually new enough to use.
But I actually use EndeavourOS because it is 99% Arch but installs easily with full hardware support on everything I own (including a T2 Macbook). It never fails me.
And now I have realized that I can use Distrobox to get the Arch repos and the AUR on any dostro I wish.
So, I now have Chimera Linux on 4 machines because it is the best engineered distro in my view. The system supervisor, system compiler, and C library matter to me (not to everyone). All these machines have the AUR on them (via distrobox). Best of all worlds.
Fedora just werks™
Haven’t used the command line since installing Kinoite, it’s… weird.
I use gnome software all the time and since the new update it’s so much faster
Mint cuz I’m a newbie and it was recommended.
I tried KDE Neon Plasma a while too and it was doing a weird stuttery jitter thing with the mouse that I didn’t like so I switched back.
Mint just hasn’t had any huge frustrating problems or anything wrong with it that I couldn’t fix in the settings menu. Just how I like it.
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 itChimeraOS on minipc:
does couch gaming wellBecause despite all the people telling me I’m wrong, Kubuntu is still by far the best distro I’ve ever used. Rock solid, super fast, and continues to improve.
I always unable to upgrade ubuntu based distros. I always need to reinstall
The only reason my last machine didn’t get more than 10 years worth of in-place upgrades was because I decommissioned it as a desktop and turned it into a server, so I wiped it at that point.
Bazzite. Just works really Convenient updates, and more straightforward features
I started using Linux with Arch as first distro Fedora KDE and Arch would be my other picks
I tried Debian, Ubuntu, Manjaro and CachyOS.
I stayed with Ubuntu because it simply works out of the box. To me an OS is nothing I want to tinker with, it’s supposed to be the layer on top of the hardware for other applications I want to work with. So the less hassle, the more user friendly the better in my opinion.
There are also some political reasons why I didn’t have a look at other distros.
Debian Stable.
I’ve used plenty of distros but Debian continues to give me a stable, predictable OS that allows me to get done what I need to get done with no real surprises. I have used it for many years and know how it works very well at this point.
Its my computing equivalent of a comfy and sturdy pair of well worn boots.
I’m used to debian, it was the first on the list of distros I downloaded to try and it worked right away, so I kept it. Overall, Pop Os is unintrusive and works, so it’s perfect for me.
Debian stable (ok, writing this on Debian Trixie which is not stable yet, but nonetheless works w/o trouble in a virtual machine).
I am using Debian for work and on my servers.
Why Debian? Because for my use cases there are no real alternatives at this moment.
- I need stable support for Aarch64 and AMD64, which already rules out nearly every other distribution
- For desktops I use a highly customized Gnome, which takes some work and my workflow depends on a few plugins, which rules out Fedora
- For work I need some 3rd party software repositories which again rule out fast moving distributions and other non mainstream distributions
- By now I think I run Debian and distributions based on Debian for nearly 3 decades, everything I need works stable and good enough at this moment and I accumulated a lot of knowledge about how things work in Debian
- Some of my hardware needs workarounds (not because it is too new), and again I know my way around Debian and how to patch/fix things for my hardware
- It is nice that I can use Debian for my desktops and my servers on all hardware I own, I would not want to have to learn different Linux systems for desktops and servers or have different versions of software (think Fedora vs. RHEL/CentOS/Alma etc.)
Every 6 month I’ll boot Fedoras live cd and play around with the newest Gnome/KDE, but seriously, for at least the last 5 years I never feel like essential improvements are pushed in the newest iterations of Gnome/KDE and I can happily wait the maximum of 2 years until they are released with Debian.
Saying that, I also own a Steam Deck and as an entertainment/media station I totally love what Valve is doing there. I would also be totally happy to run a De-Googled ChromeOS if it would support all the platforms/software etc. I need. For containers I’ll also happily use Alpine Linux, if it is possible, but again, I’ll mostly default to Debian simply because I know my way around.
In the end, an operating system is just a necessary evil to allow me to do what I want to do with a computer. As long as I have a stable OS which I can tweak to my liking/needs automatically and central package management, I am good. (Unless it is your hobby to play around with your operating system ;-)).
My main reason to use arch is the exceptionnally complete and useful arch wiki. Though many pages are useful for other distros as well. With the archlinux and package install guides, it’s just a matter of time (and study!) until you know how to get around.
EndeavourOS - I jumped around distros a lot but always found myself coming back to arch. Then I found Endeavour which is just arch with the same basic setup I would always end up doing, so out of convenience I stuck with it
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.
I’m mainly on Linux for over 20 years (still have one Windows Box for VR and some games, hopefully I can migrate this to Linux with the next hardware iteration). I was on Suse, Debian, Mandrake, Gentoo, Ubuntu, QubesOS (which does not self-identify as Linux-distribution) with Fedora+Debian Qubes. I never had those installed on my main machine, but also worked a lot with kali, grml, knoppix, dsl, centos, Redhat and certainly a bunch of others.
The absolute best for me, as working in it security and with different customers, is QubesOS. Sadly my current laptop is so badly supported by QubesOS that it burns 6h battery in 25 minutes and sleep/suspent does not work at all, so I’m currently on Ubuntu (which I hate for their move to snap and being Ubuntu in general)
Ubuntu. Started in the Slackware days, tried a lot of distro’s. Got used to debian commands/layouts etc. still happy to move to Centos for security focused installs. I find Ubuntu has a ton of support and general updates that fix anything I can find broken.
