Linux

My distro hoping days are about done. I started with ubuntu -> KDE Neon -> Arch -> Manjaro -> Solus -> Manjaro -> Pop_OS -> Fedora.

I'm sticking with fedora because I love the ideology behind the project and the pace of updates works perfect for me. Not too fast but still very up-to-date. Also I used to hate gnome but after using fedora I love it, I realized I didn't hate gnome but hated all the clunk other distro would add to it. I am interested in NixOS but for now I'm gonna continue to stick with fedora, might hop to fedora silverblue tho.

my arch systems have been great for years now. had one breakage that was not my own fault though.

i also have some older thinkpads with endeavor and they're working great as well.

i would distrohop but i'm too accostomed to the arch repos and aur at this point.

I've been on Nobara for almost a year now and am really happy with it. The only distro I'd probably switch to is Bazzite just to try out immutability, but aside from that I'm good where I am.

Very happy. My two daily drivers (Desktop and Laptop) are on Ubuntu but user space is managed with Nix.

All other machines are Nixos proper. Only thing keeping me back from moving to Nixos fully is I decided to piecemeal my own DE and I've just lacked the time to debug some issues related to gnome-keyring, computer locking, and coding up some system setting widgets.

I love Debian, but want Plasma 6, so I’m installing openSUSE right now.

I was quite satisfied with Debian Stable for a few years on at least two different laptops, and felt I had found my "forever distro", until I got a Framework laptop whose AMD graphics were quite buggy on it. In order to get rid of all the issues, I had to upgrade to Testing and install a mainline Liquorix kernel (and along the way, I briefly made a Frankendebian and fiddled with kernel parameters). While my years of experience with Debian and derivatives has prevented me from breaking anything, I do wish I didn't have to use all of this beta-quality software just to prevent games from freezing and crashing constantly, just because I bought "new" (about a year old) hardware.

I still want to keep Debian, because I've found nothing else that works quite as elegantly or stably, but I'm hoping to find ways to get the performance I need without Liquorix, and if something forces me to reinstall between now and the time Debian Trixie becomes stable, I'll probably give Fedora or KDE Neon another try.

Debian 12. It just works, except for buggy Wayland, thankfully KDE still supports Xorg.

Really happy with EndeavourOS for the last few months - started daily driving Linux in October last year.

blendOS has caught my attention though, I’m very interested in using immutable distros more and more.

I've settled on Manjaro for this computer, and I'm pretty happy with it (I've stooped distro-hopping, I just don't have the energy, nor the time to entertain that on my only laptop), though I'm considering changing to base Arch for my next one (which I hope is still 3 years or so in the future; this machine is only 4 yro still). Why? Because the version wait on Manjaro seems a bit arbitrary sometimes and that lag often doesn't play nice with the AUR (which I love). Sometimes I think of switching to more esoteric distros, such as the neat Alpine (which I've been using on servers for a while) and reproducible NixOS, but then I question the day to day usability and pain points, which are quite relevant to me atm.

Why do I like Manjaro though? I like the Arch made easier, the mhwd tools, the support forums (which I know people have mixed feelings on, but my experience has been nothing other than very pleasant).

Feel free to discuss my points!

Eh. I'm just (again, take 371) trying to get a ThinkPad running on Linux for light use, and I've dabbled with a lot of distros in the last 20 years, but I've always reversed course because something didn't work, and I got frustrated troubleshooting it.

This go around, I wanted Debian 12, fde, btrfs, snapshots. And I wanted it to work ootb (spoiler: it did not). It also needed to support my hardware, which includes WWAN.

D12 installs fine, everything is great, until the restart, where it hangs on hardware errors (I thiiiink it's thunderbolt but I can't remember) on boot. Okay, let's try Fedora - yay it works. Oh no, the fcc unlock for WWAN doesn't work. Let's try Mint (Debian Edition). Wtf, I can do fde but only on ext4, and gparted is useless here. I want Debian(-based) since I have the most experience with it, and the software I use is available easily. Don't like straight ubu, but not a lot of options so let's try kubu. After a couple installs, it checks all my requirements (Debian, fde, btrfs, snapshots via gui, WWAN, ootb* (with fcc unlock and added apn)).

It's fine, it works, but it's not what I wanted. And between needing WWAN working, and needing compiled packages for my software, I'm kinda stuck.

So I dunno. Kubu is fine. It's like the compact car you get as a rental. It does the job. But fuck, WHY is WWAN support so shit, why isn't btrfs support in the installer more common, why is it often difficult to do fde. Those three were a huge pain for me. And I'm not fresh off the boat, but I'm not going to fuck with the terminal just to install a fucking system. Ugh.

Anyway. I'm not "happy", but it's currently working. Suggestions (or assistance) welcome.

I’m very happy with gentoo. My computer is a universe and I am its god.

I was early on Silverblue but went to Workstation. The Fedora Anaconda UEFI shim on enthusiast edge class hardware is flawless. The ability to roll back if there are any issues is default config. Encrypted drives are easy. NVME is managed. Nvidia kernel modules are built lightning fast in the background. I have a dozen distrobox container environments each with layers of Python containers within. I occasionally have a minor issue, like upgrading to F40 put me on Python too far ahead for some projects, but it was an easy fix for me.

Unfortunately I must be on a shim, so only Fedora and Ubuntu exist on my main.

Very. I've always used Debian flavors, but I recently installed barebones Debian 12 starting from the command line up. The result has been a sleek, lightweight powerhouse of a laptop.

I'm on Debian Stable with KDE Plasma. Been thinking of trying XFCE because i've only heard good things. But eh...everything runs smoothly as it is so I'm happy.

Couldn’t be happier with Debian stable. Easiest year on my computer since I installed bookworm when it was released. There is a reason it is the basis of so many distros.

EndeavourOS. Arch, but easy to install. I'm thrilled with it, although I suspect I'd be even happier if I'd have tried one of the convenience installers for the base. Endeavor is has prettier defaults, so less fussing with basic stuff.

Otherwise, I'm thrilled. I have Artix on my laptop, and while I like not having systemd on it, some things are a bit more kludgey, and I spend more time on maintenance and working to fill gaps. Like, there are not dinit entries for every service, and I have to write them myself; which is absurdly easy, but still. Maybe in a couple years Artix will be less of a chore; in the meantime I'm preferring EndesvorOS.

I do not like the frequency of reboots necessitated by kernel upgrades. I know that I could mask it, but IME that eventually causes problems with packages than make .ko kernel modules; it's just more things to fail, and it makes me really wish Linus would have just based Linux on MINIX.

Anyway, I have 4 computers I deal with which are Debian based, and I never love Arch more than when I have to do something on Debian. Two are Mint, which are infected with flatpack, and I really hate those.

Because of all the nice feedback about OpenSUSE:
SUSE was my first (bought) Linux distribution, at a time when I would have spent days downloading an ISO, SUSE was available with a manual in store. That was nice.

But then I had an AVM Fritz! ISDN card and it was a complete shit show to get this working. Especially as YAST(2?) didn't support the configuration I needed, but every time you opened it, it would overwrite your manual changes in some configuration files.
(Edit: I'll probably need to add, that this was like 25 years ago. So besides "fuck, I'm old", my perspective in SUSE is very probably not up-to-date)

After that I hopped through a few distros and mostly stayed with basic Debian.

Nowadays I'm mostly using Manjaro (or just Arch itself, if I don't need X), because I like the Arch package system and actually also the whole system architecture... Don't exactly know what it is, but I feel much more at home.
With apt I sometimes found myself in situations, where a fresh install will resolve things faster than trying to restore/save the system. With Arch I always was somehow able to restore everything.

Can someone tell me how Tumbleweed differs/excels?
Thanks in advance!
Currently waiting for my new laptop (Framework 16 :-D) and that would be a nice opportunity to try something new.
But as I need my device for work, it's important to me, that I really have it under my control and am not depending on some half-baked configuration utility like YAST was.

Edit: I'm also playing with the thought of moving to something immutable. NixOS looked nice in concept, but the more I read about it, the more I see that it's more suitable for more server than my laptop - but maybe I'm wrong here, as I don't have any hands-on experience

I'm very content. Stopped distro-hopping a few years ago and settled on EndeavourOS.

Extremely happy. Debian Stable. Every time I open the lid of my laptop, it's working and ready to go. Wonderfully boring and exceedingly reliable.

I am 100% happy. I use a rolling distro, secure (firewall+apparmor), stable (snapshots tested through openQA) and easily revert to a previous snapshot (snapper). Yes, I am using openSUSE Tumbleweed and in my opinion there is no rolling distro that offers all these features.

Debian and very. Sorry I strayed to Ubuntu for as long as I did.

I'm enjoying Linux Mint so far

I'm thinking I may hope around to a distro using a newer kernel but meh

Mint is pretty nice

Using Debian Testing. Happy with it except with the fact it's still on KDE plasma 5 :(

don’t worry, when you get tired of distro-hopping, Debian will still be there for you

I'm running OpenSUSE Tumbleweed.

99% happy, once in a blue moon there is a library issue during an update, I have to wait a few days, that's it.

Very solid KDE experience, all of the things I wanted to do worked out of the box. Very solid.