Free and Open Source Software

Currently I run GNU Guix on my desktop, laptop, and servers. I like the dedication to software freedom and the way package management works. Before that I used Debian until 2019, Trisquel until 2014, and Ubuntu until around 2010. Debian and Trisquel are fine and I don't have anything against them, I just like the Guix package manager more. I've used Xfce with all of these (and before then, GNOME 2). I set it up the way I like it and it never changes.

I typically run LineageOS on my mobile devices, without microG or any proprietary apps. As I've said before my preferred OS would be some variant of GNU/Linux, preferably Guix as well, but LineageOS works well enough.

I run OpenWRT on my router, and had a previous router than ran LibreCMC (a variant of OpenWRT using Linux-libre).

Windows games are made for Windows so I prefer to use Windows for them. I don't particularly want to turn GNU/Linux into Windows, I think it deserves better than that.

Arch KDE and SteamOS.

Kinoite has my heart forever

Gentoo

Slackware

Bazzite, from Universal Blue, based on Fedora Atomic Desktops. Immutable-style distro which means critical OS files and folders are read-only and all system apps (the ones preinstalled) are updated together as a full image rather than piecemeal. Anything not preinstalled can be installed in a distrobox or as a flatpak/appimage/aur, or as a last resort, layered with rpm-ostree. Extremely user-friendly, everything a gamer needs is either installed and preconfigured out of the box or available as a flatpak. Bazzite's the first time I had a good enough experience on Linux that I made it my daily driver; now Windows is the secondary OS I only go to when I really need that one thing that only works there.

NixOS on my Laptop, Desktop, Gaming Machine, and around 10 servers.

Still have two servers on Arch, waiting to be migrated, and I'm really itching to but NixOS on the Steam Deck as well.

Debian on servers, EndeavourOS on general PC (mainly because the aur is so good)

I run Fedora on my gaming PC (KDE) and my ThinkPad (GNOME/Hyprland). It’s a rock-solid distro. Some may think the release cycle is too fast, but then just don’t upgrade right away.

Distrohopping is an addiction for me. As soon as I get settled, I’m ready to bounce. I want my gaming PC to stay where it is, but I might hop my ThinkPad around. Maybe. Fedora on it is fantastic.

slackware

Debian, Mint, Arch (by the way).

Had Ubuntu as my main driver for about 2 years but didn't like Gnome and had more trouble with an Nvidia card than on Mint or Arch.

Fedora is top of my to-try-list but I'm not a distro-hopper, so who knows when I'll have a use case.

Linux mint it just works.

My first distrobution was the good old Ubuntu for a laptop that I used for school. I stuck with that for 2-3 years. During that time I really, really wanted to try out new distros, but I didn't want to lose my files and such, so I just stuck with it. During this time I also changed my desktop's os to Ubuntu, but I am not sure when I did it.

After I got a Laptop due to the previous being old and broken, I tried out Arch Linux and grew to love it more than Ubuntu, so I changed out my desktop's os to that as well when I got a new ssd and was migrating to it. I used Arch for another year or two, before my laptop had a disk failure and I had to reinstall. I installed Debian onto it, since I was feeling lazy and didn't want to go through the mess of installing Arch again. And then later I also installed Windows on it with dualboot for games that didn't want to work with Proton.

So basically I now use Arch on the desktop and Debian/Windows on laptop.

Started with Mint, next tried Ubuntu and I just stuck with it for now. It's a polished experience although sometimes snaps issues show up, so I've been considering switching to either PopOS 24.04 when it comes out or trying out Nix.

I have a few machines, which run:

• Raspbian Bookworm (arm64) with IceWM - Raspbian is the only desktop RPi distro that works out-of-the-box. I chose IceWM because it's fast, light, customisable, and I can make it look like it's 2004.
• openSUSE Tumbleweed with Xfce+Bspwm - I keep going back to openSUSE. It just works. As for the desktop, I wanted Xfce but with tiling.
• Mageia 9 with LXQt - I just needed something lighter than Fedora Xfce, as this machine only has 4GB of RAM.
• FreeBSD with i3 - Thought I'd give BSD a try. I was pleasantly surprised.
• Gentoo (WIP) - I'm just throwing random distros at my MacBook until something sticks. Gentoo is fast and can control the fan without me having to git clone and compile the drivers (ironically).
• crunchbang++ (i386) with Openbox - This is a mid-2000s MacBook, running one of the few Linux distros that actually boots on it.

Some distros I tried but did not like were Pop!_OS, Slackware, Zenwalk, Freespire, Redcore, Fedora Atomic, ArchBang, and antiX.

Sone distros I'd like to try are Qubes OS, Clear Linux, CRUX, Kwort, Paldo, Exherbo, NuTyX, T2, Chimera, Adélie, Frugalware (no new ISOs since 2016, but the packages are still updated), Dragora, Parabola, Hyperbola, PLD, KANOTIX, Calculate, ALT, ROSA, and AUSTRUMI.

The reasons I have not yet tried these are mostly down to my limited hardware and the complexity of some of the distros. With others, it's often down to WiFi drivers not existing for my proprietary cards. And then there are also a couple of distros from Russia, which I feel I can't trust at the moment.

I'm currently on Neon on the desktop (and macOS on the mac). On the servers it nearly all debian and a couple of BSDs

Over the last almost 25 years i've almost exclusively ran KDE when not being stuck with windows (for various reasons). Ive heard good things about Arch, but I'm getting far too old to be bothered with a semi-complex install (yes I have run Gentoo for several years, so I think it is an age thing).

Happily running EndeavourOS with KDE for like 3 years without reinstall.

Debian

I've tried different distros and liked them, but tend to come back to Debian.

Debian on my servers, LMDE on my laptops.

I'm currently using Kubuntu, although I'm planning on switching to Debian or maybe NixOS at some point. Kubuntu works, but I don't like snaps, and even though I've removed them I'd rather just not ever have to deal with them.

I first started with Mint, but didn't like gnome/cinnamon which is why I switched to Kubuntu, but other than that it was fine.

Gentoo, after a 15 year break where I used Ubuntu / Arch. Might try NixOS or something similar.

KDE for desktop env.

Mint on a couple of old laptops. Debian command line on a hobby server. Raspbian on a Raspberry Pi.

Didn’t love Arch (too complicated for my skills at the time). Fedora was okay and would do in a pinch. I remember liking OpenSUSE, but went back to Mint for some reason that I don’t remember (probably driver- or repo-related).

I’ll likely never try it myself, but I’ve known new users who did ok with Zorin.

Endeavour and KDE.
Like the look of it. Easy to update, no bloatware or games reinstalled.
If I do swap again it'd probably be back to Mint. I had some issues a while ago and moved to MX. That worked well but there was so much guff. Tried Endeavour about a year ago and have been here ever since.

Opensuse because I like green.

Used Ubuntu for ~15 years, switched to NixOS a couple months ago and haven't looked back.

I've made a habit of clean installing all of the desktops/laptops/servers in my life on the first point release of each LTS (i.e. 22.04.1). That would mean there was time for the dust to settle and for me to tweak my install/customization scripts from the previous LTS.

So since I knew I was gonna have to modify my Ubuntu install scripts to work with 24.04 anyways, I fiigured it was a decent time to try and see if I could get the install scripts converted to a nix config instead, and it ended up working a treat.

I use Linux mint I also tried Lubuntu but it felt slow and clunky and when I tested Puppy linux it seemed okay but I like being able to boot up my laptop without using a usb every time.

I'm currently on Arch, but my first distro was Linux Mint. Linux Mint eased my transition into the Linux world, as it looked and behaved almost the same as Windows. You can avoid terminal commands completely thanks to the GUI apps that the Mint team includes for updating, installing, and removing packages.

I switched to Arch because one of the benefits of Arch is that it forces you to become familiar with the various different components that make up a Linux distro. When you install Mint, pretty much everything is included out of the box. You may have to install a few proprietary drivers here and there, depending on your HW config, but overall, you get everything you need to start using your computer. You don't have to concern yourself with a lot of things. Arch is different. Even with the archinstall command that you can use to simplify the installation process, you still have much to do post-install. Audio drivers, package manager, Bluetooth, productivity apps, customization options, WiFi drivers, to name a few. And even after that, when you start daily driving Arch, you still may encounter issues that would require you to do some troubleshooting via reading the Arch Wiki or looking for similar problems on Arch forums. It can be a headache at times, but I personally feel it's worth it.

Try Debian + KDE. It's a good combo imo - both stability and modernity.

My first choice is Pop!_OS because my graphics cards are NVidia, but you said that you don't like their DE. My second choice is LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition). It is boring and stable and gets out of your way.

My current distro is NixOS - mainly as I've built my NAS/homelab. Definitely not recommended for a new player to Linux!

I'm on Pop_OS and really like it. I chose it because i have a 2080, so the nvidia specific package is great for me. No WiFi issues, but I almost always have it hard wired, so not much chance to have it go wrong

Debian! It's stable, elegant, and doesn't impede customization. I distro-hopped a lot over the years - some that I ended up disliking included KaOS (severely limited software repository), Clear Linux (only way to get ffmpeg was to compile it from source) and Fedora (very slow); most I liked, and just decided to move on at some point. But I kept coming back to Debian, and eventually got to a point where instead of trying a different distro when Debian broke, I would just reinstall Debian.

I'd be interested to try VanillaOS or another "immutable" distro at some point in the future. See if they've matured enough for my day-to-day use.

I am using CentOS 9 in WSL. I don't particularly care what distribution I use because I mostly using a bash shell as a software development environment. I prefer apt to flat packs and use ubuntu 20 on an embedded system that I write code for at work. I keep wanting to get more experience with KDE and gnome, but I haven't been good about using my free time to mess with OS. As long as I have vim and a prompt that uses vi input, I am pretty content. (Does this make me sound old? The kids at work have trouble following what I am doing when we pair program.)

I used to be on pure Arch for 2.5 years, but currently uses cachyOS. And its so much removes the pain points of arch, as well as giving super fast performance.

SteamOS on steam deck, PostmarketOS on pinephone. On desktop I use OpenBSD, but if I used a Linux it'd be either Alpine, Void, or Devuan.

Finally, my chance to say...

I use Arch, by the way :D

...Also, I tried Ubuntu and Mint and Fedora and some others (ages ago). Didn't like feeling like everything I wanted to do was stepping on the toes of some software that was trying to manage it for me, but not how I wanted or I just didn't want it managed for me.

I tend to alternate between Arch and Gentoo every few years. Sometimes Arch feels like it's making assumptions and doing things its way more than I want, but then Gentoo takes ages to install or update anything, is a bit more fiddly. I'll probably go back or maybe try out Funtoo again but for now I don't have a CPU that won't melt if I try to compile things (laptop-only booooo v.v!!) sooo Arch for now. :3 🤷

I'm on MX Linux

Antix! It has a couple of rough patches but overall I really like it. Mainly I like having my RAM back