this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2025
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I made the unfortunate post about asking why people liked Arch so much (RIP my inbox I'm learning a lot from the comments) But, what is the best distro for each reason?

RIP my inbox again. I appreciate this knowledge a lot. Thank you everyone for responding. You all make this such a great community.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 hours ago

Arch, because I get to say that I use Arch. /s

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 hours ago

Since I mostly use computers for entertainment these days I keep coming back to Bazzite. It’s fast, stable, kept up to date, reliable, and “just works”. I’ve created custom rpm-ostree layers to faff around, but it’s not actually necessary for anything I need.

I used to keep a second Kubuntu Minimal partition around but I realized I just don’t need it. If I wasn’t so happy with Bazzite, I would probably go with openSUSE or Endeavor.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 hours ago

Ubuntu because they provide kernel live patching and they fix issues quickly and my system doesn't go down if I procrastinate in doing system updates

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 hours ago

Gentoo because it is as stable as Debian, less bloated than Arch, has more packages than Ubuntu, is rolling release, can mix and match stable, testing and unstable on a whim.

Even its one downside, compile times, is now gone if you just choose to use binary packages.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 hours ago

LMDE because I get the robustness of Debian stable and the quality of life goodies of Mint.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)
  • The fricking AUR

  • Nothing I don't _actually_ need

  • Pacman

  • Everything is the latest version available–ALWAYS.

  • ArchWiki

[–] [email protected] 3 points 12 hours ago

Tumbleweed. Rolling release with automated testing (openQA), snapper properly setup out of the box.

Honestly the entire openSUSE ecosystem. Tumbleweed on my main PC that often has some of the latest hardware, Slowroll on my (Framework) laptop because it's rolling but slower (monthly feature updates, only fixes in-between), and Leap for servers where stability (as in version/compatibility stability, not "it doesn't crash" stability) is appreciated.

openSUSE also comes in atomic flavors for those interested. And it's European should you care.

With all that being said, I don't really care much about what distro I'm using. What I do with it could be replicated with pretty much any distro. For me it's mostly just a means to an end.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

EndeavourOS is the best because.

It's currently on my system and said system hasn't burst into flames yet, so I'm too lazy to change it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago

Also, its space themed which makes it automatically the coolest.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

I use Nobara with KDE for my gaming computer, Mint with Cinnamon for pretty much everything else.

Mint is the closest to a "Just Works" experience for me. Cinnamon is rock stable, especially on Mint Debian Edition. I don't remember the last time Cinnamon crashed or had any major bugs for me.

I use Debian for most of my servers, stable and simple. Arch on a junker Thinkpad to test and mess around with new programs and window managers.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 hours ago

Been using Nobara KDE for about a year, it's been awesome Mint Cinnamon is also great

[–] [email protected] 9 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

I use debian cause it just works.

I was a Nix user (more specifically, nix-darwin user) but after being away from the computer for like one year (to study for the university entrance exam), I completely forgot how to use it and resulted in erasing the computer. Nix/NixOS is fun, but it was too complicated for me.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 hours ago

ubuntu for similar reasons

[–] [email protected] 2 points 19 hours ago

It isn't. I'm on PopOS 24.04 Alpha 7 (soon to be Beta 1), because of COSMIC (and because I was having some bugs with Fedora a few months back).

I recently wanted to tinker with a piece of software that wasn't packaged, and I couldn't compile it because of outdated libraries. I could return to Fedora specifically to tinker with it but as an ex-distrohopper, I know it isn't worth the effort.

Even though Fedora or some version of it will likely be my forever distro, I will stick to PopOS for now because I can't be bothered to distrohop and back up months' worth of files, including game saves and a ton of stuff in my Downloads directory.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

I use Kubuntu. It is defintly not the best Distro. I am just used to it and too lazy to get used to another distro. My days as a distro jumper lie 15 years back...

Tbh though, I might switch to Debian stable whenever Trixie comes out.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 19 hours ago
[–] [email protected] 5 points 20 hours ago

Linux Mint because it's extremely simple and has caused me no issues for over a year. It's the best distribution to get someone who is afraid to switch from Windows or MacOS to understand that using Linux can be just as easy.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 20 hours ago

OpenSUSE tumbleweed: Up-to-date, unbreakable due to Btrfs+snapper, very secure defaults (firewall), based in Germany. It works perfectly on my Thinkpad, so I couldn't ask for better.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 20 hours ago

Arch, everything it does provide works extremely well, I can configure everything how I want it without having to fight a distro maintainer trying to be clever, I get new features and bugfixes whenever they go in without having to worry about a distro maintainer deciding whether it’s relevant or whether I should just live with crashes and security issues for another two years because they figured it wasn’t important or critical enough.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Fedora is quite unremarkable, no issues of late. Or ever, for that matter. It's glorious.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Fedora is just a no-drama distro that works, and I love it

[–] [email protected] 2 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (1 children)

Its actually a high drama distro, they push new changes before many other distros. For instance they were one of the first to go to Wayland by default and there is an upcoming vote to remove 32bit stuff In the next release, which would make it so steam only works as a flatpak because steam on Linux is 32bit

Fedora is my distro of choice also

[–] [email protected] 2 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Fair!

The vote resulted negatively, BTW, as far as I've heard. 32-bit are there for now.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 hours ago

Good to hear, I was hoping that wouldn't get approved by the engineering and steering committee

[–] [email protected] 1 points 21 hours ago

Yast, actual stability.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 22 hours ago

Arch btw, only been using it for a couple of weeks, only installed it because of the meme. Got my hands on a few years old thinkpad for practically free, so why not. It's actually quite good so far, been struggling a bit with external monitors, but I don't miss windows

[–] [email protected] 2 points 22 hours ago

the mouse is cute

[–] [email protected] 4 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

NixOS. I've gotten so used to the declarative nature of NixOS, that I simply cannot go back to a "normal" distro anymore.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 22 hours ago

I love Pop OS because it got me back into Linux after ditching it for windows for the last 10 years, partly to do .net development and partly because I hated the state of Ubuntu/Unity.

As soon as cosmic is stable and easy to install on Nix I'll switch to it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

A bit of tinkering. Thoughts?

Obligatory "There is not a single distro that's the absolute best for each and every one." disclaimer aside, my personal favorite is definitely secureblue for being a hardened-by-default distro that adheres to the ~~'immutable'~~ reprovisionable, anti-hysteresis paradigm while enjoying a healthy stream of improvements pushed out by an active group of contributors.

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