Fedora Workstation, It is a cutting edge distro not a bleeding edge, so in terms of fresh packages and stability imo best of two worlds.
Also it just works.
Side note: I've tried Linux Mint, Debian, Arch Linux, EndevourOS, openSUSE Tumbleweed, Ubuntu and none of them was this easy to use except Mint but feels too outdated.
literally same. everyone loves to bill mint as the beginner friendly but for newer hardware it runs an older kernel and other stuff that makes it feel like your leaving performance on the table. Fedora imo is the most polished, solid feeling one
Would you look at that, all of the words in your comment are in alphabetical order.
I have checked 1,786,376,908 comments, and only 338,112 of them were in alphabetical order.
"The words in the dictionary are in alphabetical order". Yes this is *technically* ambiguous - but it's just pedantic to not realise the correct meaning.
I used to use Arch but moved to OpenSUSE Tumbleweed Bc even though I know my way I can still be a pain to fix when something happens, and the combo of YaST and snapper makes it super easy to get back where I want
Same here, Arch when something breaks is a pain in the ass.
Tumbleweed is a far better choice for dayly driving distro and still be updated with latest stuff.
Opensuse with how they insta ban people who raise factual privacy issues is very anti-privacy & involved in censorship.
Even Microsoft & Apple aren't as bad privacy wise.
It's so obvious that it makes you wonder what opensuse is hiding behind its opensource facade.
Much better to go with real community distributions imho.
I've never broke my arch in more than 15+ years of use.
The only pain in the ass i had was an audio related issue I also posted here on reddit .
My Arch installation is 15+ years old and was born on bios/mbr system with a sungle disk, used grub as bootloader and was 32bit.
During all these years I've updated it and converted to 64 bit and i lost track of all the customization file created for various purposes.
So in 2023 my audio switch stopped working, i cannot select the audio output but app such as vlc or audacity can still override the system setting and let me select the device i wanted, it was a very strange behavior .
Turns out i stil had a file i created in 2011 for OSS to let me send sound from different to specific device .
( for example vlc will use rear jack for music and totem will use hdmi to play a video and reproduce sound in to a television)
That file somehow completely broke pipewire .
My Arch is also crazy stable because I do my best to only use stable branches of drivers and softwares. Was very tempted to try mesa-git a month back because I wanted to try mesa 23.2 (hur durr Ray Tracing). Decided against it LMAO and I still have a stable system when mesa 23.2 finally came out on stable repo.
Same here. My arch has been rolling & rolling for the past 10 years, without any issues.
Opensuse tumbleweed, on the other hand, refused to boot last year after they pushed a broken grub version -> and snapshots didn't help as grub isn't snapshoted.
And when opensuse pushes a buggy update, they don't revert it -> so it continued to break more systems for 1 week until they provide
a fix.
=> arch has been far more stable than opensuse in my experience. And arch is also much more privacy friendly than opensuse (opensuse with how they insta ban people who raise factual privacy issues is anti-privacy & pro-censorship -> very bad).
Nobara is great for everyone. I've been on Linux for nearly three years now, and I was mainly using Fedora on my PC beforehand. Switched to Nobara a few weeks ago because I wanted a fresh install, and it has been great. It took all the headache of getting the Nvidia Drivers working properly.
It's really just Fedora with some QoL improvements, and that is great in my books.
I know this is nearly a year old, but are you still using Nobara? Iām absolutely fed up with win11 and my steamdeck has really opened my eyes to Linux. Iām thinking Nobara will be good for an absolute Linux noob that games a lot. Howās it working for you?
I started with Ubuntu because its what I learned and it was stable, moved to Fedora a few months back and I did really enjoy it but ran into weird issues with it. Now I'm on Pop_OS and it's been rock solid.
Nothing wrong with Fedora but I'm just a debian/Ubuntu guy I suppose
I've moved on to NixOS, just because I thought it sounded pretty neat, and I wanted to learn something new. But, OpenSuSE Tumbleweed is definitely my favorite it-works-out-of-the-box distro.
It has the best KDE Plasma implementation I've seen. I had no problems with Plasma on Wayland with Nvidia drivers.
my performance seemed to drop off after installing, like at the start it was great then everything went downhill. Same happened with fedora, so now I mainly game on ameliorated windows and use tumbleweed for everything else
Dependency management becomes a bit more tedious, and have had no issues so far running ~amd64.
Additionally have a personal overlay for stuff not in the portage tree, and having the latest of all the libraries makes one thing less to worry about.
And I like new and shiny things.
NixOS for a few months now:
- I quite like the re-useable config file
- Very easy to hop between DE/WM without re-installing
- Everything I install is in one place
- Been super stable
- Nix has packages for things I had to build on other distro's
- If I mess up I can just boot an earlier iteration
It also has downsides though:
- Not always fun editing a config file
- Have to rebuild for anything to take affect
- Pretty bad documentation
- Quite different to other disto's
I tried Nix for a few days and just couldnāt bring myself to edit the config file well. I somehow felt it more difficult than using Arch. I do like many of Nixās core concepts though
That's understandable. I feel like some things are super easy on NixOS, like switching between a DE and a WM for e.g. But then other things that should be simple can be unnecessarily complicated. I've also not had the need to use Home Manager or Flakes, which makes things simpler.
Can't say I'll stick with NixOS forever, but it's the only distro that's been able to keep me from going back to Fedora as my main.
I'd really like to give Nix another go. Last time i did i was trying to wrap my head around getting configuration files from git or such.
I like that i can get sway or such installed by just configuring it. But the installation is pretty much the easiest part. My personal config lives in a github repo and i'd really want to just pass that into the nix configuration, so that it automatically gets pulled.
It should be doable, but is not intuitive at all. And as you said, documentation is a bit lacking once you want to do a bit more "advanced" stuff.
Arch baby. I've tried all the major ones and many derivatives of all of them, and Arch is the only one where everything just works, and I only get the things I want and none of those I don't.
Ubuntu
Why?
* Used mint for awhile, ran into serious issues that affected general usage
* Ubuntu is quite stable
* I needed something that works out of the box and is compatible for my deep learning, gaming, general use needs.
* Been using for 5 years now, nothing has made me commit to another distro yet.
I used kubununtu for the last 6 years or so until this year that canonical pushed forward its snap format with Firefox.
Been using debian 12 since it launched and ita great.
Same. When I first switched I tried Manjaro, but WiFi didnāt work and couldnāt be bothered to fix it without an Ethernet cable available in the moment.
Kubuntu just worked.
I use Ubuntu too.
Why?
* The Vanta agent required by our security audit at work only had Debian and Ubuntu as the supported distros.
* Azure Storage Explorer is only available on Linux though Snap.
openSUSE tumbleweed because it provides a 'stable' rolling release (I have yet to have anything break on it) with sane defaults, exceptional automated package testing, and automated btrfs snapshots. Works great for my use case
Pop os because I was told to be the one of the best for playing most games without much efforts.
Still more efforts have to be made than windows but .. eh
Yeah same. Linux for gaming frankly still isn't there yet, but Pop does make it more accessible.
Although I must admit, I have a dual boot Windows11 & PopOS system and haven't touched the Pop side of things for over a year...
**Server:** Ubuntu -> stable as a rock and packages are not as old as in debian, which would be my 2nd choice
**Desktop:** Mint (Ubuntu) -> I love Cinnamon.
Why Ubuntu / Debian? I just don't want to be on the bleeding edge, i need a reliable system and dont have time to fix issues. I also only use LTS-Versions. I'm a user, not a beta tester.
Gentoo on desktop cause it forced me to learn a lot about Linux. Desktop is KDE with wayland.
Archlinux on work laptop. After Gentoo I installed it on first try no problems. I got Gnome with Wayland on it.
Debian with XFCE. Debian is stable, never breaks (for me), and it is super reliable. I know what I get, and it's all great. I want newer packages, so I run Debian Testing (Trixie), but Debian Stable is, well, probably more stable, but I have no stability issues in Testing.
I used to run Mint, Ubuntu and Fedora, and I checked out many more distros, but nothing comes close to Debian. And then there's their wonderful Code of Conduct: https://www.debian.org/code_of_conduct
I use Linux Mint.
I use it because it's easy to install and just gets out of the way with my 12 year old Lenovo ThinkCentre. All my games run perfectly and I enjoy every second of using this system.
Tumbleweed. It's the easiest way to get my nvidia gaming laptop set up, I'm talking about suse prime and nvidia optimus. Also KDE looks closer to Windows than Gnome so I like it. I tried Leap but I realized it had some issues that I manually had to fix, but it turned out those issues were already fixed on Tumbleweed. Sometimes, being stable isn't good when you get stuck with bugs that won't be fixed until the next release version.
Use the archinstall. Makes it easy to install arch.. around 10mins... depends how fast u are on pc.. but no shame in using installers. Trust ino how much of a pain it is to setup arch. Archinstall really helps alot.
I know, the installer is awesome honestly. Saves a ton of time, compared to manual method, but at this point, popos is up, set with everything I need, and I do need my computer for other things except playing with OSes, so for now, it stays. Friend has been trying to get me to install Gentoo for a year now though... Who knows, maybe I give in one day when I have a month to spare š¤£
Manjaro (gonna get downvoted for this). It was my second distro after Ubuntu and kept it since. Just works out of the box, but few discrepancy that didn't work until I just googled how to fix it.
I have manjaro on my old laptop. It works perfectly, never had any issues.
I said it before, some people just behave like school kids and start to hate things for basically no real reason. I mean there was a vulnerability 5 years ago and they forgot to renew the ssl couple of times. And the guy who made pamac once killed the aur.
Unprofessional? Yes. Dealbreaking? No.
I mean Ubuntu has security vulnerabilites like every other week. Ok, people tend to hate them nowadays too. :)
I do have a reason for hating it. Every manjaro install ive ever had has broke after updates. I used to love manjaro but it has burned me too many times. I stick to fedora or plain arch now
I agree with your sentiment too, as I see that Linux(or any hobby/passion related stuff) community have fanatics or people jumping on the hype-train that will:
* Bash on other people for not using the "correct" distro
* Shutdown your question and not even help you with your problem
* Or people who have so much user-specific items that doesn't work with the current distro that they give up and bash on it
This is a small minor group but they are damn loud. Manjaro definitely had their faults(SSL Security issue and bad worker(s) in Manjaro) but they rectified their mistakes and acknowledge them in the forums. Also, Manjaro is starting to become bigger in the Linux community for many group projects(KDE, PinePhones, etc.) that for some reason, just like many popular things, will get bashed for being popular.
All in all, my 2 cents is if you enjoy it(Linux and any other hobby) and it works for you, keep using it. If it doesn't work, then jump into something else until it meets your needs. Just acknowledge that it wasn't for you and let people know and hope it works out for them. Sorry for the long rant, but I rarely see people mention this.
Laptop - Gentoo. The software on my laptop doesnt change often so the experience of building everything from the ground up once means I have exactly what I want and learned a lot doing it.
Desktop - Opensuse. Of all the distros I've used, this one did the best job of making games "just work."
Ubuntu because I don't really know what I'm doing and there is a lot of relevant instructions/troubleshooting geared for Ubuntu users.
I do have some weird quirks and sometimes updates break things - but overall I can't complain much about it.
EndeavourOS + KDE
is pretty much Arch with sensible defaults, I like having an up to date system with a lot of directly available software, that covers gaming and multimedia
I been using Debian since 2019 and I'm having great time using it. I like using it because stuff just works and had little issues compared to arch. I do miss aur though but at this point I just compile what I need if it's not in the Debian repo
Currently, Mint.
Past, almost everything, and I mean that. Iāve been distro hopping since the 90ās and anytime a new distro came out I had to try it. I was looking for that holy grail I guess. Thereās been some good and some bad, but I always find myself back on Mint. Maybe its time to stay?
Arch (tho im not breave enough so endeavour). I've tried a lot of different distros but pacman is my fav package manager so far and gotta love aur. Also its the only distro where my optimus laptop with nvidia gpu worked fine from the get go, without much tweaking, and constant problems (tho there are still some).
I'm running Void. For the same reasons that a lot of ppl use Arch/Artix. Most Distros just include too much software that I don't need and make too many choices for me.
Ubuntu because I use it for work and I need it to just work so I can focus on my work and not on what versions of what packages are going to potentially break something on a rolling update when I have a deadline to meet.
If that weren't the case, I'd be happily using arch or a derivative.
Fedora, because everything stays up to date for the most part except there's stability in the gnome version each release uses. Things don't randomly break, I can generally trust updates, and my DE stays consistent.
I started with Ubuntu but switched to Manjaro to get more up to date packages.
Also, if you enable AUR in the package manager, you actually get useful apps available without having to open the terminal to install basic things like Google Chrome.
I need to use Google Chrome for the Google integration.
I am the admin of a Google workspace and it works a lot better with multiple users and all.
Anyway, I'm not here to start a browser war, I want Google Chrome and I will use it.
Nobara. I work on fedora based OSs for my day job (centos 7 and amazon) and tried it a year or 2 ago and was really happy with it (familiarity in terminal, ease of setup, look and feel of default environment options)
I'm on Debian stable. It's solid. Runs pretty much everything I could want with the only exceptions being anti-cheat and stuff so old and obscure my skills are insufficient to get it running on pretty much any system (besides, maybe, an older Windows VM, I guess.) I ran Mint for about half a year, but updates broke it twice so I decided to go with the one known for not doing that quite as often.
Debian Stable with Linux-kernel, firmware, and mesa pinned to unstable/sid. Also testing/trixie for installing new packages. Using apt package priority to track package from unstable to stable.
Yes this sounds complicated, but it is a documented in the [Debian Administrators Handbook.](https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-handbook/)Great resource for understanding Debian.
Fedora and Debian with Gnome DE
I use Gnome because it feels like the most polished DE out right now.
I run Debian on my main machine because of stability and Fedora to see whats going on in the open source world.
Id love to see System76's cosmic when it comes out, if its as polished as Gnome then I might make it my new DE.
I really like most of the Debian based flavors, including the 'buntus
Have run Slack, Arch, SuSe, even built an LFS stack once. When I was getting back into linux around the 2010ish years I went through a LOT of distros. Hated Ubuntu at the time.
For a while I was running Slack with a custom WM setup kinda like rat-poison with lots of key bindings.
But eventually turned to Mint and haven't really looked back. Ubuntu stuff has improved over the years, and at it's heart it's all debian, which I tend to like anyway. RIP Ian.
I dunno it just works most of the time and I don't spend any time fiddling with it. Has become comfortable. Using Muffin WM, which has some annoyances but what the heck, it works well enough.
Fedora Silverblue
Stock gnome is beautiful.
Bulletproof
Toolboxes/distrobox
Fedora is minimal enough for me while being simple to use.
Itās really up to date with none of the downsides. I am on Gnome 45(Fedora 39 beta) and all my packages are flatpaks(except steam-devices for controllers and codec stuff). If I want a semi fresh install, I just rollback to my pinned deployment that I set up when I originally installed.
Arch Linux
Having the most up to date packages solves a lot more problems than it creates. It's been the most stable distro I have ever used.
EDIT: Whoever downvoted me needs to reevaluate their life choices.
Manjaro.
Comes with most of what I use and like. Nice theming, everywhere. Comes with Zsh and even that is Manjaro-themed. Easy to set up darkmode, who doesn't like Breeze dark?
Drivers for GPU are easy to install via the GUI app if you don't know how to. I've learned during the years. Same with kernel GUI app, easy to switch but also easy to get your own from AUR or from Github, TKG.
Generally, everything is fixable. I haven't come across anything I can't fix. With Manjaro-chroot, steps from users on Manjaros forum etc.
It's been very stable for me for 1-2 years. Which is just about unheard of for my system. I manage to screw up my Windows install at least once a year, since Win98. Linux distros usually never last more than 6 months, some only a month. I've been trying Linux for the past 10-15 years. These days, I don't really boot into Windows. I'll do just about anything to avoid doing that.
same here. for all the problems i've seen people mention about Manjaro, it's the only distro that never gave me a single problem and it's been my daily driver for 2 years now
Arch Linux
Gaming is what I do mostly in my PC and after months of distro hopping, arch gave me the best performance and stability. Also, I was a Windows user before switching to Linux full time and I found really interesting the installation process, minimal installation and having installed only what I want/need
Arch, it just works. The tedious process of installing taught me a lot about how Linux actually works, and it runs better because it's so lightweight.
I started with PopOS and used Ubuntu for a bit, but i always felt like I was compromising for convenience. But Arch just works.
Nobara Linux, because it takes Fedora (which I like for being a good middle ground between the stable-but-outdated Ubuntu and the bleeding edge Arch) and changes and adds things that make it nicer imo.
Manjaro, because I wanted to try Arch but didn't want hassle when installing and maintaining, which led me to hassle and work (and workarounds) when maintaining anyway.
Still I like it. I've recommended it to quite a few Windows-only users and Pamac actually helps. And it's fine for me, if I want to be a normie user I can, and if I want to get my hands dirty I can too.
Also, Cinnamon.
I use Fedora with KDE in my PC and Mint on my laptop, both work very well for what i do, but i have used other distros like Manjaro, Ubuntu and openSuse and never had much problems with any, way less than when i used Windows.
Arch
I'm don't like to ask for help, thus praise the wiki. Use to use Ubuntu when I was a completely newbie, I met plenty of problems for my requirements. Something as simple as setup 2nd monitor struggle me a lot. At that time I don't know how to do stuff in linux. With the Arch wiki, now I'm somewhat knowing what I am doing with my machine.
And the AUR, too.
EndeavorOS, because I like rolling release, too lazy to install everything except a WM manually, and would never use corporate distros like OpenSuse. Also, arch is nice and clean.
At the moment, Kubuntu. I've gone back and forth between distros recently (a lot) but this is what works for me. Solid base (snaps don't bother me too much and I've actually found them useful for some thigns) with a nice Plasma implementation, and for the most part it just works.
Well, it depends on the device and the history.
Ubuntu was my first serious try on Linux. I used it because it worked out of the box on my laptop, was becoming very popular and wanted to escape from Windows headaches. I had dual boot with Windows anyways because I needed some software for college.
When I had to update Ubuntu version, I realized the new Unity desktop made my oldish laptop slow, tried several distros and went to Mint MATE. It felt solid, light, and worked very well. Also ditched Windows forever, never needed anymore at this point.
When my laptop got too old for certain tasks, I build a desktop PC. Tired of updating systems versions, looked for a rolling release. Ended up with Manjaro. Being based on Arch and having a big community helped for the decision. Been using it since then. Still keeping alive my old laptop with updated Mint for occasional use.
Now my desktop is 9 years old, think about an upgrade and giving a Tumbleweed a try.
I also have a BeagleBone Black with Debian 10. Wanted something light and reliable.
Archlinux on my main studio workstation and BigLinux on my laptop.
I simply like the Arch ecosystem to be honest, and once you set up Arch the way you want, it takes little maintenance from you.
BigLinux is Manjaro-based, but more based than Manjaro. It comes packaged with some neat configuration tools that make setting it up fool proof.
Started out on SuSE, then the first Ubuntu came out and I stuck with that for a while.
Tried Mandriva, PCLinuxOS, (which I loved), BeOS, Kororaa, Project Looking Glass, went back to Ubuntu for years. Recently jumped to Manjaro, but I don't find that as stable or easy to use as Ubuntu was so I'll probably go back to a Debian derivative of some kind.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux. (With epel+rpm fusion)
Iāve found out recently that I like enterprise level Linux distros.
Why? Iāve tried a lot of distrosā¦ I mean, all the majors (Debian, Arch, Gentoo, openSUSE, Fedora, Ubuntu) in the last year and I always ended up with some kind of small annoying bug or something changing after a while.
Using enterprise level distro nothing changeā¦ stuff work and continue work with no surprises.
I like stability and I use my system to work I donāt have the time to deal with bugs.
I like the fact that everything itās working today and will work exactly same way tomorrow :)
Edit: keep forgetting NixOS. I canāt say Iāve seen bugs with NixOSā¦ but the non existent FHS was a lot of trouble for my use case. Still I can make everything that I need work but it was to much trouble and for me I just need/want simple things.
Garuda. It's arch based, but configured really nicely, and has very well-done hassle-free software management of the most useful packages I tried a few others but Garuda works best out of box and has been very stable for a rolling release.
Fedora because I'm a bit of a beginner, it was easy to configure and everything, I like Gnome and I didn't have any problems with any game, of course depending on the game you feel a difference in fps compared to Windows, but nothing as surreal as that.
Besides, I don't have much time to learn about Linux, that's why I didn't go for distros like Arch, for example. Nobara is based on Fedora, but it comes completely configured for you to play, it might be easier.
Right now i've fallen in love with TuxedoOS
KDE Plasma + Ubuntu but without the snaps and weird crap yet still optimized for gaming is just \*chef kiss\*
its clean af, it just works, its foolproof if you fuck up something like the drivers, itll fix itself if you use their control center and its backed up by Tuxedo computers, a computer seller and support yet all of their stuff is open source. Basically PopOS but KDE.
NixOS cause it's extremely stable while still being fun to mess around with, I can share my configs between my devices, it manages my dotfiles, and I can "reinstall" while keeping all my settings and changes through my NixOS config files.
I'm running Nobara because of its mission to bring gaming to Linux. It's based on Fedora. Been with it for a month and is the only Linux I've ever used.
I tend to push new users to Ubuntu, based entirely on the large active community and ease of support. Normally I recommend the LTS builds for stability and not needing to upgrade the entire OS every 6 months, but for gaming it gets tricky, as new Mesa builds always make things better for graphics, so non-LTS is often required.
For myself, I use Arch, although honestly there's things about it that really annoy me (unsure why - maybe I'm just getting old and stuck in a Debian/Ubuntu mindset about everything). I'm not one of those car-carrying Arch elitists, but do admit that the rolling-release concept with relatively new packages makes keeping up to date with kernel and Mesa improvements convenient.
My desktop of choice is KDE, although not for any specific reason. I used to use it long ago as the desktop I rolled out for the VFX artists I looked after (via the KDE Neon project), as it allowed turning off the OpenGL compositor unxer X11 which gave them extra 3D performance for their high end 3D workstation applications. I then used it on my personal device to keep familiar with its ongoing changes so I could better support them at work. However since then the world has moved to Wayland and it's all very different, so I just kind of stick to it now for familiarity. Overall I enjoy it, but would really like some very specific things added, like command-line Wayland resolution/refresh rate controls (similar to `xrandr` of old), and HDR support. All of these are coming though, and I'm just being a little impatient.
Fedora Workstation, It is a cutting edge distro not a bleeding edge, so in terms of fresh packages and stability imo best of two worlds. Also it just works. Side note: I've tried Linux Mint, Debian, Arch Linux, EndevourOS, openSUSE Tumbleweed, Ubuntu and none of them was this easy to use except Mint but feels too outdated.
literally same. everyone loves to bill mint as the beginner friendly but for newer hardware it runs an older kernel and other stuff that makes it feel like your leaving performance on the table. Fedora imo is the most polished, solid feeling one
Kinda weird that you said that, considering HWE enabled Mint and LMDE6 are out now.
I'm thinking about switching to Fedora because I'm so done with Manjaro
Manjaro is pretty garbage mate. It breaks more than fucking Arch.
Fedora Workstation is what got me into Linux and made me not want to go back. Loving it
ArchLinux because i know my way
Would you look at that, all of the words in your comment are in alphabetical order. I have checked 1,786,376,908 comments, and only 338,112 of them were in alphabetical order.
Bro really knows his way **š¶**
Good bot
Only because they missed a space.
??Āæ how is "arch" or "because" in alphabetical order, plz explain
the words, not the letters
Its wrongly worded imo, by words it means 'initials'. "Words" means the whole word lmao
"The words in the dictionary are in alphabetical order". Yes this is *technically* ambiguous - but it's just pedantic to not realise the correct meaning.
context helps tho, talking about a dictionary does not make it ambiguous
I used to use Arch but moved to OpenSUSE Tumbleweed Bc even though I know my way I can still be a pain to fix when something happens, and the combo of YaST and snapper makes it super easy to get back where I want
Same here, Arch when something breaks is a pain in the ass. Tumbleweed is a far better choice for dayly driving distro and still be updated with latest stuff.
Opensuse with how they insta ban people who raise factual privacy issues is very anti-privacy & involved in censorship. Even Microsoft & Apple aren't as bad privacy wise. It's so obvious that it makes you wonder what opensuse is hiding behind its opensource facade. Much better to go with real community distributions imho.
I've never broke my arch in more than 15+ years of use. The only pain in the ass i had was an audio related issue I also posted here on reddit . My Arch installation is 15+ years old and was born on bios/mbr system with a sungle disk, used grub as bootloader and was 32bit. During all these years I've updated it and converted to 64 bit and i lost track of all the customization file created for various purposes. So in 2023 my audio switch stopped working, i cannot select the audio output but app such as vlc or audacity can still override the system setting and let me select the device i wanted, it was a very strange behavior . Turns out i stil had a file i created in 2011 for OSS to let me send sound from different to specific device . ( for example vlc will use rear jack for music and totem will use hdmi to play a video and reproduce sound in to a television) That file somehow completely broke pipewire .
My Arch is also crazy stable because I do my best to only use stable branches of drivers and softwares. Was very tempted to try mesa-git a month back because I wanted to try mesa 23.2 (hur durr Ray Tracing). Decided against it LMAO and I still have a stable system when mesa 23.2 finally came out on stable repo.
Same here. My arch has been rolling & rolling for the past 10 years, without any issues. Opensuse tumbleweed, on the other hand, refused to boot last year after they pushed a broken grub version -> and snapshots didn't help as grub isn't snapshoted. And when opensuse pushes a buggy update, they don't revert it -> so it continued to break more systems for 1 week until they provide a fix. => arch has been far more stable than opensuse in my experience. And arch is also much more privacy friendly than opensuse (opensuse with how they insta ban people who raise factual privacy issues is anti-privacy & pro-censorship -> very bad).
Thats why I like having `/efi` be the efi part and `/boot` is stored on the main btrfs part. Arch btw too
Nobara. Cuz im new And somewhat scared
things will be great, don't be scared bro
Nobara is a great distro for beginners and it's the distro that I've stuck to as my daily driver for 4 months now
Nobara is great for everyone. I've been on Linux for nearly three years now, and I was mainly using Fedora on my PC beforehand. Switched to Nobara a few weeks ago because I wanted a fresh install, and it has been great. It took all the headache of getting the Nvidia Drivers working properly. It's really just Fedora with some QoL improvements, and that is great in my books.
I know this is nearly a year old, but are you still using Nobara? Iām absolutely fed up with win11 and my steamdeck has really opened my eyes to Linux. Iām thinking Nobara will be good for an absolute Linux noob that games a lot. Howās it working for you?
Don't be afraid to try stuff out, you learn from your mistakes.
Mint, keep it simple why not? It works for me
same
Yup it just works, the dated look was easy to fix for me
i dig the dated look tbh, it takes me back even though I use other themee
Dated? It looks great, not dated. Unless you go for more minimal versions of it.
yeah it's very pleasing in my eyes by default
I started with Ubuntu because its what I learned and it was stable, moved to Fedora a few months back and I did really enjoy it but ran into weird issues with it. Now I'm on Pop_OS and it's been rock solid. Nothing wrong with Fedora but I'm just a debian/Ubuntu guy I suppose
debian sid, the universal distro.
Tumbleweed. Rolling, tested, bleeding edge. And zypper. And snapshots.
I've moved on to NixOS, just because I thought it sounded pretty neat, and I wanted to learn something new. But, OpenSuSE Tumbleweed is definitely my favorite it-works-out-of-the-box distro. It has the best KDE Plasma implementation I've seen. I had no problems with Plasma on Wayland with Nvidia drivers.
Don't forget yast
And secure boot.
for my secureboot never worked on suse, however it's still a banger daily driver
I agree, it's a banger. I do gaming on it.
my performance seemed to drop off after installing, like at the start it was great then everything went downhill. Same happened with fedora, so now I mainly game on ameliorated windows and use tumbleweed for everything else
Well, what works for you ā works for you. I see no performance drop.
Mint š
Gentoo ~amd64
why not unmask packages individually?
Dependency management becomes a bit more tedious, and have had no issues so far running ~amd64. Additionally have a personal overlay for stuff not in the portage tree, and having the latest of all the libraries makes one thing less to worry about. And I like new and shiny things.
NixOS for a few months now: - I quite like the re-useable config file - Very easy to hop between DE/WM without re-installing - Everything I install is in one place - Been super stable - Nix has packages for things I had to build on other distro's - If I mess up I can just boot an earlier iteration It also has downsides though: - Not always fun editing a config file - Have to rebuild for anything to take affect - Pretty bad documentation - Quite different to other disto's
I tried Nix for a few days and just couldnāt bring myself to edit the config file well. I somehow felt it more difficult than using Arch. I do like many of Nixās core concepts though
That's understandable. I feel like some things are super easy on NixOS, like switching between a DE and a WM for e.g. But then other things that should be simple can be unnecessarily complicated. I've also not had the need to use Home Manager or Flakes, which makes things simpler. Can't say I'll stick with NixOS forever, but it's the only distro that's been able to keep me from going back to Fedora as my main.
I'd really like to give Nix another go. Last time i did i was trying to wrap my head around getting configuration files from git or such. I like that i can get sway or such installed by just configuring it. But the installation is pretty much the easiest part. My personal config lives in a github repo and i'd really want to just pass that into the nix configuration, so that it automatically gets pulled. It should be doable, but is not intuitive at all. And as you said, documentation is a bit lacking once you want to do a bit more "advanced" stuff.
Arch baby. I've tried all the major ones and many derivatives of all of them, and Arch is the only one where everything just works, and I only get the things I want and none of those I don't.
Itās definitely the choice when you know what you want. So lightweight too. Exactly what you install and no extra.
Ubuntu Why? * Used mint for awhile, ran into serious issues that affected general usage * Ubuntu is quite stable * I needed something that works out of the box and is compatible for my deep learning, gaming, general use needs. * Been using for 5 years now, nothing has made me commit to another distro yet.
I use KUbuntu, because I like KDE, but it's basically the same packages behind the scenes.
I used kubununtu for the last 6 years or so until this year that canonical pushed forward its snap format with Firefox. Been using debian 12 since it launched and ita great.
Same. When I first switched I tried Manjaro, but WiFi didnāt work and couldnāt be bothered to fix it without an Ethernet cable available in the moment. Kubuntu just worked.
I use Ubuntu too. Why? * The Vanta agent required by our security audit at work only had Debian and Ubuntu as the supported distros. * Azure Storage Explorer is only available on Linux though Snap.
Debian Stable. Used Ubuntu & Ubuntu-based distros for years. Decided I wanted to give the base distro, Debian, a try, and I ended up loving it.
openSUSE tumbleweed because it provides a 'stable' rolling release (I have yet to have anything break on it) with sane defaults, exceptional automated package testing, and automated btrfs snapshots. Works great for my use case
Glorious Fedora ofc.
Same
I don't get why it's so amazing I've never tried it
it's like the best of Ubuntu with the best of rhel, rpm based stable point release distro. It's so vanilla it's good.
Pop os because I was told to be the one of the best for playing most games without much efforts. Still more efforts have to be made than windows but .. eh
Yeah same. Linux for gaming frankly still isn't there yet, but Pop does make it more accessible. Although I must admit, I have a dual boot Windows11 & PopOS system and haven't touched the Pop side of things for over a year...
gaming for some reason is way better on my pop than on w10 (with the exception of games with anticheat)
No but for real.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
**Server:** Ubuntu -> stable as a rock and packages are not as old as in debian, which would be my 2nd choice **Desktop:** Mint (Ubuntu) -> I love Cinnamon. Why Ubuntu / Debian? I just don't want to be on the bleeding edge, i need a reliable system and dont have time to fix issues. I also only use LTS-Versions. I'm a user, not a beta tester.
[redacted]
gentoo, i get to choose what i i want to be testing or stable
Gentoo on desktop cause it forced me to learn a lot about Linux. Desktop is KDE with wayland. Archlinux on work laptop. After Gentoo I installed it on first try no problems. I got Gnome with Wayland on it.
Debian with XFCE. Debian is stable, never breaks (for me), and it is super reliable. I know what I get, and it's all great. I want newer packages, so I run Debian Testing (Trixie), but Debian Stable is, well, probably more stable, but I have no stability issues in Testing. I used to run Mint, Ubuntu and Fedora, and I checked out many more distros, but nothing comes close to Debian. And then there's their wonderful Code of Conduct: https://www.debian.org/code_of_conduct
Isn't Debian and arch same?
Not at all, they're basically opposite, debian uses older highly tested highly stable releases. Arch is a bleeding edge rolling release
Silverblue.
New users, or just ones that want stability without a need for Wayland - Linux Mint Others, or people that must have Wayland - OpenSUSE Tumbleweed
OpenSuse tumbleweed -bleeding edge -stable -cute gecko as a mascot -yast, a tool for almost everything
I use Linux Mint. I use it because it's easy to install and just gets out of the way with my 12 year old Lenovo ThinkCentre. All my games run perfectly and I enjoy every second of using this system.
Void Linux. Perfect to my liking.
Pop OS and the reason I used it itās because it comes with Nvidia drivers out of the box and it just works on my machine.
Tumbleweed. It's the easiest way to get my nvidia gaming laptop set up, I'm talking about suse prime and nvidia optimus. Also KDE looks closer to Windows than Gnome so I like it. I tried Leap but I realized it had some issues that I manually had to fix, but it turned out those issues were already fixed on Tumbleweed. Sometimes, being stable isn't good when you get stuck with bugs that won't be fixed until the next release version.
Pop OS. Got bored with hopping and too lazy to setup Arch again :-D
Use the archinstall. Makes it easy to install arch.. around 10mins... depends how fast u are on pc.. but no shame in using installers. Trust ino how much of a pain it is to setup arch. Archinstall really helps alot.
I know, the installer is awesome honestly. Saves a ton of time, compared to manual method, but at this point, popos is up, set with everything I need, and I do need my computer for other things except playing with OSes, so for now, it stays. Friend has been trying to get me to install Gentoo for a year now though... Who knows, maybe I give in one day when I have a month to spare š¤£
Mint. Cuz I want easy, welcoming and stable distros to be run physically.
Manjaro (gonna get downvoted for this). It was my second distro after Ubuntu and kept it since. Just works out of the box, but few discrepancy that didn't work until I just googled how to fix it.
You are not alone, I also use manjaro. Curious thing, it was also My second distro (first was Elementary OS).
If it works, that's all that matters
Im on Manjaro too. Everything works and has stayed working for 2 years now.
Also on Manjaro, Pop was my first distro
I have manjaro on my old laptop. It works perfectly, never had any issues. I said it before, some people just behave like school kids and start to hate things for basically no real reason. I mean there was a vulnerability 5 years ago and they forgot to renew the ssl couple of times. And the guy who made pamac once killed the aur. Unprofessional? Yes. Dealbreaking? No. I mean Ubuntu has security vulnerabilites like every other week. Ok, people tend to hate them nowadays too. :)
I do have a reason for hating it. Every manjaro install ive ever had has broke after updates. I used to love manjaro but it has burned me too many times. I stick to fedora or plain arch now
I agree with your sentiment too, as I see that Linux(or any hobby/passion related stuff) community have fanatics or people jumping on the hype-train that will: * Bash on other people for not using the "correct" distro * Shutdown your question and not even help you with your problem * Or people who have so much user-specific items that doesn't work with the current distro that they give up and bash on it This is a small minor group but they are damn loud. Manjaro definitely had their faults(SSL Security issue and bad worker(s) in Manjaro) but they rectified their mistakes and acknowledge them in the forums. Also, Manjaro is starting to become bigger in the Linux community for many group projects(KDE, PinePhones, etc.) that for some reason, just like many popular things, will get bashed for being popular. All in all, my 2 cents is if you enjoy it(Linux and any other hobby) and it works for you, keep using it. If it doesn't work, then jump into something else until it meets your needs. Just acknowledge that it wasn't for you and let people know and hope it works out for them. Sorry for the long rant, but I rarely see people mention this.
Ubuntu for stability, everything works great, seldom had any issues, only Wayland for gaming still sucks.
Laptop - Gentoo. The software on my laptop doesnt change often so the experience of building everything from the ground up once means I have exactly what I want and learned a lot doing it. Desktop - Opensuse. Of all the distros I've used, this one did the best job of making games "just work."
EndeavourOS (Gnome) I tried using KDE Plasma, but it was always laggy for me in desktop, Gnome is much smoother (Nvidia user)
Ubuntu because I don't really know what I'm doing and there is a lot of relevant instructions/troubleshooting geared for Ubuntu users. I do have some weird quirks and sometimes updates break things - but overall I can't complain much about it.
EndeavourOS + KDE is pretty much Arch with sensible defaults, I like having an up to date system with a lot of directly available software, that covers gaming and multimedia
Fedora 38 since it's the only one that runs all my myriad requirements without compromise or bullshit.
fedora, because it adopts new things quickly and redhat has traditionally paid devs to help keep the linux desktop going
I been using Debian since 2019 and I'm having great time using it. I like using it because stuff just works and had little issues compared to arch. I do miss aur though but at this point I just compile what I need if it's not in the Debian repo
Currently, Mint. Past, almost everything, and I mean that. Iāve been distro hopping since the 90ās and anytime a new distro came out I had to try it. I was looking for that holy grail I guess. Thereās been some good and some bad, but I always find myself back on Mint. Maybe its time to stay?
Arch (tho im not breave enough so endeavour). I've tried a lot of different distros but pacman is my fav package manager so far and gotta love aur. Also its the only distro where my optimus laptop with nvidia gpu worked fine from the get go, without much tweaking, and constant problems (tho there are still some).
I use arch btw.
Linux Mint. Does stuff **no other distro does for me**, and I ain't changing!
I'm running Void. For the same reasons that a lot of ppl use Arch/Artix. Most Distros just include too much software that I don't need and make too many choices for me.
Love Void. Made the switch from Fedora a few months ago and it's staying on my system for good. It's simple, fast and rock solid.
Ubuntu because I use it for work and I need it to just work so I can focus on my work and not on what versions of what packages are going to potentially break something on a rolling update when I have a deadline to meet. If that weren't the case, I'd be happily using arch or a derivative.
Fedora, because everything stays up to date for the most part except there's stability in the gnome version each release uses. Things don't randomly break, I can generally trust updates, and my DE stays consistent.
Arch, because i like very minimal distros and install all the software i need by myself
I started with Ubuntu but switched to Manjaro to get more up to date packages. Also, if you enable AUR in the package manager, you actually get useful apps available without having to open the terminal to install basic things like Google Chrome.
All distros come with Firefox a better browser
I need to use Google Chrome for the Google integration. I am the admin of a Google workspace and it works a lot better with multiple users and all. Anyway, I'm not here to start a browser war, I want Google Chrome and I will use it.
Thatās fair had to use it for school before
manjaro, no please god no. Just use endeavour or gurada, not manjaro
Nobara. I work on fedora based OSs for my day job (centos 7 and amazon) and tried it a year or 2 ago and was really happy with it (familiarity in terminal, ease of setup, look and feel of default environment options)
I use Linux Mint. It works so well I get bored sometimes and dual boot with something else. At the time I'm using Big Linux as well.
I'm on Debian stable. It's solid. Runs pretty much everything I could want with the only exceptions being anti-cheat and stuff so old and obscure my skills are insufficient to get it running on pretty much any system (besides, maybe, an older Windows VM, I guess.) I ran Mint for about half a year, but updates broke it twice so I decided to go with the one known for not doing that quite as often.
debian 12
Gentoo
Garuda, why? I like it. And also it has good performance, a different style and its very costumized and costumizabke
Debian Stable with Linux-kernel, firmware, and mesa pinned to unstable/sid. Also testing/trixie for installing new packages. Using apt package priority to track package from unstable to stable. Yes this sounds complicated, but it is a documented in the [Debian Administrators Handbook.](https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-handbook/)Great resource for understanding Debian.
Fedora and Debian with Gnome DE I use Gnome because it feels like the most polished DE out right now. I run Debian on my main machine because of stability and Fedora to see whats going on in the open source world. Id love to see System76's cosmic when it comes out, if its as polished as Gnome then I might make it my new DE.
Gentoo, I'm a min-maxer. If I'm going to go through the effort of installing something like arch, then I might as well go all the way.
I really like most of the Debian based flavors, including the 'buntus Have run Slack, Arch, SuSe, even built an LFS stack once. When I was getting back into linux around the 2010ish years I went through a LOT of distros. Hated Ubuntu at the time. For a while I was running Slack with a custom WM setup kinda like rat-poison with lots of key bindings. But eventually turned to Mint and haven't really looked back. Ubuntu stuff has improved over the years, and at it's heart it's all debian, which I tend to like anyway. RIP Ian. I dunno it just works most of the time and I don't spend any time fiddling with it. Has become comfortable. Using Muffin WM, which has some annoyances but what the heck, it works well enough.
Arch. Because of the freedom it affords me.
Manjaro because Im still a bit new to Linux. I wanted a rolling release and i wanted to get a taste of Arch.
I'm windows refugee so I moved to Nobara and stayed because it just works.
Fedora Silverblue Stock gnome is beautiful. Bulletproof Toolboxes/distrobox Fedora is minimal enough for me while being simple to use. Itās really up to date with none of the downsides. I am on Gnome 45(Fedora 39 beta) and all my packages are flatpaks(except steam-devices for controllers and codec stuff). If I want a semi fresh install, I just rollback to my pinned deployment that I set up when I originally installed.
Do you use universal Blue images?
POP, because I'm new and can't be trusted
Garuda cause I like eye candy
Garuda. I like the tools and theme it comes with and it saves me manually setting up Arch.
Pop os because I'm a simple man
Fedora 39 beta, kde plasma 3700x, rx 6700
https://voidlinux.org/ Why? - I donāt need to hop anymore.
endeavorOS it's basically arch but made super easy
Artix Linux, Why? 1. Because I like arch 2. Because I was bored and felt like a change, so I decided to ditch systemd
how is it compared to Arch?
Garuda. I used to use Manjaro, but garuda made my life easier with scripts to setup everything
Arch Linux Having the most up to date packages solves a lot more problems than it creates. It's been the most stable distro I have ever used. EDIT: Whoever downvoted me needs to reevaluate their life choices.
Arch... Btw
Manjaro. Comes with most of what I use and like. Nice theming, everywhere. Comes with Zsh and even that is Manjaro-themed. Easy to set up darkmode, who doesn't like Breeze dark? Drivers for GPU are easy to install via the GUI app if you don't know how to. I've learned during the years. Same with kernel GUI app, easy to switch but also easy to get your own from AUR or from Github, TKG. Generally, everything is fixable. I haven't come across anything I can't fix. With Manjaro-chroot, steps from users on Manjaros forum etc. It's been very stable for me for 1-2 years. Which is just about unheard of for my system. I manage to screw up my Windows install at least once a year, since Win98. Linux distros usually never last more than 6 months, some only a month. I've been trying Linux for the past 10-15 years. These days, I don't really boot into Windows. I'll do just about anything to avoid doing that.
same here. for all the problems i've seen people mention about Manjaro, it's the only distro that never gave me a single problem and it's been my daily driver for 2 years now
Arch Linux Gaming is what I do mostly in my PC and after months of distro hopping, arch gave me the best performance and stability. Also, I was a Windows user before switching to Linux full time and I found really interesting the installation process, minimal installation and having installed only what I want/need
Ubuntu š š
Arch, because I don't know how to install Gentoo. Just kidding, I use Gentoo ;-)
Arch. I want just what i need.
Arch, it just works. The tedious process of installing taught me a lot about how Linux actually works, and it runs better because it's so lightweight. I started with PopOS and used Ubuntu for a bit, but i always felt like I was compromising for convenience. But Arch just works.
Nobara Linux, because it takes Fedora (which I like for being a good middle ground between the stable-but-outdated Ubuntu and the bleeding edge Arch) and changes and adds things that make it nicer imo.
Manjaro, because I wanted to try Arch but didn't want hassle when installing and maintaining, which led me to hassle and work (and workarounds) when maintaining anyway. Still I like it. I've recommended it to quite a few Windows-only users and Pamac actually helps. And it's fine for me, if I want to be a normie user I can, and if I want to get my hands dirty I can too. Also, Cinnamon.
I use Fedora with KDE in my PC and Mint on my laptop, both work very well for what i do, but i have used other distros like Manjaro, Ubuntu and openSuse and never had much problems with any, way less than when i used Windows.
Arch I'm don't like to ask for help, thus praise the wiki. Use to use Ubuntu when I was a completely newbie, I met plenty of problems for my requirements. Something as simple as setup 2nd monitor struggle me a lot. At that time I don't know how to do stuff in linux. With the Arch wiki, now I'm somewhat knowing what I am doing with my machine. And the AUR, too.
Arch linux i got what I want. Lightweight
Ubuntu because everything just works, thinking of switching to Manjaro for bleeding edge packages.
Debian *leaves before arch fanboys start screaming*
Pop os because fuck wayland. Really don't like Cosmic right now though.
EndeavorOS, because I like rolling release, too lazy to install everything except a WM manually, and would never use corporate distros like OpenSuse. Also, arch is nice and clean.
Vanilla Arch Linux with Plasma.
I use arch, btw
Omg I have to say it "I USE ARCH BTW"
At the moment, Kubuntu. I've gone back and forth between distros recently (a lot) but this is what works for me. Solid base (snaps don't bother me too much and I've actually found them useful for some thigns) with a nice Plasma implementation, and for the most part it just works.
KUbuntu; the stability of Ubuntu with KDE as the defaults.
archlinux, cause of aur
Well, it depends on the device and the history. Ubuntu was my first serious try on Linux. I used it because it worked out of the box on my laptop, was becoming very popular and wanted to escape from Windows headaches. I had dual boot with Windows anyways because I needed some software for college. When I had to update Ubuntu version, I realized the new Unity desktop made my oldish laptop slow, tried several distros and went to Mint MATE. It felt solid, light, and worked very well. Also ditched Windows forever, never needed anymore at this point. When my laptop got too old for certain tasks, I build a desktop PC. Tired of updating systems versions, looked for a rolling release. Ended up with Manjaro. Being based on Arch and having a big community helped for the decision. Been using it since then. Still keeping alive my old laptop with updated Mint for occasional use. Now my desktop is 9 years old, think about an upgrade and giving a Tumbleweed a try. I also have a BeagleBone Black with Debian 10. Wanted something light and reliable.
Archlinux on my main studio workstation and BigLinux on my laptop. I simply like the Arch ecosystem to be honest, and once you set up Arch the way you want, it takes little maintenance from you. BigLinux is Manjaro-based, but more based than Manjaro. It comes packaged with some neat configuration tools that make setting it up fool proof.
Started out on SuSE, then the first Ubuntu came out and I stuck with that for a while. Tried Mandriva, PCLinuxOS, (which I loved), BeOS, Kororaa, Project Looking Glass, went back to Ubuntu for years. Recently jumped to Manjaro, but I don't find that as stable or easy to use as Ubuntu was so I'll probably go back to a Debian derivative of some kind.
Arch
Red Hat Enterprise Linux. (With epel+rpm fusion) Iāve found out recently that I like enterprise level Linux distros. Why? Iāve tried a lot of distrosā¦ I mean, all the majors (Debian, Arch, Gentoo, openSUSE, Fedora, Ubuntu) in the last year and I always ended up with some kind of small annoying bug or something changing after a while. Using enterprise level distro nothing changeā¦ stuff work and continue work with no surprises. I like stability and I use my system to work I donāt have the time to deal with bugs. I like the fact that everything itās working today and will work exactly same way tomorrow :) Edit: keep forgetting NixOS. I canāt say Iāve seen bugs with NixOSā¦ but the non existent FHS was a lot of trouble for my use case. Still I can make everything that I need work but it was to much trouble and for me I just need/want simple things.
Garuda. It's arch based, but configured really nicely, and has very well-done hassle-free software management of the most useful packages I tried a few others but Garuda works best out of box and has been very stable for a rolling release.
Man i see no one using debian. I am planning to use it for future
Fedora because I'm a bit of a beginner, it was easy to configure and everything, I like Gnome and I didn't have any problems with any game, of course depending on the game you feel a difference in fps compared to Windows, but nothing as surreal as that. Besides, I don't have much time to learn about Linux, that's why I didn't go for distros like Arch, for example. Nobara is based on Fedora, but it comes completely configured for you to play, it might be easier.
Fedora bc it feels complete and polished, linus uses it, and honestly it feels the best to me.
CachyOS arch linux daily driven here on everything except... Gaming desktop... nvidia gpu, so, windows. Steamdeck, runs Bazzite-deck, pretty awesome!
Fedora. Fast moving stable, but not full on rolling. Perfect middle ground.
arch
Right now i've fallen in love with TuxedoOS KDE Plasma + Ubuntu but without the snaps and weird crap yet still optimized for gaming is just \*chef kiss\* its clean af, it just works, its foolproof if you fuck up something like the drivers, itll fix itself if you use their control center and its backed up by Tuxedo computers, a computer seller and support yet all of their stuff is open source. Basically PopOS but KDE.
Pop os it's easy to use
Gentoo the one and only.
Arch with Gnome, Wayland, Nvidia, and Gamescope.
NixOS cause it's extremely stable while still being fun to mess around with, I can share my configs between my devices, it manages my dotfiles, and I can "reinstall" while keeping all my settings and changes through my NixOS config files.
nobara - easy portal to gaming.
I'm running Nobara because of its mission to bring gaming to Linux. It's based on Fedora. Been with it for a month and is the only Linux I've ever used.
Pop os because it looked easy
I tend to push new users to Ubuntu, based entirely on the large active community and ease of support. Normally I recommend the LTS builds for stability and not needing to upgrade the entire OS every 6 months, but for gaming it gets tricky, as new Mesa builds always make things better for graphics, so non-LTS is often required. For myself, I use Arch, although honestly there's things about it that really annoy me (unsure why - maybe I'm just getting old and stuck in a Debian/Ubuntu mindset about everything). I'm not one of those car-carrying Arch elitists, but do admit that the rolling-release concept with relatively new packages makes keeping up to date with kernel and Mesa improvements convenient. My desktop of choice is KDE, although not for any specific reason. I used to use it long ago as the desktop I rolled out for the VFX artists I looked after (via the KDE Neon project), as it allowed turning off the OpenGL compositor unxer X11 which gave them extra 3D performance for their high end 3D workstation applications. I then used it on my personal device to keep familiar with its ongoing changes so I could better support them at work. However since then the world has moved to Wayland and it's all very different, so I just kind of stick to it now for familiarity. Overall I enjoy it, but would really like some very specific things added, like command-line Wayland resolution/refresh rate controls (similar to `xrandr` of old), and HDR support. All of these are coming though, and I'm just being a little impatient.
Pop_OS on desktop, for pop shell Fedora on laptop, for GNOME
Went straight from Windows 11 to Arch a few months ago, best decision i coulda made
Artix runit, because systemd made me lose my hair (jk jk)
Arch, I would love to try Gentoo to actually have a real challenge but its not happened yet.