Wasn't a fan of Ubuntu, RedHat, Debían...
I guess I'm just a Fedora person? I'm on KDE right now, usually Xfce. Idk I'm enjoying my KDE experience.
Mint was pretty smooth. No complaints.
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Wasn't a fan of Ubuntu, RedHat, Debían...
I guess I'm just a Fedora person? I'm on KDE right now, usually Xfce. Idk I'm enjoying my KDE experience.
Mint was pretty smooth. No complaints.
Mint, actually. I tried it and found it too similar to windows and not customisable enough for my liking.
Pop os. I just couldn't use their desktop (even though I think it's good, it's just not for me)
I feel like I'm a chronic distro-hopper sometimes, but no matter how many times I try, I just can't settle into OpenSUSE for whatever reason. The OBS feels a bit more of a wild west than the AUR.
Never tried regular Arch after trying Black Arch, so not sure if they're the same feel, but after realizing the work it would take just to be given the capability to resize windows in the UI instead of just coming with drag and resize out of the box, Black Arch was a huge no go for me... Which kept me from wanting to touch regular Arch, lol. That being said, I go nope to Ubuntu the most. Gentoo is my favorite and is what my server has been running for the past decade without any kind of issue, but for laptop and daily use, I use Mint. Been on that one for about a decade now too... Used to use Peppermint (that still a thing?) and Suse the most before those.
It pains me to say this, but voidlinux, though I'm still not in the stage of "this one is not for me", it has potential and hopefully I can sort all the issues I've encountered so far.
I've tried multiple distros, and also used artix for a while so I'm used to not using systemd but man void is really another thing, this isn't the first time I've used it, I tried it a year ago and gave up, recently I decided that I'm up for the challenge and began using it again, here's what has happened so far:
Well right now I'm dealing with the pc freezing when quitting the user session, for some reason I need to exit i3 before logging out, otherwise the system freezes.
Also I wasn't able to get a clean boot screen even though I had the typical kernel parameters quiet, loglevel, etc, it even prints info on the login prompt where I should be putting my username, though I managed to mitigate this a lot by passing a kernel parameter that tells it to use another tty for the boot messages.
file-roller is broken, I can't compress some directories to 7zip, the weird thing is that it only happens to some directories and not all.
Though the very good news is that they fix issues very fast, puddletag was broken and they fixed it in like 2 hours after I reported the issue.
Edit: It is not just file-roller that is broken, it is all of 7zip on void, I can't compress with xarchiver either
I used Ubuntu for a few years, and always felt that it works well and was super easy to set up. But it also seemed to use a lot of disk space. This was of course not ubuntu‘s fault, but my inexperience. But I never had to look under the hood, so I didn’t, and I ended up installing a bunch pf bloat, some of which ended up causing minor issues eventually.
I decided to try arch, and get more into configuration and learning linux. It was quite a ride, and I am happy to have gone through with it. I’m still learning, but I have so much more knowledge & control over what the PC does and how it does it. I also have a lot more room for games and such.
Ubuntu
Fedora Core. It had so many problems updating. That would have been in the mid 2000s so it may have improved since then.
PopOS and Manjaro are two I never liked.
I had a huge problem with Arch because of the rolling release deal. I just can't handle the responsibility of updating packages every single day, even with automation.
When I install an operating system, I want it to just work, and I want their repositories to have lots and lots of software. Most distros do this, but none do it as well as one of the major Debian-family distros like Ubuntu or Mint. Fedora is quite nice as well, and I could probably daily drive it without issue, I just see no reason to change over to it since Ubuntu has me totally covered. And it is basically like this for me with every other distro: I have to think, "why would I switch? What benefit would it provide me over what I have right now." The answer is always "nothing important," so I stick with Ubuntu.
I considered using Guix because its package manager is truly a revolutionary new technology. But using it as a package manager, I can see a lot of the packages and default configurations just aren't quite to the point of "just works" yet. Still, I hope someday to switch to Guix as my daily driver.
Why do you think you need to update packages on Arch every single day?
In 2007 I tried Ubuntu and it was weird, then again in 2008, no! In 2009 I found Mint and was really happy, until they stopped supporting KDE. Then I tried a ton of distros, Xfce, no. Lxde, no. open suse, no. fedora, no, lots of others, no. I finally found Kubuntu and I have been on it ever since. Even tested Neon lately but hated it.
Kubuntu does what I want it to do.
Linux always seems scary at first, but once you learn enough, it's super easy.
I’ve messed with a decent amount, listed in my post. Most distros weren’t customized the way that I wanted them to be or I didn’t like the looks so I prefer Debian and Arch for simplicity’s sake depending on the use case and going from there.
Honestly, depending on whether you count it or not, LFS. I have not tried Gentoo yet, though I want to one day, for the learning experience, and yet I already know that compiling everything is not something I enjoy.
I can get by with OpenSUSE and Void (kinda), I've used Debian for a few weeks, I've used Fedora for a month or so, I've used Ubuntu for a bit, I've tried PopOS for a week or two, I've used NixOS for a few months, and I've used Arch for most of my time on Linux.
Currently I'm on Arch, but I don't like rolling releases that much. At the same time, I am also not a fan of immutability, as there are some programs I need that cannot be installed on an immutable distro, so that's why I'm on Arch. Why am I only using these 2? Because they are the only distros that have all the packages I need (excluding the specialist software that I need for university). By the time I discovered Distrobox (which would solve this problem), I was already on Arch. I've also done some changes to my setup and as such, I'll need to wait for some new features to make their way into program releases and into the NixOS Stable repo with the following release. Until then, I'm on Arch.
Gentoo is useless for learning how things work. Back in the 00s when I still had time to hang out at events it was always quite ridiculous at what kind of basic stuff the gentoo crowd got stuck at - and with the tooling 15+ years more polished now I'd expect what is actually going on is way more hidden than back then.
If you do want to understand how things work just build a minimal system - either on spare hardware, or qemu/kvm. Don't go with systemd, or other fat userland options - that just makes you compile a lot of dependencies not adding value for learning.
Use some lean init (or just write one yourself), and some lean shell.
After using Arch based distros for more than a year when I use any Debian/Ubuntu based distro it really feels like they aren't for me, at least when it comes to daily driving. I still have a laptop with PopOS that I use for school, stable distro is a better option in my oppinion for that usecase because I use it twice a week (unless it's summer or winter in which case I don't use it at all).
Gentoo. But it took a few years
anything with GNOME or xfce. modern cinnamon is ok ig but KDE plasma just makes anything bearable for me