Why do you use the distro you use?
-
Title is quite self-explanatory, reason I wonder is because every now and then I think to myself "maybe distro X is good, maybe I should try it at some point", but then I think a bit more and realise it kind of doesn't make a difference - the only thing I feel kinda matters is rolling vs non-rolling release patterns.
My guiding principles when choosing distro are that I run arch on my desktop because it's what I'm used to (and AUR is nice to have), and Debian on servers because some people said it's good and I the non-rolling release gives me peace of mind that I don't have to update very often. But I could switch both of these out and I really don't think it would make a difference at all.
Mint: consistency, versatility, having all the Ubuntu's benefits (being industry standard, somewhat) without the drawbacks (Canonical's opinionated bullshit like snap)
Debian: stability, predictability, leanness
Gentoo: customizability down to compile-time level
-
Debian because it's what I picked when I started, and switching sounds annoying
When i first researched Linux distros and learned that Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Kali Linux, etc were all derivatives of Debian I knew it was the distro I wanted to learn.
Granted the package manager does tend to fall behind and the Linux kernel is quite outdated on Debian 12 however, it works great for 99% of tasks (including gaming!).
-
Title is quite self-explanatory, reason I wonder is because every now and then I think to myself "maybe distro X is good, maybe I should try it at some point", but then I think a bit more and realise it kind of doesn't make a difference - the only thing I feel kinda matters is rolling vs non-rolling release patterns.
My guiding principles when choosing distro are that I run arch on my desktop because it's what I'm used to (and AUR is nice to have), and Debian on servers because some people said it's good and I the non-rolling release gives me peace of mind that I don't have to update very often. But I could switch both of these out and I really don't think it would make a difference at all.
Bazzite because never breaks.
-
Title is quite self-explanatory, reason I wonder is because every now and then I think to myself "maybe distro X is good, maybe I should try it at some point", but then I think a bit more and realise it kind of doesn't make a difference - the only thing I feel kinda matters is rolling vs non-rolling release patterns.
My guiding principles when choosing distro are that I run arch on my desktop because it's what I'm used to (and AUR is nice to have), and Debian on servers because some people said it's good and I the non-rolling release gives me peace of mind that I don't have to update very often. But I could switch both of these out and I really don't think it would make a difference at all.
Fedora Silverblue because I seem to break any system I have eventually, and this one’s still going.
-
Title is quite self-explanatory, reason I wonder is because every now and then I think to myself "maybe distro X is good, maybe I should try it at some point", but then I think a bit more and realise it kind of doesn't make a difference - the only thing I feel kinda matters is rolling vs non-rolling release patterns.
My guiding principles when choosing distro are that I run arch on my desktop because it's what I'm used to (and AUR is nice to have), and Debian on servers because some people said it's good and I the non-rolling release gives me peace of mind that I don't have to update very often. But I could switch both of these out and I really don't think it would make a difference at all.
I use my distro because my Arch friend in true Arch user fashion needed to remind me every day that I was using a Debian based distro. He'd rave about pacman being far superior to apt-get. Every time I couldn't find some software I was looking for, he'd point it out on the AUR.
I had just swapped to Pop_OS!, so I grabbed Manjaro just to get him to stop. I fully expected to be back on Pop at some point, but I'd give it some time. After about a month I didn't want to deal with the hassle of swapping again. That didn't last long as the distro hop urge set in. So I tried EndeavourOS, because I kept hearing bad things about Manjaro.
Then I went back to Windows for a while because a game I was looking forward to playing wasn't Linux supported yet. The game wound up being shit and Microsoft dropped news of their shady snapshot crap and putting ads in the start bar. By this time my Arch knowledge outweighed my Debian knowledge. Fedora and openSUSE were still intimidating, so back to Endeavour I went.
I broke my build and decided to try another distro, CachyOS. It was nice, clean, and fast, but the miscommunication with foss devs was high because Cachy mirrors update a fair deal slower than the Arch/AUR mirrors do, so I'd be making bug reports of a bug that was fixed two days prior. I thought about using Reflector, but didnt know where to even begin to implement it into Cachy. So now I sit on vanilla Arch and he's using vanilla Debian. What a world...
-
Title is quite self-explanatory, reason I wonder is because every now and then I think to myself "maybe distro X is good, maybe I should try it at some point", but then I think a bit more and realise it kind of doesn't make a difference - the only thing I feel kinda matters is rolling vs non-rolling release patterns.
My guiding principles when choosing distro are that I run arch on my desktop because it's what I'm used to (and AUR is nice to have), and Debian on servers because some people said it's good and I the non-rolling release gives me peace of mind that I don't have to update very often. But I could switch both of these out and I really don't think it would make a difference at all.
Arch on desktop/laptop because I'm very comfortable with it, and I can set it up the way I like.
Debian on servers because it's stable and nearly everything has a package available, or at least instructions for building.
Same as OP, but I'm not likely to change them out. I've tried a lot of distros over the years and this is what works best for me.
-
Title is quite self-explanatory, reason I wonder is because every now and then I think to myself "maybe distro X is good, maybe I should try it at some point", but then I think a bit more and realise it kind of doesn't make a difference - the only thing I feel kinda matters is rolling vs non-rolling release patterns.
My guiding principles when choosing distro are that I run arch on my desktop because it's what I'm used to (and AUR is nice to have), and Debian on servers because some people said it's good and I the non-rolling release gives me peace of mind that I don't have to update very often. But I could switch both of these out and I really don't think it would make a difference at all.
I use Debian-Testing. It's very stable, more so than most other distros IMHO (despite being -testing), and it has the latest packages.
-
Title is quite self-explanatory, reason I wonder is because every now and then I think to myself "maybe distro X is good, maybe I should try it at some point", but then I think a bit more and realise it kind of doesn't make a difference - the only thing I feel kinda matters is rolling vs non-rolling release patterns.
My guiding principles when choosing distro are that I run arch on my desktop because it's what I'm used to (and AUR is nice to have), and Debian on servers because some people said it's good and I the non-rolling release gives me peace of mind that I don't have to update very often. But I could switch both of these out and I really don't think it would make a difference at all.
Mint on my work PC, because my dear IT colleagues made the effort to provide standardized installations for us that are mostly carefree and can just be used; you can even get them preinstalled on a laptop or VM.
Debian on my work servers, because everyone is using it (we're a Debian shop mostly) and there's a standardized self service PXE boot installation for it. Also, Debian is boring, and boring is good. And another thing, Debian is the base image for at least half of the Docker images and alliances (e.g. Proxmox) out there, so common tools. The .deb package format is kinda sane, so it's easy to provide our own package, and Debian has a huge community, so it's going nowhere in the near future.
Ubuntu LTS latest on my home servers, because I wanted "Debian but more recent packages", and it has served me well.
Not yet, but maybe Fedora on my private PC and laptop soon, because I keep hearing good things re hardware support, package recency, gaming and just general suitability for desktop use. There's still the WAF to overcome, so we'll see.
-
Title is quite self-explanatory, reason I wonder is because every now and then I think to myself "maybe distro X is good, maybe I should try it at some point", but then I think a bit more and realise it kind of doesn't make a difference - the only thing I feel kinda matters is rolling vs non-rolling release patterns.
My guiding principles when choosing distro are that I run arch on my desktop because it's what I'm used to (and AUR is nice to have), and Debian on servers because some people said it's good and I the non-rolling release gives me peace of mind that I don't have to update very often. But I could switch both of these out and I really don't think it would make a difference at all.
TuxedoOS because my so-called "Linux-Laptop" turned out to not run mainline Linux very smoothly. But I hate that fact that it's Ubuntu-based.
I'd use Debian, Arch or dabble with Void if I could on my laptop, my servers run Debian or Alma.
-
Title is quite self-explanatory, reason I wonder is because every now and then I think to myself "maybe distro X is good, maybe I should try it at some point", but then I think a bit more and realise it kind of doesn't make a difference - the only thing I feel kinda matters is rolling vs non-rolling release patterns.
My guiding principles when choosing distro are that I run arch on my desktop because it's what I'm used to (and AUR is nice to have), and Debian on servers because some people said it's good and I the non-rolling release gives me peace of mind that I don't have to update very often. But I could switch both of these out and I really don't think it would make a difference at all.
Void linux. Both on wayland + labwc desktop and radpberrypi 4 server with multiple dockers, and a bootable usb for my work laptop. Why? Its lightweight, rolling, rock stable, and easily extendable. I love runit for its simplicity. Love xbps package manager for its speed, and good and clear documentation.
-
NixOS, because:
- I can have my entire system be declaratively configured, and not as a yaml soup bolted onto a random distro.
- I can trivially separate the OS, and the data (thanks, impermanence)
- it has a buttload of packages and integration modules
- it is mostly reproducible
All of these combined means my backups are simple (just snapshot
/persist
, with a few dirs excluded, and restic them to N places) and reliable. The systems all have that newly installed feel, because there is zero cruft accumulating.And with the declarative config being tangled out from a literate Org Roam garden, I have tremendous, and up to date documentation too. Declarative config + literate programmung work really well together, amg give me immense power.
Do you know about guix? Seems right up your alley.
-
Title is quite self-explanatory, reason I wonder is because every now and then I think to myself "maybe distro X is good, maybe I should try it at some point", but then I think a bit more and realise it kind of doesn't make a difference - the only thing I feel kinda matters is rolling vs non-rolling release patterns.
My guiding principles when choosing distro are that I run arch on my desktop because it's what I'm used to (and AUR is nice to have), and Debian on servers because some people said it's good and I the non-rolling release gives me peace of mind that I don't have to update very often. But I could switch both of these out and I really don't think it would make a difference at all.
PopOs! Familiarity, stability and the fact that it fulfils 95% of my needs perfectly.
-
Bazzite because never breaks.
I actually had it break, it wouldn't go past the login after an update. Turns out it was a gnome issue. It was something like an accessibility feature I had enabled crashed gnome. So, technically it was gnome and it would've happened in any distro.
Other than that, bazzite, its perfect.
-
Title is quite self-explanatory, reason I wonder is because every now and then I think to myself "maybe distro X is good, maybe I should try it at some point", but then I think a bit more and realise it kind of doesn't make a difference - the only thing I feel kinda matters is rolling vs non-rolling release patterns.
My guiding principles when choosing distro are that I run arch on my desktop because it's what I'm used to (and AUR is nice to have), and Debian on servers because some people said it's good and I the non-rolling release gives me peace of mind that I don't have to update very often. But I could switch both of these out and I really don't think it would make a difference at all.
Fedora because it's boring in the best ways. Curious about NixOS though.
-
Title is quite self-explanatory, reason I wonder is because every now and then I think to myself "maybe distro X is good, maybe I should try it at some point", but then I think a bit more and realise it kind of doesn't make a difference - the only thing I feel kinda matters is rolling vs non-rolling release patterns.
My guiding principles when choosing distro are that I run arch on my desktop because it's what I'm used to (and AUR is nice to have), and Debian on servers because some people said it's good and I the non-rolling release gives me peace of mind that I don't have to update very often. But I could switch both of these out and I really don't think it would make a difference at all.
EndeavourOS on my laptop and Ubuntu on my home server.
-
Title is quite self-explanatory, reason I wonder is because every now and then I think to myself "maybe distro X is good, maybe I should try it at some point", but then I think a bit more and realise it kind of doesn't make a difference - the only thing I feel kinda matters is rolling vs non-rolling release patterns.
My guiding principles when choosing distro are that I run arch on my desktop because it's what I'm used to (and AUR is nice to have), and Debian on servers because some people said it's good and I the non-rolling release gives me peace of mind that I don't have to update very often. But I could switch both of these out and I really don't think it would make a difference at all.
Laptop is Linux Mint, because my wife also use it and i want my laptop to be as easy to handle as possible.
Servers are Debian, because it's very light on my hardware. Mostly used for containers.
-
NixOS configuration is done entirely through code, so all of your packages are in a list (although that list can be spread across multiple files; it's a bit to explain)
I've found it can be easier to manage what you have installed, since you can just look at that list and go "oh, why do I still have xyz installed, idek what that does anymore"
I appreciate the way things are configured a lot, but I would not recommend it unless you really like coding and you have time to tinker. It's not too hard to get simple config setup, but I spiraled down a deep rabbit hole really quickly.
I've found it can be easier to manage what you have installed, since you can just look at that list and go "oh, why do I still have xyz installed, idek what that does anymore"
While it sounds sexy and attractive... Not sure the amount of time needed to configure your NixOS is worthwhile. (Except if you have time to spare and want that learning experience !)
Just put everyhting In your personal notes and you have a similar "feature"?
-
Variants and derivates of Debian on my servers and other headless devices because no reason except I know it, it is stable, it works.
Been trying linux for desktop every five-ten years for the last twenty odd years and went back to Windows every time because it was too bad experience despite I really tried to like it.
Except this time.
Fedora KDE on my laptop, soon on my stationary as well. No more Windows for me.
I can't stand seeing my father struggling with windows...I tried to make him switch, but he has old piracy blood in him and just want Windows things and pirated software, some which do not have any alternatives on Linux.
Also, he's getting old and he always talks about he don't want to relearn a whole system. But everytime we see each other and talk about computers he trash talks how bad windows is...
Maybe that's just something he needs... And boring distros are going to make him depressed? Dunno
Sorry for the story time, but you switching fully to linux made me think of my Dad in hope sometimes he will also take the steps to get out of there
!
-
Title is quite self-explanatory, reason I wonder is because every now and then I think to myself "maybe distro X is good, maybe I should try it at some point", but then I think a bit more and realise it kind of doesn't make a difference - the only thing I feel kinda matters is rolling vs non-rolling release patterns.
My guiding principles when choosing distro are that I run arch on my desktop because it's what I'm used to (and AUR is nice to have), and Debian on servers because some people said it's good and I the non-rolling release gives me peace of mind that I don't have to update very often. But I could switch both of these out and I really don't think it would make a difference at all.
Fedora Gnome. I like it and it just works for my daily office use. I don't have the time nor the mental strength to fiddle with different distro's on a regular basis.
-
Bazzite because never breaks.
I'm using it as my main gaming distro now but I still have it break sometimes. Mostly due to Bluetooth stuff, but I also need to shut down the pc completely whenever I leave it running on its own for a while because it just doesn't wake back up if it sleeps - and I always forget to look into that after turning it back on.