I wanted a mainstream option but not Ubuntu, and one that was preferably offered with KDE Plasma pre-packaged.

So I ended up deciding between Debian and Fedora, and what tipped me to Fedora was thinking: Well SELinux sounds neat, quite close to what I learned about Mandatory Access Control in the lectures, and besides, maybe it will be useful in my work knowing one that is close to RHEL.

Now I work in a network team that has been using Debian for 30 years, lol. Kind of ironic, but I don’t regret it, now I just know both.

And fighting SELinux was kind of fun too. I modified my local policies so that systemd can run screen because I wanted to create a Minecraft service to which I could connect as admin, even if it was started by systemd.

I use OpenSUSE Tumbleweed because it focuses more on KDE than GNOME, is quite stable, and has snapshots to roll back to in case something does go wrong. I don’t want to mess with my OS, I just want it to work reliably. I do use Debian on some devices (like my server) but the software (especially in terms of GUI apps) is very outdated and it doesn’t come with the other features of OpenSUSE out of the box.

i been linux only for over 30 years now.

I tend to use Debian stable. At least for the last 15 or so.

The reason is simple. I use it as my main PC and the stability is my main priority.

The only negative is software in the repos is often out of date.

But honestly while that was a pain in the past. Now for the vast majority of things I use. I find flat pack or appimage downloads work perfect ally.

The only exception is ham radio software. Here I tend to compile later versions if I need/want them.

Other negatives

I’m really not hugely into gaming. But use blender a lot. Due to this I use Nvidia cards as they are far better supported by blender.

Installing the proprietary Nvidia drivers is a bit of a pain on Debian for newbies. But once you know the process its simple enough. Just not obvious for beginners. The community drivers are still very limited thanks to Nvidia s weird ideas.

Mine may be the funniest

I used to always recommend people use Linux Mint as their first distro, but then it hit me, how can I recommend something I only installed for five minutes? So I got myself Linux Mint, it was 21.3 Virginia at that time, now I have more important things to do in my system and it has stayed.

I used Arch in my old laptop for 2 and half years, learned alot of things from Arch, also got to know some people in the Arch unofficial Matrix Room. But I have a new laptop and this is the story.

The amount of software available in the package manager, without adding external repositories, exceeds that I’ve seen in any other distro I’ve used. Even with epel, I feel like others fall short.

The ability to modify the build time flags of software while still using the package manager is also huge. I hate when ffmpeg doesn’t have speex support because some upstream dev figured it was a corner use case.

It’s me, I’m the target demographic. I’m the one asshole who wants to build ffmpeg with speex support, clamav without milter support and rxvt WITHOUT blink support.

There are some pretty great userspace helpers too. Things to ensure your kernel is always built with the same options. Things to upgrade all your python or perl modules to the new interpreter version for you. Tools for rebuilding all the things based on a reverse dependency search.

Slotted installs are handled in a sane, approachable, and manageable way.

The filesystem layout is standards compliant.

I recall someone on /r/Gentoo saying something like “Gentoo is linux crack, when you get a handle on it, nothing compares.”

When I boot my laptop into fedora/arch/mint/etc (or really any non-bsd based distro), I feel like I’m using someone else’s laptop. There are a bunch of git repos under /usr/src for the software I wanted that wasn’t in the package manager. I need to manage their updates separately. Someone else has decided which options are in this very short list of GUIs. I’m using whatever cron daemon they chose, not the one I want. Why is there a flat text log file under /var/db/? Why won’t you just let me exist without any swap mounted? $PATH is just a fucking mess.

PC: Cachyos love the aur and the compiler optimizations + they compile or put aur packages in their repos which saves time by not making you compile anything
Phone: Android (does it count??)

I started on Ubuntu, tried 8.04 and went back to windows XP, tried 10.04 and stayed.

20.04 was my last Ubuntu, bounced around for a while, but I have settled on Mint. Been running it for 3 years now.

Mint isn’t too fancy, it is just there and lets me get my work done, very much the way Ubuntu used to be.

I’m running the 6.14.2 kernel, to get the latest drivers for my RX 9070, I’m playing around with local AI… Mint isn’t fancy, but you can do almost anything you want.

EndeavourOS on my laptop and Ubuntu on my home server. Still new to linux thought endeavour was a good choice to really get my feet wet with lessening the chance to screw things up too badly. Ubuntu because it looks like it just works.

Void for desktop/laptop. These are the things I like about it.

• Rolling release
• Initial installation is minimal, and doesn’t foist a specific DE or other unessential software on me.
• No systemd
• Nothing similar to Arch’s AUR. I know a lot of people love it, but I do not. I mention as the distros are similar.

Debian for my server. But I plan to migrate to Devuan.

• Stable and well tested
• Huge package selection
• Pretty ubiquitously supported. If for whatever reason what you want to run isn’t in the repo, .deb packages and apt repos are often available.
• Minimal installation available.

I used the big ones, ubuntu, arch, opensuse and (atomic) fedora. Fedora had the nicest out of box experience. Morover, I moved to podman, systemd, selinux, etc. And the atomic version showed me a new workflow with flatpak and distrobox (nowadays, I use nix oftentimes).

The best part about it is that I do not care about the system anymore. I do not even interact with it. I don’t install packages (besides the base layer and minimal modifications that are long lasting like installing openssl for GNOME iirc)

I use mainly flatpaks, if I need aur, I fire up distrobox, or use nix if I want to. And the best part is, I’d have the exact same workflow even without the atomic version. Even on another distro. I do not interact with it much.

Moreover, I am happy with all the choices fedora made with the base package and images. I do not have to do an informed choice like on arch. It just updates whenever I boot my pc. I do not need to read updates, they are just there, somewhere. I do not need to disable snaps or work around weird choices. I just start firefox, vscodium, a terminal and do whatever I want to do.

Edit: I actually wanted to switch back to opensuse just to support it but I guess I’d rather move to nix some day. Maybe with niri and cosmic.

Ubuntu at work since it’s well supported and we can expect any IT people to be able to deploy our packages.

Pop 24.04 because I think it’d be cool to see how performant and maintainable and customizable a desktop that isn’t GTK or QT based. Something sparkly without the legacy choices of the past to consider in the codebase. Plus even though I’ve never touched Rust, it’s so hyped that I’m interested to see how it all works out. It’s my gaming desktop that also has a Windows VM for occasional trying something out. Also process RAW photos with Darktable. Every now and then use Alpaca to try out free LLMs, handbrake, ffmpeg, image magick, compile something

Fedora, stable to me and it goes on my minipc. I run Jellyfin on it and occasionally SAMBA or whatever. I like to see how GNOME changes.

On a Legion Go, Bazzite with KDE. Steam and seeing how KDE Plasma progresses over years. Bazzite introduced me to distrobox and boxbuddy which I now use on the gaming pop_os machine too.

An old laptop with Linux Mint on it. I like to see how Cinnamon is. Used to favor it when I first tried Linux from Windows.

It’s been a long time but I also used to really like Budgie but I feel like everything is pretty solid at this point and I no longer care to chase modern GNOME 2 or Windows XP/7 UI design

Ran Ubuntu and Ubuntu server first then switched to desktop fedora and liked it so I switched all my servers to fedora. Tried TrueNas Scale in the past and disliked it except for SMB shares. Also have an unraid server but hate it.

I guess I’m pretty superficial about just liking the base fedora DE. Idk beyond that.

Finally time to bust this out again.

Debian for everything since it’s one of the few distros that has always been there. It’s one of the second distros to come after after SLS. Distros come and go, but Debian marches on.

Arch. Purely because of the Arch Wiki. I honestly think it’s the easiest OS to troubleshoot as long as you are willing and able to read every now and again.