Linux

I started with Mandrake back in 2000 and used Red Hat at school. In 2004 Ubuntu was released and I adopted it for life. I switched from Ubuntu to Xubuntu to Ubuntu MATE to Kubuntu up to this day. It's the best because of all the quality of life additions, the stability of the LTS releases, the amount of widespread documenation, and general size of the community of users. This makes it a lot more easier to use and get help to troubleshoot any problems. So far it's been mostly a problem free and easy experience.

Until recently...

I just discovered Zorin OS and started messing around with it in a VM. I gotta say it's of of the best, most polished Gnome desktop experiences I've had so far with their free core version. While I love KDE for it's desktop experience being the closest to Windows there is, I usually find it has WAY too many customizations to a fault. Some people like this, but I find that the more you mess with configs, the more prone to problems it gets. I also find Gnome to be more well put together and well integrated. The fact the customization options are limited means I spend more time doing what I need to do than messing around with getting my desktop just right. I just hate the default Gnome destop and whatever paradigm they tried to make. That's why I've stuck with Kubuntu for a while. But with Zorin, I think they found the sweet spot. This might be my next install and I might recommend it to anyone who wants to get into Linux over Mint.

I use Arch, btw, but I don't consider it the best (yes I do.) I could easily transition to Fedora, for example (I would never do that,) and be completely happy (I would rather continually hit my head with the metal stapler gun on my desk.)

Does what I want and gets out of my way.

Hannah Montana Linux

Bazzite just works, it runs every game I have with zero fuss, it's easy to run Windows programs / emulators / local LLMs, AND it's basically unbreakable.

Debian. It works so well that I never even looked at different distros during the last 20 years or so...

Mint is Ubuntu minus everything that makes Ubuntu annoying. That's why I like it.

I considered to go back to Debian but... eh, I'm too old and impatient for that. Nowadays I mostly want things that work out of the box.

It isn't, it is the least bad

NixOS. My entire config is source-controlled and I can easily roll back to a previous boot image if something breaks like cough Nvidia drivers. I also use it for my home router and all self-hosted services.

I don't know that it is objectively the best - but its the best fit for me right now (LMDE).

I've been enjoying EndeavourOS over the past three years. It works wonderfully out of the box at default settings, and was really easy for me to use and set up to my liking with minimal know-how needed.

It also works really well on the variety of machines I have in my home. My desktop, modded Chromebook, and my husband's laptop.

It's allowed me to get more familiar and confident with the command line, and enough so that I've switched to Sway from XFCE (and previously KDE).

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Arch_is_the_best

I'm convinced it isn't.

This week alone I've used Arch, Ubuntu, OpenSuse, and Fedora. Its Arch. By a short way, and mostly thanks to the wiki. Tbh they are all converging, and I go with KDE variants when I use a GUI and no distro does too much to customise it

Mine's the best, because it fits with what I want. Might not be your best, but it's mine.

For a long time I considered Gentoo the best, because I know my things around there. A month ago I said goodbye to my last Gentoo installation in favour for Debian trixie (the next stable release). Gentoo was too time consuming despite the binary repo.

If it would be my job to maintain a Gentoo system I would gladly accept, but there should be a need for it by the users. Otherwise I would just recommend Debian stable or Fedora.

My favourite is Debian over Fedora, because I often don't need the latest versions of a software. And there is flatpak.

Void made Linux fun again for me. It gets so much right with the rolling release model.

It works, has the packages I need and they are up-to-date

It's extremely stable, and countless other distros are derived from this.

Because it was my first distro that got me away from Windows. And yes, it's Mint.

I use NixOS, btw (don't you see that glorious gif?). It's the only distro that is actually different compared to other distros. It's not just another package manager, another ubuntu skin, or a different desktop environment. If you learn how to configure it, you can easily redo breaking changes or install an exact copy of your system on a different device. You can configure all you want and you will never ever have to worry.

Also has better flex than Arch users.

openSUSE Slowroll and Secureblue are my favorites ATM. Slowroll for gaming, Secureblue for mobile device. Both are hardened for security because that matters to me.

Because I like compiling everything from source for a 0.2% speed improvement

I use Arch since approximately 2006 or so. I like its stability (yes!), performance, rapid updates and technical simplicity. It never stands in my way and it's fairly simple to understand, administer and modify. It's probably the most convenient OS I've ever used - sure it takes time/effort to set it up but once you're past that it's smooth sailing. It also doesn't change dramatically over the years (it doesn't need to) so it's easy to keep up with its development. Plus, I have a custom setup script for it that installs and sets up all of the basics, so if I ever need to reinstall, I'm not starting from zero.

I am eyeing NixOS as "the next step" but didn't yet experiment with it too much. Arch is just too comfy to use and the advantages that NixOS brings aren't yet significant enough for me to make any kind of switch to it, but I consider NIxOS (as well as its related technologies like the Nix package manager) to be the most interesting and most advanced things in the Linux world currently.

If you're reading this as a newbie Linux user: probably don't use any of the two mentioned above (yet). They're not considered entry-level stuff, unless you're interested in learning low-level (as in: highly technical) Linux stuff from the start already. NixOS/Nix in particular is fairly complex and can be a challenge even for veteran Linux admins/users to fully understand and utilize well. Start your journey with more common desktop distros like Mint, Fedora, Kubuntu.

Because I can hit "next" a couple of time and have a working install

Can't say it's the best, but I love Alpine. It's light, fast, versatile and easy to use, runs on anything, and despite it being used mostly in containers and VMs, it makes for a great desktop distro aswell. :)

Really? I guess everyone was 15 at some point and hadn't heard that distro wars are useless 🤣

There is no best. Period.

Nobara: It works well most of the time and has pretty much everything needed for gaming preinstalled. I had a bad update once that prevented booting past the command line though. Now that I'm more experienced I'd probably use a more mainline distro and install the gaming stuff myself.