Linux

I tried Fedora, Centos, Ubuntu, Debian, Slackware, Gentoo, and Mint. Finally settled on Arch Linux about 15 years ago. Never looked back.

I am running Debian / KDE with a lot of KDE adjustments/configuration. Debian to ditch snaps, KDE because I can 'adjust' it to my liking.

Kubuntu on some machines, KDE Neon on others. Ubuntu Server on my home servers.

Arch Linux (Endeavour OS if you are scared of the terminal) for personal use. It's almost all the software you want one click away, plus the best documentation ever.

Debian on my company's computer because Debian.

Debian for most of my machines, rock solid and works. I've had 0 problems with Debian on any computer its downloaded on. And I personally don't need very up to date packages.

On my main computer (currently Windows due to hardware compatibility issues on Linux), I've flip flopped between Pop and Fedora depending on how much I need 3D graphics applications.

Xubuntu... It's light weight and pretty much everything is kind of Debian or kind of redhat anyway...

The charm of rolling my own died off when I got old enough to buy better hardware if I wanted to go faster...

I tried a ton, and I settled with Fedora just for the mix of stability and support. Though, with Red Hat being asses I might have to mix it up.

Fedora

Windows, then Ubuntu when I started Computer Science, then Linux Mint, and I've been hopping back and forth between both but mostly Mint, then for a while also KDE Neon, then I decided to leave my comfort zone and tried Fedora, and never looked back.

I'm probably going to stick with Arch, or maybe EndeavourOS.

I've hopped from distro to distro but I always keep coming back to Arch. The reason I use Arch is that it's my weird sweet spot of "DIY" and "it just works". It gives me a blank slate at first, but it lets me paint the canvas with whatever I want, however I want. It allows for some weird setups (like VFIO, for instance) and the wiki really helps with that. I don't really use the AUR nowadays unless it's for a package only available there, so I can't say anything about that. I use Flatpak nowadays. Some people might prefer the AUR, that's good for them! Right now it's just not for me.

If I do distro-hop again, I'll probably go for EndeavourOS just to have an Arch install that leans heavier on the "just works" side of things.

Fedora silverblue or rather the ublue image.

I am not a power user and do casual gaming, document reading and processing, mail checking and video watching so the ublue main image provides the simplicity and stability I need.

Way back when I think it was SUSE for me after BeOS went under. Ubuntu, debian, arch, and then nixos maybe 7 or 8 years ago. Back to ubuntu for work for a few years, but nixos full time now.

Ubuntu, Arch, Manjaro and now Guix as my hopefully permanent home. Guix is one configuration file, and zap! the system configures itself from that. There are oc a lot of other goodies..

After years of stable distros and dealing with outdated software, and years of arch and dealing with updates causing me to fail to boot, I've recently hopped through every popular distro and landed on MX+Nix.

It solves both of my problems. The system is rock solid thanks to Debian, and I still get bleeding edge userland packages from nix unstable.

Manjaro KDE. It just has a good setup out of the box. The AUR as well as the other packaging formats makes it very easy to install applications that I need.

Slackware. It didnt abstract anything from me and lets me help myself. Unlike ubuntu, that keps getting in the way.

I was on Ubuntu, then I switched to Debian, then Mint. Then I was like wow if this is so good I'm gonna try some more, and I dove headfirst. I didn't run a distro more than a couple hours sometimes, never more than a week.

Then I found Manjaro, which I tried and liked well enough except for all the Manjaro shit. I decided then that I could install Arch, how hard could it be? So I did, it took me like 3 days and I broke it dozens of times but I eventually got there (with sound even!) shortly before they brought back the install script. I want to try Gentoo but I don't have time to compile everything, I understand they ship binaries now which I think is sweet but I'm happy with Arch.

I like Arch for it's KISS philosophy, the DIY attitude with which you approach it, the fine-grained control over every (most) part of the system, the AUR. But my favorite thing about Arch is the Wiki. It's such a great resource, and yeah it applies to more than just Arch but like ... why?

I use Arch btw

I hopped 10 times in 6 months. Settled on Manjaro for latest gaming related software like drivers, kwin, etc and and it's package manager gui, which is horrible but it works. Easiest distro to game on for me.

Never really distro hopped. Went from DOSLinux to Slackware and stayed put as my main. Having multiple machines, some multi booters, meant I had/tried a bunch of others. Vector Linux, Xubuntu, Debian Wheezy, several Arch-based (up to Garuda), various BSDs, and two unices (OpenSolaris/OpenIndiana, IRIX). Got an old ancient ToughBook (Pentiun II, 192MB RAM) with Arch before systemd collecting dust.

[ Those machines had multiple Windows versions also from Win2k to Win7 including XP x64 Edition ] Dem were da days. 🥰

Currently, Main laptop: Slackware. 2nd laptop: MX Linux, Void Linux, OpenBSD. Mini PC: Slint (Slackware-based).

Well, for the mini PC I did distro hop. Went through a lot trying to find the right one. Most were Arch-based (but not Arch itself) and they would indeed break at the worst time. Nature of bleeding edge rolling release I guess. Mostly I was looking for something non-systemd. Eventually settled on Slint.

LXQT on Arch

OpenSUSE -> Ubuntu -> Windows for like a decade -> MacOS -> Arch -> Manjaro -> Arch -> Debian -> NixOS -> Nobara

Currently running NixOS on my laptop, Nobara on my Desktop, and Debian on my VMs under Proxmox.

I'll probably jump from Nobara to Bazzite as soon as I start to have problems.

I'm gradually settling on immutable distros.