I've been fully daily driving Linux for about 15 years now, and for me it's almost all Arch now.

I started out distro-hopping between Debian, Mint, Ubuntu, Slack, etc, but once I found Arch (and spent two weeks getting it installed, booted, and customized exactly to my liking) I was finally at home.

I know the meme. I'm not here to claim superiority, or diminish the value of other perfectly good distros. I love Debian, I love Void, Ubuntu can die in a fire, etc.

What I love about Arch is the lack of bloat. You get precisely what you ask for, no more, no less. You can legitimately run htop and recognize literally every program, and know if something's wrong immediately.

Every one of my Arch boxes is a perfect little snowflake, suited to exactly the task(s) I built it for. And if there was anything I had to learn or configure along the way? That's just the journey, man.

I have been eyeballing NixOS though...

NixOS so I can keep my config in git. I have a single nix config for all my machines (desktop, laptop and server) so I can share configuration between them. I use it to configure both my system and my user config, my dotfiles, with home-manager. Even my neovim config is in nix thanks to nixvim.

I don't think I could go back now. It can be a bit of a pain from time to time and the learning curve is steep but it has so many advantages. Being able to rollback between config versions (called generations), having a consistent config between my machines, having it all in version control… The repo have so many packages and when there is a module it's really easy to add a service. Writing new packages (derivations) and modules is also not that hard. It can be as simple as calling nix-init.

Had my main ssd fail on me a few month back and it was very simple to just replay the config and just get everything working as before. I only had to do the partitioning by hand (it can be done by nix but I've not gotten around to it yet). That's why I only backup data and home partitions, not system partitions.

debian since forever. no reason to switch yet.

The answer is Debian like crabs on a long enough timeline it will eventually become Debian. - Linux user for 27 years

I used a linux desktop for a few years back in 08-09, started on ubuntu then got on the Gentooooooooooo bandwagon. (Went back to Windows after this due to college + games, naturally)

Ever since then, I just use stable LTS versions of either debian or ubuntu for server applications. Recently changed back to Linux on desktop and went with CachyOS, it's been super solid.

I've tried many distros over a 20 year period. I'm happy with CachyOS.

Debian

15+ years on Fedora

Solid

Arch on my personal machines, Debian on my servers.

Debian on the streets (servers), Arch on the sheets (laptop).

Debian.

Debian.

It's pretty great for desktop stuff these days. Basically Ubuntu minus the shit. Any desktop you want, it's got live installers now (several different ones with different desktops), it's got nonfree firmware on the disc, they've really upped their game.

(And if the recent systemd stuff skeeves you out, you can toss out systemd, even. It's not for the faint of heart though.)

-- Frost

Debian on everything (well except the router is on OpenWrt).

First installed Debian more than 25 years ago. Tried some other stuff, Debian is still best for me.

Debian and alpine. Coming up on 27 years of linux for me.

Debian, on the server, the laptop, the desktop, and the gaming machine. Debian.

I started with Slackware many years ago. Eventually switched to Kubuntu on my desktop and laptop machines, then later the server switched to Debian. The desktop and laptop switched later.

Suddenly realizing I use linux for more than 10 years

[despair noises]

Arch, btw

Debian mostly. I appreciate the democratic, non corporate governance, the classic Free Software ethos, the stability, and their not going blindly along with upstream defaults (e.g. telemetry).

My server runs OpenBSD because I find it more tightly designed, and simpler. Laptop Fedora because the hardware wasn't originally well supported by Debian stable.

For almost 30 years Debian somehow.

Have I been on 10 years? I dunno, but I like to think I'm pretty experienced for an amateur.

OpenSUSE Tumbleweed! It rolls! It games! It works with newer hardware and gets along sorta reasonably with Nvidia!

Best part? If any of that ISN'T true (rarely after an update), it seamlessly integrates BTRFS snapshots with the boot menu, to just roll back and wait like a week til the wonderful souls working on it, fix stuff.

The community is also very supportive.

If you have been using Linux for +10 years, what are you using now?

I distro-hopped every few years until about 2015. Since then I've been trending toward Debian for everything.

Been daily driving Arch on my laptops for the last 10 years. It's been great. Getting the latest software has been especially handy for laptops, where the kernel sometimes needs time to catch up to the latest hardware.

I ran Guix for a few months when I had some extra time and I liked it, but it was very different and not all software I needed ran on it (or ran well). I ended up going back to Arch, but I brought Guix with me, as a package manager.

I also ended up trying Fedora for the first time (ok, I was unemployed) recently and was pleasantly surprised. Turns out Fedora is pretty close to how I configure Arch. And it's got some extra polish that was neat. I ended up installing Fedora Silverblue for my parents 6-8 months ago and it's been working out great for them.

Anyway, Arch has been my reliable companion for the last 10 years.

Debian. For decades.

My first installation was slack and from then until now has been a mix of more things than I care to list, but includes things like freebsd on a DEC multia, a sparcstation pizza box with a 2.6ish kernel maybe?, along with things like Ubuntu, suse, fedora, centos, gentoo, ive built from scratch, I ever remember the days of configuring x with fvwm95 because I thought it would be easier for my parents.

I always go back to Debian. Though I'm happy with arch when I want something 'current'.

An old pop os system for everyday use.

An old debian server for most self hosting.

Onion os for my miyoo mini plus retro game console.

And a mess of things all over the house.

33 years with Linux (kernel 1.2.13, slackware). Worked at a distro. Worked in OS security -- Unix and enterprise Linux. I helped build United Linux out of the dismembered corpse suse kicked over the fence as 'collaboration'.

Because of the validation issue in the .deb package format and others, I'm on a mixture of Rocky and Nobara.

I'm subscribed to cloudLinux's tuxcare enterprise updates for some older stuff, and I can't recommend it enough. It's excellent; and if almalinux releases their sLTS distro release and actually covers it for 25 years, that will be such a coup.

I'm worried at the direction Linux has been taken by IBM and I hope it can be unfucked one day. I miss the reliable, fast boots and uncomplicated tooling before this systemd shitshow.

Debian stable, it works fine for a workstation and for the few games I play

I have started with Mandrake (later renamed to Mandriva) then went through few other distros before settling on Gentoo.

Gentoo installation is one of the most complicated because there is no installer, you do everything yourself.

This is like buying car parts and assembling them together into a car using a manufacturer's manual. its painful but once the car is assembled you almost never have to take it to a repair shop. Not because it doesn't breakdown but because you know well how it function and thus how to fix it yourself.

Linux hobbyist for 20+ years, pro for 6+. Fedora for workstations, proxmox for hypervisors, and rocky for servers is my usual personal recommendation. Beyond that, secureblue (a hardened downstream of fedora atomic) with heads firmware is a fantastic daily driver if you're into that kind of thing.

Started with debian sarge way back in the day, currently using secureblue and qubes with fedora vms for most work, with a debian htpc on the side. For servers, I'm mostly debian-based on hardware (a bunch of proxmox machines at various sites and debian-based raspberry pis everywhere), with mostly redhat-based vms. Some alpine and freebsd baremetal and virtual machines sprinkled in here and there for flavor where they fit right.

Debian on every last one of my computers and servers

Debian. I like my computer to work.

The first linux distro I remember using was Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake), so I'm just about at 20 years, maybe a bit less than that; I think it had been released for a while before I decided to give it a go. I tend to stick with debian-based distros, though I've used arch variants off and on for my daily driver for years at a time. Still got it kicking around on some machines now, though not any of my daily drivers. Servers are a mix of Debian and Ubuntu Server, machines with UI are either Ubuntu or Mint, or some resource-light version of Ubuntu, depending on the device and the mood when I last reformatted them. I have used Fedora/RedHat/CentOS at various points, but usually because someone was paying me to do so. Same story with OpenSUSE, but even less commonly. I have a few devices running variously dated versions of PostmarketOS, Lineage OS, even one device that still runs CyanogenMod (it does not get internet privileges). I have a few Raspberry PIs that all run Raspbian (or whatever it's called now).

EDIT: Just remembered I used to use CrunchBang Linux for a long time. I bought the only computer I could afford (a "netbook" with Win 10 Starter), put crunchbang on it (after experimenting with a few distros), and really kinda fell in love with OpenBox. I don't use it anymore because I don't like the default settings and haven't been bothered to set it up properly lately, but I had that netbook set up just so and it worked really well. it was my main and only computer for several years.

For personal use? Bazzite because it’s easy and stable. I have enough stuff breaking at work already…

You've had me realise how long I've actually been using Linux for, though not quite at the ten year mark unless you count some very early endeavours with ubuntu.

fully agree with you on Debian as a rock solid server. my "don't fuck with it, just work" client system for several years now has been fedora workstation, though I've only relatively recently switched all of my personal computing over to it (still have several windows installations for work-related testing).

People are going to hate me for this, but here goes...

I'm using Ubuntu.

Ubuntu Studio, to be precise.

Arch for 13 Years. No distro hopping. The AUR and Wiki are the greatest resources any Linux distro has and I'm not giving them up for anything else. There were periods where I dual booted with Windows for gaming but that's been dead and gone for 5 years. At this point the only times it breaks is because of user error which there is not much of any more.

Linux Mint Debian Edition. I started using Linux in 2007. I've tried a lot of distros, and like several of them, but Mint is the comfiest desktop distro for me.

Linux user since 1998 or 99. Debian-Testing for my desktops, Mint for my laptops. I like things that work well with a GUI (I dislike the terminal, despite being well familiar with it), without bad surprises (Debian-Testing is surprisingly stable).

Gentoo since 2004.

Archlinux. The wiki and forums are comprehensive, occasional issues I create easy to google, surprisingly reliable. AUR makes it easy to install third-party software.

For the above mentioned reasons, I would recommend you go with one of the big 3: Debian, Fedora, or Arch. Most other distros are either derived from one of the 3 anyways, or are niche.

Debian.

Arch on Desktops&Notebooks, Debian on Servers.

I think I started back in the day with Ubuntu Gnome, with some dabbling in Manjaro and then Arch.

But since then I have used Fedora Workstation, and then Fedora Silverblue / Fedora Kinoite (immutable versions of fedora, with the past several years on Kinoite [kde] over Silverblue [gnome])

On the server side of things, I am using Debian (with everything running in podman containers).

If I were to consider migrating, it would be to migrate my laptop to secureblue (likely, rebasing the OS image rather than clean-installing) and migrate my Windows 11 desktop to bazzite. Both of these are still based on Fedora's immutable base, albeit with changes to the base OS image. At some point in the future, I would also consider migrating my server to an immutable OS, however, which one remains to be seen.

I hopped around a little but settled into Debian a long, long time ago. My son loves Arch, I like my stuff to be a bit more stable and don't have the time to update between commands all the time (its a joke but has a little truth to it).

I started using Linux in '98 with Red Hat 5.2. I have swapped between many, many different distros. But for the last 10 years or so, I've mostly stuck with Fedora. It generally just works, is up to date, and I've never had issues upgrading on their 6 month release cycle. My desktop probably started on Fedora 20-something and has been upgraded to the latest (43) without ever doing a reinstall!

My primary computer is my Frame.work laptop running Fedora 43.

Ive swapped around but for now im good on Arch, I like the AUR too much and tbh it does what I need (other distros are great and I installed Debian on my families computers but for me I use Arch).

I've been using Linux for more than 20+

First distro: Slackware, then Debian for many years, finally Fedora, since 2014, very happy user.

What I like in Fedora: the 6 months release provides bleeding edge experience without compromising stability.

Debian on everything.

Fedora Atomic for user facing devices.

Fedora Server for servers.

I started with Slackware in the early 90s, moved to Gentoo in 2004 after using FreeBSD for a while, and Arch linux since 2007. Gentoo was too much work (both for my and for my CPU's) in the long run. It has been more predictable (in spite of being a rolling release) for me than anything else,

Debian Trixie headless on my router/server raspberry pi and NixOs on my laptop.

However I'm planning to switch from Nix this summer since one of the maintainers of NixOs is the one which added age verification to systemd, still haven't decided on which Os I'll switch to probably Devuan os but may give Alpine a shot since it's more stable than Arch btw, so I'll just be ricing and distro hopping this summer until I pick my new favorite again.

Started with Lubuntu in 2011, then I used Bodhi for many years. 3 or 4 years ago I switched to Linux Lite. Now I use Debian and Lite for myself and my wife's laptop is set up with Mint XFCE. Right now I'm testing out what works best with a detachable laptop that has limited hardware capabilities.

(Please recommend me a lightweight Distro with good touch integration that's not KDE Plasma, Debian with Gnome (Debian-based Distro is okay) or PostmarketOS. Or a lightweight DE with touch gestures that also supports display scaling.)

Been using linux for 7+ years, first distro was mint, then I moved to manjaro, for the last couple years I've been using Guix, a Nix inspired distro.

I’ve been a daily Linux user for sometime between 25-30 years. I’ve used most major distros and the BSDs. For the last several years I’ve used vanilla Fedora Workstation. After a while you just want to use your computer instead of tinker with it.

Gaming PC - Nobara (Fedora base with lots of gaming-specifc kernel optimizations baked in.)

Personal laptop - Linux Mint

Business laptop - Linux Mint Debian Edition

Junk/Test laptops - Void

Home lab main hypervisor - XCP-ng (Highly customized Fedora under the hood.)

NAS - TrueNAS (Debian under the hood.)

Virtual servers - Mostly Debian, but a few Alma Linux VMs to get that RHEL experience. Ubuntu Server for my self-hosted gaming servers.

Steam Deck - SteamOS (Valve's immutable spin of Arch.)

Devuan now

I’ve used Ubuntu, Arch, and Void in the past. Ended up settling on Fedora Silverblue for the time being.

Opensuse since back in the SuSE days. I've dabbled with other distros and even had a somewhat extended run with Fedora when their Gnome implementation was better, but I've always gone back to SuSE. mostly I just like Yast although I find I've used it less and less with time spent understanding what it does and how to do that other ways.

Windows ...

Because I don't want an OS that just works.

After some years of distrohopping I had a long time on Ubuntu/Debian, but for partly similar reasons I wanted to change. Fedora, I love it. Smooth nice, out of the way, very fine if you want it to stay out if your way.

Could also drop freebsd in here. Surprisingly easy to install as a desktop with something like xfce, you get zfs on root very easily. Though, there probably will be some applications missing.

Anyway, good luck on your next linux adventure 😀

Arch everywhere (desktop with KDE, personal laptop with GNOME, work laptop with COSMIC, a remote raspberry pi) except a Raspberry Pi Zero (Raspbian) and the Steam Deck

Started on 1993 with Yggdrasil Plug and Play Linux. Before kernel 1.0! Before ELF binaries, even.

I've been running Ubuntu Studio for almost ten years. Before that it was Redhat variants. Before Linux, a short time with 386/BSD. But for work, SunOS, Irix, HP-UX, and a stint on a team supporting a VAX 8900 running VMS

I'm about to dump Ubuntu Studio. Thinking either Fedora or Debian.

Recently switched to Arch, the archinstall script is amazing and gets you all set up. much better onboarding nowadays and is great to use.

I have been using unixes since 2000 and technically a bit before that as a user in school systems and linux since 2005. I am currently using zorin but have a long term trial to go towards and image type of system like bazzite. Thing is I have been doing this stuff to long and now I prefer to have stuff that just works and go rather than having to futz around. So my emphasis is on lazy linux. Its kinda funny because I sometimes talk about why I do and don't do things at the command line and I will get responses about learning it more and I kinda got to roll my eyes.

I always use Debian for my servers simply because it's stable and third-party repositories are abundant. As for desktops/laptops, I prefer Fedora — I trust their privacy policy and packages rarely break.

Slackware. In 27-ish years of using it, it's never once crashed or failed to install

Arch on my desktop and laptop. Debian, Gentoo, OpenBSD on servers

I used a lot over the last 25 years of Linux, started with Debian, Suse Linux, then some years with Gentoo (i learned so much in that time, I can recommend it), and now I am using Arch.

Arch gives me lots of the freedoms and possibilites that I am used to from Gentoo but without the constant pain of compilation. I have Arch on my Desktop, all my servers, my NAS

LMDE on desktop. MX Linux on laptop. Nextcloud server runs Ubuntu. Homelab server on Debian.

Using Arch for almost a decade now. Started with Ubuntu, fedora, mint but finally landed on arch. But am thinking about switching to gentoo; arch has gone too mainstream that im afraid it might be plagued with "age verification" virus

Question to users and distro hoppers. I've grown to love Mint used it for years. But sometimes it updates and moves my game folders, loses my saves and I have to hunt in my system and hope I find my precious years long game saves.

Is there such thing as a distro that never changes the structure where truly all my files, system files, games will all be the same over years?

I've tried NIX and liked it, I've tried LMDE and Stock Mint with Ubuntu bugs yay, I've tried base Debian 13, and lastly Fedora kinoite..

Whats a system that updates but doesn't lose my shit when I just want to game and use my PC? I like having all my files never move, structure of system never change, but having the ability to run steam and heroic games of all types. I'm still back to Stock Mint Ubuntu but dammit if they don't introduce bugs sometimes. Like suspend / resume audio doesn't work after sleeping my desktop and back on without restarting.

Fedora

OpenSUSE if you want something non American and not directly related to RedHat

slackware ftw

On my new laptop, I wanted to try something less "Cannonical"-y too, after many years of using Ubuntu. I already used Manjaro KDE on my desktop and I kinda liked it. So that, I decided to install Arch and maybe copy some configs from Manjaro, if needed. Well, at first glance, it was awesome. Fast, fully configurable system, that is fully mine. Alas, that euphoria didn't last long: very soon some fundamental problems occured. Here I should specify that I'm using my laptop for live musical performance. And I focus on some specific things that other users might not need to.

1. Wine - couldn't make it work with 32bit apps and VST plugins. That's really important to me, because some of those don't have any native replacements. Whatever I tried, Wine just refused to create a 32bit prefix.
2. At some point, several (lots of) important LV2 plugins stopped showing their GUIs. They kept working in "generic GUI" mode, but for things like equalizers having a good visualization is crucial.
3. KDE+pipewire+wayland is the worst setup for live performance ever. When you move your mouse around taskbar, it creates video-streams (to draw thumbnails) that make audio graph massively crackle.
4. Really bad performance with several soundcards. SOme cards just refused to work together in one graph, turning the sound into the ocean of xruns. And that possibility of several soundcards was the reason why wanted to switch from JACK to pipewire in the first place.
5. No possibility to have pipewire-jack and pipewire-jack-client packages installed simultaneously.
6. LADISH and Claudia - they're quite tricky obsolete pieces of software that I use. These are really handy for making large complicated audio systems. Alternatively I tried raysession, but it didn't work well too (didn't restore connections).

This list could have been longer, but I will probably stop here. After a month of struggling I switched back to Ubuntu Mate 24.04. And what can I say... It works fine. It's a bit tougher than Arch, but not much; and at the end - not a single issue of listed above. And Ubuntu has custom lowlatency kernel that helps with realtime audio applications. And it's still Linux after all - I can easily do whatever I want - like, uninstall Snap. Some packages are too old - that's acceptable for an LTS release; if I need something up-to-date, I can just build it from source. Also I notice the same issues on my Manjaro desktop, but it's not so crucial there, as I primarily use desktop for gaming and video montage. But still, considering to return to Ubuntu on it too.

What I want to say is that maybe Ubuntu is not so bad, really. Cutting off some unneeded things can turn it into a good OS.

Arch, diving slowly in NixOS

i started off using ubuntu back in the day, but these days i refuse to use any of the distros downstream or tied to a for profit company (so not fedora, opensuse, or ubuntu - and by extension mint), and i prefer distros that are used as the base for other distros rather that ones dependant on another distro (so extra not mint, ubuntu, endeavour, or manjaro).

that leaves, essentially, slackware, arch, and debian.
i am too lazy to learn slackware, so for my main desktop i use arch and for other machines i own i use debian.

departing from the original question:
for new people i mostly recommend cachyos, debian, or bazzite depending on their ability & interest

i feel that, unlike the other 'arch but easier' distros, cachy actually adds something to the arch ecosystem (the optimized packages) and the installer showing videos of the different desktop environments all running on cachy is excellent

Gentoo and Fedora for workstations although I’m thinking of switching my last Fedora machine to gentoo. Debian for servers but I’m wanting to learn alpine as well.

Now using CachyOS, I recommend Bazzite to newcomers.

I've been on nixos for a year or so now. The learning curve is steep, but I feel it worth it for the reproducibility and config control.

I'm currently running tumbleweed on my main, mostly because that's what I happened to install last time I rebuilt my desktop.

I've been running other distros before, and I must say that (bar a couple bad experiences) I could still be using any of them.

Tumbleweed is the first rolling distro I've used for a prolonged time (3 or 4 years now?): before I only did two short experiments with void linux (loved it, but I'd rather have systemd) and manjaro (I was still young and stupid).

I don't think I'll go back to non-rolling: tumbleweed never broke on me (and if it did, it has snapshots) and being rolling there is zero update stress (has the new version come out? what's new? should I update now or wait for for the .1?).

Next time I install I will probably try nixos (which isn't really rolling - but it's not non-rolling either), which I've been using on servers for a while now and fell in love with (love-hate, that is: the learning curve is steep, the documentation poor, and there are infuriating points - but I feel like it's still more than worth it).

As you will have noticed I'm not even considering "immutable" distros: honestly, I don't see the point there (they seem like a lot of effort to solve problems I don't have).

my first install of debian was before it had names. my most recent was last tuesday. i've strayed for short stints, but debian is where it's at. i do have a couple 'others' but they are special setups for specific things.

if you like the deb-based system but want to get away from canonical, trixie is ready to rescue you.

Used Linux 15+ years professionally. Love NixOS right now, but also Debian

I started using Linux in 2016, I stopped distro hopping with arch and I'm using it since 2019. But I'm looking forward to try nix like OSes like guix. I see the value of it, it's just too much hassle right now. Meanwhile I'm using aconfmgr for tracking my modifications in my system.

I'm using Linux.

debian on my server. it's rock solid. I run a LOT of shit on it, and it rarely cracks about 4-5 GB RAM out of 32GB.

Up until recently, Debian on everything. Main PC/ laptop are running Artix (Arch minus systemd) and my servers are still on Debian

On my server I run Ubuntu and on my desktop I'm running Linux mint because it just fucking works and I don't got to mess with shit.

Started on Ubuntu as anybody, then PopOS, and then Garuda, but then I realized that the Garuda community is a completely POS so I ditched the whole distro. And now I'm using vanilla Arch with my own settings.

Between those hopps can be like an average of 3 distrohopps per day, because 'this distro is better because have this and that', but when you start using WM and need to configure each config file with an different programming language and all that, you really stop caring about if that distro have blur or not.

Nixos, meaning to try Gnuix but I got projects to finish!

I am using Unix/Linux for over thirty years now, and the older I get, the more I like it simple.

Debian with Arch in a VM, and Guix as extra package manager on top of both for programming projects. I use Debian for stable stuff and Arch for new stuff.

Stumpwm as manual tiling window manager, or i3wm, or Sway if the first is not available. Somtimes GNOME.

Emacs with language server (lsp-mode) for programming. Vim frequently at work for embedded tasks.

Gollum wiki or Zim wiki for knowledge management.

GNOME OS

it's technically not for everyday use, but it has been simple and trouble free for me.

I m stuck with Lubuntu for more than 10 years now, they do the job for me and I m good,

what I will always love about them is that I can customise them to be exactly how they functioned and looked the first time I used them and that's all I want from an OS, I don't want extremely drastic changes on my OS I don't get impressed much by that, but low usage of resources is enough, my mentality with computers is if it's not broken no reason to fix it

i've been using cachyos for three years and have no desire to switch my distro to anything else. before cachy, i used to use ubuntu, mint and mx for over ten years.

using linux for 30y, and the last ~5 of those is manjaro. on laptop, that is. servers still all run debian.

Selfhosted server for +10 years. Debian. Desktop was on windows. I switched 2 or 3 years ago. It's fedora KDE for me.

You're going to be super disappointed to learn that most people who have been using Linux as daily driver for decades just use whatever works. Linus himself just uses Fedora.

Nobody that has real shit to do wants to worry about things not working or causing issues. Immutable is pointless, Nix is something I use for work, Ubuntu is dead to me...etc.

Linux over 15 years

currently Fedora KDE and it's fine

rotate every few weeks months

Been using Linux for about 8 years now. My DE of choice has pretty much always been XFCE. Here's an overview of the distros I've daily driven.

Linux Mint -> Debian -> Arch -> NixOS -> Arch

I tried NixOS for about a year before switching back to Arch recently. There were just too many problems I couldn't find a solution to, and I realized that the advantages of an immutable OS just aren't that important to me.

Arch really is a dream to use, and the setup is pretty easy if you use the archinstall script. And most importantly, their wiki is amazing.

Ubuntu was my entry back in 2012. Started using Ubuntu family seriously 10 ya. Then sparky Linux (Debian based) then manjaro for a long time. Jumped into Archlinux in c 2019 and have been having chilling exp with arch+KDE. Linux mint (Debian) was among the best, but settled in arch. Tried others in the process and did not work - fedora, open SUSE, elementary, solus. I m sure they are pretty good, but I see no point in learning them for no extra benefit.

Only now, with age classification shit in systemd, I feel motivated to try other distro. But it is a hassle.

Mint on my main daily driver because I need the stability for work, and don't need bleeding edge for common work stuff. MX Linux KDE on my Thinkpad because KDE plays extremely well with external screens, and I need to plug it in to a lot of different foreign monitors/projectors during a normal work week.

Used Arch for 10 years. Been trying CachyOS for the past year. Considering Artix if systemd continues down the age verification slippery slope. Haven't tried it but NixOS looks interesting.

After about a decade on Mint I ended up on Fedora.

Approaching 20 years full time., basically Ubuntu or Debian with xfce desktop for desktops. I know it's not what all the cool kids are using or doing but it works. Going back nearly 30 years I was messing around and failing with all sorts of distros

RIP Mandrake my first ever Linux experience that actually worked

FreeBSD 😉

Edited to add: I still do use Linux for media and gaming; on those systems I run Mint because it just works out of the box, and seems to randomly change things less frequently than Ubuntu.

Mint, after about 20 years of Linux.

I think I tested a bunch of Linux distros about 2006, and settled on running Ubuntu v6 on an old laptop for occasional use and learning. Ubuntu was brown and it looked beautiful.

Later, I dual booted Ubuntu and Windows XP on my main computer from about 2008 until about 2014ish - I remember being annoyed that I had to install some launcher thing called "Steam for Linux" so I could play this newly released Linux game called "Crusader Kings II" (I was sure I'd never use this "Steam" thing for anything else).

2 laptops and one desktop bought since 2014 have been Linux exclusive. The old desktop still chugs along on Ubuntu, having been upgraded through versions for over a decade, and somehow still works. The old laptop and newer laptop (my main machine) have only ever run Mint.

Turns out that "Steam" thing was quite useful.

Debian on my desktop, Fedora on my laptop.

Been using Linux on desktop since 2002/3 and since 2005 it's been Kubuntu, mint with KDE, or KDE neon, now back to Kubuntu again because it just works

My custom Kinoite-based system using ublue-builder. Gets me updates with 0 interference with my daily use, secure boot, tpm based FDE, and I can still install packages during the CI step (although distrobox is the main way to do that).

I've been on Linux since my childhood (found it in a tech magazine in 2008), hopped through Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Fedora, and Manjaro until like 2022 when I settled on Fedora KDE, then shifted to their immutable stuff 1-2 years later.

EndeavourOS plus Plasma 6.

I don't think I'll ever use a distro that isn't arch based again, and you can have KDE plasma when you pry it from my cold, dead hands. :)

I've been on Mint MATE for about 10 or so years. I was on Ubuntu before that.

Artix, thinking about moving to Void or NixOS or something. Maybe even BSD. The more experienced i get, the less blingbling and troubleshooting complex frameworks i want.

Gentoo, across multiple machines. Started there, stayed there. Yes, it's a bear to install, but once you've got everything sorted out, it's rock-solid.

Fedora for desktop, just because gnome is a first class citizen and it just works. On my laptop's however it's either Alpine or Void musl.

Started out on Linux Mint 17.3 Cinnamon ten years ago. Looked around, got into other distros and DEs, window managers, file systems, bash scripting and server administration. Yet here I am, still on Linux Mint. It just works extremely well for me, never broke down (unless I broke it) and stayed out of my way to let me focus on my actual work.

Debian on my personal computers and servers.

Ubuntu on my work desktop, RHEL on work's servers

I wouldn't consider Debian "Canonical"-y, it's just what they happened to pick as their upstream.

I tried some of the atomic distros, but ran into too many problems. When I buy a new computer, I sometimes have to run Opensuse Tumbleweed or Arch to get new enough hardware support... Too lazy to rebuild my kernel and mesa at home

Fedora for main machine. Bazzite for gaming machine.

Debian (OMV) for servers.

I'm at 9 years myself, I use Ubuntu on desktop, Mint on my home ThinkPad, Ubuntu on my work ThinkPad, and a mix of Debian/Proxmox and Ubuntu for my servers. I'm hoping to switch my desktop to Mint at some point.

Work (Datacenter): RHEL, some SLES

Desktop: Kubuntu (just works, more or less - start with minimal install to avoid snaps)

Steam Deck: runs arch btw

I started using Linux around 2006, did lots of hopping from the first attempt and eventually landed on arch Linux which ran on my main pc laptop until march 2026 when I decided to switch to void Linux. I also have a 2nd laptop which is more just for family and retro gaming, which is Debian. I also have a raspberry pi4 with Debian based raspberry pi os, as well as a mini pc server running Debian.

As you can tell, I don't like derivatives. I am really fussy with my setup and prefer to build my own system from scratch to some extent, even if I end up with something more similar to one of the derivatives.

Nobody can really give you advice what to use though, it's a very personal thing. All the distros offer different features and solutions for different use cases and problems. For people to recommend a distro, you would have to outline everything you want and expect from the distro, what you like and don't like etc.

Been on Linux for 20 years and I'm on Debian and Arch. Both are very different but equally great systems.
I tried Slackware a couple of times cause it combines the simple design of Arch with the stability of Debian, but it's a bit too much in both regards.
As for desktop environments, I used to use Gnome on laptops and Plasma on desktops, but I recently stumbled upon Niri with Dank Material Shell and feel like it combines the advantages of both (fast keyboard/touchpad control, fully featured, lots of GUI customization options).

KDE is ideal to me given performance and polish, things like fractional scaling and Wayland are all top tier. I use Kubuntu but am waiting on "KDE Linux".

Arch since years. Never had issues

Debian for work and my home machines that I don't need to be the latest and greatest (nas, media centee).

Arch on personal, éess implrtant machines

My Linux journey began with Fedora before I transitioned to Manjaro. Following the issues there, I switched to Debian, though I eventually moved on due to its slow update cycle in favor of openSUSE. I’ve now settled on CachyOS, and I couldn't be happier. It is exceptionally stable, benefits from timely Arch-based updates, and performs incredibly fast. Ironically, even though I'm not a gamer, I find that CachyOS simply makes everything work perfectly.

Secureblue

20+ years. Found myself feeling at home on a uBlue base for a few years now. Music software in an arch container + brew for various tools. I do love it, though I admit I’m keeping an eye on OpenSuse Kalpa if RH/Fedora get weird with the Apple APIs.

Depends! Bazzite on ROG Ally X, Debian for servers, CachyOS for my desktop and laptop and Fedora for my sons PC

Most answers seem to be Debian. Sort of just works for me as well. With KDE Plasma and couldn't be happier with it. I keep on forgetting how I did stuff though because it's solid set and forget most of the time.

RHEL on servers, then either Debian LTS or Fedora on desktop. Been interested in Zorin OS but haven’t gotten around to trying it yet. Curious if their Windows application integration is as seamless as they claim.

Have been using Linux since Slackware in the early 90s, both for work and at home - been through a lot of distros since then.

Currently use Debian on my servers and VMs, and CachyOS (with KDE Plasma) on my main desktop. I like the bleeding edge of Arch for my desktop, and find CachyOS to be a very sensible plug and play way to get into Arch (I tried to run Arch before, and also EndeavourOS, although that was a while back and not the smoothest experience for me - things might be more mature now, but CachyOS was the one that finally reached the point for me that allowed a full switch from Windows on the desktop to Linux)

Most of my servers run virtualized on Proxmox, which itself is Debian based though. I also run pfSense as my firewall/router which is FreeBSD based.

It really depends what you want out of your computer, how much you like to tinker, and how comfortable you are getting your hands dirty. I got back onto a daily driver Linux desktop a little under two years ago, but I've been running Linux on servers since um..mid 90s? I've had Linux desktops mostly on secondary computers, but didn't go back fully until more recently.

I don't run Arch, but I feel like that community is probably closest to the feeling Linux had back in the day--when we recompiled the kernel with the specific drivers we needed for everything to save memory, I knew every process running, every program I installed. I compiled most of my own programs from source. Or maybe Gentoo is the current version of that. If that's your jam, go that route.

For a while in the early aughts I ran a ton of servers with RedHat and developed an aversion to rpm and its mess of dependencies. Debian felt so much more stable and I've been picking Debian for servers ever since. If you want boring and stable, you can't go wrong with Debian. I have many times just set up Debian with automatic update and reboot, and those things just keep going for years. I can't remember when a Debian update broke my system, which I definitively can't say for every OS.

Then, I started wanting to game on Linux. The flip side of boring and stable is outdated. So when I planned my new Linux desktop build I went distro shopping a bit. I tried out a few live distros at first. I knew I wanted up-to-date drivers (for new hardware), but not a lot of tinkering, because I got a lot older and less patient at this point.

I ended up on Fedora this time. My choice was driven by the balance of being up to date enough for my (simple) gaming needs, yet mainstream enough (read: boring) that if anything broke, there would be forums available and I could get back to just enjoying my computer. I prefer KDE Plasma over Gnome, so that's what I ended up with.

I'm happy with it and not planning to change. But I do get that sinking feeling of not really knowing what my computer is doing, because, just like on Windows, there are a hundred processes running in the background and I don't know what half of them do. It's just that at this point I'm not curious enough anymore to go digging into the man pages and the wikis and peruse the source code to find out. I just want it to work and let me get to my doom scrolling.

So for mainstream and boring, I recommend Debian or Fedora, maybe one of the Arch derivatives like CachyOS. If you want to customize and tinker, probably plain Arch or one of the smaller distros that are well documented and less opinionated. I didn't mention Mint, because I think it's a bit too simplified for someone with some Linux experience. I would install it for my parents, though.

Never was a distro hopper. Used ubuntu for 10 years. It's not great, but it's good enough. 2 years ago, I made a jump (for me) and loaded up Fedora. As a daily driver, I absolutely love it. That said, I also just recently partitioned a Debian boot, just because there are some few things it does better with no flash or sparkle.

Oh hey, my anniversary is coming up.

For base daily driver on desk and lap, just a stable standard beginner friendly distro. I've customized it a lot, added custom hotkey scripts here and there, but it's so close to base that a stranger could use it. VMs for anything specialist, a couple of portable USB distros for presentation/demo/one-purpose OS environments, but for the most part I've just kept it simple and clean.

I don't have 10 year experience but RHEL desktop and server. I used Fedora Copr to rebuild Fedora packages for my desktop, as well as my custom packages.

I have a Windows 7 VM I use when I need something more powerful than GNOME.

Hi, been on Linux for over 20 years now. Very recently (less than a month ago) I switched my personal system to NixOS, I also switched one of my servers to it. Some of my other systems are on Arch as that's what I was using before. My work computer is on Ubuntu as that is company issued.

I liked Arch because of its simplicity and the AUR, but I missed the package sets from Gentoo, NixOS is excellent because it brings the package lists and also includes configuration on them. A pain to do the initial setup, but then you get reproducible systems very easily and most of the time you want your systems to be mostly the same.

i've been using arch as my daily driver for 4 years. but i am thinking of switching to chimera linux. i really like apk, i think using dinit, llvm, musl and *bsd core utils would be great. for server, i use proxmox as my hypervisor, and debian for most vm's, starting to use alpine on lxc. I am using openwrt on my router.

I started tinkering thirteen years ago, good grief. I would install Linux on my old machine when I got a new one, and play around with it. I can't remember all the distros, but most recently Mint for a while, then Bodhi, then Zorin - which I've also now installed on my PC.

I love how much choice there is - and how passionate people can be about their choices. It seems there's a flavour for everyone.

I've been using EndeavourOS for the last 18 months, before that I spent about 9 years on Tumbleweed and before that, I was a inveterate distro hopper. Having spent so long rolling, there's no way I could go back to fixed.

After years of distro-hopping, I settled with NixOS 7 years ago and kept on expanding my setup to accommodate for my new demands from it. I might be hopping to GNU Guix at some point in the future because of their choice to use scheme as the configuration language for the Guix setups.

Arch on desktop since 2020, RH-flavoured on servers.

Used Kubuntu from 2012ish to 2020, distro-hopped in the decade before that.

Nix for home server Cachy OS for daily driver I was using gentoo+openRC and later gentoo+runit before coming to nix os. But still I love arch based cachy and gentoo over nix

Arch but it is a pain in the ass to update. 20 years here. Tried a million distros, but never Slackware or Gentoo for some reason.

The only version I've used for that long is Archbang on a live disk.

started with the classics, moved to Arch, then now I'm moving to nixos.

I'm just starting to rebuild my home server in NixOS... mainly because I do things on my server only once in a while and things are breaking and I forget where stuff is.

Like I discovered fail to ban stopped working some time ago, and I've been running raw since then.

With Nix I plan to manage both os and containers in one go, so that I can have the whole system in a couple of files

Fedora

Used linux for 4 years now, I'll list it and the reason why I switched

• Ubuntu (snaps, etc)

• arch (too much setup)

• opensuse (nvidia drivers don't get checked for size, broke my GUI many times

• Gentoo (too much compile time)

• bazzite (a bit boring)

• fedora atomic (immutable, can't get mullvad on it), still use on my htpc

• mint (cinnamon DE is shit)

• endeavour (its still arch)

• fedora regular

Arch and KDE Neon currently. Started with Slackware 1.0, Yggdrasil, did the old RedHat, SuSE, Mandrake, PCLinuxOS, RHEL, CentOS, and several more. Started back with Slackware and kernel 0.99pl13, I believe.

It really does not matter which one you use.

Switched from Windows in 2002, did FreeBSD -> Gentoo -> Ubuntu -> Arch. Finally switched to NixOS in 2012 and never looked back.

The builtin isolation meant I never actually got properly acquainted with Docker until I switched jobs and had to use it.

Ubuntu LTS but grumbling about it considering distro hopping even though I disabled any snaps giving me issues immediately etc.

I’ve bounced around for nearly 15 years in the world of Linux. Some of the ones I’ve used over the years:

• Ubuntu
• Linux Mint (+LMDE)
• Debian
• Arch
• KDE Neon
• Bazzite/SteamOS

The one I use currently is EndeavorOS. I landed on it because it’s been the most reliable and consistent for me personally at running games out of the box without extra configuration.

Arch Linux for desktop. Whatever for servers, usually ubuntu, though I've been tempted to use arch then too when dealing with out of date software.

1. Software is always up to date
   • instead of old with security backports which have always kind of skeeved me out
   • so upstream issue systems are relevant
   • so I get new features without having to wait
2. When I have to turn a wrench the wiki and forums are amazing
3. I feel like I control my system

Fedora is my baby, but recently moved to Bazzite. I'm not a huge coder per say, I like things to just install and work.

I don't customise too much either, so stock Bazzite with all my apps from flatpak has been a dream so far.

PS. I play games, hence Bazzite. Beyond All Reason is the best game in the world.

I've used Fedora as my main OS for the past 6-7 years, and before that I was running openSuse Tumbleweed. And before that I ran Arch (btw) for 12-13 years.. And so on.

Now I moved to Fedora Kinoite, an atomic distro with KDE Plasma, just to see how it is and get a feel of it.

And I'm thinking of going back to openSuse.

I've been using Mint+Home Manager on my main desktop and NixOS on other devices.

Started with Slackware, basically when Slackware came out. Now either OpenSuSE Tumbleweed or Fedora because I can't be arsed to meddle with my machine for days to make it work. I just want to use it, not tweak it.

Rocky/Alma for the server Fedora KDE on the workstation Cachy KDE for the gaming

voidlinux now exclusively. previously: fedora, redhat, gentoo, ubuntu (briefly when it first released), yggdrasil, SLS

I am about 20 years in, started with Ubuntu and have been with Debian stuff since. I'm not a power user, so when I do any CLI work it's familiar, but more recently have wanted to get a laptop to experiment with something different. I did appreciate Lubuntu on a cheap used laptop I bought about 15 years ago, currently using something provided thru Mint.

I've had very few problems. Not with software at any rate!

NixOS. Started with Yellow Dog Linux in 1998.

I don't do everything through nix's derivation system.

Many of my configs are just an outOfStoreSymlink to my configs in the same dotfiles repos. I don't need every change wrapped in a derivation. Neovim is probably the largest. A few node projects for automations I'm fine using pnpm to manage. Nix still places everything but I can tweek those configs and commit in the same repo without a full blown activation.

I used Ubuntu back when it ran gnome 2, then Arch Linux for servers and my netbook and since 2017 I'm using Fedora as my daily driver and Rocky Linux for servers. I suppose XenServer/xcp-ng is technically also a Linux distribution that I use. AMA?

I've been using Linux for over 20 years. My first distro was Mandrake. I've always cime back to that line od distros.

I'm currently using Mageia on my laptop and gaming PC. I can't think of anything I haven't been able to run. My daughter uses the gaming PC to game and do school work. It's a great distro with little headache.

I also Ubuntu Studio for recording music, playing electric drums, music productuon, and also gaming. I also have some hime automation set up on it.

First distro was Ubuntu 8.04. Switched around to windows, and back, Mac OS and back, and distro hopped in between. But for the last 8 years I’ve been back on Ubuntu. Currently 22.04 on my server and 24.04 on my laptop and desktop. I usually run one LTS behind on the server, and wait for latest point release on my personal machines.

Ive kind of stopped caring about the ideology a little bit. And Ubuntu just works for me.

In the process of moving over to NixOS right now. It's been fun, but I definitely sometimes hit a wall where I don't know what to do and it takes me a while figure things out. But I also love having a file that defines my system instead of having to remember how I set everything up. I was using fedora before which is great too, and I've used most of the other ones in the past as well.

I'm making the switch because I want using my computer to feel more like a hobby

what's the amazon search fiasco?

inb4 everybody except the people who have actually been daily-driving linux for 10+ years have an answer

fwiw I use Mint

Desktop: Pop!_OS 24.04 (thinking of rolling back to Gnome as cosmic is too rough around the edges still)

Servers: Ubuntu Server 24.04.4

Containers: Debian Trixie or specific images for the project I'm working on

Manjaro. I just switched to catchyos though after the manjaro drama. Oddly in my system, I had a bunch of issues with nabora. I wanted to try a gaming focused one because I basically only use my desktop for that and have a laptop for work.

Ubuntu for many years, then back to Windows, then Arch for a year and now NixOS for about 1.5 years

Manjaro on main, Debian on server, AntiX for low-spec and Devuan for experimenting with making stuff work without systemd. The only reason it isn't all Debian sid is just because I have to game sometimes

Fedora with Niri on laptop / desktop.

Alma Linux on servers.