From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Primarily I use Arch on my desktop (and by proxy, my Steam Deck which runs SteamOS), which is what I've landed on after a ton of distro hopping. The idea of Atomic distros catches my eyes, but for me in its present state there are too many steps needed in order to make deeper changes (for example, installing a kernel module) - but I quite like SteamOS on my Deck since I know it will always be in a "consistent" state, for example.
On servers I run a mix of Rocky Linux and Debian.
Fedora 41 KDE Plasma
For the simple, shallow reason it looks great and feels snappy.
Personal rabble:
spoiler
I would say that it does not feel as "set and forget" as Mint, but I enjoy the feel of of environment.
I am pretty new at Linux in general - only have experience with a Mint environment before.
I did have some issues with Fedora - mostly audio problems in Steam games and it can feel slightly more intimidating to work with ( compared to Mint) but after digging into various help threads and trying stuff( responsibly) I did reach a point where I reached a satisfied conclusion - even if I am not sure what exactly I did that solved the problem
Cachyos.
Used to use pure arch but I like the cachy optimisations and their repos
You can put Cachyos tweaks kernels and repos on top of arch or nixos if you like.
Kubuntu on my desktop, I prefer KDE as a DE and I'm used to the Debian ecosystem.
Linux Mint on my relatively low powered laptop that I rarely use.
Debian stable on my media server.
Arch on my desktop and laptop, Debian stable goes on everything else.
Alpine Linux. It's pretty lightweight (uses ~250MiB on idle with sway), is easy to install and is super stable. My only criticism is that there is quite a lot of software not available in the repos, but this is mainly fixed by flatpaks.
Nix because I have a bad memory and hate doing things more than once
Fedora KDE, because my preferred distro Mint Cinnamon doesn't at the moment have good support for things like FreeSync.
Idk if you use smth like gamescope to enable it in cinnamon
I use TuxedoOS. I wanted something that kept up with the latest KDE updates which ran a cleaned up version of Ubuntu... that's TuxedoOS to a T. I had looked at other options like Kubuntu or just installing KDE over something like PopOS, but TuxedoOS was the most stable and up to date of those options in my testing.
That said, I have run into innumerable problems on it due to apt repos that it doesn't include which come standard on Ubuntu.
Linux Mint, because I don't like to tinker with the system, I like good defaults (and Mints has them).
Fedora Silverblue
from the comments, there's a split between
i wish this split was made more explicit, because more often than not someone comes looking for recommendations for linux as a tool, but someone else responds expecting they want linux as a toy. then the person will try out linux and will leave because it's not what they want, not knowing that there is a kind of linux that is what they want
EndeavorOS. Because I wanted to have a rolling release distribution that is always up to date, and one that is good supported by maintainers and community. Good documentation is very important to me. And I trust the team behind EndeavorOS and Archlinux.
Also the manual approach of many things and the package manager based on Archlinux is very nice. I also like the building of custom packages that is then installed with the package manager (basically my own AUR package). The focus on terminal stuff without too much bloat by default is also a huge plus.
What they said.
Arch because it helped me understand the os better and i like tinkering. Also pacman and the aur
NixOS because it’s easy to understand—I can pop open any .nix file in my config and see exactly what is being set up, so I don’t have to mentally keep track of innumerable imperative changes I would otherwise make to the system, and thus lose track of the entropy over time.
Debian on most my machines. Can’t trust commercially backed distros any more. I’m tired of chacing cutting edge stuff. Like things to just work.
And there is ever decreasing need for cutting edge with containers and sandboxing. And hardware improvement is no longer so rapid so buying the hotness of 2+ years ago is cheap and effective and well supported.
