I use LMDE. I use it because Mint has proved that it is worth using (for example: it provide easy way to install multimedia codec by only click “Install Multimedia Codec” in applications menu) and I want it to success.

Sorry if my english is bad

Arch, pacman is why

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.

MX Linux. It is Debian with setup and tools I really want but would be too lazy to prepare in one go. Love it as much as I love Debian.

Bazzite for my gaming pc, steam deck, and family members. It just works and they cant fuck it up. Even brother laser printers official drivers installed for my mom’s comp. Gotta check the details of that cups exploit though. My gamig pc is also the fallback pc I expect to always have working and for servicing any others if problems come up.

Arch or arch based, except manjaro which has screwed me over too many times, for having easy access to pretty much any software that can run on linux, or just stuff that requires too many hoops to jump through to get working on atomic distros like bazzite.

Dietpi on my SBCs like the ones running klipper for my 3d printers

Debian for my servers, homeassistant etc, but I’m planning on checking out coreos.

Also alpine just because.

Arch on my desktop and laptop, Debian stable goes on everything else.

Debian. Because it’s the best about “Just Works” (yes, even moreso than Ubuntu, which I tried). It has broken once on me, and that was fixed by rolling back the kernel, then patched within the week.

BUT I’m also not a “numbers go up” geek. I don’t give a shit about maxing out the benchmarks, and eking every last drop of performance out of the hardware; to me, that’s just a marketing gimmick so people associate dopamine with marginally improved spec numbers (that say nothing about longevity nor reliability).

If you wanna waste something watching numbers go up, waste time playing cookie clicker, not money creating more e-waste so your Nvidia 4090 can burn through half a kilowatt of power to watch youtube in 8k.

(/soapbox)

My gpu is an nvidia 970 and my cpu is a 4th or 5th generation core i7. I just don’t play the latest games anyway, I’m a PatientGamer, and I don’t do multimedia stuff beyond simple meme edits in GIMP.

It has plenty of power to run VMs, which I do use for my job and hobby, and I do coding as another hobby in NVIM (so I don’t have to deal with the performance penalty of MS Code or other big GUI IDEs).

It all works fine, but one day I’ll upgrade (still a generation or two behind to get the best deals on used parts) and still not waste a ton of money on AAA games nor bleeding-edge DAWs

Fedora because it’s stable and effective.

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.

Fedora KDE.

I was happily using Windows 10 until a few months ago, but needed to build a new PC. I got a glimpse of Windows 11 on a friend’s laptop and didn’t like it. So I asked my Linux-friend which distribution he would recommend to someone who wants to try Linux, but doesn’t want to stray too far away from the windows look and feel.

A few for different use cases. NixOS on my wife’s 14 year old laptop because it proved to handle the hardware the best, and she struggles with change so if that system dies the NixOS configuration can be redeployed identical to how she had it with no additional effort.

Debian on my old IOmega NAS.

OpenSUSE on my personal PC and Work computer, since it supports my proprietary CAD software, and nVidia releases a driver specifically for SUSE/OpenSUSE use.

Fedora.

I’ve tried them all but found it’s the most reliable. It’s upgrades are even more reliable than Macos and Windows.

Packages are very up to date but also well tested. Sometimes even newer than Arch for short periods.

The community is awesome.

I love Gnome, I’ve found it’s more consistent than even MacOs in its design. And it has perfect keyboard shortcuts.

Opensuse TW. It is rolling release and rock solid. Also amazing btrfs implementation.

I started with Slackware in the late nineties. Have been through Redhat, Suse, Ubuntu, Arch, Tumbleweed. These days I just can’t be bothered, I just want to game and code and I prefer an out of the box well configured Ubuntu derivative, they also upgrade easily and have lots of application compatibility - mostly everyone provides .deb packages. I could also choose Fedora for these reasons.

So now on Pop!_OS 24.04. Pop is has a stable/lts base but still gets Mesa/Nvidia/Kernel updates on a regular basis. I use it mainly for gaming and Rust dev, writing some COSMIC applets as well.

COSMIC Alpha does still have problems with some games but not the games I play.

Nix because I have a bad memory and hate doing things more than once