Title is quite self-explanatory, reason I wonder is because every now and then I think to myself “maybe distro X is good, maybe I should try it at some point”, but then I think a bit more and realise it kind of doesn’t make a difference - the only thing I feel kinda matters is rolling vs non-rolling release patterns.

My guiding principles when choosing distro are that I run arch on my desktop because it’s what I’m used to (and AUR is nice to have), and Debian on servers because some people said it’s good and I the non-rolling release gives me peace of mind that I don’t have to update very often. But I could switch both of these out and I really don’t think it would make a difference at all.

  • panda@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    1·
    8 months ago

    Debian Stable.

    I’ve used plenty of distros but Debian continues to give me a stable, predictable OS that allows me to get done what I need to get done with no real surprises. I have used it for many years and know how it works very well at this point.

    Its my computing equivalent of a comfy and sturdy pair of well worn boots.

  • DasFaultier@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    8 months ago

    Mint on my work PC, because my dear IT colleagues made the effort to provide standardized installations for us that are mostly carefree and can just be used; you can even get them preinstalled on a laptop or VM.

    Debian on my work servers, because everyone is using it (we’re a Debian shop mostly) and there’s a standardized self service PXE boot installation for it. Also, Debian is boring, and boring is good. And another thing, Debian is the base image for at least half of the Docker images and alliances (e.g. Proxmox) out there, so common tools. The .deb package format is kinda sane, so it’s easy to provide our own package, and Debian has a huge community, so it’s going nowhere in the near future.

    Ubuntu LTS latest on my home servers, because I wanted “Debian but more recent packages”, and it has served me well.

    Not yet, but maybe Fedora on my private PC and laptop soon, because I keep hearing good things re hardware support, package recency, gaming and just general suitability for desktop use. There’s still the WAF to overcome, so we’ll see.

    • Tapionpoika@lemmy.ml
      0·
      8 months ago

      👍🏻 Slackware was my 1st distro. It was before kernel 2.0. Now I use windowslike girly distros…

  • HumanPenguin@feddit.ukEnglish
    0·
    8 months ago

    i been linux only for over 30 years now.

    I tend to use Debian stable. At least for the last 15 or so.

    The reason is simple. I use it as my main PC and the stability is my main priority.

    The only negative is software in the repos is often out of date.

    But honestly while that was a pain in the past. Now for the vast majority of things I use. I find flat pack or appimage downloads work perfect ally.

    The only exception is ham radio software. Here I tend to compile later versions if I need/want them.

    Other negatives

    I’m really not hugely into gaming. But use blender a lot. Due to this I use Nvidia cards as they are far better supported by blender.

    Installing the proprietary Nvidia drivers is a bit of a pain on Debian for newbies. But once you know the process its simple enough. Just not obvious for beginners. The community drivers are still very limited thanks to Nvidia s weird ideas.