So we can clearly see the most popular distros and the reasons why people use them, please follow this format:

  • Write the name of the Linux distro as a first-level comment.
  • Reply to that comment with each reason you like the distro as a separate answer.

For example:

  • Distro (first-level comment)
    • Reason (one answer)
    • Other reason (a different answer)

Please avoid duplicating options. This will help us better understand the most popular distros and the reasons why people use them.

    • 00@kbin.social
      12·
      1 year ago

      Easy to set up, very helpful community. If you liked Manjaro or think Manjaro is sketchy but like the idea of a slightly pre-configured arch, check it out.

    • ClonedPuffin@lemmy.world
      10·
      1 year ago

      This, basically Arch but quick to install with all the most important things installed and ready without being bloated.

    • LeafyBirch@kbin.social
      9·
      1 year ago

      It’s arch. It just happened to be the composition i had my previous arch setup as. Yay for AUR stuff, KDE Plasma for DE. Includes a couple of useful tools and makes for a very solid OS.

      Anyone who has been in the Ubuntu sphere of things with Linux, should take a moment to try arch. EndeavourOS is perfect for these people.

    • methodicalaspect@midwest.social
      4·
      1 year ago

      Same. I’ve done the vanilla Arch thing and it’s alright, but the quality of life enhancements that come with EndeavourOS make it a great daily driver.

      It’s the only distro I could get DaVinci Resolve Studio, Blackmagic Intensity Pro 4k, and my Radeon RX 6750 XT working with, consistently.

    • blackbrook@mander.xyz
      14·
      1 year ago

      The big advantage IMHO, is the out of the box BTRFS set up that lets you simply roll back to a non-broken state, right from the grub menu, should an update break your system. I haven’t had to use it yet, but it is a huge source of comfort knowing it is there.

      Also, many people coming to opensuse remark how much snappier it is than other distros.

      • evadzs@lemmy.world
        7·
        1 year ago

        Garuda uses this feature on an Arch base, it’s saved me a couple of times. Props to openSUSE for developing the way to make that happen!

        • kurcatovium@lemm.ee
          1·
          1 year ago

          Glad to hear someone else uses this awesome tool. I think unstable debian based Siduction uses that too.

      • shotgun_crab@lemmy.world
        2·
        1 year ago

        BTRFS has saved my life a bunch, I’m the kind that enjoys experimenting and changing stuff just to see what happens

      • CrypticCoffee@lemm.ee
        4·
        1 year ago

        It’s getting 3/4’s of the votes of Debian. I think their profile has increase a lot in the last year or so.

    • CrypticCoffee@lemm.ee
      5·
      1 year ago

      Security by default. Firewall is set up blocking ports for UDP etc. so you are protected out of the box.

    • DarthVi@lemm.ee
      51·
      1 year ago

      I agree, it’s great!

      • image with baked in nvidia drivers which work out of the box without too much fuss
      • if you encounter problems, you can refer to the system76 website or use a solution provided by the community, since it’s based on Ubuntu
      • installation with full disk encryption enabled by default
      • right now it uses a slightly customized version of GNOME as DE (with “normal”/traditional windows and optionally a tiling wm), but system76 is working on a Rust-based DE, named Cosmic DE
    • zybir@lemmy.world
      1·
      1 year ago

      I’ve been using Pop for about 2 years. I have yet to run into an issue that I couldn’t fix. It’s the first distro that made ditching windows easy.

      • los_chill@programming.dev
        2·
        1 year ago

        I feel the same coming from Mac. Things seem to just work. I’m not a Linux wiz so minimal headaches while learning to tinker make it perfect for me.

    • NakedGardenGnome@lemmy.world
      5·
      1 year ago

      Seriously, the ease of installing any and all programs from the main repo’s or the AUR is such an extreme advantage over all other distros!

      And it makes keeping your system and programs updated a breeze.

      • Contend6248@feddit.de
        1·
        1 year ago

        It is nice to install much normally harder to install crap, but there are so little trusted devs on there, that i rather not install something than getting it from a untrusted source.

        It is nice to play around, but i also switched from Windows to have a more secure platform

    • sntx@lemm.ee
      3·
      1 year ago

      You get it for the low price of loosing all fun/motivation in setting up, customizing and mintaining machines with other distros

    • sntx@lemm.ee
      3·
      1 year ago

      Single command to compile & install packages from many git repos

    • sntx@lemm.ee
      2·
      1 year ago

      A great selection and amount of packages and modules to build/install/enable

    • sntx@lemm.ee
      2·
      1 year ago

      Do it once, do it right. Save work be redeploying the same configuration (or submodules) on mutiple machines or the same machine multiple times.

    • sntx@lemm.ee
      2·
      1 year ago

      A cool logo, meaningful rolling release version names and stickers

    • loggy@infosec.pub
      1·
      1 year ago

      I have been thinking to give NixOS a spin but feel like it’s above my brain capacity for me to handle. Do you also use homemanager and Flakes? Homemanager kinda makes sense (manage packages for non root users) but what does Flakes do?

      • fabian_drinks_milk@lemmy.fmhy.ml
        31·
        1 year ago

        I am already trying it and I am still no expert. How I understand flakes is that it is a file with inputs, like nixpkgs and other flakes or repos you might depend on and some outputs that can be things like a nixshell with packages and environment variables, custom packages and configs like your NixOS configurations and home manager. When you use your flake for the first time, by entering a nix shell with nix develop, building a package with nix build, rebuild your NixOS system with nixos-rebuild --flake .#<hostname>, etc, nix will generate a flake.lock file that stores the hashes of all of your inputs and thus pinning the input versions. This means that if you ever run any of those commands again, you should get the same result because the inputs are pinned and the same version. If you want to update, you just run nix flake update and it will regenerate the flake.lock file with new hashes for the newest version. The advantage with flakes is that it is fully reproducible, even if one of your dependencies changes, because the hash is specified and centrally managed in the inputs of your flake.

        Nix flakes can be used for your NixOS system by adding the nixos configurations in the outputs of your nix flake and adding the dependencies like nixpkgs to the inputs. You can also combine it with home manager by either specifying it as a separate output or adding it as a nixos module inside the nixos configurations output. You just copy your existing nixos and home manager config to the folder with your flake and reference them inside the flake.nix. If you added home manager as a nixos module, you only need to run nixos-rebuild switch --flake <path-to-flake>.#<hostname> and it will automatically rebuild both your NixOS configuration and home manager configuration. You can then backup the folder with your flake and configurations by uploading them to GitHub for example.

        The best resource I found was this 3 hour video by Matthias Benaets: https://youtube.com/watch?v=AGVXJ-TIv3Y&feature=share7

        • loggy@infosec.pub
          2·
          1 year ago

          Thanks a lot for the detailed answer. It does sound complicated haha. I should probably follow along the YT video. Thanks again!

  • gortbrown@lemmy.sdf.org
    162·
    1 year ago

    Debian

    -Simple distro free of too much bloat without being too bare-bones

    -Stable, but can also be changed to be a bit more updated if you want that instead-

    • Raphael@lemmy.world
      11·
      1 year ago

      Now now, saying Debian is free of too much bloat is going way too far, dude, even as as Debian enjoyer I cannot allow such statements to pass.

      • gortbrown@lemmy.sdf.org
        1·
        1 year ago

        Haha fair, I guess that is a pretty objective statement. In my opinion, compared to some other distros and operating systems, it’s pretty bloat free, but I guess if you’re used to something else that is even more bloat free that you would probably disagree.

  • linuxduck@nerdly.dev
    162·
    1 year ago

    Manjaro. It just worked on any device I installed it on. And wifi just worked with no fiddling.

    Then I installed it on surface tablet. What didn’t work, I found kernel fixes I could implement.

    Of all the distros, for me, it was the easiest to use, install and manipulate!!

    • please_lemmy_out@lemmy.world
      2·
      1 year ago

      Switched to Manjaro after running vanilla Arch for several years and haven’t looked back. I appreciate the slightly less bleeding edge updates and extra added stability around it.

      Easy installs are probably less of a big deal nowadays after Arch overhauled their installation process.

    • CalcProgrammer1@lemmy.ml
      91·
      1 year ago
      • Packages are kept up to date so it’s often the first distro to support new hardware, APIs, etc.
      • AUR provides a huge library of software that isn’t often in package manager repos.
      • Rolling release so you don’t have to deal with repository upgrades every 6 months to 2 years.
      • btw
  • hexagonwin@lemmy.ml
    141·
    1 year ago

    Slackware

    • the most rock stable distro imo. No systemd or snap stuff. Packages are almost (if not fully) vanilla version from upstream. Simple yet efficient unix-style approach to everything like package management, slackbuilds are really good too.
    • downhomechunk@midwest.social
      5·
      1 year ago

      Slackware gets a lot of hate, especially from the btw bros. People are spooked about having to manage their own dependencies. But I couldn’t agree with you more on simplicity and stability. I’ve been daily driving slackware since 99 or 00, and I don’t think I’ve ever broken something I couldn’t immediately roll back and fix.

      I tried to install Ubuntu on a sbc recently. And within an hour of installing this and that with all the different dependencies, I had a completely unusable system. And I had no idea how to fix it. It was totally my fault but reminded me what I love about slackware.

    • qjkxbmwvz@lemmy.sdf.org
      1·
      1 year ago

      Slack got me through undergrad on an IBM 600e ThinkPad (which was really old even then — around the time of the early 2.6 series kernels iirc). Great distro, fond memories.

    • ReakDuck@lemmy.ml
      9·
      1 year ago

      The Arch Wiki is in a language made by users for users. Meaning that its easy to understand because the wiki allows to talk about issues, alternatives and more hints about each small topic, every other wiki has some structure where important details are missing or not taken seriously.

    • milo128@lemm.ee
      51·
      1 year ago

      Starting with a blank slate is so refreshing. It takes time to build everything up from scratch and I understand that you can get a great experience out of the box with other distros, but I love the simplicity of not having any bullshit I didn’t install myself.

      • ReakDuck@lemmy.ml
        1·
        1 year ago

        True, yeah, didn’t think about the downside that you need to build it up from scratch. But people could use arch based distros I guess? Never used them.

    • Random Dent@lemmy.ml
      3·
      1 year ago

      Arch and KDE as a DE because I’m a borderline-obsessive tinkerer.

      Although NixOS is tempting me, but I haven’t moved past the virtual-machine-specimen-jar phase with that yet lol.

    • ReakDuck@lemmy.ml
      3·
      1 year ago

      I always am going to run into heavy issues when using Debian, Ubuntu or Fedora. On Arch, things also aren’t always smooth, but the issues are mild, always solvable and transparent.

    • hobbsc@lemmy.sdf.org
      3·
      1 year ago

      Mint

      Generally works in cases where Ubuntu would and you don’t have to deal with Canonical’s choices.

      • athlon@lemm.ee
        1·
        1 year ago

        Yeah, but I rarely if ever leave those constraints, so it does not matter to me at all. Day to day, I use macOS anyway, and Mint only comes on my desktop PC.