Which system I prefer depends very much on how often I will use the system and what the specific hardware is.

Easy and for AMD/Intel/Nvidia users: mageia, Nobara Project, Mint, ROSA Fresh, Neptune, openKylin, GhostBSD, siduction, ALT Sisyphus, EndeavourOS
Average and for AMD/Intel users: Devuan, Void Linux, OpenBSD, Clear Linux, Artix Linux, DragonFly BSD, Alpine Linux, FreeBSD
Average and for Nvidia users: Void Linux, FreeBSD, Artix Linux

I can work perfectly well with all the operating systems currently listed in DistroWatch's top 200, but for several reasons I always prefer one of the systems I list in the above list. I recently tested openSUSE Tumbleweed and what immediately struck me was that Firefox takes almost exactly twice as long to open as it does on Void Linux. A second thing I noticed was that Firefox on Tumbleweed had frequent hiccups where it became completely unresponsive for several seconds, and then became fully responsive again. I never saw this on Void Linux where Firefox was always perfectly responsive. It is also no secret that Btrfs is not yet working perfectly as it should. Red Hat has literally said recently that they do not want to continue with Btrfs and that it is actually not suitable for professional use. Only RAID 10 currently works reliably on Btrfs, all the other modes are unstable. More generally, you can say that only two really decent file systems currently exist, and they are ZFS and HAMMER2.

I use Arch for my gaming setup, because it's complete enough to have everything, and versatile enough to serve me. (I customize a lot of the system and it allows me to mostly do whatever I want. I really dig Arch's package building system)

I also have a custom from-scratch system, but I can only play native 64 bit games there. No steam, no wine, no lib32. I'm looking forward to the day that I don't need all that junk, when Wine's internal thunking will allow 32 bit games without needing a multilib system. I use that for work, research, even multimedia entertainment. I also have Qemu set up there for virtual machines.

That's what I've got on my rig.

Around 2016 I was contracting on a XBox/PS4 game and needed a PC to run the tools. The Mac at the time was loosing it's appeal as a nice Unix workstation as Apple was turning it into a big iPhone with a keyboard. So I bought an extra SSD and put Ubuntu 16 on it. It was great! I hadn't run Linux on the desktop since ~2002, and I played through the Feral ports of Tomb Raider (the Sibera one?), and Deus Ex Mankind Divided. A year or so later Windows Update borked itself (again... -_-), and wouldn't boot. I accidentally erased the Ubuntu drive when reinstalling as the drive setup in the Windows installer gives you almost no information about the drives. -__- On a lark, I installed this "Pop!O_S?!_&" thing I'd heard nice things about. It was also great, but I'm not sure I could really tell the difference between it and stock Ubuntu. Then I built a new PC and got a System76 laptop to replace my aging Macs. A few months ago I put Fedora on my work machine and rather liked the up-to-date Vanilla Gnome experience. Other than running "dnf" I barely notice the difference between that and Ubuntu-likes though. There are some minor software dev niceties on Fedora though. I moved my personal machine to Fedora when I upgraded the SSD because why not? My System76 laptop died, and I have an AMD Framework on order. I'll probably put Fedora on that too when it comes. I dunno, I'm not really a distro loyalist or hopper. Apparently I just get bored every 5 years or so. >_> Windows 10 has borked itself on my work PC sooo many times since 2016, and I've not had issues with Linux. So I stay!

I like new experiences so I have tried them all...

Debian unstable my primary system
Debian experimental when I feel unstable isn't quite unstable enough
Debian stable mostly on the laptop
Debian oldstable because inertia upgrading said laptop
Debian oldoldstable why upgrade a sleepy old VPS when it just works?

Have I left any distro out? Oh, Debian testing, have to get that one off the bucket list someday!

Quoting: whizseI like new experiences so I have tried them all...

Debian unstable my primary system
Debian experimental when I feel unstable isn't quite unstable enough
Debian stable mostly on the laptop
Debian oldstable because inertia upgrading said laptop
Debian oldoldstable why upgrade a sleepy old VPS when it just works?

Have I left any distro out? Oh, Debian testing, have to get that one off the bucket list someday!

Ha, sounds pretty close to me.
Server runs Debian Stable
Yoga laptop Debian Stable with Liqorix kernel.
Desktop Debian Unstable with random Experimental stuff (though now I'm not using nvidia less of that). Also Arch
Thinkpad P51, Debian Unstable + Whatever Distro project.
plus most of my other random stuff has Debian on it. I wish Asahi would be Debian based...

Debian testing (now stable i guess) on the desktop
Debian stable (with armbian kernel) on my small server.
Openwrt on my router, it is unfortunately too cheap to install debian on.

For now, I'll simply ask that if you're a user of multiple concurrent distros, and you feel safe / comfortable doing so, please tell us what all they are, as well as which is your "main", even if we can probably tell that already by the distro icon associated with your profile!

I learned a few operating systems and I usually see which one works best for the hardware and for the specific purpose.

PCLinuxOS -- https://www.pclinuxos.com/?page_id=180
FreeBSD -- https://www.freebsd.org/
Alpine Linux -- https://www.alpinelinux.org/
ROSA Fresh Desktop -- https://rosa.ru/rosa-linux-download-links/
mageia -- https://www.mageia.org/fr/downloads/
Gentoo -- https://www.gentoo.org/
OpenMandriva -- https://www.openmandriva.org
Clear Linux -- https://www.clearlinux.org/downloads.html
EndeavourOS -- https://endeavouros.com
OpenBSD -- https://www.openbsd.org/
ALT Linux -- https://en.altlinux.org/Regular
openSUSE -- https://www.opensuse.org
Void Linux -- https://voidlinux.org/download/
GhostBSD -- https://ghostbsd.org/
Artix Linux -- https://artixlinux.org/download.php

For Linux gaming: https://chimeraos.org/about/

The desktop systems I use as daily drivers are mainly FreeBSD and Alpine Linux.

My main gaming desktop is on Trisquel:

Intel i5-12600K | Cooler Master Hyper 212 Black Edition | 32GB DDR4-3200 CL16 | Intel UHD 770 | Mesa 23.0.4 | Western Digital Black SN850X 2TB | MSI Pro Z690-A DDR4 | Dasharo 1.1.1 | InWin 303 Black | Trisquel 11 | Mate 1.26.0 | Kernel 6.8.4-gnu | MSI G2730QPF 2560*1440 @ 165hz | Corsair K70 Brown Switches | Vaxee Outset


My secondary gaming desktop for any games that don't run on that is on Manjaro:

AMD FX-9590 | EVGA CLC 240 | 16GB DDR3-2133 | XFX RX 590 8GB Fat Boy | Mesa 24.0.2-manjaro1.1 | Samsung QVO 860 1TB | Asus Crosshair V Formula-Z | | InWin 303 Black | Mate 1.26.1 | Kernel 6.8.4-1-MANJARO | AOC G2460P 1920*1080 @ 144hz | Zowie FK2


My laptop is a Librebooted T400 on Trisquel:

Intel Core2 Extreme Q9300 | 8GB DDR3-1066 | Intel GMA 4500 | Mesa 23.0.4 | Crucial 250 GB SSD | Bleeding Libreboot 1.9 | Trisquel 11 | Mate 1.26.0 | Kernel 6.8.4-gnu

If distrobox count:

- openSUSE
- Debian
- Fedora
- Ubuntu
- Arch Linux
- Rocky Linux

Last edited by Vortex_Acherontic on 6 April 2024 at 6:00 pm UTC

Quoting: FateTrapFor now, I'll simply ask that if you're a user of multiple concurrent distros, and you feel safe / comfortable doing so, please tell us what all they are, as well as which is your "main", even if we can probably tell that already by the distro icon associated with your profile!

I learned a few operating systems and I usually see which one works best for the hardware and for the specific purpose.

PCLinuxOS -- https://www.pclinuxos.com/?page_id=180
FreeBSD -- https://www.freebsd.org/
Alpine Linux -- https://www.alpinelinux.org/
ROSA Fresh Desktop -- https://rosa.ru/rosa-linux-download-links/
mageia -- https://www.mageia.org/fr/downloads/
Gentoo -- https://www.gentoo.org/
OpenMandriva -- https://www.openmandriva.org
Clear Linux -- https://www.clearlinux.org/downloads.html
EndeavourOS -- https://endeavouros.com
OpenBSD -- https://www.openbsd.org/
ALT Linux -- https://en.altlinux.org/Regular
openSUSE -- https://www.opensuse.org
Void Linux -- https://voidlinux.org/download/
GhostBSD -- https://ghostbsd.org/
Artix Linux -- https://artixlinux.org/download.php

For Linux gaming: https://chimeraos.org/about/

The desktop systems I use as daily drivers are mainly FreeBSD and Alpine Linux.

Ha, I'm somehow reading this as "All those other distributions are way too mainstream for my tastes. The only one in there I'd consider to have a large user base would be OpenSUSE. I usually can get as far as installing it, using it until I have to run Yast, then I install something else :P

FreeBSD seems to like my old macbooks better than Linux does though (they're weird and contain two nvidia chips)