Linux

Arch: Arch

Ubuntu (and downstreams): Canonical

Enjoying Fedora. Find Debian (and downstreams) pretty solid as well.

"Not exactly Linux", but FreeBSD. Gave it a couple tries but gave up when I realized its minimalism is a placebo at best and its "super security features" can (also) be achieved on any other standard Linux distribution.

To all gentoo detractors.... 20 years ago compiling a browser would take 5 days (as in 24 x 5 hours...) So you are not allowed to complain TODAY about compile times ahahahaahaha ahahaha ahah haha aaaaaaaaah ಠ_ಠ

Gentoo: I hated constantly compiling and configuring. It was incredibly time consuming. If I was compiling for uncommon cases it might make sense, but I am dealing with a pretty standard dev machine.

NixOS: The configuration is kind of a pain and never really got the extra features you get beyond package management working correctly.

Ubuntu, because snaps break shit and don't work right a lot of the time, also they left people hanging with 32 bit support which isn't great (for being a Legacy OS for weak computers it's not a great look for them, or all the Linux distros that followed them).

There were a lot of problems with Fedora and CentOS, none of them as bad as Ubuntu though. Most were either instability or software availability due to lacking RPM versions of the software I needed.

Arch itself hasn't given me many problems but it is ideologically problematic for a lot of reasons (mainly the elitism) and it is also a rolling release which isn't great if you don't like being a guinea pig and getting software before all the bugs have been ironed out.

Ubuntu, after the third consecutive release that broke previously working hardware. That was a while ago and I haven't tried it recently, but given snap I'm not really inclined to.

Alpine. It’s powerful and fills a need in a specific use case. Just not my need, nor my use case, and that’s OK.

My docker usage is mostly testing and validation that when I run the code on the actual hardware, it will work as expected. I tend to want the container to match the target environment.

Alpine. I actually really like it, but it just doesn't fit any of my use cases.

NixOS .. loved the idea but doing configuration all the time for every little thing became too much of a headache.

Fedora. Just feels like I'd be moving to the dnf ecosystem for no reason.

Ubuntu

I tried arch btw.

But didn't like it.

ZorinOS. I tried to install it on my spouse's computer with all modern, well-supported AMD hardware. Had nothing but problems, to the point that the computer was barely usable. WiFi broken, GUI was laggy, repositories were buggy. When I finally got the system somewhat stable, I didn't like the interface at all. Styles were bland, icons dull, everything just seemed clunky and awkward.

For a distro advertised as a beginner-friendly and pay-for-polish system, I was very dissapointed.

Might have been a fluke, I don't think my experience is standard for Zorin, but it was a really terrible first impression and I never suggest it to Linux-curious folks. Mint or Vanilla Fedora are my go-to for newbs.

All but Arch. Find commands much easier to remember and me having dyslexia and ADHD my memory is shocking.

NixOS.

Cool package manager but constantly breaking compatibility with none nix package managers really annoyed me. (Ghcup, mason, etc...)

Also how difficult they made compiling software from source. I could live with nix packages if I could also compile the programs I need from source.

Great server os. I don't understand how people use it as a daily driver

Ubuntu, tried to install vim 8 when it released, too bad they only update major package versions once every 2 years. Find myself some random dudes repo, great it's vim 8, too bad it was compiled w/o python support... Installed Manjaro (arch based) and never looked back.

elementary os. Installed it, and noped right out of there the same day. On paper, it should be great. Maybe the execution was flawless for macfans, but it was not for me. I do appreciate how they tried to make an easy transitional Linux for macfans, though, and I do not regret the donation because of that fact.

Any distro that uses apt. I'm ok with Fedora and Arch.

Windows 🤣

RHEL, SELinux sucks and I hate it.

The first time I installed Debian on my desktop I didn't do my homework properly. This was a long time ago. It didn't take long for me to realize just how out of date many packages were and that was a deal breaker. I have since used Debian successfully in different contexts, because I knew what to expect. I still wouldn't install Debian stable on my desktop because I prefer to have a more up to date environment. Might try Debian sid one of these days though. But yeah, Debian, great distro, but you need to know what you're getting in to.

Linux Mint. There was just too much crap on the desktop

Fedora. Dont get me wrong it is a great Distro but i did not really felt at home when using it.

Ubuntu. It's just macOS but not as polished