Linux

I used Linux Mint for about 1.5 years before transitioning to Arch Linux. For me, the transition was to learn more about Linux and to try something new. Thus far, I'm really liking Arch. There have been a few issues that have popped up here and there, like getting Bluetooth devices to connect properly, but the Arch Wiki and forums often have the solution. You just have to spend time reading the articles or the forum responses.

As for other distros, I've tried Zorin, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Pop OS, and KDE Neon before settling on Linux Mint.

Any distro that's based on an existing one but changes or adds very little to it. There are so many dead Ubuntu and Debian reskins

Zorin OS, which was the second distro I ever tried, I hated how outdated their repos were since they were using an older Ubuntu LTS repository for packages. It was quite painful to install software that would otherwise have worked out-of-the-box on Ubuntu. I hope this is no longer the case today.

manjaro.

I game a lot, so I need the latest drivers. So anything with a slower release schedule than Manjaro is a no go for me.

Its a meme at this point, but I tried to install arch. Ran into display issues during install and couldn't progress. Gave up and did Ubuntu instead.

I know there's supposed to be some helper stuff out there now to make it go smoothly, but don't think I am motivated enough to retry ever.

GNU Guix. Need to do an Ayahuasca ceremony sometimes and try again with a much more radiant mind.

OpenSuse. I found the installer to be a pain in the ass and weird, and the package manager was slow as molasses.

And I'll use Debian as a server, but any distro that requires me to add PPAs as a daily driver can just go away. Fedora has a huge software library, and Arch has the AUR, which has it's own security issues but at least I can read the PKGBUILDs before I install. PPAs are just a security nightmare to my way of thinking, I can't go around keeping track of each one and the current status of whoever owns that domain these days.