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one of my favorite games unfortunately cannot be run on linux at all, and it's a gacha. I don't want to gamble with my account being banned
Yeah, let's keep it to one kind of gambling. I like and use opensuse tumbleweed. Rolling release, never had stability problems.
Started with Mint, next tried Ubuntu and I just stuck with it for now. It's a polished experience although sometimes snaps issues show up, so I've been considering switching to either PopOS 24.04 when it comes out or trying out Nix.
Used Ubuntu for ~15 years, switched to NixOS a couple months ago and haven't looked back.
I've made a habit of clean installing all of the desktops/laptops/servers in my life on the first point release of each LTS (i.e. 22.04.1). That would mean there was time for the dust to settle and for me to tweak my install/customization scripts from the previous LTS.
So since I knew I was gonna have to modify my Ubuntu install scripts to work with 24.04 anyways, I fiigured it was a decent time to try and see if I could get the install scripts converted to a nix config instead, and it ended up working a treat.
I use Linux mint I also tried Lubuntu but it felt slow and clunky and when I tested Puppy linux it seemed okay but I like being able to boot up my laptop without using a usb every time.
Nobara
Gentoo, after a 15 year break where I used Ubuntu / Arch. Might try NixOS or something similar.
KDE for desktop env.
SteamOS on steam deck, PostmarketOS on pinephone. On desktop I use OpenBSD, but if I used a Linux it'd be either Alpine, Void, or Devuan.
Debian stable on Thinkpad 1 and Debian testing on Thinkpad 2. Testing is nice because Gnome is a slightly better version. Stable is nice because it doesn't bother me about updates.
What don't you like about gnome?
Garuda Dragonized
Ditto. Super easy setup, most stuff just works right off the bat. Super active community on the forum and high participation from the devs.
Slackware
Hey I want to try out slackware real bad (for my own, religious reasons. Praise "Bob").
So anyway I was wondering, I've heard it's more difficult than your average distro, mainly in the sense that dependencies are not managed by a package manager like the dnf I'm used to, but then I've also heard they have tools for that now. Before I try it out I'd like to ask a few people like yourself how they manage dependencies, and if there are any other tips you'd like to share.
Slackware was my first real distro (many moons ago), glad to see people still enjoy it.
I've tried a couple different KDE distros and settled on Fedora 40 KDE spin. It seems to be the most complete KDE experience without all of the Canonical/snap bloat. It works great on my Thinkpad. Also runs decent on my gaming desktop using the latest Nvidia beta driver - I used to get stutters and artifacts in games/steam/plex and now with the beta driver those apps run fine
My first choice is Pop!_OS because my graphics cards are NVidia, but you said that you don't like their DE. My second choice is LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition). It is boring and stable and gets out of your way.
Gentoo
I run Fedora on my gaming PC (KDE) and my ThinkPad (GNOME/Hyprland). It’s a rock-solid distro. Some may think the release cycle is too fast, but then just don’t upgrade right away.
Distrohopping is an addiction for me. As soon as I get settled, I’m ready to bounce. I want my gaming PC to stay where it is, but I might hop my ThinkPad around. Maybe. Fedora on it is fantastic.
endeavourOS
slackware
Debian on servers, EndeavourOS on general PC (mainly because the aur is so good)
Arch KDE and SteamOS.
Kinoite has my heart forever
Xubuntu, Kubuntu, and Open Media Vault (based on Debian)
I'm thinking of just using Debian on most of my machines in the future, just have to go through the effort to switch.
Currently I run GNU Guix on my desktop, laptop, and servers. I like the dedication to software freedom and the way package management works. Before that I used Debian until 2019, Trisquel until 2014, and Ubuntu until around 2010. Debian and Trisquel are fine and I don't have anything against them, I just like the Guix package manager more. I've used Xfce with all of these (and before then, GNOME 2). I set it up the way I like it and it never changes.
I typically run LineageOS on my mobile devices, without microG or any proprietary apps. As I've said before my preferred OS would be some variant of GNU/Linux, preferably Guix as well, but LineageOS works well enough.
I run OpenWRT on my router, and had a previous router than ran LibreCMC (a variant of OpenWRT using Linux-libre).
Windows games are made for Windows so I prefer to use Windows for them. I don't particularly want to turn GNU/Linux into Windows, I think it deserves better than that.
I'm very intrigued by Guix. What would a Debian stable user notice most if they were to switch?
The most obvious difference going from Debian stable to GNU Guix is that Guix is a rolling release distro, not stable (in the Debian sense) at all.
Package management is also very different as it's fundamentally a source based distro, although sometimes the build servers can provide prebuilt packages if they're available. Also, Guix has the concept of "profiles" which group sets of installed packages; typically, there is a system profile as well as a profile for each user, but users can also create their own separate profiles. This means that a user can install packages to their own profile without needing root permissions.
Profile updates are done in an atomic manner, such that changing the set of installed packages (installing, updating, or removing a package) actually creates a new generation of the profile, and it's possible to roll back to a previous generation if something breaks. This is true of the system as well as the user profile(s), of course. A profile generation can also be exported as a manifest, which can then be imported to create a profile generation on another system, allowing package management to be done in a declarative manner.
Finally, Guix has a commitment to ship only free software, and uses linux-libre as its kernel. Debian has a clear separation between free and non-free components but does ship non-free software, including firmware blobs, and I believe as of recently the installer provides them by default. There are unofficial Guix channels (=repositories) that provide these things.
EndeavourOS on my desktop, Arch Linux on my laptop.
EndeavourOS on my desktop and laptop. Works like a charm. By far the happiest I've been with a desktop distro.
On my server VMs I'm running Ubuntu Pro because it's absolutely impeccably stable, Pro is free and I like the idea of having the option of not upgrading them for 10 years.
All running on Proxmox. I have a few appliance type VMs like opnsense and 3CX and they're nice and stable too.
PopOS for me. I have played around with Linux in the past, but never seriously dived into it. The whole Windows 11 Recall fracas changed that. I went with Pop because it's an out-of-the-box distro. Everything just works, and it has Nvidia and AMD graphics support baked in. I used to not like Gnome, but it's kinda growing on me now. Then again, that's the beauty of this OS: Don't like the desktop environment? Download a new one from a bunch of alternatives. Current distro not floating your boat? Make some bootable USB drives of different distros and take them for a test run.
It's a beautiful thing.
I'm running Pop!_OS. I tried Mint and EndeavorOS. I found that I don't like vanilla gnome, and while I appreciate KDE, it's too Windows-like. Which is contrary to what I'm trying to do by switching to Linux in the first place. So Pop is perfect for me.
Arch + riverwm on my desktop. I know barless tiling window managers look daunting, but simplicity is liberation.
I can't imagine doing that on my laptop though, so I've got arch + KDE Plasma and I love how it just works.
Gentoo on my PC, Fedora Asahi on my MacBook
Kubuntu