Linux

Manjaro. I had previously already used Antergos and Ubuntu, but after Antergos stopped I needed something like it. So I installed Manjaro in my secondary PC (with old components). I constantly got into trouble with the manual kernel version selection thingy. I was used to kernel updates being part of the normal update process, and suddenly I had to manually pick the new one. I constantly ran into incompatibility issues with older or newer kernels, vague update deadlocks where I couldn't update things because they depended in each other, and I absolutely hated having to use a separate program for updating the kernel. Now the PC runs Fedora and I'm liking that a lot more so far...

Ubuntu. I hated not being able to customize certain things and it had some interesting bugs on my hardware. Switching to a different distro solved those issues

I literally liked parrotOS, but I had other priorities and abandoned it forever

Anything that isn't debian-like. I'm just very used to It and can't make myself learn anything else.

Never tried regular Arch after trying Black Arch, so not sure if they're the same feel, but after realizing the work it would take just to be given the capability to resize windows in the UI instead of just coming with drag and resize out of the box, Black Arch was a huge no go for me... Which kept me from wanting to touch regular Arch, lol. That being said, I go nope to Ubuntu the most. Gentoo is my favorite and is what my server has been running for the past decade without any kind of issue, but for laptop and daily use, I use Mint. Been on that one for about a decade now too... Used to use Peppermint (that still a thing?) and Suse the most before those.

I have liked Ubuntu based distros until they release a major update. They are aimed at beginners and they work fine for that. If you use one to the end of support, the updater will say that your software is up to date because there are no new updates.

You have to check the website to find out you've reached the end of support, and to get instructions on how to update.

That is an awful user expierence for beginnners, and a great way to have users using vulnerable software without knowing about it.

I've switched to rolling releases for this exact reason.

KDE. Not a distro, but I can't get on with it. Too much screen real estate used by flashy things, and everything moves. I want instant transitions not a shwoosh. It's probably all toggleable, but I don't want to fiddle with it for every install or release.

OpenSUSE Tumbleweed--coming from Arch, it just felt so refined and ready to go right out of the box. Then I started installing programs and ran into dependency hell--now on EndeavourOS with the AUR which is great

Additionally, the combination of terminal + GUI to do things just felt wrong

I attempted to try Garuda Linux (cinnamon) on a mini PC (Ryzen 5800H based APU), but graphic artefacting was a constant issue as soon as the install started.

After several tries I had to abandon ship and wait till a new release to maybe try again, if I remember. Not exactly "Nope, this one's not for me" as I had yet to properly try it.

Otherwise, I tried Crunchbangplusplus and just gave up for being a bit too minimalist or not yet ready for prime time as I kept geting issues after issues and did not have the patience to wrangle the whole OS for everything from getting network working to audio and screen issues on my system.

Anyways, it is always fun to try new systems/apps/protocols and see where thing are headed towards.

Every single one of them until I hit arch. It just seemed to click and I enjoy the rolling release.

Ubuntu. I just don't like how they do things. I cant even maintain a repo for the machines i host without putting aside multiple terabytes of space. So to me they cant even make it reasonably easy for me to help them and be self reliant on their ecosystem.

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

I've tried both LMDE and Debian itself, but I think I just ended up frustrated at the age of software in the repos and how much stuff relies on Ubuntu specific stuff.

Way back in the day I was an Ubuntu user, but then everyone simultaneously decided that gnome 2 was too old and that touch interfaces were the priority. So I now use Mint and Cinnamon.

Void Linux with musl. I wanted to try setting up a distro with Musl, but many things I use daily simply don't work with it, and the hassle of troubleshooting everything was a bit too much. I went back to Fedora Workstation, and I'll likely stay on it for my workstation (though I'll switch to Fedora Kinoite when Fedora 40 releases). I also use Fedora Server for my personal server, since it's very familiar to me, and there's not a huge point in switching to CentOS anymore with the recent changes, so I'll probably just stick to it.

Arch\Endeavor, I more preferred the polished experience of Fedora Silverblue and Debian\Mint.

Manjaro. Probably because I tried it with GNOME which isn't for me either.

Anything that isn't Arch.

• Ubuntu's package managers won't stop fighting with each other so I can't complete an upgrade easily. Also, I hate apt. Trusting prebuilt binaries from PPAs seems a little dangerous to me compared to trusting build scripts in the AUR, so I don't feel comfortable with that. I do like it otherwise, though.
• Linux Mint is fine, I guess, but no Wayland yet and I don't like Cinnamon. Same PPA issues. Has some more outdated packages than Ubuntu.
• openSUSE is great, but the package managers won't stop fighting with each other and it's lacking a few packages. I like the Open Build System a lot less than the AUR.
• Fedora is fine, while missing some packages, but it broke on me after a week and I had no idea how to fix it so I stopped using it.
• Pop_OS makes everything about GNOME worse.
• Debian's packages are too old.
• Manjaro is more work than Arch and the packages are out of sync with the AUR.
• The packages I want aren't in Solus. Is this distro even still around?

And for distros I won't consider trying:

• Gentoo is too much work.
• Qubes is too much work and I can't play games on it.
• I don't like any of the ZorinOS modifications and the packages are old.

Fedora Core. It had so many problems updating. That would have been in the mid 2000s so it may have improved since then.

PopOS and Manjaro are two I never liked.

I feel like I'm a chronic distro-hopper sometimes, but no matter how many times I try, I just can't settle into OpenSUSE for whatever reason. The OBS feels a bit more of a wild west than the AUR.

Ubuntu

It pains me to say this, but voidlinux, though I'm still not in the stage of "this one is not for me", it has potential and hopefully I can sort all the issues I've encountered so far.

I've tried multiple distros, and also used artix for a while so I'm used to not using systemd but man void is really another thing, this isn't the first time I've used it, I tried it a year ago and gave up, recently I decided that I'm up for the challenge and began using it again, here's what has happened so far:

Well right now I'm dealing with the pc freezing when quitting the user session, for some reason I need to exit i3 before logging out, otherwise the system freezes.

Also I wasn't able to get a clean boot screen even though I had the typical kernel parameters quiet, loglevel, etc, it even prints info on the login prompt where I should be putting my username, though I managed to mitigate this a lot by passing a kernel parameter that tells it to use another tty for the boot messages.

file-roller is broken, I can't compress some directories to 7zip, the weird thing is that it only happens to some directories and not all.

Though the very good news is that they fix issues very fast, puddletag was broken and they fixed it in like 2 hours after I reported the issue.

Edit: It is not just file-roller that is broken, it is all of 7zip on void, I can't compress with xarchiver either

Mint, actually. I tried it and found it too similar to windows and not customisable enough for my liking.

I had a huge problem with Arch because of the rolling release deal. I just can't handle the responsibility of updating packages every single day, even with automation.

When I install an operating system, I want it to just work, and I want their repositories to have lots and lots of software. Most distros do this, but none do it as well as one of the major Debian-family distros like Ubuntu or Mint. Fedora is quite nice as well, and I could probably daily drive it without issue, I just see no reason to change over to it since Ubuntu has me totally covered. And it is basically like this for me with every other distro: I have to think, "why would I switch? What benefit would it provide me over what I have right now." The answer is always "nothing important," so I stick with Ubuntu.

I considered using Guix because its package manager is truly a revolutionary new technology. But using it as a package manager, I can see a lot of the packages and default configurations just aren't quite to the point of "just works" yet. Still, I hope someday to switch to Guix as my daily driver.

I used Ubuntu for a few years, and always felt that it works well and was super easy to set up. But it also seemed to use a lot of disk space. This was of course not ubuntu‘s fault, but my inexperience. But I never had to look under the hood, so I didn’t, and I ended up installing a bunch pf bloat, some of which ended up causing minor issues eventually.

I decided to try arch, and get more into configuration and learning linux. It was quite a ride, and I am happy to have gone through with it. I’m still learning, but I have so much more knowledge & control over what the PC does and how it does it. I also have a lot more room for games and such.

Pop os. I just couldn't use their desktop (even though I think it's good, it's just not for me)

Wasn't a fan of Ubuntu, RedHat, Debían...

I guess I'm just a Fedora person? I'm on KDE right now, usually Xfce. Idk I'm enjoying my KDE experience.

Mint was pretty smooth. No complaints.