So we can clearly see the most popular distros and the reasons why people use them, please follow this format:
- Write the name of the Linux distro as a first-level comment.
- Reply to that comment with each reason you like the distro as a separate answer.
For example:
- Distro (first-level comment)
- Reason (one answer)
- Other reason (a different answer)
Please avoid duplicating options. This will help us better understand the most popular distros and the reasons why people use them.
NixOS
declarative configuration
Easy and fearless updates
Dependency Hell, begone
Rollbacks
Mint. Easy to setup, fast to run, and very reliable.
Mint
Generally works in cases where Ubuntu would and you don’t have to deal with Canonical’s choices.
Arch. I can’t live without the AUR at this point.
We cannot forget about the wiki, which is a great resource for not only the Arch distro, but for any Linux install.
Gentoo
Arch, BTW
The AUR
Great wiki
PKGBUILDs
openSUSE Tumbleweed
The big advantage IMHO, is the out of the box BTRFS set up that lets you simply roll back to a non-broken state, right from the grub menu, should an update break your system. I haven’t had to use it yet, but it is a huge source of comfort knowing it is there.
Also, many people coming to opensuse remark how much snappier it is than other distros.
Garuda uses this feature on an Arch base, it’s saved me a couple of times. Props to openSUSE for developing the way to make that happen!
EndeavourOS
Easy to set up, very helpful community. If you liked Manjaro or think Manjaro is sketchy but like the idea of a slightly pre-configured arch, check it out.
It’s arch. It just happened to be the composition i had my previous arch setup as. Yay for AUR stuff, KDE Plasma for DE. Includes a couple of useful tools and makes for a very solid OS.
Anyone who has been in the Ubuntu sphere of things with Linux, should take a moment to try arch. EndeavourOS is perfect for these people.
Fedora
Cutting edge application releases so I get the newest toys after they’ve been decently tested
Only FOSS software and repositories unless otherwise enabled
Arch (BTW)
I’m currently happy with it
So many powerful tools that are not easy to find on other distros.
Basically, have fine tuned my setup so much that it’s almost impossible to think of another distro.
Manjaro
• Supports a wide variety of hardware, including ARM devices such as the Pinebook Pro.
• Up-to-date rolling release.
• Multiple DE’s available with customized, clean interfaces.