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.
Arch, BTW
Great wiki
The AUR
I was distrohopping for like a year or two when I first got into Linux desktop. As soon as I installed Arch for the first time that stopped. Now the thought of a distro pre-installing packages gives me the heebie jeebies. You don’t get to tell me how I sync with NTP servers!
PKGBUILDs
pacman goes brrrr
I do real work. Dont have time to waste
Maybe don’t fiddle with your install non-stop then.
Isn’t that the reason to use arch? I remember last time I installed arch, about 5 years ago now I had to fiddle with everything just to get it working lol.
Debian
- Very stable, and can run the bleeding edge through Snap/Flatpack/Appimages, Distrobox, or VMs/Containers
- Community run distro
- Compatible with more devices than many distros
Low resource footprint — smaller than EndeavourOS on my laptop. Stability is fantastic. Bookworm practically just came out, so the packages are all much newer than they were in Bullseye, making it a viable option for someone who wants an uneventful Linux distro that fades into the background and lets you get stuff done.
I love debian because it’s always there for you.
Lightweight.
- Extremely customizable
The new release bookworm solves most hardware/software problems
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!
Glad to hear someone else uses this awesome tool. I think unstable debian based Siduction uses that too.
BTRFS has saved my life a bunch, I’m the kind that enjoys experimenting and changing stuff just to see what happens
I had to scroll waaaaay down to find this. Mindboggling how underrated this distro is!
It’s getting 3/4’s of the votes of Debian. I think their profile has increase a lot in the last year or so.
It’s incredibly well put together
It’s rolling and reliable
Security by default. Firewall is set up blocking ports for UDP etc. so you are protected out of the box.
Everything just works
It is up to date so you can often get newer hardware working due to newer kernels.
YaST
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.
This, basically Arch but quick to install with all the most important things installed and ready without being bloated.
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.
Same. I’ve done the vanilla Arch thing and it’s alright, but the quality of life enhancements that come with EndeavourOS make it a great daily driver.
It’s the only distro I could get DaVinci Resolve Studio, Blackmagic Intensity Pro 4k, and my Radeon RX 6750 XT working with, consistently.
Arch. I can’t live without the AUR at this point.
Pop!_OS
Manjaro. It just worked on any device I installed it on. And wifi just worked with no fiddling.
Then I installed it on surface tablet. What didn’t work, I found kernel fixes I could implement.
Of all the distros, for me, it was the easiest to use, install and manipulate!!
Fedora
Stable
Only FOSS software and repositories unless otherwise enabled
Cutting edge application releases so I get the newest toys after they’ve been decently tested
Uses the latest tech in linux e.g wayland and pipewire.
Applies patches for better programs work under Wayland (SDDM with git patches before long awaited 0.20.0 release).
Arch Linux
NixOS
Easy and fearless updates
Rollbacks
Single command to compile & install packages from many git repos
Very good with containers and VMs
Can turn basically any distro into nixos in minutes
Dependency Hell, begone
Reproducible
declarative configuration
Ez dev shells
immutability
You get it for the low price of loosing all fun/motivation in setting up, customizing and mintaining machines with other distros
A great selection and amount of packages and modules to build/install/enable
Home Manager + Stylix
Overlays
Makes me feel cool again 😎
A cool logo, meaningful rolling release version names and stickers
Slackware
- the most rock stable distro imo. No systemd or snap stuff. Packages are almost (if not fully) vanilla version from upstream. Simple yet efficient unix-style approach to everything like package management, slackbuilds are really good too.
Debian
-Simple distro free of too much bloat without being too bare-bones
-Stable, but can also be changed to be a bit more updated if you want that instead-
Arch Linux
- Packages are kept up to date so it’s often the first distro to support new hardware, APIs, etc.
- AUR provides a huge library of software that isn’t often in package manager repos.
- Rolling release so you don’t have to deal with repository upgrades every 6 months to 2 years.
- btw
My current isn’t vanilla arch, but Endeavour OS, because as an unexperienced user I wanted to have the least trouble while installing, … I regret it ever since, because I began with a Plasma desktop and ended up with i3, mainly because of tiling, problems with some utilities, keyboard switching, etc. In the end, I still love the system, one can get quite minimal with it.
I love that you talked about regretting it. Using one of the arch-based diaries that obfuscates the installation process honestly destroys a lot of the benefit of using arch. Having to vaguely understand how the system fits together makes fixing issues a million times easier.
Yep. And I still forgot to mention one thing. It is a 2016 Macbook Pro, which basically means just more work fixing.
My favorite too. For me on other distros I was typically running into bugs that I’d find had already been fixed upstream months previously - and then I had to either live with the bug or do some hack to manually install the newer version. Somewhat related to this, but as Linux gamer it was also frustrating to have the older Mesa drivers all the time because it couldn’t support the older kernel version the distro shipped or something.
I’ve been trying to convert to linux since the mid-2000’s. Ubuntu and derivatives, fedora, and SUSE. Gaming and my lack on knowledge always brought me back to Windows.
In 2018 I tried Manjaro and loved it. But I broke it without the knowledge to fix it multiple times. The Arch BTW memes were strong at the time so I took the plunge and studied the wiki, and documented my own installation process and really learned a lot in the process. Proton was released and suddenly gaming got WAY better. I didn’t remove my windows install completely until 2022 but Arch has been my home on my main machine.
I have since put together a proxmox cluster and run many distros for various things but that’s a whole other rabbit hole!
Ubuntu
A lot of proprietary software is easier to install here
I can use the same OS on my servers
Shit just works
I don’t have time to fuck about, I use ubuntu mate because it gets out of my way and does what I expect it to do.
I love the stability of LTS
It’s easy to use
easy enough to use for me (I’m a linux newb) and I can setup steam on it!
edit: forgot to mention I can get hibernation working on Ubuntu when I couldn’t figure out how to do that in FedoraAre you playing steam games that have Linux versions? Or is the “comparability mode” stable and fast enough that you don’t really have to think about it?
I love the dock
For when I can’t get stuff to work on nixos 😅
Because it just works. Because it’s based on free Debian and not corporate RedHat. Because mainstream Linux needs a flagship distro and that distro needs to be used and supported.
but Ubuntu is corporate, no?