If you have been using Linux for +10 years, what are you using now?
Been using Linux for over a decade, and last few years Ubuntu (on desktops/laptops), plus Debian on servers, but been looking to switch to something less “Canonical”-y for a long time (since the Amazon search fiasco, pretty much).
Appreciate recommendations or just an interesting discussion about people’s experiences, there are no wrong answers.
Edit: Thanks for the lots of interesting answers and discussions. I will try a few of the suggestions in a VM.
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Debian stable, it works fine for a workstation and for the few games I play
Slackware. In 27-ish years of using it, it’s never once crashed or failed to install
My Linux journey began with Fedora before I transitioned to Manjaro. Following the issues there, I switched to Debian, though I eventually moved on due to its slow update cycle in favor of openSUSE. I’ve now settled on CachyOS, and I couldn’t be happier. It is exceptionally stable, benefits from timely Arch-based updates, and performs incredibly fast. Ironically, even though I’m not a gamer, I find that CachyOS simply makes everything work perfectly.
I think I started back in the day with Ubuntu Gnome, with some dabbling in Manjaro and then Arch.
But since then I have used Fedora Workstation, and then Fedora Silverblue / Fedora Kinoite (immutable versions of fedora, with the past several years on Kinoite [kde] over Silverblue [gnome])
On the server side of things, I am using Debian (with everything running in podman containers).
If I were to consider migrating, it would be to migrate my laptop to secureblue (likely, rebasing the OS image rather than clean-installing) and migrate my Windows 11 desktop to bazzite. Both of these are still based on Fedora’s immutable base, albeit with changes to the base OS image. At some point in the future, I would also consider migrating my server to an immutable OS, however, which one remains to be seen.
I hopped around a little but settled into Debian a long, long time ago. My son loves Arch, I like my stuff to be a bit more stable and don’t have the time to update between commands all the time (its a joke but has a little truth to it).
i’ve been using arch as my daily driver for 4 years. but i am thinking of switching to chimera linux. i really like apk, i think using dinit, llvm, musl and *bsd core utils would be great. for server, i use proxmox as my hypervisor, and debian for most vm’s, starting to use alpine on lxc. I am using openwrt on my router.
Question to users and distro hoppers. I’ve grown to love Mint used it for years. But sometimes it updates and moves my game folders, loses my saves and I have to hunt in my system and hope I find my precious years long game saves.
Is there such thing as a distro that never changes the structure where truly all my files, system files, games will all be the same over years?
I’ve tried NIX and liked it, I’ve tried LMDE and Stock Mint with Ubuntu bugs yay, I’ve tried base Debian 13, and lastly Fedora kinoite…
Whats a system that updates but doesn’t lose my shit when I just want to game and use my PC? I like having all my files never move, structure of system never change, but having the ability to run steam and heroic games of all types. I’m still back to Stock Mint Ubuntu but dammit if they don’t introduce bugs sometimes. Like suspend / resume audio doesn’t work after sleeping my desktop and back on without restarting.
I am not a distro hopper, but I think you’re asking the wrong question
I would keep your saves backed up and synchronized with a tool like rsync or git (not too great if they are larger sized files). It’s what most Linux users do with their config files for example.
Other solutions are having a separate partition for /home (or /Games) so that you can even distrohop without worrying about this. If the game looks for saves in a specific folder you can create a symlink (a sort of “shortcut” that tells the game to look for saves in a certain directory)
Not sure how experienced you are but I can try to explain it better if this seems suitable.
LMDE on desktop. MX Linux on laptop. Nextcloud server runs Ubuntu. Homelab server on Debian.
For almost 30 years Debian somehow.
KDE is ideal to me given performance and polish, things like fractional scaling and Wayland are all top tier. I use Kubuntu but am waiting on “KDE Linux”.
Arch, btw
Debian and alpine. Coming up on 27 years of linux for me.
Started out on Linux Mint 17.3 Cinnamon ten years ago. Looked around, got into other distros and DEs, window managers, file systems, bash scripting and server administration. Yet here I am, still on Linux Mint. It just works extremely well for me, never broke down (unless I broke it) and stayed out of my way to let me focus on my actual work.
I’m at 9 years myself, I use Ubuntu on desktop, Mint on my home ThinkPad, Ubuntu on my work ThinkPad, and a mix of Debian/Proxmox and Ubuntu for my servers. I’m hoping to switch my desktop to Mint at some point.
Been on Linux for 20 years and I’m on Debian and Arch. Both are very different but equally great systems.
I tried Slackware a couple of times cause it combines the simple design of Arch with the stability of Debian, but it’s a bit too much in both regards.
As for desktop environments, I used to use Gnome on laptops and Plasma on desktops, but I recently stumbled upon Niri with Dank Material Shell and feel like it combines the advantages of both (fast keyboard/touchpad control, fully featured, lots of GUI customization options).