Neat factor

NixOS has a cool logo.

There, I said it.

I find it really fun to browse the Debian repository and its source code with their dedicated websites for doing so ( https://packages.debian.org/ and https://sources.debian.org/ ), to find all the obscure utilities, and silly code comments.

OpenSUSE just feels all cool and enterprisey and I feel like I'm doing important things when I use my computer

If you want to create a Hannah Montana branded version of ublue kinoite plasma 6, that would be as neat as it gets.

Also there is Cosmic, I am just gonna say

Rust

I currently use pop-os which is an Ubuntu derivative. I use it because it works well, is easy, and it's smoother than Ubuntu. My second choice would be Kubuntu if I wanted to commit to KDE. My reasons are that I'm doing important business on all my computers and I don't want to spend a lot of time trying to troubleshoot things that don't work. So I stick to the LTS releases nowadays.

A downside of my approach is that it's less customizable, not as up to date and slightly constraining.

Over the years I have used a lot of different distributions. I've had many success and even more failures.

So many people have strong feelings about their favorite distros. The big differences are about ease of installation and configuration, stability, open source vs. proprietary code, community support and ability to customize. Other than that, they are all basically Linux.

Arch is not for the faint of heart but it is awesome if you can get it installed. And they have a great support community. There are a lot of Arch variants that are easier to install.

I use Arch because it makes installing almost any software package trivially easy via the AUR and if you run into issues, the wiki is there to help.

Okay, you asked, we deliver ;-) I tried OS/2 and BSD, but did stick with Linux (Using Debian and Arch currently).

"No. That's it. The cool name, that is. We worked very hard on creating a name that would appeal to the majority of people, and it certainly paid off: thousands of people are using linux just to be able to say "OS/2? Hah. I've got Linux. What a cool name". 386BSD made the mistake of putting a lot of numbers and weird abbreviations into the name, and is scaring away a lot of people just because it sounds too technical." -- Linus Torvalds

I wouldn't suggest arch unless you know it's issues. I love the distro, but I understand many might not.

It's the quickest rolling release for most things. When you update, things sometimes break, and break bad. Like the grub issue we all had where you restarted to get a "grub rescue" screen with no way to boot. Like the linux 5.17(I think?) Kernel that had some intel laptops backlights go flash from max to zero, possibly destroying the machine.

You'll also have some software or drivers with major bugs like the nvidia driver a while ago that stuck brightness at 100% (or 50, in my case) requiring a downgrade of both the kernal, and nvidia driver.

Arch is the first place where new software gets to meet a large userbase and their hardware. The first place it might interact with other new software.

Sometimes you need to manually intervene and change stuff, and this means keeping up with current arch events via their mailing list, lemmy, or reddit (reddit sadly is the safer bet)

If you're ok with this I'd highly reccomend arch if not only for the AUR. If not, PopOS and Fedora are also pretty sick and, there's also tumbleweed.

opensuse always had a special place in my heart. it was the first "linux" i successfully installed 17 (welp) years ago. with kde desktop, wich became my goto desktop. both are based in germany, which makes it easy for me to support local open source organisations.

my notebook is running tumbleweed for over 2 years now and i had no problem at all.

for the switch, tho, i'd stick to an ubuntu based distro. there are ubuntu tutorials for litterly everything. i guess mint might be a solid choice. the debian edition is also cool. for the moment, you don't need a rolling release. you'll install another distro before eol either because you wrecked your current one, or you want to "try something else".

if possible, have a sepperate disc (at least partition) for your home folder.

and always keep in mind:
no backup, no merci. =]

Fedora just documents itself incredibly well, plus all the pushes they're doing with immutable distributions and somehow making it seem simple is a wonderful thing.

Just gotta crank the desktop effects up to 11 on kwin

I think what you mean with "neat" is the desktop environment (DE), which hugely defines how a distro looks like.
Most major distros (e.g. Fedora, Ubuntu, Arch, etc.) have have the most major ones.

Here's my post about distro choices if you're interested, since it's mostly more about DE choice: https://feddit.de/post/9087676

For me it’s just Linux itself that’s cool. I mean, I get the different distros have different opinions and things that make them neat, and that in and of itself is what’s so cool. FWIW I use Ubuntu (server) and desktop.

I installed Arch because I liked the idea of building everything from the ground up, choosing all of my utilities, and gentoo would take too long on my laptop. Still haven’t finished my DE 2 computers and 3 years later

I usually don't order my distros on the rocks, so they're all neat.

Let me start with my unbiased opinion. There's something for everybody in the Linux land. You have to try different distros out and settle with the one you like most. I usually advocate for the path of least resistance - ie, to start with the easiest distro. Mint is a good first distro. Fedora and Debian are also reasonable choices. But I have also seen a rare few cases where people start directly with a high effort distro like Arch - so it's not impossible.

For a lot of people, Mint may satisfy their needs - a user friendly distro that needs no tinkering and meets all of their needs. Some people though, like to tune everything. Such people can eventually grow into something like Arch.

I personally like Gentoo. Not because it's compiled from source, but because it's easy to work with its Portage package management system. Another one worth trying out is QubesOS, if you're into security.

I used Fedora on my laptop for like 4 years. It came with gnome, and was very stable. I didn't know a lot about Linux at the time, but it treated me well.

Eventually, I was learning graphics and the mesa drivers in fedora's repos were lacking specific OGL support I wanted to try out. I tried installing mesa from source, but it didn't go very smoothly.

This is when I learned about arch's rolling release model. I ran antergos for a while, then manjaro, and now endeavor, and more recently I've heard arch has a fancy installer wizard so I might just do that next.

I would still recommend Fedora (or Mint) as someone's first go at Linux. I don't think you need to try arch until you know why you're using it.

Arch. Neat logo, and adding IAmCandy in pacman's config file enables a pacman when downloading packages

But the real reason is that it's on the bleeding edge... if there's a new feature in a program, I can use it today.

And if (when) something doesn't work, I can raise a ticket or even contribute to the work, get it fixed and get on with my life.

Debian and all it's derivatives are still using applications from <insert vague hand waving gesture> "years ago".

Mint is super comfy. Garuda is cool. Pop_OS! is as annoying to use as it is to type.

I have a tendency to use "DIY" systems, basically systems that leave the administration up to me, and either have a minimal base or a customizable, powerful but convenient installer. Then comes the package manager's strengths and weaknesses, and the package repository and its release cycles.

My favorite OSes of all are:

• NixOS
• FreeBSD
• Arch/Endeavour
• Debian
• To some extend Alpine

I never used Gentoo so I don't classify it, but i believe I would like it a lot if I used it.

And yeah, I have a logo bias lmao. NixOS, FreeBSD and Debian have amazing logos. Something that is neat is when a distro has multiple kernel versions in the repository.

If you want an out-of-the-box distro anyone can get things done on, without restricting you, can't go wrong with putting Mint on a live USB to mess around with before installing. The big downside with Debian (what Mint is based off of) is that some apps might be using slightly older versions, but I have never noticed this firsthand.

I realized a long time ago that Ubuntu, Mint, and like almost half the distros out there are all just Debian-based. I can literally just turn one into the other if I want. To me they are about as different from each other as different system themes, all just Debian in various outfits. (Astronaut gun meme: it's ALL Debian?/Always has been...)

So I figured why not just go with the OG? I'm not a gamer, so I don't need the hottest new GPU drivers every week.

Tell me about how you chose a specific distro because you thought the name was cool or because it ships with some completely unknown utility no one uses.

Alpine Linux: musl, minimal, fast

OpenBSD: correctness, simplicity, easy to use

I made the switch a few days ago. At the moment I'm running a dual boot setup as unfortunately I can't completely drop Windows for work sessions. I settled on Linux Mint as I couldn't get Nobara (a fedora fork or sth) to run stable.

I have no experience with Linux (except for owning a steam deck and using live CDs some years ago), so I was looking for sth simple and able to run games.

I've been doing more tweaking than I thought but that's mainly due to my hardware, e.g. getting the stream deck and the rodecaster to run. I've learned a bunch of stuff while tinkering with all of this and I can recommend Linux Mint due to its ease of use and very large community where someone probably had your exact problem before and even documented it in some way.

Can't say much about other distros but I don't think I'll switch to another any time soon.

I like lizard, i use tumbleweed

Rolling release. That's why I choose my distro

Part of the appeal is getting away for corporate control. With Fedora, you roll into Baghdad.

Meanwhile Debian might very well be the single largest anarchist project in the world.

That's part of the ideological and principaled choice.

Past that it offers long term support for servers and testing truly is pretty good if you want a rolling release.