I’ve started using Nobara recently, and I like it a LOT. Makes it really easy for a noob like me to both play games and edit videos. I actually made a Monster Hunter video entirely in Linux with Davinci Resolve, and it worked really well. I’ve been an adobe tool my entire editing life, but I really like the switch I recently made :)

The whole of Fedora atomic distros are interesting in an exercise in getting good with layering and distrobox. Pop_os 24.04 just to see if a third pillar of Linux frontends with GTK and Qt is viable. People are always pissy about Manjaro but they seem to have an interesting present being pre installed on the Orange Pi Neo handheld

Fedora Silverblue – a very good balance of immutable distro and user friendliness. Stability and reliability of being immutable without low-level hacking like in Nix / Guix.

I don’t know about the best but Debian has been going strong for 32 years and the backbone of many distros. Its MVP in my book.

Linux Mint DE and Arch, the ultimate duo of Stability/Freindlyness & Power/Control

If you leave alone the haters, Ubuntu is doing great. Mint LDME also fantastic if you wish to have a rock solid base.

I’m currently using Pop!_OS, which is a great desktop distro.

I was using MX Linux a lot which is amazing for both times when you need a portable distro with lots of features and when you need something that will still run well on older machines.

I do like Mint very much, but I think that they are neglecting to update their apps. A lot of apps are not up to date, and that’s just sad…

I’m not an expert but …

• I think Fedora and OpenSUSE are the best (with Fedora leading). Well-funded and they take security seriously.
• Arch and Bazzite are filling specific niches.
• ReactOS and NixOS I think are in beta, but I’m not paying much attention to either.
• In terms of desktop environments I think KDE Plasma leads the pack. MATE is strong on accessibility though.

gentoo! still kicking it

Fedora has gotten much more stable and reliable in the past decade. 15+ years ago it was generally regarded as nice but unstable. I’d say nowadays for a moderately technical user it offers a better experience overall than Ubuntu or Mint. There are still unfortunately some pitfalls for new users (media codecs come to mind). In fact, the only issues i’ve had in most of those 10 years have been related to GNOME plugins or the Plasma 6 transition, problems that also occured on Ubuntu.

I have 2 computers: one running Ubuntu, one Fedora. This has been my setup for over a decade. I have lately been finding Ubuntu more and more cumbersome to use, with less of the “just works” experience i remember having in the past. Perhaps the focus on cloud computing has caused the desktop to languish a bit.

I would like to try Pop!_OS, but i haven’t had a free evening for a while to do a backup and reinstall on one of my computers. It’s also been a while since i used Mint, so my impression could be out of date.

The nice thing about Linux overall (compared to macOS and Windows) is that each update generally improves on the experience. On commercial platforms the experience gets worse as often as it gets better, usually both at the same time. GNOME and Plasma are both overall much better than they were a decade ago (despite a few regressions) while macOS and Windows are both worse in general.

Tried Manjaro and Opensuse for a presentation machine lately: issues over issues, that just shouldn’t exist on new installation (problems with USB disks, input). Came back to Debian asap because Debian, weirdly, "just works ™ now.

In my opinion I love CachyOS.

I daily drive Fedora and I think it has the best Gnome desktop.

But in terms of “best at what they do” I’m blown away by Mint as an apporoachable easy to use “just works” OS. It instantly became my recommendation to new linux converts. Everything is easy to set up. It’s remarkably user friendlly. Good software store, flatpack support out of the box. Brilliant hardware support. I like the aesthetics as well.

I have an old Core 2 machine and I tried to get every potato grade distro running on it. I tried Puppy, and Linux Lite, and AntiX and all the “this will run on your toaster” type distros and had problems with every one of them. Mint XFCE installed no problem. It ran beautifully. I pressed my luck and installed a Quadro K620 and an old firewire card (trying to back up old Mini-DV videos). It handled ancient hardware perfectly. Butter smooth 1440p desktop computing and light video editing on an 18 year old machine.

EndeavourOS, it’s Arch with a familiar installer, several useful helper scripts, and a friendly community.