This is crazy. You shouldn’t use Ubuntu for anything desktop related. There’s nothing vanilla about vanilla Ubuntu.

(Custom Gnome extensions, patches on top of Gnome, custom sandbox packages that don’t always work, custom apt that refuses to install the real packages in place of snaps, paywalled security patches, should I keep going?)

This is seriously a hot take

Debian since 1998. No reason to change.

Ubuntu sucks

You choose the worst option

anything but Ubuntu tbh.

TL;DR: I'm a true Linux noob, and now love and appreciate Linux thanks to openSUSE Tumbleweed. :)

In all seriousness, as a Linux noob, openSUSE Tumbleweed made me actually start to really enjoy using Linux as my main OS. I've fucked up plenty of times, and at that point I would've had to reinstall most other distros, but Snapper came in and saved the day. I'm sure there are plenty of other distros that do snapshots just as well, but this is coming from someone who last tried running Linux 5-6 years ago, and was still fucking my shit up somehow. I've never had the best of luck with Linux, which is why I always stayed on Windows.

Then came Microsoft's ever increasing enshittification, and I saw openSUSE Tumbleweed on the distrowatch website, downloaded it, and here we are 8 months later, and openSUSE has remained my main OS. I only got a desktop for gaming, and it fit the bill almost perfectly. I had to learn some things, that's for sure, but what got me to stay was the stability! I had never used a Linux distro up until that point that made BTRFS and system snapshots the default. This was crucial for someone like me who only dabbled in Linux because I love the idea behind it, I could just never get too far into using it before fucking my shit up!

There are plenty of options that are similar, or maybe even better than openSUSE, but they won my interest and respect for getting a noob like me to truly envelope themselves into Linux.

I'm still nowhere near anything that might resemble your common Linux user, but damn do I really love my computer again now. It's like when I was kid again, and first started using computers, fascinated by what I could do.

Mint because the name is fun

Fedora on the right tbh. Even when you chill and get wisdom Canonical and Snap are just a bit too far.

I use fedora because I dont feel like waiting 6 years for new features ;P

Um, acktually some of us went from vanilla Debian to Nobara to vanilla Debian.

I use templeOS btw

But then I'd have to deal with snap.

I consider myself to be 'techie' for lack of a better word. I have custom janky solutions for everything. I have in the past written down a blue screen and troubleshooted it to give the IT team notes... Hell, I used to be the guy IT would call if they received a ticket from my office (anyone in my office) because I could give them more details and such... So, I like computers and shit, right?

And holy fuck I don't get the Linux world. I used Mint back in '13ish and it was fine but in a different place back then. I use Pop_OS! on my laptop and I like it just fine. I use Ubuntu on my secondary computer and I like it just fine. I don't get what I'm supposed to prefer about all these different distros/environments. I can't wrap my head around it. Do y'all change OSes that often? Am I missing out on something? Am I wrong or are y'all the kids who are wrong?

Something running Wayland on plasma for me.

Any rolling release will do, doesnt actually matter the flavor.

Steam has been investing into Arch (btw) which is nice but really all you want is quick updates. Graphics drivers on other distros may not be updated quickly enough for you to enjoy the newest releases.

Kubuntu for modern systems, Xubuntu for older systems, Lubuntu for older, low-end systems with limited RAM, Ubuntu server for headless servers.

Stay mad, Ubuntu haters.