My work machine is macOS as the company won't let us use Linux. My home machine is Arch Linux (obligatory "BTW") which I migrated to after Ubuntu dropped Unity and started forcing Snaps on everyone.
However, a nice shameless plug for my Terminal file manager: DF-SHOW which is designed to work on all Unix like systems.
Arch. I got it working 3 years ago, it's still working, stable. On my main laptop, though, I'm running windows, and planning to install Fedora when I get the chance.
I use NixOS on my pc, laptop, and server, although I dual-boot windows on my pc to play some games.
My phone is android, I have a pinephone but I can't get discord and other things to work well on it so it can't be my daily driver right now. (I know Matrix chat is better than discord, I even host my own instance, but everyone in my school uses discord so there's no way to switch).
I want to like macOS but Apple, IMO, is doing scummier and scummier things with it. For instance, I haven't signed in to iCloud. Once a day it seems, I'll get a little notice telling me that not all functionality will work until I've signed in. Ok.. So I click the little 'X' on the notification. It opens the settings to the iCloud setup screen. That's not what 'X' is supposed to do!
Arch for my main, Debian for my servers and family. I bounced around for a while over the years. At some point in the past I decided I didn't want to use derivatives and these two fit my needs prefectly.
Void Linux is home.
Plus, as soon as word got out that Windows 11 had those insane system requirements and the TPM stuff I decided I would abandon Winblows for good once 10 reaches end of life.
I'm using macOS also but I'm a arch/Debian guy. i know both of them. I'm not an expert but before macOS i was using Linux. I came to macOS cause of school just wanted something solid. I still help people though if I can with Linux problem when I can
my debian vm box is solid too, installed it yesterday, only audio issues with muting, for some idiotic reason, but I made a simple modification to the system, high hopes it will help with this.
I'm using Qubes OS on my laptop, HardenedBSD on my desktop and OpenBSD on my server. I use both BSD and Linux depends on the use case. For the phone, I prefer GrapheneOS all the way!
My progression was: Mandrake, OpenSUSE, Ubuntu, Gentoo, Arch, NixOS. At work I use Nix flakes on Debian machines, so one month back I figured out I could install NixOS at home to get familiar with Nix. NixOS is really something different and it brings me back to the old times when Linux was new for me. It’s again an adventure!
Due to computer games, my desktop PC runs Windows 11, but my dissatisfaction with Windows is growing. I use MacOS on my MacBook Pro because it works so nicely with my other Apple devices, but I need a change every now and then and try new things, so I installed Linux Mint Cinnamon on a relatively old laptop and it's a great pleasure to work on it. So at the moment I would say that Linux Mint Cinnamon is my favourite operating system.
I hate cinnamon, but everyone has different tastes:
I when I use linux, if I need to have gui installed mate, or else system will go
rm -rf /
I saw gnome, desktop doesn't work with orca, menu start stopped working after some updates, so mate all the way, I tried kde, but i gave up on it, it just didn't clicked out, desktop was not accessible, menu start too.
everything is bork.
mate is not, for some reason, so I have it on my debian vm on utm.
I'm forced to use debian, as I can't find fedora mate arm64, or fedora with old gnome 40.0
It used to be MacOS, but I jumped ship as soon as iOS stuff started creeping in years ago. Because I had already jumped ship from iPhones for the exact same stuff. Arch is my *nix of choice these days, or Linux Mint if I'm recommending it to someone else who doesn't want to learn Arch.
But with that said, my daily driver is a Windows machine these days. I'm getting lazy as I get older, so (relatively) effortless compatibility is king.
Arch because my installs keep working, and I'm really used to it at this point. In the future I'd be interested in trying something like NixOS/Guix, Silverblue, or Qubes.
The mobile landscape is just a privacy clusterfuck. I flip flop back and forth between Android and iOS a lot. Maybe one day I'll take the Graphene plunge, not sure.
I'm a grumpy old man when it comes to OSes. I started on Gentoo, used Arch for a while, a few years of Ubuntu, then a bunch of different Ubuntu-based distros, Fedora and all the Fedora spins, even ran the Hannah Montana OS as a meme for a week.
Eventually, got bored of the latest shiny things and fixing the best thing ever, and am using Kubuntu with Wayland. It just works, got no complaints.
ok, net BSD probably for server stuff:
void linux sounds so evil.
lol.
btw let's discuss why we are using the systems we use
I'm using macOS, because apple's ecosystem, and voiceover is more reliable than orca on linux, and all bsd's don't have a screenreader.
Arch Linux. It's too convenient. The AUR hosts a massive amount of packages, wiki is super detailed and covers solutions for all sorts of edge cases. Needs a bit of tinkering to get started but once things are set up it's very stable, and still gives you a lot of freedom to tinker with your system however you want. The only other option I've considered is NixOS which has some pretty interesting features
I've been a linux user since 1996. I've used a lot of distros over the years slackware/gentoo/debian/arch/redhat/ubuntu.These days I've been running Fedora and find it pretty great. I've gotten a bit too lazy for distros like Arch and prefer something that just works without too much tinkering.
The new Arch Installer makes it pretty darn streamlined. If you can get your box onto the internet, it'll work almost like any other installer. Just all text based.
Fedora/Ubuntu is what I tell casual users to use though.
I'm currently using Nobara a Fedora fork and upgraded today to version 38 it was a bit of a stretch. I had to delete many things in my /etc/ to get GNOME 44 working. Bluetooth and the panel on the top right is a bit buggy but it works.
I have used several other distros on and off, but I feel Pop!_OS is the macOS of Linux. Long time macOS user turned macOS(client)+Ubuntu(server) user by profession, turned Pop!_OS(client)+RHEL8(server) user (new job! Loving it).
My first foray was with Ubuntu and Mint, and I found the whole experience far too on-rails for me. A few years later, I made the permanent move from Windows to Arch, largely because of how good their documentation on GPU passthrough via OVMF/VFIO was. It was also an excellent opportunity to be forced to learn how my computer works.
Ironically, I almost never open virtual machines for gaming, I have come across very very little that cannot be handled by wine, ge-wine, or proton.
I have tried them all. The one wo never let me down was Debian stable. I use it for 8 years now on desktop, gaming rig and server.
The ones that come close are Alpine Linux and Ubuntu LTS.
I've been on Linux Mint (LM) for like 3+ years now. I was dual booting Windows, but after not booting into Win for over a year, I wiped its hard drive and started using it as backup storage. Before that, I did the rounds (Debian, Fedora, openSUSE, Ubuntu, etc.), but mostly stuck between Kubuntu and LM. LM just seems to work the best for me. Never have any difficulties with anything and love how I can customize Cinnamon. It really just works out well for me.
I'm mainly using Fedora these days, but for some games I still have to dualboot Windows, which I can't say I'm enjoying. Just over an hour ago the Nvidia drivers crashed. On Windows. Repeatetly.
Anyway, I'm quite happy with Fedora but I haven't tried many OS to be honest. I prefer stability over the slight advantages other OS might have
Sometimes I wonder how people think Linux is harder than windows. It feels like every time I use windows I'm constantly fighting my computer to do anything.
I guess most non-technical people are always fighting their computer. It is really hard to watch my grandma do anything on any device, but she's managing windows pretty well compared to her android phone (with accessibility settings), because she has used it the longest.
Even the tech-savvy Windows users are probably used to some windows quirks and work around them, just like GNU/Linux users open a terminal as a reflex. And if anything is different, it will always feel like fighting your OS.
I think the problem is the change, not the OS
MacOS for work (very simple wireless packet captures, full m$ office suite with little effort). Servers are Debian, used to be Arch but I didn't upgrade enough / I upgraded too much / you get the idea and things went boom too often (Nextcloud in particular). Does SteamOS count too? I think it's pretty rad.
Aye just on the Steam Deck, but it could be interesting to run it on a beefy desktop. I spent about 6 months running only Fedora on my gaming rig and things worked pretty well. I got back into World of Warcraft and it worked awesome until they released a patch and it didn’t work for days…I was too cracked out on wow so limped back to wintendo. I’ve been wow free for 6 months now so it might be time to give it a go again.
Also lol @ Volvo releasing a SteamOS ISO, had to read that twice
I use windows because that's where I can play overwatch and fortnite. That's literally the only reason. And photoshop, but krita is almost just as good. If I didn't play games not available on Linux I'd probably use Ubuntu instead. Why? Easy to install, very customizable, better for programming, scriptable.
Following my message I tried to dual boot. Turns out my laptop is incompatible with default Nvidia drivers and my screen stopped working with it so after days of research and trying again, I had to go back to Windows, just to get the big monitor to have display.
I have used it. I liked it. I don't know why I don't pick it over Ubuntu. It's been over a year since my last formatting spree. Any time windows goes poop I put live distros on like 7 usb drives and start formatting my computer like crazy testing and testing. Some are buggy here, some are buggy there, some are broken out of the box and take some effort to fix it, and ultimately I had for some reason decided that Ubuntu had the best base state and kept maybe xubuntu? Idk. It's been too long. I'll need another spree. But not soon! I'm gaming too much.