@ekZepp For me, it's Debian. It always just works.

Fedora

Man... I just fucking love CachyOS. I switched from Win11 a few weeks ago and up until now it is just a great experience.

Mint has been glazed since the beginning of time. Not a single laptop or computer I have ever owned has worked out of the box with it. As opposed to alternatives like Ubuntu or Fedora. I must be the single most unlucky person in the history of Linux.

There is no one reliable distro. Mint, itself is based off Ubuntu and also releases LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition).

If reliablility is measured in terms of how stable a distro is, then likely Debian with it's conservative approach to packaging updates comes to mind (No wonder large number of distros are based off Debian only).

I would even argue as long as someone isn't messing with a niche distro such as KDE Neon( meant to showcase KDE packages) or Linuxfx (or whatever it has renamed itself to, one of the few shady ones IMO ) or Trisquel OS (a GNU certified distro where running into dependency hell isn't new); it will suit user's case.

Debian, Slackware, Void, Zorin, even rolling release like Arch (basically any one that meets the user's use case is reliable)

Arch is pretty reliable

Went back to Mint a few times but ultimately I like Plasma over Cinnamon, so Debian it is!

I never left!

I think I'm just old enough, have fiddled with my PC enough times in the past, have enough other shit to do, and get enough coding and troubleshooting experience at work that I look at the quest to find my spirit distro and think "that's a youngster's game."

Or, you know, maybe Mint is already my spirit distro and I am experienced enough to not fix what isn't broken!

Neckbeard here. I run Arch btw.

Why bother with distro hopping when you can desktop hop? 

Yup, I do regular distrofuckery on my spare pc but Mint is just a rock solid option for me, great distro, feels good.

Just switched from Mint to CachyOS due to some upgraded hardware and it's been pretty nice so far. Mint will stay on all my other devices though.

Mint forever, Ubuntu without the snaps, and It generally is fuss free.

Shout-out to antiX though, revived many a "useless" old laptop with that.

Limewire?

Here is my distrohopping journey: Mint -> Arco -> Debian -> KDE Neon -> Artix -> Void -> NixOS -> Fedora -> Void

An OS should GTFO and let you get on with the business of doing shit on your computer, Linux Mint does that nicely. 🐧

Tumbleweed

I prefer Kali because dragons are freakin awesome.

Apparently, it’s dangerous to mention Arch— but I’d dare to do just that!

Fedora for me tbh

Mint is decent too though

For when you want the Ubuntu of Ubuntu as opposed to the Ubuntu of Debian.

Desktop? Debian with GNOME. Laptop? Debian with GNOME. Tablet? Debian with GNOME. Server? Believe it or not, Debian without GNOME.

Fedora for life.

After testing LM with Cinnamon, and a ubuntu based distribution with KDE… KDE is just better.

Went with LMDE7 for my first full daily driver install, real happy so far :)

I tried CachyOS and so far it's been alright besides having bit difficulty finding software so I have stuff from multiple sources.

I feel like I’m missing out on the mint hype train tbh. I’ve never tried it before but there’s an ignorant part of me that’s like “how much better could it possibly be than Ubuntu with Cinnamon?”. I know it must be because so many people default to it and rave about it, even after using Ubuntu.

My default ol reliable used to be Solus Linux. God I loved that distro. I had an install that lasted 4 years straight, no issues whatsoever.

But in recent years I’ve taken a major liking to Bazzite. Oh my god it’s incredible: immutable OSs are fucking amazing. I shouldn’t be trusted with accessing system files, it never ends well. So this really helps.