Best Distro

Personnaly, i'm using Fedora and i love it!
- IIRC Torvalds uses Fedora.
  (Debian for me.)
  
  IIRC Torvalds uses Fedora.
  Me too

I really love NixOS and use it on all my devices. Its not as difficult as people say and it really makes the linux experience a piece of cake once you get it down.
The single config file to control almost everything is just what I was looking for in linux and the fact that it solved any kind of dependency hell I have experienced in the past is huge. If I had to list a top 3 it would be NixOS, Fedora, and Arch.

Arch because I like getting the latest releases of packages
- Yeah. It's a pretty good linux distro for Beginners. It was my first distro tho. 😁
  
  I'm sorry but it's not great for beginners. It's a rolling bleeding edge distro that does not break often but when it does you need to know how stuff works to fix it.

I use Arch for personal and gaming, Debian for self hosting and hacking, Alpine for containerized cloud deployments.
- I use Arch for personal and gaming, Debian for self hosting and hacking, Alpine for containerized cloud deployments.
  Pretty much the same for me: bleeding-edge Arch for my workstation, rock-stable Debian for my server.

I just installed Bazzite about a month ago and love it! Used Ubuntu in the past and it was ok, but eventually went back to Windows. I definitely don't feel that way about Bazzite though, I think I might stick with it as my primary OS!

Nobody has mentioned immutables yet?!
I finally dipped my toes into trying a new distro over the summer and have been really impressed with Project Bluefin. All the familiarity of Gnome for existing Ubuntu or Debian users but with a completely hands off rolling update experience.
The main drawbacks are the slight complexity of how the fuck to install stuff on an immutable system. In theory you use Homebrew for CLI apps and flatpak for GUI apps but I'm really not a fan of installing from sources other than the original dev.
- Bazzite is immutable, it worked generally okay for me but I swapped back to mint because I had to use a smart card reader and getting it to work on an immutable was a royal pain
- You can also run a distrobox and install stuff normally from whatever distro’s repos, then export the applications so they’re available like native. Works really seamlessly in my experience

Debian and Fedora. I use Debian on servers and Fedora on my desktop and laptop.

Debian for my daily workstation. Minimal terminal-only install, and then I piece together my environment.
For smaller, headless applications I like Alpine. Containerized projects, VPS, etc.
- Okay. What are your thoughts of KISS linux? It's pretty minimalistic and have a very tiny package manager which is written entirely in Bash script.
  
  KISS
  Debian is KISS. Grab it and use, no need to overcomplicate things.
  
  I'm unfamiliar with KISS. I don't really distro hop, since what I use has satisfied all my needs to date.
  
  Sounds like a remake of Slackware.

I use Gentoo and I love it. The installation process is a bit more complex than Arch but it doesn't have to be if you choose the precompiled kernel.
The package management is extremely flexible and the community are great. I have a morning routine where I log onto my gentoo desktop before work and update everything; would compare it to raking one of those miniature buddhist sand gardens. Very theraputic!
- Have got Debian on an old thinkpad too because it is too under resourced to compile everything. I think Debian is amazing for a solid, reliable distro if you have weak hardware.

Debian, it Just Works.
- Until it doesn't /jk
  If you need fresh version of some software, Flatpak is a nice solution.
  You can also use Docker, it just works.
  Props to the maintainers and developers.
- Way too boring.
  
  Sometimes that's the goal

Endeavouraos, arch but also easy

There isn't a best distro, tho I stick to the root of a distro tree, meaning arch / debian.
- Why are fedora and suse often not mentioned considering theyre not forks of anything? (as far as im aware)
  
  Historically, (at least for hobbyists/enthusiasts) Fedora and openSUSE have been a lot less popular compared to Arch, Debian and their derivatives. While not necessarily representative, Boiling Steam's chart -in which ProtonDB's data is used- does indicate to this as well.
  Just my 2 cents.
  
  I didn't mention them, because I simply haven't used them yet.

Fedora Atomic, especially Bluefin, Bazzite and Aurora.
Nearly unbreakable, very reliable and stable in everyday use, needs no maintenance (updates itself, etc.) and more!

Fedora, but I wouldn’t say I’m in love with it. It frustrates me the least. No Linux distro is perfect, but they’re all better than Windows.

If there were a universal answer to this, there wouldn't be any others.
I myself currently use Debian (testing), have for some years now, but I have used other distros in the past too.

Best Distro
Needs dictate preferences. An objective assessment isn't possible even on an individual level, as circumstances change over time. Linux Mint serves as a common starting point, with many users eventually 'graduating' to other distributions. The opposite is also true; many eventually return to low-maintenance distros like Linux Mint, preferring something that 'just works'.
I’m very curious of which distro users loves the most that they have it on their daily hardware?
I daily drive secureblue.

Nix and Bazzite

Xubuntu on my desktop/laptop, debian on a server. Mostly because while I really like tinkering with things, I usually just want shit to work so I can get something done.

GNU Guix

Opensuse Tumbleweed. Sometimes I try something else, but Tumbleweed is the one I keep going back to. It is quite solid and rolling release.

OpenSuSE Tumbleweed is my current favourite. It's user friendly with good system tools in Yast, it's got good repos including community repos with lots of software.
Its also a rolling release but has been stable and reliable for me. Leap is their point release version if rolling is not right for you.
I've been using Tumbleweed for over a year, and it's my main OS since I stopped using windows. I've dual booted Linux for many years but always mained windows up until Tumbleweed.
Previously I used to use Mint; it's decent but switching to Tumbleweed (and in particular KDE) convinced me to completely switch from Windows. Everything "just works", and I do a fair bit of gaming without issue with nvidia drivers, steam, and lutris.
For example I've been playing Stardew, Cyberpunk 2077, Distant Worlds 2, and Factorio recently - all in Linux and all without issue.

Debian Stable. Predictable, low-maintenance, and well-supported. From time to time, I think about switching over to Alpine or even BSD, but the software selection and abundance of Q&A posts for Debian and its derivatives keeps me coming back. Having been a holdout on older Windows versions in the past, I'm quite used to waiting for new features and still amazed at how much easier life is with a proper package manager.

The best for my user cases atm
For work bluefin For general stations mint For gaming cachyos or bazzite

I use fedora-based atomic distros for the reliability and security. Nothing else really runs SELinux out of the box and I care about security so that’s a necessary baseline. I roll my own distro though using BlueBuild, and base it off the SecureBlue image of Silverblue. Just using SecureBlue gets you nearly to what I use though

I think Pop!_OS and Linux Mint are the best no brains required distributions.
- I really like the tiling window support in Pop_OS!'s Cosmos desktop.

I personally use Alpine on my Thinkpad
- Hell yeah, Alpine on older Thinkpads rules. What DE / WM are you using ?
  
  Sway :3

Gentoo, because no other distro offers as much choice.

Debian (desktop) and Mint (laptop), because I don't need to use the latest version of every app I use and because it works so well.
If I had to chose a single one, it would be Debian but I don't have to chose ;)

I started with Slackware in the nineties, have been through Redhat, Suse, Ubuntu, Arch, Tumbleweed.
I could use anything really but these days my focus have moved; I kinda just want functional and well configured up front. Using Pop!_OS 24 alpha on my gaming/dev laptop, it works well/is well put together and I’m having fun writing COSMIC apps. I’m using Ubuntu on a few servers, I picked it many years ago and they’ve been through a number of painless upgrades.
- Are you gaming on that comsic alpha?
  
  Yeah, GuildWars2, Valheim, Pathfinder WotR, etc. those sort of games.. So I’m a bit niche, some gamers have more issues than I.
  I got a gnome-session installed for games that have problems with COSMIC but fortunately haven’t needed it for a while now.

Tumbleweed was my favourite for years. I’m not currently using it, but I’ll always have a fondness for it.

Over the course of the last 20 years, I've gone from Arch -> Void -> Pop!_OS -> Ubuntu, and that is what I use on all my machines (laptops, desktops, servers).

Fedora. Any kind.

Vanilla Arch.

I default to xubuntu

LFS

I can't define one favorite distro. I change my daily driver sometimes but it's always something Arch based, even though I think OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is the ultimately best distro/base.

Aeon btw. Immutable, rolling, no bs. Everything in Flatlaks or Distrobox is really a killer combo imo.
- Also only very little software comes preinstalled which does not apply to Silverblue for example if I remember correctly.

I got arch cus its light af basically, id just install what i want/need myself

Manjaro for my laptop, Mint for my HTPC, and Debian for my servers.
- I'm sorry but I can't resist mentioning it. Manjaro implemented quite sus telemetry recently so you should keep it in mind when choosing and using it.
  
  Good to know! I was considering switching back to Debian or Mint, maybe LMDE. I'll look further into it. Thanks for the tip!

Gentoo, it just works
- just works
  After compiling and configuring for a few hours sure

I switched to Zorin OS (from Windows) at the beginning of this year and never looked back. Great for newbies.

Arch (cachyos) on my desktop, Debian on my server.
Doesn’t really get any better than those two in my opinion

Really depends on what you do and value. I use lots of kde software, so kde distros are my go to. then one big diffrence between distros is how they get updated. do you want the latest updates asap on the costs of stability, or do you want an effing never crashing distro but lag behind in updates a few months/years, or a middleground.
These are the two points i considered when i choose.

I use Bunsenlabs and like it a lot

Mx

It’s alway weird to me that even though Ubuntu has the largest Linux desktop market share, no one admits to using it.
Anyway, I use Ubuntu because I was doing a lot of ROS development when I last built a machine, and getting ROS running properly on other distros can be a pain.

- And we all know Arch isn't a distro right?