I tried over 20 different distros. I'm mostly into Debian/Ubuntu based ones. My favourites are:

  • Mint Cinnamon/Mate
  • Sparkylinux MinimalGUI (Openbox + Tint2 panel)
  • Linux Lite (Xfce)
  • Pop! _OS

I tried Solus few years ago when it was quite new and I liked some ideas, but could't get my stuff working. So I used Mint for years, then Sparkylinux, because I could get most FPS in games on my lousy hardware. I was curious about other and independent distros and Solus isn't some obscure and barebone one that needs serious tweaks. I tried it and I was suprised how good it looks and how well Mate edition works on a potato PC. Also it works great with Wine, Steam, Snap and Flatpak. Linux Lite had problems with running Windoze stuff for some reason, even when it's very close to Ubuntu. My Linux distro has to look nice, be fairly lightweight and must run Windoze/Steam games without much hassle. Even if I use Linux since 2010 I still prefer stuff that works out of the box and is somehow familiar. I'm really suprised how familiar Solus is even if it's not Debian/Ubuntu and eopkg was quite easy for me to get into after years with apt.

Lucien_Lachance Doesn't Solus have a built in rollback feature? I believe stateless is the term

    a month later

    Fedora rawhide
    OpenSuse Tumbleweed
    Solus
    EndeavorOS
    ArcoLinux

    Either ArcoLinux or Manjaro for me if I hadn't found Solus. Still find more stability with Solus thought.

    I replied to this two years ago. And I thought about it a long time since this thread keeps bouncing around. My answer is still the same as in 2019: Win 7.

    (I tried a lot of ugly distros because I needed a foss life, but solus was the easiest on the eyes. an aesthetic marvel. If that's shallow, then I am shallow).

      brent My answer is still the same as in 2019: Win 7.

      Well, you can't really use Win 7 anymore, it's not supported iirc, so huge security concerns...
      Choose from Windows 10 or Windows 11 😉

          Solarmass I would stubbornly use 7 with as much protection as possible. 10 is out of the question. Thankfully I don't have to do either!🙂

              I am trying to stick with "original" distros and not spins (Debian, Fedora/CentOS, Arch, openSUSE, Solus etc.). That decreases the selection a lot but makes it easier to choose a distro without the need of endless distro hopping 😄

              Currently, I am looking into openSUSE Tumbleweed. The syntax of zypper is intuitive just as in Solus. I am still not certain, if I really want to go with rolling release or static release model (e.g. openSUSE Leap). Arch is nice too by the cryptic syntax really bothered me.

              So, instead of Solus I would go with openSUSE 😄

                brent I've updated my pick a couple times since I originally posted in this thread. While I still think Elementary is beautiful and love what they are trying to accomplish, I'm going to have to say, it's not for me right now. Pop! is amazing, but I've really grown to love KDE and the Qt frameworks. It would probably be Lubuntu or a rolling Plasma DE.

                    GermanTux I keep trying SUSE in VMs and while I do like their package manager, it's just not as fast or intuitive to me as Solus. That said, having run both Tumbleweed and Leap for extended periods, I think I'd go with Tumbleweed as I prefer the rolling model over the LTS model. Tumbleweed is still pretty solid and stable from my experience. Leap is okay for a production machine that you absolutely need stability on, you just have to learn to deal with some outdated things, kind of like Debian.

                      Brucehankins Pop and MX were the longest running auditions I held at weeks...but not really there. When I was brand new, a linux newborn, I did my research and fancied myself a red hat/rhel-type user. Seemed to agree with me. But I was not smart enough to get it installed at all after several attempts! Then a light bulb went off: "why don't I look for a distro that isn't forked from anything? just independent w/their own philosphy?".....

                        People have their favorite non-Solus distros -- for whatever reasons -- but I personally classify Linux distros into two categories: Solus and Non-Solus. It's hard for me to say what I'd be using if not for Solus, because I can't imagine not using Solus.

                        At 74, most of the folks who create and maintain Solus are considerably younger than I am, so I'm pretty sure that I'll be able to use Solus on all my computers for the rest of my days! And I find that comforting.

                        i think id dive in the the arch world now, probably endeavour. liked opensuse tumbleweed a lot but i just dont trust the packman repos

                          GermanTux just that i had 2 very odd experiences. i dont know for what caused it though. but i would feel uncomfortable doing online banking etc.
                          it was probably nothing, but as i said, you gotta feel comfortable and im not

                            I'm along the lines of @WetGeek but with the latest post IRT to direction of Budgie vis a vis Gnome, I tried Bohdi Linux on my experimental laptop. Quirky but cool little distro. Still trying to figure it out but super friendly community.

                            Distros I am currently using:
                            Arch/Garuda
                            Arch/Manjaro
                            Arch/Salient
                            Debian
                            Debian/KDE Neon
                            Debian/Kubuntu
                            Debian/Kubuntu on ZFS
                            Debian/Linux Mint
                            Debian/Ubuntu Unity
                            Debian/Zorin
                            Fedora
                            Fedora/CentOS Stream
                            Gentoo
                            openSuSE
                            Slackware/Salix
                            Void
                            GhostBSD


                            You know what they all have in common? They support advanced filesystems with compression, de-duplication, and snapshots; cron; and generally support stateful configuration so hardware quirks only have to be compensated-for a single time.

                            It might be tempting to write off my complaint as being that of an advanced long-time Linux user who likes things to work the way they did back in the day, but I'm absolutely not. I've only been using Linux on a daily basis for 2 months. The distros I listed above are the ones that didn't fight me while I was setting them up to work the way I want them to. (okay, Gentoo was a pain in the ass, but only because it doesn't do anything by itself, not because it tries to prevent the user from doing things.)

                            Anyway, if you're looking for recommendations, I recommend Kubuntu, Manjaro, or KDE Neon. Those are near the top of the list on DistroWatch for a reason, as I discovered firsthand over the past couple months.