Title is quite self-explanatory, reason I wonder is because every now and then I think to myself “maybe distro X is good, maybe I should try it at some point”, but then I think a bit more and realise it kind of doesn’t make a difference - the only thing I feel kinda matters is rolling vs non-rolling release patterns.
My guiding principles when choosing distro are that I run arch on my desktop because it’s what I’m used to (and AUR is nice to have), and Debian on servers because some people said it’s good and I the non-rolling release gives me peace of mind that I don’t have to update very often. But I could switch both of these out and I really don’t think it would make a difference at all.
Depends on the use case.
I use Nobara on my gaming rig because I wanted up-to-date packages without being on the cutting edge like Arch. And I also wanted all the lower level gaming optimizations without having to set it all up manually. Plus, KDE is soooooo nice.
Debian on my servers because I want extreme stability with a community-driven distro.
Linux Mint on my personal laptops, because I like having the good things from Ubuntu without all the junk. Plus the Cinnamon desktop environment has been rock stable for me. It’s my goto workhorse distro. If I don’t need something with a specialized or specific use case, I throw Mint on.
Arch on my old junker devices that I don’t use much because I like making them run super fast and look sexy and testing out different WM’s and DE’s.
Void on my junkers that I actually want to use frequently because it’s super performant and light on resources without needing to be built manually like Arch.
Ubuntu server if I am feeling stanky and lazy and just need something quick for a testing VM or container host in my home lab.
I’ve been on Mint with Cinnamon for about 5 years across desktops, laptops, and home server
I had to update a machine with a version of Mint that was EoL this year, so I just upgraded through several major versions in a row with no issues
It was interesting seeing how much more polished each upgrade process was