This is seriously a hot take

This is crazy. You shouldn’t use Ubuntu for anything desktop related. There’s nothing vanilla about vanilla Ubuntu.

(Custom Gnome extensions, patches on top of Gnome, custom sandbox packages that don’t always work, custom apt that refuses to install the real packages in place of snaps, paywalled security patches, should I keep going?)

anything but Ubuntu tbh.

Debian since 1998. No reason to change.

Ubuntu is just Debian with extra steps.... and snaps

Ubuntu sucks

You choose the worst option

Use whatever the fuck you want, you fucking weirdo cultists.

Um, acktually some of us went from vanilla Debian to Nobara to vanilla Debian.

Kubuntu for modern systems, Xubuntu for older systems, Lubuntu for older, low-end systems with limited RAM, Ubuntu server for headless servers.

Stay mad, Ubuntu haters.

I use templeOS btw

Fedora on the right tbh. Even when you chill and get wisdom Canonical and Snap are just a bit too far.

I use fedora because I dont feel like waiting 6 years for new features ;P

If you're a programmer: NixOS.

Define your OS config, which programs to install, and dotfiles in one repo. Install a fresh OS, pull in the repo (nix-shell -p git, because NixOS doesn't come with git >_> ) and run the command to install the whole thing (sudo nixos-rebuild switch --flake .#wodan for me. wodan is just the name of a config - I have multiple all combines into one repo, so I can share configuration between machines).

Took me 17 minutes to set up my laptop exactly the same as my Desktop. Same configuration, applications, and OS settings. It's so fucking nice.

With Windows, that used to take 2 days to download and install everything manually.

Only downside: You'll need to learn Nix-the-language, nix-the-os, and nix-the-terminal-program, which took about a month of deeply digging into the Vimjoyer and LibrePhoenix channels.

Just checked my Mint. Why Cinnamon uses so much VRAM? I have over 1GB idle, without anything running. In my Windows i usually have 400Mb with all things closed.

Mint because the name is fun

Ewbuntu

Mint users make it sound like the distro will literally suck your dick. It's a cult at this point. Forums are filled with issues (which is normal obviously) but nope, "it just works". When it doesn't then that's too bad because as easy as it is to find a vocal Mint user it's much harder to find one who knows anything about Linux.

They should have named Fedora something like "red hat personal" or anything else that doesn't sound like only smelly neckbeards use it and maybe that would be more popular but here we are.

Mint, because Ubuntu Cinnamon sucks

TL;DR: I'm a true Linux noob, and now love and appreciate Linux thanks to openSUSE Tumbleweed. :)

In all seriousness, as a Linux noob, openSUSE Tumbleweed made me actually start to really enjoy using Linux as my main OS. I've fucked up plenty of times, and at that point I would've had to reinstall most other distros, but Snapper came in and saved the day. I'm sure there are plenty of other distros that do snapshots just as well, but this is coming from someone who last tried running Linux 5-6 years ago, and was still fucking my shit up somehow. I've never had the best of luck with Linux, which is why I always stayed on Windows.

Then came Microsoft's ever increasing enshittification, and I saw openSUSE Tumbleweed on the distrowatch website, downloaded it, and here we are 8 months later, and openSUSE has remained my main OS. I only got a desktop for gaming, and it fit the bill almost perfectly. I had to learn some things, that's for sure, but what got me to stay was the stability! I had never used a Linux distro up until that point that made BTRFS and system snapshots the default. This was crucial for someone like me who only dabbled in Linux because I love the idea behind it, I could just never get too far into using it before fucking my shit up!

There are plenty of options that are similar, or maybe even better than openSUSE, but they won my interest and respect for getting a noob like me to truly envelope themselves into Linux.

I'm still nowhere near anything that might resemble your common Linux user, but damn do I really love my computer again now. It's like when I was kid again, and first started using computers, fascinated by what I could do.