One that might be controversial: OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. I still have a lot of respect for this distro and I really wanted to like it but it's just not for me. It's the fact that major updates could occur any day of the week, which could be time-consuming to install or they could change the features of the OS. It always presented a dilemma of whether to hold back updates which might include holding back critical updates.

So rolling distros aren't for me, everyone expects to run in to some occasional issues with Arch, but TW puts a lot of emphasis on testing and reliability, so I thought it might be for me. But the reality is I much prefer the release cycle and philosophy of Fedora, I think that strikes the best balance.

Arch. Rolling release is too much maintenance and AUR can be a pain. I do like the minimalist approach though.

For those of a similar opinion and aren't familiar with it, check out Void. Also a minimalist rolling release, but aims for more stable packages so less updating. Decent package selection in their repos as well.

Ubuntu Reason : Canonical

Ubuntu, because snaps break shit and don't work right a lot of the time, also they left people hanging with 32 bit support which isn't great (for being a Legacy OS for weak computers it's not a great look for them, or all the Linux distros that followed them).

There were a lot of problems with Fedora and CentOS, none of them as bad as Ubuntu though. Most were either instability or software availability due to lacking RPM versions of the software I needed.

Arch itself hasn't given me many problems but it is ideologically problematic for a lot of reasons (mainly the elitism) and it is also a rolling release which isn't great if you don't like being a guinea pig and getting software before all the bugs have been ironed out.

To all gentoo detractors.... 20 years ago compiling a browser would take 5 days (as in 24 x 5 hours...) So you are not allowed to complain TODAY about compile times ahahahaahaha ahahaha ahah haha aaaaaaaaah ಠ_ಠ

Alpine. It’s powerful and fills a need in a specific use case. Just not my need, nor my use case, and that’s OK.

My docker usage is mostly testing and validation that when I run the code on the actual hardware, it will work as expected. I tend to want the container to match the target environment.

"Not exactly Linux", but FreeBSD. Gave it a couple tries but gave up when I realized its minimalism is a placebo at best and its "super security features" can (also) be achieved on any other standard Linux distribution.

Ubuntu

ZorinOS. I tried to install it on my spouse's computer with all modern, well-supported AMD hardware. Had nothing but problems, to the point that the computer was barely usable. WiFi broken, GUI was laggy, repositories were buggy. When I finally got the system somewhat stable, I didn't like the interface at all. Styles were bland, icons dull, everything just seemed clunky and awkward.

For a distro advertised as a beginner-friendly and pay-for-polish system, I was very dissapointed.

Might have been a fluke, I don't think my experience is standard for Zorin, but it was a really terrible first impression and I never suggest it to Linux-curious folks. Mint or Vanilla Fedora are my go-to for newbs.

Alpine. I actually really like it, but it just doesn't fit any of my use cases.

NIXOS is definitely not for me. The documentation sucks and there are less cumbersome ways to restore a system.

elementary os. Installed it, and noped right out of there the same day. On paper, it should be great. Maybe the execution was flawless for macfans, but it was not for me. I do appreciate how they tried to make an easy transitional Linux for macfans, though, and I do not regret the donation because of that fact.

I tried arch btw.

But didn't like it.

NixOS .. loved the idea but doing configuration all the time for every little thing became too much of a headache.

Ubuntu, tried to install vim 8 when it released, too bad they only update major package versions once every 2 years. Find myself some random dudes repo, great it's vim 8, too bad it was compiled w/o python support... Installed Manjaro (arch based) and never looked back.

Ubuntu. It's just macOS but not as polished

Fedora. Dont get me wrong it is a great Distro but i did not really felt at home when using it.

Fedora. Just feels like I'd be moving to the dnf ecosystem for no reason.

Any distro that uses apt. I'm ok with Fedora and Arch.

NixOS.

Cool package manager but constantly breaking compatibility with none nix package managers really annoyed me. (Ghcup, mason, etc...)

Also how difficult they made compiling software from source. I could live with nix packages if I could also compile the programs I need from source.

Great server os. I don't understand how people use it as a daily driver

Windows 🤣

Debian, don't like apt.
Arch, breaks too much.
NixOs, just don't need the tools it provides.
Any fork of a mainline distro because it's never as good as the root.

I used arch for a while, but got sick of running repairs every few weeks. I use Gentoo now, it's stable and good. I have a fuck ton of ram and a good cpu, I also take advantage of binary packages from time to time. I don't really need to install new things that much after having done the initial install.