Linux Mint. There was just too much crap on the desktop

The first time I installed Debian on my desktop I didn't do my homework properly. This was a long time ago. It didn't take long for me to realize just how out of date many packages were and that was a deal breaker. I have since used Debian successfully in different contexts, because I knew what to expect. I still wouldn't install Debian stable on my desktop because I prefer to have a more up to date environment. Might try Debian sid one of these days though. But yeah, Debian, great distro, but you need to know what you're getting in to.

Vanilla OS. I loved the idea of having access to so many packaging formats and package managers at my fingertips but maintaining the system, managing everything and keeping in mind all the things that I'm doing was just too much work for me when I just wanted a system that I can use without any hassle. I know immutable distros are quite the buzz these days but it just isn't for me. That was also the time when I was trying to find an Ubuntu based vanilla GNOME distro

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

I honestly don't understand why recent Ubuntu releases are popular. However, I enjoyed it in the early 2000s. There was another popular release a few years ago that had zero hotkeys enabled and I have never felt more disgusted by a release in my life. I can't even remember what it's called, it traumatized me hahaha.

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.

Manjaro. Probably because I tried it with GNOME which isn't for me either.

Mint, Endeavor, Zorin, Ubuntu, probably more I'm forgetting. Landed on Pop!_OS and am mostly happy so far.

I attempted to try Garuda Linux (cinnamon) on a mini PC (Ryzen 5800H based APU), but graphic artefacting was a constant issue as soon as the install started.

After several tries I had to abandon ship and wait till a new release to maybe try again, if I remember. Not exactly "Nope, this one's not for me" as I had yet to properly try it.

Otherwise, I tried Crunchbangplusplus and just gave up for being a bit too minimalist or not yet ready for prime time as I kept geting issues after issues and did not have the patience to wrangle the whole OS for everything from getting network working to audio and screen issues on my system.

Anyways, it is always fun to try new systems/apps/protocols and see where thing are headed towards.

I literally liked parrotOS, but I had other priorities and abandoned it forever

Every single one of them until I hit arch. It just seemed to click and I enjoy the rolling release.

Manjaro. I had previously already used Antergos and Ubuntu, but after Antergos stopped I needed something like it. So I installed Manjaro in my secondary PC (with old components). I constantly got into trouble with the manual kernel version selection thingy. I was used to kernel updates being part of the normal update process, and suddenly I had to manually pick the new one. I constantly ran into incompatibility issues with older or newer kernels, vague update deadlocks where I couldn't update things because they depended in each other, and I absolutely hated having to use a separate program for updating the kernel. Now the PC runs Fedora and I'm liking that a lot more so far...

Ubuntu. I just don't like how they do things. I cant even maintain a repo for the machines i host without putting aside multiple terabytes of space. So to me they cant even make it reasonably easy for me to help them and be self reliant on their ecosystem.

Never tried regular Arch after trying Black Arch, so not sure if they're the same feel, but after realizing the work it would take just to be given the capability to resize windows in the UI instead of just coming with drag and resize out of the box, Black Arch was a huge no go for me... Which kept me from wanting to touch regular Arch, lol. That being said, I go nope to Ubuntu the most. Gentoo is my favorite and is what my server has been running for the past decade without any kind of issue, but for laptop and daily use, I use Mint. Been on that one for about a decade now too... Used to use Peppermint (that still a thing?) and Suse the most before those.

KDE. Not a distro, but I can't get on with it. Too much screen real estate used by flashy things, and everything moves. I want instant transitions not a shwoosh. It's probably all toggleable, but I don't want to fiddle with it for every install or release.

Anything that isn't debian-like. I'm just very used to It and can't make myself learn anything else.

RHEL, SELinux sucks and I hate it.

Ubuntu. I hated not being able to customize certain things and it had some interesting bugs on my hardware. Switching to a different distro solved those issues

I have liked Ubuntu based distros until they release a major update. They are aimed at beginners and they work fine for that. If you use one to the end of support, the updater will say that your software is up to date because there are no new updates.

You have to check the website to find out you've reached the end of support, and to get instructions on how to update.

That is an awful user expierence for beginnners, and a great way to have users using vulnerable software without knowing about it.

I've switched to rolling releases for this exact reason.

All but Arch. Find commands much easier to remember and me having dyslexia and ADHD my memory is shocking.

Anything that isn't Arch.

• Ubuntu's package managers won't stop fighting with each other so I can't complete an upgrade easily. Also, I hate apt. Trusting prebuilt binaries from PPAs seems a little dangerous to me compared to trusting build scripts in the AUR, so I don't feel comfortable with that. I do like it otherwise, though.
• Linux Mint is fine, I guess, but no Wayland yet and I don't like Cinnamon. Same PPA issues. Has some more outdated packages than Ubuntu.
• openSUSE is great, but the package managers won't stop fighting with each other and it's lacking a few packages. I like the Open Build System a lot less than the AUR.
• Fedora is fine, while missing some packages, but it broke on me after a week and I had no idea how to fix it so I stopped using it.
• Pop_OS makes everything about GNOME worse.
• Debian's packages are too old.
• Manjaro is more work than Arch and the packages are out of sync with the AUR.
• The packages I want aren't in Solus. Is this distro even still around?

And for distros I won't consider trying:

• Gentoo is too much work.
• Qubes is too much work and I can't play games on it.
• I don't like any of the ZorinOS modifications and the packages are old.

OpenSUSE Tumbleweed--coming from Arch, it just felt so refined and ready to go right out of the box. Then I started installing programs and ran into dependency hell--now on EndeavourOS with the AUR which is great

Additionally, the combination of terminal + GUI to do things just felt wrong

Void Linux with musl. I wanted to try setting up a distro with Musl, but many things I use daily simply don't work with it, and the hassle of troubleshooting everything was a bit too much. I went back to Fedora Workstation, and I'll likely stay on it for my workstation (though I'll switch to Fedora Kinoite when Fedora 40 releases). I also use Fedora Server for my personal server, since it's very familiar to me, and there's not a huge point in switching to CentOS anymore with the recent changes, so I'll probably just stick to it.

I've tried both LMDE and Debian itself, but I think I just ended up frustrated at the age of software in the repos and how much stuff relies on Ubuntu specific stuff.

Way back in the day I was an Ubuntu user, but then everyone simultaneously decided that gnome 2 was too old and that touch interfaces were the priority. So I now use Mint and Cinnamon.

Arch\Endeavor, I more preferred the polished experience of Fedora Silverblue and Debian\Mint.