Linux

Used it at work and wanted to learn on my own. Then installed Ubuntu as a noob, and was like "why tf is everyone still using Windows?"

I use Devuan and TDE because the setup is so incredible boring and dusty that i do not have to get acquainted with anything new (SystemD, Wayland... whatever hipster WM is currently cool) and keep working with the tools i like.

I'm an old coot and comes from preGUI area. My first unix experience were on 80x25 amber terminal. Then X came, I used mwm/twm/fvwm and things like this, it was very tricky to configure to your taste, mainly with config file, you wanted your xeyes, xload, xbiff, xclock etc at this place, transparent, no border, etc, very complicated. Linux didn't exist.

Then Windows came... and kind of dominated the world with win3/95/98/etc. and at the time linux desktop were still not perfect + you had all kind of driver problems/missing.

As a lot of people I was used to windows GUI so I chose Xfce (also because France). Simple GUI, a button menu bottom left, an app bar, and systray icons and clock bottom right. Don't need anything else.

I tried LFS, Arch, Cinnamon Mint, I tried Ubuntu, I tried tile, but nah, the simpler the better, Xfce it is.

I am using MX Linux for years now, Debian based, always up to date, .deb packages, no systemd, no snap, no flatpak.

When I was new to the Linux desktop world (late 90s to 200x) I tried lots of different distros and (X11) window managers and tools and whatnot. Changed themes a lot. And so on. And I think there's value in all that, because it expands your horizon of what's possible on the desktop, how different UI/UX paradigms work out in practice for you, and you learn how to use different environments.

On the other hand, there's also value in having a consistent, well-integrated desktop environment. It can mean less "pain points" in various circumstances, and it's also efficient when multiple programs share the same libraries or code base instead of having separate tools all around.

In the end, it comes down to what works best for you. But this might also change over time. For example I'm really considering switching to Cosmic once it's mature. I'm also considering taking a look at Niri because it seems well thought-out. But currently I feel cozy using Plasma at home and Gnome at work because Plasma is currently the least-annoying and at work I still use Gnome because it's been historically more stable than Plasma for me. I've tweaked Plasma's hotkeys so they work more like Gnome's and since I also need to use a couple of Windows-based systems at work I've also configured common Windows shortcuts like Super+L, Super+E, Super+R so that they all behave the same everywhere.

Oh, and my distro is Arch everywhere because I've used it for ages now and I like its technical simplicity, stability and modularity. It's the one distro that gets in my way the least.

I think one should learn enough to be flexible and be able to use everything, while also not being too narrow-minded and just focus on one solution too much. What works best for you now might not be the best choice for you in a couple of years.

I use just Fedora with GNOME I ditched windows because of its bad interface and UX, first I tried linux mint, liked it but I wanted more, so I installed Nobara with KDE (but quickly begun rising hyprland), my rice was almost done, than I updated my system and its all broke, after that I decided that I just want a stable DE and went to Fedora KDE spin, overtime I noticed more and more bugs and Windows style interface bothered me more and more, so I decided to stop my unreasonable hate on GNOME and try it, and I quickly loved it. Now my plans is maybe install Fedora Silverblue (or GNOME OS once it will have stable release) and run it forever

EDIT: a little bit more about my setup. I use mostly flatpaks bacuse of sandboxing, 5 little extensions that don't change intended GNOME workflow and glfw + sdl compiled to have no window decorations (because they useless in games imo) (they not installed in system)

For my gaming rig I use Mint Cinnamon with the Xanmod kernel and kisak-mesa PPA for bleeding edge performance but otherwise a very low-maintenance, convenient system.

For my personal laptop (ThinkPad T480s) I use Arch with KDE. For my various mini PCs used as servers, I use primarily Debian derivatives, except for my Mac Mini which runs Asahi Arch so I could optimize the use of its 8G of RAM.

I use Arch with KDE Plasma. It just works.

I use Linux because it is free and good enough to do most stuff I want to do on a computer.

I use windows at work because I get paid - so from my perspective it is cheaper than free. It makes it frustrating to do the stuff I'm supposed to do but my employers are fucking idiots so it doesn't really matter.

Alpine Linux + LabWC – as I update my hardware, I seem to end up paring down my software – the more powerful the computer is, the less use I make of its capabilities 🤷 – I’ve worked with Macs and Windows, and settled on Linux more for its simplicity than anything – I don’t have any problem with MacOS or Windows themselves so much as the companies behind them

Alpine is a nice, clean, lightweight distro that works surprisingly well on a desktop despite the whingers complaining it’s for containers only … Pop!_OS ⇒ Debian Stable ⇒ Alpine (with Gentoo back in the dawn of history)

LabWC is the spiritual successor to Openbox, a nice simple stacking window manager that I’ve added a handful of tiling keybinds – I’ve added utility programs as I’ve wanted them rather than going for the cohesiveness of a proper desktop environment … Gnome ⇒ Xfce ⇒ LabWC (and with Openbox way back when)

Debian because it's like Ubuntu (one of the most popular distros, with tons of software targeting it) minus the Canonical stuff I don't need. And newer Debians even have Wi-Fi out of the box

xfce or KDE because GNOME is just too far-out for me. They wanted to get rid of tray icons and stuff. They keep moving things around, seemingly for the sake of moving things around, or maybe to look more like phones. I don't need my desktop to be a phone.

apt isn't the greatest package manager but, there's a lot to be said for popularity, and no matter how many times someone said "Don't upgrade Arch the wrong way" I kept breaking my Arch install. Debian works because apt doesn't let me accidentally break it. (I think I was doing the pacman equivalent of apt update and then apt install. I don't know why the fuck that breaks a PM. The point of a PM is to keep yourself from breaking stuff. If I wanted broken shit I wouldn't use the PM. On two occasions Arch also soft-bricked itself because I updated pacman into a state where it could no longer run. This seems like one of the simplest things a good PM should prevent. Whereas with apt, I'm not sure it's been updated ever. It ain't perfect but it's predictable.)

I use Arch with Gnome because this is something I've installed years ago and it just keeps working with no issues.

I used to run SUSE on a laptop i only used once every three years or so. Because of the "full open source" principle i couldn't run a lot of online Videos because the codecs were free but proprietary. When i decided to get a new computer as my tower was getting 15, i wanted to switch to a Linux distro as my daily system. Bought a laptop without windows preinstalled and decided to roll with Manjaro as it has KDE and was recommended as suitable for gaming.

Works fine for the most part. The last wave of updates caused some fuss with the desktop, but i can just do everything important from the terminal, while waiting for the next release.

i started with slackware ~2003 and moved to gentoo in 2005. it was very transparent to me as a newbie. use flags and compilation from source were way simpler to me than mysterious precompiled binaries. also ndiswrapper worked with my wireless chipset on gentoo. that helped

Windows doesn't have a real choice of desktop environments. So I moved to Linux 15 years ago. I'm not in IT and always use a mouse. Importantly for me, I've never needed the CLI, despite people telling me that's impossible. Plasma lets me tweak it to my needs. I use Kubuntu, yet don't care about what's below the desktop environment. Happy to change distros.

Well, I use Void Linux, Fedora, and NetBSD. All for different purposes. I just love the freedom to modify my system 'till my heart's content. I'm generally a tiling WM (sdorfehs) on laptops and openbox/lxde on desktop.

I appreciate minimal clean code.

I primarily want something simple I can bend to my will, and secondly I want a good out of the box experience. For me that's been Arch + KDE. The wiki and AUR are great!

I would say every step of the way I just wanted more and more ownership of my system. I make it, I break it. One specific experience which drove me to that camp was the time I had to jailbreak my iPhone and dig through files to disable some deprecated parental control setting... give me ownership over my stuff!

i use gentoo now from arch becuase i wanted to use portage and be able to control dependancys and i run chadwm (fork of dwm) for added features and the rest of the things i use like st dmenu neovim all are part of the workflow ive made

I use Mint, with little customization.

Mint basically gets out of my way, I care about the ability to get my work done.

I also prefer the windows paradigm rather than the Mac paradigm. IMHO Mint does it better than windows now.