Void Linux for the arch and gentoo crowd. It's a system that can be assembled more cohesively.

Nix and Guix - the ideas they bring to the table are revolutionary. I prefer Guix due to its use of Scheme (guile). But Nix is more mature and has more packages.

Whenever somebody recommends NixOS, I just want to spam the comments with Guix. I prefer configs I can understand, and I think lisp makes that easier. Other than syntax, the only thing I see is people complaining about the free-oftware-only. But the recently hyped distrobox solves that (together with the nonguix repo). Yet nobody recommends guix in all these "immutable" distro threads.

In my opinion Guix is the best mix of:

• Arch (rolling release),

• NixOS ("immutable", atomic updates , rollback, reproducible, declarative configs)

• Gentoo (source code based, write your own package definitions for any source code you find),

with some lispy syntax.

Plain ol Debian

EndeavorOS btw.

Mint is surprisingly loved and disliked from what I have seen. Having used it since 2007 I am in the category that likes it for what it is. But I am somewhat surprised by the open hostility it gets for simply existing. Main arguments being that it is a dinosaur, uses X11, should not exist because anything not KDE or GNOME is just diluting desktop Linux and is part of the problem. It has no fancy corporate sponsor, it has a small team, and it for sure has warts, but you can claw Linux Mint from my cold dead hard drive because I have distro hopped like an addict and it just checks the boxes for me. It shows up and works, even on newer hardware with a little tweaking here and there, but I can use Nvidia, find network printers without effort, scan, install and update flatpak, backup the system, game, and get actual work done that is not fiddle farting around with esoteric configs all the time. I can post on actual forums with actual users on it and not some discord where someone will just post memes over my questions. I have a strong feeling it will exist for a long while given it's history. And it is mind numbingly borning as an OS. I just sit down and compute, what a concept.

All of them, thanks a lot for all the Devs hard work, I've tried and loved so many distros that I can't choose any of them but lately I have been using cachyos which is a clean and fast arch based distro.

Linux Mint Debian Edition.

Like Peppermint this is a fantastic distro for anyone wanting to use Debian without the pain of self installing. Plus you always have the latest cinnamon.

It's also good for anyone wanting to get away from Ubuntu all together.

I'd also like to get away from the stigma that mint is only a newbie distro. It's not. It's full fat Linux so pros can use it too, and should. It's very reliable, fast and use friendly.

Above all, it's true FOSS and LMDE is 100% community 💪

Hannah Montana Linux

Bazzite, a gaming-oriented immutable distro with up to date Fedora packages and kernel, a lot of the kernel patches you'd want for gaming, automatic daily updates in the background, the option of installing the Nix package manager and Distrobox out of the box. They even have a Steam Deck version that works just like stock UI/UX wise but with all the added goodies.

Plus, on rpm-ostree/ublue-os as a whole, it just amazes me to no end you can basically look at deploying a distro as if it's a git repo these days. Wanna try Gnome? Rebase to the corresponding image and reboot, your data is still there. Don't like it? Quickly rollback or just pick the previous entry on GRUB. Incredible stuff, I'm sticking with those if I can help it for the foreseeable future.

Arch. Some of its users take this distro for granted a lot of times but it only goes downhill from here once you start looking at other distros.

Tumbleweed. Solid, Automated QA testing.

Chimera Linux. Security-related compilation flags go brrr. No systemd.

Maybe we'll see SerpentOS sometime before this decade ends but who knows.

On a side note. Aeon 1.0 if/when released, can't wait to see how it all turns out. Especially if they manage to integrate BTRFS snapshots with systemd-boot entries.

Puppy. Tiny, quick, hard to break, runs on everything.

Honestly I've really enjoyed Zorin. It's made life simple when it comes to migrating friends and family to Linux. Specifically the way they handle fonts and scaling in office programs when opening Microsoft files. It's been easy to get my wife to get off of windows after they started bombarding her with adds on her fuckin desktop screen.

OpenWrt

I don't think Arch needs more recognition; it seems to be doing just fine. It's been my daily driver on desktop and laptop for years, and on my cloud servers for a little longer than that.

Chimera Linux is doing some novel stuff, rather than the same old reflavoring of other distros; it's one I'm keeping my eye on.

I'm running Artix on a laptop; that's a good one for people wanting to escape the Poettering hive-mind. I'm running EndeavourOS on my desktop, and love it. TBH I should have done it three other way round; Artix is too fussy for a dynamic environment like a laptop.

Void, Slackware, Alpine, Gentoo, Devuan (although I'd like for them to remove even the slightest semblance of systemd), FreeBSD

Qubes

Pop_os!

Like why is ubuntu still the newbie friendly distro to recommend? I feel like pop_os is a no brainer, and yet i never see it mentioned 😂

Edit: just look at this post, im the only mention 😂

Bedrock

MX

VanillaOS. Perhaps not quite ready for prime time, but in a sea of distros where the only difference is a slightly different default config, VanillaOS is doing something distinct and different.

+1 for Peppermint. I installed it on a thumb drive and always carry it with me while travelling. This way I can boot it on the company laptop to safely steam video and browse social media while not touching the (encrypted) company disk.

All distributions of free, open-source and user-empowering software like Linux are great and deserve recognition. Whether it's simple, new user-friendly distros like Linux Mint that make the transition process from proprietary garbage like Windows as easy as possible or advanced distros that are meant for power users like Gentoo, Arch or Void Linux. But these specifically deserve more recognition in my opinion:

Gentoo. People hate it for being hard to install or because it's source based, but it allows you to customize everything, including build options for programs etc. It empowers users and teaches them a little about how their system works. Gentoo doesn't tell the user what to do, the user is in full control of their system. ChromeOS is based on it, because it offers infinite flexibility and customizability.

Also, Tails OS. It's what keeps many oppressed journalists and activists anonymous and secure, and it's what Edward Snowden used to inform the public about the horrible things going on at the NSA. The same goes for Qubes OS and Whonix.

I was a Arch Linux fan for at least 5 years. Tried all the main ones except gentoo. Kept coming back to Arch. But now I'm one week into using NixOS. I don't think I'm ever going back. It has completely blown my mind, and fixes every minor thing I didn't like about arch. Mainly how package dependencies work. I'm sure there will be a downside somewhere, but so far the only issue I've had is just trying to learn how to config everything.

TLDR: NixOS. I don't know how I didn't know about it till recently. Seems like it would be a lot more popular than it is.

Artix btw.

I can't say how popular it is amongst Linux users/fans, but Sparky is pretty cool. I had it on my shitty laptop for a while because I need a distro that worked with low ram and storage.

Also, not Linux based, but I'd love to see more work done on the Amiga based AROS. It's hella niche, but I'd work on it if I had the knowhow and skills.

dietpi. besides rpi and other sbc, there's also vm images and it can be put right on x86 or x64 pc, too.

NixOS

Maybe it has more recognition than I'm aware, but Fedora has been really good to me since 2018!

Just to be an absolute rebel; Solus

I stopped looking at PepperMint when the founder passed away. It was a sad day.

Another sad day was when they could no longer keep using LXDE because it fell out of support. Very unfortunate

Maybe it's just me, but folks seem to hate ZorinOS for some reason. Which imo, is a perfect distro as is for baby penguins.

Qubes OS