@rooster All my servers run plain Debian. But that can be a lot of work to get running on a desktop or laptop without endless tinkering and fighting with drivers. So my laptop and media/gaming PC run Kubuntu. It "just werks" and I happen to like KDE over GNOME. Not sophisticated reasons, but those are mine. :)
@rooster Not necessarily an endorsement, but I use Debian with XFCE as my laptop OS. Not as many bells and whistles, but that also means it's been more stable for me.
I use Ubuntu + XFCE at work. I'm not sure which I prefer, because there's so much overlap between Debian and Ubuntu.
@rooster I'm going to second FreeBSD for servers (got some great survival stories there) but the desktop variety still has issues compelling me to use it. Arch is difficult long term. Deb is a pretty solid base, so I'm currently "eating my own dog food" with Ubuntu Cinnamon (intended for the worst/dumbest of my users because it's windows-esque) and its actually okay. Most of the modern apps I like or want "just work" and WINE and KVM virtaulization fill in the few cracks left over.
@rooster Debian stable for general usage, gaming, science, etc. I've used it for everything and all of my unicorns(developers who are unique and wonderful) swear by it.
You mentioned python, so I would definitely lean away from Mint/Ubuntu environments since they are going to be needlessly heavy for what you likely want to do.
@mentallyalex@rooster I was going to suggest the hybrid Debian-based LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition). Running the latest release now on my laptop and it's great.
@mentallyalex@rooster If you're not into Mint, you won't be into LMDE. It's pretty much regular Mint on the surface but without all the Ubuntu-y bits. Just pure Debian underneath.
I started with Slackware in 1993, so I've seen a lot :) I used a Slackware box as a router to get my roommates online back in the late 90s when we got our first cable modem, and off-the-shelf routers weren't a thing yet.
LMDE is how I got the rest of my family to use anything other than Windows.
@rooster I've actually started using Alma 9 workstation on all my desktops because I just want it to run vim, git, and chrome, and I don't want to deal with a release upgrade in the next 8 years.
You like tiling window managers? If you want to play with something fun and retro have you ever tried window maker?
I3 or anything else I think the power move here is to setup an X server and window manager in the hosted instance somewhere (DO, Linode, Amazon, whatever) then setup a ssh tunnel and port forward, then fire up vnc to access the window manager on the dev box.
@rooster
As someone who stopped loving fixing distros all the time I've been really enjoying fedora, I've set up i3 before but don't use that machine for work anymore so it's just pretty much stock now
@rooster
If you want simple and the OS to get out of the way, choose Fedora. It’s a lot lighter on resources than Ubuntu based distros, and everything works on it. It uses different package types and such to install apps, but Snap and Flatpak are supported. I never have to open the terminal for anything.
@rooster I’m enjoying Fedora Silverblue. Comes with vanilla GNOME and updates are git-like thanks to rpm-ostree. It’s a nice feeling to literally be running today’s OS most days without any of the instability of distributions like Arch.
For me the big advantage is that I only need to know one system. My daily driver uses the same commands as all my LXC or VMs or WSL.
It's a matter of practicality. Or course using something else everywhere offers the same advantage but it's harder to pull off when debian is so ubiquitous
@cfg@rooster
This the correct answer, unless you absolutely need that one weird thing that was just released last week. And even then Debian on the base, and stick the weird stuff in a container.
@rooster you got a lot of good suggestions, so instead I'd just like to give some general advice
Stick to mainstream well-supported and well-documented distros so it's easy to get support. Try out some different distros and DEs in virtual machines so you can find what you like best. Keep your important files on a separate drive so you can hop to another distro if things don't work out
Xorg versus Wayland is confusing and unfortunately a distinction that you will need to worry about (1/2)
@rooster generally any distro will be able to do most things however there are some significant pain points associated with monitors at the moment. Support for HDR, DPI-scaling, color calibration, multiple refresh rates, and so on are still inconsistent across various DEs
On the distro side of things, one of the main things to be aware of are rolling releases versus stable releases
And last I would recommend the subreddit /r/Linux4Noobs for asking questions, they're quite friendly (2/2)
@rooster I've been using Arch for almost 10 years now. I didn't find any other distro that tickles what I need from a distro.
For me, it has been even more stable than Debian stable. Besides that, it's pretty un-opinionated about DE / WM, init systems (systemd vs OpenRC), is rolling release (basically bleeding edge in software version).
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