One distro for the next five years?

idk bro I've been running the same arch install for the last 6 years and I will run it for the next 5 as well.

NixOS. I came a long way and it combines the best of modular, customizable and immutable.

Depends on what I'm doing.

Workstation or server will be Debian. Personal devices are either Debian or Arch.

I'd prioritize Debian if I could only pick one for all options.

Been using Debian stable since Hans reiser got locked up.

It’s fine and it will continue to be fine.

I asked myself this exact question back in 2020 and chose Arch. At the time I had been using Fedora since 2017. What I ultimately wanted was a system I could install once and continually evolve rather than replace. Several years on, I’m still running that same installation and it has never given me a reason to reconsider....

Mint. It just works.

Want to live on the wild side? Use the Debian based version.

No Tumbleweed fans? :/

They (openSUSE) make a lot of default decisions for you, but it's really close to 0 maintenance if you lack the time (or just cannot even for months at a time) & still a rolling release, zypper, etc.

Gentoo <3

If I had to limit myself to one distro for all tasks, can't go wrong with Debian.

Debian is kind of too big to fail. Maybe NixOS if you want something that will almost certainly gain popularity in the future.

Don't think though that distros are the layer which you want to look at. Lots of stuff happens at the level of DEs, drivers and individual apps, which sure is preconditioned by the distro you choose but at the same time not that strict of a thing. You can get anything working provided you have the time.

x11 is still in its last round before retirement it seems, using Wayland is going to future proof what you've got majorly.

My 2c. Feel free to critique.

After 20 years of Gentoo, I don't see myself switching in the next five. Comfortable, capable, flexible.

Arch. Been 13 years on it. Aur and Wiki are the best resources any Linux distro have.

Well, I've been using Ubuntu for the last 20 years (god, it hurts to say that) and only started playing with NixOS, 3 years ago.

Between the two I like NixOS better, but if I had to choose only one it would probably be Ubuntu. When things break, I know how to fix it. Usually without having to spend 2 hours of reading and trying to understand the documentation.

The one I've been using for the last 17 years, Gentoo

I've been daily driving Debian Stable for the past 5 years and I am more than happy to continue for the next five. It's also on nearly all of my machines and the majority of my VMs.

I'm honestly not very keen on the latest features or hardware, but I am very keen on my software being predictable and consistent, so the Debian release cycle is perfect for me.

Debian. The answer is always Debian.

Debian or ubuntu on my server/docker image. Maybe alpine for docker.

EndeavourOS on my desktop/laptop.

For a headless server: Ubuntu. Solid, reliable and stable for many years.

For gaming: Pop OS looks promising now that cosmic has been released, however I’d probably stick with Fedora as it’s leading edge and has served me well so far.

If I had to pick one, Arch. I already use it a lot, so it's familiar. I know my way around the package manager and how to create packages, so even when things aren't available for Arch out of the box, I can make it work.

It'd be kind of a hassle trying to keep anywhere close to 100% server uptime, but for my own personal stuff that shouldn't be that big of an issue, as I can fix it when I have the time.

For desktop, I basically can't do stable release. I frequently mess with new projects requiring the latest versions of everything, which is a near impossible task on stable-release distros.

Familiar

So, mint with cinnamon

I would go with (semi)rolling, either openSUSE Tumbleweed/Slowroll or Fedora. I prioritize fast updating distros because they are better for security (many vulnerabilities go unnoticed because the full scope isnt understood and they are deemed normal bugs), and (unlike Windows) updates on Linux are a good thing, bring new features, crash/bug fixes, and optimizations.

Fedora is very popular, has wide software support, and is very stable. openSUSE is also still pretty popular, (even its rolling edition) is quite stable as well, has good software support, and YaST allows you to do graphical administration on your system. Both take security seriously and use SELinux for security policies.

If you care about security, use Brace for automatic system hardening. It has been developed for years by the former DivestOS dev Tavi, supporting many distros.

For my desktop: openSUSE Tumbleweed/Slowroll. I like to keep my desktop as up-to-date as possible, and openSUSE is pretty good. Sure, there's the occasional udev update that breaks inputs in the desktop environment, but that's the other side of the coin.

For my laptop and other uses: Debian. The old reliable doesn't mind if I don't update as often, and unlike rolling releases, updates aren't wont to break anything. In a pinch I could use it on the desktop too.

Fedora. It's so easy to use and so stable. Unfortunately my bleeding-edge NVIDIA graphics card does not play nice with it, so I have been stuck with arch.

I am using Fedora Server edition on my home server and EndeavourOS on my main. I see no reason to change that.

If I had to choose only one I would go with stable first.

Debian testing, then upgrade it as they make major releases. I have yet to have a single Debian upgrade go wrong on Desktop or Server. It is basically magic.

I run multiple servers all Debian desktop is Cachy becasue Endeavour broke.

Looking forward to cachy server.

But i think for servers a little more reservation is required.

Last year I would have said Arch. I have been running it for over 15 years with some small breaks to try stuff, or with some machines that have company issued OS. But I have been toying with NixOS, and honestly I'm loving it. If I had to choose only one and couldn't change it it would have to be Arch, I know I can get 5 years with it easily, but if I was setting a new system today it would almost assuredly be NixOS, I might regret that 3 years down the line when there's something I can't get to work, but the more I play around, the less likely I think that would be, and the more comfortable I feel that I will eventually migrate to NixOS fulltime

I used Manjaro for the last 5 years, and it still works as it did on the first day, so I'd chose it for the 5 coming years. I know the cool kids hate it, but in my case it's the right spot.

Debian stable. It just works.

That very much depends on my use case. For example, I have a laptop that needs to have maximum uptime, so I use a periodic atomic distro that's just under bleeding edge.

For my daily driver, I like to tinker and customize, so I trade that stability for openness and a bleeding edge, relying upon btrfs snapshots as a first-line backup should the OS shit itself.

Reproducibility. If I'm spending months configuring my setup then I want it to stay exactly the same and easily rebuildable even if I switch/upgrade my computer. NixOS is the only answer.

I've tried just about every distro over the past decade, and I always come back to Ubuntu. It commands the largest share of the Linux market by a large margin, especially when you consider its derivative distributions like Mint and PopOS. It also has excellent support from hardware vendors, specifically NVIDIA in my case.

I’ve been on Linux for 14 years now and all the projects I’ve used as my daily driver are still kicking and doing great. Arch, Fedora, Debian, and NixOS. I’m on nix and I’d happily stay here ten more years if the governance stuff settles down, that concerns me. But from a technical and package availability perspective it’s amazing

If l have a nice pc definitly qubes os

nixos, same as the last 10 years. more packages than ever on it, and I'm better at wrangling nix stuff now for my own packages. Besides my personal machines, I also use it to admin several servers for work. All the config for all the machines goes into git and I can see exactly what changed and when, configuration-wise.

Stable and rolling I guess. Its kinda funny as I don't change very often but I would not like the idea of not being able to change my distro. im going to be making a serious stab at iso based one in the future. i would say soon but my soon with this stuff can be quite awhile.

Void. Second choice, debian.

Best of both worlds -- Debian + Nix home-manager. Debian gives you incredible stability and plenty of usage resources. Nix gives you anything too new for Debian and functionally confines the more experimental end of your config to user space.

Depends from wish of tinkering otherwise nixos very stable and not breaking between upgrades at all

Kubuntu. It just works for me. It might not have the latest plasma , but i really like kubuntu.

For server I can vouch for debian or rocky great distributions. For workstation or laptop I use endeavour os. Super stable and just works. I did use Manjaro in the past but every once in awhile it would break and because it is a bit different than arch the solutions would not work straight away.

I do not game that much except for some fallout every once in awhile, but that works too on endeavour

Debian is a strong contender but the past six months I've been using nixos as my daily driver and loving it.

Spending time thinking about which distro to use is time that could have been spent learning how Linux works as a whole.

I still like Arch the most. Since ~22 years now.

NixOS unstable. I like being able to define my system as code. I also don't need that high of stability and would rather have more up to date software in most cases. I have thought about using stable releases for things like basic http and DNS servers but haven't gotten around to it yet.

Server or workstation?

My priorities:

• Secure. Unlike popular belief, the fact that the worlds infrastructure basically runs on Linux does not imply that your average Desktop Linux distro enjoys the same level of scrutiny when it comes to its security. Hence, the security-conscious should carefully pick a distro that can handle their threat model. Or, at least harden it to their liking.
• Stateless. Conventionally, you will be met with a (relatively) minimal system after installation. After which you're expected to configure it to your liking and go smooth sailing afterwards. Occasionally, you might (un)install stuff and/or modify settings; but nothing out of the ordinary, really. While applying some of these changes might seem trivial, they (kinda) lead your system to accumulate cruft. This cruft might seem innocuous, but it's exactly why your system seems so fresh after a reinstall. Foregoing this altogether is referred to as going stateless. This is done by declaring a desired state and 'flushing' all changes that have not been declared. Many other benefits are associated with this, but I digress...

The above^[So, without even going into release cadence etc.] already dictates the use of NixOS with the impermanence and nix-mineral modules.

Ubuntu and essentially every other answer is wrong.

if I had to bet on one distro for the next 5 years and I had to stay on it, it would be Ubuntu.

I run Arch right now but I would never bet on Arch.