For me it’s PeppermintOS.
I started my Linux adventure a few years ago, and haven’t owned a Windows PC since.
I currently use Arch on my main rig, and I wanted to install Linux on two old laptops that I found laying around in my house
I then remembered the first distro I ever used, which is PeppermintOS, and I was amazed at the latest updates they released.
They even have a mini ISO now to do a net-install with no bloat, with a Debian or Devuan base.
Sadly, I believe the founder passed away a few years ago, which is why I was really happy to see the continuation of this amazing project.
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.
Wow. Great to see Chimera Linux on this list, though I do not think it is even out of Alpha yet.
Chimera Linux and Vanilla Linux are two of the distributions that I am most interested in at the moment.
I am also a huge fan of Arch but I typically install EndeavourOS these days. Out of the 80,000 or so Arch packages, EndeavourOS adds only about two dozen more but many of them are great. Installing yay by default is a great decision as well.
This had me confused for a bit, but I see now that Chimera Linux and ChimeraOS are two different things.
Yeah using Arch (btw) cured me of my distro hopping. Although NixOS is looking tempting…