What's Your Favorite Linux Distribution and Why?

Linux users are known for having strong opinions, so let's hear them.

What's your favorite Linux distribution and what keeps you using it?

Is it stability, simplicity, package management, performance, customization, community support, or something else entirely?

Whether you're running Arch, Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, openSUSE, Gentoo, Slackware, Cerberix, Linux Mint, or something more obscure, tell us what drew you to it and why you've stayed.

Bonus questions:

• How long have you been using Linux? • What was your first distro? • If you had to recommend one distro to a new user, what would it be?

Let's see which distributions the RootBadger community prefers. 🐧

killswitch killswitch@override.sys wrote:

I can't make my mind up so I've got a series of Linux VMs on my Mac: Alpine, Arch, Centos, Fedore, OpenSUSE to name but a few. They don't take up much real disk space so I can have a good old play when I've nothing better to do! Currently I'm quite liking Alpine - it's seems quite stable and fast. It doesn't come with a desktop environment as standard but it's not difficult to install one (or more).

On Aug 8, 2026 11:06 AM, tanstaafl sensed a disturbance and said:

I have my own distro called Cerberix Linux, Arch-based.

https://rootbadger.com/shortened/fweqev4vr Check it out and let me know what you think of it so far. I need to start working on it again sometime soon. Have fun.

#Cerberix #Linux #Distro

yodabytz yodabytz@holonet.sith wrote:

Give me a day or so as I will have to blow the dust of my Intel Mac first! I mostly use my ARM 'Silicon' Macs these days and all my VMs hence are based on ARM64 distros. I can run many X86_64 distros fine on my Intel Mac usually on external SSDs. BTW I'm running this MacSOUP client via a Mac OS 9 emulator on one of my Silicon Macs.

On Aug 8, 2026 12:25 PM, tanstaafl sensed a disturbance and said:

haha that's funny; I ran it on my Intel Mac too.

yodabytz yodabytz@holonet.sith wrote:

I've been able to create a VM using UTM on my Intel Mac without too much hassle. However trying to install cerberix on an external SSD using a bootable USB install stick resulted in the command line prompt returning immediately after the messages:

==> Generating pacman master key. This may take some time.
==> Updating trust database ...

I waited some time and then gave up! Have I missed a step or just beeb impatient?

On Aug 8, 2026 5:08 PM, tanstaafl sensed a disturbance and said:

It’s hanging on the keyring step because pacman-key is waiting for enough entropy, and UTM VMs can be pretty bad about providing it.

Before you run the install again, add a random-number device to the VM:

Shut the VM down completely.
Open the VM settings in UTM.
Go to the QEMU section, then Additional Arguments.
Add:
-device virtio-rng-pci
Save it and boot the installer again.

That gives the VM a proper source of randomness from the host, so the “Generating pacman master key” / “Updating trust database” part should finish quickly instead of sitting there forever.

If you can’t add that argument for some reason, there’s a crude workaround. When it hits that step, click inside the VM and move the mouse around and hammer random keys for 30–60 seconds. That can help feed the entropy pool enough to get it moving.

The RNG device is the proper fix though. Once that’s in place, you shouldn’t hit this again.

Give it another shot and let me know what happens. This happened to someone else once, and I thought I had it fixed

On Jun 19, 2026 8:24 PM, killswitch wrote:

my fave is qnx which was my first real introduction to Linux. The company I worked for gave me my first X11 network training on qnx servers, security was a big issue and qnx had a sandbox to catch dodgy code prior to actual execution iirc
Anyway, overall Debian just because it's what I'm most familiar with and as a general rule I just use whatever I need to use to do the job... Learned a lot of useful stuff that way !

:)