Selfhosted

My server is Debian. My desktop and laptops are all Garuda Linux.

I'm all some Debian dereritive, whether it's Q4OS or just Debian,

Every now and then I try something else (usually live usb from ventoy) just to see how others evolve. I like endevour, but I always en up with debian minimal install. Only on mylaptop I add xfce4. It's just rock solid. For my wife's laptop it's elementary, only because of the looks just to make her move from windows to linux painlessly

My main server runs Ubuntu Server (I'm thinking about switching it to Debian), and my laptop and desktop both run Arch Linux. Generally, I pick whatever I think is best for the given usecase — things like stability, package availability, documentation, security, etc. are considered.

Nope. Raspbian, Arch, Ubuntu, Ubuntu MATE (sorta samesies, I guess), Manjaro…I think that’s it.

Yes, because nixos and distributed git-based dotfiles, would be so much work to have a second setup for no real gain, I do investigate other distros regularly though

Debian home server, macOS desktop, newer laptops run Arch and Fedora, and the two old MacBooks both run Mint DE. Oh, and OpenWrt on the router.

Basically, I do. Kubuntu everywhere. Only exception are the servers that run a UI less version of Ubuntu.

Work notebook runs Linux Mint

My private desktop PC runs Cachy OS with Wayland/KDE but Wayland crashes all the time, so my private notebook bot Cachy OS with Gnome. Love it. Now I need to reinstall my desktop to also install Gnome. Dont want the hazzle to install it Next to wayland

I've thought about it, but I like having Bazzite for my gaming PC and Debian for my laptop, so I'll probably keep using multiple distros. For me it's:

• Gaming PC: Bazzite (it's plugged into my TV, like a console, and goes straight to Steam's big picture mode)
• Laptop: Debian with KDE Plasma
• Home Server: Debian (a little single board computer, no desktop environment)

Debian on homeservers, centos on work servers, and mint on desktops

Desktop - Ubuntu Cinnamon LTS (I game and edit video this is also currently my Frigate host)

Laptop - Ubuntu Budgie (It's basically just a thin client to access my desktop when I want to sit in the livingroom)

Stepson's Desktop - ChimeraOS (Because I don't want to deal with anything in his room)

Server - TrueNAS (Been using it since the FreeNAS 9 Era)

Router - OpnSense (Been using that since before I started using FreeNAS)

Different distro's suit different needs. Could I use a single one for everything, yeah with a lot of extra work I don't want to deal with. I'm much more hardware oriented and can make software work tried switching to Linux for everything in the mid 2000's but couldn't do things reliably with it till lately.

SteamOS on my steam deck. Bazzite on my laptop. And fedora on my home server that I'm still learning how to set up(I have immich running in a container, but that was just following an online tutorial. Still trying to understand docker better.)

I use Fedora on my personal laptop and DietPi on my RaspberryPi 4 where I selfhost a bunch of stuff.

Currently my primary laptop is on LMDE and my secondary laptop is on GhostBSD just because I wanted to try out BSD. I'm thinking of taking a third laptop and putting EndeavourOS on it. That was my primary OS until an update blew up the EFI partition and I read "yeah, that happens sometimes" and decided my primary system should be a bit more stable than that. But I did really like EndeavourOS other than that. I have an old notebook PC I've thought about putting Haiku-OS on just for fun, if I can figure out what I did with the power cord for it.

Ha, I wish I could.

I'm not 100% satisfied, so I'm still searching for the "perfect distro for me", if it even exists.

I have been using Arch Linux on my personal PC and company laptop for 4 years, but I couldn't get some things to work. Things that, after installing Fedora, worked out of the box.

My current setup is:

• EndeavourOS (e.g. arch linux with a GUI-installer) for my PC at home
• Fedora Workstation 43 for my company laptop
• Servers are all running Debian, I'll probably never change that
• Hypervisor for VMs is Proxmox VE, which is Debian too

Yes 

Thanks to hyprland, I've fallen in love with Arch. Sure it works on other distros, but the AUR is great for easy configuration. I'm running it on my container server, my laptop, my gaming rig, and my OneXPlayer(portable gaming rig). That said, I have been eyeing CachyOS because of the kernel optimization plus it seems easier to install.

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

10 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 4 acronyms.

[Thread #152 for this comm, first seen 9th Mar 2026, 16:50] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

My home server is on unraid while my other machines are on OpenSuse. Having a webui makes it so much easier for someone other than me to take care of stuff if I'm not around

My laptop needs reliability to be fairly certain I'll have everything working when I use it on poor internet, my desktop is always comnected to high bandwidth and has a decent cpu so I can spare a bit extra time and cycles on updating everything when something breaks

Different needs

I did like having the same thing going on on both for the couple months I used mint on both.

Fedora on laptop. Fedora on desktop. Fedora in the server. Fedora in WSL.

For my Gaming PC I ended up with cachyOS. Justs works and still gives me enough flexibility for customization. Server is Proxmox with mostly Debian LXCs but I started to add in some alpine containers. Probably going to throw alpine on my old laptop as well, just for fun. Ah and then there is my MacBook with macOS, which for now I plan to keep…

Workstation: Fedora plasma Server: Ubuntu Rock64 Libreelec

I feel like NixOS might be the only distro that could realistically handle all these use cases, but I’m a bit scared of the learning curve and the maintenance work it’d take to migrate everything over.

It's a very steep learning curve, but I personally think it is worth it if what you want is to sync up all your various devices to a single common baseline configuration. I sought a single-distro solution for all of my systems for a long time and always ended up fragmenting them eventually because nothing I tried until NixOS was capable of handling such a diverse set of use cases in a way that would satisfy me.

I am similar to you, in that I regularly use a three server cluster, a gaming desktop, a multi-purpose personal laptop, and a work WSL instance on my work laptop. I still have some purpose-built distros where it makes sense; I use Proxmox for the actual server hosts themselves and then run NixOS VMs on them, along with running VMs for Home Assistant OS and TrueNAS (with the drives passed through, of course). All of these things I could do on raw NixOS (even Home Assistant is packaged in Nix, and there is a project to port Proxmox UI and tooling to NixOS) but I like the stability of the dedicated and battle-tested distros for critical infrastructure, especially for stuff whose configuration is very specific to a given task.

With NixOS, each other device has a consistent shared configuration and package set, they all get updated to the exact same versions thanks to flakes so everything works the same and as expected no matter where I am, and it's all declaratively configured and documented in one spot. Spinning up a new system or rebuilding an existing system is as easy as pulling the config and changing a few relevant lines, and from there it effectively assembles itself from scratch to the exact state I want it to be in. There's never any lingering packages or configuration cruft because the system is assembled from scratch every time it updates. Much of my home configuration is also managed, so aliases, environment variables, even vim configs are consistent across the board and set in one location.

The main downside is resource efficiency. Nix is designed to be reproducible and declarative, not fast or lean. It uses much more storage than a typical package manager, and packages are built with wide compatibility in mind so you often are leaving performance on the table from not using newer instruction sets like CachyOS. You can compile your own packages to fix that part, but that obviously takes a lot of spare processing power. I've been considering setting up my server cluster to do automatic building for me, but haven't gotten around to it yet.

It causes issues, like bazzite has the same profile name, IDK if I missed the option to change it. Cant use the virtual mouse swap across computers because they require different names and it has an error related to that.

My laptop was, as of a couple of minutes ago, running Windows 11 (for AutoCAD before anyone says anything), but I just installed Fedora again so I’m free!

My server is running RHEL, which I don’t have an excuse for — I thought it’d be fun, but I’m going to switch over to Proxmox (hopefully) later this year.

So as it stands, currently, kinda.

I just use Debian

I run OpenSuse Tumbleweed on my Daily Driver Desktop, Bazzite on my Laptop, Debian on my Game Server