Selfhosted

i have slackware 15 on all, it's great how i can just copy over binaries and they just run because all the linked libraries are the same version

no, i use archlinux on my main desktop as i use it daily and is my main workhorse. i have a laptop that rarely gets used at that has debian on. then i have a mini pc server with debian and a raspberry pi 4 with debian based raspberry pi os.

Arch everywhere. LTS kernel on servers and zen kernel on desktop and laptop. I love the idea of nixos but in practice it felt like more work than it was worth (to me).

I originally did Debian on servers but after using arch for long enough and never having stability problems, it was easier to move to the same distro.

I used to have Ubuntu everywhere, then changed to Debian for servers. Now that I'm using bazzite for my gaming rig, I really liked the idea and went to fedora silver blue on my work laptop. I'm the near future I want to re do my home lab, bit not sure yet what, unfortunately to many open questions concerning storage left.

I run unraid for my main servers (mostly out of convenience/ease), and pop-os for everything else. I treat my laptop as my beta tester for my desktop which is stable, but both use the same underlying os. Who has the time to troubleshoot more than one?

Everything but my server uses Arch (BTW). This is so I can have all devices have the same scripts for uniformity.

Almost everything is Debian - my servers, my desktop and laptops, my family member's computers, the living room media player. Only exceptions are my router (OpenWRT) and my Steam Deck (SteamOS).

Ubuntu for the main pc and Arch for the filthy weird frankenstein laptop from 2008. Just as god intended.

I use Debian on servers, because stable.

I use Fedora on desktops, because I game and I like having fixes for mesa, the kernel, and amdgpu for my latest gen AMD GPU. My laptop is for work, but it's just easier having consistency.

I do - more or less. Since I am the IT guy for my entire family and don't feel like doing tech support on 10 different distros.

All normal PCs run CachyOS, includes gaming PCs, laptops and media PCs. All servers run some form of Debian (includes Proxmox) or a dedicated distro for their use (TRUE WAS, technically also Debian based).

• Servers: Ubuntu Jammy
• NUC: Mint xfce
• VMs: Kali, Mint, and a variety of others including WIndows & Mac.

I hear a lot of chatter about NixOS. Going to have to check it out.

No, Arch for laptops/desktops. Debian for servers.

Gentoo, Qubes on desktops. Cent, Gentoo, Alpine and OpenBSD for servers.

Then there's weird stuff like MirageOS, DuskOS, openwrt, opnsense and I'm 90% sure there's a laptop with Kali purple in my trunk.

For other people I usually install fedora spins or bazzite.

All my kubernetes nodes are Ubuntu but when I rebuild my cluster I'll probably moved to Talos. My Gaming Rig/Workstation runs Bazzite. My Dev laptop runs Aurora. The little differences between Aurora and Bazzite are a little irritating so if I ever have a reason to rebuild one I'll probably switch it.

The PIs run whatever is most convenient for their purpose.

My next NAS will probably run Unraid or TrueNAS, but for now its Synology.

laptop & desktop: both fedora silverblue

home server: fedora server

Nah. Debian for servers, Fedora for desktops and Arch for funtimes.

Bazzite GNOME on my "it needs to work daily no matter what" school/work/light gaming laptop, ~250ish flatpak apps (mostly very awesome tiny GTK4-based tools)

Devuan on my desktop PC, Trinity Desktop Environment, almost entirely apt apps, I do heavy multimedia work and gaming on it, I squeeze as much speed as I can

Debian on my Linux phone (FuriLabs FLX1s running FuriOS, a fork of Droidian, which is a fork of Mobian, which is a fork of Debian), Phosh UI, almost entirely ~140ish flatpaks

I try to keep my operating systems and software as controlled and predictable as possible, but I approach that differently depending on the usecase. Yes, I've tried NixOS, fell in love with it, and quickly realized it's overengineered and makes my head hurt. I also used CachyOS with TDE on my desktop for a while, was really speedy but TDE packaging for Arch really sucks compared to their Debian packaging

I use Fedora on my desktop, laptop and server. On my mother‘s laptop I have installed Fedora Kinoite.

I use ArchLinux more or less on all Device where it is possible It runs on my workstations, on my NAS, on my servers

Reason for that is: I am lazy and this way I don't have to learn how to administrate different Distributions.

No, I've got nobara on my gaming rig, batocera on my wife's retro console that's just turned into a kodi device, and proxmox on my server

Kind of.

Fedora on workstations. Debian on servers

Slackware on desktop, laptop and mini PC, Debian on anything smaller

1 Fedora (laptop)

1 bazzite (old gaming desktop)

N+1 Debian on everything else than can

Fedora just works for me in every case except NAS where I have TrueNAS, so Fedora it is and I installed it even to couple of people and they also like it.

I typically use EndeavorOS because I enjoy how well documented and organized the arch wiki is.

I tried switching to fedora on my laptop recently but actually had some issues with software that was apparently only distributed through the AUR or AppImage (which I could have used, I know).

When I also had issues setting up my VPN to my home network again, I caved and restored the disk to a backup I took before attempting the switch. The VPN thing almost definitely wasn't Fedoras fault since I remember running into the same issue on EndeavorOS but after my fix from last time didn't work I was out of patience.

My servers runs either on debian or Ubuntu LTS though.

For me it depends on computer capability. 3 generations of laptop... Current: PopOS Older: MiniOS Oldest (32bit): AntiX

I didn't use to, but I do now. Debian on everything (except the Proxmox servers, but Proxmox is basically Debian too)

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.