Linux

For me it was Gentoo. I am not sure what it is but for my work it just works better. Tests shows it runs faster for my work and comes with all the tools I need to compile things. I really like the package naming scheme and use flags. I also like the custom-ability of it as well. Tried arch and others but hated it. Also I think the documentation on Gentoo is insanely good.

Fedora. Installer is a bit rubbish (being replaced soon) but it's not difficult.

In terms of speed, stability, and being up-to-date it's been exceptional IMO.

@elucubra linux mint was my goldilocks for a while. Had to get through some major driver issues before it was stable but I loved it. Very recently moved to fedora because I wanted the latest updates without being on a edge distro

Slackware.

It. Just. Works.

If you're lazy (which I take to mean you like low maintenance) and haven't tried a rolling release distro, you need to try Manjaro. It's downstream of Arch (like Mint vs Debian) but with a lot of QoL improvements that take the edge off.

It's"Goldilocks" for me because it's rolling and has recent packages but also very low maintenance. I was sick of 3rd-party repo incompatibilies and update issues on Ubuntu.

It's a curated take on Arch in that it sources packages from Arch but holds them back until they're in a decent shape. Recent example was the Plasma 6 which they've held back a couple of months until most bugs had been cleared, but normally they release packages on a 2 week cycle.

It works out of the box, keeps working indefinitely (5 years going for me), and they have integrated system snapshots if you use BTRFS for root, just in case (automatically takes snapshots before every update, which you can restore from Grub). Never had to use a snapshot (did it only once to see if it works).

Limitations of Manjaro compared to Arch:

• Not as bleeding edge due to holding packages for a while.
• You have to stick to their way of doing stuff, like their tools for graphics drivers and kernel management.
• You have to stick to a LTS kernel or at least keep one installed as backup at all times.
• It won't change your kernel major version for you, ever. Some people see this as a disadvantage, personally I greatly prefer it.
• You have to stick to their stable package repo. If you use their unstable/testing repos all bets are off (which is not going to be news to someone familiar with Debian).
• You get access to the AUR but the usual warnings apply since AUR is even wilder than Sid. Some people say they've ran into trouble installing some AUR packages on Manjaro due to missing dependencies. It's never happened to me but I can see how it could happen due to the package delay.
• You can't say "I use Arch btw". Arch fans tend to hate Manjaro because they see its limitations and hand-holding as antithetical to Arch's goals.

Regarding that last point, there's a very vocal minority that will smear Manjaro any chance they get All I can say is, try it for yourself.

~ debian ~

For me it's either OpenSUSE Tumbleweed or Arch and I can never decide which. Tumbleweed having snapper and YaST everything out of the box is amazing but sometimes I miss the AUR, and Zypper is so much slower than Pacman. I also really like Fedora Silverblue on my laptop but I don't think I could use it on my main system.

Arch, because I use niche software and the AUR doesn't always get along with Manjaro very well (ungoogled-chromium-bin is the worst offender). Switched to arch, configured it identically to my manjaro install, and all has been well.

I tried ChromeOS today, and while it looks awesome, has some really great UI elements and integrations, I would still say uBlue with KDE Plasma comes close to it.

I would prefer sane atomic updates though, like twice a month. Fedora is not that good in that regard, you want to update every day as you get fixes every day.

Also, OCI images are consuming tons of bandwidth currently, so ostree is still better.

Great question. Right up there with "what's the best movie" or "which meal should I order". Maybe you want to ask which editor is the best too?