My top 5 distros November 2018

[crosscourt]

This is based on my needs,experience,hardware and resource usage, your mileage may vary.

1.KDE Neon 20180925
2.Linux Lite 4.2
3.Linux Mint 19 XFCE
4.Kubuntu 18.04
5.MX Linux 17.1

Major changes this time around as there are no RPM distros and only one Debian based distro.

[tlmiller]

I'm still my normal, fairly boring self in terms of what I use...

1. Debian
2. Arch via Anarchy installer
3. KDE Neon
4. ROSA
5. Fedora

[crosscourt]

MX Linux was the only Debian distro i could tolerate and the RPM distros have various minor issues that I got tired of and decided to switch. KDE Neon is my favorite KDE distro and im back on my 7010 USFFs , so I can run what I want. The rest are excellent and Linux Lite was a pleasant surprise this time around so Im pretty set with my choices right now. Best of KDE and XFCE my two favorite DEs suits my needs. Gave up on the various Gnome based distros like Mint 19 Cinnamon, too may issues and high resource usage.
Hopefully my five will become like your five and i can settle down a bit for awhile.

[tlmiller]

Yeah, for me it's been 12 years or so since something else sat in #1 spot in my tastes.

[crosscourt]

I stuck to a single distro back in the day but Ive been testing distros for so long I rarely get stuck on one distro. Mint XFCE is the one distro Ive had installed regularly for quite some time.

[tlmiller]

I've been testing distro's for over ~20 years. The issue IMO is that everything based on Debian is to me less than Debian, and all other OS's aren't quite as good as Debian. So Debian's had a really long run as the best OS for me. I'd love to find something better...

[crosscourt]

Id still be using Mandriva if it had continued but Ive been doing testing since 2006 and when I ran distroratings.com I went thru a lot of distros, maybe too many. You and I are polar opposites as I never cared for Debian but I really dont dislike any distros, they just dont meet my needs at times.
Ive been disappointed with the RPM distros recently and even the few Debian based distros Ive simply not been as happy with as I would like. I end up leaning towards Ubuntu based distros and recently have found some that I like and meet my needs very well.
I really enjoyed Ubuntu back in the 8-10 days when Gnome 2 was the DE and I still enjoy Ubuntu Mate to this day.

On a side note MX Linux will probably be off my top 5 list next month as Linux Lite has replaced it on my portables and USFFs.

[tlmiller]

If LibraNet hadn't folded I'd probably still be using that. First distro I ever managed to get online with back when I lived in the middle of nowhere and had a WinModem (couldn't afford a REAL modem). Based on Debian, so when it folded I switched to Debian proper, and have never found anything that fit me as well.

[crosscourt]

I liked Xandros and would have liked to have seen it continue and improve. Would still be using Mandriva if it survived but since then its been disappointing.

[tlmiller]

Never was that big a fan of Mandriva, but Mandrake was proably my #2 favorite OS after LibraNet if you go back far enough...

Mandrake folding and becoming Mandriva (and the complete chaos that ensued for a while) is actually the reason that Arch started climbing into my top distros. Unlike Debian, Arch was completely removed from my list of favorites for quite a few years, and only recently (well, comparatively) got back into the list.