What’s your favorite Linux distro?

‘Seems to always be a Debian variant of some kind, depending on the specific application…  While I have administered Red Hat/CentOS servers, I enjoy, and am most familiar with distributions that descend from the Debian side of things.  I’m sure it’s possible I’d have a different perspective if I had came up in the Red Hat world, but I really think apt, and systemd/init are great.

For server use, the latest LTS version of Ubuntu Server is my go-to as a web, or Samba server.  For infrastructure (assuming I’m not going with FreeBSD Unix) Debian itself is usually my first choice.

For desktop use either Mint or PopOS! is what I would probably use myself.  Elementary OS, or Ubuntu Desktop is what I’d often reach for if deploying workstations, appliances, or VDI instances.

For anything with extra security requirements, Alpine Linux is often the first place I go.

For storage, if I’m setting up something special or custom (like a GlusterFS cluster), I’ll likely first look to Debian itself (without a desktop environment), or an LTS version of Ubuntu Server.  But (even though I know it’s Unix and not Linux), for anything from a SMB NAS, a File Server utilizing Directory Services, or a large scale NFS Server, my first choice would be TrueNAS (formerly FreeNAS).

All of these (with the exception of the few Unix variants) are Debian-based Linux distributions.