Debian on my server, my desktop, my laptop, and my gaming computer. That last one might be the most questionable choice, but so far it has been working well.

Just works. No issues.

I’ve heard Google use Debian as gLinux and I feel many other giants also use it and sponsor it and I’m not comfortable choosing it as my distro.

They use Debian for the same reason all heavy industry is built using steel and not whatever flashy new composite is in the news today. It works. Debian is slightly harder than Ubuntu / Mint to install and set-up, but probably the easiest to maintain since it is extremely stable and forgiving. It will also work on just about any hardware.

And don’t worry about the sponsorships. Debian is run by the community; the sponsers don’t get to decide anything.

I use Debian. It just works and is reliable.

debian on servers all the way, since 2000

I’m sure Debian would implode if any big corp started to make “hostile” changes to it. It was by some considered controversial to include non free firmware by default - that should tell you a little about how much people care about Debian, as including the non free by default is against the core of opensource.

i have debian on my server; if i could go back and use it on my desktop and laptop instead of mint i would too (nothing against mint just love debian)

Arch and its derivatives look like the trend

It’s because nobody writes “I use Debian BTW”.

I use PikaOS, which is based on Debian. It’s right up there with CachyOS is performance and gaming, and have been using it for over a year with its hyprland variant.

I am a Debian man. All my systems are Debian or Debian based. It just works!

Arch people tend to want people to know they use Arch (btw). You’ll also find a lot of posts about getting Arch working.

Debian people tend to be too busy doing other things on their computers besides getting them working, so you’ll hear about it less.

(Important: I’m not dumping on either distro here. Some people, myself included, like Arch exactly because it’s fun to play with and set up. Debian’s older packages tend to mean a more stable system. Use what you like.)

I personally use DietPI on my headless servers, which is a derivative of debian, and PikaOS on my personal computer, which is the bazzite equivalent of debian. It’s great really :). At this stage, i’ve been so used to debian derivatives that I simply don’t want to use time to learn another distro’s specific ways. I’ve tried mandrake and rpm years ago, but debian simply was the golden standard I used at school and on PI.

I have Arch on my desktop, and all my laptops, but all of my servers run Debian. If you want your machine to have all the latest stuff, then Arch is great. If you want it to Just Work™ all the time without any concerns, Debian is great.

My wife uses Debian and is very happy with it.
She uses it both for gaming and studio recordings with Ardour.

Debian has for decades been among the most respected distros in the Linux world, and it still is.
If you want something solid, Debian should be your first choice.

Edit PS:
She also uses it for programming occasionally. Debian is an excellent platform for “coding” with its huge repositories.
But most Linux distros are very good for programming, and will have all the common necessary tools readily available.

Pretty much anything I do is Debian, ive said it quite a bit before so this may be a repeat of previous comments, but…

Its solid, stable, easy to deploy with incredible flexibility and just about everything out there supports it. I do have a few boxes with arch, and they are also just fine - I wouldn’t use it as a server, personally, but its perfectly good for a “very current” approach to desktops/laptops.

It sounds like you’re concerned with EEE: embrace, extend, extinguish. While that might be a problem for centralized pieces of software, who are dependent upon revenue streams, core distros like Debian, Arch, Fedora, and openSUSE are developed and maintained by the community (and sponsors).

If sponsors all pulled their funding tomorrow, the projects would not suddenly cease to get updates. By extension, sponsors don’t get special seats at the table just for being a sponsor; it’s not some corporate buy-in where they get 5% voting share for donating $1M to fund hobbyists to work on the code full-time. Likewise, they don’t have special push access to inject “features” (read: enshittification) into the codebase that will eventually hamstring the code. Somebody would notice a bad pull-request and say something.

And even if they miraculously did, the codebase is open source. There are enough motivated people in the world who would fork the code into something free and open again. It’s one of the biggest strengths of FOSS.

Sponsorships help the development happen faster, but sponsors are not the drivers of Linux—we are. Choose the distro you like, and enjoy!