I’d like to settle on a distro, but none of them seem to click for me. I want stability more than anything, but I also value having the latest updates (I know, kind of incompatible).
I have tested Pop!_Os, Arch Linux, Fedora, Mint and Ubuntu. Arch and Pop being the two that I enjoyed the most and seemed the most stable all along… I am somewhat interested in testing NixOS although the learning curve seems a bit steep and it’s holding me back a bit.
What are you using as your daily drive? Would you recommend it to another user? Why? Why not?
Gentoo, for its user choice and lack of bloat. I’ve been using it for a long time, and can create my own packages for personal use if I don’t mind them looking like Frankenstein bodges, so that’s another plus. It’s stable enough if you stick with actual stable-marked packages and don’t go out of your way to shoot yourself in the foot, and if something does go wrong at the distro’s end, 1. they usually fix it pretty fast and 2. rolling packages back is easy if the older version is still in the tree (and usually still possible if it isn’t, although it can get kind of involved).
Would I recommend Gentoo to another user? That depends on which user. You kind of have to be either knowledgeable or willing to learn—it isn’t a “just works” distro, although some things have been streamlined in recent years. You do have to put a little time into maintenance, but it’s usually on the order of less than half an hour a week.
Also, the excellent documentation and helpful user base makes it quite possible to learn your way around the system from install and onwards.