I see often people say that the distro you are using doesn’t matter. One can turn any distro into another. And I do not agree with that. If that was true, why do we even have so many distributions? I always said, if distros don’t matter…
- … why distro hop?
- … why don’t you use Ubuntu then?
- … why don’t you recommend Archlinux to a newcomer?
- … why don’t you use Kali Linux as a server?
- … why don’t you use Batocera or SteamOS as your daily driver?
- … why do you trust a community distro more than a corporate distro? (or vice versa)
I don’t think that distros only matter to newcomers. Maybe it matters for experienced users even more.


If the distros didn’t matter nobody would have strong preference. Instead there are Distro wars raging for years now, with plenty of casualties.
For me the preference came from reliability. I tried many distros and they never worked well. They either had bugs or didn’t work the way I wanted to. When I finally found what suits me, you can be damn sure I will tell everyone who listens that its the best distro on the whole planet… FOR ME. But I will gladly recommend it as well 😊
I think the combo hardware + kind of person can create many unique preferences… almost distro-count amounts of preferences 😀
Distro wars?
Most I see is “my Debian system is very stable” Vs “I can setup arch in 5 seconds while blindfolded”.
Doesn’t look to me like a vim Vs Emacs case.