I have a tendency to use “DIY” systems, basically systems that leave the administration up to me, and either have a minimal base or a customizable, powerful but convenient installer. Then comes the package manager’s strengths and weaknesses, and the package repository and its release cycles.

My favorite OSes of all are:

• NixOS
• FreeBSD
• Arch/Endeavour
• Debian
• To some extend Alpine

I never used Gentoo so I don’t classify it, but i believe I would like it a lot if I used it.

And yeah, I have a logo bias lmao. NixOS, FreeBSD and Debian have amazing logos. Something that is neat is when a distro has multiple kernel versions in the repository.

Except for video games, all software I use daily is open source and cross platform by now, but when college demanded for me to use Adobe software, I would boot my Win 10 VM. I also boot that VM to test if the software im developing works well on Windows. I also run my Logitech mouse software in a VM with USB passthrough.

Besides games, I think the only Windows program I run with wine is a tool to extract the BGM from the official Touhou games.

Before I had a 3DS, I would use a Windows tool on my VM to decrypt my totally legally acquired ROMs

You should check out Nix (the package manager). NixOS’s Nix package manager can be used outside its own system. It supports the vast majority of Linux operating systems as well as MacOS.

Nix’s package repository is gigantic like you wouldn’t believe, and Reaper is in it.