The Best Linux Distros of 2016

Fedora is too uncool for a list like this.

I agree with you though. I got fed up with Ubuntu and switched over to Fedora a few months ago and have been pleasantly surprised at how well it works now. The Fedora team is even willing to fix stupid obvious bugs so I actually have my zsh manpages now and gmplayer works.

> ...over more modern ones.

No, for many of us it is not about modern.

I love modern. Ubuntus problem is they copied a bunch of Mac-isms for what seems to be no good reason.

Now hear me out: I almost love Apple, I just cannot get myself to use their products (OK, did, three years, was happy to get a PC again) and there are a lot of things that should be learned from Mac. Out-of-the-box experience etc.

Other Mac-isms are just bad IMO like inconsistent keyboard shortcuts, Alt-Tab that is not a consistent stack etc.

Ubuntu copied the dock, moved Window control to the left, messed with the menus and Alt-Tab all while delivering a less impressing OOTB experience (IIRC).

I consider myself a fairly technical user and I gave up on Fedora after it broke down in two releases after another. IIRC Distrowatch had the same experience around that time.

I like the idea, I just haven't taken time to go back and try again since then, and other distros have stepped up so I didn't have to either.

Maybe the author has had similar experiences that might have affected the choices?

Oh? Let's replace "Arch" with "Gentoo" in the article and see if these claims sound familiar:

Gentoo Linux is a great distro for those who want to learn everything about Linux. Because you have to install everything manually, you learn all the bits and pieces of a Linux-based operating system.

Gentoo is the most customizable distribution.

Gentoo also one of the best rolling releases. It’s always updated. Users always run the latest packages.

Gentoo is also known for having excellent documentation. The Gentoo Wiki is my to-go resource for everything Linux related.

What I like the most about Gentoo is that is offers almost every package and software that’s available for “any” Linux distribution

I always come back to Fedora. I started using Linux in 1995ish, after not quite a year using Windows 95 (which I'd switched to from an Amiga 3000). Soon found my way to Red Hat Linux (which became Fedora). It's mostly been my desktop and laptop OS of choice for that entire time. I'm tried others, I'm familiar with others, due to supporting many other distros over the years. But, Fedora always seems to hit the sweet spot for stability, Open Source fidelity and contribution to moving the state of the art forward, ease of use, package selection and modernity, and the Just Works factor is historically very high (even without adding binary blob repositories, but some drivers have needed to come from third party repos over the years).

yum (now dnf, which is a name I hate) is also my favorite of the mainstream package managers. It nearly perfectly balances ease of use with advanced capabilities, and maintaining private repos is an absolute dream (stick signed packages in a directory on a web server, run createrepo; repository is done!), compared to anything else. apt is a great, but managing repos for it is just awful (though I haven't had a chance to try aptly, which appears to potentially resolve this issue, though it still seems to be vastly more complex than createrepo).

So, yeah, Fedora remains my favorite, through many years and many attempts using other distros. I've flirted with Ubuntu a few times, going so far as having it as my primary laptop OS for a while. Partly it was because of the popularity of it; it's sometimes easier to install stuff on Ubuntu because the developers are more likely to be using Ubuntu. But, it's not worth the other trade offs, to me.

Also, I like that Fedora ships a close to stock, very clean, version of the most recent Gnome desktop. It feels very nicely integrated, while some of the alternative desktop variants feel bolted together from different pieces. Lots of folks seem to want to revert to the old 2.0 style Gnome, but I don't dislike modern Gnome (except that it has some awful quirks for multiple displays, where both displays do the shrink-and-dim thing, which is terrible for use with projections, presentations, watching movies, etc.).