Linux

There's a lot of people here promoting whatever crazy niche distro they use and I'd caution against some of the options presented here. I'd recommend the following criteria when choosing a distro for development (depends on the development but I'll assume since you're study computer science something like Python, C/C++ where distro packages are important):

1. Up-to-date packages: You don't want to come across some bug in a library that was fixed 2 years ago or miss out on the latest features or standards
2. Stability: You likely don't want to rewrite your code to account for a major library update immediately because otherwise your code won't run - it also makes it easier to share with other people as you can target a specific OS
3. QA: Possibly having maintainers that keep an eye on bugs and packaging mismatches to create a coherent system is one of the greatest features of the Linux desktop. For example I had an Arch update stuff me around for an update where the maintainer of the CUDA toolkit package did a major upgrade without any coordination with the maintainer of the proprietary nvidia driver package, making CUDA unusable.

Here's a quick list of how distros fit these criteria:

• Arch: (1)
• Debian 12: (2, 3)
• Linux Mint: (2, 3)
• Ubuntu LTS: (2, 3)
• Ubuntu 24.04: (2, 3) - Some packages weren't updated to their latest versions like KDE Plasma
• Fedora Workstation 40: (1, 2, 3)
• Fedora Silverblue 40: (1, 2, 3+) - My personal choice however, it's a bit different from normal distros, see below
• NixOS: (1, 2) - You can define specific package versions but with the large repos I doubt there is much QA going on
• Debian Sid: (1) - This is the development branch of Debian
• OpenSUSE Tumbleweed: (1, 2, 3+) - Very advanced automated testing
• Void Linux: (1, 2, 3-) - Claim to be stable rolling release, updates come slowly after some testing

Note on atomic distros and toolboxes/distroboxes:

• I personally use Fedora Silverblue with a few distroboxes (basically docker containers you can interact with) for development (Fedora) and Steam (bazzite-arch-gnome).
• With an Atomic distro the root filesystem is not mutable - you don't generally install packages there but setup an aforementioned container and install you're environment in there.
• toolboxes and distroboxes are usable on any distro so your desktop environment and any applications like Steam, Firefox, etc. are able to be updated to a different cycle/philosophy to your development tools.
• The main advantages of an atomic distro are:
  • Fast updates that you download while the system is running and on next boot you will immediately be in the updated environment (no need to wait for updates to apply);
  • Everyone runs the same configuration (or very close to) which is why I gave Fedora Silverblue a + in the QA category. This means you are less likely to come across rare configuration issues which are difficult to test (i.e. there is less entropy in the system)
• The main drawbacks however:
  • It's a relatively new paradigm on the Linux desktop (despite being basically what Android does) so there's not as many people using Fedora Silverblue as Fedora Workstation.

Desktop environments:

• On MacOS and Windows you only get one choice as to how the desktop looks and feels, here we have a few choices:
  • GNOME - the most popular choice and is the default for most major distros, with strong backing from major players like Red Hat. It implements a completely new way to interact with your computer borrowing behaviour from both Windows and MacOS. While not terribly customisable (at least not through settings, extensions can do pretty much anything), it's generally not necessary if you just want to focus and get stuff done
  • KDE Plasma: probably the second most popular choice, while not the default for the major distros there are versions like Kubuntu (Ubuntu), Fedora KDE Spin (Fedora Workstation) and Fedora Kinoite (Fedora Silverblue) which implement it. By default Plasma has a Windows like behaviour however it is customisable to behave pretty much however you see fit.
  • Cinnamon: Not as popular - used by Linux Mint to provide a familiar experience to migrating Windows users.
  • XFCE: Also not as popular but is a good lightweight option
  • Tiling Window managers - not a full dekstop environment like you would expect from the other options but provide a unique keyboard-based workflow making use of virtual desktops/workspaces and window tiling rather than floating windows.

I hope this comment is helpful for you, and the choices are really overwhelming - but worth it, and I'd recommend playing around with whatever you've got time to do to find what works best for you. If you're planning on running on an Apple Silicon based device most of these distro options are unavailable, I'd recommend looking into Asahi Linux based distros - don't use Manjaro as they aren't endorsed by the Asahi project