My first was Ubuntu in a VM because everyone recommended it, I distro hopped in VMs until I just ended up using Mint in a VM almost exclusively. It was when I complained to someone about the issues with the VM when locking the laptop and they asked me “Why not just run that system as-is?” that I installed it for real.
I’ve also used Manjaro for half a year, a very minimal Arch+i3 install (without the install script because I wanted the “real experience”) for about 1.5 year, and dual booted Bazzite and Mint on my gaming PC for a year (it’s just Mint now), all the while trying out other distros big and small on older hardware or in VMs.
I don’t feel I’ve found “the one”, but somehow I keep coming back to Mint… Although, perhaps NixOS is it… Who knows?
Real!
After installing and restoring Arch for the third time in 1.5 year I decided to go back to Mint. In the past 5.5 or so years, nothing needed to be reinstalled or restored; Mint’s more stable than Windows by now!