What’s your new distro of choice?

Not the one you're replying to, but started my Linux experience with Ubuntu 6.10, was using it all the way up to ~17, and started using Arch Linux after that since during my time of using Ubuntu, I learnt enough Linux that I could setup my own system (and of course, with the help of the awesome Arch Wiki).

Worth noting that Arch has had something resembling the OpenBSD installer for some time. Trying it out doesn't require reading 20 wiki articles as it did back in my day™. You answer a few questions, wait a few minutes, and it's done.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Archinstall

Wow, that's great, haven't seen that before! Granted, it was some time ago I did a setup from scratch.

Seems that installer is like 90% on the way to be useful as a general installer. At a glance, seems to missing things like networking setup (as most people use WiFi these days, it seems), but at least it takes care of most things you need for a install.

Linux Mint for everyday use. It made my 10 year old hot running laptop into a cold mean machine.

Linux Mint Debian Edition, or the regular version based on Ubuntu?

Anything that has a sane package system (apt, etc), and is able to install LXDE and use it out of the box.

Then, put dwm/[your fav. wm] on top of it, with some autoservices for bluetooth, mtp and stuff.

Debian Stable.

Not OP, but Pop OS is a great Ubuntu derivative.

Is that not for desktops? What is the alternative for servers?

Anything bad for Ubuntu Server? I find some bad points for Ubuntu Desktop, but Ubuntu Server is fine.

If you want to set it up and forget about it, just use any RHEL clone (AlmaLinux is by far the fastest with updates: it took them like a week to ship RHEL 9 after the official release). You set up the system, install & enable `dnf-automatic`, and forget that it exists for the next 10 years.

If AlmaLinux (or any other clone) dies for some reason, you can always move to another clone without re-installation (using their tool `elevate`).

We switched our base server build OS to Debian. Has been great so far and runs with very low resources / extra fluff.