I almost always use only programs that I compile from sources (with few exceptions, like the NVIDIA drivers and libraries or some commercial EDA/CAD programs). I also strongly dislike systemd (not based on hearsay, but after testing it for a couple of months a few years ago, while using Arch Linux). These 2 conditions disqualify many Linux distributions for me.
So I most frequently use Gentoo or some distribution derived from it, e.g. Funtoo.
I have switched to Gentoo around 2002/2003, after using a few older distributions, including Slackware, Redhat and SUSE.
During the first decade of using Gentoo, the Portage collection was better maintained and I would have never had problems with upgrades, except that when I have tested KDE 4 I was astonished by how the team which hijacked its development had been able to remove all the features that I liked in KDE 3.5, so I have wiped KDE 4 and I have reverted to KDE 3.5.
Then, for a couple of years I had to fight more and more at each upgrade to avoid the breakage of the preserved KDE 3.5, until that became so difficult that I gave up and I replaced KDE with XFCE.
Then for a few years there have been no problems with upgrades, but during the last decade they have begun to appear sporadically. In many cases the upgrades still work without surprises, but every few months there is one that fails because some package does not compile for various reasons, e.g. because some library is not listed as a dependence so it has not been updated, or because there is a circular package dependence that appears only with the specific combination of USE flags that are set on my system, or because there is some conflict between the dependencies of some packages that prevent them to be installed together without certain workarounds.
What I like at Gentoo is that it permits an extreme customization of the system, but that is what makes very difficult for the package maintainers to test their package build instructions, because it is hard to generate all the combinations of options that might have been chosen by some user.
The breakages are not frequent, but because they happen sometimes I am not confident to allow them to be performed automatically, without supervision, like I allow them to be done on FreeBSD.
I would prefer a package system like that of Nix, but I have not found yet enough time to play with Nix, or maybe with Guix, to evaluate which will be the consequences of converting to it.
So I most frequently use Gentoo or some distribution derived from it, e.g. Funtoo.
I have switched to Gentoo around 2002/2003, after using a few older distributions, including Slackware, Redhat and SUSE.
During the first decade of using Gentoo, the Portage collection was better maintained and I would have never had problems with upgrades, except that when I have tested KDE 4 I was astonished by how the team which hijacked its development had been able to remove all the features that I liked in KDE 3.5, so I have wiped KDE 4 and I have reverted to KDE 3.5.
Then, for a couple of years I had to fight more and more at each upgrade to avoid the breakage of the preserved KDE 3.5, until that became so difficult that I gave up and I replaced KDE with XFCE.
Then for a few years there have been no problems with upgrades, but during the last decade they have begun to appear sporadically. In many cases the upgrades still work without surprises, but every few months there is one that fails because some package does not compile for various reasons, e.g. because some library is not listed as a dependence so it has not been updated, or because there is a circular package dependence that appears only with the specific combination of USE flags that are set on my system, or because there is some conflict between the dependencies of some packages that prevent them to be installed together without certain workarounds.
What I like at Gentoo is that it permits an extreme customization of the system, but that is what makes very difficult for the package maintainers to test their package build instructions, because it is hard to generate all the combinations of options that might have been chosen by some user.
The breakages are not frequent, but because they happen sometimes I am not confident to allow them to be performed automatically, without supervision, like I allow them to be done on FreeBSD.
I would prefer a package system like that of Nix, but I have not found yet enough time to play with Nix, or maybe with Guix, to evaluate which will be the consequences of converting to it.