Although I have disagreed, I have come to read an article on the net whose author said that he used Windows "because it works and that's it." I disagree with the way of expressing the reason, but not in the background: Windows allows you to do everything; the software exists, and if something gets complicated, there is documentation. Something similar can happen between our favorite distribution and one that is more popular: we may like one more, but another is more convenient for us.
I will try not to give names so as not to provoke dialectical wars, but we all know what Linux-based operating system is the most popular. It gets to be used so much that there is software that puts its logo in the "Linux" section of its download page. Most of the software that is available for Linux is available in its package type, and when searching the Internet for documentation on how to do something, once again, we find how to do it with this distribution. Or his father. Or their children. All the same.
My favorite distribution is not so easy to manage
There is another distro that is popular among the most savvy. The operating system comes "bareback", without a graphical interface, so after a 100% CLI installation, we have to install it if we want to be able to use a mouse. It works great, but it doesn't even have a software center until you install it. Those who use this distro don't have any bloatware, but watching a YouTube video on how to install it is scarier than The Exorcist in the '70s. There are midpoints, distros based on it that already include a user interface, and even a software store, but the documentation to do something unusual is also scarce.
This is something that does not happen only with distributions. It also happens with the desks, although less. In the most used there are usually no problems, partly because they are more intuitive, but there are others that are somewhat less widespread in which making adjustments can cost more than is acceptable. And who says desks also says some window managers in which to manage the mouse configuration you have to pull a while of Google DuckDuckGo. You can use a popular distribution with a window manager, but if it's not in an ISO, you have to be adept at getting things right.
In the end, there are times when you have to choose…
… or not. Everything that one Linux does can be done by another. If we have a favorite distribution that we like how it works, its interface, its applications, come on, we're comfortable with it, and we don't find anything we can't do, well, we shouldn't consider anything. We stay in it. If our work requires us to use software and the lack of documentation (and knowledge) does not allow us to make it work, perhaps it is a good idea to use the most popular distribution. Anything to not go back to Windows.
It depends on what each one wants to do with their distribution.
A few years ago I installed Debian and after configuring it to my liking I realized that I had left it exactly the same as what Ubuntu left, except that with Ubuntu I do it in a couple of clicks.
There are a lot of things one can do and learn with free software, and just as I don't want to have to hunt and grow my food with a Carrefour 6 blocks away, I don't want to compile the printer driver either.
well, I say that everything works in Windows... well, what do you want me to tell you, everything works for me in Linux too and I've never had a problem and the distro thing, it doesn't matter, everything works in all of them, whatever some have more work than others, but for that there are several distros, so you can use the one that works for you or the one that you fancy or like, for example, until recently I was with slackware and did the same as with any other distro, but for example in the case of slackware, it's an exciting distro, it's actually my favorite, but I've stopped using it because of stable debian, because right now I don't have time and I need a simple distribution that doesn't give problems, that is, stable debian, slackware is a super distro, but you need to have time to deal with it. With Windows you can't make these decisions, or any others, because Windows is Windows and that's it, you have no other choice and Linux is precisely that, plenty of options, so you can use what best suits you at all times.
Well, normally our favorite distribution is the one that works best for us, so the dilemma posed in the title doesn't usually occur. Also, the differences between distros are minimal. You can make Arch Linux look exactly like Ubuntu Xubuntu or Fedora, or have it nailed to Redhat or Manjaro. Except for the package managers and some specific applications, the rest of the system will be, in the eyes of the user, identical (in fact, I have Linux Mint with Gnome shell, and I don't go directly to Ubuntu because I like the developers of the minty distro, and because I like some Linux Mint applications -which I could also install on Ubuntu if I wanted-)