In your opinion, what would you consider to be the best Linux distro?

I was actually a Linux user for a few years, but I eventually switched back to Windows because I couldn't take the unstable nature of Linux. I've heard it's come a long way, so I would love to hear which version of Linux you use, and why.

Impossible to definitively answer - it's a personal choice.

Personally, I've used Arch for the last 6-7 years, and can't imagine not using a rolling release again. Arch definitely isn't for everyone though - the install can seem a little overwhelming, and Arch doesn't make many decisions for you.

For someone looking to get (back) into Linux, I'd probably recommend one of the Debian based distro's: Debian, Ubuntu or Mint. I've never used Mint, but I swapped back and forth between Debian and Ubuntu for several years before making the jump to Arch.

I used Linux Mint in my laptop, until it had a meltdown, due to it being stable and easy to use. Just what I want on a laptop without any graphics card.

In princip am I double booting with Manjaro on the desktop but due to unfortunate circumstances have I only used other computers or Windows lately. Cannot comment a lot about it as I have used it less than ten hours but it is not as stable as Mint, which was one of the criteria I had when choosing a distro to try. Not want most everything to be outdated when playing newer games.

Best is entirely subjective. I'm an odd man who uses Fedora because I like how it is easier to use than Arch, but also prefer fresh packages. Just not without having to assemble them, too. Fedora having been made from enterprise grade software helped give me confidence too.

I dislike Debian and derivatives for holding the whole of Linux back by being based on "stability" and things like LTS. (Moreso when a spin (Ubuntu) based on an LTS has a spin based on a LTS, (Mint) which itself has an ancient LTS (yes, really) spin that looks like you walked out of a crypt with software from 2006.)

I've tried Debian, several flavors of Ubuntu, SuSe, Puppy, and even tried a few weirder ones like Slack.

Keep in mind, as long as you have a working flash memory drive, you can try as many distros as you want. Also keep in mind that a Distro is not limited to the desktop it comes with. Fedora normally comes with Gnome, but nothing is stopping you from kicking it out entirely and running Plasma or XFCE instead.

Addendum: Dual Booting stopped being an option when I accidentally cooked my partitions and had to reformat. It's all Linux, all the Time.

For gaming, probably Ubuntu or Linux Mint. Ubuntu in particular is officially supported on both GOG and Steam.
For general use, I think Manjaro is pretty cool.

Ps: I use both Windows (only for gaming) and Linux

I can only echo the posters above me. "Best" depends entirely on your personal needs and desires. What might be a dealbreaker for me, might be entirely unimportant for you, while I might be quite okay with the hassle of something that'll make you immediately start looking for alternatives.

It's a great strength of the Linux world that there's so many distributions to choose from, and that each of them allow so many more choices for how to use them. Of course, it's also a great weakness, as it's completely overwhelming for someone who doesn't yet know what they'll care about, and which decisions will be important for them.

Personally I use Ubuntu. I strongly dislike many of the choices they've made - but I love that they support their LTS releases for five years, which means that once I've tweaked the setup in such a way that I have undone - or at least can live with - all those annoying choices, I can look forward to many years of just enjoying my setup and not needing to spend a single additional minute for considering alternatives.

(And yet I entirely understand Darvond's completely opposite opinion above. It really all depends on where your personal priorities lie. Is your OS a means to an end which you want to spend as little time as possible on, do you actively enjoy tweaking and getting the absolute best out of it, or something in between? Those are all equally valid points of view.)

I personally use MX-Linux and Linux Mint on separate laptops (both still dual-booted with Windows 7). Of the two, I prefer MX because it allows a greater degree of customization with less work, and because I can still run it on my netbook. But as for it being the best distro, it is only for me but may not be for others, and your best bet really is to try out different distros to see what works best for you.

There isn't one. Different distributions serve different purposes. For example, here are two characteristics one might want in a distribution, but that are mutually exclusive.
1. Getting the newest versions of software as they're released, so you don't have out-of-date versions of software.
2. Being assured that an update won't break your setup, or change the way things work.

You can't have a distro that does both 1 and 2. (If you are wondering why one might want 2, you might have noticed how Windows 10 forces updates that sometimes break things? With a distribution like Debian Stable or CentOS, that doesn't happen.)

Depends on how you define... "Distro" :P

fedora is all i can tolerate in the current years.

Linux Mint is the best "everything just works" Linux distro.
Usually run Fedora linux, but have been experimenting with ArchLinux, and it's definitely growing on me.

The really divisive question is: What is the best BSD distro?
Flamewars from the early nineteen nineties are still raging over that question.

did mint replace ubuntu in that category? i use to love ubuntu before the unity debacle, this was when vista was a thing though. even my mother loved it when i put it on her computer.

Oh yes. Mint is essentially a more polished/better curated ubuntu variant. The Linux Mint install process is very streamlined, multimedia codecs were kinda-sorta-not-really removed (can be downloaded from internet during a Mint OS install), and GUI-wise feels very Windows 7-ish.

My favorite BSD distro is probably OpenBSD because the guy behind OpenBSD built the OpenSSH protocol, but my platonic dream BSD distro is NetBSD whose mantra is "yes....netBSD runs on that".

Either Peppermint OS or Zorin OS are the best distros