I use Debian on my server and Arch on my gaming PC and laptop. Both distros offer minimal installs so I can just add the packages I need and avoid the ones I don’t. Debian offers a nice stable base for running my services with minimal downtime and Arch has the most up to date packages for all the cutting edge features I want on desktop.

Proxmox is built on Debian and is great. My second choice would just be plain Debian.

I think people want a distribution to do what they ask of it, not one where you need to use workarounds to get it do do what you want.

Hey I get this reference.