When I use software, the only requirement that I have is that said software must be FOSS and privacy respecting (they usually come in hand). However, there are some things that, in my opinion, add value to said software. These are my "nice to have"
Basically, I prefer to use minimalist software. However, I am not that strict, I do not run a systemd-free musl distro 100% suckless core. It's just a preference.
I prefer to run terminal based programs for simplicity.
I want my software to be customized easily, without headaches. A clean configuration file is always welcomed. I do not only refer to aesthetics.
That said, let's just go with the programs :)
I use Arch Linux. I started with Linux in march 2020, and I began with Ubuntu. Since then, I have slowly progressed to Manjaro and then Arch. I broke my computer dual booting once, by the way.
I enjoy Arch due to its simplicity, I really don't understand the Arch meme to be honest. For me, everything worked out of the box, bluetooth, printer, etc. I might be a legend, or people might just be exaggerating a little bit.
I use dwm and I love it. Again,
it's simple, it's easy to configure, and it has a logical way of
ordering windows. It just makes sense.
Now I use XFCE. I like it.
I use DistroTube's fork of ST. However, I have added my own configuration so it's a fork of DistroTube's fork of st. There's no particular reason over my terminal, again, I just think is clean, simple and superior than the rest. The reason why I use a fork is because I was lazy to patch it.
I use zsh, which is just improved bash. I also use it with the oh-my-zsh framework, I like some of its plugins.
For the majority of my time in Linux, I have used Firefox with privacy extensions like uBlock origin, uMatrix, HTTPS everywhere, etc. However, now that the Mozilla future doesn't seem oriented to privacy or good user experience in general, I'm messing with LibreWolf (which is basically unmozillad-firefox) and ungoogled-chromium.
I use mpv for video and ncmpcpp plus mpd for audio. MPV is basically what everyone uses and ncmpcpp it's the best mpd player in my opinion.