Surprised nobody mentioned Yakuake. Just discovered it’s just for kde. Been using it for years. It hides at the top of my screen and slides down when the cursor hits the top. Full desktop when not used and can access it no matter which app I’m using.

Started with Mandrake a long time ago and when it went away turned to Ubuntu and have stuck with it ever since. Surprised no one mentioned LTS (long time support) which I think is 5 years. This means for servers you don’t have to worry about frequent upgrades (think fedora) and for desktops my setup stays stable for a good while.

I try other disros in VMs just to try sexier stuff but for production stick to Ubuntu.