What Linux distribution you use and why?

[YamiYukiSenpai]

Kubuntu on my host machines.  It's tried and true for me, and I'm much more comfortable in Ubuntu land.  My gaming desktop has Pop!_OS's repo (with apt preferences that would stop Pop shell from taking over).

 

I do play around with other distros though.  I got Arch with Deepin as one of my VMs, along with Ubuntu Unity.

[Willa]

Ubuntu on my main desktop, been using that for the past few years. Somewhat annoyed with that, but...I'm converting my main desktop to gaming only after moving soon so I'll just run Windows 10 on it most likely, unfortunately. (we'll see how long that lasts, LOL). I mostly stuck with Ubuntu for ease of use and it does well at running proprietary software and games compared to some other distros.

 

Usually jump between different distros on my laptops, right now my main linux laptop (Thinkpad X220T) is running ElementaryOS, a very pleasant to look at OS that does some neat things, but doesn't seem like my long term candidate of choice (too far downstream, too many non-standard [compared to Ubuntu or Debian] things / tweaks, kind of annoying and buggy at times) though. I've found that I really enjoy KDE apps and the KDE desktop environment generally, been testing that on my iMac via Kubuntu. May migrate completely off of GNOME to KDE in the future given how much more "integrated" and polished KDE feels, though I like the design of both desktop environments (KDE wins out a little compared to GNOME because I hate the default GNOME dock / application panel and use Plank instead; I'm a sucker for a macOS style dock lol)

 

For better stability, applications support, and so on, I'll either migrate fully from Ubuntu to something like Debian Testing (Stable stays too out of date for my preferences, and Debian testing seems more stable than Arch [which can be very stable if you read the releases before updating], so /shrug) or try out .rpm distros. SUSE products look more appealing than Fedora, though I can't pinpoint why. SUSE of some kind (whichever the consumer version is) plus KDE seems like a rock solid nice combo so I'll try that out on my iMac here soon probably.

 

For my PowerPC machines...I've heard very nice things about Adelie Linux and am curious about trying that out. Ubuntu server + LXDE or LXLE as the desktop environment has worked well so far though.

 

On the server side of things, I'm really liking Proxmox VE (hypervisor OS based on some mix of Debian & Ubuntu). I only have one PC running that at the moment, but will likely add one or two more so I can cluster them in one Proxmox "datacenter" and split tasks, VMs, containers, & loads across the nodes (PCs) of that cluster. What's neat is that you don't have to use the same PC for each node in a cluster, can be completely different models, brands, mixtures of hardware, etc.

 

I know it's not Linux, but either FreeBSD or OpenBSD have been calling to me a lot lately...I've messed with them before (OpenBSD worked surprisingly well on my MacBook Air lol) and find that I may actually like the more Unix-y style + integrated OS they provide compared to the sort of hodgepodge a Linux distro really is.

[10leej]

I use Gentoo because it's as close as I can get to an Operating system perfectly tailored to me.

So many distro's do things like compile chromium with or without widening support, or compile obs-studio without the browser. Gentoo let's me make that choice myself.

[jde3]

As a sysadmin who has worked on Linux/Unix systems for decades I use..

 

FreeBSD on the server:
It's remarkably simple, it's fast, it's highly flexable and it's got a lot of features Linux doesn't have or doesn't have well implemented. (ZFS, Jails, Ports, PF, Boot Enviroments and DTrace) FreeBSD makes a very nice production environment. Gentoo is the closest thing to FreeBSD in the Linux world but FreeBSD ships stable binaries as well as ports and it's build system is the same as it's package system.. They also do backports and it's backwards API compatible. So an install has a very long shelf life as it's easily upgradable and even FreeBSD 4 can be jailed on FreeBSD 13. Yes, it is Unix and not Linux and that means sometimes technicians need more training time but it is a far easier production world to live in and takes less system engineering time to maintain. Simplicity means solving problems faster and getting more work done.

MacOS on the desktop:
It *is* a Unix distro so this counts. Since I work on systems all day, I get very tired of working on them at home too. I want the least amount of headache on the desktop I can get and I've found that is MacOS. Being commercial Unix, there is a cost to it but I feel it's worth it.

If I had to use Linux:
I'd use Alpine and Gentoo due to simplicity and flexibility. (or Ubuntu if I just don't care and want something to work now) My least favorite distro to work on is RHEL, it's just needlessly complicated and stupid. I don't have to tell anyone here.. major version RHEL upgrades are absolute hell because they change so much of the system version to version and backport nothing. It has a few nice high level tools but that does not out weigh it's complexity.

[SydneyBrokeIt]

I used to be on Arch for a long time, but then I started getting hardware that was new enough it didn't want to work right.  Throw in the fact that some games still don't work right, and I gave up on Arch.

 

Now I just run Ubuntu in a VM inside my gaming machine for work.  Half my machine is still more than most people have for their machines.

[NateAteTeen]

I previously used Ubuntu on an old windows laptop. Currently using Pop!_OS on my desktop since i was previously familiar with Ubuntu and Pop!_OS offered a nice Nvidia GPU driver installation process.

[essasetic]

Fedora 36 on both my desktop and laptop (specifically the Nobara Project).

[BionicSeaSerpent]

i tried many different distros on this 10 year old Travelmate but i stuck with Manjaro KDE in the end after using Xubuntu 20.04 for a few months in 2020. i had Custom arch as an ISO with KDE Preinstalled but that gave me issues with Wifi no matter what ISO version i used. Manjaro worked and its perfect for me. i have it Dualbooted with Windows 10 as of now because in the normal way the School will not support Linux on their Internet. i use windows the most as it turns out the GT 540M won't support Vulcan on Linux and gaming aint the best on it with either OS you use. i keep Manjaro here becuase Windows absolutely hates bluetooth no matter what and i can't use it unless i pair a device in Linux first. reboots to windows will make it not work again. stupid it has to be that way but that's what it is i guess

[Giganthrax]

ZorinOS Core is my favorite so far. Got it on my work laptop and it has served me really well so far.

 

I also used Linux Mint MATE for over a year now and that's a pretty good distro as well, if a little rough around the edges.

[linkboy]

I was running Linux Mint 20.3 Cinnamon, but I wanted something a bit newer in regards to kernel and software packages, so with the release of Fedora 36 a couple of days ago, I made the switch to Fedora 36 Cinnamon.

 

My computer is a ThinkPad P50 and it's ran Linux great.

 

I'm still working on getting my computer set back up, but so far, I'm really enjoying it

[maplepants]

On the desktop I prefer macOS. I have a Ubuntu desktop, but it's not my primary desktop.

 

On the server, I always run the Ubuntu Server LTS. It's what I have used the most at work over the years, and it's the distro I learned first. I've used CentOS, RHEL, Amazon Linux, and Debian a bunch but everything I run at home is always Ubuntu (or Raspberry Pi OS on my Pi).

[Potat_ovo]

Debian GNU/Linux (testing) with GNOME.

I've started with Ubuntu and got used to apt and GNOME desktop environment, however Debian can be much more lightweight and doesn't include proprietary blobs out-of-the-box (even though it's easy to add the non-free repository).

[Ralphred]

On 5/10/2022 at 4:37 PM, jde3 said:

major version RHEL upgrades are absolute hell because they change so much of the system version to version and backport nothing

This was my experience with Fedora around 2004. I switched to Fedora when I got my first 64bit machine 'cus they had the most 64bit rpms, but major release updates were like doing a re-install. I switched to Gentoo, and once I got my head around how it worked, haven't looked back.

It's kind of ironic i was messing around with RPI's for a friend of mine and got to the same stage:

Quote

I CBA with this "no 64bit version available", mind if I rebuild these things using gentoo so you're not missing packages?

I've got an old optiplex I run updates on for him to download when needed now.

 

I installed Ubuntu the other day on a spare drive for some library testing I was doing, I don't know if it was buntu or gnome that drove me crazy, but the drive was wiped within 1/2 an hour and I devised another way to do the testing with Arch instead.

[Xiee]

Settled with Fedora. Since its sort of "bleeding edge" but "stable". Had a lot of issues with my bluetooth devices and my wifi card going crazy on Arch when I did updates. Didn't have any issues when I started using Fedora.

[xAcid9]

Manjaro on both my work and home PC. Mainly because almost everything just work for me.

 

Waow...

[cant windows123]

I use arch in both my phone and laptop. This is because i first stated using it on my phone because i wanted the bleeding edge rolling release then, when it was time to choose a distro for my laptop i figured it would be nice to have a seamless experience from one device to the next.

[masked]

Fedora on my laptop. I switched to it from Pop_OS and discovered that with, some modifications, it did everything I liked in Pop_OS better than Pop_OS.

 

Ubuntu Server for a VPS that I use, partly because that was one of the defaults offered and partly because snaps may be annoying on a desktop but for making a nexctcloud server, they're really, really nice.

[BeerisLife]

KDE Neon

 

Barebones install to build up as I like

 

The latest and greatest Plasma

 

None of that Snap rubbish, and Flatpak is an easy uninstall

 

Would rather be using good old IBM OS/2 Warp 4.5 though so play with it in Virtualbox!

[Arokan]

I currently use Debian on all devices.
This is due to the fact that I've come to know Linux through a raspberry pi, which I bought to force myself to extend my IT-knowledge.
Once I somewhat knew what I was doing after breaking it several times, I thought about making the switch for a while.

One day, I cannot remember what it was, Windows was annoying the hell out of me and I thought "That's it!".

I'm not a fan of dual-booting, because you learn best if it's sink or swim.
 

Yeah, have been using it for 1,5 years now and it's quite nice.

I'm currently in the process of planning a new PC on which I'm going to run Arch, because I'm pretty solid in using Linux and want the bleeding-edge stuff for gaming. Also I want one of those T-shirt and transform into the vegan of the IT-World, telling everybody who didn't ask that I'm using Arch.

 

My Laptop will remain on Debian, because I need the stability for uni and something to use if (when?) I eff up the Arch on the PC.

[Herr.Hoefkens]

gentoo,

 

its the one i dissagree with the least, prolly because you get to do everything yourself , and its hard to dissagree with that

[The Hope]

On a 13 year old laptop: Void Linux (reason = speed of package manager and init system)

On a cheap netbook: Devuan (reason = compatibility printer drivers and extremely fast init system)

Permanent installation on USB stick: mageia (reason = good compatibility, very user friendly and excellent stability)

Permanent installation on USB stick: NixOS (reason = learning best universal Linux package manager)

On my desktop and very old netbook: FreeBSD (reason = stability, ZFS, performance, pkg, audio stack, security, features) 

In a VM on FreeBSD: TrueNAS (reason = For NAS features like Nextcloud)

In a VM on FreeBSD: Alpine Linux (reason = fastest booting Linux distro and extremely fast package manager)

[The Hope]

I believe Alpine Linux is one of the most underrated Linux distros out there.

It has the fastest startup, which makes startup much faster on systems that still have HDD or slow SSD. Also super useful for use in VMs.

It has the lowest RAM usage of all Linux distros. Useful for older hardware that sometimes only has 1GB of RAM, and 4GB of RAM isn't much these days unless you're using Alpine Linux. Also for use in VMs it is handy that it uses very little RAM.

It is one of the most secure Linux systems.

pacman and XBPS are lightning fast compared to Ubuntu's package manager which is over 3 times slower. But it often feels to me that Alpine Linux's package manager is even faster.

It is stable and easy to use, and it already has XFCE, KDE Plasma 5.27 and GNOME 44.

[Guidosaurus-Rex]

On 1/8/2013 at 1:28 PM, puunakki said:

So the topic says it all, what Linux distribution you use and why?

I have been a Linux user for quite a while now, and have gotten used to use Ubuntu as my primary system. I also use Ubuntu in both of my servers, fileserver and general server (www, mumble etc.), and in my laptop.

I do test other distributions quite often in my test pc, but none has convinced me to switch off from Ubuntu. The Unity desktops ease of use is just superb, and I can perform my day to day tasks like a baws!

If I had to do serious working with my pc, and have like bazillion monitors, I would prefer something like Gnome 2 as my desktop environment.

Nobara on my desktop for gaming.  Fedora on my laptop for work.  I do everything through a browser which is really just using citrix.  On my old Laptop I had Mint 19 through 21.x, Pop_OS and Manjaro.  

Now this old laptop is running Garuda Linux Gnome.  

[Xiee]

Been on EndeavourOS (Arch-based) for about a year now. Was previously using Fedora, but I changed because I liked the community on EndeavourOS. They were very helpful with a lot of issues that I had so I stayed.

[Synergiance]

I use Slackware on my desktop and laptop. It's a solid distro that never fails me. It doesn't do anything I don't explicitly tell it to, and it will run continuously until I shut it down, sometimes many months later.