Your favorite distro?
Alright. I know distro wars are a thing and I’m not trying to start a flame war.
What I would like to hear is what distro y’all currently use, and why you like it.
Personally I like Debian because I’m comfortable using apt, and I’ve been led to believe that the install size is slightly smaller than Ubuntu.
It don’t be like it is until it do.
Comments
Debian or Slackware. I have some storage boxes which run OpenBSD
On big servers: Debian, on small servers: Alpine, on desktop: Fedora.
Most often CentOS on servers and Fedora on desktops. Occasionally Debian when the application requires it.
I'm familiar with CentOS and also because of it's long term support. I know if I install CentOS in a server I don't need to worry about updates breaking anything. It just works.
CentOS mostly due to years of familiarity + Alpine due to memory. Ideology aside, if you're familiar with one and know how to make it secure and tune the performance, then stick with it unless there's a need to change.
Thanks for sharing, everyone, but I’d also love to hear why you chose that distro.
And you’re totally right, @tetech.
It don’t be like it is until it do.
I started on Slackware. I moved to Debian as I was dealing with it more and more on servers, and apt-get was so much easier than slackware.
Ubuntu. Familiarity and lots of tutorials out there for everything
I start with Centos. Because the first install guide is using centos 6.
My first day job, my manager also a cent fans.
Can't say I love centos, just a tools for me.
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Ubuntu.
I started with centos but really disliked it because it got outdated packages. That is because centos basically is a fork of rhel from what I understand. It's probably useful for companies seeking for long term support and stable packages.
Then I started using debian. It's nice but for some reason I like Ubuntu more.
Ubuntu 14 was already nice but so far I really liked 16 the most. The current 18 is okay.
For servers and stability CentOs and Debian. For home use Ubuntu/Mint or Arch based distros. On the road Puppy.
CentOS for anything production grade or RHEL(when customer is ready to pay)
Ubuntu when I want to play with shiny new stuff.
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I like Debian.
If I'm hungry, I use Debiham.
If the force is strong with me, I use Debihan.
Thx.
Michael from DragonWebHost & OnePoundEmail
My laptop has Windows 10 2020H1. Through Windows Subsystem for Linux, I have:
On-prem servers are Debian 9 or 10 (armhf), depending on when I installed each node.
VPS servers are either Ubuntu 18 or Debian 10, depending on RAM (I prefer Ubuntu but it won't install in less than 512MB RAM).
I stay away from ArchLinux because last time I tried it, the upgrader decides to upgrade libc, and then the node is broken.
I stay away from CentOS because I hate the name DNF: it means "did not find" in my other hobby geocaching, which is a negative achievement.
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Burn the witch!
It don’t be like it is until it do.
Debian - Ubuntu - Mint. Usually the first for server and the last for personal computers. The one in the middle is a courtesy mention.
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as a hobbyist, started with centos and centos commands now make most sense (perhaps by memory as well). never tried debian, but ubuntu does have some advantage when it comes to installing stuff and updates. cant remember exactly what but it is more complete and "smart" by default than centos.
however due to limited experience, centos is preferred for stability, webpanel testing, and best of all benching
it almost always does much better than ubuntu in crunching numbers.
#centosfolaif
I bench YABS 24/7/365 unless it's a leap year.
DNF isn't in 7, and it will answer to
yumin 8. You don't even have to seednfin 8.I’ve wondered what I’d miss if I switched from Debian to Alpine. I should look into it.
It don’t be like it is until it do.
It depends on what you need. Alpine has fewer packages because it's a smaller community, and they use musl for their c lib instead of glibc. Which means, compiling from source might be an adventure, if you're into that sort of thing. Most big FOSS things are there, but some smaller things aren't. Commercial stuff certainly isn't.
It also depends on how you feel about the systemd ecosystem. Alpine is derived from Gentoo, and uses OpenRC instead.
Nearly everything I do on a personal VPS is through Docker containers. I rarely interact with the system at all. So going Alpine might not affect me as much as I thought...
It don’t be like it is until it do.
Started on Redhat 6 , weaved my way around probably every top ten list on Distrowatch over the past decade and a half. Now : Debian on VPS, any variant or fork of Debian on desktop. Locked into using Ubuntu 18.04 for Gridpane subscription. On desktop so far have tried Ubuntu , Ubuntu Mate, ZorinOS, Mint, Bodhi. Prefer the last two, Bodhi still running on my 13 year old Dell Latitude.
Tested/ tasted Alpine for the first time when I had tried freebox. I personally feel alpine is an acquired taste. I liked it and leave it at that.
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My journey started on Ubuntu & now headed to Debian.
Jeez, u geekmates.
Linux Mint
in the past I was more focused on barebone stuff and customizing it myself, but there is no time, Linux Mint is the closest to what I need
Servers Centos, workstation Ubuntu LTS.
For smaller, specific tasks, Alpine is great. It's thin and it's just enough to do what it needs to do without any systemd bullshit. Production nameservers in 256MB? Sure, that's more than enough (did it in 64MB back in the early 90s w/o hitting swap, but then again, djbdns was a thing). nsd4 > powerdns > anything > bind
For legacy/web stuff, I run Devuan, because I am so used to debian apache config that even thinking of migrating causes me headaches. It's stable, it does what it needs to, and again, fairly thin with the proper php-fpm config and so forth. 10+ year old Xeon serving a few hundred vanity domains? Load sits under .5 even when it's getting scraped. This is kind of cheating because I KVM everything, and this is from the hypervisor.
Low RAM? OpenBSD. It just works, and although Theo is the world's biggest butthole, he's given up and admitted that x86 won so hardware support is pretty good. I don't think NetBSD will even boot in 64MB anymore, but I haven't tried recently. I do have a special "virtualization" kernel built for this because it gives me more free RAM, which is a bit important when your VPS has a tenth of the RAM of your router.
Desktop? Void. Shit just works. DJB inspired init system and weird quirks/bugs and a homebrew package manager from a former NetBSD dev, but damn if my 9 year old i7 doesn't fly. Cinnamon w/ 2 heads, Chrome, all of the trimming. Still using about 2G.
"It's a hard life- to be a stick insect." - Karl Pilkington
FreeBSD is my favorite.
Alpine is irritating me frankly because it's taking this too far.
Cutting usability to save megabytes just doesn't work for me in an era where a 16gb vps is LES compliant
You've chosen the wrong distribution. CentOS 7 will probably be happy with 16GB, even if it is a little low on RAM.
"It's a hard life- to be a stick insect." - Karl Pilkington
LOL no 16 ramses not hdd
In fairness that was a wicked once off special so calling it LES compliant is a stretch (thanks @nseries)
Point is ram is no longer in short supply
>
Alpine was never meant to be a full server distro. It was originally a router or firewall distro, like OpenWRT, and it was supposed to run from a readonly system image with data and configs in a writeable overlay partition. That's still it's basic mission, so there is a reason for the minimalism.
It just so happens that a bare-bones distro without lots of junk sitting around or lots of automagic happening is pretty nice. How much human comfort do you really need to host a service?
Still a bit low for CentOS 7.
"It's a hard life- to be a stick insect." - Karl Pilkington
Uhm. Have all da things.
Nah I guess Alpine is just irritating me cause docker and not used to non Ubuntu stuff.
I get the thinking and understand that I'm in the wrong (if deployed at scale) but at the learning stage the bare bones approach is irritating me
Favorite?
What we use every single day of our lives, are, Debian > Kali > Astra Smolensk 1.6.
Definitely would not call any of them 'favorite' though.
Ah, yeah. It's a little odd switching to new distros or operating systems, especially from one of the big 3 who round off the edges.
I'm old enough to remember when this was more normal, and I also remember it took me a few tries to really get into Unix-like OSes.
Debian if I have the choice. CentOS if I have no choice.
Amitz, a very stable genius (it's true!) and Grand Rectumfier of the official LESLOS® (LES League of Shitposters).
Certified braindead since 1974 and still perfectly happy.
Debian mostly, then variables like Ubuntu, Mint etc. Centos when needed for certain tasks or software.
• If a program actually fits in memory and has enough disk space, it is guaranteed to crash.
• If such a program has not crashed yet, it is waiting for a critical moment before it crashes.
CentOS - Basic start for me for personal servers which are meant to 'setup, run and forget' and for job related tasks
Fedora - For my desktops because it works, is similar in many ways to the CentOS/RHEL (again job), and I am in the group that like Gnome Shell and it always seems to be doing better in Fedora than in other distros that I try with full GUI
Debian - For development and such, I actually started with it years ago. Very often what is hard to complete in CentOS or Fedora is just plain easy to do in Debian (I wish the other two had so much stuff as debian official respositories without the need to use 3rd party repos).
FreeBSD or Debian preferred. Fedora or Centos when I have to.
My favorite Linux distro is Windows XP SP2.
It falls under the GNU GPL/BSD license, if torrented properly.
Computers are just weak heaters, in winter.
Laptops are no different than toasters.
Pissing towards the wind keeps the balls well moisturized.
Warranty is lifetime, it works until it stops working.
I've tried Centos 6 & 7, Debian 8, 9 & 10, and Ubuntu 18.
Among the three distros, there is no perceived favorite, but in recent couple of months, Debian 10 has been highly used and relied on.
manjaro since it is based on Arch. Makes feel any old laggard comp faster and better.
Used to use CentOS on my own servers, but I moved everything to Fedora now. At work it's Debian and Ubuntu unfortunately.
Production servers on Fedora?
Sounds a bit stressful to me (new major version every six months still?) ...
12 months of support per release, so it's feasible to stay on a version for a year. Fedora has also made in place upgrades pretty painless, just don't do anything too wacky with packages.
How's kernel 3.10 treating ya?
"It's a hard life- to be a stick insect." - Karl Pilkington
I use Debian for production servers (mostly out of habit & the package manager is great). I've used it since about 2007. When I first got familiar with Linux I used to compile lots of software manually but I quickly learned that it was almost impossible to keep up with security bugs. Recompiling Apache/LAMP (and all the prerequisites) for every bug is a pain. I finally accepted that I should use packages and make due with the older versions of software.
About a year ago I decided to see (again...) if Linux was ready for use as a desktop. I've tried to switch several times over the years but there were always problems, mostly due to poor font selections/rendering. Compared to Windows the interface looked ugly (especially when browsing websites). I would inevitably throw it out and start using Windows again. This last winter I decided to try Gentoo on my desktop and so far I'm impressed. I've been using it for a little over a year. Although it's a pain to initially set up, Gentoo runs incredibly fast and the KDE Plasma user interface finally gives Windows some competition for appearance. The other benefit is that Gentoo stays on the bleeding edge with new software releases. I still have Windows installed (mostly for remote desktop support and Visual Studio) but I've gotten to the point where I spend most of my time logged into Linux.
I tried really hard to use Linux as my personal desktop OS. I gave Solus a spin, and I actually really liked the opinionated approach. Budgie is also decent as a WM.
The problem for me is that I’m a competitive gamer. Linux isn’t built for that. Tools like Wine / DXVK have greatly improved the gaming expedience on Linux, but they’re still plagued with higher than average input latency and insane stutters due to shader caching. Also basic things are simply broken, such as dual Freesync monitors. That really ruins the mood.
Maybe someday Linux will be the desktop OS of choice for everyone. For me though, it’s not quite there.
It don’t be like it is until it do.
That's quite the euphemism for lazy.
"It's a hard life- to be a stick insect." - Karl Pilkington
My choice of hobby in my free time is not indicative of my work ethic. I’m employed at a BigN company and I worked damn hard to get there.
It don’t be like it is until it do.