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geekhack Community => Off Topic => Topic started by: ozar on Mon, 09 February 2009, 18:24:22

Title: Linux: which distro do you use?
Post by: ozar on Mon, 09 February 2009, 18:24:22: Being a big fan of Linux for the last 8 or 9 years, I couldn't help but to notice that a large number of you appear to be regular Linux users as well. Of course, that started me to wondering about what distros you all prefer?

While I still experiment with other distros now and then, I've been running Arch Linux for the last 4 or 5 years. It generally works pretty well, and it usually gets along with my computer hardware, so I'll probably continue with it until something better comes along.

So, what are the rest of you running?
Title: Linux: which distro do you use?
Post by: vyshane on Mon, 09 February 2009, 19:39:00: Like most Linux users I've tried several distributions over the years. I now value stability and just getting **** done more than trying out the latest hyped distro du jour.

These days I use Ubuntu if I need a Linux workstation. Most of our servers run Debian at work. It makes sense to have a familiar environment and package management system. FreeBSD was my favored operating system for a long time. I use it on my personal VPS, again, out of familiarity, and because it has been rock solid for me. My preferred general purpose OS has been OS X for the last 3 or 4 years.
Title: Linux: which distro do you use?
Post by: bigpook on Mon, 09 February 2009, 19:54:20: ubuntu, because it mostly just works.
Title: Linux: which distro do you use?
Post by: lexicon on Mon, 09 February 2009, 20:34:14: Ubuntu, which really does "just work" so well that I never think about it.
Title: Linux: which distro do you use?
Post by: bhtooefr on Mon, 09 February 2009, 20:36:53: Ubuntu Server 8.04 on my ancient Dell, and that's it.

I used to run Ubuntu 7.04 on my old ThinkPad, but I've had a lot of trouble with Linux as a main OS, and it generally highly annoys me. OS X is as exotic as it gets for daily use for me, and I don't even use that daily because I can't get it running on my ThinkPad, and my iBook sucks horribly. ;)

(Not saying I don't play around with more exotic OSes, though. But, usually in a VM, an emulator (if it's a non-x86 OS, I'm on a real ARM kick lately, which means RPCEmu is often running,) or on a secondary machine.)
Title: Linux: which distro do you use?
Post by: cheater1034 on Mon, 09 February 2009, 22:07:04: Arch linux is great, if you aren't having any problems then don't switch. It is what i find to be the BEST binary distribution available hands down. In terms of basically everything, nothing else is close in comparison. (Especially with aur, and having kdemod is a nice commodity too)

I have ubuntu installed right now (it's my second linux partition that i use for backups and stuff, and distro testing), and ubuntu is blech. You can't do anything outside the box without it breaking, because the default "just works" isn't good enough for me ;)

Although right now i'm on exherbo (which is awesome), which i wouldn't reccomend to anyone since it's a dev-only distro right now basically (< 1 year old and no user support, etc)

Anyway, for me right now it's, 1) Exherbo/Gentoo (gentoo kind of annoys me with kde and the devs), 2) Arch, 3) Sidux
Title: Linux: which distro do you use?
Post by: DarthShrine on Tue, 10 February 2009, 00:06:20: Agreed about Arch Linux. I run it on my router and EeePC.
Title: Linux: which distro do you use?
Post by: cb951303 on Tue, 10 February 2009, 02:06:52: even though I started with slcakware, 9 years ago, as many of you I got tired of handling everything manually. used arch for a while and loved pacman but then I got tired again. Now I use latest ubuntu and loving it.
Title: Linux: which distro do you use?
Post by: FunkTrooper on Tue, 10 February 2009, 03:47:59: I'm currently also running Ubuntu 8.10 on my laptop. Though that may change if ever I feel like it. I'm a bit of a Linux noob as well, so I don't really know what would be best for me. I'm liking this a lot though, it does seem to work very well. Though, the packages do seem rather out of date. They don't usually have the latest bugfix versions of apps, which I would think they ought to have.
Title: Linux: which distro do you use?
Post by: wumpyr on Tue, 10 February 2009, 04:08:45: Gentoo of course :) sure, you need to know a bit more and put some more work in up front, but honestly the payback is tenfold. I have been in situations with Fedora where you just get into rpm dependency hell with no easy way out. Also I found distributions based on the same sets of tools tend to override your settings, typically have stupid defaults or I spend my time finding where they set up things.

I also refuse to do "big upgrades". With gentoo I have very granular control, upgrade in small increments, or downgrade as I please. This control can have its downsides as well, but if you really know how linux works, you'll be fine, and even if you don't, you'll soon learn :)

I've really never looked back.

This guy has been blogging (http://gentooexperimental.org/~patrick/weblog/index.html) a little on the stupidness of some distros package managers. See the two part post on Debian and How Bad Tools Can Make Easy Things Very Hard. Yeah, I know, a gentoo view of the world, but still, worth consideration.

(ex-Solaris geek, the world has mostly moved on lol)
Title: Linux: which distro do you use?
Post by: cb951303 on Tue, 10 February 2009, 09:20:04: Quote from: FunkTrooper;21287
I'm currently also running Ubuntu 8.10 on my laptop. Though that may change if ever I feel like it. I'm a bit of a Linux noob as well, so I don't really know what would be best for me. I'm liking this a lot though, it does seem to work very well. Though, the packages do seem rather out of date. They don't usually have the latest bugfix versions of apps, which I would think they ought to have.

what you need my friend is a "rolling" distro which means packages gets updated as new versions come out. Distros like ubuntu have 6 month release cycle. No new versions are added to the repo in this 6 month, only security updates and occasional bug fixes...
Title: Linux: which distro do you use?
Post by: D-EJ915 on Tue, 10 February 2009, 09:30:51: I use ubuntu and debian mainly, have ubuntu on my desktop (kubuntu w/no kde and gdm, lol kdm blows) and ftp server, debian on my other linux boxes.

I don't even really remember, lol...got the specific versions on my system info pages on my site if you really want to know.

I like arch but somehow I never get around to installing it. I probably picked kubuntu because I knew the configuration files would be in the same place as on my old 7.04 setup lol.
Title: Linux: which distro do you use?
Post by: lowpoly on Tue, 10 February 2009, 10:12:23: SUSE 10 on my development server.
Title: Linux: which distro do you use?
Post by: cmr on Tue, 10 February 2009, 13:18:27: ubuntu on desktops, usually debian or red hat on servers
Title: Linux: which distro do you use?
Post by: iMav on Tue, 10 February 2009, 16:12:14: I, also, started with slackware back in the day...installing off of floppy images (1994 or 1995 if I remember correctly). A long run with Red Hat started with version 3.0.3. Played with other rpm-based distros (with a short commitment to TurboLinux), and then was with SuSE for a while. Then came my love affair with Gentoo. These days I typically use Debian or *buntu. (Xubuntu runs on at least a couple of my computers at home...Ubuntu server powers my VM server).

It used to take me 2.5 days to compile the kernel on my 486SX-25 (with 4MB of ram). Sucked when you forgot something and had to recompile. :)
Title: Linux: which distro do you use?
Post by: dw_junon on Tue, 10 February 2009, 16:35:31: I've had great success with Xubuntu on desktops and on my old ThinkPad (other than the wireless, but there was definitely hardware issues too...) It's really great how it does predominantly "just work" (and stays that way).

On the other hand, one of these days I need to see how well Slackware would get on with my 9595 [MCA PS/2].
Title: Linux: which distro do you use?
Post by: dw_junon on Tue, 10 February 2009, 18:00:03: Hm, I figured Jay Maynard would run OS/360 under Hercules (http://www.hercules-390.org/), which I guess he might well be running on Linux.
Title: Linux: which distro do you use?
Post by: cchan on Wed, 11 February 2009, 11:22:40: I can't remember if I posted here or not. I like running debian or Ubuntu Server on servers, and Ubuntu on desktops. It's definitely become a much more viable desktop OS since I started playing around with it in 2005.
Title: Linux: which distro do you use?
Post by: Therac-25 on Thu, 12 February 2009, 08:50:10: Quote from: cb951303;21302
what you need my friend is a "rolling" distro which means packages gets updated as new versions come out. Distros like ubuntu have 6 month release cycle. No new versions are added to the repo in this 6 month, only security updates and occasional bug fixes...

Ubuntu Backports (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuBackports).

Furthermore, it's becoming more common to find that specific packages get put up on a launchpad ppa by their authors or interested parties -- I have Quod Libet, some Mono stuff, Gnome Do, sabnzbd+ and a few other programs installing from PPAs.
Title: Linux: which distro do you use?
Post by: bigpook on Thu, 12 February 2009, 08:59:41: That gnome-do with docky is really sweet. I installed it a week or so ago and think its a 'must have' application.