Hi all!
I have personally been using Linux for the past 8 years now. I initially started with Linux Mint installed on my laptop and I was quite happy with it. Then a couple of years later I switched to Ubuntu 16.04.
What I love about Ubuntu so far is that I've been upgrading it each year and I'm now at 20.04 on the same laptop. This is something that was missing with CentOS.
For my servers, I've always been defaulting to CentOS up until the recent RH changes. So instead I've been experimenting with Ubuntu Server and it's quite nice.
So for me it's been:
- Desktop: Linux Mint -> Ubuntu
- Servers: CentOS -> Ubuntu
I'm quite curious to hear what your distribution of choice has been!
Oldest comments (100)
I use Ubuntu or Debian they are readily available and work well for me.
My main desktop is is Windows most of the time because I am either sharing with family (who uses Adobe heavily) or work. I do most of my work through wsl or cloud vm.
I also have a Laptop with Windows + Ubuntu dual booth just because in some cases I would need to run some stuff on Windows as you said.
Archlinux!
Because it is very customisable and contains no rubbish from the installation. 3 years ago I love build my own distro with arch, you can choise any desktop, and install only the necesary drivers, software... And the best part for me was pacman with ths package manager you never touch the source again always is updated.
Love that! Starting with Arch really helps understand how Linux works.
Ubuntu! Admittedly, it's the first one I've tried, but I love the UI and it revived my old, sluggish XPS into a snappy little thing. I may end up reaching for a different distro in the future, but I'm glad I went with Ubuntu as kind of a transition distro from Windows.
Well said! Ubuntu definitely gives you a smooth transition from Windows to Linux.
When I started, there were essentially three options: Slackware, Debian, Redhat. My brother used Redhat, so I did too. 25 years later, still using Redhat or derivatives. I've taken various forays into SUSE/OpenSUSE, Ubuntu variations, and even building custom distros for small devices (prime-linux.org).
I'm happy to see anyone using any flavor of Linux!
That is absolutely amazing!
Debian. Originally it was for the within breadth of the archive but now I have tried Ubuntu and had to deal with several crashes I don't think I have ever seen Debian crash on me.
This is an interesting observation, did this happen on Ubuntu Desktop or Ubuntu Server?
It was the stock desktop that came with my system 76. It was the first time I saw a kernel panic in the wild
For my personal workstation I prefer Manjaro (or Ubuntu).
I really like Arch, but at work it just has... to work. Building Arch Linux hast too much overhead (Even though it's really fun!).
On servers, I find Debian the only viable option.
It is stable, secure and simple. Yes, you do have to do some things manually (To be honest, with automation this is not really a concern. Whoever configures servers by hand these days... do yourself a favor and just use Puppet, Ansible or whatever automation tool works best for you). Because of this it is more flexible and lightweight than Ubuntu, but still not as cumbersome as CentOS or RHEL.
I feel like CentOS/RHEL just makes life harder. Like they want simple things to be hard.
Really well said! Fully agree with all this!
I've been wanting to try out Manjaro for a while now so might give it a try this weekend!
They now have a guided installer which makes installing Arch easy - dev.to/mbcrump/arch-linux-april-20...
Linux became harder and hardware to manage as a system administrator, as necessary tools became obfuscated away by more and more layers of abstraction, on average doubling the time it took to resolve issues in production when they came up.
Had FreeBSD running to mirror and backup some content on the Linux servers. Found that it was significantly faster to troubleshoot issues on these FreeBSD machines. Over time, shifted the entire infrastructure over to FreeBSD, and now that's where I live.
FreeBSD Jails and ZFS have really opened up the possibilities with my infrastructure to support applications in wildly new ways, yet retaining a level of simplicity and consistency never found on Linux.
I've heard so much good stuff for both FreeBSD and ZFS and it's a shame that I've never got to use FreeBSD in prod.
We're in the same page here. Have been used FreeBSD for almost five years by now, though still run Linux for academical reasons.
As for the linuxes, I do prefer Gentoo and Arch Linux.
Ubuntu
Ubuntu is crushing it!
Manjaro KDE Plasma, style like magic using KDE and installation of anything is so much easier with arch user repository
This sounds like the best setup indeed!
I use Vanilla arch
I love it, bcz
Nice! I really like the fact that with Arch you have control over every aspect of your operating system.
More like, "I use Arch btw".
I am using Linux Mint because I think is very fast and simple to use
This was the first distro that I've worked with and I loved it!
Alpine, because I only use containers and leave the “hey we need to actually run this problem” off to GKE ;)
Haha yea! Alpine is a beast! I also use it for a lot of my containers!
I now use Linux Mint, Xubuntu & Xubuntu.
I used to mess around and break everything.
Now, I just want things to work easily.
Very good point!
I’ve always been an Ubuntu person. It’s the first distro I learned about and the one I’m most comfortable with.
What I like about Ubuntu is that there are a lot of tutorials out there!
Difficult choice between Arch and Manjaro. Nowadays it's mostly Manjaro though. It's sleek and probably best all-around support for a daily rig.
Great to see all those awesome comments about Manjaro ♥
Just to note, I've also been a long time Mint fan but for the past 6 years I've slowly fallen out of love with it. Feels like for the most part it's slow to keep up with its Ubuntu base and it's defaults are just stuck in the past (UI-wise, mostly).
It's Linux for sure, so you can customize it to your heart's content and the community is great, but I feel like I've gotten old and just can't get myself to put in the work to customize and update. Manjaro feels better out of the box (so does Arch).
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