Ask HN: What is your current Linux distro and why did you choose it? - saikatsg
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skshetry
Arch Linux. Why?: It's simple and how you want it to be. The wiki is great and
the Arch Repo is great. With AUR and official repo, you will never need to
look elsewhere for packages and it's very simple, unlike, Ubuntu's PPA. And,
even with the rolling release, it's pretty stable.I used Ubuntu previously and
had a lot of problems with stability. I have been more than a year now on
archlinux.

~~~
btschaegg
That's pretty much my sentiment on Arch, too. I have another point, however,
that is also very important to me:

If I break something, I can fix it. Guaranteed. That's not completely due to
the experience you gather doing the "manual installation of everything" dance,
but also due to how this process works. I've _never_ had to reinstall my Arch
system - there's always a way to save a botched installation.

As someone who likes to tinker with my systems sometimes (and who's
reinstalled more screwed up Ubuntu/Fedora setups than I can count), that is
really valuable to me.

~~~
skshetry
Yeah, it's really easy to fix things in Arch. Once, during 'pacman -Syyu'
install, the linux kernel didn't install correctly and left the system broken.
I just chrooted via a Arch live USB and reinstalled linux and was good to go
again. This kind of issues hasn't happened since.

Around 2 years ago, I wanted to tinker and understand linux distros and have
installed most of them. But, when I tried Arch, I settled with it,no more
tinkering. However,I find it painful to install. I installed Arch successfully
in third time.

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mbrock
NixOS on my laptop, my Hetzner dedicated server, and my EC2 instances.

Configuring NixOS is done declaratively, so I can easily inspect how my
computers are configured, and I know that when I get a new computer, I can
just copy the configuration.

Its way of performing upgrades and configuration changes is the new state of
the art. You could say it's like React for your whole userland.

The configuration syntax and the package definition syntax are one and the
same functional programming language, which makes the system very flexible.
And the whole package hierarchy is just a Git repo.

The package server maintained by NixOS also happens to have binary builds for
nearly all Haskell packages, which saves me a lot of time.

~~~
peller
Any resources you would recommend for getting started?

So far I've found this[0] which seems like a good introduction.

[0] [https://ebzzry.io/en/nix/](https://ebzzry.io/en/nix/)

~~~
mbrock
Yeah, that seems good!

The NixOS manual is also a good resource.

I'll also mention that EC2 can spin up a NixOS instance from an existing
public AMI, which can be a convenient way to get started.

While reading up on the basic semantics of the Nix language, you can also poke
around in the Nixpkgs repository on GitHub to see how packages are typically
defined and composed.

And there's an IRC channel on Freenode that's nice and helpful.

~~~
peller
Awesome, thanks!

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ekr
About 10 years ago I discovered Arch Linux, and never looked back. What I like
most about it is that it comes with no bloat, you install exactly what you
need.

I'm using it with i3wm, which is also a beautiful piece of software.

------
unmole
Ubuntu. Back in the day I only had access to really expensive and painfully
slow Internet connection. Ubuntu was the only distro I could get my hands on
thanks to Canonical's free CD shipping program. It mostly just works and I've
stuck with it ever since.

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MightySCollins
Arch Linux. Once you know how to use it you never feel comfortable with
Debian/Ubuntu. With AUR having every package under the sun and usually no
dependency problems. A Wiki which is detailed and a minimal install I love it.
I sometimes use Antergos so I don't need to deal with as many problems
installing.

~~~
saikatsg
I am tempted to use Antergos now but last time when I tried the cnchi
installer gave me trouble. Guess it's stable now.

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lithos
Ubuntu mostly since I haven't had a reason to change, and it got me to try it
when it had boot/run from USB. And it's just on every server hosting service.

~~~
npolet
This is the real reason why I've stayed with Ubuntu for many, many years. It
was my first entry into Linux years ago and I've never had any reason to
switch to another distro.

I also like that I can use the same OS on my servers as my desktop. It just
makes server setup/maintenance simple for me, as I never have to "learn" a new
way of thinking or flow of processes.

I've never had issues with Ubuntu, no crashes, no issues with drivers (even
with nVidia graphics cards etc...). I recently purchased a dell XPS laptop
which came with Ubuntu pre-installed. It was more as a vote for "yes Dell,
this is a good thing" rather than "I can't be bothered installing ubuntu
myself".

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LarryMade2
Ubuntu the community is very big and supportive, if I have an issue an answer
is usually just a Google search or two away. On other distros, that is not
always the case.

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sputr
Manjaro, it's a no-hassle arch distro.

I used to use Kubuntu. But trying to upgrade to the latest version was a
nightmare (latter realizing it's because the distro is abandoned). Tried other
KDE, ubuntu based distros - always the same story. Buggy as hell.

Finally listened to my friends and moved to arch. Manjaro (kde edition) has
been fantastic. Yet to see a bug or non-functioning feature in >6 months of
use. Thinking of switching to tiling desktop tho.

~~~
type0
How about Antergos, isn't it a better choice for new users? Technically it's
just Arch and should _just work_. When I tried Manjaro I found it slightly
confusing, also being shunned by Arch community for using it is a Majjor
Majjaro drowback.

~~~
peller
I haven't tried Antergos yet, but for me, Manjaro just worked out of the box.
It's also technically just Arch, and I can't say I've ever experienced being
shunned for using it. Sounds to me like you just had the unfortunate
experience of running into some pricks on the internet. I can't see how said
pricks would react any differently if you told them you were running
Antergos... (But if it persists, perhaps you'd find it easier to just say
you're running Arch. :)

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salex89
Xubuntu. It has a lot of support and community knowledge, since it is a *buntu
distro, feels very snappy, never had stability issues and looks fine just out
of the box, no tweaking required. I'm not motivated to look elsewhere,
although if I do, I'll opt for XFCE again.

For servers I kinda prefer CentOS, but a lot of people around me prefer
Ubuntu, so I usually use Ubuntu. I have no proper metrics around this, it's
just a feeling.

~~~
noir_lord
Try Fedora xfce if you do look elsewhere, I was xubuntu for years and then
switched to Fedora XFCE respin (needed hardware support for new hardware).

Other than 5 minutes setting it up, everything was pretty much the same and I
like DNF.

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timonoko
GalliumOS. Pruned for Chromebook hardware, so no excess packages and booting
in few seconds. Unfortunately Made In Inchland USA, so world standard DVB-
devices not supported. But I have solved this issue by myself:
[https://github.com/GalliumOS/galliumos-
distro/issues/308](https://github.com/GalliumOS/galliumos-distro/issues/308)

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iamrecursion
Arch Linux for me. The AUR is fantastic, and the wiki is obscenely detailed. I
also love being able to have it operate exactly how I’d like.

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ohazi
Debian testing. It's similar enough to Ubuntu that instructions and
suggestions (e.g. how to get $program to work on Ubuntu) are generally still
applicable. Packages are far more up-to-date than Debian stable. Rolling
release means (almost) never having to perform a show-stopping upgrade or
reinstall.

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amcrouch
Arch or Antergos. I couldn't go back to a non rolling release OS.

Most of the time these days I use the Antergos installer and clone my dotfiles
but my personal laptop (T430) still runs Arch.

I recently tried a number of distro's including Ubuntu, Fedora and Suse and
while they were all great in their own way they make life too difficult. Why
have more than one package manager or way to install software? Yast is still
horrific. The lack of rolling release and single package manager has limited
Linux on the desktop. While it's not a problem for most Linux users it has
stunted everyday users.

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Yaa101
With my desktop I have been on the Mandrake/Mandriva/Mageia bus for years,
while solid and easy ( I do not like to solve puzzles with my desktop OS ) It
became more and more appearant that they can't keep up, so parts of their
distro are hopelessly outdated. Now I use an Arch based distro that is
somewhat, but not very unstable, called Manjaro. It is not as suave as the
Mageia distro but it does have a really massive Arch knowledge base, if you
google problems with some part of linux then 9 out of ten times you see Arch
based problem solving as top links.

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vfulco
Ubuntu 16.04. It just works. Upgraded to 17.04-17.10 and had the dreaded
issues which made me fall back on the tried and true. I don't recall all of
them but they were painful.

~~~
open_bear
Upgraded 15.10 to 17.04 on my laptop. Went from working stable system to
slower, less stable system - Firefox causes full system lockdown every hour.

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kennu
I used to use Debian unstable because it had all the packages regular Debian
was missing, but it was a bit, well, unstable. Then Ubuntu came out about 12
years ago and it was exactly what I had always wanted: a stable distribution
of everything missing from Debian. Since then Ubuntu has been my default
choice of Linux and the LTS versioning has served well for long-running
servers.

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bediger4000
Arch, on laptop and server. I like having very nearly the latest release of
everything. I used to use Slackware, but then I'd get played by the huge jumps
in version numbers - config files changed drastically, GCC #pragma changed,
etc etc. I prefer getting those changes gradually and incrementally with Arch.

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tonyedgecombe
Ubuntu

Reason: It just works.

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bthachdev
Used Fedora before but switch to Ubuntu, as a developer, there are more
tutorials using Ubuntu than other OS.

~~~
saikatsg
did you find any stability issue with Fedora or is it just the availability of
tutorials reason to switch to Ubuntu?

~~~
bthachdev
the availability of tutorials, it just saved my time when using ubuntu.

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type0
Fedora, you'll need to cope with GNOME if you want Wayland but the underlying
distro is rock solid compared to what it was just a couple of years before.
I'm surprised no-one mentioned Solus yet, to me it seems to be a runner up
distro one should keep an eye on.

~~~
saikatsg
Agree, Solus 3 looks pretty amazing! I am using GNOME edition.

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sunstone
Ubuntu for everyday, friends and family. Linux Mint for development. Ubuntu
server in the cloud.

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stephenr
Debian (for servers)

• Good package management + vendor repos.

• Sane defaults

• config packages: [https://debathena.mit.edu/config-package-
dev/](https://debathena.mit.edu/config-package-dev/)

• truly community run

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Mikeb85
openSUSE Tumbleweed. Mainly because it runs on pretty much any hardware, has
RPMs for everything, is easy enough to use, and updates easily. Also up to
date with all the newest stuff, and bug free.

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chauhankiran
Ubuntu

Reason: I can install it using wubi, can easily find solution if stuck, dabian
based

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comstock
I just started using Devuan.

Generally like Debian, don't particularly like systemd. So I thought I'd try
it out. Seems pretty good so far, a bit easier than installing Debian then
removing systemd.

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gvisoc
I use Ubuntu Mate (17.04 now). Ubuntu is rock solid and very friendly, and
Mate is my favourite desktop. That team works like a charm (prior to that I
used Debian for a lot of years).

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CyberFonic
Ubuntu LTS on both desktops and servers. Alpine Linux on small servers, e.g.
systems with older 32 bit CPUs (I reuse a lot of old computers for various
tasks).

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DanParson
Kubuntu. It offered the best out-of-the-box compatibility with the programs I
use, and it's not at the center of a desktop environment debate.

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threesixandnine
For dev work machine I use Fedora and Debian. On the server CentOS and Debian
and at home some might find it interesting a MacOS ( looking for good laptop
with trackpoint to replace Mac Air and get either Fedora or Debian on it ).

I find my dev workflow best on Debian ( probably just used to it ) but lately
using Fedora as well. CentOS on the server just because it is available
everywhere but where I can I choose Debian for the server due to like already
said being familiar most familiar with it.

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hetspookjee
Ubuntu 1604 server, easy install and plenty resources to look into and already
had some experience with Ubuntu on accident.

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elderK
I use Crux.

It's a source-based distribution similar to Gentoo but far, far simpler.

And that's why I use it: It's simple.

It also has a great community. :)

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SirLJ
On the majority of my servers I am running Red Hat , because of the support ,
even tough personally I am an unix guy

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noir_lord
Fedora, better Ryzen support back in June.

Been using Linux 20 years so at this point, the distro is just back ground
noise for me.

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w84death
Sparky Linux. It's a Debian 9 based OS. It has all the benefits of Debian:
stable and have the largest software compatibility. But makes it working out-
of-the-box.

So in some way it's like Ubuntu but slimmer(faster) and more stable. I've
tested so many distros and in the end Sparky (Debian9) is the most stable,
fast and productive distribution on my hardware (dell rugged laptop).

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15DCFA8F
Debian (yes, stable) for laptops, desktops, VMs, bare metal servers,
containers. Everything.

\- It's a solid and trustworthy distro.

\- It's general and universal, and adaptable for most uses.

\- I have tons of Ansible tasks and roles developed for Debian, so pretty much
anything is automated and standardizing helps a lot.

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stefantalpalaru
Gentoo ~amd64 - because I can customise it exactly how I want, the packages
are relatively new and the *BSD-ports-inspired package management makes sense
to me. I even maintain my own package repository for version bumps and new
packages: [https://github.com/stefantalpalaru/gentoo-
overlay](https://github.com/stefantalpalaru/gentoo-overlay)

