

Ask HN: What Linux distro do you use for work, and why? - ethyl66


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dman
debian

a) It just keeps on working.

b) They are conservative with new technology. This means that by the time
things hit debian theyre well thought through.

c) The community behind debian is principled.

d) The debian package repository is very exhaustive.

e) They offer a small net install iso which is ~180 megabytes. This makes a
fantastic foundation for a minimalistic linux install with a tiling manager
(without pulling in monstrosities like libre office).

~~~
dshep
debian here too for most of these reasons

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jakeogh
Friends and family new to Linux: Mint. (Best interface options, great
community, not sending your search query to amazon.com, very polished.)

Personal systems: Gentoo. (easiest to customize and automate for me, time
investment required.)

Nginx/Apache: Debian. (stable security updates, minimal install)

MariaDB/Postgres: Debian. (security updates, stable branch, well tested.)

Other unless I am stuck with RPM: Debian (long term stability)

RPM: Fedora (works, but EOL is always soon, so make sure the server does only
one thing)

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LarryMade2
Ubuntu - because I can find answers for just about any problem easily.

In the past we started with Redhat then Centos, that was back in the day of
more simple RPM where you had to resolve dependencies manually. We were mainly
using the unit as an internal LAMP and file server, nothing exotic.

After Ubuntu went into creating server versions we went that route. The on-
line community was way more active and the package manager just worked.

Ubuntu is definitely a route of lower frustration when things go wrong.

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dutchrapley
Wow, isn't this timely? I've been running Xubuntu. I've been feeling like it's
a little overkill. It may be time to give Crunchbang a try.

~~~
dutchrapley
Yep, #! is what I'll be using moving forward. My needs are basic: vim,
terminator (default on #!), vagrant, and virtualbox. #! just stays out of the
way and needed very little keybinding changes out of the box.

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hatchoo
RHEL-derivatives (Scientific Linux, CentOS) for work since we deploy to RHEL
for clients in production.

Mint 15 on my laptop

Switched my home desktop to Debian. Would want to switch my work laptop to
Debian for longer term stability but not sure if all drivers are available
(couldn't get Realtek HD SPDIF to work on my desktop). Can anyone with a
Thinkpad T500 confirm that it works flawlessly?

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rodolphoarruda
Ubuntu 12.04 with GNOME. For a couple of years I ran it with Unity out of the
box, but then one day it crashed so badly I could not use the system at all,
then I switched to GNOME and never turned back since then. Of course, you have
to stop by gnome extensions website and tweak your UI a bit to smooth the
rough edges found in default mode.

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clasense4
I work on my dev server, CentOS 6.5. Last year I choose Ubuntu 10.04 on my old
laptop (Intel Dualcore), but now I still can't decide best linux distro for my
laptop, last time I try L/X/K/Ubuntu 13.04, but it make my laptop battery
drain faster and really hot (AMD quadcore) and some of those distro can't work
properly like has buggy in graphics, I already install the driver too.

~~~
brudgers
I have CentOS on my main computer in part because of it's long support cycle.

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cheald
Fedora. I've been using Redhat-flavored distros since the 90s, and we deploy
on RHEL at work. Running Fedora gives me a RHEL-like environment with access
to all the cutting-edge goodies.

I don't particularly have any issues with stability with it, despite its
reputation for being bleeding edge.

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veganarchocap
Elementary OS, just because it's Debian/Ubuntu based so it's nice and easy to
use, but it's also fairly light-weight. I think because it's quite a nice
looking distro as well, it just makes work a bit more of a pleasure. I feel
sorry for the others still using Windows 7!

~~~
cms07
Isn't it just a linux distro with gnome3?

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munimkazia
On my work desktop and home laptop: Ubuntu. I just like Unity and I have got
used to it now.

On our servers, we use CentOS though, so consequently, I keep a bunch of
CentOS virtual machines for testing too. I think CentOS was chosen for our
live servers because of it's stability.

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CrowderSoup
Ubuntu 12.04 on my servers, giving Elementary OS a try on my desktop.

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dannyrosen
kubuntu. I came from Windows and love the ui. Ubuntu under the hood means noob
and advanced support. Also, IMHO Konsole is one of the best terminal emulators
around.

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quasimo
There is a Chinese distro :
[http://www.linuxdeepin.com/index.en.html](http://www.linuxdeepin.com/index.en.html)
not bad.

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turnip1979
These days I mainly use Ubuntu. Love the package manager. Also, Ubuntu works
well for openstack dev. Exploring FreeBSD since I want kqueue.

------
rainmaking
Ubuntu. I would have went for Debian, but Ubuntu has better hardware support
and more/better quality 3rd party repositories (PPAs).

------
mobiplayer
Ubuntu 13.10 with Mate desktop. The only solution I could find to use three
screens on two nVidia GPUs with the propietary drivers.

------
martiuk
Technically I (have to) use Windows for work but for real 'work' I use Arch
and push to an Ubuntu server if it needs to.

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lugg
crunchbang.org, simply because it gets out of the way while I work. I also use
an arch/ob setup on my main laptop but that requires a fair amount of upkeep /
fiddling and such isn't very suitable as a work horse.

------
iends
Ubuntu. It just works without hassle, especially when non-free drivers are
involved.

------
jameshk
Elementary OS is great! I use it on all of my machines, it's very polished!

~~~
jonalmeida
Elementary here as well! I just wish they updated a bit faster, I need a newer
version of glibc and I can only get it from Ubuntu 13.10.

------
ahdinosaur
Debian for personal computers and servers. OpenWRT for embedded devices.

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MichaelStubbs
OpenSUSE for the latest and greatest stable packages.

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devb0x
centos 6.x at work

I also have a centos 5.x box running personally

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motyar
Elementary OS, cool one.

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cfredmond
mint 14

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flaxin
Ubuntu, am soo used to the Unity interface, when i try to move to other
interfaces such as KDE or GENOME3 they just feel _bulky_

though if you are not a "beginner", i highly recommend ArchOS
[https://www.archlinux.org](https://www.archlinux.org) \- by far the active-
est community out there

