Ask HN: Which Linux distribution do you use, and why? - pyeu
======
indescions_2018
Ubuntu 16.04 on client and server. Just phenomenally stable on a basic laptop.
Particularly when I hear about High Sierra and UWP woes.

Very much looking forward to Bionic Beaver and Mesa 18!

Am still looking for a good distro as bootable usb thumb with persistence.
Alpine is very convenient if you just want a quick shell. Tails for situations
requiring more privacy. But apart from running mkusb and creating my own
ubuntu live stick. Is there anything really specifically tailored to this use
case?

~~~
jxub
The only major grip I have with Ubuntu is their deficient support for Nvidia
drivers. The Noveau et al configuration was a particular kind of hell for me.
Ubuntu is hands down the best OS for development for me though.

~~~
ktta
>their deficient support for Nvidia drivers

I believe the problem is with Nvidia. You'd get the best experience with
Ubuntu since it is the most used by average customers, so well tested.

------
simon_acca
On my laptop I use Arch Linux,mainly because it doesn't get in the way
installing any unwanted package or service. Should I need to configure a new
laptop suddenly, I have scripts that provision the new machine _exactly_ the
way I want it in 1h~. Another killer feature of Arch is its vast repositories
of packages, I can install spotify, dropbox, skype the same way I install
htop! In 4 years of running it (and updating weekly) I have not had any major
problems with updates breaking things, which is a common concern of newcomers
to the arch rolling update system.

On servers I most often use debian, rigorously with unattended-upgrades
enabled, for its stability and attention to security.

As a base image for containers I prefer Alpine for its slenderness and
security, escalating to debian or ubuntu as a last resort when needed for
exhotic packages and such.

Finally, when I setup a linux box for inexperienced users, I usually use
manjaro for its ease of use and attention to the inexperienced-user-
experience.

~~~
jonvillage
Can you share those scripts? I need to reinstall arch on a new laptop, and I
would like to see how you automated the setup.

------
injvstice
I have a few requirements when I choose my distro:

1\. Ubuntu based, since I know where everything is. I don't mean to knock
other great distros like Arch, etc.. but I'd rather do my stuff than try to
figure out another package manager or another file system layout.

2\. Customizable. I make my environment look a bit like windows, with the task
bar and all. Not because I love windows, but because I have two laptops, one
windows and one linux, and I need a bit of a seamless transition. I am sure if
my other laptop was a fruit, I'd want my linux machine to resemble a fruit.

3\. I need my desktop right click context menu, with a command line option.

For the longest time I used Xubuntu. I still think Xfce is the best out there,
but its glacial rate of movement made me look in other places. It is falling
behind in some things such as multi-monitor support with docking stations.

I now use Ubuntu 17.10 with Gnome shell. I was able to make it look almost
like my Xfce setup. I had to turn off Wayland, since it was causing gnome to
crash randomly on wake from sleep and close all my apps. It is also far less
customizable than xfce, and some things are unexpectedly buggier (the terminal
window loses cut and paste abilities randomly, and I cannot replace the
console shortcut in the desktop context menu with Terminator).

I may yet go back to Xubuntu. Not sure.

~~~
luv2code
You should give cinnamon a try. I think you would prefer it over gnome.

~~~
Snuupy
I actually use Linux Mint for this reason - Cinnamon is just awesome (except
the random crashes every once in a while)

Docking support is great, but sound output needs to be swapped manually
sometimes.

~~~
sassy_samurai
Will Cinnamon be fast and responsive on an old laptop with a 2nd-gen Intel
Core i5 processor and 4 GB of RAM? And how is the support for NVidia GPUs?

------
brudgers
Ubuntu because there are even fewer meaningful differences among Linux
distributions than there are among operating systems in general...and the
important differences among operating systems are mostly "Will it run on my
hardware?" and "How much more or less of a distraction is managing operating
system A versus operating system B?"

------
marssaxman
Ubuntu 16.04 (LTS), because it's the closest thing there is to a standardized,
plain-vanilla version of Linux. I don't want to think about it; I just want it
to work.

------
SamLeBarbare
Debian, good in: ethic, governance, maintainers, documentation, choices over
time

~~~
Petrakis
Debian is one of the best choices

------
mbrock
NixOS on both my laptop and all the servers I set up.

Declarative configuration, atomic upgrades, system rollbacks, a functional
configuration language, excellent Haskell support, etc.

I used Debian and Ubuntu for many years, but now I wouldn't switch to any
distribution that isn't inspired by NixOS.

I'm not usually opinionated, but as I see it, NixOS (along with Nix itself) is
clearly a huge step forward.

~~~
goblins
Never heard of this one, popped over to the website. Literally the only thing
I understand is that the name is NixOS which uses the Nix package manager.

They'd need to dumb down whatever it is they're talking about significantly
before I would use it, can't make heads nor tails of it.

~~~
mbrock
I'm brainwashed already so it's hard for me to see it from the perspective of
a new user.

Here are some main points from the website:

 _NixOS has a completely declarative approach to configuration management: you
write a specification of the desired configuration of your system in NixOS’s
modular language, and NixOS takes care of making it happen._

 _NixOS has atomic upgrades and rollbacks. It’s always safe to try an upgrade
or configuration change: if things go wrong, you can always roll back to the
previous configuration._

That makes sense, doesn't it? Is it that you want a more detailed explanation
of _how_ it achieves this, and how it differs from other distributions?

Did you see this page?
[https://nixos.org/nixos/about.html](https://nixos.org/nixos/about.html)

~~~
goblins
I'm not adverse to messing with config files but this seems a little above my
knowledge base.

I've no experience with functional programming so have no idea really how it's
doing the things it's doing. Plus I can imagine writing out your config file
would take a long time.

What does declarative mean? What does atomic mean?

------
k4ch0w
Kali Linux on usb for pentesting

Ubuntu 17.04 for Machine learning/Cuda because anything else takes more time
to work.

Alpine-Linux for Dockerfiles because it's the bare minimum.

Arch Linux for learning Linux, because you're responsible for installing what
you'd like to have a stable machine.

~~~
riffic
Careful, 17.04 went EOL last month:

[http://fridge.ubuntu.com/2018/01/17/ubuntu-17-04-zesty-
zapus...](http://fridge.ubuntu.com/2018/01/17/ubuntu-17-04-zesty-zapus-
reached-end-of-life-on-january-13-2018/)

------
mattbillenstein
Ubuntu LTS releases -- it's a relatively stable deploy target with a not
ancient set of packages like on the enterprise linuxes.

The 2-year update cadence feels about right as well.

------
lovelearning
Xubuntu on my main development laptop, because I like its aesthetics and it's
lightweight on CPU and RAM.

Ubuntu Unity on desktop. No particular reason for Unity, but I've become
comfortable with it over the years and have no complaints or reason to switch.

Lubuntu on a secondary old laptop, because it's fast and lightweight.

ChaletOS on my father's old laptop, because it closely resembles Windows
Vista/7 which he was used to, but unlike Windows, can continue to get latest
software and updates. Can run all DOS and Windows programs using DosBox and
Wine. ChaletOS is an Ubuntu variant - not sure if it's modified Xubuntu or
deploys its own XFCE customizations over Ubuntu.

~~~
nekopa
Xubuntu here too for pretty much the same reasons. Look and feel plus
performance.

------
petecox
KDE Neon - the bleeding edge KDE experience. It's ubuntu LTS under the covers.

LineageOS - Nougat for 'obsolete' phones, though I might switch to
postmarketOS if they get calls working!

------
8draco8
Before Canonical decided to ditch Unity and go to Gnome I was using Ubuntu at
work and Ubuntu Mate at home on laptop. Since Ubuntu dropped Unity I went full
time to Ubuntu Mate and I am very happy with it. Apart from that I have KDE
Neon on big PC that I hardly ever use. It's the least stable distro I use.
There is always something to do on it, but I am using it only for gaming, so
it's good enough. On servers I prefer to run Ubuntu LTS editions.

------
digi_owl
Gobolinux because i found the project interesting at one point and was fed up
with Windows at the time.

Really exposed me to the sausage factory that is upstream userspace btw...

------
Tom4hawk
Laptop (x230)/Steambox+htpc(HP8300+GF1050): ElementaryOS - Looks nice,
AppStore with native only-programs, Ubuntu underneath so I can find a lot of
programs/information online in case of any problems, everything works mostly
out-of-the-box

Desktop/Homeserver/VPS: VoidLinux + DWM(only on desktop ;)) - Simple (runit as
init system, no default logging daemon [I'm using socklog on servers],
LibreSSL), cutting edge and not bloated

Work: Ubuntu Mate LTS + ArchLinux in chroot - Ubuntu Mate - same reasons as
with elementary on my laptop :) ArchLinux in chroot - cutting edge, AUR with
everything and because it's a chroot I can easily snapshot/share/move my
development environment, lot of information/solutions out there

I also use:

Alpine - containers with weird things[LXC] on home server - small(almost
nothing inside ;)), LibreSSL

Slitaz - old Pentium-M laptop without DMA(I don't know what happened - I got
it for $0 so no questions asked), old P4 machine - perfect fit(and toy...) for
those machines

LineageOS - no google inside, only f-droid

------
drakonka
I use Fedora; this was my first Linux workstation. Fedora was the most
painless to install on my at-the-time just released ThinkPad X1 Carbon. The OS
was easy to get started with and very user friendly after sorting out some
initial issues with firmware and wireless card drivers. I haven't felt the
urge to stray to anything else yet.

------
timonoko
GalliumOS boots 10 times faster than Ubuntu, because it is designed to run on
ChromeOS hardware. Even if you do not like Chromebooks perse, this might be a
good enuff reason to get one. For example the off-the-shelf linux seems to
waste minutes installing and looking for weird filesystems no-one ever uses.

------
newadventures
Debian. It's probably because I've gotten used to it so much over the years,
it feels like a familiar friend every time I boot a new server on it. Rarely
an error or issue I haven't encountered before, it just feels good being able
to manage a system without much worry.

------
bowlich
Ubuntu 16.04

Why? Because it worked when I installed it.

I never got into the whole install the hottest distro each season phase, so
I've never actually tried anything else (other than my work servers which are
running Cent-OS, but I didn't have to bother with the hassle of installing and
configuring those)

------
DanBC
Bodhi Linux. [http://www.bodhilinux.com/](http://www.bodhilinux.com/)

It's sort of minimal. It's a derivative of Ubuntu which means it's not Red
Hat.

It uses Moksha for a desktop, which is a continuation of Enlightenment 17. You
can read about Moksha here: [http://www.bodhilinux.com/2015/04/28/introducing-
the-moksha-...](http://www.bodhilinux.com/2015/04/28/introducing-the-moksha-
desktop/)

I use it because it's not annoying; it mostly works; I didn't have to fuck
about to get it working; it's sort of minimal; it uses sensible defaults; I
like the philosophy; I had a bad experience with Fedora and so I avoid
anything red hat.

------
tomkat0789
I use Bunsen labs Linux on my main computer, and Xubuntu on my gaming laptop.
I'm gradually setting up a ham radio laptop and testing Devuan on that. All
these Debian distros are just because it seems like it has just about
everything and is wonderfully stable. I like being able to update without any
surprises.

My phone is still android though! What are people's experience of LineageOS?
Am I in for a nasty surprise if I try to switch without completely knowing
what I'm doing?

------
r0brodz
Debian without systemd: On an older Pentium4, just for web browsing although I
just replaced it with OpenBSD. Its a great distro because of its age,
stability and ease of use.

Gentoo OpenRC: On amd64 laptops for learning how to build software.

I've installed and configured 80% of distros on Distrowatch.com. Its all the
same pretty much. Linux from Scratch was a good experience as well.
Recommended for anyone interested in the deeper reasons of a distro.

------
usr1106
OpenSUSE with no desktop, just i3 on my development machine. Xubuntu on family
machines and my travel notepad. CentOS on some server, Ubuntu on another.

Need to install Archlinux, because I need it at work. Want to install Gentoo,
because it should be useful experience.

Its like with languages on earth. Many things might be easier if there were
only one. But probably also something would get lost.

------
itnomad
Fedora on my laptop and desktop, Centos on my servers, Debian based on my
Raspberry Pi 3b and Zero. Been using Redhat based distros since 1998. I've
tried others but never for very long. I know how to find help if something
breaks which is very seldom.

------
jimnotgym
Ubuntu because it worked first time on my laptop. Getting concerned about the
end of Unity though. I don't like Gnome3 because it's to bar takes up too much
of the screen. Ubuntu on desktop again because it works well in Virtualbox on
Windows

------
O_H_E
Ubuntu Mate: Stable and gets out of the way. very good for non-techie family
members

------
stephenr
Debian (stable, or old-stable) on servers. It's reliable, well documented and
has plenty of software available in the official repos.

For most things not in the active apt repo, there's backports and/or a vendor
apt repo.

------
jeroenimo
Xubuntu 16.04 on my Dell Latitude 7240 which is a 99% OOB working system. Only
the fingerprint scanner is not working. But that is a bullshit sensor anyway.
I love the minimal XFCE desktop.

------
punchclockhero
Fedora - because of habit, RPM distros feel like home to me as I started out
with one.

Arch Linux - installed it as a rite of passage, works okay on my laptop, can't
be arsed to install something else.

------
andrewstuart
Tiny Core Linux, Alpine Linux, Yocto Linux - because they run from RAM and
tiny operating systems appeal to me.

Ubuntu because it is a full featured workhorse and everything works on it
first time.

------
Petrakis
Sabayon Linux, active community, you get both binary packages (from sabayon
repos) and you can compile gentoo packages from portage, because sabayon is
built on top of gentoo.

------
UK-AL
Fedora - Stable but still up to date.

I used to use arch, but you have to be selective and careful with updates
otherwise you find you can't boot into x. Takes time to go and fix.

~~~
mgalgs
Nailed it... I used Arch for years but moved to Fedora. Fedora is almost as
up-to-date as Arch, but without the breakage.

------
shortoncash
Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, and mostly because it usually just works. I use a mac, but
there is always an ssh shell open to Ubuntu where "the real work" gets done.

------
yasinaydin
Looking at the answers, I've learned lots of new distros. Never thought
there'd be still that many!

I personally use Arch on desktop/dev and Ubuntu LTS on servers.

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sdca
Kubuntu 17.10 because I wanted per-folder views in Dolphin. The 16.04
backports repo hasn't had an update for ages.

------
meekins
Fedora. Up to date packages, decent KDE experience out of the box and synergy
with RHEL when it comes to skills.

------
stevefan1999
I don't know if it was relevant but I had Ubuntu 16.04 in my server.

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BinaryBuddha
Kali for Pentesting, Raspbian on the Raspberry Pi, TAILS for the privacy

------
cg-cnu
centos: I am surprised to see that centos is not mentioned a lot. Anyway, I am
in the animation/vfx industry and most of the vendors support centos out of
all the other linux flavors.

------
milton63
sabayon as client: good package manager, up-to-date packages

rhel as server: long lasting projects/software because of long term support

ubuntu/debian as server: for smaller project

