Ask HN: Advanced Linux users, which distribution do you run? Why? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Advanced Linux users, which distribution do you run? Why?

80 pointspsxuaw167 comments

This is for the technically competent Linux users.

Which distribution(s) do you run on your desktops/laptops/servers?

Why did you choose them?

What problems do you face with them and what changes would you like them do make?

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Debian all the way.

Used to use Ubuntu, but then they lost their way and went all sucky (both Canocial and the software itself).

Used to use CentOS, but then they lost their way, e.g. CentOS 8 was in the pipeline for an eternity, meaning CentOS 7 packages became increasingly rapidly obsolete.

Tried Alpine Linux, I really wanted to like it. But it sucks. The team managing the AL product is a bit stretched. Plus some of the design decisions make it a bit of a pain (e.g. DASH, musl libc etc.)

Tried OpenSUSE but found it a bit too opinionated for my liking.

So I settled on Debian, and the same on the vast majority of server instances at work.

Debian is solid and well maintained, and I prefer their erring on the side of stability rather than bleeding-edge (most of the packages are still reasonably in-date).

Upvoted, because if I have to use linux, Debian is still it (or devuan). I like to learn things that will be long-term useful and then put those learnings to use before starting over, and Debian has been best for that in my many years of Linux usage. So I mostly like their conservatism and that I don't have to upgrade as often, and that they keep providing security patches. And so many things just...work stably as expected. Some years ago, on another very popular distro when I tried using their LSB scripts in some other tools we provided to the business, it was like even the script author had not even run them to see if they had the most basic actual functioning--I looked at the script code and it was like they didn't even try, but still claimed "LSB support" (a moot point now, I realize). And their packaging system was relatively inconsistent and felt -- loose and messy at times by comparison. Those in debian all worked flawlessly, consistently, and predictably as documented (except for one package hosting tool being slow on large amounts of data, where I found a workaround--sort the data). The debian packaging infrastructure, and the debian policy for how things should work together reliably on the system, is very helpful. It seems there are good reasons that debian has more derivatives than any other distro (per distrowatch IIRC).

But I moved my laptop to OpenBSD because of the security benefits, and even greater predictability. A final motivation was when in the first release after Debian's move to systemd it wouldn't boot (with an obscure message about a net error?) on some hardware where devuan did just fine, and my firewall wouldn't auto-start any more and I didn't want to dive in to learn why right then. The firewall will always auto-start on OpenBSD. :)

@lcall, I agree, OpenBSD is great (especially the newer releases).

My only real complaint is that the community (openbsd-misc) is a bit cliquey.

As for the famous Theo, well, if you thought Linus was not afraid to state his opinion .... :)

Moved from Red Hat to Debian back in 2002. Never used anything else on my computer.

You didn't mention Arch :-)

I've done a ton of distro hopping over the years and always come back to Fedora for a few main reasons:

* They ship a ton of mingw-w64 libraries. It's super nice to not have to cross-compile a bunch of dependencies when I'm building something for Windows.

* They ship debuginfo packages for everything. This was one thing I really missed when I used Arch, where I'd have to rebuild packages with "options+=(debug)".

* "dnf shell" exists, which lets you do multiple operations in one transaction that would otherwise cause conflicts if done separately. I'm not aware of any other distro package manager that supports this.

I've been using Fedora since Fedora Core 15 and never stumbled across dnf shell. What's an example of using it to avoid conflicts?

One thing I do (for better or worse): if I need to patch a system package for an extended period of time (like to use a fork), I rebuild the package with a different name and make it provide the original package. For example, one package I recently did this with is libarchive. I rebuilt it as libarchive-patched and in the RPM spec file, I specified:

    Provides: libarchive-%{version}-%{release}

The new package would be able to substitute the old one, but the only way to install it is with dnf shell. Since other things depend on libarchive, I couldn't do:

    dnf remove libarchive
    dnf install ./libarchive-patched-*.rpm

Instead, if I do:

    dnf shell
    remove libarchive
    install ./libarchive-patched-*.rpm
    run

then both the remove and install are done in the same transaction and dnf won't throw any dependency resolution errors.

This is awesome! Will definitely be using this, thanks!

> * They ship a ton of mingw-w64 libraries. It's super nice to not have to cross-compile a bunch of dependencies when I'm building something for Windows.

Still shipping, however they dropped EPEL7 support for it :( Issue about it here:

https://pagure.io/fesco/issue/2333

Ubuntu LTS. I chose it because it mostly just works and there's plenty of documentation and q&a online (StackOverflow)

As for the problems, on the desktop side I wish it was more polished. For some reason every time there's a wireless printer in the network it tries to reinstall it (fix: sudo systemctl disable cups-browsed), error reporting is annoying (fix: sudo systemctl disable apport), can't easily set full RGB out on HDMI (fix: xrandr --output HDMI-1 --set "Broadcast RGB" "Full"), volume change is laggy on some soundcards (fix: enable-deferred-volume = no) and small quirks like this.

The only quirk I haven’t been able to fix running Ubuntu as my main work OS is the scroll wheel on my MS mouse jumps pages instead of smoothly scrolling. I’ve tried many recommended fixes to no avail over the last two years (on my phone away from my work laptop right now so I can’t check my notes on what I’ve done otherwise I’d post them here)

I've been using linux as a daily driver for almost twenty years. Mostly Arch. At the time it used to have a nice installer.

Nowadays I run mainly Ubuntu LTS in production for my clients, with some AWS Linux sprinkled in. The reason is that it's fairly well-known so it's easy to find up-to-date ppas for most software as well as people who know how to use it. It's all managed by SaltStack.

On my work laptop I run Arch. I like using a minimalist WM (i3) and don't need all the random helpers running in the background. I figured it's easier to start from scratch and add just what I need instead of trying to remove clutter. I also quite like having recent versions of software, so a rolling distribution is nice. It works perfectly on my HP Probook 430G5 out of the box (stable bluetooth audio, sleep, hibernation, wifi, webcam. Only the fingerprint reader is unsupported).

I've recently tried Ubuntu 20.04 on a desktop. I kinda liked it. As I prefer i3 to gnome, I installed the Regolith packages and it's quite nice. Snaps are a pain though, launching something like Remmina (RDP client) takes forever while it's instant on the aforementioned laptop. However, I'm looking to move this computer to Arch. Mostly so that I don't have to deal with two different systems.

Ubunutu LTS. I've been using Linux since the STS days (about 50 3.5 floppy disks). I used to compile my own kernels, enter clock timings for my video driver, but now I'm older and just want an OS that works.

Linux still has video driver issues, but once those things are worked out, it's pretty solid. It's still possible to screw up your bios settings, so be careful there.

For open source development projects, it has great/the best support.

UI is still bad, but I use IDEs and command line. Those things provide some consistency across all the failed window systems.

Lifelong linux user.

For desktop I’ve settled on Arch and it’s been smooth sailing for over ten years. The package management is vastly superior to ubuntu/debian and most mainstream distros. As a software developer, I often need recent mainline releases of major compinents like gcc/clang and other such libraries. Other distros force me to manage these manually and tend to have bad packaging conventions.

For server, I tend to do whatever is the “default” of the cloud provider I am working with as they tend to be tested the most and get security patches the quickest.

I use Arch also, as a desktop. I like:

  * Rolling releases which mostly doesn't break things
  * Solid package management
  * Doesn't handhold too much, while still not being too much of a pain to get a desktop going
  * Doesn't start services because you install them (Debian/Ubuntu)
  * Doesn't try and force snaps and an essentially proprietary store on you (Ubuntu)
  * Still popular enough to have momentum behind it (problems are Google-able)

I don't really like:

  * systemd. It's almost a necessary evil at this point, but not quite

I also use Alpine on my personal server. The package manager is blazing fast, and it uses OpenRC, which I prefer over systemd. I know the musl memory allocator isn't all the fast, which bothers me, but not enough to rebuild it with a different distro. busybox is also a bit bothersome sometimes (/etc/network/interfaces syntax is a bit limited, for example).

I am using Artix right now. Arch with no systemd. It has it own repos with -s6 -runit and -openrc packages, and uses the Arch repos for fallback.

It's been pretty smooth sailing just a few slight quirks you need to keep in mind. Would suggest checking it out if you get a chance.

I use Debian and feel satisfied about package management. What should I miss from Arch?

As a big debian fan who runs it on everything... apt works great, yeah, but packaging itself is a nightmare. Try to source patch one of your packages and rebuild it, and maybe distribute it internally. It’s a mess. Haven’t used Arch but e.g. APKBUILDS are heaven in comparison.

What is a mess? The build scripts? More often then not, patching a source package amounts to add the patch in debian/patches and write its name in debian/patches/series.

I don't find it terribly difficult, but maybe I am biased here, because I am a Debian Developer, so I work on Debian packages pretty often and know it well enough. It's true that packages can be very heterogeneous for many reasons.

Yeah, the heterogeneity. Having to figure out whether to use sbuild, pbuilder, cowbuilder, or that one that does it in a fakeroot, the debian wiki pages on these tools are quite dense and it’s hard to tell which info is 15 years out of date. I definitely cannot remember how to incant dh_make correctly given I only use it every 6 months. E.g., last time I wanted to patch a package debian already had quite a few patches, and I couldn’t figure out how to get the source into the debian patched state, change the code and rebuild it smoothly to test. I acknowledge that the tooling is good enough that if I used it regularly, I probably would have no problem with doing all of this in 2 minutes, but it’s nowhere near as nice as https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Patching_packages.

That said, again I love debian, its stability and high quality, and thanks to you and the volunteers who make it that way :)

Yeah, I can see that. Fortunately on many axes the situation is getting better and better, as data in https://trends.debian.net/ show. But every single developer is still free to choose whatever tools they like, so there will be always packages that do it differently.

On the other hand, there are reasons for scepticism towards proposals of forcing a uniform style. If such policies were accepted, they would have accepted years ago, so we would now be stuck with packages on SVN, much cruder tooling, etc. Back then SVN was really the future. What will be the future in ten years? We don't know, and that's the reason why we want to be sure that we'll be still free to move to it when it will arrive.

(and, BTW, of course you can change your SVN policy, but then you have to update all at once 30k+ source packages and the habits of 1k+ developers, not really easy)

Not to be meant as a rant, just an explanation for the current situation.

> That said, again I love debian, its stability and high quality, and thanks to you and the volunteers who make it that way :)

Thanks to you for your support!

The AUR is really nice. Also creating your own packages is super easy.

AUR can be used to install git version of software and configure them to your liking. For example, I run Emacs, rebuilt every month or so, that's directly from the most recent commits. Arch Linux makes it really easy to compile any package from source and configure how you would like (change gcc optimization level, compile in optional features, etc).

Pacman (the package manager) is also a lot faster and full featured than Debian. Everything just works.. better. And with the AUR, Arch Linux undoubtedly has more packages than any other distro. And the packages aren't ancient, either.

Another plus is that Arch Linux includes all development headers with the main package. In Debian you have install a special dev pack, which I think is pretty stupid.

Arch's package manager constantly loses information

Consider submitting as a poll at https://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll -- HN will keep track of votes for each choice.

> Which distribution(s) do you run on your desktops/laptops/servers?

Ubuntu 18.04 LTS on desktops, laptops, and servers. We will probably switch to 20.04 LTS later this year or early next year, once it has been tested in the wild for a bit longer.

> Why did you choose them?

Ubuntu works, it has the most support from third parties (e.g., instructions for setting up CUDA devices), and it has the largest community of users online (every Linux user has used it at some point). Why go off the reservation?

> What problems do you face with them and what changes would you like them do make?

None, though I'm a bit concerned about potential issues with the transition to snaps.

I run Debian Linux on dozens of (different roles) VMs and physical servers, all managed by Ansible.

On my desktops/laptops, I run Debian Stable, but I feel it is too old for development/common desktop usage, and I waste lots of time manually installing Python/Go/Rust tools.

I am a competent Arch Linux user too, having used for a decade. It has all the tools I need on the latest version, but lately I just shy away from it because it moves too fast and the constant feeling of a "moving target" that can break anytime. Interestingly, in a decade of usage, I only have a couple of big problems that were fixed in less than half an hour, so that fear might be because I'm getting old and a bit lazy...

I switched to Manjaro after becoming a father. It's based on Arch Linux. The installation is as fast and guided as an Ubuntu installation. But you get Pacman and AUR. Manjaro is still a rolling release, but they have a bit of delay. They let test ArchLinux users first. So over all it's the most stable, easy to use and uptodate Distribution I ever had.

For development you don't want to use the distros tools anyways. The distro packages are there primarily to build the other packages, they also provide the basics of a development environment suitable for small tasks and testing. For more serious development you want a level of control over your tooling that distro packages just can't provide (NixOS being the only exception I know about).

This is why most languages have their own compiler/runtime distributions and module/package system.

These days I prefer NixOS, but I use ubuntu most of the time for VMs.

NixOS requires a high initial investment, but is so reliable and convenient afterwards. Installing multiple versions of software for development is convenient without having to use third party tools.

Sure it has downsides especially if you use weird or old software that is not available in the repository, but nothing an ubuntu vm or docker cannot solve.

Over the past 20 years: Suse -> LFS -> Gentoo -> Arch -> NixOS As you can see, I like to make it difficult for myself, but you learn the most this way.

I run GoboLinux on all machines I own. The distro provides an infrastructure for experimenting with different ideas at the filesystem and package management layers, which are activities aligned with my personal interests. I've been a core developer since its early days for a reason :)

The problems are associated with the fact it's a niche, research-oriented distro: due to the lack of man-power, one often needs to write compilation recipes for several programs (and potentially having to patch them) before being able to build and run them. Many things that are taken for granted when you run a major distro are not there.

Despite the limitations, I always have a hell of a good time developing and using the distro; it's been 18 years so far. We also have a small community of people who identify themselves with the distro's proposals and who are comfortable enough to live with its limitations. Many of them became active recipe contributors over the years.

Workstation: OpenSUSE Tumbleweed

- Rolling release with QA. If a package has issues the update will get delayed. It doesn't just update to the last commit blindly.

- Btrfs root partition with automated snapshots. Ext4 and XFS for my home folder. GRUB integration for snapshots so you can reboot to a read-only snapshot and rollback. It's all installed and configured automatically if you want.

--- https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Snapper

- Zypper package manager

--- https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Zypper_usage

- Automated QA (even for graphical applications)

--- https://openqa.opensuse.org/

- Free build service

--- https://build.opensuse.org/

If you want to install TW I don't recommend the net installer, breaks often and mirrors are slow. For updates switch to a TTY (or use GNU Screen) and run zypper dup, do not update packages in any other way. There's YaST but I don't like using it except for a few tools like Software Management to study package relationships.

>What problems do you face with them and what changes would you like them do make?

It could be my lack of knowledge of the package manager but sometimes I can't remove some packages without removing a lot of related ones (it's not a pattern), or they get reinstalled even with zypper lock. Other than that, best distro I ever used.

Server: I want to move away from Ubuntu (fuck snap btw) but I still haven't decided to what distro. I might just use a container based OS.

I run NixOS. I recently wrote a blog post about my opinions of the pros/cons: https://willghatch.net/blog/2020/06/27/nixos-the-good-the-ba...

For several years previously I ran Arch Linux on laptops, Debian on servers, and a mix of the two on various desktops. I'm generally much happier with NixOS. NixOS-style package management is the future, it's clearly better than all its competitors (I put Guix together with Nix as NixOS-style here). NixOS-style system configuration is also much nicer than most OSes, though the quality of configuration design for different components varies a lot, and I think there could be big improvements to the configuration language and APIs in future OSes that try to improve on the model (largely due to NixOS being the first system of its kind). I'm happy that Guix is also exploring this space and making some different decisions, and it's the only other OS that I would seriously consider right now. All in all, I'm very pleased with NixOS.

I think most of your critique can be addressed with documentation, I've started the work at https://nix.dev/

Fedora - it's modern but stable. I think they have very decent QA but also quite up-to-date kernels, which is important when running on newer hardware. I don't care much for the Gnome default desktop though - use sway and QT-based apps mostly.

I tried Arch and OpenSUSE Tumbleweed and found that things broke quite frequently (~every week), which I couldn't justify for my work setup. Most of the time copr https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/ has any out-of-tree builds I need. I was a Gentoo user for many years (2006~2012) but again the maintenance burden was quite high, and I could never quite eliminate GNUTLS from my system XD.

For server-side stuff, either I customize Alpine (containers, small devices) or roll with whatever is the default.

Void Linux, because it's stable. I've never had an update break my system, unlike other rolling-release distributions.

The tooling is great: runit, xbps, and xtools are refreshingly simple and sane.

I also like the fact that Void takes the BSD route more often than other Linux distros. LibreSSL is cool.

I don't face any specific problems. Sometimes the changes that experimental software tends to undergo can be challenging to keep up with, but the Void team manages to develop their toolchain without compromising stability. As a result, when behavior changes slightly, I generally find it easy to adapt.

Biggest problem I had with Void, was that the musl libc support wasn't as good as Alpine.

This is because Void gives you the choice between glibc and musl. Therefore the team spreads themselves thin trying to support both. So some packages for Void musl are unavailable.

I'm a programmer, have done server sysadmin since I was 12, Linux on the desktop since 16, startup since 25. I'm now 29. Edit: Because other replies in the thread complain that "technically competent" is not well defined, I guess it makes sense to add some detail: I've spent >10k hours on open-source contributions, and believe I can bend most userspace software to my will.

I run NixOS because of its high reliability, stability (upgrades on Ubuntu servers these days go wrong more often than years ago, and NixOS allows you to roll back any change), low maintenance (fully declarative config for all machines, little state to manage), and extreme hackability / ease of contribution (you can override and patch anything declaratively to fix things quickly, and upstreaming is very easy to do via a simple Github PR, which leads to broken things being resolved quickly by its users).

I use it on the startup's servers (for 4 years) and my laptop (for 1 year), and the desktop will join as soon as I have time.

By now I think NixOS is a technically fundamentally better way to build an OS, and as an open-source project it has a great trajectory and community. Also, to my surprise it was the first distro where the Nvidia proprietary driver worked out of the box, and stayed working.

Before this I've used Windows 95 to 7, Suse 9.3, Ubuntu, Gentoo, Arch, Ubuntu again.

What changes would I like NixOS to make? Even more automatic QA, re-running all the GUI intregration tests of e.g. Firefox when any dependency changes. I've written about it on https://discourse.nixos.org/t/steps-towards-even-more-pr-aut....

Fedora. Regular releases and they're typically the first to adopt new technologies. I used to run Ubuntu but they have a terrible case of rolling their own tech that they put under a CLA or leave significant parts proprietary, like Snap/Mir/Unity.

I started with Debian back in ~2002, which I still love but I prefer Fedora's release cycle.

Fedora on my primary desktop. I've got Linux Mint on an old laptop. Personal servers are a mix of CentOS and FreeBSD 11, mostly because I wanted to mess around with BSD.

> Why did you choose them?

I'm a certified Red Hat guy, so Fedora and CentOS were easy picks. Fedora also has good support for Steam/Linux gaming, and it has packages that are fresh. Occasionally too fresh, and I've definitely had an update break stuff

FreeBSD, as mentioned above, was mostly on a lark, or chance to learn the system. Stable, solid back-end system tho.

Linux Mint was mostly because it was laptop and I wanted the drivers to work.

> What problems do you face with them and what changes would you like them do make?

Honestly Fedora is fine as a daily driver these days. Steam works well, and most games work fine with Proton; the handful that don't aren't really the fault of the OS.

Mint has some issues with security and their repos, which makes me nervous, but from a technical standpoint it's fine.

I've hopped many distros and DEs, but I've ultimately landed on Ubuntu. At a certain point, you just want things to work, on a platform that is widely supported by other tools.

However, I did write a tool that allows me to treat my Ubuntu install like a Docker image.

Darch: https://github.com/godarch/darch

My personal recipes: https://github.com/pauldotknopf/darch-recipes

Fully switched to Linux 16 years ago as a schoolkid, now I have a Linux admin job.

NixOS is my current most favorite, I'm using it for the last 4 years on my main box at home and my work laptop. Planning to use NixOps for my web project, too.

Gentoo was my first love, Arch was my second choice for low-power machines. Nowadays I can fully replace them with NixOS, because once you grok the Nix language and ecosystem, you can pick any balance between "customize and compile everything" and "fetch prebuilt and lightweight".

Managing your entire OS with a Single Source of Truth becomes a viable and attractive option, and then functional programming can be used to DevOp like never before.

The only problem I see with the Nix approach is the high barrier of entry. You need to become proficient with a large amount of complex concepts, and the go-to sources often talk to you with large inferential distances.

The first things I would contribute, when I get a chance, are an interactive topology browser and a smart generator of skeleton expressions for code and binary sources, with a "nix init" similar to "stack init".

In the last decade, I've used Fedora or Ubuntu. Currently Fedora, as my employers for the last 7 years have used Fedora or Centos based systems.

Fedora tends to have pretty up-to-date software (the kernel, especially), but is also pretty stable for me -- I primarily use my computer for development, so they can't get in the way of me working.

In the decade before that, I experimented with distros a lot more. Slackware, Gentoo, Arch, LFS, Debian and variants. I learned a lot about Linux desktop systems doing that: Getting X, wifi, modems, printers working. Fixing things when they broke. But back then, I largely wasn't doing software development -- more sysadmin stuff. I don't do that anymore. I installed Fedora on my current system with a lovely polished installer, and it's almost entirely worked out of the box for me.

I'm a sysadmin, been running Linux for 25 years.

These days I almost exclusively use Ubuntu, largely because the free release and the LTS release are exactly the same thing, and are released on a predictable schedule. I used to do mostly CentOS, and liked it, but having to have it at arms length from RedHat did introduce some problems and uncertainty. Debian (and I know some argue this, but I don't agree) doesn't have an LTS release.

I run it on my desktop, laptop, and servers. Nice having the same OS on them all. I can build packages and test things on my laptop, with an eye towards production. Our developers all use Windows.

On the horizon: NixOS. Though I haven't really looked at it seriously.

25 years....the days of Yggdrasil, Slack, and Debian

I started to administer my university unix computers in 1995, including Linux.

I rememeber modifying the kernel to account for my NIC. I can say that I mostly knew how my server worked.

Now I use Ubuntu LTS and Stack Exchange to run my home server as a platform for docker containers.

Slackware on 3.5" floppies was my first install.

Remember installing Slackware. Installed their Slackware on DOS partition when I was in 8th grade. Had no idea what I was doing... Moved to FreeBSD in 9th grade because it was a more cohesive operating system.

And the struggle with xf86config to somehow get the UI working. Ah, memories!

Centos at work, Fedora at home. Like it or not, RedHat devs are core contributors of many of the most critical parts of the linux ecosystem. The desktop integration of those different parts in Fedora is both bleeding edge and often without a hitch.

"Technically competent" is a wide spectrum, you'd like to have to narrow that down a little.

I use Manjaro.

Started my Linux journey on Knoppix (for coolness), then Ubuntu (for easy/popularity), then Fedora (for serious workstation environment), now Manjaro (for a great UX and not putting up with Canonical's strong flavors on everything)

Same here. Was using Ubuntu before, but prefer continous updates. Never have looked back...

25 years on Linux, tried perhaps a hundred distros plus all of the classic BSDs. Also developed for a couple high profile ones.

I use Ubuntu LTS for my gaming box, with as few tweaks as possible. I want my operating systems like I want my woman: stable and without issues.

Debian on a simple laptop.

ubuntu Mate/Manjaro on laptop with a graphics card (what I would put on a desktop if I had one)

Debian/ubuntu server if in need of server.

Debian has quick and easy keyboard shortcuts to easily move/resize windows from desktop to desktop. This is something I am used to do while multitasking.

Mate/Manjaro has integrated NVIDIA support, and more software sources.

If I set up a server, I just like to save time by already knowing commands and programs.

Arch for Desktop and a minimal distribution(like BottleRocket/CoreOS) for Kubernetes on servers. Ubuntu/Debian if I want a general purpose server.

I run Arch for my homeserver as well, but that’s mainly because I run Steam on it (alongside Docker for services)

Arch because it’s a rolling distribution, and because it tried to stick as close to the upstream.

Problems: Reboots in Kernel upgrades. I tried Canonical LivePatch on an Ubuntu server, but it rarely patches without reboots. Kernel upgrades end up with too many broken parts - things like docker for eg. I guess I could switch to LTS kernel, but Arch has spoiled me.

Better security model for desktop applications - neither of Snap or Flatpak comes close. I would be happy if this only solved for limited usecases, even. My primary concern is around apps I install from AUR, and dependencies in my code. And browser extensions. Sigh.

Give me LittleSnitch on my desktop.

If you haven't come across it yet - here's OpenSnitch: https://github.com/evilsocket/opensnitch

I've tried it and its nowhere near close. I used to use WinPatrol a decade ago on Windows, and that was a thousand times better.

I bought a Lenovo T4xx series laptop. I read most Lenovo laptops were Linux friendly, as I didn’t want to waste too much time on it at home. You can easily fall into a time sink trying to get Linux working on a laptop. And I don’t have much time or patience to mess around with such frivolous pursuits anymore.

I split the hard drive to dual boot, in case I needed access to Windows. And installed Ubuntu on it. The latest release uses Gnome by default, so this was a much better window manager than their previous Unity one.

So far, so good. It works mostly well. The fingerprint reader does not work. This is actually quite handy, especially when coming out of a reboot, or lockout. It works nicely on Windows, but doesn’t work on Linux.

However, one great feature difference between Ubuntu Linux vs. Windows, is the ability to resume. On Ubuntu Linux, I can fold down the laptop lid, and not touch the computer for weeks, and when I reopen the lid, it resumes immediately at where I left off. Whereas, with Windows, it seems to force a reset, and I lose all my previous works, open windows, etc. So, this is a definite big win for Ubuntu Linux here.

Most other things works ok on Linux. Not great, but it’s acceptable. Firefox works ok, but I found a few glitches, where I had to revert to using Chrome on Windows. Although I’m sure I could’ve downloaded Chrome for Linux to use it.

I found reprogramming Linux to automate some tasks, to be much easier on Linux, as opposed to Windows. Mostly because Bash is easily scripted, and all the Bash and Gnu tools, just makes Linux easier to automate. And especially aliases, which can auto set a bunch of commonly used parameters.

Overall, it’s more fun to use Linux on this laptop, than Windows.

Some things about the Gnome window manager does annoy me however. Like, when I try to save a file, or open a file, then the file manager window, takes the entire screen, instead of just being a smaller modal dialog box. But, this hasn’t irritated me enough yet, to find a possible fix for it.

I bought a Lenovo T4xx series laptop.

Yeah. Me too. A T410 back in 2010. It's its 10th birthday in about a week's time. It's so good that I can't find a suitable replacement that's more up to date and more convenient. The nearest alternative I've found is a Lenovo P53.

How do you define “technically competent?” I run Ubuntu on my servers and laptops but recently switched back to Windows on my desktop because I don’t like the direction Canonical is going with snapd in 20.04.

Problems? On two laptops (both Razer blades of different generations) the webcams were glitchy. Dell XPS 15 was fine. Most of the “problems” are known issues with Gnome that apply to any machine and could be addressed with a tiling window manager if I really cared. These were work laptops for my team. Really no major showstopper issues except for one failed release upgrade that required a wipe and reformat of the whole machine.

I might try Arch, as the rolling distro thing seems interesting, and not being forced into software updates is kind of important.

Going from Ubuntu to Windows because of snapd is a big jump, there has to be something else there. I mean, I think Mint announced they are dropping it. You could go to Debian. But to Windows?

WSL is pretty nice. It's not a bad transition. I tried it, but moved back to Pop OS.

Right I’m using WSL2 for a bit while I decide my next move. Probably arch / manjaro. In the meantime I’m enjoying Adobe Suite and better gaming. Dat

Laptop: a well worn-in kubuntu 16.04 - browsing and general use

Desktop is a 3-way boot:

o stable KDE Neon for games (via steam) and media

o separate up-to-date KDE Neon for development and fun,

o separate Slackware 14.2/current for low-latency audio tinkering and avoiding systemd in general.

My main gripe with all of these is updates changing things that already work, often for the worse (are you listening, Firefox?!)

But it's still better (for my software requirements and use cases) than either of the two main commercial alternatives, one of which is accelerating ever harder down the road user hostile forced updates and telemetry, while the other has just signaled its intent to obsolete the entire hardware platform of its current user base.

I use Arch Linux, and have for over 10 years. I don't like systemd, but the documentation is really good and the AUR is pretty amazing. I've never really had any problems with it, and the performance is really good.

I've thought about switching to Void Linux (no systems), but I'm lazy and don't like trying new things as much as I used to when I was younger.

I chose Arch Linux a long time ago because I liked it had i686 binaries instead of i486 like Debian. I had a 32-bit CPU back then. Also it doesn't come with any crap, so that's nice.

I would like Arch to remove systemd.

Have you tried Artix? They offer OpenRC, runit or S6.

No I haven't, have you? I've thought about it, but it doesn't seem especially popular.

I use it and it works quite fine! Just a few differences you need to learn, all of which are noted on their concise wiki. It's best to think of Arch as the fallback distro, therefore all other information is obtained from the Arch wiki as normal.

I spun it up in a VM once or twice, but nothing serious yet. From what I have seen it's mostly about the different init systems. Anything else should be identical to Arch and you can use the Archwiki for that.

Not advanced, but works solely on Linux.

I use openSUSE Tumbleweed.

1. Biggest benefit: snapper rollback is so convenient.

2. Yast.

I hate doing sysadmin stuff, so I tried my best to avoid it. As a result, when something came up that forces me to do it, I could never remember where is the config file or what key was to be changed, or what command to run afterwards, since the last time I mess with my system was months ago.

Yast solved that problem for me. Don't have to remember anything, just mindlessly use the GUI.

The drawback would be that a few software don't have an openSUSE package. I'll have to compile it, or not use it.

I author the half dozen base linux AMI images that our middleware and end customers use, so we have amazon linux, amazon linux 2, ubuntu 1604, ubuntu 1804, centos/rhel/oracle 7, and some alpine stuff for container spaces. (author, ok, all I mean is I write a manifest that adds some extra crud into a cis level 1 pre-hardened image the industry sells us)

Desktop, I'm always running a mac. It's pretty, and I can run all my dev stuff from here - terraform, packer, vagrant are my daily drivers. It helps me keep all my runtime code decoupled from the pipeline so that the other devs are able to stay running in whatever they use for local work. It's always too easy to tack weld pipeline constructs in that break the local build model and my mac gives me slightly better results by keeping me on my toes.

Servers, which are always build servers, it's always either Ubuntu LTS, 18.04 right now, or Red Hat 7. They say we're not supposed to name our livestock, but our build servers are Bessie and Clarabelle, 4 years old and banging products out left and right. Having an OS that isn't distracted by its own bling has been a source of confidence to us - the more boring, the better.

I'm kidding, Bessie and Clarabelle are only for our on-prem builds. Everything happening in the cloud exists for about 90 seconds longer than the build process, and then evaporates. And as you might guess, those are nearly always 100% successful builds and the onprem stuff has its own dedicated triage team to try and salvage bad builds (because it's cheaper than starting a new one, sigh)

Job is CentOS based, so workstation is Fedora: Similar system structure with the convenience of current versions of desktop software. Fedora 32 is my current "work distro", with production hosts on CentOS 7 or 8. CentOS Stream is interesting, but the rate of package updates still seems slow compared to other rolling releases.

Did a lot of distro hopping out of curiosity this year, and while I see where the popularity of Arch comes from - especially the docs, but I seem to be prone to breaking it, usually around a package update. That is likely because it is being used as an experimental system, with more config changes than a work environment. Manjaro made that less of a trap for me, and it's DEs are very nicely configured, but I have killed it a time or two as well.

Have a Void VM (glibc) running and that has been really interesting - still on the first image I created with Xfce - and have not managed to get it into a non-bootable state. So far xbps has been very nice to work with, and there seem to bee fewer footguns than with Arch (given my experimental patterns). I'm hoping this distro finds more usage, eventually resulting in community maintained doc quality that would approach Arch.

I started out with Debian about 16 years ago. It was relatively easy to install, and it was cool that you could download a minimal image, and then only pull from the itnernet, the packages that you needed during the installation. I used Debian/stable for a long time, but got tired of packages often being old. I switched to Debian/testing and ran that, and it was better.

I switched to Arch and ran for about 4 years. It is such a well documented distribution, and it does not try so much to force everything into being streamlines, it instead respects each upstream package, and documents how to configure it. Installing arm is a lot easier that you'd think, and you get to learn a good deal about how things work.

Ay my jobs, company policies have usually been Ubuntu, and while I do enjoy how most things seem to "just work", I find it more opaque as a system.

Now I'm also running Ubuntu at home, because I'm too lazy to keep up with two different ways of doing the same thing. I've been running ubuntu at home for about 4 years, and while it's nowhere near as elegant as Arch, it gets the job done, and I'll just format and reinstall (like a peasant) if it breaks.

On desktop/laptop my distro to go with is Fedora.

Why: It’s one of the most upstream distros you can get. Following you get latest Kernel, frequent updates with recent packages. It also comes with proprietary software, so you don’t need to mess around with Intel Microcode, NVIDIA drivers etc. It just works- out of the box.

Also interesting why I don’t use... Debian: Outdated packages. Not suitable as daily driver on a workstation. Different branches already messed up my system, so I lost trust.

Ubuntu: I lost trust in Canonical. They used to be Microsoft on open source. Instead of working upstream, they made their own software pieces for their very own goods- and might have ditched it already.

Arch: I used to love Arch. Really, this is my favorite. However, I’m too old or just too tired of starting a Linux “from scratch”. All the pre-condigured derivates are nice, but they waste the idea behind Arch. So, use vanilla Arch or leave it.

Suse: To be honest, I never tried it for too long. Just remember times where you had to buy a 90DM package containing 6 CDs and a manual.

On servers: Debian. Arguments already mentioned by others.

After trying out a lot of distros I'm also using Ubuntu.

20.4 for desktop and 18.04 for servers. It has its issues but you're most likely to find a quick solution for it compared to the rest.

Though during my experiments I did find that clear linux does give you an amazing performance boost but it falls short on usability and big community support so decided to pass but its definitely something to check out.

i'm using linux since 1994 on my own desktop since 1996 -> why? netscape 4 which supported linux was available

* desktop(s) - on my own debian / stable (development)

* (my) laptop & all desktop/laptops of "family-members" which i support for free - linux-mint

* servers - mostly debian / stabe and sometimes centos / rhel

why debian? its rock-solid - "stable" -, has a working dist-upgrade-path and it offers/maintains a vast selection of packages "out of the box" (from distro-repos)

why linux-mint? it looks nice and some edge-cases are easier to handle compared to vanilla-debian - especially: 3rd party drivers for certain hardware etc.

why centos/rhel? server-distro, 3rd party software is sometimes only supported on those

edit: i started with slackware back in the early 90ties, but also took a look on suse - which was slackware-based at first - and redhat ... settled with debian after the "apt" tool was available :)

i'm really happy with the situation of linux today.

sure ... you can always find some details to improve, but compared to the 90ties nearly everything works like a charm ;))

All new machines I've provisioned myself recently have been NixOS:

- Getting out-of-tree software to work takes a a little bit longer than on other distros, but once you do it, it's very reproducible.

- The OS itself is centrally configured in a functional way, but individual user environments default to being stateful. I find this to be a good practical divide. Easy roll-backs of the whole system and a very small number of files to reproduce a setup elsewhere

As far as what I've used in the past:

Mandrake -> Gentoo -> Debian -> Gentoo -> NixOS

The second Gentoo represents a long time (about 14 years out of 20). I switched to Debian the first time because the "stable" Gentoo portage got broken twice in under 6 months. Debian was a complete no-go for me because of how conservative it was though. At the time the Linux kernel was getting hardware support at a very rapid rate, so using a kernel even a few months out-of-date could mean no support for your hardware.

I've tried Unbunto many times but every time I have run into something that flat out didn't work, or needed more manual work than Gentoo to get working. One time (in the past 5 years) I had to construct a modeline to get graphics working. I knew how to do that, because everyone in 2000 knew how to do that but in 2016, that just felt primitive.

Other wonderful things that were default in Ubuntu were: when other people log-in, my Xorg session would restart. Adopting pulse-audio when it was still alpha-quality software. The whole snap thing people are complaining about now just seems like par for the course with Ubuntu.

It's possible that Ubuntu is a useful distro for moving things forward (I like pulse audio these days), but I don't want my workstation to be a beta tester for it.

For the server: Debian Stable. Why? - it's really stable - great community support - is predictable

For the desktop/laptop: Arch (or Arch derivative like Manjaro). Why? - it's rolling release, I have always up-to-date software without major updates - has great (the best?) community support: AUR, wiki - it's easy to tinker with/customize

My last company ran Ubuntu in the cloud, so I ran it locally to be the same. Since then, I still use it out of habit, but I have one machine running manjaro since the rolling release aspect is appealing. So far, zero stability issues, but some software isn’t configured to work with it as well as with Ubuntu. The community repositories usually have some adapted version you can download that works but then you have to trust a stranger

I don’t like Lts Ubuntu because gnome was extremely slow and was sped up significantly in 2019 or so. It wasn’t worth waiting for the next lts version to get that update, but I suspect I could have updated gnome separately.

Use gnome tweak tools a lot and find some gnome extensions you like.

Also, Ubuntu used to support full disk encryption better than some other sisters, but I think the arch variants do it better now?

Nothing, where I have a choice: Ubuntu or any Debian derivative. I don't like the way they screw around with upstream code before packaging it (e.g. "sites available" in the NGINX config) and start/enable systemd services by default when you install a package.

Personal laptop: Arch Linux. I do a lot of dev and screwing around on my laptop and want everything on the bleeding edge.

Backup home server: RHEL. It's rock-solid and very well documented. This is a machine I want to "just work" without having to do any manual maintenance.

Main home server: Arch Linux. I don't _want_ Arch Linux here, I'd have preferred Red Hat, but I couldn't get PCI passthrough working with libvirt and vfio-pci on this machine. I believe I needed a more modern kernel than Red Hat was maintaining at the time.

Xubuntu on the desktop, centos/rhel on servers.

I like my stuff to work.

I am considering dropping Ubuntu for fedora because canonical has this darn habit of ruining the desktop experience - one of the last straws for me was this snap thing that breaks a lot of stuff and slows down application startup. I'm not sure Fedora is better, I might have to go back to good old Debian.

Regarding centos/rhel: I am fairly knowledgeable about the system and certified too. It's nice to have something that I know won't change next month following the latest hype.

I stay as far as I can from rolling distros like arch: I've heard too many horror stories from friends where something trivial like a system update broke their system and they had to basically reinstall the whole system. I thought about it and it's not worthy for me.

Look at Mint.

I have been using Linux Lite for about 4 years now on 2 laptops and 1 desktop. Ihe distro is based upon a net image of ubuntu and runs XFCE. It is lighter and more polished than Xubuntu. I like the distro because it is a very basic OS and a no brainer. Anyway I am a huge fan of XFCE.

I have been using Arch for a couple of years now. It simply provides so much freedom to the power-user.

1. Installing packages via pacman and AUR is much much easier than any other distro I have come across. Every now and then I see people around me using Ubuntu or CentOS banging their heads to figure out how to install the correct version of something very popular like nodeJS.

2. The Arch wiki is fantastic. Apart from all core things, it has a wealth of information about so many things that are not directly related to Arch itself. Reading the wiki is often more productive than reading the first stackexchange answers.

On the other hand, I have been hearing good things about Guix and NixOS. I will be happy if someone who has used both extensively points out why I should be moving to Nix.

Arch Linux mainly because of the AUR.

Mint MATE.

Mint because I'm lazy. It uses a Ubuntu LTS kernel. It also has provision for including practically all of the necessary proprietary codecs and peripheral drivers without me having to install them all separately.

MATE because it is spartan GUI and doesn't add too much cruft.

Pop!_OS

It just works and is basically a better, less bloated Ubuntu.

Ubuntu, came from centos then moved to xubuntu but now just Ubuntu.

Debian derives mostly as it just works. Run on netbooks, in VMs and as physical machines. Laptops have given some problems with hibernation/ suspend. Oh I have a Debian as well. Just works!

Arch for desktop use, Ubuntu LTS for servers/appliances.

I seem to bounce between Gnome & Plasma on about an 8 monthly basis. I prefer the look and UX of Gnome, but dig the stability and lightweight nature of modern Plasma releases.

I like the simplicity of Arch, broken and reinstalled enough times over the years that it now only takes <30mins. I tend to get the base install done manually, and almost everything else is configured using Ansible.

Laptop setup is a bit more 'meta'. Running Arch on btfrs with full secure boot and a tidy plymouth boot splash for flicker free boot. Mostly use the laptop for VSCode Remote & Terminal work and so far it's been solid for 24months+

I have been using Ubuntu as my main OS for 10 years now and have written a fairly popular blog post about setting it up for development work [1].

However, I believe the distro is much less relevant than people think. I am using Ubuntu simply because it has the largest community and it is easy to find documentation/fixes/StackExchange posts/etc. The actual value comes from the things on top, such as an efficient command-line setup.

[1] https://tkainrad.dev/posts/setting-up-linux-workstation/

Ubuntu for day to day. I used to have a lot more free time and was able to sit at night and debug all the issues I might have encountered. Nowadays however, I just don't have the time like I used to and prefer things to just work.

If you have any sort of machine learning pipeline it can be especially frustrating to work with anything other than Ubuntu. Nvidia drivers :(. Arch is fine with it but upgrading again is just more time spent that I'd rather be busy researching.

I love Arch, I love the community and they have the best documentation. However, for me personally being on a rolling release is too time consuming :(.

Not advanced but get comfortable after years. Even i got strong desktop machine, i use debian lxde. And fedora lxde work laptop. After spending some time even in lxde i figured i dont need half of installations, so i have script removing everyting, setting network,nfstables etc. Now you can count user space processes with finger,And then after playing with LFS help me the figure out i only need base packages and simple xserver and even more lightweight window manager. I am in progress of making those builds via git as kinda package mgr, but paused project for a year due to new job.

I was using for 10+ years Gentoo Linux because I could customize it to my needs, but recently switched to fedora Linux mostly because I don't have much time now for maintenance and in my work we use a centos on production therefore it helps with muscle memory.

With gentoo I used it with systemd IMO it solves enough problems that it's worth having.

PS I miss how gentoo allowed customizing packages with use flags and using lto + graphite for compiling system actually provided measurable better performance.

PS2 I choice fedora also because is uses bleeding edge software like Wayland by default.

The distros I've had the most professional experience with are Debian and Fedora.

My main personal distro has been Ubuntu (usually the LTS version) for quite a few years however I recently installed Debian 10 on my second laptop and have been quite pleased with it. Ubuntu is doing quite a few things I don't understand and don't want to take the time to figure out so I tend to have a higher level of trust in Debian. At least I can do a "df -h" and not have it polluted with a bunch of loopback mounts for snap.

Arch for desktop: way easier than other distros because contrary to popular belief, older 'stable' versions of software have way more bugs and downsides. And removing the clutter enables kiss so life is easier overal. Once every 6 months I check the arch page why my update doesn't work and then copy paste the solution. Other than that it's perfect. Requirement for this distribution: update at least once a week

Centos for servers: webservers/other services just work, even the older versions

For all my personal stuff, I use Archlinux. I’ve been using it for years, so for me it is very easy to use. I’ve got no fears of the rolling release model causing me heartache because I’ve learned so much I can figure out how to fix whatever. I also find the rolling release model to be really beneficial because when I want to do something it’s nice to be able to install the newest version w/o any pain.

I really have no complaints with how Arch does things, they really make their model work and it works well.

I'm surprised I haven't seen a https://clearlinux.org/ user/recommendation yet. I found it pretty good. I would probably pick it up as the base of any docker images (or alpine where appropriate) I would need to create. (Usually server/java based hosts) As a daily driver but went back to windows/wsl2 (ubuntu 18.04) mostly for better battery + gpu/igpu management. (XPS laptop)

Ubuntu since 4.10 and linux since the late 1990s. Why? because I am a bit lazy and it is still pretty close to debian. On the server its a mixture of ubuntu and debian.

I don't like snaps and windows10 vms should be automated and better integrated (like windows has done to linux). I don't like that they have removed findutils. I do like that thinkpad bios updates is now integrated.

Mostly I think the OS should get out of our way. I might move over to debian as they seem to producing newer packages now.

openSUSE for desktops. Typically Debian for servers. Sometimes Ubuntu for VMs for stuff that's "We tested it with Ubuntu 14.04/16.04, take it or leave it".

For my laptop and desktop (where I work and watch movies, no gaming so far) I use openSUSE Tumbleweed. A rolling distro that allows me to have the last version of all my software, and very stable so I can do my daily job.

I choose it because is a funny mix between innovation (rolling, automatic tested, staging project to detect integration problems, reproducible build, etc) and conservative (traditional package manager, all based on RPM, robust good old tech already battle tested).

I've been distro hopping for since I have introduced myself to linux (2-3 years I think). Tried Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Suse, Mint, Arch, and a few random distros I found on distrowatch.

Finally settled for Arch (with KDE) and using it for 3-4 months now. I love it. It has forced me to learn a lot about linux. And now I realise other distros were too bloated and have a lot of packages I probably would never use.

That being said, I haven't tried Gentoo yet. Hmm. Someday maybe :P

I went from gentoo to arch years ago. Unless you absolutely need to compile the universe from scratch on your machine all the time, don’t bother. Arch’s greatest asset is its speed and excellent binay distribution. Gentoo affords you none of that. If you just want to “learn” I suppose, then by all means.

> Arch’s greatest asset is its speed and excellent binay distribution.

And its wiki.

> If you just want to “learn” I suppose, then by all means.

Yep that was the only purpose. But I don't see this happening anytime soon.

Excellent point regarding their Wiki. Gentoo's wiki is a great resource, too. What I like the most is that both have distro-agnostic information that apply elsewhere.

Ubuntu, because I got tired of screwing around tweaking my distro into submission a long time ago and just wanted something Debian-based that worked out of the box.

I use Arch Linux for everything with one exception (see below). I first got into Arch about a decade ago, and at this point I'm just used to it. I know where things are, and if I don't, I can easily find out. I don't trust other distros to give me the amount of full control of the system that Arch does, basically.

The other exception is in WSL, I use Ubuntu, but this is mostly because there isn't an official WSL Arch Linux distro.

Would not consider myself advanced but I have been using Linux since Fedora Core 4 (my first distro). I then used Ubuntu and Debian, where I stayed on Debian for years.

For personal computing I have been on Solus Linux for a few years. I love it. Everything just works and it is really polished. I get newer packages rather than having to deal with debian backports.

For servers I would choose CentOS due to familiarity with RHEL at work and maturity of documentation.

Not sure if I’d pass for advance but I first used Linux two decades ago and have used it on and off since. I use Ubuntu because I’ve become lazy in my old age.

Laptop: Debian Testing, because it's up-to-date enough that I don't feel I'm missing anything, but stable enough to actually get work done (I get breakage maybe a few times a year).

Servers: Debian Stable, because the base system is rock solid, updates/patches are basically guaranteed to never break anything, and if you really really need some specific package to be a new version you can usually get it out of backports.

Ubuntu LTS on servers. On the desktop I also use Ubuntu LTS, but through WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux). All the stuff in Ubuntu I don't like is desktop stuff, but I don't have to deal with any of that on servers or with WSL. It's not perfect, but the distributions out there that solve its problems are all more hassle than they are worth. It's the most "just works" option.

I run my own derivative of Arch. Was building images for EC2 back when it was new and I just like knowing every file in the smallest possible system I can get to serve my needs.

With Arch it is relatively easy to set up your own derivative that has full access to upstream while adding whatever you need from AUR, quickly. And you get to be the one in charge of making sure the system jells before updating your fleet.

Yeah, but will my company let me run a custom derivative of Arch?

Depends on a person's "company". My "company" is myself and, for now it suits me well.

Note that I'm a lisper though and have all intentions of letting Guix eat my lunch.

Desktop: Kubuntu LTS

Server: Ubuntu LTS

My employer's standard is Ubuntu servers. For familiarity, parity, and ease of development I've settled on the same.

I've experimented with Arch, Debian, Fedora, and Ubuntu (non-LTS) over the years. I've moved to LTS because I don't want the hassle of upgrading regularly (I've been burned multiple times). The only problem I have with Ubuntu is Snap which I purge upon first boot.

Not sure what you mean by advanced. But I have been using different distros for years now. Used to main debian. But for the last year I have been using Solus, and wouldn't look back. Very stable rolling release with official support for Budgie, Mate, Plasma and Gnome Desktop Environments.

I couldn't ask for more.

https://getsol.us/

Not sure I am qualified as "Advanced Linux user". There are always more advanced than me and always less advanced than me. But anyhow, for desktop I really like Xubuntu. I love the way it is so simple using XFCE and Ubuntu is quite largely supported. For servers I don't really much care but I use centOS.

Arch for desktop, mostly because packages are very up to date and I like the AUR package system.

Debian Stable for production stuff.

Xubuntu.

Why? We use Ubuntu on servers and I don't have to mess around with and tweak things as much. I can just get to work.

I prefer Manjaro Linux, which is based on Arch and comes with mostly all the actual packages, in comparison to most distros out there.

Easy to configure and use, perfect for every kind of usage (Gaming, Development, Multimedia)

Almost none, the ArchWiki is really full of content for problems you might encounter

Arch for my development machine. It’s been the most trouble free distro I’ve ever run.

All my production stuff is dockerised and running on GKE these days. Most are FROM scratch with a statically compiled go binary in there. Some are on alpine and there’s the odd bit of Debian here and there.

I use whatever the latest Ubuntu LTS release is (Ubuntu 20.04 at the time of this writing), mainly because it works well enough, it has broad compatibility with open source and commercial software, and I can spend my time focusing on my project rather than my computer.

Always Debian Stable (currently 10.x)

Is that actually possible these days? The last time I tried Debian stable was about 18 years ago, and at that point even "testing" was too old of a kernel to support recent hardware.

These days Debian Stable is very comparable with Ubuntu LTS. They are aiming for a release at about every 2 years, which is the same cadence as Ubuntu LTS. They do have some different policies, such as using Firefox ESR and other things, but there are also the Backports repository and other niceties. And you don't get Snaps forced down your throat.

> and at that point even "testing" was too old of a kernel to support recent hardware

Today Debian testing has a 5.7 Kernel, which is the most recent one.

Debian is indeed a little "behind" in adopting certain modern technologies compared to other distros like Fedora, but most of the time I see this as a plus, because new tech is often buggy and take a long time to mature. I generally don't like to pay the price of being an early adopter.

> recent hardware

This is indeed an issue. The trick when you get new hardware is that you install Testing but you don't configure your repositories as "testing" you configure them as the name of the current testing distro: "bullseye" today. So if I keep updating my Debian Bullseye, once it gets branched I will be effectively out of testing, then Bulleye will get released and I will be on the stable repository.

If you have the time, and you are willing to learn, o suggest Arch Linux. It is great due to the full customization from the user, and complete control. The bad side is that you have to put in some serious time to get it up and running. It is worth it in my opinion.

All I use is a browser,terminal and Docker.

Ubuntu seems fine it provides quick access to the above and works quite well ootb on laptops.

For servers? I'd like to transition to a well-maintained kubernetes stack. I stopped caring which linux distro the k8s distro uses underneath.

I switched from Debian to Ubuntu long time ago. It just felt that's one way to support Ubuntu desktop project. I used to be a "frequent" small donator to the project.

I use Xmonad and Xfce4. So the desktop experience hasn't really changed for me.

I just use org mode

I lol'd. org-mode is too good for Linux.

Fedora on my laptop, usually CentOS or Amazon Linux on servers.

Why? I've been using RH derived distros since around the RH 6.2 days, and it's always just worked. And I know my way around the ecosystem moderately well, and know how to get stuff done.

Ubuntu LTS on my laptop, because it's the closest I've found to "Just Works" status. I run RHEL servers at work, but that's not my decision, though they are serious workhorses (albeit always somewhat outdated).

Kubuntu on desktop and laptop. Simple ux, light on cpu and ram, efficiently updated lts version. The default file manager (dolphin) is almost unusable to to ux decisions the maintainers made. I use simpler ones like thunar or pcmmanfm.

Used ArchLinux for 6 years and eventually switched to Ubuntu. It just works most of the time and most of the things I require is bundled with the installation ISO. Most third-party bundles in .deb format which also usually just works.

Nixos is my current OS. I'm happy with it. I am able to configure my whole system by typing codes. This is great for me because I'm a reproducibility guy. I do not like make system-wide changes "on-the-fly"

You might like this: https://godarch.com/

I get to use Ubuntu, make TEMPORARY changes on the fly, and still have things reproducible.

I ran a lot of distros until now, since Conectiva 3.0. I am now using Ubuntu on servers, and just gave up Fedora to use Linux Mint now.

I couldn't put Fedora working with Docker the way I like, but someday I'll be back to.

You have a specific set of requirement for Docker? I have not had issues setting up Docker on Fedora. I have been on it since v25 after being ~10 years on Ubuntu.

I have tried Puppy, Linux Mint, Linux Lite as I was playing with an antique maschine. Currently running Ubuntu 20.04 on Sony Vaio, Manjaro on an older Laptop, Ubuntu Touch on my Nexus5 and on my future PinePhone.

ubuntu. ML/AI stack is very deb-heavy, so this saves me some build time.

Started out with Slackware 22 years ago, and have migrated through Mandrake, Red Hat, and Ubuntu since then. Recent made the move to Manjaro because I wanted Arch but with stability. Haven't looked back.

Desktop: Manjaro Xfce. Up to date gcc/clang and the whole toolchain.

Servers: Debian stable or Centos 8 (depending on the job place)

Also Mx Linux where I need Debian/Ubuntu-like system with a pleasant GUI.

Looking into Clear Linux and NixOS.

for desktop I'm using arch linux with DWM , arch because it's just a single version of package that is well integrated in system with all dependencies, because of AUR and high community support with the nicest possible wiki, and because it's easy, with initial effort at the begging it's easy to setup and understand how it's working.

For server side usually debian(for single service oriented stuff), if are strong recommendations then Ubuntu(usually for virtualization tolls like openstack ).

I use Arch because of AUR. And one more thing I don't like snaps.

Desktops: OpenSUSE Leap with Plasma desktop. It just works, and the experience is pretty polished. Only issues I ever run into is having to drop to the command line occasionally for running an update. My family doesn't know much about that, so I have to fix their computers for them.

Laptop: Arch Linux - Very light, very customized, and it also just works. I have no problems with Arch.

Servers: Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server. It's stable, and since I run it at work it just makes sense to use at home as well. I know in and out how it works and what to expect from it. Only issues I ever have are typically due to a previous admin underprovisioning a machine. Otherwise it's great.

I only run Linux on the server, no GUI. I use Debian everywhere, except in those (thankfully) few cases when I am administering commercial software, in which case I use CentOS.

Arch. Because:

* it's the best documented (by far)

* it's extremely no-nonsense

* it's a rolling release

* it requires you to learn more and take responsibility for difficult decisions (like which network manager to use etc.)

Qubes OS

Without it, I can't sleep.

Same here. It is not only secure but also provides a possibility to easily separate my life into independent domains - virtual machines (work, personal, random websites etc) with simple independent backups. Those domains are integrated into the UI such that I only see colorful windows, not full "virtual computers".

Same...... Same.

I am competent but certainly not advanced.

Nowadays I use MX Linux because it gives me stability, performance, and just enough abstraction to allow me avoid excessive tinkering.

what is ubuntu to debian is manjaro to arch. Having said that there is not really any easy way to install a debian rolling distro therefore the next best alternative that exist is manjaro.

Arch seems to me too fast and probably a little unpredictable where manjaro is easy to install and a little bit late to upstream in comparison to other rolling distros.

The last point actually is a plus and I regard manjaro as the most stable rolling distro.

> Which distribution(s) do you run

Slackware

> Why did you choose them?

You get a no-nonsense, standard Linux/GNU install without a bunch of distribution specific complexity layered on top.

Various debians on servers. Manjaro on desktop.

Debian was my main OS everywhere since perhaps 1999 or so. I've jumped on Devuan early on and I think is just great.

KDE Neon on my laptop.

Debian or Ubuntu or AMI on servers.

KDE Neon is Ubuntu a sane (yeah, I know, not everyone agrees on that) and configurable UI.

I wouldn't say I'm an expert.

I mostly use it on Pi. I use either Raspian Lite for most things or Kali Linux for security.

pop_OS! 20.04 for my laptop, it solved all my issues with wifi drivers, waking up from sleep etc., it just works

debian buster on the server i manage; it just works, always, i hope i won't jinx it but never failed me, perfectly stable, reliable, predictiable, security autoupdates enabled without issues

Ubuntu LTS. I find most things just work. I started with Ubuntu -> Debian -> Arch -> Ubuntu

Recently POP_OS but with kde as main de. In the last 10 years a mix of kubuntu lts and manjaro.

Desktop: Arch Linux

Server: Ubuntu LTS or Debian

I had my first experience with Slack some 24-5 years ago. After that I used many distributions and their variations on both personal computers and work servers or desktops. Used them on Digital and HP "workstations" from the 90ties, Sun machines, SGI, with text-only terminals, with graphical terminals. Had admin experience with Slackware, Mandrake, Redhat, CentOS, Oracle Enterprise Linux, Linux Mint, Linux Mint DE, OpenSUSE, Ubuntu, Xubuntu, Ubuntu Studio, Arch, Parabola OS, Fedora, Debian, even some specialized like Clonezilla, gNewSense, Scientific Linux, ClearOS, Gentoo (compiled a whole WAMP based server from scratch once). I must be forgetting at least several of them that I used.

I don't understand people who are frantic supporters of some distribution or some packaging system. They are all very similar and it is really easy to hop from one to another in a matter of a day. You just need to think through your first install in the proper way and decide on a stable partition setup where it will be easy to just switch to another one.

At this moment I am running Ubuntu studio on my personal computer. Why? Because I am experimenting with open-source software for music, and Ubuntu Studio is setup in the proper way to have everything audio without much hassle. Before that I had Arch, and although I spent months trying to setup everything to work as I wished, I had many problems. As I said, I don't have trouble fiddling with configurations and recompiling the whole OS from source, I did that many times in the past, sometimes you don't have so much time and you need to appreciate to good effort that some other people put, to have a complete system targeted to some type of usage (such as audio).

When I have a choice, the servers I maintain are running Debian.

The largest problem of many distributions is: - stable distributions use stale versions of software and rolling distributions are unpredictable, so you always do a compromise depending what is your primary target for daily use.

In the past distributions boasted how extensive their library of ready-to-install packages is.

Nowadays, I fear that many distributions will stop supporting most of the software packages except for a very few, and move everything to image-based partial-os-snapshots like appimage, flatpak or snap. The problem is that - while snap, appimage and flatpak are modern ways to have fresh software and they all work in some or another way, the software vendors forget themselves and literally needlessly pack 1GB of libraries for a single mostly useless application, that you use once a month. If you have installed 100 simple applications of 1GB, in the end you will have 100 mounts to virtual drives for 100 too-simple apps, taking 100 GBs.

Instead application vendors should stick to sources that are easy to compile, and sources that are Portable, so that anyone is able to support them on any OS or distro. E.g. like Maven usually works for most Java apps - you just run mvn package and it will download all needed dependencies and run all procedures that are needed to create an installable package of the software, so that it is easy for distributions to pack it and ship it, instead of spending hours and hours figuring out compilation and packaging bugs.

Linux user for 15+ years, Slack, now Arch in the past 10 years.

Debian,I need a stable system to work on.

I recently tried Manjaro but I've had less issues with Arch.

arch, because of wiki and the package manager

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