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

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).

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.

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)

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.

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?

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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

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.

There is a Chinese distro : http://www.linuxdeepin.com/index.en.html not bad.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

OpenSUSE for the latest and greatest stable packages.

Elementary OS, cool one.

centos 6.x at work

I also have a centos 5.x box running personally

mint 14

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 - by far the active-est community out there