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.
Ask HN: Which Linux distribution do you use, and why?
41–50 of 59 posts
Re: Ask HN: Which Linux distribution do you use, and why?
#42NixOS 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.
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.
The orig PhD thesis paper is what you want http://www.st.ewi.tudelft.nl/~dolstra/pubs/phd-thesis.pdf
I use GuixSD, just because it's init system is in Scheme(guile) and the declarative syntax of system config and pkg definitions seem more straight forward to me and I prefer free software. You can easily run a GuixSD system with a mainline kernel if you want proprietary firmware blobs but so far I haven't had any issues with the default Libre kernel. There's a GuixSD presentation here http://dustycloud.org/misc/talks/guix/chicagolug_2015/guix_t...
Re: Ask HN: Which Linux distribution do you use, and why?
#43Ubuntu 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
Re: Ask HN: Which Linux distribution do you use, and why?
#44I 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.
Re: Ask HN: Which Linux distribution do you use, and why?
#45Looking 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.
Re: Ask HN: Which Linux distribution do you use, and why?
#46I 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…
You should give cinnamon a try. I think you would prefer it over gnome.
Re: Ask HN: Which Linux distribution do you use, and why?
#47On 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…
+1
I use Arch since ~8 years at work and on my laptop.
Re: Ask HN: Which Linux distribution do you use, and why?
#48NixOS 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.
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.
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
Re: Ask HN: Which Linux distribution do you use, and why?
#49I 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…
You should give cinnamon a try. I think you would prefer it over gnome.
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.
Re: Ask HN: Which Linux distribution do you use, and why?
#50I 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…
Check MATE, they try to keep up with good experience without breaking anything. It just works