Poll: HN desktop Linux users, what distro do you use? • Hacker News Board

Re: Poll: HN desktop Linux users, what distro do you use?

#61

Post by namelesstrash01 » Sun, May 19, 2013, 12:21 AM UTC

angersock wrote: post #19

Crunchbang ( #! ), because stock Debian is not compelling, and Ubuntu is unadulterated garbage as far as UX goes.

Hear, hear! I can (and do) run Crunchbang on tiny embedded devices all the way up through those netbooks. For all of those smaller (capability) devices, you really can't go wrong with #!.

Re: Poll: HN desktop Linux users, what distro do you use?

#62

Post by namelesstrash01 » Sun, May 19, 2013, 12:26 AM UTC

I'm actually a bit surprised to see Mint with so few users here. I expected Ubuntu to have less of a grip on the HN community than, say, Reddit or something. There's definitely a large Arch and Debian community, which is what I expected, but I certainly did not expect to see so many people using an OS that technical people pretty universally complain about. Mint Cinnamon == Ubuntu without some bloat and minus Unity (and plus a great UI called Cinnamon). That's very interesting to me.

I wondered about VPS/cloud server distros people are using, but there's a great comment here with several good answers. Looks like quite a few are using some kind of VPS out there.

Re: Poll: HN desktop Linux users, what distro do you use?

#63

Post by LaSombra » Sun, May 19, 2013, 12:32 AM UTC

I was re-introduced to Linux desktop 4 months ago. Fedora 18 with KDE at first, now I moved to Xfce and am quite happy with it.

Re: Poll: HN desktop Linux users, what distro do you use?

#64

Post by hkmurakami » Sun, May 19, 2013, 12:33 AM UTC

New Linux convert here. Been an Ubuntu user since early April. Chose Ubuntu since it's what I defaulted to for my Linode instance (which I've also only had since January) upon referencing some guides, and since it seemed to have strong guides and references I could look to if I got stuck on something.

Happy to be off the MSFT train after 17 years!

Re: Poll: HN desktop Linux users, what distro do you use?

#65

Post by namelesstrash01 » Sun, May 19, 2013, 12:33 AM UTC

gee_totes wrote: post #4

Is anyone's choice of distro influenced by the type of servers they find themselves working on? For example, I find myself doing alot of work on REHL systems in the cloud, and thusly run Fedora (so I don't have to figure out where config files, etc. are kept in other distros).

I use CentOS 6.x almost exclusively, since I work with several different low-end VPS for my businesses. I found it's much, much easier to have adopted a sort of "let it fail" philosophy and replicate across many (then worry about the failure when I have time) instead of paying dearly for a single high-end VPS that does occasionally have downtime. I'm also "sort of" in the business of CDN-type services, so geographical/latency distance is important to me, which is another reason this "let it fail" across many replicated servers around the world works best for my situation.

For hardware firewall/security appliance, I use pfSense (a FreeBSD "distro").

Re: Poll: HN desktop Linux users, what distro do you use?

#66

Post by namelesstrash01 » Sun, May 19, 2013, 12:37 AM UTC

thomseddon wrote: post #14

gee_totes wrote: post #4

Is anyone's choice of distro influenced by the type of servers they find themselves working on? For example, I find myself doing alot of work on REHL systems in the cloud, and thusly run Fedora (so I don't have to figure out where config files, etc. are kept in other distros).

This is exactly why I use fedora too, however I'm increasingly pulled towards Ubuntu again....

Is there any reason you'd use Ubuntu over an Ubuntu-like distro such as Linux Mint? I'm just curious, because I feel like not many people know about Mint here, and the general feeling is that people don't want to use Ubuntu, but like apt and the Ubuntu repos (which Mint uses, without so much of the bloat of Ubuntu, and with a different UI like Cinnamon, which is fantastic).

Re: Poll: HN desktop Linux users, what distro do you use?

#67

Post by gnosis » Sun, May 19, 2013, 12:38 AM UTC

kenko wrote: post #36

memset wrote: post #25

I started out with Gentoo, maybe 10 years ago. It was the coolest thing, but later realized that I was spending a lot of time compiling everything and wanted these magical things called "binaries" instead. So I switched to Ubuntu - Warty Warthog! I loved it because it was a minimal distro that was very useful and fit on a single CD. (I neither had lots of internet nor CDs available to me at the time.) Also, I never k…

"I started out with Gentoo, maybe 10 years ago. It was the coolest thing, but later realized that I was spending a lot of time compiling everything and wanted these magical things called "binaries" instead." I'm using Gentoo and I don't really notice this, but that's probably because my needs are fairly minimal and I take the approach of "if it's working, don't change it". Unless I happen to upgrade to something that…

You have to compile quite a lot just to keep up on Gentoo. If you don't, your system will fall out of sync with the packages that are in portage, and trying to install new software and keeping your system running will be painful at best.

In my opinion, this is Gentoo's greatest weakness. I don't really see a way around it, however, short of the Gentoo team somehow getting the resources to mirror every version of every package in portage.

Re: Poll: HN desktop Linux users, what distro do you use?

#68

Post by namelesstrash01 » Sun, May 19, 2013, 12:40 AM UTC

saosebastiao wrote: post #32

Unfortunately, the distro whose philosophy I like the most has a package manager that I like the least. Therefore, instead of Arch, I use Ubuntu.

Have you tried Mint instead of Ubuntu? It's like Ubuntu's hot, skinnier, younger sister.

Re: Poll: HN desktop Linux users, what distro do you use?

#69

Post by bifrost » Sun, May 19, 2013, 12:41 AM UTC

I had to stop using Linux on the desktop, but I've tried out a few of the bigones (Debian/Gentoo/Ubuntu/CentOS/RH) and they were all mostly ok. For day to day desktop work I use FreeBSD, but I also use OSX, since both require me to do very little work to maintain them and I can focus on doing actual work. In terms of the OS I have to spend the most time fixing (for customers/friends), hands down its Ubuntu, Debian/RH/CentOS require some time but not nearly as much. I attribute that mostly to popularity and frequency of updates, but I also kinda think that could be controlled with a heavier QA process. enh :)

Re: Poll: HN desktop Linux users, what distro do you use?

#70

Post by renanbirck » Sun, May 19, 2013, 12:42 AM UTC

Used to run Arch until recently, but moved to Ubuntu when 13.04 came out.

Currently using Ubuntu with MATE (haven't bothered with Unity in quite a while, considering my experience with it in previous Ubuntu versions was quite underwhelming - might try it again someday) and - surprisingly - not missing Arch that much.