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How many of you use a Linux distro as your primary desktop OS?

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Re: How many of you use a Linux distro as your primary desktop OS?

#21

Post by davidgerard »

Xubuntu, because it stays the hell out of my way.

Things running in it: Firefox (personal browsing), Chromium (work browsing), a buttload of terminals, KeePassX.

I hope Xfce never pulls a GNOME/KDE and just keeps refining version 4 forever. When I hear the words "desktop" and "innovation", I reach for my revolver.

Re: How many of you use a Linux distro as your primary desktop OS?

#22

Post by stevekemp »

I've used Debian as my desktop for the past seven+ years. I like that I can script, I like that I can develop, and as a sysadmin I like that my local environment matches my remote one.

I had a brief stint using a MacBook and found it painful; the keyboard was wrong, installing packages was clunky, and it just didn't work for me well.

I've no interest in paying for an operating system, so it is unlikely I could be lured over to running Microsoft Windows, or Mac OS XX.

Re: How many of you use a Linux distro as your primary desktop OS?

#25

Post by nostromoa »

Ubuntu latest with Mint desktop Free one advantage not held hostage by Microsoft Updates and overpriced Apple hardware Its unlikely other OS will do anything but try to maintain and grow their monopolies. In linux there are tones of media, music, and video programs for free and Libre Office is very good. Microsoft office does have RTD and good web to spreadsheet linking but also has errors in a lot of functions they haven't fixed for about 33 years.

Re: How many of you use a Linux distro as your primary desktop OS?

#26

Post by omerhj »

Debian Wheezy (stable) on most of my systems, and Debian Testing on my primary home laptop. I use backports for things like Emacs and Iceweasel/Firefox where I like to have recent versions.

I've been using Linux as my main desktop starting with Red hat 5.1, so that's got to be almost 15 years ago. Moved to Fedora, then Ubuntu, and then finally to Debian.

I've got an old MacBook and I may get a MacBook Air at some point because they're great travel laptops. Hate the keyboard on all Macs I've worked with though. The operating system is fine, I can get work done on OS X.

Occasionally I boot into Windows (7) to play a game but at least half the time Windows will update itself for what seems like an eternity and then reboot automatically straight back into Debian. By that time I've usually forgotten what I needed Windows for.

At work I have a Windows 7 VM for various corporate tools that only work in Windows. Usually use the Outlook web client in Debian for email and calendaring. That works most of the time.

Re: How many of you use a Linux distro as your primary desktop OS?

#27

Post by nostromoa »

Linux seems not to ever suffer from viruses. And you can crash Linux if you try real hard and it starts up again reliably. Linux is far more reliable than Microsoft and same reliable before Mac went to Intel. Don't know how it is now. But its annoying not to have Flash on Mac Hardware. Or not be able to Play Mac Media on Windows as they come out of the box. Though VLC does largely solve that problem as a replacement for the native media players.

Re: How many of you use a Linux distro as your primary desktop OS?

#29

Post by gaymish »

I use ArchLinux.

The main advantage I have is that I work in an environment where there are thousands of Linux servers. By running something like linux in my day to day life I have learned a lot of my skills which I use in troubleshooting the production hosts.

I also am a big fan of the linux way of development where there are lots of small tools and everything has its specific role. I feel that in Windows this approach to development doesnt exist. I really do not like powershell but this may be due to me being a linux fanboy and not understanding the powershell way of doing things. Which leads me to the point of flexibility of user interface, shell and many different applications to do the same thing. Its a blessing and a curse.

The fact that with Arch I can have the latest packages at my finger tips shortly after their release is fantastic, but can also be a detriment. I have had many times with bad graphics drivers, kernel panics (havent had one for a while) and recently I had a broken golang install.

With regards to moving to a different OS, my biggest pain point is Xmonad. I want to keep Xmonad (or i3) but I cannot do that in either OSX or Windows. If OSX didnt feel so restrictive (brew helps but i shouldn't have to feel like I'm sidestepping the OSX way of working) I would definitely consider it. OSX is a really good tool and can be a great system for developers but it needs to be heavily modified for my use case. With regards to Windows, I dont find it performant enough. Needs too much RAM, too much disk (Windows SXS is the bane of my existence) and just generally has the most obscure undefined behavior. Every time I have booted my Windows partition I have had trouble (granted maybe lack of use is a player) with rebooting from windows updates and the like.

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