Kali for Pentesting, Raspbian on the Raspberry Pi, TAILS for the privacy
Ask HN: Which Linux distribution do you use, and why?
31–40 of 59 posts
Re: Ask HN: Which Linux distribution do you use, and why?
#32Ubuntu 16.04
Why? Because it worked when I installed it.
I never got into the whole install the hottest distro each season phase, so I've never actually tried anything else (other than my work servers which are running Cent-OS, but I didn't have to bother with the hassle of installing and configuring those)
Re: Ask HN: Which Linux distribution do you use, and why?
#33NixOS 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.
Re: Ask HN: Which Linux distribution do you use, and why?
#34Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, and mostly because it usually just works. I use a mac, but there is always an ssh shell open to Ubuntu where "the real work" gets done.
Re: Ask HN: Which Linux distribution do you use, and why?
#35On 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…
Can you share those scripts? I need to reinstall arch on a new laptop, and I would like to see how you automated the setup.
Re: Ask HN: Which Linux distribution do you use, and why?
#36Debian without systemd:
On an older Pentium4, just for web browsing although I just replaced it with OpenBSD. Its a great distro because of its age, stability and ease of use.
Gentoo OpenRC: On amd64 laptops for learning how to build software.
I've installed and configured 80% of distros on Distrowatch.com. Its all the same pretty much. Linux from Scratch was a good experience as well. Recommended for anyone interested in the deeper reasons of a distro.
Re: Ask HN: Which Linux distribution do you use, and why?
#37I use Fedora; this was my first Linux workstation. Fedora was the most painless to install on my at-the-time just released ThinkPad X1 Carbon. The OS was easy to get started with and very user friendly after sorting out some initial issues with firmware and wireless card drivers. I haven't felt the urge to stray to anything else yet.
Re: Ask HN: Which Linux distribution do you use, and why?
#38On 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…
Another Arch Linux user here, for stuff like Spotify, Dropbox, Skype I highly recommend installing them through Flatpak.
Some of these proprietary programs have dependencies that are out of date, so it's much easier to use flatpak to install these programs rather than messing with your system' packages.
Re: Ask HN: Which Linux distribution do you use, and why?
#39Kali Linux on usb for pentesting Ubuntu 17.04 for Machine learning/Cuda because anything else takes more time to work. Alpine-Linux for Dockerfiles because it's the bare minimum. Arch Linux for learning Linux, because you're responsible for installing what you'd like to have a stable machine.
Careful, 17.04 went EOL last month:
http://fridge.ubuntu.com/2018/01/17/ubuntu-17-04-zesty-zapus...
Re: Ask HN: Which Linux distribution do you use, and why?
#40NixOS 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.