Your favorite distro?
Alright. I know distro wars are a thing and I’m not trying to start a flame war.
What I would like to hear is what distro y’all currently use, and why you like it.
Personally I like Debian because I’m comfortable using apt, and I’ve been led to believe that the install size is slightly smaller than Ubuntu.
It don’t be like it is until it do.
Comments
Debian or Slackware. I have some storage boxes which run OpenBSD
On big servers: Debian, on small servers: Alpine, on desktop: Fedora.
Most often CentOS on servers and Fedora on desktops. Occasionally Debian when the application requires it.
I'm familiar with CentOS and also because of it's long term support. I know if I install CentOS in a server I don't need to worry about updates breaking anything. It just works.
CentOS mostly due to years of familiarity + Alpine due to memory. Ideology aside, if you're familiar with one and know how to make it secure and tune the performance, then stick with it unless there's a need to change.
Thanks for sharing, everyone, but I’d also love to hear why you chose that distro.
And you’re totally right, @tetech.
It don’t be like it is until it do.
I started on Slackware. I moved to Debian as I was dealing with it more and more on servers, and apt-get was so much easier than slackware.
Ubuntu. Familiarity and lots of tutorials out there for everything
I start with Centos. Because the first install guide is using centos 6.
My first day job, my manager also a cent fans.
Can't say I love centos, just a tools for me.
Action and Reaction in history
Ubuntu.
I started with centos but really disliked it because it got outdated packages. That is because centos basically is a fork of rhel from what I understand. It's probably useful for companies seeking for long term support and stable packages.
Then I started using debian. It's nice but for some reason I like Ubuntu more.
Ubuntu 14 was already nice but so far I really liked 16 the most. The current 18 is okay.
For servers and stability CentOs and Debian. For home use Ubuntu/Mint or Arch based distros. On the road Puppy.
CentOS for anything production grade or RHEL(when customer is ready to pay)
Ubuntu when I want to play with shiny new stuff.
I like Debian.
If I'm hungry, I use Debiham.
If the force is strong with me, I use Debihan.
Thx.
Michael
My laptop has Windows 10 2020H1. Through Windows Subsystem for Linux, I have:
On-prem servers are Debian 9 or 10 (armhf), depending on when I installed each node.
VPS servers are either Ubuntu 18 or Debian 10, depending on RAM (I prefer Ubuntu but it won't install in less than 512MB RAM).
I stay away from ArchLinux because last time I tried it, the upgrader decides to upgrade libc, and then the node is broken.
I stay away from CentOS because I hate the name DNF: it means "did not find" in my other hobby geocaching, which is a negative achievement.
Server2012r2
Burn the witch!
It don’t be like it is until it do.
Debian - Ubuntu - Mint. Usually the first for server and the last for personal computers. The one in the middle is a courtesy mention.
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as a hobbyist, started with centos and centos commands now make most sense (perhaps by memory as well). never tried debian, but ubuntu does have some advantage when it comes to installing stuff and updates. cant remember exactly what but it is more complete and "smart" by default than centos.
however due to limited experience, centos is preferred for stability, webpanel testing, and best of all benching
it almost always does much better than ubuntu in crunching numbers.
#centosfolaif
I bench YABS 24/7/365 unless it's a leap year.
DNF isn't in 7, and it will answer to
yumin 8. You don't even have to seednfin 8.I’ve wondered what I’d miss if I switched from Debian to Alpine. I should look into it.
It don’t be like it is until it do.
It depends on what you need. Alpine has fewer packages because it's a smaller community, and they use musl for their c lib instead of glibc. Which means, compiling from source might be an adventure, if you're into that sort of thing. Most big FOSS things are there, but some smaller things aren't. Commercial stuff certainly isn't.
It also depends on how you feel about the systemd ecosystem. Alpine is derived from Gentoo, and uses OpenRC instead.
Nearly everything I do on a personal VPS is through Docker containers. I rarely interact with the system at all. So going Alpine might not affect me as much as I thought...
It don’t be like it is until it do.
Started on Redhat 6 , weaved my way around probably every top ten list on Distrowatch over the past decade and a half. Now : Debian on VPS, any variant or fork of Debian on desktop. Locked into using Ubuntu 18.04 for Gridpane subscription. On desktop so far have tried Ubuntu , Ubuntu Mate, ZorinOS, Mint, Bodhi. Prefer the last two, Bodhi still running on my 13 year old Dell Latitude.
Tested/ tasted Alpine for the first time when I had tried freebox. I personally feel alpine is an acquired taste. I liked it and leave it at that.
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My journey started on Ubuntu & now headed to Debian.
Jeez, u geekmates.
Linux Mint
in the past I was more focused on barebone stuff and customizing it myself, but there is no time, Linux Mint is the closest to what I need
Servers Centos, workstation Ubuntu LTS.
For smaller, specific tasks, Alpine is great. It's thin and it's just enough to do what it needs to do without any systemd bullshit. Production nameservers in 256MB? Sure, that's more than enough (did it in 64MB back in the early 90s w/o hitting swap, but then again, djbdns was a thing). nsd4 > powerdns > anything > bind
$ free -m total used free shared buff/cache available Mem: 237 126 33 0 77 114 Swap: 475 1 474For legacy/web stuff, I run Devuan, because I am so used to debian apache config that even thinking of migrating causes me headaches. It's stable, it does what it needs to, and again, fairly thin with the proper php-fpm config and so forth. 10+ year old Xeon serving a few hundred vanity domains? Load sits under .5 even when it's getting scraped. This is kind of cheating because I KVM everything, and this is from the hypervisor.
$ free -m total used free shared buff/cache available Mem: 24105 7828 3813 0 12463 15884 Swap: 11443 0 11443Low RAM? OpenBSD. It just works, and although Theo is the world's biggest butthole, he's given up and admitted that x86 won so hardware support is pretty good. I don't think NetBSD will even boot in 64MB anymore, but I haven't tried recently. I do have a special "virtualization" kernel built for this because it gives me more free RAM, which is a bit important when your VPS has a tenth of the RAM of your router.
Desktop? Void. Shit just works. DJB inspired init system and weird quirks/bugs and a homebrew package manager from a former NetBSD dev, but damn if my 9 year old i7 doesn't fly. Cinnamon w/ 2 heads, Chrome, all of the trimming. Still using about 2G.
$ free -m total used free shared buff/cache available Mem: 15893 1982 3511 1030 10399 12537 Swap: 7425 20 7404My pronouns are asshole/asshole/asshole. I will give you the same courtesy.
FreeBSD is my favorite.
Alpine is irritating me frankly because it's taking this too far.
Cutting usability to save megabytes just doesn't work for me in an era where a 16gb vps is LES compliant
You've chosen the wrong distribution. CentOS 7 will probably be happy with 16GB, even if it is a little low on RAM.
My pronouns are asshole/asshole/asshole. I will give you the same courtesy.
LOL no 16 ramses not hdd
In fairness that was a wicked once off special so calling it LES compliant is a stretch (thanks @nseries)
Point is ram is no longer in short supply