6 ms·

Ask HN: What Linux distro do you use for work, and why?

21 points by ethyl66 13y ago

veganarchocap 13y ago
Elementary OS, just because it's Debian/Ubuntu based so it's nice and easy to use, but it's also fairly light-weight. I think because it's quite a nice looking distro as well, it just makes work a bit more of a pleasure. I feel sorry for the others still using Windows 7!
- cms07 13y ago
  Isn't it just a linux distro with gnome3?
jameshk 13y ago
Elementary OS is great! I use it on all of my machines, it's very polished!
- jonalmeida 13y ago
  Elementary here as well! I just wish they updated a bit faster, I need a newer version of glibc and I can only get it from Ubuntu 13.10.
clasense4 13y ago
I work on my dev server, CentOS 6.5. Last year I choose Ubuntu 10.04 on my old laptop (Intel Dualcore), but now I still can't decide best linux distro for my laptop, last time I try L/X/K/Ubuntu 13.04, but it make my laptop battery drain faster and really hot (AMD quadcore) and some of those distro can't work properly like has buggy in graphics, I already install the driver too.
- brudgers 13y ago
  I have CentOS on my main computer in part because of it's long support cycle.
lugg 13y ago
crunchbang.org, simply because it gets out of the way while I work. I also use an arch/ob setup on my main laptop but that requires a fair amount of upkeep / fiddling and such isn't very suitable as a work horse.
quasimo 13y ago
There is a Chinese distro : http://www.linuxdeepin.com/index.en.html http://www.linuxdeepin.com/index.en.html not bad.
dman 13y ago
debian a) It just keeps on working. b) They are conservative with new technology. This means that by the time things hit debian theyre well thought through. c) The community behind debian is principled. d) The debian package repository is very exhaustive. e) They offer a small net install iso which is ~180 megabytes. This makes a fantastic foundation for a minimalistic linux install with a tiling manager (without pulling in monstrosities like libre office).
- dshep 13y ago
  debian here too for most of these reasons
dutchrapley 13y ago
Wow, isn't this timely? I've been running Xubuntu. I've been feeling like it's a little overkill. It may be time to give Crunchbang a try.
- dutchrapley 13y ago
  Yep, #! is what I'll be using moving forward. My needs are basic: vim, terminator (default on #!), vagrant, and virtualbox. #! just stays out of the way and needed very little keybinding changes out of the box.
motyar 13y ago
Elementary OS, cool one.
dannyrosen 13y ago
kubuntu. I came from Windows and love the ui. Ubuntu under the hood means noob and advanced support. Also, IMHO Konsole is one of the best terminal emulators around.
cfredmond 13y ago
mint 14
iends 13y ago
Ubuntu. It just works without hassle, especially when non-free drivers are involved.
cheald 13y ago
Fedora. I've been using Redhat-flavored distros since the 90s, and we deploy on RHEL at work. Running Fedora gives me a RHEL-like environment with access to all the cutting-edge goodies. I don't particularly have any issues with stability with it, despite its reputation for being bleeding edge.
devb0x 13y ago
centos 6.x at work I also have a centos 5.x box running personally
jakeogh 13y ago
Friends and family new to Linux: Mint. (Best interface options, great community, not sending your search query to amazon.com, very polished.) Personal systems: Gentoo. (easiest to customize and automate for me, time investment required.) Nginx/Apache: Debian. (stable security updates, minimal install) MariaDB/Postgres: Debian. (security updates, stable branch, well tested.) Other unless I am stuck with RPM: Debian (long term stability) RPM: Fedora (works, but EOL is always soon, so make sure the server does only one thing)
CrowderSoup 13y ago
Ubuntu 12.04 on my servers, giving Elementary OS a try on my desktop.
munimkazia 13y ago
On my work desktop and home laptop: Ubuntu. I just like Unity and I have got used to it now. On our servers, we use CentOS though, so consequently, I keep a bunch of CentOS virtual machines for testing too. I think CentOS was chosen for our live servers because of it's stability.
ahdinosaur 13y ago
Debian for personal computers and servers. OpenWRT for embedded devices.
turnip1979 13y ago
These days I mainly use Ubuntu. Love the package manager. Also, Ubuntu works well for openstack dev. Exploring FreeBSD since I want kqueue.
rainmaking 13y ago
Ubuntu. I would have went for Debian, but Ubuntu has better hardware support and more/better quality 3rd party repositories (PPAs).
martiuk 13y ago
Technically I (have to) use Windows for work but for real 'work' I use Arch and push to an Ubuntu server if it needs to.
flaxin 13y ago
Ubuntu, am soo used to the Unity interface, when i try to move to other interfaces such as KDE or GENOME3 they just feel bulky though if you are not a "beginner", i highly recommend ArchOS https://www.archlinux.org https://www.archlinux.org - by far the active-est community out there
rodolphoarruda 13y ago
Ubuntu 12.04 with GNOME. For a couple of years I ran it with Unity out of the box, but then one day it crashed so badly I could not use the system at all, then I switched to GNOME and never turned back since then. Of course, you have to stop by gnome extensions website and tweak your UI a bit to smooth the rough edges found in default mode.
MichaelStubbs 13y ago
OpenSUSE for the latest and greatest stable packages.
mobiplayer 13y ago
Ubuntu 13.10 with Mate desktop. The only solution I could find to use three screens on two nVidia GPUs with the propietary drivers.
lennexz 13y ago
Ubuntu 13.10 because I love unity like a fanboy :) Coming from windows Ubuntu has the best support IMHO
hatchoo 13y ago
RHEL-derivatives (Scientific Linux, CentOS) for work since we deploy to RHEL for clients in production. Mint 15 on my laptop Switched my home desktop to Debian. Would want to switch my work laptop to Debian for longer term stability but not sure if all drivers are available (couldn't get Realtek HD SPDIF to work on my desktop). Can anyone with a Thinkpad T500 confirm that it works flawlessly?
LarryMade2 13y ago
Ubuntu - because I can find answers for just about any problem easily. In the past we started with Redhat then Centos, that was back in the day of more simple RPM where you had to resolve dependencies manually. We were mainly using the unit as an internal LAMP and file server, nothing exotic. After Ubuntu went into creating server versions we went that route. The on-line community was way more active and the package manager just worked. Ubuntu is definitely a route of lower frustration when things go wrong.

21 points by ethyl66 13y ago

Elementary OS, just because it's Debian/Ubuntu based so it's nice and easy to use, but it's also fairly light-weight. I think because it's quite a nice looking distro as well, it just makes work a bit more of a pleasure. I feel sorry for the others still using Windows 7!

cms07 13y ago
Isn't it just a linux distro with gnome3?

jameshk 13y ago

Elementary OS is great! I use it on all of my machines, it's very polished!

jonalmeida 13y ago
Elementary here as well! I just wish they updated a bit faster, I need a newer version of glibc and I can only get it from Ubuntu 13.10.

clasense4 13y ago

I work on my dev server, CentOS 6.5. Last year I choose Ubuntu 10.04 on my old laptop (Intel Dualcore), but now I still can't decide best linux distro for my laptop, last time I try L/X/K/Ubuntu 13.04, but it make my laptop battery drain faster and really hot (AMD quadcore) and some of those distro can't work properly like has buggy in graphics, I already install the driver too.

brudgers 13y ago
I have CentOS on my main computer in part because of it's long support cycle.

lugg 13y ago

crunchbang.org, simply because it gets out of the way while I work. I also use an arch/ob setup on my main laptop but that requires a fair amount of upkeep / fiddling and such isn't very suitable as a work horse.

quasimo 13y ago

There is a Chinese distro : http://www.linuxdeepin.com/index.en.html http://www.linuxdeepin.com/index.en.html not bad.

dman 13y ago

debian a) It just keeps on working. b) They are conservative with new technology. This means that by the time things hit debian theyre well thought through. c) The community behind debian is principled. d) The debian package repository is very exhaustive. e) They offer a small net install iso which is ~180 megabytes. This makes a fantastic foundation for a minimalistic linux install with a tiling manager (without pulling in monstrosities like libre office).

dshep 13y ago
debian here too for most of these reasons

dutchrapley 13y ago

Wow, isn't this timely? I've been running Xubuntu. I've been feeling like it's a little overkill. It may be time to give Crunchbang a try.

dutchrapley 13y ago
Yep, #! is what I'll be using moving forward. My needs are basic: vim, terminator (default on #!), vagrant, and virtualbox. #! just stays out of the way and needed very little keybinding changes out of the box.

motyar 13y ago

Elementary OS, cool one.

dannyrosen 13y ago

kubuntu. I came from Windows and love the ui. Ubuntu under the hood means noob and advanced support. Also, IMHO Konsole is one of the best terminal emulators around.

cfredmond 13y ago

mint 14

iends 13y ago

Ubuntu. It just works without hassle, especially when non-free drivers are involved.

cheald 13y ago

Fedora. I've been using Redhat-flavored distros since the 90s, and we deploy on RHEL at work. Running Fedora gives me a RHEL-like environment with access to all the cutting-edge goodies. I don't particularly have any issues with stability with it, despite its reputation for being bleeding edge.

devb0x 13y ago

centos 6.x at work I also have a centos 5.x box running personally

jakeogh 13y ago

Friends and family new to Linux: Mint. (Best interface options, great community, not sending your search query to amazon.com, very polished.) Personal systems: Gentoo. (easiest to customize and automate for me, time investment required.) Nginx/Apache: Debian. (stable security updates, minimal install) MariaDB/Postgres: Debian. (security updates, stable branch, well tested.) Other unless I am stuck with RPM: Debian (long term stability) RPM: Fedora (works, but EOL is always soon, so make sure the server does only one thing)

CrowderSoup 13y ago

Ubuntu 12.04 on my servers, giving Elementary OS a try on my desktop.

munimkazia 13y ago

On my work desktop and home laptop: Ubuntu. I just like Unity and I have got used to it now. On our servers, we use CentOS though, so consequently, I keep a bunch of CentOS virtual machines for testing too. I think CentOS was chosen for our live servers because of it's stability.

ahdinosaur 13y ago

Debian for personal computers and servers. OpenWRT for embedded devices.

turnip1979 13y ago

These days I mainly use Ubuntu. Love the package manager. Also, Ubuntu works well for openstack dev. Exploring FreeBSD since I want kqueue.

rainmaking 13y ago

Ubuntu. I would have went for Debian, but Ubuntu has better hardware support and more/better quality 3rd party repositories (PPAs).

martiuk 13y ago

Technically I (have to) use Windows for work but for real 'work' I use Arch and push to an Ubuntu server if it needs to.

flaxin 13y ago

Ubuntu, am soo used to the Unity interface, when i try to move to other interfaces such as KDE or GENOME3 they just feel bulky though if you are not a "beginner", i highly recommend ArchOS https://www.archlinux.org https://www.archlinux.org - by far the active-est community out there

rodolphoarruda 13y ago

Ubuntu 12.04 with GNOME. For a couple of years I ran it with Unity out of the box, but then one day it crashed so badly I could not use the system at all, then I switched to GNOME and never turned back since then. Of course, you have to stop by gnome extensions website and tweak your UI a bit to smooth the rough edges found in default mode.

MichaelStubbs 13y ago

OpenSUSE for the latest and greatest stable packages.

mobiplayer 13y ago

Ubuntu 13.10 with Mate desktop. The only solution I could find to use three screens on two nVidia GPUs with the propietary drivers.

lennexz 13y ago

Ubuntu 13.10 because I love unity like a fanboy :) Coming from windows Ubuntu has the best support IMHO

hatchoo 13y ago

RHEL-derivatives (Scientific Linux, CentOS) for work since we deploy to RHEL for clients in production. Mint 15 on my laptop Switched my home desktop to Debian. Would want to switch my work laptop to Debian for longer term stability but not sure if all drivers are available (couldn't get Realtek HD SPDIF to work on my desktop). Can anyone with a Thinkpad T500 confirm that it works flawlessly?

LarryMade2 13y ago

Ubuntu - because I can find answers for just about any problem easily. In the past we started with Redhat then Centos, that was back in the day of more simple RPM where you had to resolve dependencies manually. We were mainly using the unit as an internal LAMP and file server, nothing exotic. After Ubuntu went into creating server versions we went that route. The on-line community was way more active and the package manager just worked. Ubuntu is definitely a route of lower frustration when things go wrong.