Which Linux distribution do you prefer? (2014 edition)

[+jamesyfx Subscriber²]

I don't use Linux much, but I think Debian is the distribution to go for if you've got a choice. It seems the most stable and the most straightforward one to start tinkering with.

[Bugballou]

PCLOS or Mint.

[Max Norris]

PCLOS or Mint.

Haven't used PCLinuxOS in a few years -- how's that one shaping up? Was a pretty spiffy KDE distro at the time.

[Gerowen]

I ran straight Debian for years, but I started having problems with things like Steam where it didn't work properly because Debian was using older versions of certain libraries.  I switched to Ubuntu because it seems like it gets updated more often, so there's less of a possibility of something not working because you're stuck with old software.

 

I'm still a big fan of Debian though, it's rock solid and "just works", but I've gotten so used to the Unity interface now that I'm pretty well an Ubuntu guy, at least on the desktop.

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

I ran straight Debian for years, but I started having problems with things like Steam where it didn't work properly because Debian was using older versions of certain libraries.  I switched to Ubuntu because it seems like it gets updated more often, so there's less of a possibility of something not working because you're stuck with old software.

 

I'm still a big fan of Debian though, it's rock solid and "just works", but I've gotten so used to the Unity interface now that I'm pretty well an Ubuntu guy, at least on the desktop.

 

There are workarounds :) But as long as Ubuntu works, what am I to say? :)

[Jub]

I use Debian for my servers. It's always worked well and, to be quite honest, it's as much what I'm used to as anything else now. I've been with Debian for well over a decade.

[f0rk_b0mb]

SUSE in my opinion is by far the most stable, feature filled Linux distro! 

[Max Norris]

SUSE in my opinion is by far the most stable, feature filled Linux distro!

Not sure why, that one tends to get overlooked sometimes, it is rather good. Last time I tried it I think my only annoyance was YaST, lots of polish/etc otherwise. I'd assume/hope it's in better shape by now.

[f0rk_b0mb]

Still use Debian on my servers for stability, but still prefer Arch overall.   Mostly because I don't have to rely on it, if it were my main OS I'd probably pick Debian there as well.  Fun to work with though.  (When it works.)

 

If you are having stability issues with Arch, or hate the thought of installing it, I would highly recommend Chakra. It is quite literally the "Ubuntu of the Arch world". I have to say it is very stable, very fast, on my secondary "Linux only" workstation. I have however, never been able to successfully install it in VMware/Virtualbox so try it out on a spare HDD. :)

 

http://www.chakra-project.org/

[seta-san]

don't really know. i really hate the new interface (unity and gnome). It's even more confused and out of place than the Start Screen in windows 8.0

[Max Norris]

If you are having stability issues with Arch, or hate the thought of installing it, I would highly recommend Chakra. It is quite literally the "Ubuntu of the Arch world". I have to say it is very stable, very fast, on my secondary "Linux only" workstation. I have however, never been able to successfully install it in VMware/Virtualbox so try it out on a spare HDD. :)

I agree, Chakra is quite good -- my reason for Arch is purely "for the fun of it", I know it can occasionally implode or cause keyboard/forehead collisions when the maintainers go on a tangent sometimes. I don't use it for anything where reliability is a factor (that'll be my Windows desktop), it's my playground. Chakra looked really nice the times I've tried it in a VM, I think my only complaint with that one is that it (at the time anyway) was very QT-centric, went as far as treating GTK based apps as second rate.. it can be difficult to do without GTK apps depending on your needs, but at least they have their "bundles" for the common stuff. That said, their "half rolling" release model is a nice sweet spot as far as I'm concerned.

 

don't really know. i really hate the new interface (unity and gnome). It's even more confused and out of place than the Start Screen in windows 8.0

I agree with Gnome, it went into WTF-ville with 3.0, makes Windows 8's modern stuff look good. (Opinion of course.) Unity on the other hand is growing on me, as it's maturing it's getting rather nice, although I'd really prefer them dropping Gnome 3's Nautilus for something a tad less brain-dead... my worry with them is what they have planned in the near future. Either work out great or seriously backfire.

[Yorak]

I primarily use Arch. I have installed Gentoo once or twice in the last year, but I am waiting for their systemd implementation to mature a bit before I keep it around. Why Arch? Well, because I agree 100% with their philosophy. I remember when Arch was still a young guy and the AUR was not very populated. Look at it now. There are so many packages available. The community is a bit elitist at times but overall they are great, especially in terms of package maintenance. Years ago, I would use Gentoo solely for the speeds. I enjoyed the fact that I could open an application faster than most other distributions could. While it still may have a few speed increases over Arch (not many that I can notice here), they are not worth the hassle of compiling. It is not difficult, but time consuming. The greatest part of Arch is the wiki. It does not matter what distribution you are on because if you are trying to find some instructions for various topics, the chances are you will come across the Arch Wiki.

 

For servers (which I have none of currently, but I have set plenty of them up) I would recommend the latest stable Debian or CentOS. It depends which you are more familiar with. Both have proven themselves over the years. I prefer managing .deb over .rpm, but they both work well.

[f0rk_b0mb]

 

I agree with Gnome, it went into WTF-ville with 3.0, makes Windows 8's modern stuff look good. (Opinion of course.) Unity on the other hand is growing on me, as it's maturing it's getting rather nice, although I'd really prefer them dropping Gnome 3's Nautilus for something a tad less brain-dead... my worry with them is what they have planned in the near future. Either work out great or seriously backfire.

 

I think unity would be a lot better off if they were to remove the ugly black bar completely and put the menus back where they belong on the application windows. They should make the system tray a tile and have everything in one menu like Gnome 3.  I think this would make the desktop a lot less cludgie and overall more atheistic. It would also make the system tray easier to use on touch screen devices, which after all, is unity's goal. 

[n_K]

Mint with Cinnamon. Looks gorgeous. Similar usability concepts as Windows :)

Are you able to alt+tab on it whilst dragging a file?

[AJerman]

With me working towards my RHCE and looking to possibly get a job at Red Hat this year, I'm going to go with Fedora this year, even though I've been an Ubuntu/Mint fan for a while now. As I try to familiarize myself with Red Hat technologies, I think Fedora will be more fitting for me.

[Shiranui]

Scientific.

[LittleNeutrino Veteran]

if i were to use a linux distro it would probably be Arch again.

[macoman]

Debian ftw!!!

[domboy]

Really depends... for my daily workstation at work I use openSuse... yast makes it really easy to join an Active Directory domain. Servers are a mix of openSuse, SLES, and Debian, depending on what it does. Suse/SLES seems to have more support from OEMs and software publishers than Debian. Home use is a different matter.  I recently switch a PC at home to Ubuntu (from XP 64bit) and I'm liking it so far. I went that route as for consumer desktop use it seems to have gained the most traction, and is the OS valve recommends for Steam.

[AStaUK]

Elementary OS for me, have it dual booting with Win7 on my laptop.  I like the clean/sleek look of the OS compared to Ubuntu, also it looks similar to OSX which I also enjoy.  Tried Mint 15 for a short while but had a few performance issues with it which put me off using it.

[The Evil Overlord]

To ask a totally noob question

How many OS's are there? I always thought there were 3

Is this one OS with different bells and whistles or 15?

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

To ask a totally noob question

How many OS's are there? I always thought there were 3

Is this one OS with different bells and whistles or 15?

 

There are 3 main OS's, Windows (DOS) , OSX (Unix), and Linux.

 

Distrobutions all run on the same Linux kernel, but they have millions of different software. Different software per distrobution.

[The Evil Overlord]

There are 3 main OS's, Windows (DOS) , OSX (Unix), and Linux.

 

Distrobutions all run on the same Linux kernel, but they have millions of different software. Different software per distrobution.

Ah, ok ty :)

[Gerowen]

To ask a totally noob question

How many OS's are there? I always thought there were 3

Is this one OS with different bells and whistles or 15?

 

As mindovermaster said, they're just "distributions"; operating systems based on the Linux kernel.  Software between them is largely cross compatible because at their core, they're all very similar.  Companies adopt the Linux kernel and build things the way they think would be best, use their own philosophies, add their own custom bits here and there, and release it as a "distribution".  Debian is a separate distribution from Redhat, however they are both Linux, run mostly the same software and are both based on the Linux kernel, they're just managed by different teams with different goals and different philosophies.  However, if you write code on one Linux computer and compile it, it should run on every other Linux computer, regardless of distribution, unless you make your program dependent on something specific to a particular distro.

 

On one hand, it's a good thing because you can tinker around and find the one that works best for you.  You have lots of options.  On the other hand, it's a bad thing.  Until Ubuntu really became mainstream, a lot of people were afraid to develop for Linux because of the immense number of different distros.  What if you wrote something that worked on one distribution, but it didn't work on another distribution because of some slight difference in available software versions or some difference in default behavior?  Some people dislike Ubuntu, but I think Ubuntu is what kind of broke the mold by making things easy for newbs, which made it popular, and because most people who use Linux either run Ubuntu currently or have at one point, it gave developers one single platform upon which to build their products.

[The Evil Overlord]

As mindovermaster said, they're just "distributions"; operating systems based on the Linux kernel.  Software between them is largely cross compatible because at their core, they're all very similar.  Companies adopt the Linux kernel and build things the way they think would be best, use their own philosophies, add their own custom bits here and there, and release it as a "distribution".  Debian is a separate distribution from Redhat, however they are both Linux, run mostly the same software and are both based on the Linux kernel, they're just managed by different teams with different goals and different philosophies.  However, if you write code on one Linux computer and compile it, it should run on every other Linux computer, regardless of distribution, unless you make your program dependent on something specific to a particular distro.

 

On one hand, it's a good thing because you can tinker around and find the one that works best for you.  You have lots of options.  On the other hand, it's a bad thing.  Until Ubuntu really became mainstream, a lot of people were afraid to develop for Linux because of the immense number of different distros.  What if you wrote something that worked on one distribution, but it didn't work on another distribution because of some slight difference in available software versions or some difference in default behavior?  Some people dislike Ubuntu, but I think Ubuntu is what kind of broke the mold by making things easy for newbs, which made it popular, and because most people who use Linux either run Ubuntu currently or have at one point, it gave developers one single platform upon which to build their products.

I've been curious about it for a while, and had a spare pc lying around, I was thinking of trying aversion of Ubuntu I had waiting for it, but seeing as my spare machine is now in my son's room, as he needed for homework (and probably other things he's not supposed to do on it at his age) I lost my chance until another one comes along :)