Which Linux distribution do you prefer? (2014 edition)

By zhangm
in Linux

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Which Linux distribution do you prefer?  

288 members have voted

  1. 1. Which Linux distribution do you prefer?

    • Debian GNU/Linux
      55
    • Red Hat Enterprise Linux
      0
    • CentOS
      12
    • Fedora
      18
    • Arch Linux
      40
    • (K|X|L)-Ubuntu
      71
    • Mint
      45
    • Gentoo
      5
    • Slackware
      3
    • Mandrake
      0
    • Mageia
      1
    • openSUSE
      5
    • Other (specify in reply).
      5
    • I roll my own distribution.
      1
    • Elementary OS
      27

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Grand Master

Aergan

Posted
Posted

My Dell XPS L702X laptop died (motherboard fault, coming up to it's 3rd year) so I'm on Xubuntu 14.04.1 full-time now on the HP laptop (7 years old and still going).

Grand Master

Max Norris

Posted
Posted

Haven't had a good "It's not Linux, it's GNU/Linux" speech in a while, thankfully at least skipped the "recursive acronym" explanation, usually goes hand in hand, especially to those of us who prefer Unix.  I'm sure everybody reading this forum knows that.. it's just shorter and easier to type.  Not going to go to a store and ask for an "Android Plus Linux" device either.  

Grand Master

Ambroos

Posted
Posted

Do you want that on an ARM or x86 architecture? With proprietary non-free software, or with free software only?

 

I'll have a FOSS GNU-Linux-Android OpenRISC ethical non-gender-identifying transfriendly biological vegan CO2-neutral conflict-metal-free phone please.

  • Max Norris and Knife Party
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Mentor

duoi Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted

Do you want that on an ARM or x86 architecture? With proprietary non-free software, or with free software only?

 

When we call software ?free,? we mean that it respects the users' essential freedoms: the freedom to run it, to study and change it, and to redistribute copies with or without changes. This is a matter of freedom, not price, so think of ?free speech,? not ?free beer.?
 
These freedoms are vitally important. They are essential, not just for the individual users' sake, but for society as a whole because they promote social solidarity?that is, sharing and cooperation. They become even more important as our culture and life activities are increasingly digitized. In a world of digital sounds, images, and words, free software becomes increasingly essential for freedom in general.

Guest

Posted
Posted

 

When we call software ?free,? we mean that it respects the users' essential freedoms: the freedom to run it, to study and change it, and to redistribute copies with or without changes. This is a matter of freedom, not price, so think of ?free speech,? not ?free beer.?
 
These freedoms are vitally important. They are essential, not just for the individual users' sake, but for society as a whole because they promote social solidarity?that is, sharing and cooperation. They become even more important as our culture and life activities are increasingly digitized. In a world of digital sounds, images, and words, free software becomes increasingly essential for freedom in general.

 

 

Wow. Okay. :laugh:

Grand Master

simplezz

Posted
Posted

Arch all the way. I've tried virtually every distro under the sun, but I always come back to it. Gentoo is a close second though.

As far as reasons go:

1. Highly customisable.

2. A blank slate. I love nothing better than building a system from scratch just as I like it.

3. Pacman / Yaourt / AUR. Gentoo and Arch have the best repositories and package management tools hands down.

4. Rolling release.

5. Net install (tiny download).

6. Simple installation & great documentation.

7. I can run it on my Raspberry PI.

Grand Master

simplezz

Posted
Posted

I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.[/size]

I agree. That's an important distinction that's often lost. The GNU programs and libraries are a core part of what makes a distro.
Grand Master

Mindovermaster Global Moderator

Posted
  • Global Moderator
Posted

Arch all the way. I've tried virtually every distro under the sun, but I always come back to it. Gentoo is a close second though.

As far as reasons go:

1. Highly customisable.

2. A blank slate. I love nothing better than building a system from scratch just as I like it.

3. Pacman / Yaourt / AUR. Gentoo and Arch have the best repositories and package management tools hands down.

4. Rolling release.

5. Net install (tiny download).

6. Simple installation & great documentation.

7. I can run it on my Raspberry PI.

 

You can do all that with Debian, just saying...

Grand Master

Max Norris

Posted
Posted

Arch all the way. I've tried virtually every distro under the sun, but I always come back to it. Gentoo is a close second though.

Another plus, in my opinion, is the Arch Build System. I've been partial to Unix and later BSD as long as I can remember, just another thing that Arch does that makes it feel more "proper" to me. And yea, Gentoo for the same reason.
Enthusiast

Hussam Al-tayeb

Posted
Posted

Arch all the way. I've tried virtually every distro under the sun, but I always come back to it. Gentoo is a close second though.

As far as reasons go:

1. Highly customisable.

2. A blank slate. I love nothing better than building a system from scratch just as I like it.

3. Pacman / Yaourt / AUR. Gentoo and Arch have the best repositories and package management tools hands down.

4. Rolling release.

5. Net install (tiny download).

6. Simple installation & great documentation.

7. I can run it on my Raspberry PI.

I use Arch but every single package is compiled on my machine. Most package maintainers on ArchLinux these days compile the packages on their own computers instead of clean chroots. I don't like that habit as it may on very rare occasions cause unexpected results. I don't blame them as Arch Linux has no build server.

One of my friends who works at a company that makes multimedia servers had that issue with Arch Linux.

Pacman itself is great.

So my system is fully compiled from source on my own computer without the need to dwell into the complexity of Gentoo.

 

As I already stated earlier in this thread, systemd did wonders for Arch Linux.

Grand Master

Haggis Veteran

Posted
  • Veteran
Posted

You can do all that with Debian, just saying...

 

 

exactly

 

I always start with a network install with nothing but ssh, i then go in and start building from there

 

I mean ok they are deb packages and not compiled directly on my machine 

 

but

 

1. Highly customisable. Yes

2. A blank slate. I love nothing better than building a system from scratch just as I like it. Yes

3. Pacman / Yaourt / AUR. Gentoo and Arch have the best repositories and package management tools hands down.

4. Rolling release.

5. Net install (tiny download). Yes

6. Simple installation & great documentation. Yes

7. I can run it on my Raspberry PI. Yes

Mentor

Starbuck84

Posted
Posted

Don't ask me why exactly, but I've always been fond of Fedora. I'm not doing much with Linux these days, but if I want to play around with it, I always go back to Fedora. Tried several, like Mint, Ubuntu and Suse. I'm a Linux noob :P

Grand Master

+Elі Subscriber²

Posted
  • Subscriber²
Posted

ElementaryOS all the way for me, I love the look and feel, it doesn't look amateurish at all like so many distros, it's really a joy to use.

 

 

 

Thanks for that.

  • 3 weeks later...
Grand Master

simonlang

Posted
Posted

ubuntu ease of installation and friendliness 

 

ubuntu is really a great distro for beginners, also for advanced users, as you can do all the stuff, but also don't really need to go into the konsole thanks to amazing package manager and .deb files.

also: for ubuntu there are some excellent wikis out there i would have killed for when i started to first use a comp with windows 95 and had to lear all by myself and buy expensive literature about it. yes it was that bad.

  • Draconian Guppy
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Grand Master

Krome

Posted
Posted

I am very very excited to try Linux.  I have not used Linux ever since I am out of Uni.  Need to get back to it.  I can't wait to use Linux again.  Right now, there's a few things that is stopping me from using Linux.

 

1) Waiting for "Scientific Linux 7" to be compiled.

2) VirtualBox is still not stable.  Version 4.3.14 break many VM.  The bug is still being ironed out.

3) 128GB SSD is not enough to install many applications.  I am currently waiting till I can get the 1TB SSD so I can install any apps to my heart's contend.

  • 1 month later...
  • 2 weeks later...
Proficient

vhane

Posted
Posted

I've recently Dockerized one of my client's web service applications, and I'm sold on the technology. I've got the current iteration of the service running on EC2/Ubuntu/Docker. It follows naturally that CoreOS is the next distro that I'm going to investigate. I think that this is the future folks.

  • 2 weeks later...
Contributor

BigItup

Posted
Posted

Arch for me. I was put off trying it as I kept reading it was not for newcomers to linux and was too cutting edge etc. I am glad I tried it anyway as I find it the easiest to use and keep updated. The main reason I like it is I get up to date software not the ancient stuff I had to put up with when I tried Debain distros. That's the worst thing about Debian. You go to the web site of program x and the author tells you to use the latest  version as it has a lot of bug fixes and is better by far, but if you want to use it you have to build it yourself and hope that it builds fine for you because you cant find a recent version in the debian repos.

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