Question Favourite Linux distro?

[martins]

I've gotten used to Ubuntu over the years, but the latest 16.10 (Yakkety Yak) incarnation left me underwhelmed. I realise it's not a LTS version, but even so, I feel it shouldn't ship with a broken tcsh. (it crashes every time you press Tab for file name completion, which my little finger does automatically these days without brain input ). What's more, after a little digging I found out that the problem seems to have been fixed upstream months ago. Apparently working command shells are no longer a priority ...

[/rant]

So, what other distros would people recommend?

 

[Urwumpe]

Well, I personally made good experiences with ScientificLinux, which is a RedHat derivative.

https://www.scientificlinux.org

 

[Artlav]

I have settled on Arch Linux over the years.
Nice, not-too-bloated distro that doesn't make any big assumptions on whether you use a GUI or a command line/remote access - can be a few hundred Mb on headless computational nodes, can be a few Gb on big productivity machine with bells and whistles.
Got a good community, with most issues being solvable in one round of googling.

 

[mike-c]

They have a good collection of distros, suitable for scientific purposes:
http://ftp.tu-chemnitz.de/
most distro's can be test-runned from stick (not archlinux).

Yes, Archlinux, it puts root to the basics during setup, so you always know, what you have installed. Using bash and korn-shell i cannot say about tcsh-package-maintaining.

I also have still Ubuntu (16.04) due to the not so overloaded desktop (even icewm is enough for working at the commandline),

and for intranet(!) purposes (VNCMFD,xephem) puppy (small distro, quick install).


P.S. unfortunally there is one important application, which (beeing bound to directx) doesn't run on nativ linux.
The one and only reason i need windows.

 

[IronRain]

I'm with Artlav on Arch for personal use.
On my work, I prefer Fedora.

 

[Fabri91]

How about Linux Mint? It's based on Ubuntu LTS releases, and it seems the one to go to for those not satisfied with the latest Ubuntu releases.

 

[orb]

My personal favorite is Gentoo.

It's great when you want the system have (almost) everything the way you want. However it's very slow with installing or updating the installed software, and sometimes it's hard in it to resolve some dependencies when additional package overlays are used (with additional, previously removed from the tree, or more recent versions of the software), especially if you don't keep updating the 'world' every few days - sometimes your own code patches and versions of ebuilds are required or flipping the USE flags off and back on (and of course rebuilding) to solve some of the problems.

For work, on VPS or dedicated web servers I've been lately using Debian, but that's without X.

 

[Linguofreak]

I run Ubuntu LTS, with heavy use of PPAs to get more recent software versions, and using Mate instead of Unity for my desktop.

 

[Enjo]

Debian Stable here with XFCE.
I used to have trouble installing NVIDIA drivers on my laptop, but since a year or so the OSS drivers are good enough to run 3D apps even on the integrated 3D chip.

I've had experience with Arch and quite liked it, but I prefer Debian's packaging system.

I also got disgusted by Ubuntu with a sudden switch to Unity some time ago, but not functional shells? Yuck.

What I didn't like about previous Debian Stable version ('wheezy' I believe) was that at some point it was lagging too much and I had to install many things manually. This was the time when C++11 was entering the arena and I couldn't afford not having a chance to work with it. So far I'm not experiencing the same lag in 'Jessie'.

 

[mjanicki]

Slackware sine 1994. Rock Solid.

 

[llarian]

LinuxMint has been my choice.

 

[jedidia]

Still using Ubuntu 14 at work, with mixed feelings (solid system overall, but the GUI is quirky and unstable at times). But right now, I can't afford the time to set up a new working machine and get familiar with a new Distro.

Also, most of our servers run Ubuntu, and our devices run some form of debian, which is similar enough, so it's kind of good to be working on a similar system as what you'll be deploying your software to.

I also got disgusted by Ubuntu with a sudden switch to Unity some time ago, but not functional shells? Yuck.

You can switch it to Mate pretty easily if that's more your cup of tea. Had to do it with one of our network stations because XRDP doesn't like unity.

 

[Geirunni]

I was a Mandrake/Mandriva user for years. Now, that Mandriva no longer is a going concern, I switched to Mageia. It is developed by former Mandriva gurus. It has choices for server and desktop kernels, choices of desktop environments, tons of optional apps, and lots of support.

 

[Linguofreak]

You can switch it to Mate pretty easily if that's more your cup of tea. Had to do it with one of our network stations because XRDP doesn't like unity.

In my own case I never, strictly speaking, switched. My home directory goes back to 9.04, so my configuration was originally GNOME 2. I didn't upgrade from 10.04 to 12.04 until MATE was available and didn't consider the upgrade complete until I had MATE installed.

 

[Thunder Chicken]

Linux Mint on a netbook.

 

[Fabri91]

And as expected (almost) no two answers are the same. :lol:

 

[Xyon]

And as expected (almost) no two answers are the same. :lol:

Well, my answer is the same as Orb's - I love Gentoo, personally. It's package manager and ethos really seem to fit what I wan from a Linux system.

The only place I don't use it, I use CentOS, or debian, which is in work where I can't be waiting for compiled updates all day long, though there are ways around that.