Favorite Linux OS? Put in your 2 cents.

If you had to say your favorite Linux OS, what would it be?

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Ubuntu, or Ubuntu derivatives (Mint and BackTrack 4). I can do what I need to with pretty much any distribution, but there's a lot to be said for popularity and a supportive community.

*Ok seriously, this (which is yet another Ubuntu derivative) is my favorite

billscott92787

LMAO that is freaking hilarious. I have to say you made my day with that one

dynamik

It gets better. I put the live version on thumb drives or CDs and load it up on people's machines while they're away. They are thoroughly confused once they return.

billscott92787

LOL, that is even funnier. I'm sure you get some amusement out of it

veritas_libertas

dynamik wrote: »

Ubuntu, or Ubuntu derivatives (Mint and BackTrack 4). I can do what I need to with pretty much any distribution, but there's a lot to be said for popularity and a supportive community.

+1 another vote for Ubuntu!

eMeS

The first one I ever really used: SVR4

Edit: Somehow I read "UNIX" instead of "Linux".

Silentsoul

I really like a debian based distro. Apt is fantastic. Ubuntu does a lot of stuff right, lately with some of their newer stuff ive had issues. I just recently went to Mint which is an unbuntu based distro with some tweaks.
I found debian easier to learn on, and so that is kind of what i have stuck with. I have 5 Linux boxes at work that I have implemented. 2 are Webservers ( ubuntu) 1 is an imaging box (ubuntu) 1 is a dev box that switches between a lot of stuff. The last box is a box which runs our Ticket system, Nagios, Cacti, Nagvis,(Centos 5.3) both the web servers i mentioned above have been running for over 180 days no reboot. All those machines are running the server os's with no gui.

When i waas starting out like i said i chose Debian because it was what the guy who got into linux used. Plus they have so many packages it is insane.
Its more a preference anymore there are so many.

Paul Boz

Ubuntu is Linux for Linux newbs and that's what I am so that's what I use.

rsutton

I'm not a big Linux user.

I run CENT OS as a LAMP server and it has run smoothly without any problems for over a year.

UnixGeek

Ubuntu for desktops and laptops, CentOS for most servers, and Debian for low powered servers and embedded devices that I'm not running BSD on.

Met44

I have grown fond of Debian, and Debian-like distributions such as Ubuntu. I was first introduced to Fedora, but I did a lot of learning on Debian, so I attribute most of my fondness to that -- it's what I'm most familiar with. Nothing wrong with the other distributions. The run levels in Debian threw me off initially, coming in with some knowledge of the rest of the Linux world.

As Silentsoul said, aptitude and dpkg are really nice to have around, and you can easily create kernel packages with make-kpkg. Debian has great package maintenance, and the number of supported packages are huge compared to other distributions (Debian had something like 23,000 official stable packages when last I checked). With beginners, it can be very nice to not have to learn how to compile code the first time you want to install something (and, particularly, troubleshoot the compile process when something goes wrong).

Of course, you could always just roll your own Linux. Check out the Linux From Scratch project. I got a good way through it, then it was placed on the back burner in favor of other projects... has anyone else here tried it out and completed it? Any thoughts on the use of your system versus a "standard" distribution?

Chivalry1

Fedora Core

MentholMoose

For personal use I've used Gentoo for about 5 years now, so I guess it's my favorite. I've also used Fedora to some extent, which I also like. For servers, I've mostly used RHEL and derivatives (CentOS and Oracle Unbreakable Linux).

NinjaBoy

I don't really play around with Linux (I'm a Windows person), but on the odd occasion I've found Ubuntu and FC that really stand out when it comes to ease of use as well as ease of installation. But that's just my opinion

-Ken

sidsanders

centos... however id rathre run freebsd or openbsd.

davidspirovalentine

I'd have to say CentOS... I LOVE Ubuntu, but work mostly with Cent and have really grown into it...

Ubuntu is a 2nd for me... a very close 2nd...

Regards,
David

undomiel

I'll cast in my vote for OpenSUSE. I ran that is my primary desktop until Windows 7 was released.

Silentsoul

billscott92787 wrote: »

If you had to say your favorite Linux OS, what would it be?

I'm curious why you asked everyone their favourite distro. Looking for one yourself?

billscott92787

I was just curious which seems most popular. I have been using Ubuntu on my laptop but was thinking about changing it to something else. Honestly, I was bored at work and wanted something to post about

Silentsoul

billscott92787 wrote: »

I was just curious which seems most popular. I have been using Ubuntu on my laptop but was thinking about changing it to something else. Honestly, I was bored at work and wanted something to post about

Gotcha. If you are every curious about the "most popular" distro, or how many variations there truly are check out

DistroWatch.com: Put the fun back into computing. Use Linux, BSD.

I forget how they rank the top 100 but it has something to do with downloads or impressions.

Mishra

Debian for servers. Been a fan since 2003.

Red Hat isn't bad.

msteinhilber

For servers I've been a pretty strict CentOS guy myself. This mostly carries over from my background when I used to do web hosting. As the control panels I used on my servers was cPanel and eventually some DirectAdmin it was one of the handful of free distros available that was supported well by most providers of control panels out there.

For any desktop/notebook's I use Linux on it's Ubuntu as my primary choice. I've not used Linux as a desktop enough to have all of the quirks I might run into in a desktop environment, so Ubuntu works well for me since there is a fairly large resource of people much smarter than I am that I can look to for answers.

I've even introduced a handful of Ubuntu servers at the office lately and may eventually standardize on Ubuntu for servers and workstations shortly. This is in the works but we are waiting on one web application to switch away from use of ActiveX and to a cross compatible platform with their next release. Once that happens, I anticipate much more use of Linux distros in our environment.

L0gicB0mb508

Desktop OS: Mepis
Server OS: CENTOS
Security: Backtrack
Travel OS (usb stick for shared machines): DSL

I also really like FreeBSD, Solaris, and OSX.

Nobylspoon

I started on Knoppix so that will always have a soft spot for it but I mainly just use Mint and Backtrack 4. I also have an Amahi home server at home for my media streaming.

120nm4n

UnixGeek wrote: »

Ubuntu for desktops and laptops, CentOS for most servers, and Debian for low powered servers and embedded devices that I'm not running BSD on.

Ditto. A lot of people say that Ubuntu is getting a little bloated, but for what I need it for, it runs perfectly fast.

petedude

As much as I hate to admit it. . . OpenSUSE. It's the best configured of the distros from a software standpoint, in my opinion. Nearly everything one will need in a box. Problem is, performance of 11.0/11.1 were poky and VMWare gave me fits, so I'm having to use Fedora at home for right now.

disi

Desktops and servers are Gentoo for about 6 years now, but I have some vps with CentOS and Debian to learn about their way of doing things and scripts etc. That gives me Source, RedHat/rpm and Debian/deb based experience

Bl8ckr0uter

disi wrote: »

Desktops and servers are Gentoo for about 6 years now, but I have some vps with CentOS and Debian to learn about their way of doing things and scripts etc. That gives me Source, RedHat/rpm and Debian/deb based experience

I have heard stories but how steep is the learning curve for a newb to learn/install gentoo?

MentholMoose

knwminus wrote: »

I have heard stories but how steep is the learning curve for a newb to learn/install gentoo?

Some of the problems people run into are common to Linux in general, but handled better by installers for other distributions. For example, other distributions have a "create partitions" section in their installer where they offer reasonable disk partition sizes by default, whereas you have to do it manually on Gentoo, and have to know what are good sizes in the first place. However nowadays if you mess up partitions sizes, it is easy to resize them using the gparted live CD (many Windows-only users are even familiar with this tool).

I think if you follow the official instructions carefully, you can do it. I wouldn't recommend a newbie follow some blog entry or forum post out there, rather they should use the official docs. The main thing is to take care when configuring Gentoo specific options, especially USE flags and CFLAGS (and *especially* ACCEPT_KEYWORDS, which should be left alone), but really this is just part of following the official instructions. This is where I see a lot of newbies go wrong.

Another problem is manually configuring the kernel. Any easy solution is to start with a working kernel .config file, such as the one from the running live CD. So from the linux source directory you would do "zcat /proc/config.gz > .config", then "make menuconfig" to make any changes (should only be a few, such as changing drivers), then continue with the instructions.

dynamik

knwminus wrote: »

I have heard stories but how steep is the learning curve for a newb to learn/install gentoo?

Freaking easy if you use the guide. Just step-by-step. It's a good exercise to do once (and then switch to Ubuntu

)