Ask HN: What Linux distro do you
Title was supposed to be "Ask HN: What Linux distro do you <3, and why do you prefer it over alternatives?" but HN is paranoid about HTML I guess? Anyway, can't even edit it to replace "<3" with "love", sorry about that.
There's a huge amount of variety, but I imagine there's only a handful of really popular distros. And I'm having a hard time finding a listing of the pros/cons of each, relative to each other, from the horse's mouth. So, without trying to call you a horse, I'm hoping you can tell me from your personal experience why you prefer the distro you use vs. others you've rejected. Thanks!
20 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 56.4 ms ] threadPersonally, I use Ubuntu 14.04 LTS because it worked straight away, gives me nearly everything I want, and just gets out of the way and lets me work.
Ask yourself why you care? How will it improve your life? How will it help you get more done?
How much time you'll waste tinkering?
You're running just about the latest of everything, and you pick and choose everything you want to run. It becomes easy to try every window manager and desktop environment, because they are all there (and up to date!).
I don't use Linux but the family devices that do run Antergos (with Cinnamon). Setting up a new box is trivial and updates can be managed via GUI for non tech savvy people.
For a portable OS (and may switch to it as main linux OS) I really like Porteus.
Ubuntu is nice if you have never used Linux. There is a wealth of resources out there that assume you are using Ubuntu for your distro, it offers a lot of default options that let you do things without worrying about them (like network configurations or mounting of file systems), and it is incredibly stable. However, changing or removing certain aspects can prove difficult. If you start to deviate from the things they give you, or the things available in the Ubuntu app marketplace (or whatever it is now), then you will probably experience some friction. Or, if you are a developer and want to run with the latest updates for that compiler that made it finally not terrible, you are going to be waiting a while until it moves into the ubuntu-stable repository (and mixing experimental/testing/stable is risky, if you aren't sure what you're doing).
Arch is the other side of that coin. If you want something that just got released, Arch will probably have it, either in the standard repos, or the AUR. And pacman/yaourt are some of the best package managers I have used. And making changes to your system is easy, as there is very little that gets in your way (systemd is perhaps the only thing to worry about). And for any changes you do want to make, the Arch Wiki is an absolutely fantastic resource (this is true in general, for most distros). All this comes with a price, as you have to manually do a lot of stuff. You have to install your window manager or desktop environment; you have to manage or set up your network connections (and there are a few programs to choose from); you have to write your own xinitrc (if you want), set up your session manage, everything. A base Arch install gives you the coreutils, and little else. For some people, who want to control everything their computer does for one reason or another, this is perfect. For others, this is maddening (I assume).
Most distros exist somewhere on that spectrum of usability and control, with Ubuntu on one end and Arch (and to a further extent, Gentoo) on the other. I have spent hours upon hours learning about my system and what I can do with/to it using Arch. It is fun for me, but I don't think that is for everybody. Its up to you to decide what you want.
(Protip: install to a virtual machine or a throwaway machine before making the full switch. Even with Ubuntu its much easier to break your system than Windows or OS X)
http://nixos.org/nixos/about.html
In my view, it really is a fundamental improvement and represents the state-of-the-art in OS distribution. Nix, the package manager, also works on other distributions and Mac, and operates in a totally self-contained way. It also lets non-root users install packages for themselves.
NixOS doesn't have a graphical installer or anything like that though, so at the moment it's for enthusiasts. But there are tons of packages and they are easy to make and change. And the community is friendly and smart.
I've been using it since spring 2015 with few problems, and I absolutely love it... it's basically made me like computers again. I run it on my Dell laptop and on an Amazon VPS, sharing parts of the configuration via Git so that all the vhosts are available on localhost too.
I also sync the main configuration file with my brother/cofounder so our laptops work the same aside from our own user configs. For example, he might create a new service that depends on some packages, changes some configs, opens a port, adds a new Unix user, etc etc, and when I pull his changes from git and run nixos-rebuild, all of those changes are applied to my computer seamlessly and atomically.
I also run i3 as my desktop interface, and hats off to those guys, it is amazing. You should check it out, if you're into tile-based window managers, and good design, without the horror of configuring dwm.
I love the package tool, apt-get and apt-cache search to find what I need.
I've toyed with the idea of going with CentOS on a desktop, but I think that release cycle may be a little too slow. Ubuntu's LTS every two years gives me the opportunity to upgrade sooner if there's a compelling reason (e.g., Docker support).
I do web development at a consultancy (lots of different projects in a variety of languages / environments) and have in the past been able to do a pretty decent job isolating different client applications while running them locally. However, these days I'm moving more to Vagrant for some of the heavier applications and likely to Docker for some of the lighter ones.