What Are Your Favorite Linux Distrobutions and Why?

Software & Operating Systems Linux
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I'm creating this post as the one Zoltan created never really progressed, so I guess I'll start:

  1. Linux Mint

I know this was highly unexpected of me considering I'm a SUSE fanatic, but Mint is my distro of choice. Why? From freedom came elegance. Mint is fantastic at having everything you need with the bare options you need packed into a GUI without conjuring clutter.

I don't really prefer the Ubuntu based version over the Debian based version or vice versa. As a matter of fact, I have chosen both to be the basis of my accessibility script which is a work in progress (Not that Mint isn't accessible enough).

Mint makes it easy to swap between open and closed drivers, participate in any form of development, has the best forum, and due to it's nature is also great for enthusiasts (I wouldn't say any distro is necessarily better for enthusiasts but rather to use what you like). Mint gives you total control over updates, and every codec you can imagine is already installed. Steam is easy to maintain as well because at its core Mint is Debian in which SteamOS is based upon. I currently use Mint on my workstation, and used to use it on my laptop but I switched to SUSE Tumbleweed to fix the bugs that are preventing me from using it as my daily driver on my workstation.

(2). openSUSE

openSUSE gets so many things right yet at the same time has too many options that are in the GUI itself. When using the KDE version of openSUSE even with my tweaks I felt like I was running an OEM copy of Windows 7 that just so happened to be open source.

But all of this changed once I tried the Gnome edition of openSUSE. I'm going to be honest; I don't care for Gnome, Plasma, MATE, XFCE, LXQT, or anything of the sort. The only thing I can use and feel like I'm using my desktop in the most productive manner is Cinnamon, and I would say Gnome takes 2nd but falls short in a few aspects. SUSE didn't feel as bloat heavy as it did with the KDE edition granted it did take so long to boot either way that I could check my email on my iPad. Enough bashing (pun intended), let's get to why it is my 2nd favourite distribution.

Zypper: I love Zypper. It is my favourite package manager of all time. Its capabilities are fantastic and the syntaxes are awesome and something every PM should use.

Virtualization: SUSE made it so easy to create and manage virtual machines that it was easy to run say 5 VMs at once without having to worry about having a cluttered desktop.

Documentation: The documentation provided is the best of all dsitros available. It is in depth and to the point.

That is why SUSE is my 2nd favourite when it comes to Linux.

(3). Manjaro

I don't know to begin. Manjaro is what you would get if all the GUI options in SUSE were CLI with a but of Mints simplicity mixed in. Pacman is awesome for managing packages, the AUR is great, the community isn't snobbish, and drivers aren't hard to manage. Manjaro and Arch are two different distributions that share different concepts, and just so happen to share the same PM and the AUR; both have different goals.

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Puppy because it runns on a turd (its allways on my usb stick) and debian because its bomb proof my outher pc has been running debian flawlessly for years

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Fedora

Why.

Bleeding edge,
Easy to use,
Dev Team has a unified goal for the project.
UEFI support out the box.
The community is not as big as say Ubuntu but there is a ton of people who are helpful and Red Hat is fully behind the project.
I would not have recommended earlier fedora to new users but having been using F22 on a daily basis I would be confident in recommending it to a completely new user.

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Debian - Super stable, lots of packages, well supported, good community, uses apt, long history leading to a well refined product, etc.

Just a great distrobution overall, I'm really happy with it and recommend it to anyone with a bit of linux experience or someone looking to have a distrobution with less hand holding than Ubuntu / mint / etc but still very usable.

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Fedora itself is not bleeding edge. Are you referring to rawhide?

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Fedora - because it made it possible for me to successfully do a hardware pass through of a GPU which enabled me to run Win 7 in a KVM which enabled me run Linux as my primary OS which will enable me to complete the 1 year challenge.....and probably stay on Linux the rest of my life.

Life is good! lol

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1 Opensuse tumbleweed for daily use

2: fedora 22 for productivity and stability

3: arch for fun

4: ubuntu and its derivatives once it stops being a buggy pile of crap. I really like the software that ubuntu can use, and I like the extra DEs like the pantheon desktop, but it does not do me any good when packages keep breaking.

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Fedora Workstation. The only distro that I didn't have to troubleshoot regarding stuttering or screen tearing at all. That's really enough after raging over those issues with other distros for ages.

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1 - LMDE2. Stability and solidity of Debian with the ease of use that comes with mint. bit of a win win if you ask me.

2 - Xubuntu. just a better version of stock Ubuntu to be honest. before you get the pitchforks i'll explain why. xubuntu uses less resources than that of gnome, unity or kde, in my opinion it has a cleaner interface and lastly it has a certain familiarity to it which makes it good to have as a system for multiple users.

3 - Gentoo. Just because its a massive fuck you to logic(and my spare time),

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Xubuntu I like it over Unity but unity does have a nice sound app that actually works well for switching sound out puts and my headset scroll wheel works in it as well.

I have used others such as CentOS (my server OS now it's Ubuntu server with xfce desktop), and Mint for a bit but ran into issues.

I tried debian, fedora, arch and did not find them to be my cup of tea they had nice features but didn't suit me.

I really like the ubuntu store, makes things easy. If I want to play with linux I start a vm on my ProxMox server.

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Essentially

I guess that was a bad use of the term.
Fedora is the cutting edge distro for Red Hat Linux. RHEL is normally what Fedora was 3-4 versions ago.

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Ah

makes more sense : )

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1) Funtoo Linux

It's like Gentoo (see below), only that it has additional features that makes it more practical imo. And like Gentoo, it has OpenRC, but it doesn't have the option for Systemd, which I don't mind.

2) Gentoo Linux

Because of customization ability and control your own system. Really stable if you know what you're doing. OpenRC option.

3) Manjaro Linux

OpenRC option. Has some nice features like MHWD.

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  1. Arch - simple & familiar
  2. *suse - it's green
  3. fedora - it's blue
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(1) ArchLinux
suits my needs very well, simple and challenging a the same time. Let's you control every aspect of your system and because of this you'll learn something new every day.
(2) RedHat EL / Fedora
I've been using it for years on enterprise gear, it never let me down. Stable, reliable, great community, tons of support
(3) Debian
Super stable, really good for new and old systems as well, super community.

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  1. Ubuntu GNOME for my daily driver.
  2. Debian for old machines.
  3. Gentoo/Funtoo just for fuck all.
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I use manjaro on my laptop. I like it because it's easy to install and configure. Pacman and the AUR are awesome and it's crazy easy to install new kernels or video drivers.

On my servers I use Ubuntu server. I like it because it comes with a lot if stuff out if the box and the repositories and community support are pretty good.

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  1. Sabayon
    Sabayon combines the best elements of a rolling binary distribution with the flexibility to use Portage to compile software software to your requirements. It also aims for an "out of the box" experience and so comes with codecs, proprietary graphics drivers and other nice things that make setting up a modern computer pretty easy.

  2. OpenSUSE
    OpenSUSE is one of the distributions covered in the CompTIA Linux+ certification and is a remarkably simple distro to use. The defining feature is YAST (Yet Another Setup Tool) which provides a graphical interface to the myriad configuration options that often need to be tweaked in a system. This is especially useful when a setting requires many changes to different configs scattered across the system.

  3. *buntu (U, Ku, Xu, Lu, or otherwise)
    The Ubuntu family, for better or for worse, has become one of the most widely supported Linux distributions which makes it rather friendly for beginners and newcomers as well as experienced users who want a broad software base to draw on and little hassle in the initial setup (though getting proprietary graphics drivers going can take a bit of work). For people interested in the Ubuntu base with a somewhat different GUI experience, I recommend Bodhi Linux which ships with Enlightenment by default.

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I personally jump between Manjaro and OpenSUSE one day I might decide which I like more

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Gentoo where I want flexibility for tinkering. Rolling release is a must for desktops in my opinion. I haven't done a clean install of my OS in probably close to 6 years now. I've just migrated from disk to disk.

Ubuntu server on VMs. It is much faster and easier to build and rebuild using scripts and require no maintenance. Unlike Gentoo I don't need to give it extra resources so that it can compile stuff.

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