What Linux do you use?

[flarkit]

Ubuntu 7.04 (and soon 7.10), hopefully for a looonnngggg time, cos it's shaping up excellently

 

[chiskop]

Bought a laptop about three months ago, with no choice but to take Vista. I thought I'd at least give it a chance. Things would be working then not working the next day, and it seemed to get slower and slooooower. This week my patience ran out.

I've pared down my Vista to the bare minimum that I need to be able to work - just in case. Put Kubuntu on a new partition and that's what I'm working in. My computer looks better, works faster. Much better.

 

[w1z4rd]

Honestly - as a windowing system it is not up to par with OS X or Windows for that matter. With millions of developers, countless distributions split into countless more distributions, and millions of dollars being thrown at various aspects of it (including sizable amounts from the likes of IBM and many others), it just doesn't catch up.

Windows and Os X are slicker. Video will always work as expected. And though most people knock windows, the majority of Windows apps are actually damn good. Games work on Windows natively - you don't need an emulator to get it going. Hardware has often got better support on Windows than Linux (blame the manufacturers, the fact remains that they would rather support a few flavours of Windows than countless flavours of Linux).

Windows and Mac Os X just look better. From the fonts right through to the slickness of window redrawing, Windows and Os X just do it better. My own disappointment with the extremely slow pace of making Linux look and feel as good as Windows and Os X is probably one reason for animosity towards Linux, but probably lending more to my increasing gripes with Linux is my undeniable hatred of sitting all hours of a morning rebuilding Linux boxes that have inexplicably fallen over while my MS SQL Server boxes hums along without any hassles whatsoever - as do my Exchange boxes and even my IIS boxes. .Net is actually quite awesome, and even the MS C Compilers are more standards compliant in my experience than GCC.

I wanted Linux to step up to the plate, but after more than 15 years of cheering the underdog, I've realised that even the stability and security that was once the pinnacle of all things Linux is not even 100% true of it anymore. In my lifetime I will probably never see a Linux desktop without at least a grimace on how freaking ugly it actually is. OS X is how things should be - and Vista is, well, just really really so many years ahead of any desktop Linux out there.

Written by someone who does not know what he is talking about.

Anyways I use Kubuntu as my desktop.

 

[The_Unbeliever]

Written by someone who does not know what he is talking about.

Anyways I use Kubuntu as my desktop.

Agreed on that. Maybe he was using an out-of-date distro?

I use SuSE 10.3, and plan to introduce my wife to Kubuntu, Ubuntu and SuSE 10.3 and ask her which one she likes the best...

She already uses SuSE 10.1, want to give her an upgrade She took to SuSE 10.3 like a fish to water no need to give training or the such, just help her with little things here and there

Our Exchange is not stable. Require a reboot every 3rd day to get the printers to work again... *sigh*

 

[rwenzori]

Mandriva has been my favourite for a long time.

 

[Ryder_JHB]

I use Kubuntu on two servers for Jawug - both hosting FTP, Lan Games, and also both run Zoneminder for my CCTV around the house (and on the Jawug network)

I remember the days of installing DeadRat by dialling up to mweb (28.8k) and installing using the ftp method. I also learnt a lot on Slackware, but I have found Kubuntu to be exactly what I want in a distro - Yes it's easy, but I would much rather install something and have it work first time (this has been my experience thus far) than battle through forums, trying to find how to do something... I just dont have time for that anymore these days...

I still run XP on my "main" desktop pc, but I have a decent spec system running Gutsy too, and so far, I am very impressed.

If it was not for linux, Jawug would probably not exist!

Long live *Nix!

 

[Cadavre777]

I use NetBSD for most of my systems + server (currently running 3.1 - too lazy to compile 'current' from scratch). I've honestly never come across any of the problems BobbyMac has whined about. Don't expect stability using unstable builds for production systems and then moan about it.

Unfortunately also have a dirty little secret (XP) on my gaming system. This would change in a heartbeat if EA and Dice released linux ports of Battlefield 2 & 2142 (which is mainly written in python = more than half the work already done).

 

[Skeptik]

Agreed on that. Maybe he was using an out-of-date distro?

I use SuSE 10.3, and plan to introduce my wife to Kubuntu, Ubuntu and SuSE 10.3 and ask her which one she likes the best...

She already uses SuSE 10.1, want to give her an upgrade She took to SuSE 10.3 like a fish to water no need to give training or the such, just help her with little things here and there

Our Exchange is not stable. Require a reboot every 3rd day to get the printers to work again... *sigh*

These Linux distros don't change much. Breezy is little different from Gutsy. The install routine is the most unintuitive I've ever seen and it blew my WinXP partition. They use a live distro through which to do the normal install, which is just stupid. Did I mention ACPI is also stuffed?

 

[milomak]

debian and fc7. been meaning to try one of gentoo or slack as well.

 

[koffiejunkie]

Yeah, personal experiences rock. We have over three hundred servers, and the linux boxes are definitely the most unreliable. We've even switched mail from sendmail to Exchange. All in all service from MS has been superb, whereas service from Linux is, well, who you gonna call?

BobbyMac, fire your linux sysadmin and get a better one.

For what it's worth, I work for a company that has close to 30,000 servers, about a third Windows and two thirds Linux. There are only two instances where Linux servers go down:

1. Hardware failure.
2. Clients doing stupid **** like setting apache max_clients and php memory_limit so they allow it to use three times as much as their physical memory+swap combined. And then get (D)DOSsed...

In my opinion, the reasons people experience poor reliability from Linux are simply:

1. Sysadmin incompetence.
2. Using the wrong tools for the job, i.e. using MyISAM (in MySQL) for a table that will have multiple simultaneous updates, inserts and deletes.
3. Using the wrong distro. I know this is going to get some upset, but using distros that are cut for the desktop (Fedora, Ubuntu, Mandriva, etc) is just stupid. Their kernels are built for good desktop performance, almost always at the sacrifice of some server goodies. If you're serious about running a server, use a distro that was built with a server in mind - RHEL, SLES, Debian, etc.

Linux expects you to know what you're doing.

 

[jsxza]

BobbyMac, fire your linux sysadmin and get a better one.

For what it's worth, I work for a company that has close to 30,000 servers, about a third Windows and two thirds Linux. There are only two instances where Linux servers go down:

1. Hardware failure.
2. Clients doing stupid **** like setting apache max_clients and php memory_limit so they allow it to use three times as much as their physical memory+swap combined. And then get (D)DOSsed...

In my opinion, the reasons people experience poor reliability from Linux are simply:

1. Sysadmin incompetence.
2. Using the wrong tools for the job, i.e. using MyISAM (in MySQL) for a table that will have multiple simultaneous updates, inserts and deletes.
3. Using the wrong distro. I know this is going to get some upset, but using distros that are cut for the desktop (Fedora, Ubuntu, Mandriva, etc) is just stupid. Their kernels are built for good desktop performance, almost always at the sacrifice of some server goodies. If you're serious about running a server, use a distro that was built with a server in mind - RHEL, SLES, Debian, etc.

Linux expects you to know what you're doing.

I'll second that!

I work for a company where Linux is used on the servers and desktops and downtime is caused by user error or hardware failure.

Even though I have only been into it for about 5 years I can not recall a single time when linux just broke itself completely.

There have been 2 instances where linux servers hit kernel panics but both of the machines were on a constant extreme load before crashing. Both machines had more than 200 days uptime and a simple reboot sorted it out - no permanent damage.

 

[flarkit]

I work for a company where Linux is used on the servers and desktops and downtime is caused by user error or hardware failure.

Which company is this, where are they, do they have a distro preference and do they pay well for developers/Linux enthusiasts?

 

[!!DV!!]

Desktop running OpenSuse 10.3 GM or SLED 10.1 -- The wonders of VMWare / XEN
Servers Running SLES 10 or Centos

Spec the right Hardware and Distro to get the job done right...

Had to reboot my VMWare (SLES 10) server once in the last year -- Kernel Upgrade.

 

[jetpacman]

I'll second that!

I work for a company where Linux is used on the servers and desktops and downtime is caused by user error or hardware failure.

Even though I have only been into it for about 5 years I can not recall a single time when linux just broke itself completely.

There have been 2 instances where linux servers hit kernel panics but both of the machines were on a constant extreme load before crashing. Both machines had more than 200 days uptime and a simple reboot sorted it out - no permanent damage.

Me 2.

I started out with Redhat 5 way back in the day. I must say I tried Ubuntu recently and don't dig it too much. For me SuSe was the best because it had everything. I haven't played with Linux for about 2 years because I have been so busy, I still remember most of what I used to know.
Linux taught me to understand what an operating system is really about and what it does. I'm a bit old school and prefer doing things in GNU/Linux via shell. I also prefer to call it GNU/Linux since that makes the most sense to me. Nevermind that Richard wants it that way...

About 5 years ago I used to get strong opposition in the work place when I tried introducing Linux and installing it on a few systems (dual boot) in all three companies I was instructed by the managers to "remove that from that PC now". I even signed a warning letter for somehow contravening the IT policy ( installing illegal software) at my first job but that didnt stop me from trying again at other places. I still can't figure why they were like that. I even tried explaining open source and the GNU/Linux thing to them and I was chastised even further.

What makes me sick is that now that open source is all trendy and all over the media, some of those same people are now using GNU/Linux and other OS software. and they still don't know whats going on.

 

[Brawler]

Ubuntu 7.10

 

[The_Unbeliever]

BobbyMac, fire your linux sysadmin and get a better one.

For what it's worth, I work for a company that has close to 30,000 servers, about a third Windows and two thirds Linux. There are only two instances where Linux servers go down:

1. Hardware failure.
2. Clients doing stupid **** like setting apache max_clients and php memory_limit so they allow it to use three times as much as their physical memory+swap combined. And then get (D)DOSsed...

In my opinion, the reasons people experience poor reliability from Linux are simply:

1. Sysadmin incompetence.
2. Using the wrong tools for the job, i.e. using MyISAM (in MySQL) for a table that will have multiple simultaneous updates, inserts and deletes.
3. Using the wrong distro. I know this is going to get some upset, but using distros that are cut for the desktop (Fedora, Ubuntu, Mandriva, etc) is just stupid. Their kernels are built for good desktop performance, almost always at the sacrifice of some server goodies. If you're serious about running a server, use a distro that was built with a server in mind - RHEL, SLES, Debian, etc.

Linux expects you to know what you're doing.

Agreed on the distros.

Desktop distros are not cut out to be server distros - you can, in a pinch, do it, but it is not recommended as it is not tuned correctly.