Ask HN: Which Linux distribution do you use, and why?

Bender · on April 30, 2021

CentOS for my long running systems. Even with stream I expect that to be more than stable and predictable for my needs, meaning low feature-creep. I use the ElRepo kernels with CentOS and even that has been quite stable to my surprise.

Alpine Linux for temporary instances when I just need something stood up quickly. The VM and docker container images are tiny. The supported packages are almost always up to date with upstream. The setup is so fast and small I can basically run the entire thing in ram.

Pseudomanifold · on April 30, 2021

Arch Linux: it's lightweight, configurable, and keeps out of my way. If I want to delve deep into the configuration, I can. If I don't want to, that's also fine---but Arch will never do anything that I did not specifically set it up for.

I am still running one of my first installations...it's going strong for ~5 years now and I really appreciate the rolling release mechanism. Plus, AUR makes it almost trivial to roll your own packages.

simonblack · on May 1, 2021

Mint MATE.

Mint because it has all the drivers and codecs, even proprietary ones.

MATE because I like the spartan desktop.

Second choice: Debian MATE

vondur · on April 30, 2021

I've been using PopOS lately for the desktop.