Linux distributions come in every flavor

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one size fits all

Opensource.com

Linux distributions are operating systems for desktops, servers, laptops, netbooks, mobile phones, and tablets (and some minimal environments). These poll choices are only a few of the many different ones out there. Specifically, they rank among the top ten on DistroWatch (over the last 12 months).

The DistroWatch Page Hit Ranking statistics are a light-hearted way of measuring the popularity of Linux distributions and other free operating systems among the visitors of this website. They correlate neither to usage nor to quality and should not be used to measure the market share of distributions. They simply show the number of times a distribution page on DistroWatch.com was accessed each day, nothing more.

How does the Linux distribution you use meet your personal and professional needs?

Share with us which applications such as word processors, spreadsheets, media players, and database applications you enjoy from the Linux distribution you use.

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Jen leads a team of community managers for the Digital Communities team at Red Hat. She lives in Raleigh with her husband and daughters, June and Jewel.

41 Comments

I'd like to vote for multiple choice in this. :)
My choices would be:
-CentOS
-Fedora
-Debian
-Ubuntu

Yes, I agree! I use CentOS for servers. Fedora for my laptop. Ubuntu for the family's PC. I installed Mint on my daughter's mini netbook.

Same here, i used and recommend CentOS for servers and Ubuntu for desktops and laptops..

-Fedora
-Debian
-Ubuntu

I agree for these.

:D

I agree, I commonly use many distros... the most common of which are:

RHEL
CentOS
Debian
Fedora
Mandriva
Ubuntu
Mint

Currently I am using Fedora/Mandriva at home and RHEL/CentOS at the office.

Yeah, also missed multiple choice feature. i prefer two quite different distributions - ubuntu and centos.

Awesome that you guys are running different versions to try things out.

Note: The mulitple choice feature on our Drupal voting module...doesn't work as expected. So we're a bit limited because of that feature...I mean, bug.
Jason

None of the distro I use are in this poll.
Maybe you could add "other" to the answers.

yeah, like Arch Linux, which is what I use

Watch out you have an unnecesary condition there

windows sucks is always evaluated as true ;)

Hi,

I've been using Slackware for three years and I love it. No other distros I've tried give me as much satisfaction.

Oncle Jean

And that's the real key, what you use works for you.

I work exactly the same way with Debian. None of the others that I've tried "click" with how I work.

That's why distribution-hopping is so important. It gives the opportunity to try a different way to accomplish.

I understand that this is open source.com and is about open source and Linux in general. But really this is sponsored by Red Hat. Shouldn't RHEL be on there? I marked CENTOS because it's closest to what I use. I use at home what I use at work. It does everything I need it to do. Just my 2 cents.

Obviously we could have included lots of flavors of Linux. The focus for this poll was more about the community versions out there. And we're definitely not being scientific about this ;)

It's great to see so many folks passionate about the version(s) of Linux they use.
Jason

You know a linux-distro poll/article is one of the easiest way to start a flame on distro war :D

Personally I'm using :

Work - Servers:
Debian and Red Hat Enterprise

Work - Laptop
Gentoo with Fluxbox/Cinnamon

Home :
Xubuntu 12.10 and Mint 13 XFCE

I started in about 1998 with Red Hat Linux 5. I have pretty much stayed with Red Hat ever since. This machine is running RHEL 6, and my other 12 year old machine is running CentOS 5 because it cannot run 6 (too small) and I am too cheap to get another RHEL contract.

I recently switched from gentoo to exherbo for my work laptop.

Wow, a new distro never heard before :)
I'll take a look at this one, thanks for the info !

My only computer is an older Presario (2.8mhz CPU, 1.1g RAM) and I have tried a lot of distros over the last couple of years, but I've found that #! (Crunchbang) gives me the best performance. That being said, I do run MATE 1.4 so as to have a more functional desktop.

I use the following distributions.

At home:
Ubuntu Studio (desktop and laptop)
Crunchbang (netbook and older machines)
Slackware (server)
Puppy (Wary) (odd, old IBM Thinkpad with buggy video)

At work:
Ubuntu Studio (desktop)
Slackware (servers)
Ubuntu Server (servers)

The servers were pre-existing installations. I may consider switching some of them to Debian in the future when I am more acclimated to my new position.

Voted Debian because is was my latest desktop for the choices given.

Currently, i'm using Arch Linux...

Using Mandriva and openSUSE here, trying out Chakra and ROSA also

where's slackware ?

Very good question. :o)

When we were trying to narrow the choices down (tough job BTW), we realized that Slackware only cracked the top 10 via this site http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=popularity once. So although popular, it didn't make the list for this poll.

Jason

http://www.fuduntu.org/

Servers: Gentoo
Desktops: Gentoo or Mint

Ubuntu and Puppy.

I use LibreOffice a lot. FireFox is the first thing running when I log-in.

Chromium browser

Tomboy Notes

Banshee

Skype

Empathy

I use ArchLinux but it's not in the poll, so ... Mint.

I use Fedora and Ubuntu on my laptops and Centos & Ubuntu server on our servers.

It's great to see what the current trends are!

I use Linux Mint for my desktop and netbook, and I have 2 web servers that run debian. But all of the ones on the list are good choices.

I always use the latest stable of Fedora for my desktop and the latest stable of RHEL for my server.
I really like them and I can do everything that I want. :)

Debian & Ubuntu...

In what way all these linux distributions are different?
Is there any site, which shows what they are better for?

This is kind of difficult. I work exclusively with Redhat EL at work, but I use CentOS for my personal internal and outward-facing servers (running non-GUI), and run Ubuntu on desktop/laptops.

I voted for CentOS because it and REL are basically the same thing and my servers are more critical to me. Since my primary desktop OS is Mac OS X, I don't work with the Ubuntu as much as I do the others. I will say that I like the Ubuntu OS distro and it would be my primary desktop/laptop OS if I wasn't on the Mac.

If I could vote for multiples though, I would have voted for:

CentOS
Ubuntu

When I got a new laptop recently I installed Linux Mint 13 because it gives me the type of interface I like. It has convenient menu trees, and I can place launchers for commonly used software on the panel, which is never hidden from view. I hate cell phone style interfaces. I am happy with Mint and will probably use it on future computers.

I have Ubuntu on my desktop, where I an sticking with version 10.10 because I don't want to "upgrade" to Unity, or goofy disappearing scrollbars and I'm not willing to install something else and have the hassle of spending hours reinstalling all my software and data files when the existing system works fine.

Other than the interface, the distributions are all pretty much the same to me. They all provide the same software and programming tools, and unlike my experience in Windows I can do useful things easily on the command line.

The distribution that meets my router's needs is OpenWRT. My desktop is a mixture of curiosity and benchmarking; I'm playing with Fedora 18 Alpha, Oracle R5U8, OpenIndiana 151a r7, and FreeBSD 9. However with the constant news about Valve, I'm posting this from Ubuntu 12.04. viva libre

"What version of Linux do you use?" - there is only one "Linux", perhaps the question should read "What Linux Distribution do you use? Personally I'll use the right one for the job - centos, ubuntu, debian, etc.... it is after all the essence of open source - <strong> freedom </strong>. So without presuming to contradict the open source ideals, perhaps the question should have been "What Linux Distribution do you use on your desktop right now?". Then one asks the question, why on earth would anyone want to know?

I'm using Lubuntu. Maybe in few months I will switch to Xubuntu.
I don't know if there are official statistics, but I think Ubuntu is the most popular distro in Tunisia.

Well well well... Isn't Gentoo missing?

My chart is :

RHEL on the servers
Fedora / Gentoo for my laptop @work
Gentoo on my personal servers

Opensuse for my family (their KDE integration rocks)

Ubuntu for the people I want to be scared by linux :P

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