I’m just curious which Linux the Linux people are using on a daily basis?
Personally I’m all over the place depending on my needs and what I’m doing. Since I play on Windows, Mac and Linux I really do not have something that I stick with because I enjoy seeing what one distro has over another.
Raspbian on a Pi 4 (whichever version was the default when I first set it up and updated it).
I’m considering getting a Pi 5 and pairing it w/ a Wacom One screen (the new generation w/ touch as well as stylus) — the nice thing with this setup is of course that one may have as many OS setups as one is willing to have Micro SD cards.
I’d really like for there to be a lightweight OS which used GNUstep and apps written in Objective-C, but there aren’t enough such yet.
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After years with Ubuntu they finally drove me away with their package manager shenanigans so since then I’ve been a happy Fedora + Sway.
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Given that I started the Fedora Project at Red Hat, no huge surprise that Fedora is my daily driver…
But as of a few days ago, that’s Fedora Silverblue. The update experience is more like a Chromebook, regardless of whether you are applying daily updates or upgrading to a new version of the OS or even switching between one OS and another! The whole new system is prepared in the background, and then you just reboot into it, and if you didn’t like it you can reboot and choose the old system instead.
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Fedora (always latest) on my laptop and desktop. I used to be a RHEL certified sysadmin, then I ran a devops system that built a custom CentOS (RIP) distro.
Also running PIOS on 4x PI’s, Debian on a VisionFive 2 (risc-v), and Ubuntu on a MangoPI MQ Pro (also risc-v). I’m actually very distro agnostic, last week I was cross-compiling risc-v code in an Arch Linux container on my x64 fedora laptop…
However… All the above is ‘just Linux’, for my home server I run Unix.
eg; FreeBSD (always latest) which was bootstrapped from scratch and continually rebuilt and updated since FreeBSD4 days… I then run a poudurie server on it and build my own package repo to install and upgrade the userland; it serves my web site and mail with apache, gitea, dovecot and co… plus other services, DNS, DHCP etc… And it has a working i3 desktop that I use to play video + youtube on my TV.
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I have Kubuntu on my main garage CNC PC. Love it! I also have Linux Mint on my other garage PC (for my laser), and that is also great.
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Yeah, I had CentOS on a PC. But CentOS got killed by RedHat’s IBM overlords, which was a total dick move. RockyLinux.org is the successor to CentOS.
Eff them. I’ll stick with Ubuntu (Debian) variants.
I really strongly disagree with this.
AlmaLinux is the closest thing to a successor to what CentOS used to be, before it was turned into rolling free RHEL. Rocky have made multiple moves that have really lost my trust.
Rocky, not long after making a huge stink about Red Hat changing the way they manage sources, started doing basically the same thing. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
I personally also think that having a rolling free RHEL (what CentOS now is) is actually highly beneficial and I wish Red Hat had spun something like that up many years ago.
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I don’t use it, but… Bluefin, from the Universal Blue project, feels like the ultimate distro-hopper’s heaven… For those who like the Ubuntu UX, it has that on top of Fedora, but then incorporates distrobox to make it really easy to have as many runtime environments as you want, all running at once. Fedora in one, Ubuntu in another, AlmaLinux in another, Alpine, Arch, OpenSUSE…
Here’s a video showing this in practice:
Instead of distrobox, I’m using the similar toolbx, which ships with Fedora, and supports lots of different OS containers.
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Kubuntu has been my daily driver for couple of decades. Raspberry Pis get what ever version of PiOS or Raspbian is needed for the task it’s assigned beit DIYRobocar autonomous car stuff, NodeRed server for hydroponics or python servers doing solar PV monitoring.
For school projects kids will use and the DIYRobocar project where bootable ISOs on USB thumb drives are used then I custom build from Lubuntu.
DistroBox looks interesting but I use NVidia Docker for 3D stuff and when a app/tool needs a newer version of the OS or just to skip dealing with library variations. But ya, I have shelled into so many remote machines I’ve got lost as to why things don’t look right and then realize I was on a remote terminal instead of my local machine.
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Linux Mint on my main PC with Kubuntu sources added to keep my KDE desktop as up to date as possible. Only desktop I like cos it’s so configurable.
Used Linux since about '96 when I window$ went from ini files to the registry and have used at different times RH, Ubuntu, Mandrake etc.
EDIT: fogot about Gentoo, used that for years but compiling everything from source became a bit of a chore after a while.
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Thanks for the info. Looks like something I’m going to have to try out.
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That’s pretty cool! I just watched Jorge’s presentation on Cloud Native and it turns out I’ve been kinda forced to use a clunky version of that by not updating my main dev system from Kubuntu 18.04. Some apps have moved beyond 18.04 and have been built on newer Qt libraries while others are stale and haven’t been updated in years but are very usable tools. My way around it has been to stay on 18.04 but use docker with trimmed docker.file specifically for running LightBurn and a laser user home directory where LightBurn is installed and my laser files exist. Can be and was my regular home directory.
When I first learned docker it was after I wanted to experiment with PrimeSense’s tech using an ASUS Xtion Pro camera but wasn’t having luck and almost broke my host machine trying to get libraries setup since PrimeSense had been bought by Apple and their repo and web pages went dark. Got 3D acceleration working in the container with OpenGL and DRI exposure then worked on the libraries and eventually was creating meshes of rooms and objects scanned with the Xtion Pro camera.
I really like what I’m seeing in Jorge’s video. For giggles I’ll post my 3 docker files. ubuntu_docker.file creates the container using Ubuntu, I really should spec a version number though as this will eventually break when the default changes version.
FROM ubuntu
RUN apt update
RUN apt install -y libusb-1.0-0
RUN apt install -y libpulse-dev
RUN apt install -y libgl1
RUN apt install -y libxkbcommon-x11-0
RUN apt install -y libxcb-image0
RUN apt install -y libxcb-keysyms1
RUN apt clean
RUN apt install -y libxcb-render-util0
RUN apt install -y libxcb-icccm4
RUN apt install -y libxi6
RUN apt clean
RUN apt install -y libxrender1
RUN apt install -y net-tools
RUN apt install -y iputils-ping
RUN apt install -y libgtk-3-0 libwebkit2gtk-4.0-37 locales
RUN apt clean
# Set the locale
RUN sed -i '/en_US.UTF-8/s/^# //g' /etc/locale.gen && \
locale-gen
ENV LANG en_US.UTF-8
ENV LANGUAGE en_US:en
ENV LC_ALL en_US.UTF-8
RUN echo “mylaser:x:1000:1000:Doug LaRue,:/home/mylaser:/bin/bash” > /etc/passwd
RUN echo “mylaser:x:1000:” > /etc/group
ENV DISPLAY=:0
doit-launch which creates the docker container
#!/bin/bash
docker build -t ubuntu_lbr -f ubuntu_docker.file .
doit-launchLightBurn which launches LightBurn on the docker container.
so it runs the latest LightBurn running on an old 18.04 host.
#!/bin/bash
docker container run --device /dev/video0:/dev/video0 -u 1000:1000 -v /home:/home -v /tmp:/tmp -h Light --mac-address 02:42:ac:11:00:02 -it ubuntu_lbr /home/mylaser/LightBurn/LightBurn
#!/bin/bash
docker container run --device /dev/video0:/dev/video0 -u 1000:1000 -v /home:/home -v /tmp:/tmp -h Light --mac-address 02:42:ac:11:00:02 -it ubuntu_lbr /home/mylaser/LightBurn/LightBurn```
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Windows 11…
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@mcdanlj I trust your opinion on this, as I’m aware of your Linux credentials, which I feel exceed mine.
That being said, I’m little confused by your comment.
Which would you recommend: Alma or the new CentOS (and which version of CentOS?!?)?
Yes! 
Especially for a remote access physical system, AlmaLinux (9 for any new deployment) because it’s more conservative about updates. I do this for several systems, and it’s what Maker Forums Discourse and Maker Forums Social run on. (So, for everyone who is a daily user of either, it’s one of your daily driver Linux distros… 
)
I run CentOS 9 in a bunch of VMs where I don’t want to do major updates frequently. I’d generally prefer the faster update stream there too the old point releases where real fixes wouldn’t pass the bar for updates.
The thing that makes Red Hat and its derivatives “stable” isn’t really lack of updates. It is the processes and people backstopping quality.
In practice, another point for AlmaLinux is that they have made a strong point of working together cooperatively with Red Hat, whereas Rocky have really poisoned the well from a relationship standpoint. That trust-building benefits us generally, I believe. Usually in ways that are hard to measure, probably…
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I started off with Slackware (copied onto a dozen floppies off the university network) a while ago. Then Mandrake, Mint, and for some years I’ve been used Endeavouros.
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I’ve been very happy with Linux Mint but “had” to switch to Ubuntu 22.04 due to compatibility issues with LightBurn (specifically the camera gave me problems). I got help to solve the problems also from friends from this forum 
As a normal/standard software user who has worked for many years in Windows environments, I clearly prefer MacOS and Linux. I have helped friends once in a while with their Windows machines, but gradually I have forgotten a lot of handling Windows and recently, when I had to install wlan, printer and move data from A to B for a friend, I quickly got tired of it. … Windows 11 with its 365 policy and almost forced MS membership is not a step in a direction where I could consider changing OS again. Windows people say they were most happy with Windows XP…I hardly remember and are happy with Ubuntu
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