LinuxBBQ

We have distros mixed in with the scrot threads, but I'd like to know what distros people are using, and especially why you chose the ones you have now. Think of this like a distro-hoppers thread -- what have you found, what do you like, and what do you not like (without meaningless bashing; you need a reason for dislike here).

Right now, I have Arch on my main machine, on test machines several BBQ spins, Debian stable as NFS server (and cups for printing), and several versions of CRUX, and an LFS with CRUX ports. I like Debian stable on my NFS box because I only have to update it once a month or so, and I put cups on Debian stable because I don't want to install the extra crap anywhere I don't need it. I like CRUX for experimentation with kernels and source, and BBQ because it has infinite variety. I also have an Ubuntu netinstall just to prove that it can be as lightweight as anything, when configured properly. I burned my Gentoo installs for reasons I have explained elsewhere, and I tried Void and exherbo and they just didn't click for me.

What do you have installed currently, and why?

honestly, I suck. I only use BBQ spins. I have Fedora on another partition, and a stale LMDE from awhile back that my wife was using for a bit. With Fedora, I wanted to try something that was different, and wanted a Gnome Shell to play around with. I liked it, see blog post, and did have aspirations, but those have gone by the way side for the moment. Nothing specific I could say I liked, but it was cool to be on something different from Debian, and experience a different package manager.

I've thought about trying out Arch, and have been interested both in BSD and Crux. I would try BSD or Crux before Arch. But I don't know, I'm not motivated at the moment. Maybe at some point.

BBQ is what works for me. Hell, I'd be happy to still be on Colin. But it was fun roasting Gruffalo, and I have it set up pretty well for now. I don't really do much. So I don't need much. Its a hobby.

No surprises what I use.

antiX on my main 64 bit desktop (to be precise antiX-base-maintenance Edelweißpiraten 01 October 2012). This is running the Sid repos and the latest 3.15.2 antiX kernel.
antiX on the partners PIII - running Testing and a 3.14 kernel.
antiX on the old Dell - upgraded from antiX-M8 which was Lenny based to Wheezy.

I have MX-14 on a partition just for testing on my main box.

I play with various distros in VB, 99% Debian based.
I use VB to try out the bbq spins and get some ideas for antiX :)

It's no secret that I'm a Slackware guy. After my one month adventure trying out Arch and borking it, I'm back to Slackware (64-bit) on my ThinkPad T61. This time I decided to go with running Slackware -current. Why Slackware? It's old-school, stable, and simple. Vanilla, non-patched packages, no dependency resolution (which is not to say that I don't appreciate this in other distros). It does what I want it to do, predictably and reliably, with no surprises. Patrick Volkerding is the BDFL, and otherwise the team is small (Eric Hameleers, Robby Workman, etc.). I like that more than 1000 developer democracies *ahem*. I like the Slackware reputation and ethos, and I like the name. :D I also have a partition on the T61 which I will put Apathetic Abalone on.

Prior to Slackware, I ran Debian stable for a long time. Somewhere along the way, it really pissed me off, I can't even remember why now, and that's why I ended up moving to Slackware.

I also really like OpenBSD, although I don't currently have it installed anywhere. I need to find a new home for this one. Like Slackware, I like the reputation and ethos of OpenBSD, and the focus on code-correctness, and security.

I have two generic old Athlon XP 2000+ computers at work, one which runs Slackware 32-bit, and the other which rotates BBQ spins (currently running Cream). Now that the Cream scrot-fest is done, I will probably wipe it and put Summer 2014 with spectrwm on it, or perhaps Chicken Wings or Zijwaarts. Like dkeg, I don't really do much or need much, Linux and BSD is a hobby. I make my living using Mac OSX all day, the defacto workstation standard of the commercial printing industry.

Every now and again I try out other distros, but frankly, they all seem like buggy beta software to me, compared to Slackware, and I just end up frustrated. Having said that, I'm still entertaining the idea of trying Gentoo or CRUX. I have found that I don't really care for any of the rpm-based distros (Fedora, openSUSE, Mandriva/Mageia), although the first distro I ever used was Red Hat (pre-Fedora).

It would be a shame if I wouldn't use the BBQ crap :) As for other distros, I am quite agnostic and always test out new spins (netinstalls whenever possible) of Ubuntu, Fedora, CentOS, different bootstrapped ones (DSL, jhalfs), gentoo, killX and Frugalware. antiX runs on a very old laptop of mine which I gave my father... I even have a YOPER installation that doesn't update anymore :) And if I see some Chinese localized version, they get a test installation, too (StartOS, Kylin, CDlinux)

I run Debian Stable on my only machine, for now. All the packages are available in Backports that I feel I need to have the newest of, or at least newer versions of (like Darktable, which usually improves a lot with every release, or Iceweasel, etc). That said though, I'm definitely not keeping it until the next release, that's just way too long, even for me. I'm always tempted by Arch and Slackware, and now Cream, maybe one of those will replace it soon.

^ Haven't you been running Ubuntu for a while?

^ Nope. I try it out every now and then, and that's it. Usually lasts about 1-2 hours.
Actually, it's installed on my mother's laptop, but she doesn't use it, so I might as well wipe it :)

Nice topic.
I mainly use BBQ spins, but I got some other setups:

- a Debian netinstall for busybox and other experiments on the Pentium 4
- Void Linux 32-bit which only gets updated once a week and I mainly use for testing WMs and scripts on a non-Debian distro
- Gentoo 64-bit to test my skills with kernel compiling (and of course out of curiosity)
- Arch Linux on my old but lovely Acer Aspire 1304XC. I'm keeping it pretty minimal, just to prove to myself that the old lappy still works well
- CrunchBang is still on a couple of laptops I don't regularly use, but as soon as I got time it will be replaced by Sidbang

Prior to these ones I put my hands on OpenBSD, LFS, Slackware, Fedora, Mint, Ubuntu, Bodhi Linux, elementaryOS and Trisquel. I like trying everything I can. :)

Oh right, forgot to mention FreeBSD and minix, but these barely qualify as distros :)

My main system that I use for everyday tasks is still Siduction Linux LXDE. I back it up regularly and I'm comfortable with it for online banking, etc. I don't claim that it is necessarily any better than my other systems, but trust has built up over months of use. In fact, it is probably due for a fresh install, because of built up crud from many ill-advised packages and configuration activities.

My second oldest system is openSUSE KDE. I mainly installed this one to use to help my son with his school work, which requires Flash. But I have found it to be a very capable distro. It is exactly the opposite of the things we strive to do here, but since it's isolated, it's ok.

My second newest system is Arch Linux Openbox. I maintain it, regularly, but I hardly use it anymore. My intent had been to replace Siduction as my main distro, but I just don't like it enough. I configured the wired and wireless networking, manually. That was a trip. Also, I installed this one from the hard drive, using squashfs. That was another trip.

My newest system is LinuxBBQ Summer spectrwm. It is my favorite tiler, ever. The guys on the BBQ irc channel are really helping me make this one hop. Lots of fun. I need to convert the file systems from ext4 to btrfs.

Tim

On my main laptop I have Antix and 1 or 2 BBQ spins (now only Cream :) , pentium 4 (see my sign)
On another laptop (HP Compaq NX 6310) now I have SolydXK with xfce but I'm thinking about to put Mint 17 XFCE on it :D

bbq/debian/killx/slackware/opensuse

I am a proud user of an every day aging Debian sid system that I installed in..., I do not even remember anymore, it was years ago and it still works perfectly. I love it! Therefore I really love pure Debian even though I am also a big criticizer of their "democracy". It is an old laptop. Sometimes I thought to put something else on it but I leave it until the hardware dies.
Yes, in the meantime I spiced it up with Siduction repos, BBQ tools and added Experimental, compiled some packages, used Git repos for WMs and it is rock solid!
Debian just works for me even with transition shit, sometimes poor maintainers of some packages, forced Lennart-ware etc. :P

Of course I run a BBQ spin, too, on one laptop. There I want to replace the old release with Summer because it is fun to use BBQ and we only use the laptop for watching movies.

Ubuntu, in fact, Lubuntu, now 14.04, is running on my better half's desktop. She upgrades the machine by herself every six months and it works perfectly! Yes, some bug here and there after newer releases and I purge some Ubuntu malware but other than that Ubuntu has a good reputation in this house. It really is a great distro for Linux beginners. I do not bother with Debian for her.

You can see, it is Debian all the way in this house.

Maybe I should mention for the sake of completeness that Summer (and all Summer-based spins) are pure Debian Sid/Experimental :) siduction and antiX repos are added, of course :)

i run a dualboot of a customized BBQ Boner and Win7. i really like them both and cant be bothered to try much else :)

BBQ all the way, baby 8D

I have ran a few others, but - I just install i3 and chromium on them, github a few confs over and that's it.
Not much point with the varying subtleties of packages and stuff for me!
I very occasionally boot into centos for wobbly windows.

^ Wux, don't you have Alpine running somewhere, too? Or, like me, did you kill it already in favor of something else? ;)

Fedora 19 with i3. I switched from Linux Mint because apt breaking so often was annoying me and ventured into the world of less user friendly stuff.

@bones Alpine was a trial for the server as it is super light weight, unfortunately it was hard work at every turn, I think I moaned about it here somewhere.
@wei try alpine and you'll find Alpine is user unfriendly, not that i've tried Fedora.
at least for multi RAID setup's with LVM and XEN and other abbreviations.

SO I went running back to debian, got the server setup in a day.
I really liked alpine though, I really tried to get it running, but i wimped out - everything is lightning fast.
felt snappier than the local machine, over a remote SSH. Installing stuff was super quick, as was booting/shutdown.