Any Linux Users?

[ApolloFC]

I'm just curious. If so what distro? What do you use it for?

I myself am using Xubuntu as Windows 7 has a serious battery life issue (6 mins max) on my laptop. Loving the fast XFC desktop environment and how everything on here is free. Even got my two midi-keyboards on here so that I can practice piano when my pro tools rig is out of commission, as it is now.

 

[PureXul]

I use Ubuntu on my laptop, have done so for a few years...over the years I've used Red Hat, SuSE, Gentoo, and Slackware on the desktop (or laptop) as well, but Ubuntu is so smooth and I'm just not motivated to spend hours tweaking config files to get shit working.

I also use FreeBSD for all of my servers (not Linux, but part of the *nix family).

 

[Diamond45]

I use Ubuntu at home, but at work we have RedHat and Fedora. A co-worker of mine uses Arch Linux and likes it a lot.

I also have a distro of PBX in a Flash for testing purposes which uses CentOS.

Used to use Solaris before that at work (not Linux but still part of the *nix family) until a couple of years ago.

 

[ApolloFC]

A co-worker of mine uses Arch Linux and likes it a lot.

I actually tried to install Arch Linux maybe last night and was wondering why it was being so difficult. The reason? It really is what you want installed lol. I was trying to use my laptop & wireless network to install it which doesn't work in the Arch Linux installation.. at least not on the iso I used.. regular ethernet connection yes no problem but I couldn't be bothered lying on the floor for a while thanks to a short ethernet cable lol.

 

[jhallum]

I was a Linux Admin, now more of a manager type. I use primarily Fedora/Red Hat as a part of my job. I have a Fedora box here at home that I use for some light server duty, mostly backups of my wife and my machines.

 

[jaimek]

Briefly played with RedHat about ten or twelve years ago; had Ubuntu on the netbook but royally borked a couple partitions due to an interrupted update gone bad, and have not had the motivation to go in and sort it out.

 

[spag]

I got started way back, like ~92 with Yggdrasil Linux. Nothing like having to FTP down and burn a huge stack of floppies. Probably moved to Slackware from there, and stayed with it till using Redhat. Most of the companies I worked for in the 90s and early 2000s were using it, so it was easier to just have that on my home/mobile installs as well.

I later went to Ubuntu like a lot of people, but once they released that Unity crap as standard I started going with Mint for desktop/mobile. Seems a lot of techies are following as well. If I'm doing an embedded project, I'll use something more in line with that.

 

[ApolloFC]

I later went to Ubuntu like a lot of people, but once they released that Unity crap as standard I started going with Mint for desktop/mobile. Seems a lot of techies are following as well. If I'm doing an embedded project, I'll use something more in line with that.

Man I hate Unity, its just like one fancy panel to me and you can't really customize anything aside from compiz options (which I don't use) i believe. They could at least make the dash full screen instead of half or whatever it is when you first click on it. I liked Mint but it was a bit too sluggish on the laptop for me.

 

[spag]

It's possible to go in an turn off all the Unity stuff, but I kept finding that I had to do it for each install, each VM I created, etc. Just got sick of it. Unity is about as stupid as what Microsoft is going to do with Windows 8. They both are essentially an interface for tablet/touch computing, that really has no place on a desktop system. Nobody is running Linux because they want a dumbed down system. Not like I'm going to be installing it for my Mom. Ubuntu is banking on it getting installed on lots of cheap PCs maybe. I think it's a mistake.

For speed issues like your laptop, you can never do better than going with Gentoo Linux. Installation basically compiles a machine specific optimized version, so you're always going to be at peak speeds. Normally, you're downloading a build that is compiled for a very generic machine architecture, and doesn't take advantage of everything. I ran it for a while just for the geek factor, but my desktop machine is such a beast, I never really notice the difference.

 

[ApolloFC]

It's possible to go in an turn off all the Unity stuff, but I kept finding that I had to do it for each install, each VM I created, etc. Just got sick of it. Unity is about as stupid as what Microsoft is going to do with Windows 8. They both are essentially an interface for tablet/touch computing, that really has no place on a desktop system. Nobody is running Linux because they want a dumbed down system. Not like I'm going to be installing it for my Mom. Ubuntu is banking on it getting installed on lots of cheap PCs maybe. I think it's a mistake.

For speed issues like your laptop, you can never do better than going with Gentoo Linux. Installation basically compiles a machine specific optimized version, so you're always going to be at peak speeds. Normally, you're downloading a build that is compiled for a very generic machine architecture, and doesn't take advantage of everything. I ran it for a while just for the geek factor, but my desktop machine is such a beast, I never really notice the difference.

Cheers I'll keep that in mind when Xubuntu releases their next stable version in april.