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Experienced Linux users, what are you using?
(lemmy.ml)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
The first linux distro I remember using was Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake), so I'm just about at 20 years, maybe a bit less than that; I think it had been released for a while before I decided to give it a go. I tend to stick with debian-based distros, though I've used arch variants off and on for my daily driver for years at a time. Still got it kicking around on some machines now, though not any of my daily drivers. Servers are a mix of Debian and Ubuntu Server, machines with UI are either Ubuntu or Mint, or some resource-light version of Ubuntu, depending on the device and the mood when I last reformatted them. I have used Fedora/RedHat/CentOS at various points, but usually because someone was paying me to do so. Same story with OpenSUSE, but even less commonly. I have a few devices running variously dated versions of PostmarketOS, Lineage OS, even one device that still runs CyanogenMod (it does not get internet privileges). I have a few Raspberry PIs that all run Raspbian (or whatever it's called now).
EDIT: Just remembered I used to use CrunchBang Linux for a long time. I bought the only computer I could afford (a "netbook" with Win 10 Starter), put crunchbang on it (after experimenting with a few distros), and really kinda fell in love with OpenBox. I don't use it anymore because I don't like the default settings and haven't been bothered to set it up properly lately, but I had that netbook set up just so and it worked really well. it was my main and only computer for several years.
Open/Fluxbox were so good
Both are still good and at least openbox has a wayland equivalent these days, labwc.
Agreed. I found a pleasure in using openbox that I have not found in other DEs. Working with such constrained and frankly crappy hardware made it worth the investment to get the UI as light and functional as it could be, and I'm pleased with the performance I got out of that little machine. It was fun to use. Then it got stolen and I had to start from scratch as I had no backups because I had nothing to back up to, and the task of replicating it all over again seemed daunting, so I decided it was worth getting comfortable with a DE that worked more or less how I wanted it to out of the box. There is something to be said for the ease of defaults, but I've never gotten a machine that "just so" , before or since.