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What operating system do you use?
I'd imagine that this website probably has an above average linux user percentage, considering that one of the main principles of tildes is to respect your privacy.
Personally I use fedora. I started with windows, than moved to ubuntu when windows 10 came out. I tried a few others and settled on fedora because I wanted an operating system with a quicker package update cycle than debian, but I wanted it to "just work".
Arch. I love aur and having everything on bleeding edge
I'm on Manjaro because I love the Arch philosophy but I'm still a linux noob to deal with the actual installation process
In my opinion, the difficulty of installing Arch is severely overstated. If you follow the (excellent) instructions, and make an effort to understand what you're doing instead of just blindly bashing in commands, you will most likely be perfectly fine.
I fully agree with this. If one follows the installation guide from the wiki and does a little bit of extra searching of the wiki for some special cases (dual booting, wifi instead of wired during install), installing Arch becomes a relatively easy task.
Speaking from my own experience, I tried installing Arch just a few days after my first foray into Linux (Mint a few years ago). I screwed up once or twice while installing the bootloader, but on my third try I was able to make it all the way to a fully functional GNOME desktop.
For me the hardest (or at least nerve-wracking) part of installing Arch was nothing to do with Arch at all - it was the shuffling around of partitions to make space for the new OS. Windows didn't take too kindly to being punted onto a new disk! The only major speedbump I encountered with installing Arch itself was that the internet died at one point, but as I recall giving the DHCP daemon a kick fixed that and otherwise it was smooth sailing all the way.
Yeah, coercing Windows into working with partition changes and being fine with filesystems it doesn't recognize is never fun. I've actually never installed Arch in a single disk dual boot with Windows (I have a spare disk that I scrounged up for my Linux installs), but I've helped a few friends set up "proper" dual boots and had issues at the partitioning stage.
I gave up dual booting about 3 months after first using Ubuntu way back when it was 5.04. Too much hassle even then. Vista, 7 and 10 being more controlling of hardware just sounds like a dual boot nightmare.
Honestly, with a simple setup like the ones that Ubuntu and other mainstream distros will autoconfigure for you, I've run into no issues with dual booting with Windows 10. Even on Arch, the few problems that I've had have been noted in the wiki and pretty easily solvable.
Not trying to force you onto Linux or anything, but if worries about OSes not playing nice together are all that's stopping you from trying out modern Linux, I'd highly recommend giving it a shot.
The installation process is what lets you graduate!
If you really want to use linux, you could look into running a windows virtual machine with GPU passthrough. That's what i'm planning for my next build.
There was a great demo video from LTT/L1T the other day about setting up a GPU-passthrough that you might find handy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsgI1mkx6iw
Agreed, and you're welcome! Please let me know how it goes as I plan to do this myself eventually.
That seems really interesting. So it requires two video cards to run?
There's a dual-card "passthrough" option, then there's the single card "VM" version. Each has their advantages. There are several writeups out there from reputable tech sites that go into hard performance stats and common issues if you're deeply interested. For now, it seems the VM version is the best bet for novices looking to move to a *Nix only setup but still want to game.
Make sure to get both OS on a separate disk each. This way you can also natively boot each OS and then boot the other OS in a VM.
(Obviously you can't do GPU passthrough on Windows but it does come handy for that edge case when you need native windows but also do some work on Linux)
Huh, I've gotten such a system working before. I dual booted Windows 10 and OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, it auto configures the UEFI stuff when you install it, and while it won't encrypt it automatically, it's not very hard to do manually in the installer. It's definitely possible :D
Forgive menu ignorance but couldn't one just have a boot, Linux, and windows partition where the latter two are encrypted individually?
Sounds like Windows. I remember spending what felt like hours trying to figure out why it wasn't seeing a USB key I'd made with a main Linux partition (ext4) and a smaller windows partition (NTFS) for the odd work file or whatever. Turns out the NTFS partition needs to be first or Windows gets offended.
So precious.
Oh sorry, I misunderstood. It can't do full disk encryption for both Windows and itself, I thought you meant have itself in FDE and then have Windows alongside it (with or without Bitlocker, so like a separate FDE, but still on the same disk). In that case, yeah, you might be out of luck... Out of curiosity, what's the reason for having them both under the same FDE?
No problem! Let me know if you run into any problems, I'd be glad to try and help if I can :)
Would using two different drives make it possible? If not, I also recommend you check out PCIe pass through in a VM (this requires two GPUs, though).
Well, last time we had this thread it was Ubuntu, but now it's Arch :)
Arch+Sway+Firefox really feels like home now. It's lightweight, snappy, and doesn't abstract stuff away from me. Genuinely superb.
How you liking sway? I use it at work and have had a couple bugs here or there but overall quite like it. The devs currently have a philosophy of "don't file but reports, submit pull requests" which is interesting, but I think it's because they're pushing for a big release.
I really like Sway. I'm currently using a bleeding-edge build and while it is a little buggy, the excitement of having new fixes and features every time I
git pulland rebuild outweighs the niggles. I think they will accept bug reports for v1.0 when it gets fully released, but in the meantime I think it's perfectly fair that open-source devs with limited time to devote to the project don't invest too much time doing tech-support for users who are cutting their releases from what is effectively the dev's own working directory.Oh I'm fine the stance. Why support the old codebase when you're sprinting for the rewrite?
I'm the one who's an idiot for using arch with some obscure window manager in a production environment.
Turns out I can't get any work done lugging a mouse around using a crappy trackpad and figured it'd take more time to chisel down a Debain or Ubuntu installation than to plop i3 on top of Arch.
I think I went with sway because I assumed it might be less complicated a stack than xorg or something, but I I think mostly because it was new and shiny.
I rebuilt sway a couple of days ago* and am pleased to note that trying to move floating windows no longer crashes the desktop! Also, a load more dialogs in day-to-day applications seem to float-by-default which is great.
I think a lot of Sway issues aren't really Sway's fault, so much, but a simple consequence of the fact that a large proportion of applications end up running through Xwayland, which naturally causes some weird behaviour. Hopefully in the near future Firefox, Rofi, and other key applications (for me at least) will become wayland-native.
* 1.0-alpha.4-43-g27f65b94 (Jul 22 2018, branch 'master'))
Sorry, it's hard to tell if i'm reposting with no search feature
I'm not criticising you for reposting! I just wanted to highlight that I'm a new convert :-)
I think the anti-reposting culture of reddit is one hell of a flaw.
There are 10,000* people that hear about something for the first time each day. Why deny them the ability to share their what they've learned simply because it had already been posted some time ago?
I'm technically missing a step. While I went straight from Ubuntu to Arch on my desktop (well, I still have the Ubuntu install, but Arch is now the daily driver), I used Manjaro for several months on my laptop and grew very fond of pacman, pkgbuild, and the AUR. When exams were over, I treated myself to a weekend alone with an Arch install disk. Well worth it, and nowhere near as painful as people make it out to be. I'm glad to be free of the bloat that comes with Ubuntu, Manjaro, et al. As an outsider, it's hard to understand what Arch (and Gentoo, and LFS) people mean when they talk about the feeling of being fully in control of their system - it seems rather abstract - but I now know exactly what they're talking about. It's very satisfying to be able to scroll through the output of
ps -Aand (with the exception of some kernel stuff) know exactly what everything is and why it's running.Really? I don't think the progression would be that uncommon. Ubuntu is (or was) most people's first introduction to Linux. Once they get comfortable with it and start looking into other distros, Arch is bound to come up. I don't think most people using it switched straight from Windows.
I don't think the complexity curve is that steep between Ubuntu and Arch, at least not as much as some other distributions like Slackware or Gentoo. But I last used Ubuntu in the late 2000's, so there was probably more command line stuff then than there is now.
Ubuntu today is pretty damn polished. I'd say there's no significant complexity difference between Ubuntu and Windows today (in fact, if I had to judge, I might even declare Ubuntu the victor). On that basis, I think there is a considerable complexity leap from Ubuntu to Arch. I'd agree there are bigger jumps (Gentoo, GuixSD, Void, Slackware) but that's beside the point.
As someone perfectly happy with Ubuntu, can you share the upsides of Arch (or other distros) that cause people to switch?
Thanks! It doesn't sound like it's for me. I value stability and dependability a lot in my OS and am not interested in "bleeding edge" anything as I have a terrible track record as an early-adopter.
Thank you for the suggestion. I'll look into it more :)
I'd switch from ubuntu to debian in a heartbeat if they would just add night mode.
Agree with @apoctr except I don't agree with his comment about Arch being toxic and elitist, and the installer thing is for me an upside.
I'd also like to note that pacman is a nice package manager and makepkg is a good build system. Apt feels a little clumsy by comparison. Furthermore, the lightweightness is really nice - there's just so much less stuff by default which is really freeing.
I had forgotten, but definitely installing and using Arch got a lot more involved when they got rid of the install wizard for some reason.
They got rid of it because there was noone interested in maintaing it. I don't think it's a great loss - that niche is almost entirely filled by Antergos these days anyway.
I am using multiple, depends which computer and what purpose. NixOS (Linux) at job and as primary system for doing general stuff at home, I have been using it for a few years now, I love it because it just do not age by design - every other operating system that I know it will age and become slower by potentially every software you install. I am using Windows 10 for gaming, which I do not do much lately. Recently I am experimenting with Manjaro (Linux) which is the only distro in the top 5 of distrowatch that I could setup - the lazy way - on Lenovo MIIX 320, with actual battery indicator working, but that is probably because of higher versions of Linux kernel in the official repos.
NixOS <3
I have it on close to a dozen machines now...I've actually lost track.
/etc/nixos as a Git repo replicated using Syncthing means I have all my common configs shared between machines. Standing up a new machine becomes trivial because all the little setup bits you normally forget over the months / years are version controlled.
I run OSX and mostly love it - except when I don't. Most of my computer use is based around work. I do various levels\aspects of user support (from basic fixing, to full user communication management (info management) to KB management to CRM to technician training etc) and running Mac with a Windows dual boot just works for me. I rarely have to switch over to Windows but if it wasn't for fighting MS Office formatting and functions on Mac (Office in Win is still leaps above Office on Mac or online) I'd probably be fine without the dual boot.
Something about the way the software just works - still - is what I like. The touchpad on the laptop can be set exactly right for quick and easy control and the Mission Control feature is so useful for being a mobile worker.
I know all of this can be replicated in Linux but I always felt like I was fighting Linux and I'm just tired of fighting my computer. It isn't fun to "tinker" that way anymore. It's one of the reasons I switched to console gaming (even though I'm worse at FPS there than on WASD controls). Win10 is fine... but it's just ... missing some basics I like on my Mac. Something as simple as a window opening in the background not stealing my cursor focus while I type...
I decided years ago that I was tired of fighting my computer and would rather focus on the content/work rather than spending time configuring a machine so that I could get to the content/work. MacOS is the only system that fits that bill for me. I used to run Linux and Windows as separate machines or in vm's on my Mac but now I'm Mac-only.
Yeah MacOS has been great for me for development, and my MacBook (outdated 2012 Pro, yet decent even now) has the best touchpad I have used which has negated the use of a mouse.
However all the new MacBooks are just bad hardware for me (Escape in the touchbar, the dongle issue). I really want a new Mac, but all the new ones suck. I just wish I could buy MacOS for other hardware :/
I'm still running a bit older MacBook. The keyboard on the newer ones with the really shallow travel for keypress bugs me (and I don't like using the touchbar because I touch-type and expect buttons to be static not dynamic). Maybe these are things I can learn to live with or will be better implemented in newer iterations of the hardware.
Yes, the keyboards too, the older ones had an appropriate travel time and a nice clickyness. The new ones have Butterfly keyboards (I think they wanted to slim it even further) which has broken down on few friends' Macs and on many posts I've seen on /r/apple.
Home: Windows 10. I hate it, but I like PC gaming. A GPU passthrough is something I've seen brought up, but from what I've looked into, it seems like far too much of a headache to deal with on top of my 40 hours of programming every week. I also don't want to risk somehow screwing up my only home machine, again, just trying to get something to work. I just want to be able to install a game and play it without having to research and implement potentially several solutions and then document whatever I did after the fact just so I can hopefully replicate the setup later on when something inevitably goes wrong and I can't find the damn article/documentation/video/whatever I used last time.
Work: Ubuntu. It's easy to set up, package installation is typically a breeze, it's reliable, I can have a consistent environment across dev and production, and it just fucking works right out of the box. I love trying to run a command through the terminal, being told it's the wrong command or that it isn't installed, and being told exactly what it is I need to do to resolve the problem (e.g. which command I probably meant, or which package needs to be installed). I don't have to run to a damn search engine or dig through
manpages for the most common, basic stuff. When I already have a forty-hour week of programming ahead of me, not fighting my OS is a huge source of relief.Phone: Android. If it weren't such a hassle, I'd probably run something a bit more bare-bones than what's currently on it. If a proper Linux phone ends up being available in the future (especially one that gives me root access--even if password protected--by default!), then I'll happily snag one.
You've probably noticed a trend in these OS choices: convenience. I have neither the time nor the energy to keep looking for solutions buried in obscure documentation or forum threads or to keep looking for workarounds to deal with things that should be easily solved. At this point in my life, I just want my OS to work and to provide me with the functionality I want with minimal effort, especially if I come home after a long day at work and just want to play a game instead of spending a couple of hours trying to figure out what the hell this error is that apparently everyone else has experienced but has had a completely different root cause than what I'm dealing with (a problem I've experienced far too often).
One thing that I hate about software in general these days is you have to choose between software that's convenient and software that respects your privacy.
It really is frustrating. It seems like that invasion of privacy is at first used to improve the user experience via an opt-in feature (acceptable, because at least it's opt-in), but then inevitably shifts to default mining of data to the point of knowing what you're seeing and when, pushing ads, and trying to increase "engagement" by manipulating the way you interact with the software to the point that it's a nightmare to deal with.
I actually find Windows 10 to be incredibly inconvenient in many ways, but it's convenient enough in the ways that I need it to be that I deal with it. I'm looking forward to the day that I can just ditch it completely, though. Facebook is a nightmarish trash pile that I only use to keep in touch with friends I would otherwise have difficulty keeping in touch with. Reddit has devolved into a steaming cesspool that I only glance at on occasion then immediately get sick of because it's turned into Facebook lite.
It seems like the software always starts off okay, hits a peak where you don't want them to touch anything because it's perfect as it is or you just want a couple of little long-standing issues fixed, and then the entire thing ends up having a complete makeover or the fundamental underlying mechanics get completely reworked and everything that was good about the software ceases to exist. And that shift from perfect or near-perfect always seems to be tied to further efforts to make the software a more profitable investment. In general, the more a company needs to monetize their software, the worse it ends up getting.
Anyway, I've digressed enough. I'm just a curmudgeonly Millennial getting increasingly frustrated at being treated as a product and not as a consumer.
Have you heard of the Librem 5? It's a Linux phone. It doesn't exist yet, but the company behind it, purism, seems legit and does sell the librem15, which is a sleek aluminum Linux laptop.
I've seen mention of it in another post, actually! If it turns out to be any good, then I'll have to look into grabbing one myself :)
If the phones are anywhere nears as poor as the laptops I'd stay well away. My librem 13 has been a total pain my tail.
Could you go into more detail about that? I'm interested in the whole privacy first philosophy of Purism but I've never used any of their products.
I might be a special case but my first laptop had two dead keys on it and needed to be rma'd, and now after less than a quarter of light use the wireless card seems to have given up the ghost. Even simple things like interface enumeration cause a kernel panic because the chip has powered off or something. Even weirder, you'd think I could work around this by flipping the famed hardware kill switch? Nope. It seems to just manipulate rfkill, so is basically software, doesn't stop the device from being visible to the kernel so I still get the stacktraces. I need to rma it, but I lack the willpower to do it atm.
OpenSUSE Tumbleweed! It's perfect.
What're the advantages of using btrfs?
I use it for instant snapshotting. Makes backing up consistent views of system trivial as well.
How's package availability? snap, flatpak? Up to date drivers and kernel? Looking for a distro to put on an old computer I'm giving to a friend. Web and gaming.
I can probably search for all that myself but hey.
To be honest, if you are going to install Linux on an old laptop to giving to a friend, I would not recommend OpenSUSE unless your friend has used Linux before.
I would instead recommend Solus MATE. It's lightweight, simple, and fast. The software repository is small, but you can install Steam, drivers are handled automatically, etc.
At the moment I'm dual booting Arch and Windows 10. I'd like to switch to Arch solo, which I ran for years, but I've got a VR headset and my computer is too old for GPU passthrough.
I will say I'm impressed with how far we've come over the last few years with native releases. VR is as of yet a no go, but aside from that I've got access to most of my library.
Huh, too old for VFIO but beefy enough for VR? Interesting combo. I'm also not sure how well VR actually works with passthrough, it's quite a bit of extra timing-critical hardware.
I mean you can stick a 580 in any old 2600k build, but Intel didn't start including the relevant virtualization extensions in the K series chips until Devil's Canyon (4790k).
I'm currently dual booting Archlinux (i3-gaps for the win) and Windows 10.
I ended up in this situation because, while Windows 10 is great for gaming and daily use, it just wasn't cutting it for programming and my other computing interests. In addition, I was really starting to miss the simplicity and power of the i3wm setup that I'd been using for a while before I installed windows.
I unabashedly use Windows 10, mainly because I have an irrational soft spot for Microsoft.
void masterrace represent!
I'm running the latest beta of macOS 10.14 Mojave.
I am using Ubuntu Mate for now, I installed it on a usb and use for ~20 hours in a week.
I use Debian, OpenSUSE, Windows 10, and FreeBSD in various capacities on different computers. Windows 10 for games, FreeBSD as my file server and my old desktop, OpenSUSE as my new one (although I'm thinking going back to FreeBSD), and Debian because it's the only distro that supports all of my Thinkpad X60t's hardware pretty much out of the box.
Debian has long been my OS of choice for servers since it's so stripped down. The base install, then installing only the components you need makes me very happy.
For personal use though, fuck it. I'll just throw windows 10 on there.
Fedora and Win 10. I use certain proprietary software that I need 10.
Dual booting debian and Win10 Enterprise LTSB on my laptop. Win7 on my home theater PC.
I don't really use Win10 on my laptop, but I do need to have it around. I've been working on getting passthrough working in qemu so I can replace the dual-boot setup with a VM, but I've run into all sorts of issues with that. In fact I actually compiled a patched version of OVMF_CODE.fd today with my vbios patched in, just to try again with a newer version of qemu, but that didn't seem to help.
I used to be exclusively Ubuntu or Fedora since 2006.
Until I got my XPS 9370 a few weeks ago and decided to let it stay on Windows 10.
I've become very disappointed in the stagnation of desktop Linux over the last 5 years or so.
Still got Ubuntu running as a home server.
Could you please expand on this? What things are you missing from desktop Linux? In my personal opinion, Linux today is as polished as it has ever been, and the lack of massive architectural upheavals (besides Wayland finally coming of age) is a sign of maturity not of stagnation.
Not sure I'll be able to articulate what I mean very well. I agree it's stable and things work well.
There don't seem to be any improvements to appearances that seem unified. I feel like that's more an issue brought about by Ubuntu spending a long time trying to get Unity going somewhere and then ditching it recently and going back to Gnome. And gnome default/Ubuntu themes looks pretty gross with its half hearted layout and design pattern copying of osx/anywhere else.
I don't really agree with this. Love it or hate it, if you plump for GNOME 3 and the standard array of GNOME applications, you get a pretty consistent experience. It's probably not as good as Mac OS, but it surely beats Windows (which is a consistency trainwreak and has been since the ill founded move towards 'Metro' applications). As for Ubuntu, perhaps you disagree, but I think it looks really rather nice these days and I don't think it's fair to say it's ripping off its theming from other operating systems. In some ways returning to GNOME was a step backwards, but I still think Ubuntu is in a better place now than it has been before.
Anyway - the nice thing about Linux is that you can opt out of the mainstream anytime you want. As I've mentioned elsewhere in this thread, I use the Sway compositor, which, for my usage patterns, provides a better graphical computing experience than anything else I've ever used. Anything else feels clunky and condescendingly imprecise by comparison.
Theming gnome has also had the ability for some rather nice looking setups. But it still lacks cohesion and consistency.
The window frame/title bar themes differently from the gtk window. The shell themes independently again. And then when you think you've got it figured out some program you have is apparently using a different toolkit and themes its own way again.
openSUSE Tumbleweed. I've had Arch for about a year now, and while I love it and have learned a lot, I want something that combines that bleeding-edge rolling release with learning a distro that's relevant to business use (looking to shift gears into an IT role soon).
Personal: Windows 7, Windows 10 Pro, Server 2008, Server 2012, Server 2016.
Professional: Windows 7, Windows 10, Server 2003 - 2016, ESXi, NetApp ONTAP.
Debian Linux. I've also got the Debian-derived MX Linux installed on my main system, although I'll probably migrate back to Debian sometime in the near future. Both run Xfce, which has a nicer look on MX Linux.
As many as possible, and grateful for the mentions above of a couple I don't have VM's for - OpenSUSE and Manjaro. It used to be a big joke that I was an "OS whore".
My daily driver is actually a Chromebook with dual boot to Gallium through Crostini - I'm comfortable with the security model (for everything but Google looking over my shoulder), I can play with a few Android under-the-hood tools, and Linux-native apps are coming. Everything else at home is running on VMWare ESXi, thanks to a sweet deal through VMUG for the vCenter tools.
I'm ops, not dev, so my workware is Windows in every flavor from 2000 to 2016, a miscellany of Linux-esque appliances (ESXi, XenServer, firewalls, etc.) or Mac OS.
Actually gave up on running chromeOS and switched full-time to Gallium because it appeared that Google gave up on the idea of Android apps working on my model. Gallium worked so much better than chromeOS could anyways, and I had the occasional need for more advanced USB devices than the ancient version of Linux ChromeOS offered.
Honestly, I don't like Chrome anymore. It's too bloated. Even before Firefox went "quantum" it ran faster than Chrome, even when it was on chromeOS!
Another shoutout to Solus plasma. I might move off though. It is becoming quite apparent limitations of small team, despite their excellent efforts.
I wish it were just that. Ikey is currently on a much needed time off, and his absence is unforgiving. Even when Ikey was there, I remember one particular incident where kernel was downgraded to then unsupported 4.15 for two weeks, because later version wasn't integrated properly. Such things demonstrate weak spots. They show that Solus grew too much too fast, and it can get unwieldy at times.
Don't get me wrong, I see just how much the team works and is doing pretty good job at keeping things alive, but that's not enough in long term. Maybe they'll fix things, and I'd happily hop back on. Until then, I'll keep looking for replacement.
I used only Win 10, but few months ago, I installed Ubuntu as dual boot. At the beggining, I almost didn't use it, but in few months, Linux has became my primary OS. Now I only use Windows when I write C# (Visual Studio is so good) or when I play FTL (because on linux steam sync doesn't want to work).
MacOS X at home, Windows 10 at work, Ubuntu on my VPS.
I'm finally so fed up with the lack of decent scripting on Windows (and the fact I just can't install Cygwin/bash everywhere) that I'm trying to learn more PowerShell.
Ubuntu on my laptop, Android on my phone. They both mostly Just Work™ – but Ubuntu has just enough flexibility to let me poke around and
breakimprove things if I have the need to. I used to root my phone, but I've stopped for now, since it seems overwhelmingly likely that it will bootloop at some point, and I'd rather not have to try to convince them that it wasn't my fault when I have to return it.According to that article it affects at least the LG G4 and V10 as well as the Nexus 5X. Anecdotally, I can confirm that the 5X has a bootloop problem, as I've already had to return one that died after just under two years – there's basically an entire subreddit of people posting about their dead phones at /r/nexus5x.
I'll probably keep using it, I guess – I don't really want to splash out on something like a Pixel 2 when this is still basically working fine. Hopefully there'll be a less expensive Pixel at some point...
Solus Linux and Slackware for personal use. Ubuntu server and Win7 at work.
I've been using Arch for about the past 5 years now, and the installation on this machine has been going for about 3.5. I use i3wm as my window manager on a Thinkpad X220. It's a bit of a stereotype, but the tiling functionality is a great fit, especially on the 1366*768 display.
On my phone, I use LineageOS with microG for the few apps that need Google's messenging service. Most of my applications come from F-Droid.
Essentially, yes. My phone is a Oneplus One, which has an unlockable bootloader and a strong community building alternative versions of Android for it. At the moment, installing Android ROMs is about the closest thing you can get to a custom OS on most phones.
For what it's worth, I probably wouldn't buy one of their phones today. They don't have the best track record for customer service if someting goes wrong with it. When it comes time to get a new phone, I would look into the ability to unlock it and install third-party ROMs on it, if that's something that interests you.
That's what's most important to me, anyway, because when the manufacturer stops supporting a phone with software updates most people have to buy a new phone to keep current. This phone is going on 4 years old now and I don't feel any immediate need to get a new phone since I've been able to keep the software current using LineageOS.
Debian for gaming, and OpenBSD for my laptop. I have some qualms with Debian but for gaming I think it's the easiest option (other than Ubuntu). OpenBSD feels simple and closer to what a Unix-like system should be.
On my phone, Lineage OS. It's Android minus Google and minus all the bloat that your carrier pushes.
Nice
All three: Gotta triple-boot on my desktop: Ubuntu for coding, Win10 for games, and MacOS for music production.
windows on my desktop because games and Im to lazy/ dont feel like reinstalling all my programs on Linux. solus os on my laptop
I have a desktop with Windows 10, a Laptop with Windows 10 and two Raspberry Pi's running Unix (Raspbian)
I used Windows (starting on XP, 2005 maybe?), then jumped straight to 7 (the school computers still used vista, not good nor bad), stayed there for a long time. When i bought a new laptop it came with shitty windows 8 (no start button, riddled with bugs), then i jumped to 7 on that laptop (for some reason also full of bugs), and after losing my mind fixing windows bugs i jumped to linux mint mate; it was love at first sight, everything worked as expected, the games i played worked without a problem (warcraft 3 RC and FT).
Then the laptop died (it was a toshiba one, pretty solid construction, but the gpu decided to go kaput, maybe a reflow would make it work again) and i bought a new one (asus, with less than two years it started opening itself... anyway), it came with windows 8.1 (a pretend to be fixed windows 8, still filled with bugs, like going to the power menu and clicking power off did absolutely nothing), i couldn't handle that thing for long, so i decided to go to kubuntu (i think it was kubuntu, not sure though), it was meh, with a few bugs here and there, at that time someone recomended me to use the arch wiki to search for problems, that was when i decided to try arch for the first time, i followed a youtube guide (yeah, i know), but it somehow was also filled with bugs, so i did a new arch installation reading the install instructions on the file/wiki and it was the perfect setup, but i did dumb stuff (like make install on the system) which made the system go unstable, then i bought a desktop where i first tried windows 10, oh... that shit was compared to windows 8 better, but compared to windows 7 way worse, i couldn't handle that for long and then i decided to dualboot with arch, i have that installation running (not in the way of uptime XD) for more than a year and haven't had problems since, then i decided to remove windows 10 from dual boot cause everytime that thing updated grub somehow broke, and now i have that thing inside a virtual machine (which i only boot for oculus rift, and that is like once a month or when i'm with friends, which is also rare :D, i like the headset, but software support after oculus was bought by facebook is really bad, the windows software rarely works as expected) with pci passtrough for the gpu.
TL;DR; I started with windows XP, went trough all windows versions till 10, got introduced to the linux world trough linux mint, and now i'm running only arch linux based systems
Debian Stable and NixOS on my portables, OpenSUSE on the desktop. At some point it really makes no difference what distribution you are using; they all have their peculiarities that you can seemlessly transition between, once you know them.
NixOS with it's different paradigm is another story, though. I really enjoy having essentially one config, but then again I don't quite find the time to really learn writing nix. Every custom package I built until now has sort of been hacked together until it "works for me"™. Also, I found the nix store chugging really hard on my SSD, which is why my main portable is running good old Debian again.
Win10 w/ WSL on my desktop, Ubuntu 18.04 on my laptop. I can't ditch Windows entirely yet because I'm a gamer and my GPU isn't powerful enough to manage a passthrough without noticeable performance degradation.
Gaming PC: Windows 10.
HTPC: Windows 10
Laptop: Mac OSX
Phone: iOS
Work: whatever they want me to work on. Solaris, RHEL, CentOS, Debian, Windows, I've done it all.
I have no real loyalty to any particular OS or company, and will use what best suits the needs of whatever project I'm currently working on.
Linux is my preferred operating system.
Most of my computers run Arch Linux, but I also have a few running Debian Sid (Unstable) as well.
Thoughts on Arch and Debian Sid as regards things breaking? I really want to use Sid but I have had breakage so do want another computer as backup first
I had Sid running for a year now and I haven't really had any notable issues that I can think of. I keep the system fairly light though so that may or may not be a factor.
I have not had any issues with Arch either. On rare occasions there is a manual intervention required while updating, but those are always announced in multiple locations.
Windows 10 for gaming, Arch for development, and OSX at work.
Windows 7 for gaming purposes x 2 (kids).
Partner's laptop came with Windows 10 but considering going to Linux.
Custom Android ROMs for phones.
Android TV for Nvidia Shield.
UnRAID for file server.
I dual boot Linux Mint and Windows 10. At home at this point I'm not using Windows that often, because I've been doing a lot of programming and watching videos, and the game I'm working through (Half-Life) runs great even on crappy nvidia Linux drivers. I am hoping to someday soon get GPU passthrough on a desktop and say goodbye to Windows.
Home: Ubuntu. I'm running openbox with Compton on Ubuntu since my home laptop is an old and slow i3 with 4gb of RAM. I chose Ubuntu because it has a lot of mindshare and anything that is outdated or nonexistent in the repos is almost certainly available as a PPA, and it's stable enough that I don't have to worry about it not booting up after an
apt full-upgrade.Work: OSX Sierra. That's what they give us. At least it's not Windows. I updated to the latest version to patch against KRACK.
Win 10, and I ain’t ashamed. I spend plenty of time being cool at the command line on other machines. :)
I run CentOS 7 on servers, and have MacOS in a VM on my Windows laptop for iOS related duties.
Edit: I should add that after Vista came out, I got really pissed and ran Ubuntu for a couple years as the daily driver. That was a really good move because it exposed me to Linux again and that led to my current job. Ubuntu is great if you want to get into Linux. It is relatively pain free.
Home laptop: Elementary OS (based on Ubuntu 16.04)
Home desktop: Windows 10 (games :/)
Work: Ubuntu 18.04
Interested in trying arch at some point.
I'm also thinking of rebuilding my gaming machine as a vfio virtualized Linux host/windows vm hybrid. Windows is really getting on my nerves.
I was a Mac guy forever (classic through to MacBook pro 2008) , and I'd switch back if I had more money and they made good computers like they did 10 years ago.
Mint 18 on my indoors laptop, which is mainly a media / browser machine. Doesn't need any of the performance or configuration advantages of "serious" Linux distros.
Dual Boot Windows 10 and Ubuntu Studio on my shed laptop, for low-fuss drunk gaming and high-fuss audio tinkering respectively.
I'm begrudgingly running Windows on my desktop. Because Im a gamer but dont want to do complicated stuff. On my work and study laptop I run osx. I have an Ubuntu vm to host a few websites.
Fedora, FreeBSD, NetBSD and regrettably, Windows 10 for games I can't get running at all on Linux.
I use Win7 on my desktop, Win10 on my laptop because I was pretty much forced to.
Debian Stretch for most things, Win10 LTSB for certain apps and gaming. They are installed on separate hard drives.
Sorry for the super late reply, haven't logged on for quite a while. I'm using a KMS activator from the MyDigitalLife forums with the 1607 LTSB install.
Windows 10 on my laptop.
Elementary OS on my PC.
Android on my smartphone.
Windows 7, though I'd be using XP if it were practical.
Currently FreeBSD and 4.3BSD Quasijarus. Might switch from FreeBSD to OpenBSD when it's time to upgrade.
Debian!
Linux mint 19 as my primary OS with a Windows 10 dual boot for my secondary and games. I can run about half my steam library from Linux so not too bad honestly. I got sick of all the stuff I kept seeing about msft wanting to turn windows 10 into an OS as a service. With ssds dual booting is pretty quick.
I started with slackware then moved to Debian and have mostly used Ubuntu for the past ~5 years. As I've gotten older I'm less interested in futzing with the system. Ubuntu provides the polish and Debian a solid base and both are compatible with my morals regarding Free Software and my aesthetics for software design and functionality. Lately I've been playing a bit with Nix (on Ubuntu) and look forward to watching where NixOS goes.
MacOS + NixOS for me. I find I do most of my web-flavored development on MacOS due to the better tooling (for my workflow), whereas I use NixOS for passion projects and anything Ops related.
I use Windows 10 Pro on my desktop and laptop. I also use Raspbian on both my Raspberry Pi's, one which I use as a network adblocker with Pi Hole and the other Pi is my local NAS device
MX-Linux, an awesome Debian based distro that is fast and stable like a rock. I was using Manjaro, but when the performance degraded after an update I came back to my beloved MX. It installs a complete Xfce system in less than 10 minutes and comes with a lot of niceties, like snapshot tool, an installer for extra packages like Google Chrome, Spotify and Dropbox, Repo Manager and Nvidia driver installer. But the main thing for me is that once I install it just keeps working without a hitch for as long as I need. MX is the best kind of boring. I'd be using pure Debian if it worked with my wireless card, though.