I'm on Ubuntu, and using it for Gaming, though wishing Graphics drivers were better. What distros do you use, and why?

I'm also kind of curious what window manager people use. I'm probably going to install Linux soon (thinking about Arch).
Probably on a secondary HDD.

Ubuntu for work & play:

1) Debian-based

2) Got lot of momentum so good indirect support in the form of existing literature

3) Stable and very polished with things that usually work well out of the box without too much finicking

4) Has a desktop and server offering (and now many more)

I like Ubuntu for the ease of use as much as the wide variety of software for it, being Debian-based really helps on that score.

And it is so amazing for development purposes..

Ubuntu with Unity. Installed it a year ago as my first distro and it's still on my HDD. I've tried to run couple of liveCDs of Debian based distros, but all seemed rather... similar. So I didn't bother to change to anything else.

I have an empty partition waiting for me to try my patience and bravery with Arch, but it probably won't happen soon. ;P

Distro: Arch 64 bit
WM: Openbox

No display manager or desktop environment. startx all the way.

Distro: Debian Stable 32bit
WM: Openbox
(Tint2 for taskbar and systray)


I have to agree with hummer010: startx is the way to go!

Already an interesting topic, I've learned some things by Googlesing some of the things mentioned here ;)

I was using ubuntu since 2005 up until version 8+ (hardy heron, if I recall the version's name). Then I began my endless search for the best distro my netbook could handle. Lost count with how many distros i worked for a while, but now I'm using Peppermint. It's the only distro my old netbook (celeron 900mhz, 1gb RAM) can handle without lagging (ok I used some tiny distros such as puppy linux and the likes but I didn't liked them). Recently I downloaded openSUSE just to give it a try..

Also, I'm using Windows 7 (strictly offline) for the gaming and music production. I use Linux for everything that has to do with the internet plus some good old gaming.

I am thinking about a dual boot system, have downloaded Debian and plan to install it in the next weeks, need another hard drive for that. But now I think Arch Linux looks interesting. Any recommendations which I should use from the two?

I mainly used SUSE Linux for a long time, but when I set up my new computer, I installed only Windows 7.

I used to use Zorin 6 a lot, it was my first distro I ever used, all the way up to Zorin 9. I had it installed on my new computer and it screwed up for unknown reasons, so currently Mint 17 Cinnamon. Cinnamon is great!

I'm not currently using Linux because my last job required a good knowledge of Windows. I have used it as my main O.S. for work and at home in the past and probably will go back to it in the future.

The distro I ended up using back then after trying many is Slackware. Since starting to use Windows I have tried new fangled distros like Ubuntu on spare and virtual machines but I am not a fan. I think Ubuntu is great for people who don't want Windows or Mac and do not care about what happens under the hood, but not so great for those of us who think playing with configuration files and compiling our own Kernel is as or more fun than playing any game.

Since I do not want to start a fight I will add that I would never do renovation work, work on a car, do garden work but do understand that lots of people find those kind of activities more fun than playing around with an Operating System.

The only things stopping me from getting back to Linux right now are: Windows games I own but haven`t played and money to get a second hard disk as I`d prefer to keep a Window system as second O.S. on its own Hard Disk. Hard Disks are cheap but my current income is very limited.

I have used some of them (Debian, Mandrake, RedHat, Fedora, Suse, Ubuntu...) and I'm actually using Xubuntu x64, in both my i5 laptop and my intel atom netbook. I began using Ubuntu when I started installing Linux to some relatives, because it was easier to configure than Debian (I consider .deb package management better than others like rpm). When Unity came in the 12.04 version, and considering Gnome 3 and KDE were resource hungry too, I switched to Xubuntu (Ubuntu with a lightweight desktop manager called Xfce). So my recommendations are: 1) Debian based (better package management) 2) light desktop (Xfce, Lxde) 3) stable releases (so you don't have to reinstall / do full distro upgrades each 6 months)


I use it for studying, work, home use and gaming (through wine or virtualbox).

Fedora, KDE, X64.