Most of the time I tend to use Ubuntu, given it has one of the largest user-bases and often documentation and search results are easiest to find when searching for answers. Originally I used Redhat as I liked Linux distributions with package management systems like RPM rather than compiling source, like you need to with Slackware for example,
Over the twenty or so years (I started toying with around 1993), I have also used:
- Redhat (the original before they became Fedora)
- Fedora (what Redhat was formally known as prior to splitting into Fedora and RHEL)
- RHEL (Redhat Enterprise Linux)
- CentOS (spin-off of RHEL)
- Debian (what Ubuntu was originally based on)
- Whitebox (spin-off of RHEL)
- Slackware (source-based distro, super fast as it is very lean and geared towards hardware-specific configuration compilation)
- SLES (SuSE Enterprise Linux)
- Puppy Linux (live CD version of Linux that's designed to be pocket-sized)
Whilst not strictly Linux, I've also worked with various *NIXes (POSIX-compliant UNIX) varieties over the years, mostly at a back-end, commercial support capacity, with many commercial-grade ERP systems such as SAP and Pronto hosted on UNIX.
- SCO-UNIX
- HP-UX
- Solaris
- FreeBSD
- MacOSX (derivative of FreeBSD and NetBSD)
- Dragonfly BSD
Given I come from a Healthcare I.T. (H.I.T.) background, many PAS (Patient Administration System) platforms historically tended to be hosted on various flavours of *NIX, though this is not so much the case these days as many wanted to start the transition to pretty graphical GUIs rather than text-based, end-user GUI:
So there you have it, in reality, my tendency has always been to lean towards operating systems with reasonably adequate documentation and a strong user-base rather than having to sit there reading "man" pages continually looking for that one switch command that's going to finally get my server running.
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