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Ask HN: What is your current main OS?

by selmat on 1/6/19, 11:53 AM with 11 comments

• by SuperNinKenDo on 1/6/19, 12:34 PM

  Antergos. I picked Antergos because I wanted strong access to the Arch resources like the Wiki and AUR. But at the time I didn't have enough time in the day to set up vanilla Arch. I'd thought that my experience running Gentoo a few years back would ha e helped me with that, but it didn't help me with getting Arch set up tbh. Antergos was a good compromise because I had previously used Manjaro, and found it just a little too far from vanilla Arch at times. As far as customisation goes, I first switched it to i3wm which was a solid experience, but then moved to xmonad. Beyond that I guess just the normal stuff like installing lots of applications and getting a nice Emacs environment set up by hand.

  As far as concerns go. My main concern is that the OS hide as little as possible while also not making me deal with super low-level stuff unless I really want to. So Arch is perfect for that. I want to be able to build things up just the way I want them, and create my own personal cohesive system. So again, Arch is a perfect choice there. After that it's the level of community support for Arch that has made me finally give in and love it, despite the fact that I resisted for so long.

• by AnIdiotOnTheNet on 1/6/19, 4:40 PM

  Windows 10, for lack of a better alternative.

  I chose it because it is the OS that works most like what I actually want an OS to work like, which still isn't really that close.

  I use O&O ShutUp10 to remove it's stupidest features, and make heavy use of portable apps. The portable apps are launched from a toolbar menu that acts as a menuized view of a folder, like the old fashioned start menu. It works great and if my system ever needs to be reinstalled I just recreate the toolbar and point it at the portable apps dir and I've got all my applications without any of this "installation" bullshit.

  My main concerns for a desktop OS are that it enables me, as a user, to use it as a tool to improve my life. Too many OSs these days are more concerned with making things "easy" for me by hiding my ability to configure things, forcing decisions on me "for my own good", and effectively locking me into walled gardens to get applications. Not to mention trying to sell me things. My computer is a tool and it should allow me to conform it to my workflow, not try and force whatever it thinks the ideal workflow is on me.

  It's also nice if I can actually use the hardware I paid for.

  Sadly, Windows 10 is the best the modern world can offer.

• by jrepinc on 1/6/19, 12:50 PM

  OpenSUSE Linux Tumbleweed with KDE Plasma desktop. Mainly because it has regularly updated software and it is very stable despite of this. And even if something would break I could just boot from a working snapshot automatically made just before the update. KDE Plasma desktop because I can customize it quite heavily to fit my workflow the best and no other desktop allows me this. And it also looks best to me. I also care about security and privacy quite a bit, and I trust GNU/Linux the most when it comes to this. It is also the most perfect OS when it comes to software development. Well Gentoo was even nice than OpenSUSE, but unfortunately I do not have the time anymore to compile everything and packages come in handy. Another thing I care a lot besides privacy is openness and user freedom so closed/totalitarian OSes like Windows and MacOS are out of the question for me.

• by chrisMyzel on 1/7/19, 5:43 PM

  Extremely happy with arch linux (antergos os, for convinience.of having an easy time.setting.up) with awesomeWM (big gnome fan but dont want to wait 10 secs until it is fully usable when running on mid/high end hardware, especially in times where booting takes.less then 15 secs - now I can be productive within 30 seconds from cold boot

• by karmakaze on 1/6/19, 4:42 PM

  For work, macOS High Sierra [I only upgraded when there's something I need]. Ubuntu 18.04 on most servers.

  At home, Ubuntu 18.04 with LXDE. It's the most nonsense free regular desktop experience with obvious similarity with the server OS I primarily use.

  I regularly try out other user-friendly desktop Linux distros and have my sister using Mint/Cinnamon without issue.

• by chewz on 1/6/19, 6:26 PM

  ChromeOS with Debian stretch in chroot on laptop - Macbook Pro and old Lenovo. Debian stretch on servers or raspberry.

• by billconan on 1/6/19, 3:55 PM

  ubuntu for desktop, mac os for notebook

• by jeffmcneill on 1/6/19, 12:11 PM

  Debian stable

• by itg on 1/6/19, 12:46 PM

  Arch Linux

• by gjvc on 1/6/19, 12:20 PM

  Fedora 29