Hypothetically, If Only One Could be available, Which One?

[carlarogers]

Even even if this crazy situation could happen, It could only happen for a moment. If a moment ever came or only one copy of Linux or UNIX was available, it would only be a few minutes before a new version would be available fashion from the first . Let's just say the situation is only one copy of Linux is available, to see what we can learn from discussing which copy you most want that one copy to be for your preferences? What about considering which would be the best globally?

I think it is worth mentioning that every distro seems to be distinguished by some extremely interesting and valuable principles. I never heard of a distro that lacked an excellent reason for existing.

I wanted to nominate Debian. It seems to be the overall best for quality, reliability, completeness. Debian is developed in accordance with great values and morals. No organization is better than Debian development in the standards of open source it provides. In my eyes, Debian is at the most advanced-without-bombs of any software anywhere. Debian has had a success of leaders with extraordinary talent beyond any sequence of leaders anywhere.

What say you?

 

[KGIII]

RHEL - not necessarily because I use RHEL but because they have driven so much of what is around the kernel ecosystem and because they've done things like demonstrate that running a business with opensource is possible.

Are they perfect? Nope, not even close.

But, I can't think of any other distro that has done so much for the community as a whole. They helped ensure Linux isn't just 'in' the enterprise segment but that Linux dominates things like the server market.

Personally? On the desktop I seldom use anything based on RH. But, I'm not thinking about myself when I answer this question. I gotta think of the whole system and what's best for the future in this imaginary situation.

 

[dos2unix]

It seems to be the overall best for quality, reliability, completeness.

I would say the industry doesn't agree with this. While many home users like Debian.
Redhat owns more of enterprise server market than everyone else put together.
It comes with many enterprise tools others distro's just don't have. Some of these things
(like clustering, and NIC teaming) can be added after they are installed, but other things
like Kickstart just don't have a real competitor in other distro's.

SuSE is second in Linux Enterprise market share.
Debian based distro's are a distant third.

 

[craigevil]

Debian. Simply for the Free Software Policy.

Debian Social Contract

www.debian.org

I have no issue with Red Hat, and I do know they contribute more to kernel development that most of the other distros put together.
I pick two Commercial RH, personal use Debian.

 

[f33dm3bits]

RHEL for server.
Arch for desktop.

 

[JasKinasis]

Debian has been my go-to distro for many years.
And ever since Gnome 3 was released - I've been a fan of installing via Debian minimal, so I can avoid installing the Gnome3 desktop and other things I don't need.

So I start with a bare-bones, terminal-only install and then switch to Debians Testing repos and update the entire system. After updating from Testing - I add the software I actually want and need.

And whenever a new version of stable is released - I'll usually switch back to stable for a couple of months, before switching back to Testing. However, since Debian 10, I've stuck with Stable.

Installing Debian via the minimal net install is like installing Arch. But with slightly older packages, much less manual configuration and almost no chance of breakage! Ha ha!

And it's an absolute doddle to maintain!
Install it once and upgrade it through different releases by explicitly tracking stable, or testing (or switching between the two).
The only time you need to reinstall is when your HD eventually dies! Ha ha!

 

[f33dm3bits]

Debian has been my go-to distro for many years.
And ever since Gnome 3 was released - I've been a fan of installing via Debian minimal, so I can avoid installing the Gnome3 desktop and other things I don't need.

Gnome 40 was just released in case you are curious about new features and want something different than DWM, just kidding

 

[JasKinasis]

Ha ha! No thanks! I'll be sticking with dwm for the foreseeable future!