I use Ubuntu mostly because it's a supported desktop OS at work. I like how it's fairly trivial to install (I'm tired of trying to hunt down drivers that I need to modify and compile myself just to get basic functionality - that's great for college kids but I'd rather actually use my computer than fight with it) and the Debian-based apt-get system is very nice. Granted, the last time I ran a RedHat system it was just known as RedHat (not RedHat Enterprise Linux or Fedora) so I don't know how it compares with Yum.
I came from Slackware in the late 90s, dabbled with RedHat a bit in the early 2000's and then only played off-and-on until about two years ago. Before home routers were popular I remember making a Slackware-based router using the IP Masq rules - fun times! I'd probably rather play with CentOS (the free version of RHEL) or a BSD variant for my own servers today, but since I use Ubuntu on my desktops it's just more consistent to run the Ubuntu LTS server version for my webserver, DNS server, IPv6 router, and media server (all separate VirtualBox instances on a hypervisor).
Fundamentally I haven't found anything that Ubuntu can't do that another distro can, nor is there much other than the installer that really makes Ubuntu all that special (even when compared to non-Debian distros). I find it kind of sad how much self-hate there is in the Linux community - way too much of "oh, you use that distro so you must be an *****" and not enough people actually trying to make the Linux ecosystem a better (and nicer!) place.
I run standard Ubuntu, but with the migration of the window management buttons to the left and now moving from GNOME to Unity I'm seriously tempted to move to Xubuntu's UI. My desktops and laptops are the latest released version (sometimes a beta if there's something I really like) but my servers are the latest LTS version.
I came from Slackware in the late 90s, dabbled with RedHat a bit in the early 2000's and then only played off-and-on until about two years ago. Before home routers were popular I remember making a Slackware-based router using the IP Masq rules - fun times! I'd probably rather play with CentOS (the free version of RHEL) or a BSD variant for my own servers today, but since I use Ubuntu on my desktops it's just more consistent to run the Ubuntu LTS server version for my webserver, DNS server, IPv6 router, and media server (all separate VirtualBox instances on a hypervisor).
Fundamentally I haven't found anything that Ubuntu can't do that another distro can, nor is there much other than the installer that really makes Ubuntu all that special (even when compared to non-Debian distros). I find it kind of sad how much self-hate there is in the Linux community - way too much of "oh, you use that distro so you must be an *****" and not enough people actually trying to make the Linux ecosystem a better (and nicer!) place.
I run standard Ubuntu, but with the migration of the window management buttons to the left and now moving from GNOME to Unity I'm seriously tempted to move to Xubuntu's UI. My desktops and laptops are the latest released version (sometimes a beta if there's something I really like) but my servers are the latest LTS version.
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