I use xubuntu on my servers. This is based on the following criteria.

1. It has to be fairly stable, and fairly current.
2. I’m agnostic as to package management. I’ve used debian, rpms, portage and even conary. I’ve been using linux since 1998 and remember having to install X from the command line — in fact, I have used Arch and Gentoo.
3. The server has to run dual screens easily.
4. It has to handle the stuff I need fairly seamlessly. The core packages are darktable, R(preferably), Revman, and a recent version of Libreoffice.
5. It has to run skype. Yes, I know it is not open source, but it is cross platform and I teleconference all too much

I can get darktable, R and Libreoffice almost anywhere. Revman is the difficult one. It requires that one has a JRE version 1.6 (not anything earlier or later). This broke in Debian, and that forced me to switch to Ubuntu.

Reluctantly. Because I prefer not to have to update at any time. The reason I moved to Debian Testing is that it functions as a rolling release, without the craziness of a sid based rolling release (siduction or aptosid) or the fact that Arch and gentoo, at least in my hands, crash.

My productive machines cannot crash.

But Debian testing and Fedora break Revman.   So… I looked around and thought about Tumbleweed. This is rolling, somewhat tested (like Debian testing) but unlike Debian and revman it has a few more scripts and is easier to work with. It also looks pretty, and SuSE is one of the bigger distros that has been around for a long time, I have worked with before (including in the days before YAST2).   So… I downloaded the kde live iso and installed it on my dell test laptop.

• Installation was fairly painless. SuSE has the newest disk format (btfs) as an alternate, and I used that.
• After installing, I noted that kde had sped up considerably since the last time I used it. I use xubuntu because I dislike unity and mistrust Mir and xMir and that does a good enough job. KDE4 is polished, it’s easy to be productive, and works well.
• Upgrading to tumbleweed required over 600 MB of new files, but worked fairly well. Like fedora, Suse uses delta RPMs, which make upgrading fairly easy.
• Getting skype up and running and codecs running was fairly painless.
• But I cannot get revman to (easily) point at the correct version of Java.

It’s a more pleasant environment at the moment than Ubuntu. It feels more familiar, less new, and the shortcuts I understand and know just work. It is rolling, so I will leave it running for a few months. I may move the microlight laptop I travel with to tumbleweed as well.

But the production machines, at present, remain with Ubuntu. I’m delaying upgrading to the next version of xubuntu until I know that they have Mir sorted (which I think is not the case) or they can continue with X.org.

And I hope revman 6 is not dependent on such an old version of Java. One can hope