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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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I'm seeing a lot of very interesting answers but I'm wondering what you mean by "production environment".
Do you mean VFX Production? (English not my first language so if "production" is used in different industries, well, I didn't know).
I'm new to the industry and worked for small companies that don't use Linux. But my VFX peeps use Rocky, Mint, and Ubuntu ( stronger preference for Rocky in studios).
In this context production means servers or machines which make money in a business. The partner term is normally staging: a testbed environment.
A company I worked at 2016-2022 used mainly CentOS and Ubuntu for all their servers at customers' sites
I always use Ubuntu Server. It was my first distro 20 years ago and it's still where I'm most comfortable.
My current job is all Ubuntu LTS, my job before that was all CentOS, and my job before that was a mixture of Debian and FreeBSD.
I was working as a DWDM technician sometime ago and IIRC most of DWDM hardware (or at least the Infinera ones, as I had used those the most) were actually running on Gentoo, which was kinda surprising for me.
But in "regular" environments I have mainly seen Ubuntu or Debian.
I work for a big enterprise, we have RHEL on all our Linux servers save for a few that are SuSe for SAP.
At work: Alpine-based docker containers. Flatcar Container Linux for host VMs.
Personally: Ubuntu Server. Some alpine docker containers.
Mostly cost. We used to run a lot of Oracle databases and they have become extremely expensive to keep running. So we are migrating to PostgreSQL. The servers were getting migrated to CentOS but now that RedHat fucked that distro we are going back to RedHat. Part of that deal is switching from chef to Ansible. So to save costs we are consolidating to a single vendor.
So what are the biggest differences. Or is it mostly the same? Also thanks for the responses!
I think Ubuntu is the most popular distro in the cloud, at least based on cloud provider metrics. Dockerhub shows like 30 million downloads a week for it regularly, which is a lot compared to most images. Debian would be good to learn as that's what Ubuntu is based on and all the major software with will probably target it. Alpine is good to learn as it's super slim, tends to be used for containers a lot.
I don't use Linux at work (I wish I did), but I default to Ubuntu Server for at-home Docker needs. I might switch to plain Debian at some point.
I recently finished reading a good docker book. They explained why alpine is so great to use: its like 16 MBs or something. I deployed a Minecraft server with it just for fun. Pretty cool. Shrunk the image a good 15 percent from a debian version I believe. Check it out if you want. Have a good one.
You're absolutly right, but this is about host os, not container os
For learning system administration, I think Cent OS Stream can be a great choice. Not because it offers something special than others but because it would familiarize you with the RHEL/Fedora family and in my experience majority of enterprise-servers are using one of its family members, be it RHEL, the former CentOS, Oracle Linux, Amazon Linux or some other variant.