Every time I have been asked, "Which distribution do you use?" I have given a truthful answer: "I use whatever distribution my customers use. It depends on the situation." Typically, that answer is sufficient, but recently someone asked: "Who are your customers? Why is it dependent on customers? There are many 'Linux' (sic) distributions, like Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, etc. Anyone can choose what he likes."

So, in this column, I'll explain why, over the past 20 years, I've hesitated to tell people which distribution I use. First of all, I typically take no "honorariums" for the presentations that I make. I earn my money through writing and consulting. As a consultant, I sometimes do work for various companies, such as Red Hat Software. So, Red Hat is my customer. I think it would be fairly insulting to my customer if I showed up at Red Hat with Ubuntu on my laptop, even though I know from experience that the people at Red Hat would not say anything about it.

More importantly, the work that I do for Red Hat might be less useful if I developed it in a different environment from what Red Hat's customers typically use. If I were developing a solution that required a different media player from the one Red Hat normally delivers or a different codec from the one Red Hat recommends, this would create a needless incompatibility in the solution.

[...]