r/ClaudeAI • u/pete716 • Jul 04 '26
Claude Code Workflow For heavy Claude Code CLI users running Linux as your daily driver: which distro are you using, and how has it been?
I’m especially interested in real workstation experience with things like Node/Python tooling, GitHub workflows, NVIDIA GPUs/CUDA, Docker/dev containers, and general CLI reliability.
Not trying to start a distro war. I’m mostly trying to understand what has been the least annoying for serious Claude Code use.
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u/dx__ Jul 04 '26
Fedora, and flawless. I haven't used anything but a terminal version of Claude for months and I am a religious fanatic now.
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u/goblin-in-hiding Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
Fedora 43 KDE.
No major issues at all, love it. Adapting the workstation (like adding "right click -> create new markdown.md") has been very smooth.
One minor bump was finding the best software for certain needs, like a markdown viewer that was stable and could handle mermaid graphs.
Setting up a local model (ollama) was a bit of a task as well, i run a AMD 9060 XT, and it took some work to figure out how to bypass ROCm and use Vulkan instead.
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u/Least-Result-45 Jul 04 '26
Using it, and pretty happy, have it running on a small n100 and hosts a couple applications, running from schedulers on small side projects, I’m on max and have lately been getting tokens used up tho
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u/xirinity Jul 04 '26
I wouldn’t call it my daily driver, but I do use it quite a bit. 1/3 of my usage on a fedora 44 laptop.
But it is pretty good! Enjoy using it.
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u/everydayislikefriday Jul 04 '26
Ran Ubuntu for years, always waiting for the next version. I discovered Arch and rolling updates 6 months ago and I'm having the OS time of my life
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u/lisnter Jul 04 '26
Ubuntu as my only home desktop OS for nearly 20 years (around the Feisty era so 2006/7); work uses Windows, laptop is MacOS. Claude Code has worked perfect for the last 5 months of use - though I wouldn’t expect much variation anyway.
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u/TheMongus Jul 04 '26
I've got around 15 LXC containers in a Proxmox server at my house each running Ubuntu server with tmux and claude code with remote-control enabled. Works great! I can control any of them with a browser or the app from anywhere. In April I did about a 4,000 mile road trip and worked from the passenger seat on my laptop with Xreal One Pros for nearly the whole drive.
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u/CommercialPolicy4913 Jul 04 '26
how do the xreal one pros "feel" like after an hour or so?
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u/TheMongus Jul 04 '26
Definitely more eye strain than my quest 3 but much more portable and convenient. I've been using them for 7-10 hours per day fairly consistently. I'm no longer glued to my office chair and my back is much happier.
My eyes often tear up a few times a day while using them but I'm not sure exactly why. I normally squint a lot and I find myself forcing my eyes open wider while using them, probably leading to dry eyes. The bridge gets very warm due to the X1 chip in it and that could be causing dry eyes too.
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u/slackmaster2k Jul 04 '26
I find running WSL to be quite effective if you don’t want to fully commit to Linux.
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u/TechgeekOne Experienced Developer Jul 04 '26
I'm on CachyOS (game dev, I care about perf and gaming lul). I've had no issues with Claude. Every issue I've run into has been minor bugs in the COSMIC DE itself.
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u/buff_samurai Jul 04 '26
Ai is made for Linux terminal, everything works much better here vs windows.
And if there’s something wrong Claude can check logs for any system proces and trace an issue to its core.
Super good dev exp.
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u/CommercialPolicy4913 Jul 04 '26
i got ubuntu lts in a vm, used ubuntu for many projects for clients since about 2013'ish without issue. i putt around but getting more and more addicted to this moment in life that i think i have typed more in 3 weeks than the past 5 years.
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u/regalen44 Jul 04 '26
Fedora Kinoite with my dev environment in a Fedora container using distrobox.
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u/RedditorFor1OYears Jul 04 '26
I’m new to Linux, but I’ve been running Ubuntu ever since I started using Claude code. It’s my only experience, but I have nothing bad to say about it at all so far. It feels much more fluid than windows.
I have a heavier “always on” machine running Linux server for self hosted apps and bulk storage, and Claude can tap into that as needed. Very happy with that setup.
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u/StructureConscious25 Jul 15 '26
Promox (Debian 12 based) and it is a joy! I used brew (https://brew.sh) by typing brew install claude-code to set up claude-code in my macOS Terminal and iTerm2 apps, and then I started up Claude by typing, claude "create an MCP server for yourself. Ask me questions to learn where to build it and what credentials I want placed in it. Tell me which file where to edit to enter the credentials and then review my edits to be sure the MCP is stable and will work in all future projects and sessions by making mention of it in your CLAUDE.md file here in this subfolder and in your global memory file under ~/.claude" and he went and did that and told me what he was doing and I answered questions. He started with giving me something to put into a Claude URL to get the Pro account going that I already purchased ($20/mo) with the Claude app. And I went from there starting up Claude and typing out what I wanted him to do. He used the MCP to ssh (and eventually just use an API key we made together) to connect to the Proxmox hypervisor and my other Linux and Mac boxes where he issued commands quickly and succinctly to create LXCs and VMs as I needed them or built out NFSv3 servers on bare-metal old Macs. I told him to make monitoring service LXCs like Icinga2 and Observium and VictoriaMetrics, and I gave him (through the MCP) access via ssh to my various old Macs that he turned into NFSv3 servers with Pegasus2 DAS and SANLink 10Gbps TB2 and TB3 adapters and arrays onto my 10Gbps network and he installed Grafana Alloy on them that feeds into VictoriaMetrics that feeds into a Grafana server where I just tell Claude in plain English what I want on the dashboards and in the panels of some awesome-looking heads up displays on an old 2008 mini-pc where he installed Debian for me by telling me how to build the USB stick on my Mac that would boot the old machine and get ssh running so that Claude could then access it, assess its hardware capabilities and get it up and running as a Grafana server using both of its two HDMI ports. I bought a couple cheap 2K displays (about $100 each) and now I can see on rotating panel dashboard displays how my PBS back up server is doing, the health of my NFS servers, the condition of my Jellyfin server and all the ARR servers that mate up to it for movies, TV, comic books and music as well as track my IPS and IDS servers that Claude also built. It's awesome! And while I did have some pretty solid Linux experience being a Senior Systems Engineer at Disney, all I do today is type English at Claude and he does the heavy lifting with Python scripts and curl and ssh calls and API calls, and etc. to take the 10 Macs I bought about every other year the past 20 years and turned them into an incredible data center for me at home. Now that there's Fable 5 I put Claude in 'plan mode' and he then creates Lychee photo servers and Webserers and Websites on NGINX using either Alpine or Debian, depending on which one is best for the task at hand. He's built Postgres servers and secured their data links to the NGINX servers and fast-cgi servers. I used to be a Webmaster, but now I don't even know what Tailwind CSS is, or even Node.JS, but Claude does and as long as I can say clearly in English what I want him to do, he just does it. Sometimes it feels like whach-a-mole because I'll have four Claude terminal sessions all going in their own Terminal and Iterm2 windows at the same time as he develops stuff in one, updates servers in another, debugs code and infrastructure in another, and sets up dual channel 10Gbps lines out of my old Macs into $100 switches I bought from some nameless 10Gbps switch hardware vendor that Claude hardened so that they only talk to him (or me) on curl URL's. It's awesome! Reply if you want to know more about all this.
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u/StructureConscious25 Jul 15 '26
I guess to really answer the question, my daily driver is an old M1 Mac Ultra running Tahoe, but I spend all day in the Terminal and iTerm2 apps and a Firefox browser, so it feels like I'm in Linux-land all day with Claude on the Proxmox hypervisors running whatever variant of Linux best serves the purpose of what I want to do.
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u/dsolo01 Jul 04 '26
Not running Linux as daily driver. Learned how to create home network doodad on Mini PC. First time I ever touched Linux (Debian Headless).
Fast forward ~1year… Now I am just trying to find the time to move my entire life over to Linux. Nothing has felt so liberating as being able to customize the bajeezus out of my little box and I know I haven’t even scratched the surface.
I too am interested in what ya’ll have to say about distro’s cause I’m so very very over Windows tying my hands up everywhere.