I used Gentoo for a very long time. I liked Gentoo because it was source-based, and I had previously had trouble with redhat's binary packages locking me into old versions of programs and libraries. Now I use kubuntu and couldn't be happier. Even though it's a binary distro, they post regular updates and usually have the latest versions of all of the software I want. It's pretty convenient being part of a big group of ubuntu users, too. I use kdevelop for my IDE. I use Sun's VirtualBox if I need to do something simple in Windows or OSX.

I started off with Fedora, but I've recently moved over to openSUSE 11. Something about it's ease of setup and use appealed to me after fedora 9 wouldn't do anything that I wanted. I have never been that impressed with Ubuntu unfortunately, not sure why, maybe it is the lack of a root user. I also run debian on my home web server.

Debian (stable) and Ubuntu. I'm accustomed to the Debian way of existence anymore.

I first tried Gentoo (That was a different experience since I was new!). Then I tried mandriva or mandrake (whichever...). Then I tried dual boot Ubuntu with win XP. Now I use Debian testing with XP dual boot and vista installed inside debian with virtualbox :D Debian is my final choice.

KDevelop is impressive in size but I can't get SVN to work with it! For everyone else it's straight forward but mine always fails.

I used Gentoo for a few years and now I'm a happy ArchLinux user. You get the latest versions of the packages, so you stay on the bleeding edge, and, surprisingly, it's damn stable -- an upgrade never broke my installation -- and I've had it installed for over a year now.

For development I use zsh, rxvt-unicode, vim, Emacs, Eclipse, and Code::Blocks -- whichever one is the most suitable for the concrete task.

At home, I have Ubuntu - currently playing with KDE 4.1, so I guess it morphed into Kubuntu somewhere. At work, on the desktop I use openSUSE (with Windows available in Virtual Box seamless mode). On various servers, we have some Debian, some Red Hat Enterprise, and a whole lot of FreeBSD (not Linux, I know - but I love it!).

For development, it depends upon what I'm trying to do. Lately, it's been Java projects - so I spend a lot of time in NetBeans. Otherwise, it's gvim + toolchain for whatever language I'm working with. In my virtual Windows, it's Visual Studio all the way.

Ubuntu likes: the Debian package system without the Debian long delays between releases ("testing" works great, too), includes just about everything I've ever wanted in the repositories, does a good job of getting out of the way when I feel like customizing things.
Ubuntu dislikes: Every release seems to break something (that's also a like, since I enjoy fixing stuff - but it's a big downside when I need to get something done).

OpenSUSE likes: the installer is really nice, it's solid/stable & detects my work hardware out of the box. Upgrading to 11 didn't break anything! Close enough to SuSE that some of the wierd SuSE certified software I encounter will work on it.
OpenSUSE dislikes: Novell (the company) suck, far fewer packages available, RPM in general, and it's HUGE.

Just started to use Ubuntu, so far it has been great. I mean it is not that much difference from any other OS, but it just works out of the box. The add remove application is a nice feature as well as dual desktops on the same monitor (something Windows is still missing). I will probably keep Windows though and use Ubuntu on my laptop when going on business trips.

I have also used SuSE and Mandrake (is that still around?).

Quote: Original post by Trapper Zoid
I'm still debating if the small market share is worth the extra development time and support effort.

I think this depends quite alot on your target audience, If you belive linux users will like the game you will probably be able to capture a very large percentage of them due to the severe lack of competition (Getting even 1% of the Windows users to even notice an indie game is hard, very hard, while linux users will notice pretty much anything half-decent that gets released for their platform), If it is primarily a multiplayer game it makes even more sense since the success will then be highly dependant on having a reasonable number of active players (Anything that can boost the number of players will make the game more attractive even for Windows users)

One other option is to simply write it for Windows but to avoid DX9/DX10 in order to keep it compatible with wine, This would allow linux users to play the game without forcing you to actually support it. (Ofcourse getting linux users to pay for a windows game that might or might not work after the next patch might not be as easy)