I am doing FPGA designs with Synplify & Xilinx tools. I converted the compilation machines at work to Linux. This proved to be a very good move. But unlike most of the poeple, I converted them to be remotely usable text only.
We are designing huge systems and as FPGA tools today demands a lot of CPU and memory, graphical environment would only slow down compile time.
For this, I am using the good old Slackware distro. I have to say that I like this one more than all the others because it does not have anything superfluous; no candy, just bare system tools. I want the CPU for my applications, not for any other helper software or any daemon that I don't need.
My opinion / experience.
tcn