Linux for programmers

[harsh4u89]

Plese tell me which linux(mint , ubuntu , fedora , opensuse) is best for programmers.

I want to switch from windows to linux.

Thanks in advance

Harsh

[Galik]

If you are just switching I would go with a major Linux distribution like Ubuntu of Fedora. I have used Fedora for many years and its an excellent platform for development. Very current, very stable and lots of community support.

I can't speak for the others you mention because I have never used them. But I would imagine any major distribution should be okay.

[mgupta]

What motivates you to switch from windows to linux?

I have used fedora core 9 for much time and tried out ubuntu.
Just installed fedora 9 again that day and crashed my computer trying to update it online with Fedora core 13.

I would say go with fedora if u have been using linux before or go with ubuntu as it seemed better for first time users to me....

[moorecm]

I've been a big Fedora fan but after about 2 weeks Fedora 13 stopped booting (I have no idea why--might just be a fluke) and I switched back other to Ubuntu 10.04. I recommend Fedora 12 or Ubuntu 10.04; I've been using both of them without issue.

I would say go with Ubuntu for home use. If you are interested in getting into professional software development Fedora might be a nice option because it is very similar to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), which you'll most likely run into in your career.

[1yR4jE8b]

Out of the distributions you've mention If you are new to Linux, then I would suggest either Ubuntu or Mint (Mint is based on Ubuntu but has some personal modifications to make it unique, I still prefer Ubuntu though).

I wouldn't go with Fedora with a newbie, I find it breaks often (in my experience, others mileage may vary), and the lack of support for certain (non-free) hardware drivers makes life difficult for some.

[Athar]

I don't know about Fedora and OpenSuse, but Ubuntu (and Mint, by extension) has a large number of precompiled libraries in its repository, including header/dev files and debug builds. This is very convenient, because you'll rarely have to compile/install libraries yourself. No matter how many dependencies a project you're working on has - you can install them all in just a minute.

[chrisname]

@darkestfright,
If said hard-to-find hardware drivers include nVIDIA graphics drivers, you can use the Nouveau driver. It's an open source NVIDIA driver with hardware acceleration and experimental 3D support.

[PanGalactic]

I would recommend Fedora for one reason alone: it is most similar to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), which has the largest market share on the commercial side. If you are planning to develop software commercially, you will almost certainly be targeting an RPM based distribution. Do your development on Fedora. Moving the code to RHEL (or CentOS) and Suse will be much easier.

Besides that, it is stable, developed by developers and feels like it is developed for developers. Unless it is completely bleeding edge, you can rest assured that any development tool available is packaged for Fedora.

I develop on Fedora, test on CentOS, deploy on RHEL, then port to other Unix environments. It works very well for me.

[1yR4jE8b]

Well, I wouldn't call the nVIDIA graphics drivers "hard-to-find"...but Fedora developpers do make it a big pain in the ass to get any driver that isn't free software to get to work on their platform. At least non-free drivers work in Ubuntu.

And Ubuntu has a much larger repository than Fedora, so I can bet that any usefull tool that is packaged for Fedora is also in the Ubuntu repos.

Either way it doesn't matter...Mandriva is a much better distro than either of them ;-P

[chrisname]

They aren't, but they're a pain to install. You download some 40 MiB .run file and if your distro didn't come with full source code you can't install it.

At least nvidia-xconfig works.

[bigearsbilly]

freebsd ;-)

any linux can be used for programming.
though some may support it better from the kick off.
ubuntu is a modern desktop distro which doesn't tend to have programming tools
switched on by default.

anything you do on one linux you can do on another.

[Kyon]

If you are just swapping and haven't use Linux before, go for a stable commonly used distribution like Ubuntu or Fedora. If you do know how things get around in Linux, I'd personally go for BackTrack (3 or 4).

[milkway]

it depends your target.

if you just want to use linux, fed- or Ut- maybe better.

If you are software developer, deb- is the best.

As for drivers for linux, my suggestion is "Donot to buy brand new /high perfermance computer except that the drivers you need are available"

[kajienk]

For beginners I would recommend Ubuntu as well.

Though I have switched to Debian beacause of programinig (couldn't get to run the PIC programmer under Ubuntu 10.04).

to conlude: use any major distributin ;)

[Seraphimsan]

I jumped into linux using Ubuntu. But have since moved to Slackware64....redesigning some things to fit my likeing :)

[stephane]

Because i'm a Fedora user i would recommand it to you... I've began linux with fedora, and now i'm still on fedora.

Even if the beginning were hard when i discovered linux, now i won't go back and use again microsft os. I'm so happy to use linux.

Dive into it! :)