Linux Distros for a Windows Software Developer? 85
Omega1045 asks: "I am a software developer, writing client/GUI software in C# (.NET) on Windows and server software in a UNIX environment. I have used Linux in the past as a firewall, server and more but have never used it seriously as a desktop. What Linux distro and tools should I look to for a switch? I definitely still need to run Win2k (in a VM would be preferable) for testing and other purposes, but want to live as much of my monitor facing life as I can in Linux. I also need the best laptop and Wireless PC Card support (D-Link in my case) from the distro I choose. Have any Slashdot readers gone this route? What are your recommendations?"
Why switch? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why switch? (Score:1)
Too many times when using a windows client I've had to sftp files to my FreeBSD box in order to use some tools on them that just don't have native windows versions and then sftp the results back. Running windows in a VM-type setup would sure make that process a lot easier, for example.
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Kirby Reviews [generalhouseware.com]
Re:Why switch? (Score:2)
If you hate gnu utilities, you can pay mks a bunch of money for their port of posix compliant unix utilities.
Re:Why switch? (Score:2)
I've used both Cygwin and Debian, and it's much quicker to SSH into my Debian box (that's already set up how I want it), than to get Cygwin up on a box (both the first time, and every time I nuke the OS and reinstall W2K.)
Re:Why switch? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Why switch? (Score:1)
I hate to break the news to you but mono is not quite ready yet.
Re:Why switch? (Score:2)
Web app stuff is a little weak, but the poster of this topic was developing client apps, not web apps. While SWF on linux isn't at all there, GTK# is (and works really, really well). Not ideal, but if you prac
Re:Why switch? (Score:1)
To test the 1.0 version of mono after installing it, I attempted to run an nunit [nunit.org] test of a middleware assembly (no GUI) that I coded for the ISV that I work for. The test runs without mishap using Microsoft's VM but crashes when using the mono VM.
I get this message (with different line numbers) 2863 times.
I get this messag
SuSE (Score:2)
Re:SuSE (Score:1)
Re:SuSE (Score:2)
The good thing is that, unlike fedora where 3rd party sources containing MASSIVE repositories of rpms are all over the place confusing you. With SUSE there are like two, and they have less packages than the cd's do not more. In fact, if you actually manage to find a 3rd party repository for yast that has something in it besides the base distribution, let me know.
Re:SuSE (Score:1)
You can use up2date, yum, or apt-get to update your system too (apt-get isn't on FC1 cd, not sure about FC2).
Re:SuSE (Score:2)
Re:SuSE (Score:2)
Start with Knoppix (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sure MandrakeMove is going to be about the same, but Knoppix would be my "default" choice simply because I've had great experiences with it to date.
I use Knoppix on my main development PC at home; works great and it takes about an hour to fully rebuild it from bare metal if/when I get the inclination. That hour includes the time to:
- apt-get update,
- install netselect-apt & run it to find the fastest repository
- apt-get update again from the fast repository
- apt-get upgrade to bring everything up to date
- install a few other things like Postgres, Zope etc.
Re:Start with Knoppix (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Start with Knoppix (Score:3, Insightful)
By the way, the original poster mentioned doing development with C#. I've been playing with Mono on my Knoppix-installed dev PC at home for a while now, and it works fine. Not sure
Re:Start with Knoppix (Score:2)
I didn't even bother to mention Mono. I figured, considering the timing of the post and that Mono has just reached 1.0 gold, that
You won't use just one distro... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd suggest Mandrake to start with, since it is actually easier to install than Windows XP. It's easy to use, and it has URPMI, so it is MUCH easier to upgrade on EVERY PACKAGE than Red Hat or Suse. Then I'd bear in mind that this is just your first use of any distro, and that you'll get a chance to find out the strengths and weaknesses of it, and you'll move on.
After you've had a chance to get used to Linux, and are looking for something more powerful, try Libranet. Libranet is based on Debian, but without the impossible install (Debian-ites will say the install is easier, but that's relative. It's easier than it was, which means it's easier than getting a root canal.) Since Libranet is about to publish a new version, you can get 2.8.1, which is what I've been using on a few boxen, for free at their site. When their next version (3.0) comes out, you can easily upgrade to that version with one or two commands.
I've made my recommendations based on what is easy to start with, and on the general principle that after you get used to Linux, you'll most likely want to try something different. Debian is easy to upgrade and maintain, but even Libranet can be hard to install for someone who hasn't been using Linux for a good while.
I know there are other easy to install distros (like Linspire and Lycoris), but Mandrake is the only easy-to-install-and-maintain distro that is "mainline" in terms of including all the goodies Linuxers want on their system.
And, to anticipate comments that Mandrake is too easy, made for beginners, or doesn't let you have fine control over settings, ANY distro lets you have as fine a control over settings as you want. Some have easy to use config panels (like Mandrake's "Mandrake Control Center"), but in ANY distro, you can bypass their control panel and edit all the config files by hand, if you want. -- So it's not going to take away control, it just makes it easier for someone who isn't already a full time Linuxer to install, setup, configure, and maintain.
Forgot to include... (Score:3, Informative)
With Mandrake, I don't even think about hardware as a problem. With other distros, I find I still have to worry about it.
Re:Forgot to include... (Score:2)
Just remember your goal. (Score:1)
Remember why you want to have Linux, and stick with the distros that fit that niche. At guess I would say you should stick with a major commercial distro. Don't be fooled by the "just emerge foo" crowd. Gentoo is a great distro, but if you want to get up and running SuSe, Fedora, Mandrake, all can be installed and updated in an hour or so if you have a fast internet connection. Also if you are a C# programmer, remember to at least insta
Not the easiest approach but...Gentoo (Score:3, Insightful)
It took about a week and a half on and off to get my laptop(HP ze4240) fully working. We're talking 2.6.5 kernel, Xorg w/ dri cvs for 3d, linuxant modem driver, etc. But then you get in to things like my pcmcia DLink DWL-650 rev P 802.11b card wasn't support by the rev of the wlan software even in Gentoo so I had to go out and get the latest version of that.
You might just want to go to http://www.distrowatch.com/ [distrowatch.com] and just try the most popular free distros till you get one that works on your system without too much hassle. You could also take a look at http://www.linux-laptop.net/ [linux-laptop.net] and see how other people faired at various distros on your laptop model.
It does and doesnt matter (Score:1)
Realistically... (Score:3, Insightful)
VM Software (Score:2)
Re:VM Software (Score:2)
Re:VM Software (Score:2)
Re:VM Software (Score:1)
Re:VM Software (Score:2)
Easy! (Score:2)
Re:VM Software (Score:1)
Re:VM Software (Score:1)
Re:VM Software (Score:1)
I was in the same boat (Score:3, Insightful)
Pick a more configurable distribution as your comfort in the *nix world increases. You might want to start with a "standard corporate distro" like SuSe or RedHat. And then use something like Debian, Slackware, or Gentoo later on.
Go through as many distros as feasible. It's a good learning experience.
Re:I was in the same boat (Score:2)
Gentoo (Score:3, Insightful)
All kidding aside, as a developer who is new to Linux as a way of life, you really may want to Look into Gentoo, as it lends itself to a lot of learning quickly, and as a developer, you should be savvy enough to pick it up
Gentoo: Beats the first rule [blogspot.com]
Re:Gentoo (Score:2)
Slow progress up (Score:3, Informative)
I used Redhat About 5 or 6 years ago. I moved to Mandrake because it supported my hardware better, and I used it up until a year ago. Then I moved to Gentoo where I am today.
Start with Fedora or Mandrake. You will learn things there, but only so much. They will probably suit your needs for quite awhile. But invariably you will find things you don't like. And the user friendly guis wont have an interface in place for you to make things the way you want them to be. And the rpm packages available wont always be the way you want them to be. When you start feeling like you want more control over your pc and it starts getting frustrating to do things its time t move.
This is when you move up the scale to gentoo, debian or one of the distros based on those two. Gobolinux, knoppix, libranet, etc. Also there is the lesser known lunar linux which is quite good. You will find one of these that suits you and that is where you will end up. Through the process of setting up this distro you will learn all the things you didn't know while using the easier distro. Rays of enlightenment will shine upon you from the heavens. Well, not quite, but it feels good.
It is possible you will be eternally satisfied with Fedora/Mandrake. If this is the case, good, don't move up. The only reason to move up the scale is if you are the kind of person who is dissatisfied with the user-friendly offerings. However, there are also people who are still dissatsified with gentoo/debian level distributions. These people do something called linux from scratch. I like to call this unemployed linux for obvious reasons.
Yeah, someone should really make a heirarchy of distributions in a nice graph. LFS could be at the top with lindows and xandros at the bottom. I'd do it, but I have a job. By the way, I'm all gentoo in this house, and yes I am a ricer and proud of it. Insert an emerge joke here.
Debian+KDE (Score:3, Informative)
Don't Switch (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm being serious. You state your requirements up front:
You are a Windows client developer and you need Windows for testing ergo you should run Windows as your desktop. If you have other unstated reasons for wanting to switch to Linux then I suggest you tell us what they are. We can't just guess at why you want to run Linux.
Remember that you can run Linux in emulation on Windows too. Either in Virtual PC, VMware (I know VMware isn't really emulation), or even the free QEMU these days. So any desire to have the "server software" on your laptop shouldn't be a deciding reason to switch to a Linux desktop.
Re:Don't Switch (Score:2)
This is my home dev laptop, which means I probably use it for c# software dev about 5 - 10 hours a week. Also, we are looking at migr
Re:Don't Switch (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, that's great. You've identified your primary reason for switching to Linux is security and your secondary reason is that Windows requires too much maintenance.
I don't think any Linux distribution will ease your maintenance woes. Although I find Linux a lot easier to maintain than Windows I know this isn't the case for the majority of users. You should definitely avoid the high-maintenance and high-experience distributions like Debian and Gentoo (disclaimer: I personally use Debian).
Regarding security, any distribution that regularly updates their packages in response to (or preempts) CERT advisories would be fine. You don't want to get into secure distributions like Smoothwall; they will not give you a good desktop experience. Nor do you want to use Linux distros like Knoppix that don't have a formal mechanism for deliving security updates.
I think a paid and supported version of SuSe, Mandrake or RedHat would be your best bet. They offer the best balance between ease-of-use, ease-of-administration, cutting edge features, and automated security updates.
Don't kid yourself that Linux is "better". It is different. For some jobs it can be better. For some jobs it can be worse.
we're revoking your slashdot membership (Score:1)
Re:Don't Switch (Score:2)
I found SuSE 9.1 to be pretty much painless to get up and running, beautifully themed right out of the box, and extremely easy to keep up-to-date (with YaST/YOU), but the versions of software that are available on YaST are not always the latest ones. For example, as of this writing they're still on Firefox 0.8 and Thunderbird 0.5.
By the way, I had
Slackware (Score:2)
Re:Slackware (Score:2)
Now seriously... other people address the question of distro, but nobody's hit his Wifi card yet. D-Link's Linux compatability chart is somewhere in their support section.
slacker for life (Score:2)
But for what this fella needs, I can't say. There are distro zelots all over suggesting gentoo, MDK, RH, FC2... etc. and they all have their good points.
My _personal_ opinion on what he should use (and this is because I prefer it and do develop for windows on occation) is thi
Re:Slackware (Score:2)
I've just installed Vector Linux 4.0 [vectorlinux.com] on my laptop and on an older desktop - it's a good way into a fast efficient no-frills linux system. I'm a windows developer so my work laptop is a w2k machine, to make it bearable I've installed niceties such as bash [cygwin.com], gvim [vim.org] and perl [activestate.com]. You could use Bochs [sourceforge.net] machine emulator to run w2k under linux. If you dual boot, you can use thunderbird email on a dual boot system [texturizer.net] with
The predicted recommendations... (Score:2)
There are about three hundred Linux distros available. Expect all of them to be recommended here, plus five different BSDs and two commercial Unixes...
Linux is like sweet love (Score:2, Insightful)
coLinux (Score:1)
Suse 9.1 (Score:3, Informative)
I tried the following, listed in order of preference:
Libranet 2.8.1 - very nice commercial Debian system, but apt-get doesn't work like magic 100% of the time.
Fedora Core 2 - very nice, but some immediate stability problems with Gnome Nautilus (crashes while trying to do Samba client things). Samba Active Directory features do not work as the pretty GUI tools would suggest. I'm sure with ample configuration of smb.conf and other conf files it may work.
Knoppix 3.4 - very slick, but actually using it off CDROM is painfully slow. HD install not flawless, but once you mkswap manually you fix the one problem. Installs too much crap.
Debian Sarge - same as Libranet, without the handy Adminmenu and other Libranet goodies. Same apt-get issues.
FreeBSD 4.10 - nice, but building non-bin-supported products from ports gets old quickly. Firefox took ages to build on a 2GHz workstation class machine.
Then I tried Suse 9.1 Personal when the ISOs were released free. Very very nice. High quality, great polish. YaST is quite good, but not perfect. Package installation using YaST is nice when it works (usually does), but when it fails you get no details about why it failed. You end up doing rpm from command line anyway, and as with all Linuxes you find that the reason for the failure was a missing dependency or a conflict.
Ramming (force) the latest Samba server and client software down rpm magically got me a system that can painlessly connect to Active Directory network shares via Konquerer file manager, and after manually starting smbd and nmbd, I have a working Samba host. Very pleasant.
My great desire is to find a distro that automagically does Active Directory membership/browsing, as well as hosting of shares within the domain. I also long for some kind of package management system that doesn't have every package fighting with every other package, or doom me to using several old version software.
I'm sure this is naive, but I'd be happy with every package/app going in its own directory, and including (or automatically downloading) every library it needs and storing it in its own dir.
If there's one huge huge rough spot in Linux/BSD desktop adoption, it's package management. None of the existing systems - ports, rpm, apt/dpkg work in all cases.
Good luck.
and Red Carpet (Score:1)
SuSE 9.1 is definately the distro you are looking for
install Red Carpet (Ximian) and you should be able to install mono just fine... you can develop just about anything in monodevelop as long as you stay away from the GUI... it will compile (and even run natively in most cases) on win32-.NET
the GUI part (WinForms) you'll have to do in Windows though...
ohw and eh
Re:Suse 9.1 (Score:1)
Please excuse me for sounding like the typical gentoo fanboy. Portage seriously addresses this and then some -- to perfection. The "rough spot" has certainly been sanded. I've run through about 7 distros now in my short linux career and I always *hated* downloading and trying to install programs, because they'd always need infinite dependencie
Re:Suse 9.1 (Score:2)
It's also something of a drag to build some of the larger packages (like Firefox or OpenOffice). Those make a kernel compile look brief.
Re:Suse 9.1 (Score:2)
Upgrades of previous products frequently break.
Installing a product doesn't automatically use the latest patched version, it installs the broken old version instead.
CD drives or a self-maintained network share are usually required, and there are few network repositories and those that do exist (such
forgive my slightly off topic question (Score:2)
Question being: I know there is some kind of meld with GTK and mono or dot gnu (not sure which), is it seamless with Windows.Forms classes? Will my Windows.Forms classes compile and run in mono in Xwindows.. as is?
Love
Zaq
Re:forgive my slightly off topic question (Score:2)
My recommendation, GTK libs on Mono, make it a thin client to a server of whatever type you want, this gives you portability where your clients usually want it.
Re:forgive my slightly off topic question (Score:2)
Re:Actionscript editor. (Score:1)
Re:Actionscript editor. (Score:2)
I don't know what Actionscript is but vim (my preferred editor) has syntax highlighting and folding. For example, here's a dummy program in C.
Turn on syntax highlighting with ":syntax on". From anywhere inside the main function enter "zfap" to fold the function.
On top of that line, enter "zo" to open the fold or "zc" to close t
Re:Actionscript editor. (Score:2)
A free Actionscript-2 Linux editor, with code highliting, and folding
jEdit [jedit.org] (30 seconds on Freshmeat. YMMV) Remember, ActionScript is just ECMAScript (JavaScript), so searching for JavaScript editors, then narrowing down to ones that offer syntax highlighting and code folding should yield plenty of results.
Here's one that I think no one can answer.
You're not, by any chance, a troll?
Re:Actionscript editor.-Scite/Flash-SE|PY (Score:2)
Well Actionscript is a modified ECMAScript. Does jEdit handle the latest, or is it an earlier versions? If so, how easy is it to extend as Macromedia changes it?
I believe - not used it for a while - that it handles the latest version (certainly it did when I was playing around with ActionScript, before I started my current job a year or so ago). jEdit is built around extensibility, so, yes, it is easy to extend as needed.
Nope, I could only find Scite/Flash and SE|PY which are Windows only.
Take a lo
RedHat, for the corporate world (Score:2)
Also, buy and install Crossover Office [codeweavers.com] right away. This will get you to run Office and other MS stuff flawlessly.
I'm using Fedora Core 2 (Score:2)
Xandros. (Score:3, Interesting)
Many othere recommend Mandrake or SuSe, mainly for the eye candy.
Well, get the best of both worlds and use Xandros. It is Debian under the hoods (you can actually point it to read the standard Debian software repositories) and it looks professional and polished.
You cn integrate things like CrossOver or StarOffice (Sun's port of OpenOffice.org) with a couple of clicks of the mouse.
My wireless card worked immediately after initial configuration (stick to supported hardware, Wireless support is far from stellar in Linux) and USB devices work as they should (I am using a 7 in 1 reader, again stick to supported devices, a graphic tablet and aprinter, all with no issues).
Some quick thoughts (Score:2)
Re:Some quick thoughts (Score:2)
I have experience with Mandrake and Redhat, so I have naturally been leading towards those projects (Fedora, that is). I am also seriously looking at Gentoo.
Afraid Mono won't do it (wish it would) as I develop in Winforms and
Lindows developer edition (Score:1)
SuSE 9.1 and Win4Lin (Score:2)
switchup (Score:1)
What I decided on (Score:2)
I decided to start with Gentoo. A lot of people gave me a lot of good choices, some that I had already researche