Attention Linux developers

General Discussions
#1

I am looking for opinions from people who develop in Linux. This is not meant to be a flame war, just people who use a certain distro of Linux, tell me if and why you like it. If you don’t like something that someone says in favour of a certain distro, it doesn’t matter, so please don’t shoot down other’s opinions.

What I am specifically looking for is:

  1. Easy to install.
  2. Easy to install other software(Java, Eclipse, etc.)
  3. Uses a GUI interface out of the box(GNome, KDE, whatever)

What I am trying to do is set up a box to develop with Ruby(and Rails) on, since Ruby is not Windows friendly. And since I will have it already set up, I can also do a bit of Java work too.

I have tried Gentoo, FreeBSD, Ubuntu and Fedora so far.

FreeBSD didn’t have a GUI OS layer out of the box and I don’t have time to try and figure out how to install it.

Gentoo crapped out during the install.

Ubuntu installed fine, but uses APT for it’s software installation. This only gives me Ruby version 1.9 and I want to use version 2.0. When I used APT to install RPM, RPM wouldn’t find the RPM package I was pointing it to.

Fedora installed fine, but when I tried to boot with it, it wouldn’t start up.

#2

So can’t you install Ruby by yourself? I’m sure there are guides that help you get started.

Ubuntu basicly ‘just works’ everywhere, so should be a good pick for starters.

#3

Although Ubuntu worked on my laptop, it didn’t have the right drivers for my wireless card (which is probably fairly standard), so I didn’t install it. I only ran it from live CD and then gave up on it. What’s the point in installing it if I can’t use my wireless card?

#4

I find that Mandriva has the best hardware support and graphical configuration tools, and I prefer it over Ubuntu. Some Debian purists berate me for the use of an RPM-based distribution over DEB-based, but it works for me, especially with the official “non-free” repository to grab things like the nvidia drivers.

I always install Java directly from Sun, not from any RPM repositories. I put it in /usr/local and add “export JAVA_HOME=/usr/local/java” to my ~/.bash_profile. Also, if you’re doing Linux-based Java development, I strongly recommend 32-bit Linux. As you may know, not all of Sun’s Java utilities work on 64-bit, though that’s supposed to be fixed in 1.7.

I use Eclipse, and I install that in my home folder, then create a desktop link to it. This allows me to run it as a normal (non-root) user and still run updates and install plug-ins in userland. I do the same thing with Firefox, for what it’s worth.

Good luck!

#5

Here are the instructions for installing Ruby: 

sudo apt-get install ruby irb rdoc

However, I just realized I made a mistake with the versions. Ruby is only at 1.9. Rails is at 2.0. So I’ll give Ubuntu another try.

Thanks.

#6

Thanks. I am going to try Ubuntu again. If I can’t get it working, I will try Mandriva.

#7

Thanks for the replies guys. I got Ubuntu working. Just my own inexperience causing the problems.

#8

I missed this thread, but: PC Linux OS is really good; designed for someone coming from windows, but doesn’t hide anything from you either.

#9

Mandriva Linux is a quite fine solution too. You don’t need to use APT.

#10

I have used various distros over the years for development in Linux.

Currently I work for the USAF and they insist on using RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux). It has some nice support features. If you don’t want to purchase RHEL you can use the free clone called CentOS. I use JDK 1.5 and 1.6 with Netbeans. All three were easy to setup.

RedHat I think has some motivation of being compatible with Sun and Java. First off RedHat owns JBOSS which is a enterprise java framework of some sort. Here is an article about a new partnership RedHat and Sun has.

Believe me I hate the thought of paying for Linux but in some cases it makes sense. If you are in a large enterprise environment and need/require the support and certification RedHat is the way to go. Out of all the distros it has the least hassle factor in terms of patching “yum update” is all you need to do. The RedHat network sends you email reminders when your system(s) need patching plus it shows all your systems and when they were last patched. We have 90+ servers and without RedHat management we would need a few extra admins to keep the machines in good shape.

#11

Agreed. Also I would like to point out that no OS is free as in beer, as there is always some cost associated with administering it. Paying for linux support is sometimes a wise decision cause it saves you solving a problem that Redhat has already solved for one of it’s customers, especially when its some rare problem.

#12

Thanks for the continuing replies guys. This is all very helpful. If we decide to go the pay route, we’ll definitely look Red Hat.