I've been looking into Linux lately because I'm programming a game that needs to run both on linux and windows. I might give the code over to somebody else to be ported for OSX. While working on this project I'm also writing a persuasive research paper based on Linux and Windows. So, I would like to know the following from the linux users out there: What is your favorite linux distro? What kernel is it based off of? What do you use your distro for? Which linux distro do you use to program C/C++ programs? Which distro provides the most development tools? Thanks and I look forward to hearing back from you guys.

I use SuSE since version 4.x because at that time it was the distro with the largest list of included programs to play with. Then I became a regular user and stick with it... I love it! but I don't use it nowadays because of: 1. games, 2. Visual studio, 3. directX

[Edited by - VerMan on July 12, 2007 3:48:10 PM]

I use an old slackware (I guess it was 9.0 or 10.0 maybe?) with a 2.6 kernel, and use it for everything except games and visual studio. I use to install everything "by hand" (compiling), it was the reason why I install it. But I think I will try ubuntu as soon as I bought a new computer :)

I think whatever distro you choose, you will have all developpement tool needed (I use mostly emacs for code writing, gcc/Makefile/scons etc). The only "big" problem with linux is the debuger, gdb, which is not as easy to use as visual studio.

Quote: Original post by caldiar
What is your favorite linux distro?

Debian GNU/Linux on pretty much all architectures.

On x86, I also quite like Zenwalk, a Slackware-based distro using the XFCE environment. It's very sleek.

Quote:
What kernel is it based off of?

On my main system, running Debian 'SID' (Still In Development): 2.6.21.

Quote:
What do you use your distro for?

Everything. I haven't owned a Windows or Mac system for many years. I only recently purchased a Mac and a PC so I can port some of my code, and I don't think I've booted either of them in the past month.

Quote: Which linux distro do you use to program C/C++ programs?

When I must code in C or C++, I simply use my distro of choice (Debian). However, there are so many languages available in the free software world than using C or C++ usually isn't a requirement for me.

Quote: Which distro provides the most development tools?

Depends on what you call "development tools", I guess. I'd say Debian because it provides more non-mainstream languages and implementations (OCaml, Common Lisp, Scheme, Boo, Scala, Smalltalk, Prolog, Erlang, Oz, ...)

Fedora seems well featured if you're into Java development.

If what you're talking about is C and/or C++ development, I think any distro will do just fine: GCC is present on all the distros I can think of that aren't meant for embedded systems. The same is true of all the major libraries. Now if you want fancy IDE and things like that, I'm quite sure any "desktop" distro will do (that is, don't pick server-oriented or embedded distros).

I'll have to say slackware, even though I'm not a real linux user. The reason is that I find it fairly easy to setup and use, while not limited. Gentoo is cool, but a bit too hardcore for me (I would recommend it only to people with experience). Fedora core is really nice and easy to setup and use, however, I felt somewhat limited in it. One of the things I didn't like about it was that it did not let me boot without starting X (which was a problem, since I was trying to install some driver requiring X to be off). I'm sure this is easy to fix though (as I said, I'm not a Linux user, I just wanted to try Linux some). I was going to try Debian on a virtual machine, but for some reason, the installation program lagged so much I just gave up after few attempts (took up to 10 seconds to scroll a line in the installation gui, no idea why). I also tried Ubuntu, but it didn't come with KDE, which I prefer over Gnome (these days there's a project called Kubuntu though, which is Ubuntu with KDE instead of Gnome). Other than that, I've heard tons of great things about it. I tried Mandrake (Mandriva nowdays), but it didn't work very well at all with my virtual enviroment afaik, and I think they charged money for disk 3 which contained KDE, and that was unacceptable to me back then.

Edit: Oh, and all of those came with C/C++ devtools, I think even the server versions did.

Quote: Original post by caldiarWhat is your favorite linux distro?

Slackware

Quote: What kernel is it based off of?

Slackware 12 comes with 2.6.21.5, the first slack release based on a 2.6 series (2.6 kernel headers etc.) Slack 11 and below come with 2.4.33.3 (2.4 kernel headers) stock. But I, like many, just compile my own 2.6 kernel anyways.

Quote: What do you use your distro for?

Apache/MySql/DNS/DHCP/MythTv/NFS/SAMBA/Asterisk
Web browsing, compiling, and developemnt.

Quote: Which linux distro do you use to program C/C++ programs?

Slackware

Quote: Which distro provides the most development tools?

As far as tools for compiling, any distro will come with what you need. For IDE's then it may vary. Anything KDE based will come with kDevelop. Dunno about others.

--Zims