Using Which Version of Linux

[blah]

ok, i m going to use Linux for my Python Programs, mainly because i
need to see what will these fork() and exec() do. So, can anyone tell
me which flavour of linux i should use, some say that Debian is more
programmer friendly, or shold i use fedora, or Solaris. Because these
three are the only ones i know of that are popular and free.
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[malv]

bl**@blah.blah wrote:

ok, i m going to use Linux for my Python Programs, mainly because i
need to see what will these fork() and exec() do. So, can anyone tell
me which flavour of linux i should use, some say that Debian is more
programmer friendly, or shold i use fedora, or Solaris. Because these
three are the only ones i know of that are popular and free.
--
* Posted with NewsLeecher v3.0 Beta 7
* http://www.newsleecher.com/?usenet

You have to look out for the version of Python the distro comes with
2.4. Some don't and it may be nasty having to deal with different
versions installed next to one another. (You will probably not be able
to safely remove the original version as the distro uses it for many
things.)

Another point to watch for is things like Python bindings and easyness
of gui (free) installation. FWIW, I like Suse10.0 (Novell). It has
kde-Python bindings to Qt installed. It also has eric3 available. So
without any additional cost or trouble, you'll have a powerful, dream
developer's system.
malv

[Norman Silverstone]

On Sat, 05 Nov 2005 04:26:38 -0600, blahman wrote:

ok, i m going to use Linux for my Python Programs, mainly because i
need to see what will these fork() and exec() do. So, can anyone tell
me which flavour of linux i should use, some say that Debian is more
programmer friendly, or shold i use fedora, or Solaris. Because these
three are the only ones i know of that are popular and free.

I use the latest version of Ubuntu and find it very good in all respects.
It's free and regularly maintained.

Norman

[Rod Haper]

Dan M wrote:

Personally I would recommend staying away from Fedora unless you have a
friend who is well-versed in it and willing to help. I like the
distributin ok (I run it on the laptop I'm writing this from) but it uses
RPMs for package distribution, and the rpm tools don't know how to
automatically downloaded dependencies like yum or apt do. Because of that
I have to say that the RPM package tools suck quite badly.

Dan,

I don't know what version of Fedora you are running but FC4 and FC3 use
yum for updating.

---
Rod

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Sat, 05 Nov 2005 04:26:38 -0600, blahman wrote:

ok, i m going to use Linux for my Python Programs, mainly because i
need to see what will these fork() and exec() do. So, can anyone tell
me which flavour of linux i should use, some say that Debian is more
programmer friendly, or shold i use fedora, or Solaris. Because these
three are the only ones i know of that are popular and free.

Solaris is not Linux, although both are like Unix.

In my opinion, Debian is not newbie friendly.

In my experience, Ubunto is HUGELY over rated. The installation was easy,
the user experience was like being poked in the eye with a blunt stick.

In my experience, Fedora is very newbie friendly, as well as being quite
powerful for non-newbies. If you are in Australia or the USA, and start
looking for commercial support, you'll have less grief if you use Fedora
than most other distros. Although it has to be said, multimedia support is
rather lacking due to licencing issues. (And, in fairness, multimedia
support is still Linux's biggest weakness compared to OS X and Windows.)

I hear that Mandrake and SuSE are very popular in Europe.

If you don't mind really horrible German industrial industrial punk themed
desktops, you could do a lot worse than play around with the Knoppix
LiveCD. That would be the quickest way to get started: no installation
necessary.
--
Steven.

[Grant Edwards]

On 2005-11-05, Mike Meyer <mw*@mired.or g> wrote:

"Programmer-friendly" is pretty vague. Gentoo is the only Linux distro
I've run into (which excludes a *lot* of Unix distros) that I'd
consider programmer friendly, because it doesn't split packages up
into "user stuff" and "developer stuff". That means you have to
install two packages instead of one if you want to build things
against that software. On the other hand, it uses it's own "package"
manager - emerge - so you can't take advantage of rpms/debs from other
systems (or you couldn't last time I looked into it). It also installs
the least amount of "bundled" software, which I consider a programmer
friendly behavior.

I just switched one of my computers to gentoo, and I like it a
lot. It's very no-nonsense, but there are alot of available
packages and everything (so far) just works. However, it's not
for the impatient (or at least not for the poor and impatient).
Since it compiles packages from source, a full-featured desktop
install on a slow machine can take days to finish.

--
Grant Edwards grante Yow! if it GLISTENS,
at gobble it!!
visi.com

[Grant Edwards]

On 2005-11-05, Dan M <da*@wolf.com > wrote:

Personally I would recommend staying away from Fedora unless you have a
friend who is well-versed in it and willing to help. I like the
distributin ok (I run it on the laptop I'm writing this from) but it uses
RPMs for package distribution, and the rpm tools don't know how to
automatically downloaded dependencies like yum or apt do.
Nonsense. You're comparing apples to oranges. If you want to
compare rpm with something it would be dpkg. If you want to
talk about yum or apt, then you should be comparing them to
something like urpmi. If you tell it to install package X, it
will analyze prerequisites, and then download and install
everything required. It works almost exactly like apt-get
does. Urpmi is text-mode, but there are also GUI front-ends
that do the same thing.
Because of that I have to say that the RPM package tools suck
quite badly.
You'd say the same think about Debian if all you had ever used
was dpgk, and I dare you to try to do anything with dselect.
Debian and SUSE are both pretty good choices.

--
Grant Edwards grante Yow! I just got my PRINCE
at bumper sticker... But now I
visi.com can't remember WHO he is...

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Sat, 05 Nov 2005 12:50:44 +0000, Jeffrey Schwab wrote:

bl**@blah.blah wrote:

ok, i m going to use Linux for my Python Programs, mainly because i
need to see what will these fork() and exec() do. So, can anyone tell
me which flavour of linux i should use, some say that Debian is more
programmer friendly, or shold i use fedora, or Solaris. Because these
three are the only ones i know of that are popular and free.
Solaris isn't Linux, but it is good. I've never installed it from
scratch, though.

I might get lambasted for suggesting this, but try Slackware.

If only you knew how hard I had to work to overcome the bad impression
Slackware makes on first-time Linux users.
It will
let you do a very minimal installation, which means there's less stuff
that can go wrong.
And less stuff that can go right, because it just isn't there. There is
something sort of sad about watching an experienced Linux guru trying to
get things done on Slackware, especially when the purist set it up with
FVWM2 as the window manager. It is kind of like going back in time to 1980...
It also has nice, beginner-friendly FAQs to help you
get started.

Just so you understand what Jeffrey is talking about, by
"beginner-friendly" he means the FAQs walk you through the process of
compiling your own kernel. (Okay, okay, so that's a *tiny* bit of an
exaggeration... but not much. Slackware isn't quite Gentoo *wink*)
--
Steven.

[Mike Meyer]

Grant Edwards <gr****@visi.co m> writes:

On 2005-11-05, Mike Meyer <mw*@mired.or g> wrote:

"Programmer-friendly" is pretty vague. Gentoo is the only Linux distro
I've run into (which excludes a *lot* of Unix distros) that I'd
consider programmer friendly, because it doesn't split packages up
into "user stuff" and "developer stuff". That means you have to
install two packages instead of one if you want to build things
against that software. On the other hand, it uses it's own "package"
manager - emerge - so you can't take advantage of rpms/debs from other
systems (or you couldn't last time I looked into it). It also installs
the least amount of "bundled" software, which I consider a programmer
friendly behavior.

I just switched one of my computers to gentoo, and I like it a
lot. It's very no-nonsense, but there are alot of available
packages and everything (so far) just works. However, it's not
for the impatient (or at least not for the poor and impatient).
Since it compiles packages from source, a full-featured desktop
install on a slow machine can take days to finish.

This is one of the things I love about the *BSD systems. The package
system is "two-headed". You an do pkg_add, and it'll act like yum or
apt-get, and install binaries for the package and all the
requirements for it. Or you can cd to /usr/ports/category/pkg-name
and do "make install", and it will download, compile and install all
the required software and the port you're building (I do that to
change the isntalltion prefix on the packages). If you want to create
customized packages, you just do "make package". I found creating a
port (and hence package) to be much easier than creating a .deb or
..rpm, but that may just be me. For real control, you can install the
portupgrade package.

That said, the author of the BSD ports system thinks the architecture
is wrong. It handles the building, installation, fetching and
requirements all by itself. He thinks the yum/apt-get approach, where
one tool handles package installation duties, and another deals with
requirements fetching is much saner.

<mike
--
Mike Meyer <mw*@mired.or g> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.

[Steve Holden]

Dan M wrote:

On Sat, 05 Nov 2005 04:26:38 -0600, blahman wrote:

ok, i m going to use Linux for my Python Programs, mainly because i
need to see what will these fork() and exec() do. So, can anyone tell
me which flavour of linux i should use, some say that Debian is more
programmer friendly, or shold i use fedora, or Solaris. Because these
three are the only ones i know of that are popular and free.

Personally I would recommend staying away from Fedora unless you have a
friend who is well-versed in it and willing to help. I like the
distributin ok (I run it on the laptop I'm writing this from) but it uses
RPMs for package distribution, and the rpm tools don't know how to
automatically downloaded dependencies like yum or apt do. Because of that
I have to say that the RPM package tools suck quite badly.

Debian and SUSE are both pretty good choices.

I used yum on Fedora Core 2, and it downloaded and installed
dependencies fine.

regards
Steve
--
Steve Holden [phone] [phone]
Holden Web LLC www.holdenweb.com
PyCon TX 2006 www.python.org/pycon/

[Max]

bl**@blah.blah wrote:

ok, i m going to use Linux for my Python Programs, mainly because i
need to see what will these fork() and exec() do. So, can anyone tell
me which flavour of linux i should use, some say that Debian is more
programmer friendly, or shold i use fedora, or Solaris. Because these
three are the only ones i know of that are popular and free.

Ubuntu comes with lots of Python stuff (Mark Shuttleworth, its sponsor,
really loves Python - he gave me quite a lot of money for using it). For
example, it's comes with Python scripting for the GIMP.

It uses DEB packages, which are apparently better, but software (I find)
is much easier to find in RPM format. Also, it tries to emulate a
Windows-style file hierarchy. This is very irritating because:

a) Windows-style file hierarchy is ugly and stupid, and certainly not
worth emulating
b) it is emulated badly.

However, this is only apparent to the user. For the programmer, it is
pure unix. (But it does its mounts in /media instead of /mnt)