Linux Distributions

[nwtrombley]

I am new to Linux OS and I quickly noticed that there are a lot of distributions of Linux. Is there a good way to find out what all the different distributions are made for, like a book or something?

 

[arochester]

Is there a good way to find out what all the different distributions are made for

With one or two exceptions it doesn't work that way. Most distros are generic. Or can be MADE to suit YOUR purpose. This was recently published, although I don't really agree with it: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/specific-purpose-pc-use-linux-os/

like a book or something?

When I was at college, a long time ago now, we studied the sociology of knowledge. By the time a book is written, published, printed and distributed much of it is already out of date.

Have a look at something like https://distrowatch.com/ . Much is wrong with the site, but it is one of the best. If you click on the entries in the table on the right you will get a thumbnail description of different distros

 

[nwtrombley]

Ok thanks, that helps a lot. I was under the impression that the different distros were designed for different purposes or geared towards different fields.

 

[wizardfromoz]

If I could place a double like on the above, I would

@nwtrombley Welcome to linux.org, hope you enjoy

DistroWatch also have a page hit ranking, which, whilst not necessarily an accurate statistic, nevertheless implies the most popular for downloads.

They also have a DistroWatchWeekly in which they review a Distro or OS, and other items of interest.

Cheers

Wizard

 

[wizardfromoz]

I was under the impression that the different distros were designed for different purposes or geared towards different fields.

That is not untrue ... did you have a particular field in mind?

A lot can be found by Googling eg:

• linux media center distros
• linux scientific distros
• linux security distros
• linux education distros
• linux developer/coding distros

... you get the picture.

It may pay you to bookmark and take a read through the following Wikipedia pages as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_distributions

and

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightweight_Linux_distribution

...And if you have a small supply of USB sticks, you can read up on a Distro, burn its .iso to a USB stick, and try it on your PC before you install it. I say USB because they perform faster than optical disks and can be reused, but the choices are yours.

Hope this helps

Cheers

Wizard

 

[nwtrombley]

I am interested in Linux mostly in general. I would like one or two that are good for program development, have reliable programs to create programs and support for multiple forms of code like C, C#, C++, python, etc. It does help a little I am beginning to understand the different distributions.

 

[nwtrombley]

So far I have played around in openSUSE, CentOS, and Slackel. Do you have recommendations for good programming programs that will run on openSUSE or CentOS. I am not much for Slackel.

 

[atanere]

Hi @nwtrombley, and welcome! I'm not a programmer, so I don't have any "recommendations" for IDE's, but Google will know the answer! I might suggest, however, that you switch from CentOS to Fedora unless you are specifically focusing on server development. Fedora is more for the common desktop users. You might also consider a Debian/Ubuntu distro for development, or in conjunction with Fedora and openSUSE. All of these are fine for programming and will run the tools you will need.

Cheers

 

[JasKinasis]

So far I have played around in openSUSE, CentOS, and Slackel. Do you have recommendations for good programming programs that will run on openSUSE or CentOS. I am not much for Slackel.

Without knowing which languages you are interested in programming in, I can't really make any solid recommendations. But there are lots of programming IDE's available for many programming languages in Gnu/Linux:

Off the top of my head:
Codeblocks, Codelite, Anjuta, KDevelop and QTCreator (all primarily for C/C++).
Eric and Idle (for Python), Gambas (Basic), Lazarus (Pascal/Delphi), MonoDevelop (C#), Scratch (programming language for kids), Netbeans and Eclipse (primarily for Java, but support for other languages can be added via extra plugins), Edi (for developing EFL based apps for the Enlightenment desktop). There are probably a lot of others that I have failed to remember/mention.

Most, if not all of the above IDE's should be available in the repos of all major distros - including Suse and CentOS.

Also there are a few free (as in zero financial cost not free as in freedom) proprietary IDE's available for Linux - like Microsoft's Code IDE (VS-like IDE for Linux), Android Studio (for developing Android applications) etc...

Personally, I tend to do most of my development in the terminal, using a combination of Tmux, Vim and whatever compilers/interpreters/debuggers I need for the language I'm programming in - to create my own IDE-like environment.... But that's just me! Heh heh! XD

Oh, and of course there is Emacs - which is primarily a text editor, but can also be set up as an IDE for multiple programming languages.

Hell, with all of the extra functionality available for Emacs, it can be more like a guest OS running inside Linux! XD I do know a few developers who use it for pretty much everything!