Suggest a distro plz

u666sa

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What's up. A little about me. Back until sometime in October 2019 I'm was a strict windows 7 user, programming mainly in C++Builder. I decided to wipe and update to Windows 10 since 7 is dropping support and meanwhile have a look at Linux. I ended up installing Linux on one of my laptops with XP and 7 tripple boot, and on my main laptop Windows 10. Turns out I'm using Linux more often than Windows 10 at this point in time. Prior to this I had limited Linux experience in early 2000s when I bought Mandrake on CD and installed it....It was bad. Then in early 2010s when I tried Kubuntu, it was limiting at that time. Nowadays, Linux is mature enough and is much better than Windows. It gives me that feeling when I first sat in front of DOS computer back in 1990s, and then in front of Windows 95 back in 1996s, it brings back the magic which I long lost with Windows.

I tried Ubuntu first and was impressed as a desktop user, the only thing I did not like about it is snap packages, which take longer to load. Then I went to Fedora and loved it, and struck with it until February 2020 when a kernel update broke my NVIDIA optirun install. From that I decided to try FreeBSD and ditched it when I realized it's a pain to run on my hardware. Then again Ubuntu, and this time around I did not like that pretty much all packages are old, even ancient. However, I loved the development tools. But did not like the package manager. In fact that package manager eventually broke the entire installation. I then tried CentOS and it's eww, ancient. Back to Fedora again. Now with a fresh look at Fedora I realize it's not so good. Stability wise and feature wise I'm alright with it. I don't like development tools and driver support. For example CUDA and OpenCL, I have 390 drivers. Thus far I"m not that far into configuring and installing stuff. I'm questioning if I want to stick with Fedora. I do have another HDD and can try something else, I'm looking for your suggestions.

I want latest software, and I want development tools, different versions of gcc and g++.

I'm using Linux for hacking.
 


have a look at this and see if its got mostly what you want :


if you can code then you will be ok with a little tweaking of config files . Slackware has quite a formidable package choice and as you can see it looks like kernel will be more up to date than even 5.4.26


As regards package management most users really just click click and hope for the best.
I at the moment (i'm on current using 5.4.12) approach install of packages via slpkg which does give me a choice from different repo's tells me the deps and installs them. Latest current seems to be ahead of slpkg when i tried live from a usb which is one reason i haven't done another full system upgrade.

Then there is slackbuilds where you build a package and its deps; also slackpkg which i use for full upgrade. There is documentation and choices; you can blacklist existing software so the upgrade doesn't touch it.

So its probabbly a choice of "do you want some control" but occasionally the tedious editing that goes with that or just click click and hope for the best ?
 
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If you are interested in using the Linux distribution for programming and hacking only, you could also check Kali Linux. (You can also find the download page from the "Download Linux" section of this site)

If you intend to use it for a general purpose computer (including some pre-installed IDEs and many Penetration Testing tools) you could try Parrot OS (The complete version is the "Security" one)
 
If you want more up to date software a 'rolling' release such as Arch Linux may be what you are looking for. Arch has a reputation of being on the 'bleeding edge' regarding new software packages but along with that comes a greater risk of 'breakage'. Manjaro does a good job of 'smoothing out the bumps' and makes Arch usable for people like me. The Manjaro Package Manager is.... 'different' than what I am used to but seems quite full featured, approachable, and loaded with software. I usually have a Manjaro installed on one of my machines.

There are some other 'rolling' releases available and some of the Ubuntu based distros take the Ubuntu base and add some more modern software to it.

I would recommend to give Manjaro a try :)
 
I’ll give manjaro and slackware a go. I wanted cuz I watched videos about them.

I’ll be more specific about my wants. Laptop has geforce 420m. That is 390 driver and cuda 9.0 or 9.1... That in term is gcc 6x, g++ 6x, clang 4. This is why I’m running from fedora, no way to install those on fedora. Stuff that I have installed compiles but open cl and cuda are sumply not detected when running john or pyrit.

I could not care for them lessif hacking wasn’t involved.

Fedora is too modern for my circa 2010 laptop —a garbage rescue.
 
Unless you don't like the 'DEB' package manager (or Debian), you could try the ones I suggested above.

In Parrot OS you probably don't even have to install the openCL(in-doubt. I use AMD GPUs) driver or the gcc / g++. You sure need CUDA but it's much easier to install and not break anything.

In Kali, you would need to install everything (maybe not g++ and gcc) and it comes with less tools pre-installed but it is more resource sufficient.

Depending on the programming language you use (if I understand correctly C/C++), I know that both of the distros I mention have some really good compatibility with IDEs like codelite and Qt.

My views are for the hacking part mostly.
I personally recommend Kali for an old laptop but if you have 8GB RAM, you could go for Parrot.
 
well if you want to do some hacking you can add packages as needed for instance metasploit is in repo https://slackbuilds.org/repository/14.2/network/metasploit/?search=metasploit


the only thing i would say is if you go for slackware take your time;set up partitions first ; its unlikely to involve uefi though with a 2010 laptop . slackware stable is 3 years old . current is stable but be prepared for some updates breaks etc. You could just install slackeware live onto usb and see if it works with the hardware .let me know if manjaro doesn't do it for you and will give links to live iso etc . they are not on main site but provided by core memeber "Alien Bob"
 
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Okay, thank you. Didn't know that. I have never played around with Arch-based Linux.
:)
 
I gave Manjaro a go. Let me tell you. It it wasn’t for CUDA I would stay on it. It’s amazing and officially I say this— Fedora is nothing but a buggy old testing ground and whoever is using it haven’t seen anything else. Manjaro is the cheese.

However. My hardware wants clang 4 and llvm 4. Manjaro dropped support for that—-https://forum.manjaro.org/t/clang-4-on-manjaro-19-because-of-geforce-420m-which-needs-cuda-9-1/130475/6

I’m taking a small backstep towards ubuntu. If it don’t work out I’m trying slackware.

As far as manjaro I will probably make room for it on my prumary windows 10 machine. W520 quatro 2000m.
 
What's up. A little about me. Back until sometime in October 2019 I'm was a strict windows 7 user, programming mainly in C++Builder. I decided to wipe and update to Windows 10 since 7 is dropping support and meanwhile have a look at Linux. I ended up installing Linux on one of my laptops with XP and 7 tripple boot, and on my main laptop Windows 10. Turns out I'm using Linux more often than Windows 10 at this point in time. Prior to this I had limited Linux experience in early 2000s when I bought Mandrake on CD and installed it....It was bad. Then in early 2010s when I tried Kubuntu, it was limiting at that time. Nowadays, Linux is mature enough and is much better than Windows. It gives me that feeling when I first sat in front of DOS computer back in 1990s, and then in front of Windows 95 back in 1996s, it brings back the magic which I long lost with Windows.

I tried Ubuntu first and was impressed as a desktop user, the only thing I did not like about it is snap packages, which take longer to load. Then I went to Fedora and loved it, and struck with it until February 2020 when a kernel update broke my NVIDIA optirun install. From that I decided to try FreeBSD and ditched it when I realized it's a pain to run on my hardware. Then again Ubuntu, and this time around I did not like that pretty much all packages are old, even ancient. However, I loved the development tools. But did not like the package manager. In fact that package manager eventually broke the entire installation. I then tried CentOS and it's eww, ancient. Back to Fedora again. Now with a fresh look at Fedora I realize it's not so good. Stability wise and feature wise I'm alright with it. I don't like development tools and driver support. For example CUDA and OpenCL, I have 390 drivers. Thus far I"m not that far into configuring and installing stuff. I'm questioning if I want to stick with Fedora. I do have another HDD and can try something else, I'm looking for your suggestions.

I want latest software, and I want development tools, different versions of gcc and g++.

I'm using Linux for hacking.

If your interested in using linux for hacking then Kali-linux is a strong choice. Parrot is also a strong choice for pent-testers/hackers and many say they prefer parrot os to kali.

Parrot is probably better to use as an every day os as its purposefully made more user freindly where as kali is a little impractical for everyday normal use as its aimed strictly at hardcore pent-testing professionals.

I think you would be best off installing linux mint or ubuntu and running kali or parrot in a virtual box, its much easier that way and if you are playing around with hacking tools then you dont run the risk of screwing up configurations on your main os if your using another distro in a virtual box. You can also experiment with different distros that way, but mint or ubuntu are very solid distros so you cant go wrong with mint or ubuntu
 

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