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Which Linux distro would you recommend?


Artisan

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Alright guys, so today was the first day of an advanced programming course (1 credit hour, mostly to prepare for ACM competitions) that I will be taking this semester. My professor informed us that we will all be required to program in a Linux environment. I've always wanted to dabble with Linux, but never had the motivation - now I must. I'll have a brand new laptop by early next week, so I have a blank slate to work with(i5-2410M, 4GB of RAM, etc). I know there are a bunch of different distro's of Linux (the most obvious/popular being Ubuntu), but other than that I'm pretty ignorant. I figured I would ask the experts here before I just go with that - so, which do you recommend?

 

I'll just be dual-booting with Windows 7(or hell, if I like it enough I may just be converted) and the laptop is just for schoolwork/web-browsing. (I still have my desktop for gaming :))

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Well for user friendliness I'd probably go for the usual choice of most newcomers - Ubuntu :) It's actually really nice. Probably what I'll be using when I get back on Linux :)

 

It's been a long time since I looked at the others tbh.. I used to love Mandriva xD

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I use Fedora, I like it, and I don't think it's less user-friendly if compared with Ubuntu, after all many (most?) things are the same...

I've also used Mandriva in the past, it was nice too, but I don't know much about newer versions.

 

actually I think all the most popular Linux distros are equally good, but if I were you I'd go for Ubuntu, you can still change some things if you don't like them

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I use Backtrack for all the right reasons.

 

Isn't Backtrack mostly powerful for penetration testing? Pretty sure it'd be a poor choice for an average user to go for just as a standard OS.. But correct me if I'm wrong..

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Isn't Backtrack mostly powerful for penetration testing? Pretty sure it'd be a poor choice for an average user to go for just as a standard OS.. But correct me if I'm wrong..

Yeah, it is... plus(straight from BackTrack FAQs)

I'm new to linux, is BackTrack a good place to start ? Sorry, the simple answer to that is no.

Sooo yeah, maybe eventually.. but it's highly discouraged as my first go at Linux.

 

Thanks for the replies guys, still got a few days to make my decision so keep em coming.

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You could just download a bunch of linux distributions and test those in a virtual machine e.g. via Virtualbox

Though the performance will be a lot worse.

 

Happy *in'

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Isn't Backtrack mostly powerful for penetration testing? Pretty sure it'd be a poor choice for an average user to go for just as a standard OS.. But correct me if I'm wrong..

 

In my line of work its a necessary evil, I would disagree on the poor choice, you have to start somewhere and there are tools in it that you will not find as standard in other distros, maybe you learn a thing or 2, I know I did :)

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In my line of work its a necessary evil, I would disagree on the poor choice, you have to start somewhere and there are tools in it that you will not find as standard in other distros, maybe you learn a thing or 2, I know I did :)

 

I definitely want to give backtrack a go personally, but from what I've read, it's more for those who have a basic understanding of Linux already >.< But then I've never used it so your opinion is probably more valid.. THIS TIME. -.- xD (Obviously, I'm usually right. So nerr!)

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I have LinuxMint and Ubuntu in recent experience. I would recommend LinuxMint, however Ubuntu has -by far- the best repository, and that might be useful if your teacher would like to use some random obscure package.

 

In general, many 'new' distro's are Ubuntu based, only problem for me is that Ubuntu's GUI is a bit FUBAR to me. And if you feel the same, you might consider a different distro (KUbuntu, XUbuntu, etc)

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  • 1 month later...

With 4gb Ram you can use Fedora 15 xfce,kde and win 7 with no problems. I suppose you'd love fedora.(fedora with xfce is best for programming but it's for med advanced linux users). Kde have better efects than Gnome and Xfce.

P.S. Sorry this is old topic but i want to help :)

NoSkill

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