Using Which Version of Linux

[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.