Preferred distribution for c and shell programming?

Its All in your Head · 07-06-2007, 06:33 PM

Hello everyone!

Currently, I'm taking a university elective that deals with basic shell and c programming on Unix systems. I actually enjoy it a lot (maybe I have a command line fetish, who knows), and would like to further pursue it, even if just as a hobby. Right now I am able to ssh to the school's Linux server (which is running Red Hat something or other) and do all my work there with vim and gcc and whatnot.

However, having little power over the actual development system, I decided to try and turn my relatively old tower (then again, 4 years in computer years is ancient

) into a dedicated linux development machine (and in time, maybe a web server, file server, print server, sandwich server, etc.). Since the vast majority of my linux exposure has been Red Het, I figured that would probably be my best choice, however, with so many distributions out there, I gotta be missing something.

I don't need any sort of Windows-esque desktop or anything, but I do want something thats stable (is it possible to fail here with Linux?), updated relatively often (having up to date tools is important), and for the most part straight forward to install.

Thanks for your responses!

docalton · 07-06-2007, 06:48 PM

If you like RedHat, you can go with CentOS (which is a repackaging of RHEL). I've used CentOS on several projects and have not been disappointed. I would imagine it would run fine on 4 year old equipment.

My personal favorite distro is Debian. It would make a fine c development machine. I don't do a lot of dev work but Deb works great for it. Any linux distro would be good for shell programming.

If you have some time, play around with several distros. Find the one (or 2 or ten) you like and have fun with it.

Hope this helps

kshymkiw · 07-06-2007, 06:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Its All in your Head

Hello everyone!

Currently, I'm taking a university elective that deals with basic shell and c programming on Unix systems. I actually enjoy it a lot (maybe I have a command line fetish, who knows), and would like to further pursue it, even if just as a hobby. Right now I am able to ssh to the school's Linux server (which is running Red Hat something or other) and do all my work there with vim and gcc and whatnot.

However, having little power over the actual development system, I decided to try and turn my relatively old tower (then again, 4 years in computer years is ancient

) into a dedicated linux development machine (and in time, maybe a web server, file server, print server, sandwich server, etc.). Since the vast majority of my linux exposure has been Red Het, I figured that would probably be my best choice, however, with so many distributions out there, I gotta be missing something.

I don't need any sort of Windows-esque desktop or anything, but I do want something thats stable (is it possible to fail here with Linux?), updated relatively often (having up to date tools is important), and for the most part straight forward to install.

Thanks for your responses!

Debian would work well for you as the previous poster stated.

Really any Linux enviornment is going to work for you. The new Debian has a good update tool. As i don't use RH too much, you may also want to try Fedora 7, as it is a repack of RHEL.

Its All in your Head · 07-07-2007, 03:37 PM

Thanks for the replies!

I decided to give Debian a shot, after reading many internet installations docs, got it up and running and was able to start working right away.

Thanks again