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Ask HN: What is the best Linux distro for a development laptop?

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Re: Ask HN: What is the best Linux distro for a development laptop?

#311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took Void for a spin on my desktop because, as much as I like OpenBSD, I do occasionally need to touch stuff that's Linux-only. It's like a breath of fresh air, really. I can go about and mind my own business, as if all the mind-boggling complexity that's been steadily poured into the Linux cup during the last 3-5 years or so has been nicely tucked away under the rug or just thrown out. Not having systemd isn't suc…

Likewise, Void takes some getting used to, though - meaning its package manager (I was used to apt-get). The manual partitioning also was quite cumbersome for me, even though I've done a lot of fdisk fiddling when I was younger. The main issue for me was the lack of clear documentation regarding this phase [1]. However, I took it as a "forced learning" opportunity and spend a day fiddling with it until I got it worki…

> The manual partitioning also was quite cumbersome for me, even though I've done a lot of fdisk fiddling when I was younger. The main issue for me was the lack of clear documentation regarding this phase [1].

The way I do it, lately, and for pretty much any Linux system I use, is to just use LVM for everything except the /boot partition which I leave unencrypted. I think you can have an encrypted /boot but with Grub 2 being the way it is, I don't want to bother with it, my threat model is pretty much thieves stealing my computer, I don't need much plausible deniability.

The only install-time inconvenience with this is that the manpages for LVM-family commands (lv, pv, vg*) are nothing short of terrible. They're pretty much the equivalent of the // add 1 to i comments next to i++.

You don't necessarily "screw up" if you pick the "wrong" label type. You can actually convert between the two (e.g. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fdisk#Convert_between_M... ) . Also, I don't know if the functionality was eventually merged, but a while ago, you had to be careful to use the "correct" set of utils for the partition table type you used (e.g. fdisk for MBR, gdisk for GTP, cfdisk for MBR, cgdisk for GPT and so on)..

Re: Ask HN: What is the best Linux distro for a development laptop?

#312
post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So I tried Neon (the "new" Kubuntu) ... but they don't even have a working installer. It worked flawlessly for me. Now I wonder if I was lucky or you were unlucky. Oh, and I live it: clean fresh KDE 5 built on a Ubuntu/debian base.

Try using any non-US settings and it will break :). Unless they fixed it, but I know it went unfixed for more than a month because a friend of mine tried as well and got a similar error.

Thanks for clarifying.

Can't remember installation settings but I know I have successfully used the Norwegian locale after installation.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best Linux distro for a development laptop?

#313
post #72

I'm using Elementary, and I really like it so far. It's based on Ubuntu, and the standout things for me were: 1. Gets out of your way really fast - very little config and setup to do. 2. Clean UI - very macOS inspired, so they try and get rid of everything unnecessary. To the point where it doesn't feel like a normal Linux distro with knobs all over the place. 3. Excellent built in terminal - can't stress this enough…

Thirded? I've ran several linux distros and this is the one I've settled on. It's clean and pretty, it just works, and it stays out of your way, like a good wife. :)

Re: Ask HN: What is the best Linux distro for a development laptop?

#314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took Void for a spin on my desktop because, as much as I like OpenBSD, I do occasionally need to touch stuff that's Linux-only. It's like a breath of fresh air, really. I can go about and mind my own business, as if all the mind-boggling complexity that's been steadily poured into the Linux cup during the last 3-5 years or so has been nicely tucked away under the rug or just thrown out. Not having systemd isn't suc…

Likewise, Void takes some getting used to, though - meaning its package manager (I was used to apt-get). The manual partitioning also was quite cumbersome for me, even though I've done a lot of fdisk fiddling when I was younger. The main issue for me was the lack of clear documentation regarding this phase [1]. However, I took it as a "forced learning" opportunity and spend a day fiddling with it until I got it worki…

It's probably better to look at the Arch/Gentoo documentation for partitioning. The void wiki should probably be updated to point to some of those wikis. There is a lot of crossover in the Gentoo/Arch dev communities.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best Linux distro for a development laptop?

#315
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it comes to tooling, I found the packaging strategy of Arch to be pretty invaluable, too: - Pacman is a great package manager (esp. when compared to e.g. ´yum´). - The Arch User Repository ( https://aur.archlinux.org/ ) has a large list of additional packages maintained by the community. - The PKGBUILD format used by the AUR is easy to read and essentially just generates Pacman packages you can install alongside…

Can you honestly say you remember the exact pacman syntax of how to perform a system upgrade or how to install a package? :-) For me the UX was a problem, even if technically the package management is good.

You do not have standard package manager aliases in your dot files? Why would I want to remember sudo pacman -Syu when I can just enter pkg-update?

Useful if you have to jump distro's when you surely have your commands aliased.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best Linux distro for a development laptop?

#316
post #93
post #47

I've recently started experimenting with NixOS on my secondary (testbed) laptop at home. (My main home laptop has Windows, while at work we use Ubuntu.) Based on that and posts on this thread, I'd say if you're willing to consider Arch, I'd seriously suggest it might be worth adding NixOS to your list too. In my experience, at some cost, it gives you one particular super -power, that I've never seen anywhere yet. Spe…

> It's one of the few truly purely functional languages around. No IO monads or whatsit. The IO monad, as in Haskell, can be viewed as an entirely pure construct. Its implementation is impure purely because of performance reasons. You can write your own completely pure IO type if you want, with unchanged semantics. A basic example of this would be data IOF r = PutStrLn String r | GetLine (String -> r) deriving Functo…

I believe the parent meant to say "no IO", although my knowledge of Nix is limited.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best Linux distro for a development laptop?

#318
post #79

Arch Linux If you want a developer laptop you want modern hardware. If you want to run modern hardware you want a modern kernel. In your case (since your hardware is a little old), you might not care about support from recent kernels but still want modern compilers, toolchains, etc available to you. You also probably don't want it to break every 6 months when you have to system upgrade. Rolling release is the best.

I can't comment on arch, but I've found the same with my own software. Many small, incremental releases cause less breakages than big code drops every 6 months. Even if there is a bug introduced, it's usually much quicker to find debug and fix.

Re: Ask HN: What is the best Linux distro for a development laptop?

#319
post #10

I'd go for Mint. The only system that never disappointed me and always just worked. Second place would go to Debian "stable", old (== problems with Wifi) but rock solid.

I loved mint until I switched to Mint 18, now I have weird problems with the wifi stopping working randomly, the webcam and the audio. Besides the new desktop theme Mint-Y dont work well with some software I use like Repetier and Sli3r

I'm considering changing to Ubuntu :(

Re: Ask HN: What is the best Linux distro for a development laptop?

#320
Arch Linux is super awesome and super lean. It has one requirement, that you can read. The documentation is solid, and you'll be up and running in a very short time. Your first install might take long, but do not fall into the this-is-frustrating trap. You'll be rewarded pleasantly for reading. It is also a bleeding edge distribution, basically the packages are updated pretty frequently and there is no concept of a release - cycle as such... in theory. Not to mention you also get to hang out a lot with a cool guy called Pacman-
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