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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?

#41

Post by demonshreder »

tluyben2 wrote: post #19

I have been using Linux since the late 90s and tried most of the bigger ones for development over the years. In my practical experience distros which use aptitude are far easier to work with than distros with yum (awful, how can people use that?) or other package managers I tried. Stuff just works. I myself use Ubuntu; I have not reinstalled my laptop for years, I just run dist-upgrade and it works well on both clien…

Arch (Or any rolling release) isn't just about cutting edge. OS upgrades tend to break stuff depending on your usage (something compiled against the specific kernel version). Updating your computer every few days means you can avoid it entirely.

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

#43

Post by demonshreder »

crocowhile wrote: post #17
heinrichf wrote: post #13

Archlinux ( https://archlinux.org ) is a great rolling release distribution, and the Archlinux wiki ( https://wiki.archlinux.org/ ) is an invaluable ressource.

There is nothing better than Arch. I have been using linux daily since 2005, tried multiple distros and now all of my machines (laptops, desktops, PIs, remote servers) run arch. Hardly ever a problem and making packages is a so damn easy compared to any other distro.

How many servers? How are you managing the updates? Are you using it for any 'production' code?

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

#44

Post by yellowapple »

btschaegg wrote: post #18
amcrouch wrote: post #15

It's a matter of tools. All distro's are basically very similar but come with different desktops and package managers. I spent many years jumping around Debian and its derivatives but then I found Arch and it just felt right. I love the package manager and the fact I can control what I have installed. With a 9 cell Thinkpad battery and some cleaver settings I can last all day. I have to admit that these days I tend t…

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…

Slackware does indeed work similarly with its SlackBuilds system, albeit with much more minimalism (no dependency resolution is probably the most significant difference). SlackBuilds are also standalone shell scripts, unlike (AFAICT) PKGBUILD scripts (which seem to rely on being invoked by a separate command).

Gentoo is a whole other ballgame, and its packaging system is much closer to a modern-day BSD-style ports tree.

As for the starting environment, Slackware actually takes the opposite approach from Arch: the installer defaults to installing all package sets available, which in the case of the install DVD includes KDE, Xfce, a bunch of other window managers, and a whole lot more. You're of course free to deselect the package sets you don't want (or even individually deselect packages), but Slackware's approach is definitely to start the user off with a fully functional system rather than expect the user to set things up from the bottom up.

Gentoo's somewhere in between those two extremes, at least as far as I remember from last time I installed Gentoo.

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

#45

Post by Steeeve »

I'm partial to Gentoo for a few reasons, but honestly most distros are going to work out just fine for development work.

If you're doing enterprise development, you might want to look towards RHEL, Fedora, or CentOS.

If you're doing all work in virtual environments, you might want to just install ESX, but 275GB isn't going to hold a lot of different environments.

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

#46

Post by dingleberry »

i use arch as main os it bit me often over the years (fubar after arch-specific significant update) so i got spare laptops so i can do recovery (download the newest iso, burn to usb, install on fubared laptop, wipe all partitions but /home, read the newest changes and what caused fubar)

it's not everyday event (it gets better, last year i got 1); however, it's a good idea to clone a working virtual disk.

also consider about having openbsd as your main os. it's stable and simpler than arch. i use openbsd on my remote server and have a desktop version on my spare laptop. zzz sleeps, ZZZ hybernates, wifi automatically reconnects after sleep, etc. all made simple by the sane default. no need to fudge around systemd, power management, etc (oh yeah, i got weird mouse freeze under arch, click and it unfreezes. but freeze again after 2 sec of no movement. turns out linux power management tries to save every juice from battery, putting the mouse in 'sleep' mode after moment of inactivity. really smart, right? until the mouse frustrate u). there's workaround (i forgot atm), but not after you waste hours of testing every mouse brands you have, test said mouses on other os, etc.

linux is like that, a lot of gotchas. it seems linux devs just code but no empathy to user (things get more complex every year). openbsd feels like its devs love using their stuff so it's smoother. it's hard not to notice.

NB: i know i know, i should read archlinux.org latest news before updating; but, what if i'm clueless about the changes?

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

#47

Post by akavel »

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. Specifically, breaking down cons vs pros:

- ~CON: It's not as polished experience as Ubuntu on "first install", i.e. "end user first" or "Windows-like". But based on other comments here, I assume if you're willing to try Arch, you agree for some tweaking. Please note I've never used Arch, so I can't more precisely compare the level of tweak-ness required; what I can say for sure that it's certainly easier than what was required in '90s (at least because we have teh internets now; and esp. the ArchWiki + askubuntu...) But again, I started my post with "if you're willing to consider Arch", so in such case I assume this point is a non-really-CON, as you're already agreeing to take this cost.

- CON: you have to learn a new language (Nix). To sweeten the deal, IIUC it's one of the few truly purely functional languages around. No IO monads or whatsit. As a result, you may (um; will have to...) learn some interesting functional tricks you never imagined may exist. Note also, that some advanced usage ideas are spread over a few blogs (see esp. the "Nix pills" series), and also in inline comments in the Nix standard library source code.

- SUPER-PRO: I found out that NixOS is a hacker's dream OS. Nix's core idea is that removing a package from your OS nukes it clean, leaving absolutely no trace it ever existed. As a result, you practically don't fear any changes in even most sophisticated internals of the OS. Want to change a kernel compilation flag? Meh, let's just try this one, bam, compile, reboot! Oh, it hanged during boot? Pfff, reboot again, select previous version in GRUB, and we're back! [Um; I mean, as long as you haven't burnt your hardware ;) you know, Linux is powerful :)] Also, part of this is in the fact, that all of your OS config is described in a single file, so you can control everything from single central position, and VCS it trivially.

I've already sent a couple PRs based on this ease of hacking and tweaking, namely to neovim and systemd-bootchart. I'm also trying to write my own series of blogposts documenting this (while it's still fresh in memory); but, eh, you know, a bit too many side projects... not to mention even some of this weird "real life" thing people are talking about so often...

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

#48

Post by _vufv »

kelnos wrote: post #36

Regarding your important points: - All modern distros can run virtualized systems. You just need to install your favorite virtualization software (VirtualBox, qemu, VMWare, etc.). - No distros have good battery management, at least not really on par with Windows, and certainly not on par with macOS. This is just the unfortunate state of affairs with the Linux kernel. Some of it is due to lack of focus on improving th…

Gentoo's "compile everything" approach doesn't seem like such a bad proposition up front, but it really turns out to be the PITA. Since it's a rolling distro packages get updated often and if you haven't updated you're system in couple weeks and you happen to have couple of heavy packages installed (chromium, firefox, octave, openoffice, kernel) upgrading your system may take up to 10hrs on a average 2015 machine.

Similarly, compiling flexibility didn't prove like important feature for myself also. It allows you to slim down package installations or compile them with different optimization flags, but in most cases you don't gain much by using them:

- smaller package installation (by turning off features not commonly used) in the time where disk is cheap and OS is not the biggest consumer of the disk space

- have marginally improved performance if you know when it's safe to crank up compiler flags (better leave this decision to package maintainers)

- have debugger symbols built in - if you happen to ever need to do this, doing it for the binary package is not that difficult; you shouldn't have source distro just for this use-case

Gentoo deffinitely excels in providing you with concrete reasons to deepen your Linux knowledge if you have it as a distro on your main machine, which can be both pro and con.

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

#49

Post by yellowapple »

Pretty much any reasonably-mainstream distro will be about equivalent for the features you're prioritizing. Usually, when someone asks about which distro to use, my go-to answer is openSUSE. It's easy enough to give Ubuntu a run for its money, and I've found it to be much less prone to breakage.

----

I personally use Slackware. Some developer-friendly features I've found to be useful:

* Ships with all sorts of editors, including Emacs (which is what I use)

* Ships with the full GCC suite among other compilers (including LLVM)

* Convention is for all packages to include development headers; no more "foobar" and "foobar-dev" like in most other distros

It ain't for everyone, though. Like Arch and Gentoo, Slackware carries an expectation of being very comfortable with low-level Linux use.

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

#50

Post by yellowapple »

demonshreder wrote: post #43
crocowhile wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing better than Arch. I have been using linux daily since 2005, tried multiple distros and now all of my machines (laptops, desktops, PIs, remote servers) run arch. Hardly ever a problem and making packages is a so damn easy compared to any other distro.

How many servers? How are you managing the updates? Are you using it for any 'production' code?

Definitely interested in an answer here, too. If the rolling release ain't bad enough, the focus on bleeding-edge would ordinarily make Arch the absolute least desirable production server OS imaginable. I certainly don't have that kind of courage :)
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