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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?

#271

Post by jcoffland »

beambot wrote: post #226
jcoffland wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why? Because if you miss three releases then you have to do three upgrades. If you setup a system and then come back to it a couple of years later and find you need to upgrade you can plan on fighting through multiple system braking upgrades. Yes I know you can mitigate this with LTS but that's a big compromise.

But it's a dev machine, right...? So you just nuke the install and then `git pull` all your key configuration files and dev environment, and then you're right back up and running. Same as if you switched to a new machine or one whose harddrive died. I still don't see the problem.

Reinstalling is a sorry solution. I haven't had to reinstall my dev machine in about a decade.

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

#272

Post by jcoffland »

tornadoboy55 wrote: post #244
jcoffland wrote: post #179

Debian and I'm surprised more people aren't saying so. Ubuntu or Mint, which are built on Debian do not add much value these days, IMO and Ubuntu's 6 month release cycle is intolerable. If you get behind with upgrades you are screwed. Even after all these years it's hard to beat apt-get. I think a lot of people dismiss Debian as unmodern or some how less than the distros built on it but that's hardly the case. Debian…

> Debian and I'm surprised more people aren't saying so. Ubuntu or Mint, which are built on Debian do not add much value these days, IMO and Ubuntu's 6 month release cycle is intolerable. If you get behind with upgrades you are screwed. Ever tried to install Debian on a Macbook without an Ethernet-to-USB cable? I take it not, because then you would know how completely retarded it is that you need a second USB stick w…

Actually, one of my main machines is a Macbook running Debian. Works great. Admittedly, I had a few driver issues in the beginning but that is common with cutting edge hardware with any OS that was not shipped with the hardware. Now I'm running stock Debian with no issues.

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

#273

Post by diegoprzl »

tornadoboy55 wrote: post #244
jcoffland wrote: post #179

Debian and I'm surprised more people aren't saying so. Ubuntu or Mint, which are built on Debian do not add much value these days, IMO and Ubuntu's 6 month release cycle is intolerable. If you get behind with upgrades you are screwed. Even after all these years it's hard to beat apt-get. I think a lot of people dismiss Debian as unmodern or some how less than the distros built on it but that's hardly the case. Debian…

> Debian and I'm surprised more people aren't saying so. Ubuntu or Mint, which are built on Debian do not add much value these days, IMO and Ubuntu's 6 month release cycle is intolerable. If you get behind with upgrades you are screwed. Ever tried to install Debian on a Macbook without an Ethernet-to-USB cable? I take it not, because then you would know how completely retarded it is that you need a second USB stick w…

You can use these images.

https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-in...

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

#274

Post by jcoffland »

icebraining wrote: post #270
jcoffland wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot the porridge that is just right, "testing".

I actually found Testing to have the drawbacks of both: it's neither well tested and rock-solid, nor up to date with bugfixes. I used Testing on my laptop for a year, and it was the only time I had serious bugs that lasted for more than a day.

Maybe you were unlucky. I haven't had that problem.

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

#275

Post by dyukqu »

exergy wrote: post #227
dyukqu wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is so true. I was really tired of not being able to find insightful content and discussions on so many other social networks and/or forums. Most of them are full of frivolousness, hatred, squable, swear, all that memes, gifs... etc. Then I came across HN, ~3 years ago. I am not a coder (trying to learn fundamentals on my own, though) and not so fluent in English either. Even though, it was (and is) like brillian…

Completely agree. This place is now my "front page of the internet" even more so than Reddit. There is a lot of diversity, and little that is frivolous. Also, it's obvious to me that people here will upvote a comment even when they disagree with it, simply because it adds to the discussion. And THAT is what makes it so great. This place does, however, have its limitations too. For reasons I cannot fathom, the communi…

Nit-pickings are what I love most here on HN. You never know what interesting, beautiful comments (stories) will come up, even if they are tangentially related to OP. Btw, we are (kinda) nit-picking in this very thread. :-)

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

#276

Post by vacri »

_callcc wrote: post #256
vacri wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use debian but I'm not sure I'd recommend it for devs who don't want to fiddle with their desktop. Stable is great for servers and simple desktop computing, but is too stale for developers. Testing and Sid are both rolling updates, so if you don't keep updated, things can break (or more usually, change in workflow) sometimes when you do update. Ubuntu and Mint are snapshots of these rolling setups, so they stay mor…

Having spent years on debian, and having run stable and sid, the only really sustainable arrangement is to use stable+backports. Don't run sid! Gradually your system will become a mess and you'll end up doing a reinstall. If you need a library that isn't in backports, just compile from source and install to /usr/local, it's not hard!

Datapoint to support you: this conversation reminded me to do an update on this debian sid laptop, which is a couple of months un-updated. about a gig of downloaded updates... and I came back to my lockscreen which had a whole new look, and my desktop wallpaper had changed (I think I was just using the default before, so understandable).

It's fine because I understand what Sid is about and this is to be expected, but I wouldn't suggest this to a naive user. And since Testing gets these changes in short order, I'd stay away from that as well if the user isn't comfortable fiddling.

So yes, stable + backports, unless you're comfortable with change/fiddling (same with any rolling distro).

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

#277

Post by [deleted] »

jcoffland wrote: post #271
beambot wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's a dev machine, right...? So you just nuke the install and then `git pull` all your key configuration files and dev environment, and then you're right back up and running. Same as if you switched to a new machine or one whose harddrive died. I still don't see the problem.

Reinstalling is a sorry solution. I haven't had to reinstall my dev machine in about a decade.

[deleted]

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

#278

Post by Arcaire »

jcoffland wrote: post #224
beambot wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you get behind with upgrades you are screwed. Why? You shouldn't rely on system files for development... you probably want a proper dev environment that can later be replicated into production or staging (eg. containerization, VMs, virtualenv, etc). Just stick with Ubuntu LTS releases, and enjoy the consistent updates (eg. security) and the massive support benefits (eg. forums) associated with running one of the…

> Why? Because if you miss three releases then you have to do three upgrades. If you setup a system and then come back to it a couple of years later and find you need to upgrade you can plan on fighting through multiple system braking upgrades. Yes I know you can mitigate this with LTS but that's a big compromise.

> Yes I know you can mitigate this with LTS but that's a big compromise.

Genuine question as a Ubuntu user, where do you win using Debian on a laptop? I totally understand using it on servers, as it is the definition of 'rock solid' and you can ensure that it will work 100% of the time.

Admittedly I don't pay a huge amount of attention to the differences, but isn't using Ubuntu LTS compromising in the same way as Debian stable? Specifically, packages are oriented for stability. Consequently, you don't get improvements to the kernel, or other packages you may use frequently. On my laptop, I don't want to use Kernel 3.6 that doesn't have the latest improvements to work with Intel processors, direct rendering management, and power saving. I don't particularly want to use quite outdated versions of GNOME either. Six months, to me, is a solid amount of time to sit on a release.

Some people suggest (misguidedly, according to Debian volunteers) using Unstable on a workstation / laptop, which caused my system to outright break entirely because I was using a Nvidia graphics card, so I just installed Ubuntu and it worked from first boot.

Using testing is sworn against by almost everybody, as it's the worst of both worlds - it's not stable and it's not fixed quickly.

Stable plus backports, suggested elsewhere in these comments, sounds nice only if you consider ensuring that water drains out of each hole in a colander equally an adequate use of your time. You then have what I'm fairly sure it's explicitly listed as "don't do this" on the DontBreakDebian[0] page.

[0] https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDebian

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

#279

Post by AlexAMEEE »

jcoffland wrote: post #179

Debian and I'm surprised more people aren't saying so. Ubuntu or Mint, which are built on Debian do not add much value these days, IMO and Ubuntu's 6 month release cycle is intolerable. If you get behind with upgrades you are screwed. Even after all these years it's hard to beat apt-get. I think a lot of people dismiss Debian as unmodern or some how less than the distros built on it but that's hardly the case. Debian…

> I find Arch, Gentoo and many others to be a lot of work. I don't have time to spend fiddling around with the OS.

I agree, first install was boring and confusing. I installed it once and didn't touch it since then, haven't touched it for 6 years, it's still running. In fact that's the last time I installed an OS.

edit: I'm running Arch.

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

#280

Post by beambot »

jcoffland wrote: post #271
beambot wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's a dev machine, right...? So you just nuke the install and then `git pull` all your key configuration files and dev environment, and then you're right back up and running. Same as if you switched to a new machine or one whose harddrive died. I still don't see the problem.

Reinstalling is a sorry solution. I haven't had to reinstall my dev machine in about a decade.

Where do you buy your HDDs? You're sitting a couple standard deviations beyond MTBF.
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