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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Moving to a Linux distro for dev (lemmy.world)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I'm a long time Windows user who has experience with WSL. Last year, I needed a laptop for university, and out of laziness, opted for a Macbook since, although they're expensive as hell, are reasonably reliable.

Since using the mac, I've absolutely fallen in love with it over Windows. Note that I refer to the non-iOS specific aspects. After not touching my desktop for several months, I now see that I absolutely hate Windows even more. I would like to move my desktop to a Linux system some time in the future. However, my education is limited, and so I'm here to ask for help.

Currently, I'm a student in Mathematics and Computer Science. But outside that, I am, for the most part, a programmer. I rarely game, but I would like the option for the rare occasion that I have the time to do so.

I've grown comfortably with the command line, through my in-depth knowledge of lower level knowledge is limited. So, I feel I'm comfortable enough to extend the possible domain of my options.

I would love to hear recommendations and suggestions. I'm also open to other options such as NixOS, but that would require some research to learn more, which is fine. I'm not doing this soon.

If you could provide any links and resources that I can follow to continue learning, especially if relevant to your suggestions, I would be deeply appreciative!

My Mac is the most Linux-like thing I've used for so long, and it's been so, so much easier to work with compared to Windows (I hate Windows PATH limitations so much).

Thanks, all ❤ 🐧

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago (1 children)

There's a lot of people here promoting whatever crazy niche distro they use and I'd caution against some of the options presented here. I'd recommend the following criteria when choosing a distro for development (depends on the development but I'll assume since you're study computer science something like Python, C/C++ where distro packages are important):

Up-to-date packages: You don't want to come across some bug in a library that was fixed 2 years ago or miss out on the latest features or standards
Stability: You likely don't want to rewrite your code to account for a major library update immediately because otherwise your code won't run - it also makes it easier to share with other people as you can target a specific OS
QA: Possibly having maintainers that keep an eye on bugs and packaging mismatches to create a coherent system is one of the greatest features of the Linux desktop. For example I had an Arch update stuff me around for an update where the maintainer of the CUDA toolkit package did a major upgrade without any coordination with the maintainer of the proprietary nvidia driver package, making CUDA unusable.

Here's a quick list of how distros fit these criteria:

Arch: (1)
Debian 12: (2, 3)
Linux Mint: (2, 3)
Ubuntu LTS: (2, 3)
Ubuntu 24.04: (2, 3) - Some packages weren't updated to their latest versions like KDE Plasma
Fedora Workstation 40: (1, 2, 3)
Fedora Silverblue 40: (1, 2, 3+) - My personal choice however, it's a bit different from normal distros, see below
NixOS: (1, 2) - You can define specific package versions but with the large repos I doubt there is much QA going on
Debian Sid: (1) - This is the development branch of Debian
OpenSUSE Tumbleweed: (1, 2, 3+) - Very advanced automated testing
Void Linux: (1, 2, 3-) - Claim to be stable rolling release, updates come slowly after some testing

Note on atomic distros and toolboxes/distroboxes:

I personally use Fedora Silverblue with a few distroboxes (basically docker containers you can interact with) for development (Fedora) and Steam (bazzite-arch-gnome).
With an Atomic distro the root filesystem is not mutable - you don't generally install packages there but setup an aforementioned container and install you're environment in there.
toolboxes and distroboxes are usable on any distro so your desktop environment and any applications like Steam, Firefox, etc. are able to be updated to a different cycle/philosophy to your development tools.
The main advantages of an atomic distro are:
- Fast updates that you download while the system is running and on next boot you will immediately be in the updated environment (no need to wait for updates to apply);
- Everyone runs the same configuration (or very close to) which is why I gave Fedora Silverblue a + in the QA category. This means you are less likely to come across rare configuration issues which are difficult to test (i.e. there is less entropy in the system)
The main drawbacks however:
- It's a relatively new paradigm on the Linux desktop (despite being basically what Android does) so there's not as many people using Fedora Silverblue as Fedora Workstation.

Desktop environments:

On MacOS and Windows you only get one choice as to how the desktop looks and feels, here we have a few choices:
- GNOME - the most popular choice and is the default for most major distros, with strong backing from major players like Red Hat. It implements a completely new way to interact with your computer borrowing behaviour from both Windows and MacOS. While not terribly customisable (at least not through settings, extensions can do pretty much anything), it's generally not necessary if you just want to focus and get stuff done
- KDE Plasma: probably the second most popular choice, while not the default for the major distros there are versions like Kubuntu (Ubuntu), Fedora KDE Spin (Fedora Workstation) and Fedora Kinoite (Fedora Silverblue) which implement it. By default Plasma has a Windows like behaviour however it is customisable to behave pretty much however you see fit.
- Cinnamon: Not as popular - used by Linux Mint to provide a familiar experience to migrating Windows users.
- XFCE: Also not as popular but is a good lightweight option
- Tiling Window managers - not a full dekstop environment like you would expect from the other options but provide a unique keyboard-based workflow making use of virtual desktops/workspaces and window tiling rather than floating windows.

I hope this comment is helpful for you, and the choices are really overwhelming - but worth it, and I'd recommend playing around with whatever you've got time to do to find what works best for you. If you're planning on running on an Apple Silicon based device most of these distro options are unavailable, I'd recommend looking into Asahi Linux based distros - don't use Manjaro as they aren't endorsed by the Asahi project

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

NixOS: (1, 2) - You can define specific package versions but with the large repos I doubt there is much QA going on

It depends on the nixpkgs channel you use (I'm also using the term for flakes here, though technically these are then called inputs). The main channels, those being NixOS-stable whatever the current version is at the time and NixOS-unstable have a rather big set of packages that must be built successfully before users get updates, including the tests defined in the build system plus sometimes distribution-specific tests, though these are often rather simple, like start program and see if its port is open. Even more, when a library gets updated, all programs and other libraries depending on it get rebuilt as well, including all tests.

Now what if a package outside of that scope breaks? Most likely, your new configuration won't build, so you're stuck on an older but working configuration, or it does build, but something doesn't work. But I'm the latter case, you can still choose to start the older working configuration.

Also the more complicated packages have very dedicated and capable maintainers from my experience, sure the smaller stuff is often updated mostly automatically with merge request created by bots and just the final merge approved by the maintainer, but the big infrastructure is usually tested quite well.

As a downside, this can sometimes lead to longer periods without updates when a lot of stuff has to get rebuilt and something doesn't work (multiple days, but not weeks). You can then switch to another set in case the problematic packages don't affect you, or just wait. However, saying there's little QA is unfair, in fact from my experience there's more QA in nixpkgs than in most distributions.

I don't recommend NixOS to new users because it abstracts a lot of stuff away and makes use of mechanics that are helpful to understand first. But if you're comfortable with Linux, NixOS is a great distribution that even on unstable works very well. Then again, it allows specific packages to depend on very specific versions of other packages, which is partially the reason you'd use a stable distribution.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

I've never actually used NixOS (I did use Nix once to save my ass on Arch because of the aforementioned CUDA thing which I will not let go), but my reasoning for it not having as good QA as Fedora Atomic Desktops is the large number of possible configurations to test for, as well as testing GUI programs. But I understand the way the project is being developed and designed with things like flakes there is certainly potential for much more stringent QA, however, it still feels a bit like an "in development" thing that's probably not at the stage where users can expect to use it without coming across things they can't do etc. (Not that Silverblue doesn't have that).

So I agree it certainly has its uses.