Best Distro for development?

[wildbohr 0]

Hi guys,

 

I recently opened my own software/web dev business. I want to make a move to linux for all of my development.

 

I'm trying to plan ahead for when and if I need to hire people on. What would be the best distro to use. What will be less hastle for soft/web dev tools. Also looking for ease of use and it being nice to hardware changes.

 

Thanks guys.

[wildbohr 0]

No one has any suggestions. I was thinking Mandrake, it's an easy install but I'm wondering about tools.

[Admiral LSD 0]

Well it depends on how close you want to get to the "bleeding edge." A Gentoo system, emerged from Stage 1 and against the ~x86 package set will have pretty much the absolute latest versions of all the major Linux development tools (gcc, glibc etc) but there is an increased risk here of a dud ebuild slipping through the net and breaking things quite spectacularly. This happened quite recently with a gcc update that caused pretty much everything compiled with it to screw up in some way. It was quickly rectified (the ebuild was masked and the package downgraded until a proper fix could be found) but as everything compiled with the dud gcc had to be recompiled again afterward, it left people with a fair amount of work before they had their systems running up to speed again.

[wildbohr 0]

Oh... that maybe a little TOO unstable for my needs. Any recommendations for a good site to find linux development software comparisons? Like in Windows I use HomeSite for html/js coding and would need something as robust but in Linux equivalent.

[enloop 0]

Quote:

Hi guys,

I recently opened my own software/web dev business. I want to make a move to linux for all of my development.

I'm trying to plan ahead for when and if I need to hire people on. What would be the best distro to use.

Depends on what you plan to develop. If you intend to do systems work, or get deep into the kernel, you might want to look at Slackware. Slackware doesn't get in your way with a lot of distribution-specific goodies. It tends not to muck about with the software it include. So, in my experience, introducing new software to a Slackware machine has been a problem.

I can't say that for the RPM-based distributions I've used. What you need may not be available in an RPM. If it is, third-party RPM's have, on occasion, caused problems for me. And, compiling from scratch can lead you very quickly into Library Dependency Hell.

On the other hand, if you intend to focus on web work, perhaps building sites using php with mysql on the backend, or something similar, you probably won't be installing or testing systems or kernel code. So, consider an established distribution with a reputation for stability. Debian certainly has that. I've been impressed with SuSE 8.2 Professional (enough to pre-order the next release). RedHat and Mandrake have similar virtues.

Last piece of advice: If you're setting up a development business, spend a lot more time trying to figure out how to make money than worrying about the "best" distribution. Your customers wll not care about the software you use.