Which Linux distribs are people actually using? Topic is solved

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Jorg
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Which Linux distribs are people actually using?

Post by Jorg »

I am now preparing some pre-built binaries for FC4, Suse 10.x and FC5. What distributions are actually the most favorite? Are there more out there that are used (mostly by developers?)

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Post by DavidHart »

Hi Jorgen,

The most popular distro for users is said to be Ubuntu. See http://distrowatch.com/ (right-hand column below the adverts) for their rankings (which they admit are of debatable value).

OTOH developers with hair on their chests will be more likely to use gentoo or debian; and not want to use a binary anyway. ;)

Regards,

David
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Post by jb_coder »

I primarily use (and develop on) Suse 9.3 and try to do at least a test compilation on FC4. I "plan" to do a test compilation on Ubuntu when I have time to set up a machine. If you have a SourceForge account, you can try compiling on their compile farm which also provides Mac OS X machines.
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Post by dsk »

for developers, I think best are slackware and debian

I'm using slackware...
Back to wxWidgets and c++, from long time with php projects
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Post by Jorg »

Hi David,

Thanks for the link, it is very clarifying. I will see if i can set up Ubuntu + compiler tools, but I am not sure if I have the time for that. For all other distribs I guess I will just leave it at FC4, FC5 and Suse 10.

dsk, my app will hopefully easy compile on other distribs. It would be nice if there would be less diversity ;-)

jb_coder, I think I will not go lower then Suse 10. I might even condier not building for FC4 ..

Thanks again!
- Jorgen
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Post by benedicte »

We have an old debian for development, and FC4, Live Ubuntu and Live CentOS for testing.
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Post by priyank_bolia »

I currently tried SuSE 10.1 that comes with a local magazine, and it configures all the devices, with little work all configure the window partitions and install window codecs and mplayer and SuSE 10.1 rocks. It almost like windows in comfort. I don't need to login it remembers the password, detect tv tuner and bluetooth, though I didn't tested them. Has all the latest packages. And wxWidgets compiled on it, without any issues.
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Post by Vexator »

i want to release my commercial project for linux as well - so it has to be prebuilt. will i have to provide binaries for every platform then?
Windows 7 Pro
Visual Studio 2010
wxWidgets 2.9.3
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Post by Jorg »

Well one way to limit the pain is compiling against a wxGTK RPM that is out on the field.

But yes you need to. The problem I have found is that every distrib has their own libs they link to. Some distribs are compatible others are not. How I do it is simply installing a fresh linux in a VMware machine, and build the binaries there. At least I know that no updated or strange libs are also linked along this way.

Maybe you can use the XEN technology and reserve one machine as the build machine with multiple linux virtual systems.

With regards,
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Post by Vexator »

aargh
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Post by grf »

SuSE 9.3 and 10.0.

Regards
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Post by T-Rex »

How I do it is simply installing a fresh linux in a VMware machine, and build the binaries there
Mmm... but MinGWStudio works with different distros. As far as I understand, it was staticaly linked and there are no problems for executing this IDE on different distros (I have been working with MinGWStudio under Ubuntu, FC3 and FC5).
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Post by Jorg »

Hi T-rex,

They probably buils everything static. If you want to take advantage of the libs that an OS offers (e.g. the newest ones) then dynamic linking is the best way. Problems here arise when wxWidgets was built on my system with e.g. zlib version 'x' and on other OS'es a less new version exists, e.g zlib version 'y'. Anyway it costed me a lot of pain and mostly related to libglide.lib (or some name I forgot) which was linked to because of the OpenGL stuff. However not all other Linux distribs use this.

I recently left Linux for a while because my wireless card refused to work, and I am using music apps that are not available on Linux. But that is the most pain developing on Linux for me. I am constantly looking more and more to scripting like wxPython or Iron Python where hopefully the mess of lib compilation is left to a minimum.

Regards,
- Jorgen
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Post by mac »

slackware
(k)ubuntu

if slack ever gets bad I'll reinstall with ubuntu. But so far I've always loved slack :P

on the 5th pc in our home we got ubuntu ^_^ I installed it for my less tech savy roomie. Ubuntu based on debian is really easy for even a linux noobie to maintain. Slack is easy to maintain too (patches, closed ports, check for rootkits ^_^, etc.) just maybe not as easy for people that are new.
vista 64bit, OS X 10.4.x, OS X 10.3.9 x 2
(virtualization: vista 32bit, MS XP, MS95, MS98, Debian 3.1, Slackware 12, FreeBSD 6.1, a few more)

wx: 2.8.8/9 (unicode)
compilers: gcc (GTK+2, OS X), vc++6(MSW)
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Post by eranif »

I tried FC4/5, CentOS, Ubuntu and so far I found Ubuntu the most friendly for users.

Nothing had to be done to configure my hardware, went smooth!

However, the live CD of ubuntu comes pretty much with very thin distro, you need to install everything by using the (very friendly) package manager.

Updates (like windows update) are done autumaticaly using mechanisem like windows update - very nice.

So: Ubuntu FTW!

One major problem (the way I see it) with Linux, is the need to provide a precompiled binaries for every distrobution... kinda pain in the a**

I would really like to see a universal installer for all Linux out there (or maybe just the majority of them)

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