Hi Elazar! On 05/10/2010 05:05 PM, Elazar Leibovich wrote:
I'm evaluating a distribution for developer desktop.
I am using Ubuntu since 7.04.
As a starter I tried to stick only to the official distro packages, which caused me to use older versions of the development tools.
Later I have realized the main tools are distributed in a very easy to install packaged - The latest versions of Eclipse, Aptana, Netbeans, VirtualBox and more tools can be download from the vendor and installed in one click, system wide or per user. (You do have to choose to use Sun's Java but this is really trivial using update-alternatives.). Most of them even auto update with their own mechanism. Although this might sounds strange, it works just as good as using authentic packages, and this is the important part for me. Same for stuff needed to be installed from public source control. Checkout, build, install - just works.
In the last two years people tend to use Ubuntu's PPAs ( https://help.launchpad.net/Packaging/PPA ) more and more. Developers choose to use this as their main distribution mechanism, and users love it. For example, I use the daily chromium-browser and mercurial ppas.
In the short term future I think you should still expect problems with the Linux desktop - especially when it comes to stuff like Adobe Flash and still sometimes some sound issues ( http://linmagazine.co.il/hacking/2010/04/27/why-linux-on-the-desktop-sucks ). I personally had problems with the mic and nvidia in 7.04 and 7.10 but now it works OK. I have an ancient very non standard Webcam which also caused trouble (but it should have reached the trash can long time ago anyway). I am not very familiar with other distros - but I don't think Ubuntu should be about the same as any other main distro.
Good luck, Udi
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