From: Felix Windt Date: 2007-09-13T02:29:32+09:00 Subject: Re: What Linux distribution to choose for learning Ruby and Rubyon Rails ------=_NextPart_000_015B_01C7F527.3383BDF0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > -----Original Message----- > From: forgottenwizard [mailto:phrexianreaper@hushmail.com] > Sent: Wednesday, September 12, 2007 10:00 AM > To: ruby-talk ML > Subject: Re: What Linux distribution to choose for learning > Ruby and Rubyon Rails > > I'm going to jump in here with a few quick comments. > > First of all, how MUCH do you want to learn about linux? If > you want to > learn quite a bit, then I suggest Gentoo, simply because its virtually > impossible to NOT learn the details about your OS/distro. > > When it comes down to learning the basics, I'd actually > suggest steering > clear of Fedora/Ubuntu/ect. which are heavily graphic-based > (I could be > wrong about Fedora), and pick up something like Debian, Gentoo, > Slackware and such, as they will give you a bit more of an > in-depth look > at the system. > > It boils down to how much time and effort you want to put > into learning > Linux. If you want to learn the graphic enviroment, then take > your pick, > but if you wish to learn more of the system itself, then I > would suggest > something that is more command-line centered than Ubuntu and the other > major graphic distros. Why? Nothing keeps you from learning and using the standard command line toolbox and administration tasks in a GUI centric OS - all the tools are there, it's up to you to learn and use them. I use Ubuntu on my work laptop nowadays simply because it had the easiest support for the graphics and wireless card and I prefer to spend any time fiddling on servers I have to administrate either way. I use this laptop exactly the same way I used the FreeBSD laptop I had before this - some window manager with virtual desktops that give me access to a browser, whatever remote access software I need for work, and a shell. If I need to restart a service, I run the same scripts I would anywhere else - that there's a menu option for that somewhere could be perceived as added bonus but its existance certainly doesn't affect me. I also firmly believe that being able to emerge something in Gentoo teaches you nothing about the actual ./configure && make && make install cycle or debugging it - those that can do that or learn to do so in Gentoo could very much do the same in any other distribution. It may be a source based distribution, but the compilation steps are very different from what is common between all distributions, and what it triggers in the background. To me, there's not much difference between apt-get and emerge, and many things Gentoo teaches you are Gentoo specific. That is not to bash Gentoo - one advantage of Gentoo is the excellent documentation and the outstanding forum (well, it was outstanding last time I ran Gentoo, which is a few years back). But I really don't think that an individual willing to spend time learning Linux will benefit from one distro over another as long as that distro has good support for individuals new to the OS. That's true for all the major players, though Ubuntu _may_ be the most newbie friendly. You can always move on to something else later and realise that if all you do is browse websites, read emails, do basic clerical work and write code, there really isn't much difference in what distribution you use. 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