From: forgottenwizard Date: 2007-09-13T02:55:06+09:00 Subject: Re: What Linux distribution to choose for learning Ruby and Rubyon Rails On 02:29 Thu 13 Sep , Felix Windt wrote: > 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. Thing is, most people would prefer to use the GUI to the command-line. Thats just a way of making sure you learned it. > 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 tend to run commands via a terminal myself. I find it easier and in some cases much quicker, but there are also people who won't touch a command-line because they have never used one before, and it scares them to some extent. > 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. Lets not turn this into a distro-war, which it could easily do. The install proccess for Gentoo is a great learning experiance, and the fact you have to go in and actually configure a program (such as X), teachs you a bit more about the system itself. While I'm not going to argue about the ./configure && make && make install part, you do aquire some experiance with LD_FLAGS and CFLAGS and such, which isn't something you can do with many others, but that is probably more beside the point for a new person than anything. > 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). Its still fairly good, although I'm messing with the mailing list more than the forum right now anyways. > 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. My main problem with pointing someone to Ubuntu for leaning Linux is that so much of everything is already done for you. Ubuntu is a good distro for some cases (new hardware seems to be something it handles well), but it is so automated and does so much for you I see it as telling someone to learn YaST to learn how to handle package managers. > 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. The end-product will generally be the same, yes. It is all the same base code, anyways. What you do to get there, though, differs greatly. > > Felix P.S. The reason I mainly suggested Gentoo, btw, is I though LFS would be a bit much for someone new to Linux. I've always seen Gentoo as a sort of 'LFS for the lazy'.