Which Linux flavour is best for programming and hacking ?
 

Which Linux flavour is best for programming and hacking ?

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...-linux-923211/

For the (in my opinion) true meaning of hacking and programing I think that the creator of Linux himself uses Fedora.

Take the test:

http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/

It's all good, but I prefer to stay close to the base: Slackware, Debian, Gentoo. A full Slackware installation will give you all the tools to get started, and you'll learn a lot about Linux by learning Slackware.

For hacking and security testing, Backtrack 5 R3 or Kali; for programming Cruncbang or Excelsior 1.0 (previously Workbench). I use all four by the way. Excelsior is hard to find so if you want I can send you the iso or upload it somewhere and post the link.

Every distro is ok, the thing most important is your mint ;)

I think this would fit the bill perfectly.

This was meant for kids

You ought to us the Kali OS for hacking: I use Slackware for programming, but when you install it you may need to check the programming option on list of programs to install. If you are looking for a good combo I would go with Ubuntu Linux because you can use the Ubuntu Linux package manager to find and install both programming and hacking tools.

Cheers,
Nbiser

I'd be interested to hear what people think makes a distro suitable or unsuitable for 'programming and hacking'. To me, it means ready access to a wide assortment of development tools, networking tools, and relatively unrestricted access to privileges such as root access. So far, I find Debian fits that bill best. Redhat based distros are near the opposite end of the spectrum.
--- rod.

That's actually where I'm going with my previous post, the distros mentioned have the wide variety of programming and security testing tools.

To my mind the distro that is best for anything is the one you're used to and the one that works for you and has the tools you want. The big distros (and many of the small ones) all have most tools that most people want for most purposes so a lot of the time it's just a matter of taste.
Although it doesn't matter which distro Linus uses, I think his reasoning is the same as everyone else's so to quote him from some years back:When it comes to development or penetration testing I doubt that there's something that, say, Fedora can do that Debian can't or vice-versa and, as I mentioned above, I think that goes for every major distro and most smaller ones.

With respect to software development (what hackers do), I cannot agree that all distros are created more or less equal. It's true that all major distros come with some basic toolchain and some libraries. However, the versions of those tools can range from positively ancient to as recent as possible. The reality of dependency hell is that many newly released packages depend on similarly modern support libraries and even on modern compilers and other toolchain components. Just try to build a cross toolchain using one of the popular frameworks that do that on a Redhat-based distro and see how many things need to be upgraded from external sources in order to complete a build. The conservative approach taken by Redhat is probably ideal for server oriented purposes where well tested reliability is a key feature. For software development, it isn't always a great feature.
Having tools that most people want is different from having tools that a specific group of people want.
--- rod.

I know what you mean about out of date packages but then isn't that what Fedora (Red Hat), Sid (Debian), Current (Slackware) and all the others are for?

If you consider Fedora as a 'Redhat', then yes. I suppose I should have specified RHEL. My point remains that there are significant differences between distros. RHEL is as different from Fedora as almost any two full-blown distros can be, IMHO.