that was never in question.

I agree, Slackware is great as a development system (I am a developer), it comes with just about every programming language + what other distros calls 'Developer Libs'.

The only language that does not come with Slackware is Java, that is due to it's license. But on the dvd there are easy to follow instructions describing how to get java. For environments, eclipse is also not installed due to the java license.

I do not develop Java apps, so I can say for my development needs, I did not have to install anything extra.

1 members found this post helpful.

There is the GNU java engine. It does not have ALL of the features of the newer ORACLE java versions, but it is pretty good and readily available without the painful license restrictions.

I'd hazard a guess that most use debian or arch but I suspect that the later one may be favourite going on comments from devs long ago - if distro's left their code alone there would be less problems with it. I wonder if devs even read forums now.

On the other hand all major distro's have the tools that are needed available.

I'm thinking of writing some code that will probably be just for my own use and have decided that when and if I do I will use java. That's a lot less likely to need updating as various other things on machines change.

I spent years writing the stuff but not for pc's. Trouble is once stopped it's not easy to get going again. There's a certain amount of reluctance.

John
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If I keep coding it is exciting and taking a break is almost painful. Once I stop and try to get back, there is a period of LAZY BRAIN where it takes a real efforts to regain the groove.

I never got far into java. Assembler, FORTRAN, Pascal, C, and even COBOL make better sense to me. Now that Oracle is starting to get anal about the license terms for their java, I am glad I did not dive into it.

Most of my stuff still compiles and runs using modern open source tools.

Good luck with your code!

Why not try Devuan ?

Most certainly stay away from this one. The community is not the least bit helpful and the developers are known for a severe lack of quality. For instance they once patched mesa with a upstream unfinished branch that came with a "DO NOT USE" disclaimer. Or the time they broke xfs in the kernel and promptly ran away until the xfs devs were forced to revert the change.

Slackware or Arch.

I've run it for about 15 years always on KDE and never ever had much of a problem with it. Yes that predates opensuse and may even be longer as I ran at least 2 releases from suse before they were bought out by Novell.

Most of the forum helpers use console based solutions to peoples problems. No one really has any clues as to what can be done in kde5 configuration for instance. That's not their problem. The helpers do need complete info in order to help. They often don't get it so need to ask and tell people what to do to get it. That can come across a bit terse at times.

Dev's ? Generally when ever I want the latest version of some application a dev will have produced it more or less as soon as they are released and they will fit in with the standard release. As they do have stable releases though there can be problems but those can generally be prevented by simply not refreshing or using the repo they came from for any other updates.

Opensuse usage has been on the increase anyway. It did drop back. There release system may be a bit different to some. Take a 42.2, it's likely to be more stable than a 42.1. Point 3 when it comes will be the equivalent of the long term release. However I've never had any serious problems with the early ones - even when kde4 came out.

John
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Have we answered your question Kunal3363?

As I understand it the license aspects come in according to what it's used for and what parts of java se are actually used. However their site has certainly changed since I last downloaded a jdk and the developers license has some rather odd statements in it.

The reason I favoured it is that there are some excellent tutorials around especially on youtube. Just enough to get going with it and in some ways it's very easy to use especially if fx functions are used. Also backwards compatibility.

John
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FALSE and F U D ! ! !

btw : did u know it opens is based on Slackware ? ? ?

Hi,
Being biased, I say it has to be Slackware. I am a developer/software dogsbody/whatever. I use Slackware at work where everyone else tends to use Windblows! Windblows runs in a virtual machine on my desktop box!

Although there are plenty of packages for Slackware out there for items not on the distribution DVD.
However, major items such as Java, Eclipse, Tomcat, VirtualBox can be downloaded from their respective creators repositories and just install and work .. at least that has been my experience thus far (I have been using Slackware since 1995).

cheers
pete

pete hilton
saruman@ruvolo-hilton.org

Only the very first version off Suse as I understand it. Wiki reckons so too.

Open/Suse is an rpm based distro fist used I think by RedHat. Slack isn't as far as I know. Suse have also added things that now crop up elsewhere - apparmor for instance. Next one which I think they did is a network manager called wicked. Their build service is used by several distro's. HP qualify there servers for it.

One thing for sure there are / has been loads of distro's

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o..._distributions

I've stuck with opensuse for several reasons. YAST simplifies a lot of system level tasks. I sometime want an application that does something or the other but don't know a name. Not such a problem these days but descriptions can be searched for everything they have. Install's flexible and pretty easy to use. Ideal really for some one who knows how they want their machine set up straight from the install and then just want to mostly get on with what ever they want to do with it. The default install can be used too.

It did mess me up a little when I installed leap. I imported my partitioning and /home was on a raid. It stuck it at root on an flash drive. Confused me for a while. It left my back up disk alone though and just changed what it needed to. Think there was an upgrade option too but didn't risk that while there is a mix of kde 4 and 5 about. They don't include stuff that may have license problems but packman takes care of that.

Forgot to mention one click installs - why bother doing it any other way and then there's their software search. Good for unofficial upgrades.

John
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Last I heard Linus used Fedora -- so Fedora it is!

Seriously though, whichever you prefer is likely fine because, as a developer, you should be able to work out the differences and work with them -- it's part of the job-spec.