Hi Guys. I'm a Newbie to the forum and more than that, a complete Newbie to Linux. I have programmed commercially in Windows happily but am due to start a job in a Linux environment and need to get set up to explore from home prior to starting.

In order to reflect what goes on at work the recommendation is to set up Red Hat 5.6. With no knowledge of Linux to fall back on, can someone point me at where I can download this from? Remember I am working in Windows at the moment until I get the relevant installation stuff in place.

Am I right in assuming this is a free distribution? Red Hat's site seems to want to point me to Red Hat Enterprise and charge me, (for the support?).

Please be gentle until I find my feet.

ok, so first - DON'T get RedHat EL. You've already been given bad advice! Get CentOS EL instead, which is functionally *IDENTICAL* to RedHat EL but doesn't require a license to obtain software updates. Also, unless you've a specific motivation to use EL5 (which is no on 5.8 not 5.6), then use EL 6 instead.

http://centos.org

Note that these distros are specifically server orientated, and can suck a big one on a laptop, with wireless cards etc. If that's how you want to use it, then try fedora as a more user angled, and more cutting edge member of the redhat based ecosystem.

i dont know if red hat has a free version. i know that my corporation uses it on a few servers and they pay a few thousand dollars a year to use it.

i would run fedora live-usb (which is based on red hat).

i second the motion on fedora, which is redhat based
redhat USED to have a free version, but they discontinued it years ago
if you are talking RHEL then yes it's commercial, fedora, centos is free.

Just to make sure there is no CentOS EL as the name "Community Enterprise Operating System" already says it.


No need to post that as it would have taken you only five seconds to find out.


Unless, like acid_kewpie already said, there are compelling reasons to maintain RHEL5 compatibility.


@OP: and next to CentOS there's also Scientific Linux.

The best OS to use at home to prepare for Red Hat 5 at work is Centos 5.

Is that "Red Hat 5.6" you mentioned a specific quote from someone who knows what you will be using at work?

If so, I still wouldn't worry about which Centos 5.x you use at home (the differences are too small to matter for your purpose) but the major version number 5.x vs. 6.x ought to match between your Centos and work's RHEL.

Open source but not free in the sense you mean.

Usually you can find a free trial copy of RHEL. DON'T DO THAT. It is not what you want. You really do want Centos. Not Fedora (as others suggested), not a free trial of RHEL.

To practice at home for RHEL at work, you definitely want Centos.

apologies for the incorrect information
if you are going for a job with linux that requires redhat based knowledge then yes, centos is your best bet, if you were using it for everyday desktop then fedora would be what you want but it looks as if you are looking to learn management of servers, or actually operate servers, so yes.. centos.

Wow, many thanks for the responses. So much in so little time. I'm not used to this level of support. I feel spoiled and it's great.

To answer a couple of your points here:

acid_kewpie:
Answered by the next bit....

johnsfine:
Yes, absolutely. This was the request of the project leader. As I am so new to Linux in all its glory with so little time to prepare, I wanted to make sure that I really did get as close to what he requested as possible. The object is not so much server management at the moment. It's basic code writing in C++, compilation with GCC, using wxWidgets as application framework/GUI builder and Doxygen for code commenting to generate documentation. Doxygen I know but all of the other stuff is Linux specific (barring the C++ coding of course) and he quotes releases for them to aim for so I am trying to make sure everything is as close to his spec as possible at this stage. I really only need to get to grips with the relations and the build process in their environment.

If you guys reckon that Centos is the one to plump for that is good enough for me. I'll get as close to 5.6 as I can if that is possible, and fill in the other stuff after I have Linux set up on the nice new SSD which is on its way as I write. The PC is an Intel i5, 4GB RAM, 2x500GB HDD so shouldn't be too dodgy at handling this. If it can deal with Visual Studio in Windoze without problems I would guess it should be fine.

Thanks once again and if there is any other advice anyone can offer knowing what I am after it would be welcome.

yes, CentOS all the way.

You should find out what they use for
*) Editing C++ code
*) Building (not the compiler and linker, but the tool that invokes those)
*) Debugging

For most Windows C++ programming, Visual Studio is so dominant for those three things that most programmers aren't even aware there is an alternative.

For Linux, there are many choices.

All of those choices are independent of your choice of Linux distribution.

There are a few different IDE's available in Linux. CodeBlocks is one of the popular ones with the advantage that it operates almost exactly the same way on Windows and Linux. KDevelop is another popular choice. But most Linux software development projects don't use IDE's at all.

There are lots of text editors available in Linux. Find one you like. It is very rare for a team project to be so rigidly structured that individuals don't select text editors independently. If you're used to VS, you might prefer an IDE for text editing even if the project doesn't use an IDE.

Lots of people directly use gdb for debugging. I've never understood how. gdb has poorly organized documentation and a command set that is counter intuitive, hard to type and hard to remember. Its output formats are similarly awkward. There are several GUI front ends for gdb, including one in each IDE. If you prefer a GUI debugger, you might want to use an IDE for its GUI debugger (GUI front end to gdb) even if the rest of the project doesn't.

Linux has a few versions of the basic make tool for building small projects and a bigger variety of additional layers mainly to facilitate maintenance of the build files for bigger projects. All that is totally different from what you're probably used to from VS. But a new team member joining a project usually doesn't need to understand any of that stuff. There will be some simple command or click you need to cause it all to build. Initially that is probably all you need to know. But it still would be helpful to ask the basic questions about build tools when setting up a practice environment at home. If the build tools at work are simple, you probably want to use the same at home.

I would suggest using the same editor and debugger at home that YOU expect to use at work, which is not necessarily the same editor and debugger others at work use. Use some easy build system at home that is not necessarily the same build system that you and others will use at work.