I'm just qurious...

What is your favourite linux dist to program on?
What desktop env?

Any other setup to make your programming sessions a little better?

Hello. I use Debian SID because Scut from TESO said he uses it in "Phrack prophile on Scut" and I hope to be a famous hacker like him one day. I run notepad under WINE because that's my favorite text editor for when I program in C, C++, C# and Objective-C -- at the same time.

P.S.: It was a (stupid) joke.

I'm not really sure if there are better/worse distros in terms of programming. If, for example, you want to program in python, it's just a question of installing it (if it's not already installed on your system). The same applies to the desktop environment. What probably matters most is an editor/IDE that you use and how you set it up for a particular programming language. Some people use set up vim or emacs for their programming needs. Others prefer complete IDEs like Eclipse. I would never call myself a programmer - just playing with python and php. I use vim and sometimes emacs with a python mode enabled. That's completely sufficient for me as I don't do any advanced stuff.

That's just 5 pence from a newbie programmer

It makes no odds really,
though some come with more stuff ready installed,

I use BSD.

In my experience this is far from true. For example, Ubuntu comes with almost nothing for development: it doesn't have headers for most libraries, it doesn't have manpages 2&3, it doesn't have the glibc infopages, and it doesn't have autotools. Everything must be installed a package at a time when you realize it isn't there. Slackware, on the other hand, allows you to install almost everything needed for programming up front. Not only that, but Slackware allows you access to the packages it installs from the CD, whereas Ubuntu doesn't. One generally has to connect to the web immediately after installing Ubuntu to download the rest of the packages needed, which is quite inconvenient when one is, e.g., waiting for network access for a new server.
Kevin Barry

Valid point - I didn't think of it that way. I only used Ubuntu for a few weeks. What I meant is that once you've installed whatever is needed on ubuntu then it isn't any worse/better than slackware as a programming platform, is it?

So far it's been about the same. So long as the packages you need are available, all distros should be comparable after everything is installed. BSD is something else altogether, though.
Kevin Barry

Can you elaborate on it? I'm intrigued

Programming in Linux and BSD can be quite a bit different, for one, because some programs and functions with the same names in both systems don't work the same (this is especially apparent in shell scripting.) That's why we have things like autoconf and the POSIX standard, but you still have to pay attention to how things might be implemented differently.
Kevin Barry

but mostly 99% the same for general everyday programming.
solaris too.

I'm using fedora distribution and I usually used the KDE 3.5 before but when the fedora changed its KDE to 4 I switched to gnome, for stability reason.
I just basically installed every devels I need and also some IDE's like netbeans, kdevelop3, eclipse and codeblocks.

I think it depends on whether your programming is more narrowly focused on specific types of applications and/or programming environments, or whether you are more interested in paddling around trying out different things. In the former case, you can probably install specific packages of interest on any otherwise satisfactory distro. For the latter, it can be very convenient to have a good collection of programming tools pre-installed along with compatible libraries, header files, etc. Exploring things like new programming languages can be a lot friendlier if you know that all of the required pieces are properly installed and are compatible with each other. Recent releases of Fedora seem to have done a good job of this, IMHO.
--- rod.