[lug] New to the group

[Glenn English]

On Aug 18, 2013, at 12:21 PM, Jason Barnes wrote:

> When it comes to the distro's of Linux I know Glenn suggested Debian as a good one but is it newbie friendly?

I started on RedHat about 15 years ago, as a newbie who knew next to nothing about any flavor of *nix. Debian wasn't at all newbie friendly back then (as I recall, I couldn't manage to get X working). I'm not a newbie anymore (except every time I try something new) but Debian's installer is a lot easier now. It doesn't cost any $$, so give it a try; except for the packaging system, Linux is pretty much Linux once you get it installed.

> Is there one that would be good for starting with, or is it one of those situations of preference?

Here, Debian's definitely a preference. But it became a preference after several years of wandering...

> Also when it comes to learning a language would C# even be a good choice or should I stick with C++?

C# doesn't exist on Linux, AFAIK. I'd suggest shell, PERL, C, Objective-C (C++ has design flaws, I'm told). But I run servers, so I'm a tad conservative. 

More advice: get off Gnome/KDE as soon as you can. XFCE doesn't look/act like Windows, but it's much smaller/faster/simpler, once you get used to it. You can install Gnome/KDE programs on other desktops -- I'm using KDE's Kmymoney to balance my checkbook on my Mac and on XFCE.

And I'm finding Geany/CVS to be a civilized IDE. Geany is small and easier (for me) to deal with than Eclipse and its buds. CVS keeps track of my code, is well documented, is known to work, and is enough for a single user or small group.

-- 
Glenn English
Disclaimer: Any disclaimer attached to this message may be ignored.




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