Whats the best linux distro for 3D development and C/C++ programming?

[Vida Marcell]

I have a slowass notebook, i want to use linux or win 8.1 on it.

[Josh]

I'm interested in trying out Debian now. It's the first version of Linux I've seen that looks better than Windows:

 

[Robert_d1968]

But it is poor against  viruses and what not.  !!!

 

Robert

[reepblue]

Josh, you can install any desktop environment you want in any distribution. 

Debian is nice because it's one of the slimmest and robust distros you can ever install. However, you are locked into only using FOSS software and drivers out of the box You'll need to configure your system to pull things like media codecs and proprietary drivers.

11 hours ago, Robert_d1968 said:

But it is poor against  viruses and what not.  !!!

This is not true at all. While you'll not find the latest version of software in the repositories, you're system will get the latest security updates. Ubuntu and Mint wouldn't base their distros of of Debian if it was unsecured.

Personally, I keep going back to Linux Mint as a distro I would actually use. Cinnamon looks nice, it's familiar, and any system tool or codecs I'll ever need is installed by default. Sure, my programs will not be up to date, but I never updated Gimp or Blender on my dev machine. And despite thinking it's really cool, I'm not a person who would build and configure a system like you would do with a raw Arch install. I like to run the installer, update the system, and then install software.

If you know the basics of how Linux works and used to Windows, I can't recommend Linux Mint enough. The developers also work hard to filter out Ubuntu's bad decisions from the good ones.

[Josh]

26 minutes ago, reepblue said:

Josh, you can install any desktop environment you want in any distribution. 

In theory. In practice it will brick your machine.

[reepblue]

Probably because each distro tries to force their choice onto you so everything falls apart if you don't know what you're doing.

That's one thing I like about Debian. It will ask you what desktop environments you want during installation and it all works. 

[Josh]

Choice is not really that great of a thing usually. It just means you haven't made your mind up yet, and when you do there will invariably be a lot of compromises that were made to support all the different options.

Have you tried doing any work on the Steam deck desktop? How is it?

[reepblue]

2 hours ago, Josh said:

Have you tried doing any work on the Steam deck desktop? How is it?

I haven't tried setting up a developer environment on it or ran any of the SteamOS tools, but it's not much different from any other Linux install. I'm stuck using GUI apps to do things as I'm not used to arch commands right now.

Set up an Ultra App/Engine dev environment last night on my Mint machine using Codelite and I really enjoy it. I feel like a better and cooler programmer when using Linux. 😎

[aiaf]

I recommend to try Fedora linux really good environment  for development.

Latest gcc/clang compilers and tools.

But if you plan to use leadwerks you will need to stick with ubuntu or keep an ubuntu vm.

Leadwerks static library is unusable on newest compilers because of an abi change in gcc 5 if i remember well.

And we are on gcc 12 now , so waiting for Ultra

[Josh]

I have no idea why they even have "distros". Linus should man up and just release an operating system called "Linux" and stop all this nonsense. Having a weird logo and name added on top of the OS and a bunch of random pre-installed applications doesn't add any value.

[aiaf]

Not going to happen unfortunately, Its not like he has any control over it, just the kernel.

A bit too many distros each with its competing way to install packages 

i really only care i have the latest development toolchains/tools and it works out of the box.

 

But things are going in the right direction if you look back how it was in the 90s.

The closest things to a standard are  Debian/Ubuntu, Redhat and Android.

 

Latest in the chain is Valve which created SteamOs based on what they decided is best for them ArchLinux.

[Josh]

I installed Debian with KDE in a VM and it looks really great. The blue highlight color is too light through, and it washes out the white text of selected items.

[aiaf]

VMs are really easy to use on linux , i have the windows VM just to build the game exe:

[Epsylon]

On 7/19/2022 at 3:52 PM, Josh said:

I installed Debian with KDE in a VM and it looks really great. The blue highlight color is too light through, and it washes out the white text of selected items.

KDE is the best and most flexible in plethora of DEs options, and the most cool and very useful with big number of tweaks and features like for example "KDEConnect for any Android phone or tablet"... an also have better performance and memory low consumption in compare with outher popular DEs.
As for me the two most lightweig fast,stable,and flexible is 1st! KDE and 2nd Cinnamon.
BTW:Right now for a little change im usin LinuxMint with its Cinnamon Enviroment for a little change after a long time in KDE Neon (Recomended Distro!!).

[Epsylon]

In case with the RIG with multy monitor setting (realy it is wright?!) ) Then its ONWAY TICKET))) to KDE !!!
If some one ask why??) then use it first to see it for yourself and then we talk In outher DE you need a lammerstick of third parties or external addon to use for different monitor its own different background images or slideshows or even a video background (YES in KDE we known how to do it... with cost som  specs of GPUs skills))