PureBasic Forum

I'm thinking of having a separate Linux PC in addition to my Windows10 PCs. I'm minded to have
Linux on a separate machine and not use a dual boot setup. I'll then be able to test and run
my PureB software on both and then SpiderB when I get around to buying it.

Amongst other issues, I'm irritated with MS running stuff like Microsoft Compatibilty Telemetry
which tracks usage patterns on the PC and can spike the CPU for short times while it is analyzing
and then sending the reports back to Microsoft. It runs mainly at startup and I have to manually
shut it down. The now more frequent, timewasting and unexpected updates, are becoming more than a
little annoying. Presumably in the main they are spyware amendmendments, regardless of what MS call them.

In the past I tried Linux Mint without moving any further than installation. I formatted a Windows XP
PC but it fell over after installing Linux Mint. When I explained the error message to Mint support,
I was told that Mint couldn't run due to screen driver incompatibility but gave no more information
and left me to locate the solution. The PC had run Windows XP for years with the same screen.
At the time I simply couldn't be bothered sorting out low level system stuff that I hadn't done since
the 1980s on DOS and MP/M. So no thanks, and that was the end of Linux for me at the time.

As I want to give Linux another go, I'd be interested and appreciative for any advice on which version
of Linux would be the one to install onto the following PC
Intel Core Celeron 2.60GHz, 8GB Ram, 250GB SS Drive
Intel HD Graphics
Max screen 1920 x 1080 @ 60Hz (HDMI 1.4a) and/or 1920 x 1080 @ 60Hz (VGA)
Three USB 3.0, One USB Type-C port
No CD drive fitted.

Recommendations for essential or useful Linux software would also be helpful.

Have you tried Manjaro before?

if it's old hardware then I recommend Lubuntu
Lubuntu Wiki wrote

you may also consider raspbian https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/r ... i-desktop/
I recently assembled an old PC with an Intel Pentium 4 3.0E Prescott Socket 478 Processor at 3.0 GHz and tried running Windows XP on it but it was extremely slow, not to mention that it failed to install all the drivers needed
I tried some Linux distro, don't remember which distro but it also was super slow, then I installed raspbian and it installed all the necessary drivers and its quite fast and responsive.

I'd recommend Arch Linux, because it teaches you basic stuff about Linux during installation. To be honest, without this knowledge you'll be kind of a second class linux user.

Many people switching from Windows to Linux expect it to work like Windows and they forget how difficult it was to learn using Windows. The same difficulty might apply when switching to Linux.

No it is a new PC, so I don't expect any speed issues at all and was thinking of installing a 64bit version

You could use virtualbox or another solution to run linux on windows. Distrowatch has a nice search feature to find the best distribution for your hardware and software requirements. If you prefer the setup and installation already done, you can find ready-to-use virtualbox images.

@Fred - Would'nt it be useful if everybody could download a virtualbox linux image with gtk and qt support and an installed IDE for purebasic development "out of the box" from their user download area? That would also help a lot with the configuration and driver problems with purebasic on linux.

I find OpenSuse to be very useful for Linux development with PureBasic.

Simon

@C87 - as you may already have discovered there is no single best Linux installation, every user will have their own recommended favourite

It's really a case of trying to select something that suits your particular needs and you feel good about using. As well as considering the Linux distro, it might be the Desktop Environment that is a big factor.

My personal choice is MX Linux, currently installed on 4 differing machines used for PureBasic coding and testing. I have both 64-bit and 32-bit and with single-OS, dual boot and triple boot set-ups. I also have installations of Mint and Manjaro that are used for testing plus also occasionally boot-up others via USB drive, such as OpenSuse. But I prefer MX for day-to-day use.

My main priority is stability and being able to run with no fuss on a variety of hardware including old and slow machines. MX Linux has been consistently good through several versions. I also used one of its predecessors, Mepis, for my very first attempts with PureBasic under Linux. MX comes in 4 official variations suited to a wide range of hardware, including new stuff - explained in the Download section of their website.

So I am second class linux user although I am working with Ubuntu since 2008? Get off your high horse again. That's just bullshit.

Wow, not so rude, please. This wasn't meant as an insult, I've just experienced it myself and seen on many other users. During the time I was using Ubuntu or some other "klickibunti" installing linux distribution, I never learned what was going wrong, such that I always had the impression that reinstalling when the system goes buggy or grub is dead might be better. Simply reinstalling the bootloader wasn't on my todo list, I didn't know initramfs or anything like that. In the last few months I've heard from two other linux users in my direct environment that they reinstalled the linux distribution just because something seemed to be wrong.

With Arch Linux you directly know how to get into your system if it doesn't boot (mount everything into a folder from a bootable arch linux cd and chroot into it => there's your system), because thats how the installation is also done. Also many system internals like switching locales and keyboard configurations on the command line, setting the hostname etc. is really a huge knowledge gain. And if you do it long enough, you will also expand the shell-fu further beyond the basics, e.g. use ctrl + r (with bash) more often, increase the shell history size, expand your favorite terminal text editor knowledge, use grep/find/locate/xargs etc. when appropriate, ... this is what linux makes much more efficient for everyday use IMHO and without every being forced to learn it I wouldn't have learned it. Arch Linux forces you to do so, for others (except Gentoo and maybe plain Debian) it is way too easy to get around this stuff, such that you never come in touch with it.