[yaeli_17]

Hi,
I am a first-year computer science student.

I find that we use more and more of the UNIX operating system in my courses and i am thinking to changing from windows to UNIX.

my problem is that i don't know much of UNIX (only basic commands, enough to go by i suppose) but i rather change sooner than later. so i can't really tell which version will suit my needs best.

i had alittle read and i got the impression that solaris, AIX and the one by HP are quite popular.

i guess i'll need something that is user friendly, for a beginner.
i'll mainly do my C and JAVA programming on it. and some shell programming of course. and some more languages as i go along.

any suggestions/tips/advice will be highly appreciated.

[rockstar_]

yaeli_17, on 9 Jan, 2007 - 05:10 PM, said:

i had alittle read and i got the impression that solaris, AIX and the one by HP are quite popular.

i guess i'll need something that is user friendly, for a beginner.
i'll mainly do my C and JAVA programming on it. and some shell programming of course. and some more languages as i go along.

Alright, there will probably be a few people who will STRONGLY disagree, but I didn't TRULY learn to use *NIX operating systems until you put Windows down. DON'T dual boot windows and your *NIX operating system of choice. You'll probably remain where you are comfortable.

That being said, You'll probably want to cut your teeth on a Linux distribution. AIX is actually very quickly dying. Most of the ads you'll see for an AIX sysadmin will usually expect guys who are 40 and know NOTHING but AIX. Solaris, AIX, and the like are not very "learner facility." You'll find Linux distributions at many development companies (unless you work on Windows only software).

I was weened off Windows to Debian, which FORCED me to learn a lot, but the word Debian can also be pronounced sadomasochism. Ubuntu is based on Debian, is MUCH more user friendly, and the user forums are PERFECT for someone to learn. You can download it for free at Ubuntu.org I currently use Kubuntu, which is the KDE flavor of Ubuntu (even though I don't use KDE), on my desktop systems, but Debian on my servers.

rockstar_

[Amadeus]

While I can't necessarily agree with rockstar's assertion that a *nix only environment may be more conducive to becoming comfortable with a non-Windows system (it would certainly force development, but I feel one can accomplish the same in a dual boot environment), I will endorse his recommendation of begining with one of the Ubuntu flavours. I was always a Debian man, to the death, but switched to some of the Ubuntu's over the last year or so. Currently using Ubuntu with an xfce desktop on my main machine (other *nixes on other machines), and it's great.

[yaeli_17]

Thanks to both of you

I had alittle bit of read on Ubuntu and it does seem to be a user friendly one (or at least has reputation of such), seems like a good place to start.

I have a question though. i've read that the system requirements are 256 of RAM and 3 gg hard drive.

My laptop is kind of old. P3 767, with 256 RAM.
would this be a problem? do you guys recommend adding some RAM before switching ?

i have windows XP on it and its toleratable

thanks again

[Amadeus]

Trust me...if windows XP runs at an acceptable rate on the machine, then Ubuntu will be nooooo problem at all.

[k0b13r]

Like in my signature, Slackware is great Linux distro (but not too easy for new ones) ... but try it

[GWatt]

PCBSD is a nice little UNIX OS that's pretty easy to use. My favorite UNIX distro, however, is Mac OS X. Even though the hardware is expensive, OS X (I think) blows every other OS out of the water in terms of usability and looks.

[Nova Dragoon]

If you are going to go with Ubuntu, and wanting to do Development, you'll need to look for and install the build-essentials package. Ubuntu doesn't come with a compiler off the initial install and finding it is a big pain when you are dropped into a new environment.

So yeah, build-essentials

[yaeli_17]

Nova Dragoon, on 10 Jan, 2007 - 08:16 AM, said:

If you are going to go with Ubuntu, and wanting to do Development, you'll need to look for and install the build-essentials package. Ubuntu doesn't come with a compiler off the initial install and finding it is a big pain when you are dropped into a new environment.

So yeah, build-essentials

thanks for the tip.

i'm not quite sure now whether to go for mac OS X or Ubuntu.
i find the mac OS X quite friendly as an enviorment. but i don't know much about it to be honest.

any thoughts ?

oh ! and any idea where i can get the build-essentials package ?

thanks again.

[Nova Dragoon]

You would have to buy a new computer to run OS X, the hacks that get it to run on whitebox rigs wouldn't be enough to run on your setup.

Go with ubuntu

Build essentials will be in the ubuntu package managers apt and synaptic, just do a search