My 13 year old son has budding aspirations of becoming a programmer or such.
He has an old Dell Inspiron 2650 laptop. While it's got a perfectly good XP operating system on it, I've suggested he go ahead and try installing a Linux system on it.
Which leads to the question, which one? I'm kinda leaning towards puppy because it's got such a small footprint and should be very easy to install. But what would some of you folk recommend?
Puppy will run on dang near anything. I have it running on a 1998-model IBM ThinkPad 600e.
I use Puppy when I want to run Linux. I'm not a Unix kinda guy, though.
In reply to foxtrapper:
You can also try Linux running as a live cd distro without disturbing your xp until you are sure the hardware meets your needs.
I'm a huge Debian fan, however, it can be a little daunting to the noob... but Mint Debian is an Ubuntu fork that is pretty well setup right out of the gate.
It has a live CD to test with and a solid installer. Help that works for Ubuntu and/or Debian typically solves issues you do encounter.
There is no better playground than Linux for a budding programmer. Shell scripting, C, C++, C#, java, perl, python, PHP, web stuff ... all available and free. Databases, web servers, app servers... same thing. Whatever you need you can get free, all of the open source software's actual source code is also there for you to look at including the OS.
The learning curve can be a little steep for a Windows-only user but it's well worth the effort.
Windows - easy to learn, hard to use.
Unix - hard to learn, easy to use.
It's a little like a manual transmission in that regard. :)
My preference is Ubuntu. Pretty big user base, lots of software is available and pre-compiled.
I haven't found a good IDE on Linux, though. (By IDE, I mean includes stuff like running things in debug mode, break points, etc. not just glorified text editors.) And I could really use one for JavaScript right now.
Unless you have specific needs, it's hard to go wrong with Ubuntu. There are enough users out there that almost every question has been asked a dozen times, and the package management is top notch (which is really critical for n00bs).
ppddppdd wrote: the package management is top notch (which is really critical for n00bs).
That's what I said (?)
Another vote for puppy. It practically installs itself, and is leagues faster on the same laptop than windows 7 was
scardeal wrote: My preference is Ubuntu. Pretty big user base, lots of software is available and pre-compiled. I haven't found a good IDE on Linux, though. (By IDE, I mean includes stuff like running things in debug mode, break points, etc. not just glorified text editors.) And I could really use one for JavaScript right now.
Eclipse is pretty good. You can use it with Crossfire, AJAX or Chrome tools to debug browser code.
Puppy is actually not that user-friendly and has an unusual and super-minimal set of packages...I wouldn't recommend it for that. I wouldn't recommend it for much actually.
I'd recommend Mint if you had 4-8x as much RAM, but since it's so low I'll recommend Debian with LXDE desktop. If there's anything you can do to bring the amount of RAM into the 21st century though, do it.
ubuntu to get started. fedora to get more involved. centos/redhat if he really gets into it.
however, most (few do but most don't) programmers don't code on a Linux system so it is not really something will help him to devlope his programming skill.
slow wrote: ubuntu to get started. fedora to get more involved. centos/redhat if he really gets into it.
RPM distros suck the bollocks.
however, most (few do but most don't) programmers don't code on a Linux system so it is not really something will help him to devlope his programming skill.
This statement makes no sense whatsoever. Programming skill is completely unrelated to operating system. Aaaand the entire premise is incorrect regardless. There might not be a lot of Linux desktops out there but there are 25000 linux servers in the cluster I'm writing software for today. There are millions of them running everything from Cisco routers to ALL of Google's, Amazon's, and Netfix massive server farms. It owns the internet. Every Android phone? Yeah... that is a unix operating system that is very Linux-like. Mac OS-X? A BSD unix fork.
There is whole world out there that pays good money for people who have more than Windows on there resume.
I've been pretty happy with Ubuntu. Works a heckuva lot better than that buggy Microsoft stuff.
GameboyRMH wrote: Puppy is actually not that user-friendly and has an unusual and super-minimal set of packages...I wouldn't recommend it for that. I wouldn't recommend it for much actually. I'd recommend Mint if you had 4-8x as much RAM, but since it's so low I'll recommend Debian with LXDE desktop. If there's anything you can do to bring the amount of RAM into the 21st century though, do it.
I'd say if it will run XP it will run Mint. I've got it on an old 586 with 2G of RAM for my kids to use for homework and it's really pretty snappy with the 2D Mate desktop.
I agree on puppy. It's too lean for a beginner. Having a very small number of packages is nice when using it as a boot utility or file server but for someone looking for a desktop who does not know how to get around or access/install new things yet - it can be an obstacle.
The bigger distros like Mint 16, Mint Debian, Ubuntu... they come fully cooked if not a bit fat.
Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote: I'd say if it will run XP it will run Mint. I've got it on an old 586 with 2G of RAM for my kids to use for homework and it's really pretty snappy with the 2D Mate desktop.
That's 4x Mint's minimum required RAM, this system has 1/4th...
At one point my home server was running Xubuntu on 128MB RAM, it did a decent job at Samba hosting and torrenting but it was painfully slow to interact with.
GameboyRMH wrote:Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote: I'd say if it will run XP it will run Mint. I've got it on an old 586 with 2G of RAM for my kids to use for homework and it's really pretty snappy with the 2D Mate desktop.That's 4x Mint's minimum required RAM, this system has 1/4th... At one point my home server was running Xubuntu on 128MB RAM, it did a decent job at Samba hosting and torrenting but it was painfully slow to interact with.
I didn't see where he said how much ram he had but I know it will run on 512M... it won't run much... but it will run.
First off, I'm happy to see so many Linux users here!
As big of a Mint fan I am, I don't think I would suggest it for something that old. Lubuntu seems to play nice on older systems. He could try it from a live disk too.
I personally jumped the MS ship at work when I realized how much easier/faster it is for manipulating the huge data files I deal with through the command line rather than trying to use excel. I ended up putting it on my laptop and netbook at home too. The only people at work still on Windows are those that need to run Visual Studio, and the graphics people on macbooks.
I used Windows 8 last week for some customers. What were they thinking!?
I've used Ubuntu on a bunch of old machines.
I had a buddy put a fresh XP SP3 load on an older desktop for me, he set it up to dual boot with PC Linux. Very quick and very familiar feeling.
My vote is for opensuse running xfce ( or lxde ) or one of the slackware variants. As far as tools, it kinda depends on what lang he wants to learn first. I've recently started looking at python and its very noob-friendly. Vi( or vim or gedit ) should work okay, but if not Ive run across an python IDE called pyscripter. Not as heavy as eclipse, but gets the job done for now.
As far as os' go, I would pick one that I like that has decent driver support so I could spend more time learning to code, instead of fighting to get an environment setup.
Edit: I may have some memory that may work. I'll see if I can find it.
Meanwhile: 1) Comparison of the two desktops that I mentioned earlier: https://www.google.com/search?q=lxde+vs+xfce&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
2) And why re-invent the wheel: https://www.google.com/search?q=Dell+Inspiron+2650+linux&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#q=Dell+Inspiron+2650+%2B+linux&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official
Good luck, and congrats to a great parent for supporting his kid.
Well, the computer helped decide. File got corrupted, so Windows won't start. Dug out my old Ubuntu discs from a few years back. He's over there working his way through the installation as I type. He played with it a bit, running it from the disc, and liked it.
Well, the computer helped decide. File got corrupted, so Windows won't start. Dug out my old Ubuntu discs from a few years back. He's over there working his way through the installation as I type. He played with it a bit, running it from the disc, and liked it.
Barfglargle wrote: I didn't see where he said how much ram he had but I know it will run on 512M... it won't run much... but it will run.
The stock specs for that model say 128MB RAM. If it had 512MB I'd say Mint with XFCE.
Well, he's happily running Ubunto 8.04 Hearty Heron. Just a little out of date! 
Machine has 512MB of RAM, which is more than I expected from the specs I found online.
Now that he's made it through that hurdle look at getting him into playing with Arduino's if he has aspirations of programming.
The coding system for it has plenty of support so he can learn much from others and build many fun projects with it.
And make sure he develops a taste for Cheetos and Diet Coke or Mountian Dew....it's a requirement ;)
Arduino would be cool to build something that actually does something. The RaspberryPi is also a great platform, and the HDMI out makes it a cool HTPC build (XBMC) even if they have pretty much automated the entire install.
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