[svlug] Good linux distro for learning programming

[David N. Welton]

Ryman <rymanle at gmail.com> writes:

> Hi, I'm new to linux. I've never used linux before so I'm wonder
> which is good distro for newbie like me. I'm sorry if this question
> has been asked many times before. I'm going to use linux to learn
> java, c and other languages. Do I need to install any compiler for
> java or C ?  thanks.

Just about any distribution will be ok for that.  Ubuntu looks like
it's a very nice version of Debian for the desktop (and they get that
freedom matters, too).

As far as C, everyone has GCC.

Java is a little bit more difficult.  The implementation from Sun is
not free software, so most Linux distributions can't include it - you
have to download it and install it yourself, and it only runs on one
(or two?)  of the many architectures that Linux supports.

On the other hand, the gcj folks are making excellent headway into
creating an open source java environment.  I'm using it for a little
java-learning project of my own.

As far as I know, gcj is available for any recent distribution, so
once again, Ubuntu is a good choice.

If you really want to learn lots about programming, here are some
other languages you might look at in addition to the above two:

Tcl, Forth, Scheme, Erlang, x86 (or ppc if you can get a machine)
assembly, (maybe Smalltalk if you want to see OO done differently than
Java's)

... as these languages present quite different ways of doing things
which will help your thinking even if you never use them
professionally.

<advertisement>I've got a list of books on my free software page below
that I've found useful myself in learning different things - both
languages as well as C programming on Unix</advertisement>

Ciao,
-- 
David N. Welton
Personal:                   http://www.dedasys.com/davidw/
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