I am trying to decide what version of Linux I want to set up on an old machine I have in my home. I am thinking of openSUSE, Fedora, Debian or something more cutting edge such as Arch Linux. Let me know if you can help me decide on something. I’ll tell you what I would really like to have.
First off I plan to use the system for development of C based applications, so I need all the dev tools, I believe thats easy to install on all the distros.
Secondly however I want to be able to use Remote Desktop to connect to my desktop on the box, that way I don’t have to worry about hooking up a monitor to the machine in order to use the GUI.
I also want to just be able to use normal ssh and ftp to access the machien when I don’t want or need GUI.
And also, I prefer KDE over Gnome, I know in the past when I used SUSE KDE was very well polished and kept up to date, is that still the case? Or like other distros is openSUSE moving away from KDE to Gnome?
I’ve contacted others on the FEdora forums to ask these questions about Fedora, and they have been of little help. I don’t think the idea of VNC sounds good, because what I want is to be able to log in and view my desktop as I last left it, just like I can do from one windows machine to the other.
I’ll appreciate your help in deciding what distro to go with.
I have tried Fedora on a machine I had before and found that although the system was polished it was a nightmare to try and get my hardware working due to driver compatability issues.
I got the latest openSUSE 11.0 Distro with Linux format and decided to have another go. Install was simple enough and the drivers where fine without needing to connect to any repositories to find drivers.
There are plenty of dev tools with all the distros you mentioned but if your looking for a quick and simple way of getting up and running I would recommend SUSE over Fedora.
Also forgot that the SUSE 11.0 distro I installed uses KDE 4.
If you install off of the KDE 4 LiveCD, you don’t have a choice. If you install off of the DVD, you can choose KDE 3.5.9 or KDE 4. I recommend KDE 3.x for now.
openSUSE, Fedora and Arch all feature bleeding-edge repos. All three are largely community driven.
First off I plan to use the system for development of C based applications, so I need all the dev tools, I believe thats easy to install on all the distros.
Every major distro should be able to provide you with a nice dev environment.
Secondly however I want to be able to use Remote Desktop to connect to my desktop on the box, that way I don’t have to worry about hooking up a monitor to the machine in order to use the GUI.
This is perhaps one of the first areas on your list where you’ll start to see separation between the distros. You can use VNC or whatever on any distro, but openSUSE has YaST, which is the best configuration tool out there. YaST should make it easier to set up your remote desktop.
I also want to just be able to use normal ssh and ftp to access the machien when I don’t want or need GUI.
And also, I prefer KDE over Gnome, I know in the past when I used SUSE KDE was very well polished and kept up to date, is that still the case? Or like other distros is openSUSE moving away from KDE to Gnome?
openSUSE may have the best KDE desktop out there. openSUSE 11 offers both KDE 3 and KDE 4. The KDE 4.0.4 LiveCD isn’t that impressive, but KDE 4.1 is coming out this week. I still use KDE 3, with some KDE 4 apps mixed in. I say both and decide what you like best for you.
If I use Samba and share files and edit them in Windows with Visual Studio, when I save the files back to the samba share, do they retian their linux permissions? Or do I need to use FTP?
I’m not sure about SAMBA permissions. They should retain the permission, but do not quote me on that.
SuSE has a remote desktop utility (KRDC). Rdesktop is also another one that is in the repos (and on the DVD I think). I know these work well for going from SuSE to windows. To go from windows to SuSE just turn on the desktop sharing and use the windows remote connection GUI.
I would also recommend staying with KDE 3.5.9 for development. KDE4 is nice, but is still in the process of growing and can/will have some growing pains.
On the development topic, there is a pattern (set of packages) dedicated to C/C++ development and a basic development pattern that contains package such as GCC, GCC-C++, etc. On the desktop environment question, you can install both KDE3 and KDE4 if you wish, and easily switch between the two. Like said above, KDE4 is less mature and is still going through its paces (I personally use Gnome, but this is what has been said by other KDE users), which may cause errors along the way, so KDE3.5.x would probably be the best bet.
I believe it depends on the filesystem you’re using. If you’re SAMBA-ing a FAT32 drive, then no, your permissions will not be saved, since FAT32 doesn’t support permissions. NTFS, maybe - I don’t have any experience there.
I went into Yast2 and selected to allow remote administration, I also set it up so that the port 5901 is forwarded through my router correctly. I restarted the system and I tried to connect into the openSUSE from windows using tightVNC and it would not work, any help would be appreciated.
