Recommended Distro for Programming?

So, currently I use Windows 7 Pro on my main laptop (in sig). As an Atmospheric Sciences major, there is a lot of programming. Last semester I did a lot of MATLAB. My other laptop just sits around useless and I'm taking an elective grad course next semester that will continue on in MATLAB but also go through a decent amount of FORTRAN. I may take a Python course too eventually (I think I technically have Python on this laptop because of ArcGIS). Anyway, one of my genius ECE majoring friends of course loves Linux, makes sense. He was supposed to teach me some basic cyber security (DoD) stuff (he works for Raytheon now) but that fell through. He wanted me to install Python and a Linux distro.

Anyway, I digress, fastforward to now, I don't know if we will be using any labs with Linux running computers or not and I always prefer using my own computer (if performance won't be a problem).

I need enlightening on the subject, I don't mind installing a Linux distro on my older laptop, and kind of want to for toying around again. I've put Ubuntu (I do not like Unity) and Linux Mint (11 & 12) on it before. I've since put back Windows 7 Pro on it.

What Linux distribution do you recommend for programming? Also, what is recommended for desktop environments? I'm not the most savvy at command line stuff yet... or at all so user friendly helps. Chances are I will be installing MATLAB on it, as well as working with FORTRAN, Python, etc. I don't see any form of C in my future.

Thanks for the help and please forgive my ignorance.

 

I like Gentoo for my distro. I prefer to do my development in kde/kdevelop which is a nice IDE and fairly fast. Eclipse is popular but kind of bloated. If you want to play with programming environments you should just get an ubuntu cd and boot it up and play with different packages. Gentoo is certainly not for beginners. Once you get used to it then you can play with other distros in a VM.

Good luck!

 

My newest distro of choice is Manjaro. All the bleeding edge of Arch with less setup hassle. I use XFCE (But MATE is also a good one, so is openbox but that is very bare) I use eclipse mostly or Vim for command line.But like anything with linux, messing around and testing is the best way to find your favorite.

 

You can run Ubuntu and install KDE alongside unity. I had 12.10 but now am upgraded to 13.04. When you log in just select your GUI is all. I think most GUI's running through X-Server are about the same..............

 

The answer is ... whatever.

With your very limited Unix skills (and maybe understanding of OSs in general) whatever distro you put on your machine, once configured properly, would be effectively the same thing.

Go for the most newbie-friendly one (Ubuntu?) if you want less config work before getting a usable system.


Not sure if your high-level coding skills is good enough to tell the difference, but do keep in mind ArcGIS comes with Python 2 and P3 is not backward-compatible.

Why is cyber security courses needed by atmospheric sciences majors?

 

I'd use one one the mainstream distros, it will be easier to get help and they should have all the major development tools and so on available. My take: Linux Mint cinnamon, which is ubuntu based. I drove away from ubuntu when they switched to the unity desktop, and I'm very happy with mint.