Ask HN: Can you recommend a path to developing on linux?

Re:Ask HN: Can you recommend a path to developing on linux? by WickyNilliams on Friday November 25, 2011 @07:43PM (#3278719)

Wow, that's a thoroughly comprehensive response. I've never investigated tools like Cygwin or Tiny Core, but they sound like a great starting point. Incrementally is definitely how i want to learn Unix as there are so many radical paradigm shifts for me to get to grips with i risk overwhelming myself if i get too immersed. It seems, as i get more replied here, that the command line is so integral to Unix that my original plan to avoid that as much as possible (i.e. just get on with web development) is not realistic. Your recommendations will help immensely now that i've come to that realisation.

To be honest, some of the hardware compatibility issues you mention aren't of much concern to me (providing i don't encounter any serious issues, i can deal with bluetooth not working for instance) as i plan to dual-boot windows/linux and still use windows as my primary OS, but linux for dev.

I should perhaps edit my question title to be more clear, as i'm specifically interested in web development via Linux (at least for the moment), but thanks for the advice on native app development.

I'll be sure to get in touch if/when i go down the Qemu/Tiny Core route. Though consider this prior warning that you're opening yourself up to a constant stream of emails from a frustrated linux noob ;-)

Thanks again for the detailed answer

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Re:Ask HN: Can you recommend a path to developing on linux? by _dps on Friday November 25, 2011 @11:23PM (#3279050)

Ah, web development. I see. Well, that's actually 90+% the same on Windows for most use-cases. For example, if I were starting a small web app in Linux I'd probably use Python and Bottle. I'd do the same on Windows. To be clear: I'm not recommending that you use Windows to deploy web applications in Python. I'm just saying that you can develop the applications on Windows and deploy on Linux with very little hassle.

Unless you actually care about native Linux applications, or specific performance-related features like Linux's epoll (or BSD's kqueue), then you can definitely jump into "the Linux way" of web development with Cygwin and either Python or Ruby. I haven't used Ruby since 2005, but in Python most of the difference between Windows development and Linux development is details of the os and sys modules (anything else has to do with stupid details of threading performance).

On a second reading, it sounds like you might be conflating getting beyond .NET with Linux development. It's entirely possible to learn Python or Ruby web development on Windows, though I'd strongly suggest either using a full Cygwin installation or at least Unix Tools for Windows (http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/).

Linux is worth learning, but it's not the same thing as (for example) Python web development. They're mostly independent. Things like Node.js are still mostly *nix-only (last time I looked), but I'm sure that will change over time. On the positive side, you can get Haskell/GHC for Windows ;-)

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