[Tutor] Which computer operating system is best for Python developers?

[Tim Golden]

On 23/02/2012 09:00, Alan Gauld wrote:
> By no means, one of Pythons strengths is that the same code can run on
> many OS. But as Steven has mentioned many developers use Linux because
> GNU/Linux is designed as a developer's OS and comes with oodles of
> tools. Most of those are available for Windows too but you have to go
> find them, download them and install them.

> One thing:
> If you do a reinstall, download the ActiveState version rather
> than the Python.org version. Active state tweak their Windows
> version of Python to include a bunch of extra goodies for Windows
> programmers.
>

Just seconding both of Alan's points here. I have been fruitfully
using Python on Windows for more than 12 years now and I am one of
the very few core developers who works in Windows (although sadly
lacking the time at the moment to contribute much). I develop
Python-based websites which run unaltered on my Win7 laptop, my
WinXP desktop, and whatever flavour of Linux my hosting provider
is using. (It could be RedHat or CentOS but I don't care because
it just works). You need to do a very small bit of initial
assumption-bashing to ensure that things will work across platforms,
but once that's done you never have to change anything again.

I also recommend the ActiveState distro. It sets Python up on the
PATH and adds pip in the right places. Both of those are easy
enough to do for yourself, but it's nice to have it done for
you.

TJG