[Tutor] OT: Recommendations for a Linux distribution to dual-boot with Win7-64 bit

[Alan Gauld]

On 28/06/16 03:52, boB Stepp wrote:

Steven has already repolied and my immediate responbse was almost word
for word what he said, sop I'll start again and you can consider this an
addendum to Steve's message :-)

> 1)  I am not ready at this time to take on the challenge of *really*
> getting into understanding *nix by installing something like Arch
> Linux and having to configure almost *everything* myself from scratch.

Debian and Slackware are the nearest I've gotten to that.
Now I use Mint because I don't want to do that...

> However, I do like Arch's install once and enjoy very frequent OS and
> package updates, huge package repository, etc.

Other distros do that too. For example Mint has a variant that
continuously updates. Personally I prefer to keep some control
and only update when I want to. It improves stability too.

> quite functional.  Currently XFCE looks attractive.  I first ran into
> this while looking at (2), but it is popping up quite frequently in
> other Linux distros.

I use Mint on both my desktop and netbook. The desktop uses Cinnamon
while the netbook uses XFCE. I hardly notice the difference.

> 4)  It would be nice if the most recent development tools were part of
> the most recent OS version, such as the latest stable Python 3, gVim,
> Git, etc.  

You usually get the latest but one version when a distro release
first comes out. Distros tend to favour reliability over novelty. That's
where the rolling updates tend to be better, if you want
to be on the bleeding edge. I've just checked my Mint 17 package manager
and 3.4 is still the latest available.

> and make two (or more) Python versions work together without getting
> confused as to which I'm using, etc.  

I'll let Steve answer this in more detail, my approach is very
conservative and I have no plans to upgrade to 3.5 until it appears
courtesy of Mint. If I did have such a need I'd wait till a deb package
appeared somewhere and download that rather than build from scratch.
But these days I'm lazy like that...

> upgrade to the current release without wreaking havoc with OS uses of
> Python.

That should not be a problem.

> 6)  Good documentation available would be a solid plus as well as a
> dedicated, helpful (to newbies like myself) community (Like Tutor!)

The bigger (better known) the distro the better the support.
This is especially true when dealing with commercial software(yes it
doees exist for Linux!). For example I use Corel Openshot for photo
processing and their support is limited to a couple of distros - and
in my experience not great even there! But the forums will
generally make up for any "official" ignorance!

> 7)  It should be easy to install existing software packages without
> having to compile everything from source.  

Compiling is not necessarily a problem When I used Slackware it tended
to download source and build it but the package manager did all of that
for me, I very rarely had to type 'make' myself.

> 8)  How troublesome is malware for Linux?  

I've been running Linux since 1994 and using it as my main OS since
2008 and I've never experienced any malware. (The same is true on my Mac
which I bought in 2000) On Windows I've had 3 instances to deal
with (since 1991). If you take sensible precautions Malware should
not be an issue. (I do have Clam anti-virus and run a scan once
a week or so, but it has never found anything)

> loads.  I *really* would like to have a snappy OS where everything
> *stays* snappy with minimal effort on my part.

I'm running Mint 17 on my main desktop (4 cores, 3GHz, 8GB RAM,
1.5TB disk space) and on my ancient(2008) eeePC Netbook (1 Atom CPU @
1GHz, !GB RAM, 20GB "disk" - actually flash memory). That's the exact
same OS, apart from desktop, and performance is fine on both.

> 10)  I have a hard drive that has mostly text-based stuff, like Python
> programs, which is formatted NTFS.  Can I share this with both Win7
> and Linux?  

Yes, I do that with several disks and I had to check the disk tool
to see which was which.

> What about the differences in line endings?  Am I going to
> have to be constantly converting back and forth?

Not unless you work on files across OS. If you work on Windows files
on Windows and Linux on Linux it's not an issue. But if you work
across OS it's worth finding tools (like VIM) that can handle
it transparently. But there is no doubt it does occasionally bite
you with less intelligent tools - especially command-line filters
and the like, and even more so if they use regex. (But it's not
an NTFS issue since FAT disks will be the same)

I run Virtual Box for XP which I only use when testing new
software that needs to run on it.

I do have two dedicated PCs for running Windows, one runs
Windows 10 which I use mainly to keep abreast of what's
what in Windows land and the other runs Windows 7 for when
I really need Photoshop/Lightroom/DxPro (increasingly rare).
They both use the Linux box (over hardwired Gigabit LAN) for
the bulk of their disk storage. And all 3 are tied together
via a KVM box so I only have one monitor/mouse/keyboard.
I also run Cygwin on both as a *nix comfort blanket! :-)

I hope some of that is useful...

-- 
Alan G
Author of the Learn to Program web site
http://www.alan-g.me.uk/
http://www.amazon.com/author/alan_gauld
Follow my photo-blog on Flickr at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/alangauldphotos