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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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Is there a programming specific distro? (programming.dev)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I know there choice of distro is really meaningless as you can install almost any program on almost any distro. But I have been playing with kali which is for security people and pen testers. Is there a similar distro for programmers? Like a few ides installed some profiling tools some virtual environment tools etc?

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

I've done the horrible deed of updating Debian, for example.

Distros like Arch get a pass, but Debian screwed me over several times. For example a few years ago, some driver decided to make itself clinge onto old kernel versions. So the boot partition got full and left me in a weird start where I had to manually remove old kernels and track down the driver at fault.

Recoverable, but annoying, and on a system I use for work it would be really really expensive.

Fedora used to nuke itself sometimes if you upgraded an install from version n to n+1, n+2, .... Like a config not being migrated properly, a package conflict because of renamed packages and versions, yada yada yada.

If you didn't experience that, you either were very lucky, only used enterprise distros, or simply reinstalled often enough for it not to be an issue.