Laptop Linux Distro

[ELYK6002]

Hi, I'm a Linux newb for the most part. Next year in school though, I will be taking a C programming independent study with a friend and we plan on using Linux programming because of the book we intend on using (something he found, not really sure what it is). I was wondering what distro you would recommend for programming usage. The processor of the laptop will be an AMD64 if that makes a difference for compatibility.

[octalpus]

Hi, I'm a Linux newb for the most part. Next year in school though, I will be taking a C programming independent study with a friend and we plan on using Linux programming because of the book we intend on using (something he found, not really sure what it is). I was wondering what distro you would recommend for programming usage. The processor of the laptop will be an AMD64 if that makes a difference for compatibility.

Any distro will install to a laptop and comes with gcc. It's just a matter of your personal preferences. Search the forums for the 8,327 other posts about recommending a distro.

[TheCotMan]

Hi, I'm a Linux newb for the most part. Next year in school though, I will be taking a C programming independent study with a friend and we plan on using Linux programming because of the book we intend on using (something he found, not really sure what it is). I was wondering what distro you would recommend for programming usage. The processor of the laptop will be an AMD64 if that makes a difference for compatibility.

We have other threads on "which Linux distro" but I don't recall any that focused also on ".. for a student of programming." (You can still search the forums.)

My suggestion:
Try several, settle on the one you like the most. Here are four I suggest depending on your present skills and desire:
* RedHat
* Slackware
* Debian
* Gentoo
They each have advantages and diadvantages.