Linux Distro for development on a 4 yr old laptop?

Question

i have a 4 yr old Acer Aspire 5030 Amd Opteron 64 With 1GB Ram

I want to know which linux distro would be good for Web App Development cause my winxp is really slow and it hangs a lot!

Im basically looking to do web application development with it...

Answer 1

Linux is pretty light by itself. Where you get into resource issues is with the windowing system (Gnome, KDE, etc). I'd recommend you go with something like Xubuntu (http://www.xubuntu.org/) since the windowing system is XFCE. XFCE is a lighter alternative to Gnome, KDE, etc. Then you'll just need to install the web app dev tools you need.

Answer 2

If you have some computer knowledge and are willing to read the excellent wiki then Arch Linux would probably be idea for your needs. You basically install a base system comprising the packages you want and then keep adding. You basically have complete control as to what packages you have installed.

The Beginners Guide and Wiki are superb and make life really easy. I have used all types of distros over the years including Ubuntu and Debian but I have used Arch exclusively for over 18 months now and it would take a lot to change.

Answer 3

I would recommend using Ubuntu, because it has all the good features of debians packaging system (apt) and really good hardware detection and automatic setup by default. Used both, but Ubuntu is far easier to use.

(Writing this on a 5 year old laptop with 1GB Ram)

Answer 4

I would recomend use Debian with XFCE. Then you can develop using VIM, or another text editor. Also, is pretty easy install Apache, MySql and PHP if you use that tools.

Answer 5

If you're beginner with Linux you can try out ubuntu, otherwise you can install whatever you want because even the new distributions that are coming out don't use as much as resources as windows (realized this by experience ). And i don't think putting a lot of RAM will boost it so much, imo linux uses more the cpu than the ram..

Answer 6

Linux is very small, gnome or kde less so (but still smaller than the mainstream alternatives). Depending how far you want to go down the usability vs. memory usage route, you could try Gnome with as many features turned off as you can stand, or evilwm (a windowmanager that uses 1/3 as much RAM as the bash shell), or any one of the literally hundreds of other options. With evilwm, a solid color on the desktop, vanilla sh instead of bash, and vanilla vi or qemacs instead of vim or emacs, you could run a whole system on a 386 if you really wanted to, and could figure out what to do with it without gnome holding your hand.

Answer 7

I definitely agree to Xfce. Fast, light, but still feels like a full desktop. I would suggest Ubuntu, or Slackware. I tend to use Slackware for development because of all the libraries and tools it comes with by default and the fact that it's rock solid. But Ubuntu is great because you can grab pretty much most, if not all of the libraries you need from apt-get. Together with its synaptic package manager it's pretty tight. It has many Web IDEs, PHP libs, a full Mono suite (if you're into ASP.NET), MySQL/postgres/sqlite databases and more.

Answer 8

Try to add another gigabyte of RAM to it and you'll be off to the races.