I was talking to a programmer a few weeks ago about how I was planning to buy a new computer for playing games and schoolwork (mainly programming). In the midst of our conversdation he told me that, for programming, I should get linux because it was better, unfortunatly we didn't talk more about it afterwards and I never got a chance to ask him what the advantages of Linux are when it comes to programming. Can anuone tell me what makes Linux better than Windows when it come to programming?

one is pretty obvious.. if you do that, one day you'll have a friend telling you he want to do programming and you would be able to tell him he should use linux, and feel very cool in the process.

other than that.. nothing I can think about.

Linux is a more "programmerish" environment... On windows you usually just have an IDE that does everything for you and that's it. On Linux you are more exposed to the "low level" stuff. You end up doing lots of stuff on the command line and are kinda required to actually understand what you are doing. On the other hand, nowadays it seems to be en vogue to consider all these "hard parts" (like manually using tools and actually knowing what the computer/OS does) an anachronism.

On windows you usually just have an IDE that does everything for you and that's it.

So all these years it wasnt actually me writing my code.. it was my IDE.. you can really learn a lot on forums.

Pro windows:
* Windows is my target platform (linux is supported, but it's a minority of users) so I should focus primarily on the target platform during development.
* My personally preferred tools (i.e. Visual Studio) are Windows applications.
* If I want to use leet nix tools like bash/vim/git/etc, there's native Windows versions.

Pro linux:
* My beard will grow thicker.

Pro both:
* You can run either OS inside the other, via Wine/AndLinux/etc...
* You can choose from a variety of tools, including "just an IDE" or "low level tools"


There's really no reason to use either, other than that it's your favorite for every-day use.

[quote name='japro' timestamp='1315587022' post='4859617']
On windows you usually just have an IDE that does everything for you and that's it.

So all these years it wasnt actually me writing my code.. it was my IDE.. you can really learn a lot on forums.
[/quote]
I guess again I have to be ultra specific in forums because there is always someone who finds the worst possible interpretation of whatever you write (must be some sort of corollary to Murphys law). What I mean is that on Windows there is more of a WYSIWYG/all-in-one mentality that also shows in the software. This is even visible in simple things like beginners on windows often only having vague concepts about what a compiler is ("I use the Dev-C++ compiler..."). On linux you are more likely to deal with compilers, editors, build systems etc. separately. If that is an advantage or not is up to the individual. You obviously still have to program yourself, regardless whether you use a super advanced IDE or cat and gcc.

Pssh. You can run things in Wine on linux if you want windows only apps.

Not that I'm saying you should run linux, but saying that most linux apps can run in windows but failing to mention that the opposite is also true is disingenuous.

For the OP: Linux has an easier/nicer interface for hacking on OS internals, and worse support for .NET based languages. As far as programming goes, that's about it.

For schoolwork, you might run into issues with linux when you go to print out papers. For personal use, linux has poorer game support.

[quote name='kunos' timestamp='1315587420' post='4859621']
[quote name='japro' timestamp='1315587022' post='4859617']
On windows you usually just have an IDE that does everything for you and that's it.

So all these years it wasnt actually me writing my code.. it was my IDE.. you can really learn a lot on forums.
[/quote]
I guess again I have to be ultra specific in forums because there is always someone who finds the worst possible interpretation of whatever you write (must be some sort of corollary to Murphys law). What I mean is that on Windows there is more of a WYSIWYG/all-in-one mentality that also shows in the software. This is even visible in simple things like beginners on windows often only having only vague concepts about what a compiler is ("I use the Dev-C++ compiler...") etc.. On linux you are more likely to deal with compilers, editors, build systems etc. separately. If that is an advantage or not is up to the individual. You obviously still have to program yourself, regardless whether you use a super advanced IDE or use cat and gcc.
[/quote]

I'd use an IDE on Linux aswell tbh, as for the OP:

Run whichever OS you're targeting. This pretty much always means that you should run Windows (Since it has the biggest marketshare), If you target more than one OS you should get a virtual machine (I use VirtualBox myself) and a dualboot installation, (3D performance tends to be a bit weak in virtual machines still so you can't rely on them exclusivly but its good enough for quick testing).

[quote name='kunos' timestamp='1315587420' post='4859621']
[quote name='japro' timestamp='1315587022' post='4859617']
On windows you usually just have an IDE that does everything for you and that's it.

So all these years it wasnt actually me writing my code.. it was my IDE.. you can really learn a lot on forums.
[/quote]
I guess again I have to be ultra specific in forums because there is always someone who finds the worst possible interpretation of whatever you write (must be some sort of corollary to Murphys law). What I mean is that on Windows there is more of a WYSIWYG/all-in-one mentality that also shows in the software.[/quote]
I have a really hard time understanding how is it that pressing "F7" is worse than typing "cd pathto/folder" then "make all" or hitting "F5" is worse than typing "gdb myapp run"

Some stuff is better being automated and Linux has a script-friendly environment, granted; but Window's capabilities aren't far behind either. Just install CMake, Python, Lua, or Cygwin and you get powerful scripting tools at your disposal.