Best Live DVD distro for FB coding on older HW ??

[petan]

I am searching distro with preinstalled Valgrind and other essential things for FB coding.
I have tested so far :
- Gentoo 11.2 liveDVD 2.6Giga on flash card - very nice layout of full OS, quite unspeedy booting, but a lot of funcionality problems >> KO

[petan]

Just tested OpenSuse 13.2 Xfce hdd install (not live DVD) on my new PC, (even still be illness) due quarantee words
"13.2 is stable version".
Bad choice, I am disappointed.

More than 1 hours installation with enabled online repos !, 2 giga of downloads !!!
No dual boot with Win 7 - impossible install bootloader with default settings of filesystem.
No network
No sound
After reinstalling on Ext4 partitioned disk it's working.After googlin' & manual install of next things (VLC, K3B,alsa firmware, pavucontrol) Ok.Still broken www browser audio streaming..
Summary: -> BEWARE of hard install OpenSuse 13.2.0
Now testing FreeBasic_64 bit and audio streaming to fix.
After that I'll test live DVD for completion.

[Lorenzo64]

I am succesfully using Freebasic 32 bit on a Fedora 22 distro (Xfce desktop) without any problem.

My hardware is -old- : amd 2.0 ghz and 2 gb of ram (just like a pentium IV 2.8 Ghz).

Lorenzo

[speedfixer]

I still have/use three P4 1Mbyte systems.

Lubuntu - loaded with LXDE, Openbox desktop. I only use them as remote nodes, now with boot into text only.
Have to start w/12.04 load, then move up to LTS 14.05. Takes time.

Almost every Linux system will need additions to use Freebasic, but any distro should not have difficulties.


Why a live distro, not installed?
Do you want your system as a workstation, desktop, remote node? Only load off of USB stick or CD?

David

[petan]

I am looking for /desktop/ instant live DVD distro /no additional installs/ for programming purposes
with freebasic.
Even having new 64 bit HW I don't want mangling my ssd drive with permanent system reinstalling.
When founded it, then and only after I'll install it.

[MrSwiss]

Even having new 64 bit HW I don't want mangling my ssd drive with permanent system reinstalling.

For testing only, something like a "virtual box" could be used (installed on SSD, but the generated "virtual machine" can be killed easily, time and again). See below:
https://www.virtualbox.org/

[speedfixer]

Perhaps a thought behind MrSwiss's reply is, I think: you have try Linux to see if you like it.

If you haven't used any Linux previously you might choose any mainline live distro - get used to it for awhile, then try another.

The desktop feel is quite different between the large Linux installs. Some love some, but many hate many. Most of them keep attempting to keep track of the bells and whistles that are introduced by Windows or Mac systems. Choose them if you want to show off your Linux system to a Windows person. Only your experience will tell you. They all have complete software sets, but you will still want a few things of your own if you are more than a casual computer user.

Linux isn't Windows: you have a LOT of choices.

The small install Linux systems are similar, though they start without all the stuff that makes a 'complete' system. They simply start with a much lighter load. Typically, because of a lighter window manager and desktop manager, the memory required is much less. And that also brings with them a MUCH quicker performing system. If you keep to smaller, light tools, the system load is less.

This does not mean you can't load your system with everything the large Linux systems have. You can. You simply start with less.

Personally, I have used a great many of the Linux systems. Starting with Red Hat in late 1995. Really cool to tweak the time slice and have that really smooth X windows and then ... do nothing, since there wasn't much real software to play with, yet. I didn't have time to do much more.

I prefer Lubuntu. I have several older systems I use in a cluster managed by custom software. Its just a choice.

In my opinion:
The Red Hat/Fedora systems and the OpenSuse systems have a little bit better integrated config systems than the Debian systems.
The Debian-based variations have a very rich set of programs available for simple installation. The others: only a little less software available.

On the other hand, it you only want to install it, make no choices, and never review what is going on - stick to Windows.

David

[St_W]

@MrSwiss: I think the thread creator worries about wear of his SSD because of the limited write cycles (beside the effort to reinstall systems).

I would suggest some Debian based system like (x/l/...)ubuntu or Debian. They have a large userbase and thus just work for most use cases. Additionally it's more likely to get answers if you have problems with it.

[MrSwiss]

... worries about wear of his SSD because of the limited write cycles (beside the effort to reinstall systems).

You may be right about the Install bit (mostly) I think, but Live Systems can't be tested for speed, because CD/DVD is so slow (HW defined). I'm aware that a VM isn't the same as a "real System" but it is AFAIK the closest you can get to.

Perhaps a thought behind MrSwiss's reply is, I think: you have try Linux to see if you like it.

Yes and testing various OS's isn't really easy in any way, especially if you don't own a spare system. This just might be the only feasible alternative.

Maybe even more important:
more than one system can be kept (side by side, so to speak) and run in any way preferred by the Tester:
- one at a time (speed comparisons)
- two at the same time (feature comparisons)
etc.

[St_W]

... worries about wear of his SSD because of the limited write cycles (beside the effort to reinstall systems).

You may be right about the Install bit (mostly) I think, but Live Systems can't be tested for speed, because CD/DVD is so slow (HW defined). I'm aware that a VM isn't the same as a "real System" but it is AFAIK the closest you can get to.

I just wanted to tell that both installing on the SSD and installing in a VM, which is stored on the SSD both have the same problem: they store a large amount of data on the SSD.
Live CD/DVD ist outdated nowadays - use live USB sticks; most small netbooks do not even have an optical drive. This also solves the speed problem. An most important: you don't need to write anything on the SSD.

[caseih]

USB sticks are faster than DVDs but they are nowhere near as fast as hard drives or SSDs. USB 2.0 sticks are actually quite slow. USB 3.0 does close the gap some, but it all depends on the type of flash memory the stick is using.

I don't think that anyone need worry about SSD write cycles. Most current SSDs are rated for many thousands of write cycles, if not millions, and with automatic wear leveling, I think the disk will be obsolete long before you wear it out. So of all the things to worry about when using an SSD, installing a linux distro for real or in a VM is not something I'd worry about.

[badidea]

Yes, most USB sticks are disappointingly slow. Some USB 3.0 sticks barely reach USB 2.0 speeds. I have 3 machines running Xubutu/Ubuntu form ssd, 1 ssd is already 5 years old and still going, although not used daily that one.

[caseih]

I've got one usb 3.0 stick I'm using to run an embedded linux system and it manages to reach 80 MB/s read timings, probably slower write timings. But overall not bad, almost as fast as a spinning disk for some things. In my application I decided to try out RHEL/CentOS's stateless mode where the root partition is read-only and there's a small writable partition that tracks any state information that I want to keep between boots. Everything else is mapped to the ram disk. But that's getting off-topic.

[petan]

Ha-ha-ha; trying Ubuntu 14.04.3 and Mint 17.2 from USBstick => very nice look BUT NO network in the first. KO

Trying burned Fedora 22 workstation (usb install crashed) => excellent look, very good sw preview to install (geany, anjuta, codeblocks,eclipse,lazarus+some debuggers), but missing Valgrind.
OK for hard install seems, more tests possibly after USB boot fixing, I hear embarassing sound from my new DVD drive..
good tip, Lorenzo, thanks !

[petan]

Allright, Fedora usb boot realised via 'dd' command quickly.
Fedora ready for tests on locked flash card Fedora 22-3 workstation live 32bit iso ( 1.3GB ).
Good for quick sharp hdd install I think.
Valgrind also founded as package via 'rpmfind.net'
...

edit
tested Gnome spin, a few things missing, but installable.
Without enabled "Persistent feature" in some way - all installation are lost at reboot.
Summary - very good for hdd install, but not suitable as Live job. KO