shifting from windows to *nix programming platform

Question

How to migrate to *nix platform after spending more than 10 years on windows? Which flavor will be easy to handle to make me more comfortable and then maybe I can switch ove

Answer 1

Excellent answers. A few comments:

Almost all distros support LiveCDs, to let you try before installing. folks mentioned VMWare and VirtualBox, also note that Ubuntu's WUBI installer lets you install Linux under Windows without repartitioning; very nice; I used it when I first switched to my 64-bit system, since I wasn't sure how good the driver support was. Ubuntu 9.04 works great in 64, though. Also, since Ubuntu is so popular, that are many versions, Kubuntu uses KDE instead of Gnome, Mint and Xubuntu are both lighter weight.

Expect to run side-by-side for a while when transitioning from Windows. Cygwin has some nice downloadable manuals for people getting used to bash, and basic information about how *nix works underneath, targeted at Windows users. There are tons of useful sites; the Ubuntu community forums have a tremendous amount of information, for both beginners and advanced.

For getting used to developing under Linux, check the Linux documentation project. In addition to KDevelop, there's Anjuta, Eclipse, and many more. Some are light, some are heavyweight.

One thing that can ease the transition is to use software that runs in both operating systems. Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, Subversion, and hundreds if not thousands of others run fine in both Linux and Windows. And with very little effort, you can use the same folders for application settings and data for many of these. Firefox and Thunderbird can easily use the same folders/files on an NTFS partition. Makes dual booting much easier. Instructions are on the Ubuntu community site and other locations.

Note that some Linux software isn't NTFS friendly; in Linux keep your Subversion working folders on a native partition.

One caveat for sharing application settings; some applications store absolute paths; as a workaround, you can create symlinks that look like Windows drive letters.

After you get comfortable with Linux, branch out and try non-Windowsy applications and tools. Sometimes different is better. Lots of people use Emacs and Vim for good reasons.

Answer 2

Ubuntu seems to be very user-friendly, and has a lot of specific information for it in forums etc. So support-wise you'll be covered.

I experienced the shift from windows to ubuntu as very much do-able, things you can do graphically in windows can be done exactly the same in ubuntu (maybe some exceptions) and a bit more. A computer savvy individual should not have any problems.

However, it helps greatly if you are familiar with the basic shell commands (you'll need them as a programmer!). Some are the same as on windows but especially ls (dir) sometimes has me wracking my brain for "what was that command again", and vice versa when I'm back on windows. Take some time to try them out. (for example: pwd, ls, mv, rm, ps, kill)

Finally, when installing programs often a simple "sudo apt-get install X " does all the work for you, even more user friendly than the windows installer executables I find.

Edit: You might want to try a VMware player and try a few linux distributions to play around in before you install the dual boot.