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Author Topic: Best/easiest distro for Lazarus coming from Windows (and Mac)  (Read 4544 times)

MISV

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Can you guys recommend a Linux Distro that

- works well with Lazarus
- is okay easy coming from Windows (also do some Mac stuff)
- preferably user friendly GUI
- can run on old PCs


winni

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Re: Best/easiest distro for Lazarus coming from Windows (and Mac)
« Reply #1 on: August 17, 2019, 02:10:05 am »
Hi!

XUbuntu is the lightweight version of Ubuntu. Lazarus works well  together with Ubuntu.
XUbuntu comes with the leightweight Desktop Xfce which is not very comfortable.
Desktops similar to Windows like KDE or gnome need a lot of RAM and disk.

XUbuntu needs only (minimum) 512 MB RAM and less than 10 GB harddisk space.

I Know this from some computer kids who use XUbuntu in school on hardware from the last millenium (nearly).

Winni
« Last Edit: August 17, 2019, 02:14:37 am by winni »

trev

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Re: Best/easiest distro for Lazarus coming from Windows (and Mac)
« Reply #2 on: August 17, 2019, 03:32:38 am »
I'm using Ubuntu 18.04 (in a VM on macOS) with Lazarus - no issues.

GAN

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Re: Best/easiest distro for Lazarus coming from Windows (and Mac)
« Reply #3 on: August 17, 2019, 04:15:17 am »
Can you guys recommend a Linux Distro that

- works well with Lazarus
- is okay easy coming from Windows (also do some Mac stuff)
- preferably user friendly GUI
- can run on old PCs

Linux Mint MATE,
Lazarus 2.0.8 FPC 3.0.4 Linux Mint Mate 19.3
Zeos 7̶.̶2̶.̶6̶ 7.1.3a-stable - Sqlite 3.32.3 - LazReport

kapibara

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Re: Best/easiest distro for Lazarus coming from Windows (and Mac)
« Reply #4 on: August 17, 2019, 06:43:34 am »
I like Debian with plain XFCE, made it look a bit like windows.

Not much more needed to learn than any other.
« Last Edit: August 23, 2019, 06:14:05 pm by kapibara »
Lazarus trunk / fpc 3.2.2 / Kubuntu 22.04 - 64 bit

munair

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Re: Best/easiest distro for Lazarus coming from Windows (and Mac)
« Reply #5 on: August 17, 2019, 07:59:44 am »
Having used Debian/Ubuntu/Mint for years (since Ubuntu 8 ), I switched to Manjaro more than a year ago. The primary reason is that at one point you will find yourself reinstalling a Debian based distro either because of dependency problems (outdated or incompatible libraries) or a new point release. I hardly ever have been able to actively use and keep a Debian based distro running for more than two or three years (except for my server which still runs Debian 7 :D  ). Distros like Ubuntu and Mint are based on Debian testing and definitely less stable.

That said, Manjaro is a rolling release always giving you next to the newest Linux software, including kernel and firmware. It is backed by a huge up-to-date repository of software packages. New releases are added to the repo quickly, including the latest Lazarus. Manjaro's main desktop is XFCE which is pretty light-weight and easy to use and should give you no problem on older machines. Its interface is similar to that of Windows with a start menu.

I still have a Debian machine (version 9), primarily for testing purposes, and I was able to download and install Lazarus 2.0.2 without problem. But you have to manually download the packages and install them yourself.
« Last Edit: August 17, 2019, 08:01:47 am by Munair »
keep it simple

marcov

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Re: Best/easiest distro for Lazarus coming from Windows (and Mac)
« Reply #6 on: August 17, 2019, 06:00:04 pm »
Somewhat my experience too, GUI installations usually I count on only one upgrade going ok, but non gui installs can do  2-3 major updates (which is quite long with LTS->LTS upgrades only)

But still, a LTS release cycle alone is 5 years, and even one upgrade makes it an avg of 7.5 years if you start with not too new hardware (if you need to do an upgrade to get on the LTS train, it is shorter)

p.s. tried to update my ubuntu 16.04 LTS desktop distro to 18.04 2 days ago and the GUI parts of the update totally went awry. Couldn't handle the whole "unity install with some history" -> gnome it seems.

VTwin

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Re: Best/easiest distro for Lazarus coming from Windows (and Mac)
« Reply #7 on: August 17, 2019, 07:28:40 pm »
I've been using Ubuntu for quite a few years on a Mac in VirtualBox (and previously in Parallels). I mainly use it to run Lazarus and debug my software. It works great.
“Talk is cheap. Show me the code.” -Linus Torvalds

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macOS 12.1: Lazarus 2.2.6 (64 bit Cocoa M1)
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Windows 7 Pro SP1: Lazarus 2.2.6 (64 bit on VBox)

sash

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Re: Best/easiest distro for Lazarus coming from Windows (and Mac)
« Reply #8 on: August 19, 2019, 10:08:21 pm »
The primary reason is that at one point you will find yourself reinstalling a Debian based distro either because of dependency problems (outdated or incompatible libraries) or a new point release.

I'm happy ever since Ubuntu (XFCE) 15.04, upgrading that same installation.
Swapped 2 videocards, migrated filesystem from hdd to ssd, now I'm have 19.04 up and running.
Well, honestly I'm little disappointed of 18.04->19.04 upgrade (few cosmetic bugs - a price of non-LTE), but nothing really serious.

Ubuntu (with Unity DE) users were suffered a way more seriously.

So XUbuntu works for me..
Lazarus 2.0.10 FPC 3.2.0 x86_64-linux-gtk2 @ Ubuntu 20.04 XFCE

MISV

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Re: Best/easiest distro for Lazarus coming from Windows (and Mac)
« Reply #9 on: August 20, 2019, 09:50:04 pm »
Thank you all - I am leaning towards xubuntu / xfce ubuntu

Do you know if i will be able to run Lazarus on that with a Pentium 4 hyperhtreading with 4GB memory and gfx card for developing?

This is all very preliminary, but I want to be ready if I start getting requests for linux versions of my software

winni

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Re: Best/easiest distro for Lazarus coming from Windows (and Mac)
« Reply #10 on: August 20, 2019, 10:34:06 pm »
Yes, Pentium 4 is enough for the Ubuntu family. And 4 GB is more than enough.

Here is a german page about Ubuntu and old Hardware:

https://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/Alte_Hardware/


Shot it through google translator if you can't read german.

Winni

lucamar

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Re: Best/easiest distro for Lazarus coming from Windows (and Mac)
« Reply #11 on: August 20, 2019, 11:38:43 pm »
Note that there may be some problems with very old hardware. In this box (Pentium 4 HT - 3.0Ghz), for example, the BIOS doesn't allow to activate the NX bit of the processor, which makes installing newer versions of Ubuntu (and in fact most Linux distros) close to impossible.

I managed to update to Ubuntu 12.04 but anthing more modern than that is not worth the effort (for me, YMMV)
« Last Edit: August 20, 2019, 11:40:36 pm by lucamar »
Turbo Pascal 3 CP/M - Amstrad PCW 8256 (512 KB !!!) :P
Lazarus/FPC 2.0.8/3.0.4 & 2.0.12/3.2.0 - 32/64 bits on:
(K|L|X)Ubuntu 12..18, Windows XP, 7, 10 and various DOSes.

Abelisto

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OS: Linux Mint + MATE, Compiler: FPC trunk (yes, I am risky!), IDE: Lazarus trunk

winni

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Re: Best/easiest distro for Lazarus coming from Windows (and Mac)
« Reply #13 on: August 21, 2019, 12:04:45 am »
Lucamars situation is the point where XUbuntu appears on the scene. It is made for old or small PCs. And if you got realy old hardware, it is said you should take LUbuntu: works with Pentium II and 128 MB (!!!!) RAM. Have not tested it.

@Abelisto: Don't say nothing angainst the good old 486! The last PC without a fan an it's noise. And the first one with an FPU on the processor! That was the computer for my first Linux distro: Slackware - on 10 (or so) Floppy discs!  You needed half a night to install it. Happy that those days are gone.

Winni

JD

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Re: Best/easiest distro for Lazarus coming from Windows (and Mac)
« Reply #14 on: August 21, 2019, 12:40:29 am »
This is very subjective and you will get different answers.

As for me, I swear by Linux Mint Cinnamon. I've been using this distro for years, have tried many others (Fedora, Ubuntu, XFCE, Manjaro, Mandrake/Mandriva/OpenMandriva, Elementary etc) but I still love my Lazarus experience with Linux Mint Cinnamon.

JD
Windows - Lazarus 2.1/FPC 3.2 (built using fpcupdeluxe),
Linux Mint - Lazarus 2.1/FPC 3.2 (built using fpcupdeluxe)

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