Debian Vs Ubuntu; Which to get?

cheese_cake · **Posted:** Wed Aug 17, 2011 4:09 pm

i need a unix based OS for waterloo's CS program...

i do not want to be constantly having to worry that my machine 'works' in the amidst of studying. which variant of unix, Debian or Ubuntu, would be recommend in my case & why?

Tony · **Posted:** Wed Aug 17, 2011 4:30 pm

Ubuntu -- it aims at ease of use. As well, that is what UW runs http://www.cs.uwaterloo.ca/cscf/student/hosts.shtml

Cool.Breeze · **Posted:** Wed Aug 17, 2011 4:31 pm

In CS 135 you don't need a linux OS since you'll be using DrRacket (scheme), which works for Windows and macs. In CS 136 they recommend using Ubuntu, and you can either download a virtual box they provide or just install Ubuntu on your computer.

cheese_cake · **Posted:** Wed Aug 17, 2011 4:36 pm

i see. great! thanks!

Sur_real · **Posted:** Wed Aug 17, 2011 5:59 pm

hm...lol what about 137? we gonna be learning C but I think they said something about our primary CS account being in an UNIX environment...

Cool.Breeze · **Posted:** Wed Aug 17, 2011 6:49 pm

There's really no need to worry about these kind of things right now. You'll have access to all this information once classes start, through the course website and/or course outlines. If you really wanna start looking into it though, you can simply go to the course website: http://www.student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~cs137/index.shtml and look around, there probably won't much be on it right now though since the term hasn't even started yet.

[Gandalf] · **Posted:** Wed Aug 17, 2011 9:05 pm

Ubuntu is Debian based so you really can't go wrong. The main advantage of Ubuntu is the ease of use, especially if you're not that familiar with Linux, as well as its large pool of packages. The main advantage of Debian is its stability.

Sur_real · **Posted:** Wed Aug 17, 2011 10:10 pm

damn...gandalf's here
lol, been a while since I've seen you

[Gandalf] · **Posted:** Wed Aug 17, 2011 10:58 pm

Hoi hoi Sur_real. Smile

I've been pretty busy with work and all that other good stuff.

DemonWasp · **Posted:** Wed Aug 17, 2011 11:34 pm

It's important to note that, although very similar, Linux isn't UNIX. The student.cs accounts are UNIX, on a group of Solaris machines (as far as I can tell).

It is possible to do all these courses things with whatever distribution of Linux or UNIX-like operating system you want. It's even possible to do most things on OSX or Windows.

Tony · **Posted:** Thu Aug 18, 2011 2:11 am

@DemonWasp -- according to the link I've first replied with, the current standard student.cs environment is Ubuntu. Solaris has been deprecated (although I have been using those for some courses recently).

Nick · **Posted:** Thu Aug 18, 2011 8:07 am

Gandalf @ Wed Aug 17, 2011 10:58 pm wrote:

...and all that other good stuff.

are you.... who I think you are? I have a college prof who says this all the time.

DemonWasp · **Posted:** Thu Aug 18, 2011 10:00 am

@Tony: Huh, either that's very new (last 1 year) or I've been stuck in the past. I was using cpu14.student.cs.uwaterloo.ca for a long while, and those machines (cpuNN.student.cs.uwaterloo.ca) were all Solaris. Not that any of this makes a huge difference, of course, it's just that compiled executables aren't portable between all of these environments.

Tony · **Posted:** Thu Aug 18, 2011 2:24 pm

@DemonWasp -- cpuNN.student.cs are still Solaris, and yes, this might have been introduced within the last year.

Also, woah: linux024.student.cs.uwaterloo.ca -- 48 CPU cores, 128GB RAM

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