distribution

This might be a dumb question but i’m new to linux, so,…
What’s the best linux distribution for development?
If i develop a game with SuSe can i play that game, for instance in Red Hat?
Isn’t the instalation different from distribution to distribution?

Any linux distrib is “good for dev”. You will just have to install development packages, which is just a few clicks on any modern distribution.

I would advise you to go with Ubuntu, as it is specially developed for non-linux experts, without limiting possibilities. There is good support in their forums, especially for total beginners.

For cross-distrib develepment : of course it is possible, but may not be easy if you have no linux experience. You will have to list precisely the libraries and tools your program depends on.
It will also depend on which form you release your game, opensource or closed binary (more complex and you will get less help).

BTW I think learning to use the integrated package manager instead of trying manually to download programs from internet, is the most important paradigm shift between windows/mac and linux.

OpenSuSE is another good one for Linux dev. Been using it for many years.

I’ve been using it too, but till now, only for playing games and office tools. i never managed to install any additional software on it, that’s the main reason why i came with this question.

“install any additional software on OpenSUSE” :
http://en.opensuse.org/YaST_Software_Management

Another vote for Ubuntu here.

There are two main difficulties in cross-distro development:

(a) Different package formats

(b) Missing or too old dependencies

The first issue is pretty annoying but not unsolvable. If you go open source, you can get other people to create packages for you. If you go closed-source (and want anyone to use your program), you’ll have to create a build environment that generates packages for different distros (RPM, Deb and tar.gz in 32- and 64-bit formats at the very list).

This is not as difficult as it sounds, but it can be pretty annoying (you’ll have to read and understand the documentation of the various package formats). Fortunately, you only have to do this one time - once you get your build-system up and running, you’ll be able to generate all packages with a single click (you can even create windows or mac os x binaries directly from linux!)

The second issue can be solved simply by building on an older distribution (e.g. you can develop on the latest version of Ubuntu, but your build system can use an older version for better compatibility).

Did I mention that virtual machines are your friends? You can launch a VM and test your program on a different OS in seconds (without rebooting).

Being a devout novice myself and having tinkered with Fedora, OpenSUSE and Ubuntu, it seems to me that the differences are more or substantially less than superficial - i.e. they’re mostly cosmetic with regard to your choice of GUI - which is altogether irrespective of distribution flavor - and functionally equivalent vis-a-vis the package managers.

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