[Lazarus] What is most Lazarus Friendly Linux Distro

[Mark Morgan Lloyd]

Graeme Geldenhuys wrote:

>> get people onto a broadly-ported distro than to have a hodge-podge with 
>> different package naming conventions etc.

Graeme, if you're going to quote me please don't chop sentences in such 
a way that it changes the meaning of what I wrote.

| Also it's obviously worth considering that Debian runs on many more
| platforms than Slackware, and from a support aspect it's far easier
| to get people onto a broadly-ported distro than to have a hodge-podge
| with different package naming conventions etc.

> The "hodge-podge" distro (I gather you mean Slackware) is the oldest
> active Linux distro in existence. That must count for something. It is
> also the closest Linux distro to "Unix style" management, and least
> modified (leaving packages as the original authors intended). This
> appeals to many. It might not win a popularity contest any time soon,
> but it sure is consistent, stable, and has a loyal following. Plus it
> makes for a good development system [returning to the message thread at
> hand].

Anybody with the least bit of brain should be able to work out that I 
was referring to a hodge-podge of multiple distreax, and was not 
attempting to denigrate Slackware- which I've been using since 
Yggdrassil faded away. In short, stop trying to teach me to suck eggs, 
kiddo. The point I was trying to make was that at least where you've got 
a fairly homogeneous mix of Debian/Ubuntu/Mint over a range of 
architectures then you know what the prerequisite packages are, e.g. the 
various -dev packages for somebody who wants to build Lazarus from 
scratch. On the other hand, if you take Slackware as your 
distro-of-choice on Intel and ARM, then you're in an awkward position as 
soon as somebody wants to run PPC or MIPS.

At that point, irrespective of the consistency and overall polish 
applied to Slackware, which is substantial, you've got a hodge-podge of 
distreaux because it's not possible to have the same one over the 
various architectures that people want to run.

Obviously I note your comment about Slackware being substantially 
"complete" as far as underlying libraries go. But sooner or later the 
average developer does need something extra or (worse) finds that a 
supplied library isn't quite recent enough for something that he wants 
to build. I'm definitely not an uncritical Debian apologist, but in 
general their model of having a large repository of non-installed but 
guaranteed-compatible libraries works well.

Now if the original question had been "What is most Lazarus Friendly 
Linux Distro for x86 and x86-64"... :-)

-- 
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk

[Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]