[Lazarus] The perfect Linux distro for FPC and Lazarus development

[Graeme Geldenhuys]

Op 2011-03-07 11:06, Mark Morgan Lloyd het geskryf:
> however is that Debian/Ubuntu do have a fairly well-tested mechanism in
> place for upgrading libraries etc. when necessary, while Slackware- at
> least when I last looked- has to be reinstalled which is significant work.

I wouldn't know about OS upgrades - even for Ubuntu. I *never* upgrade 
an OS, but rather install from scratch. With my current partition 
layout, no matter which Linux distro I use, it is very quick and easy to do.

Using a 250GB disk, I normally have four partitions. One swap partition 
and 3 file partitions. Change sizes to fit your needs.

   swap    2GB
   /       25GB
   /home   128GB
   /opt    95GB

So when a new release of Ubuntu or whatever Linux distro comes out, I 
backup the /etc directory to my home folder. Then simply reinstall the 
new OS using the above setup. The root (/) partition is the ONLY 
partition I format during the new installation. I can then copy back the 
config files into /etc, or modify the new ones, using the old ones as a 
reference (I prefer the latter). The /opt partition contains things like 
Adobe Reader, Firefox beta, Lazarus, FPC and other git repositories - 
thus no need to reinstall them, after a new OS install. The 
/home/<username> is used for downloads, documents or any project source 
code I work on. Again, by simply creating a user account in the new OS, 
with the same name as before, my desktop and all application settings 
are automatically correct. All other data are intact too.

This setup has worked very well for me for the last 5+ years, and takes 
roughly 30 minutes to install a new OS version. I once did a Ubuntu 
upgrade and it took well over an hour, and lots of issues - so will 
never do that again.



Regards,
   - Graeme -

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