Best Linux distro for type tool

James Puckett

I’ve given up on running F/OSS software and compiling software on Mac OS. It’s just not worth the dependency hell issues I run into and weird conflicts that come up when I start mixing brew, mac ports, etc.. I want to just start running this stuff on Linux in a VM. This was I can just break it however I want and roll back to a clean install. What’s a good Linux distro for this? One where I just download VMs for Virtual Box would be great.

Jack Jennings

Ubuntu is probably fine and will have the most guides/support, and probably has a number of pre-configured VMs, though I can't comment further.

Slightly off-topic, but why mix macports and homebrew? Is there a package that's required on one that's not on the other? Historically having both installed at once has lead to the headaches you're talking about, and really the only remedy is to go with one or the other that you prefer.

James Puckett

Slightly off-topic, but why mix macports and homebrew?

Because neither one works worth a damn (last week I couldn’t even get pkg-config installed) and when one won’t work at two am I just give up and fire up the other. But now and then I forget to clean up the mess the next day, and after a few years of that it gets ugly. 

Dave Crossland

I recommend vagrant or docker