Should I use LINUX?

[Clark Henry]

I have a Windows 7 machine and ran Ubuntu on a Virtual Machine. I've played around with Python on the VM for about 50 hours or so for fun. In Fall I'll begin an MSMF program, and wonder if it would be worthwhile to just run on a LINUX OS full-time to get use to it for potential employers? It couldn't hurt, right?

Thanks.

 

[alain]

knowing Linux will be an asset.

 

[Clark Henry]

Great, thanks! I've played around with the console for only about 10 hours or so. Is there any particular distribution you recommend I become familiar with?

Also, are there any hardships I ought to prepare for? Basically, as far as I know, all I'll need to use for grad school is C++, MATLAB, R, and to a lesser extent perhaps a little C#/Python/Java. I already know Python was a breeze on Ubuntu. The rest of the software ought to be reasonably easy to implement on LINUX, right?

Thank you!

 

[quannabe]

For R (if you're not already using it) RStudio is awesome. Download for ubuntu here: http://www.rstudio.com/ide/download/desktop

As far as an IDE for Java, Python, C++-- Eclipse is pretty simple/straight-forward:

Eclipse C++: http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/packages/eclipse-ide-cc-developers/heliossr1

Eclipse for Java & Python: http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/packages/eclipse-classic-421/junosr1
You may need to also download a JDK for java to work on Ubuntu. Try this: http://openjdk.java.net/install/

Then, download & install the PyDev add-on and you can have a Python perspective in Eclipse.

 

[mhy]

The main difficulties I found when learning Linux (I used Ubuntu) was figuring out where the thousands of config and setting files, etc are stored, and determining what the particular tools are for each task (i.e. vim, grep, df, ls, awk, etc). Installing software from source and maintaining your installations can also be a pain, but these days, most popular software are available via package managers, so this is less of a problem.