I’m looking for a distro recommendation for development needs.

I have a 16gb ram pc and using docker and k3s to run my code, and multiple intellijs on a linux vmware vm (my host is windows) which eats a lot of ram. I tried ubuntu, Debian and xubuntu.

Most of them didn’t handle my ram consumptions, xubuntu is good but I’d like to know if there’s a better one for my needs.

  • nachtigall@feddit.deEnglish
    13·
    11 months ago

    Fedora is a great distro for development (used by Torvalds himself ;-).

    If RAM is a problem you could try using ZRAM. Unlike the name suggests, this compresses data in RAM instead of swapping to disk, so that more data fits in there than normally available. Fedora for example uses zswapzram by default with a value of max(0.5*RAM, 4GB) but can be configured to utilise more.

    [source]

    EDIT: confused zswap and zram

  • _cnt0@lemmy.villa-straylight.social
    8·
    11 months ago

    For the kind of workload you’re describing, 16GB of RAM was on the low end like 5 years ago. Your number one priority should be getting more RAM. For what you’re doing vmware is at least better than HyperV, and depending on what people are doing with their machines there can be pros and cons favoring Windows, linux, OSX, … in your case Windows is factually the worst choice. When working as a developer with linux native technologies, use linux. If you insist on your kids playing with your work machine (interesting choice), and they “need” Windows, then dual boot. Other than that I’d second another users advice to go with fedora (easy to use, up to date, no bullshit). But do yourself a favor, go bare metal, and get more RAM.

    • DeriHunter@lemmy.worldOP
      2·
      11 months ago

      Yeah I need to get ram, but I’m afraid my psu will explode lmao, I have 3060ti razen 5 2600 and 16 gb ddr4 on 550 psu haha

      This is not my main work computer more like an hobby, I have a computer from my work. And beside we have git so it’s OK that the kids playing around with the pc

      • nyanEnglish
        7·
        11 months ago

        RAM doesn’t consume much electricity. The two power hogs in a modern system are the CPU and the GPU—everything else uses <20W, usually <10W. 3060Ti is 200W, and your CPU is 65W. Unless you’ve got a lot more stuff in that case, you’re not close to hitting your power supply’s limit even if you overclock a bit.

          • nyanEnglish
            1·
            11 months ago

            There’s a tendency for manufacturers to overspec power supplies a bit in their suggestions, just in case the person they’re advising turns out to be That Guy who’s overclocking to the max and running a SATA expansion card with ten older spinny-rust HDDs or something like that. They want you to buy something that has plenty of margin so that they won’t be blamed when their piece of the system doesn’t perform well enough when paired with an anemic power supply.

            I did my best to find information for everything I intended to put in my current system when I was spec’ing it out back in 2017, so that I could buy as much power supply as I needed without overbuying, and it was surprisingly difficult to get good figures for some stuff. Comspiracy by power supply manufacturers? I doubt it, but I don’t know for sure.

  • original_ish_name@lemm.ee
    92·
    11 months ago

    Arch

    Also, why are you using windows as the host? If you had linux as the host you could use QEMU/KVM which is way faster

    • DeriHunter@lemmy.worldOP
      3·
      11 months ago

      I’ve heard arc has a big learning curve and installation tweaking is not straightforward , i don’t have the time or desire to get messy with the os more than I need to. Also my pc is used by my kids and operating and gaming on windows is easier

      • mrvictory1@lemmy.world
        31·
        11 months ago

        Use EndeavourOS and set up ZRAM. ZRAM should reduce RAM usage while not slowing down your PC.

      • original_ish_name@lemm.ee
        1·
        11 months ago

        The thing that gives arch the learning curve is the things that make it a good fit if you want something lightweight

  • Greyscale@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    51·
    11 months ago

    I run Ubuntu Mate, and all my work shiz is containerised. But I also have more RAM than Jesus Christ himself. My laptop works fine and it has more modest RAM.

  • Vinegar@kbin.social
    4·
    11 months ago

    The immutable Fedora releases, like Kinoite, have been the best development distros for me. Immutable Fedora releases come with Toolbox for making per-project containers, so you can have separate de-cluttered dev environments for each project. Toolbox containers are not isolated environments like virtual machines, so performance is on-par with bare-metal as well.

    I don’t know if Sliverblue or Kinoite is the right choice for your exact workflow, but if you’re looking for a Linux host that “just works” out of the box, has a trivial learning curve, and provides serious quality of life improvements then definitely look into Fedora Kinoite.

  • darcy@sh.itjust.works
    3·
    11 months ago

    i would say endevouros (arch based) if you want something more technical but still beginner friendly, or linux mint is always a good start otherwise. i3 is great for development, but may be hard at the start ig

  • bahmanm@lemmy.ml
    2·
    11 months ago

    I’ve got an old ThinkPad w/ 16GB RAM. My daily workflow is a combo of Emacs, a bunch of JVM languages, Make, Docker and minikube. I’ve been running openSUSE Tumbleweed for ages and am quite happy w/ its performance, package availability and being up-to-date.