C programming with Live CD - Help

[firefdr]

Hi

Im quite new to Linux (used Ubuntu and Suse some time ago but havent touched them in like 3 years) and I need to do some programming in Unix. I decided to use Linux since its quite easier for C programming (from what I remember).

I also wanna use a Live CD instead of installing since I dont have much HD space and I also have nicely tuned Windows installation that I dont want to mess with (dont want to risk having to format it and do all over again >_>).

1- Will the Live CD be ok for that? Will I be able to install the compilers I need, the libraries I need, save files, compile them, test them, install some programs and all that even if Linux is not installed? (Never used a Live CD before... appart from playing with some for a little).

2- I will have to do a "C-language socket-based client-server program, working under Cygwin and Solaris/SPARC 2.8". Will I be able to code that on a Linux environment? (Also never touched Cygwin or Solaris...)

3- Which distro should I use? I want something easy and straight to the point. Something I wont need to mess with. Gnome/KDE is unimportant but I would like a nice text editor. If Ubuntu and Suse are good for my needs I could stick to them since Im pretty familiar with (which one of the two though?).

I think thats all for now.

Thanks

[reed9]

1. Yes. Some distros include a wide array of development tools out of the box. Some do not. Normally, any changes you make, including installing new software, are not kept after reboot. You need to make a persistent image. The easiest way is to boot off a USB stick. Everything can be kept on the flash drive and you have a full computing evironment that you can take to any computer (that can boot from USB).

2. No idea, sorry.

3. Zenwalk might be worth looking at. It has a good selection of development tools included. If you want something lighterweight and speedy, you could try Puppy Linux.

[hazel]

Gnome/KDE is unimportant but I would like a nice text editor.
Thanks

I use geany for programming. It's more than just a text editor with syntax highlighting. It also does function completions, displaying the correct argument types, and it allows you to build internally rather than having to save and build on the command line.

[Rubberman]

1. Yes, but when you reboot you will lose any installations you made as well as your code unless you saved it to non-volatile media (a USB drive, for example).
2. I used Cygwin a lot in the past for multi-platform Linux/Unix development. However, since Cygwin uses older GCC compiler versions than current Linux distributions you will have to verify and possibly tweak your code to work equally well. Much of what I was doing was of the client/server socket communication programming that you mention and I can say without reservation that it worked very well for me. I would build/test on Cygwin in an XP environment, then rebuild and test on a Linux system - and this was very complex C and C++ code.
3. Any of the major distributions that work for you should be just fine. I use both RHEL (CentOS) and Ubuntu. For a good programming text editor that is GUI-based yet light-weight and runs on everything I really like nedit. I've been using it for almost 15 years now on everything from Windows/Cygwin to QNX (real-time OS) to Unix (many platforms) to Linux (also many platforms). Nice syntax-highlighting for just about every programming/scripting language known (including make files), adjustable tab expansion, auto-indenting, brace-matching, etc. Most distributions have it listed in their package manager.

[firefdr]

Thanks everyone!

Going to try Ubuntu with the USB persistence thing. (Hope it works well on my laptop).

Will also try both of those editors, they look pretty good. (I can find them in that Ubuntu download center right? I really suck at untaring and moving files around with command lines >_>)

Thanks again.

... just found out Im out of blank CDs... great timing.