What is a good flavor of Linux for programming/development

[VintagePCGamer]

I am looking to get back into Linux and wanted to do some programming/development and wonder what disturbution was the best for that purpose. The last time I had a linux box was in 2000 and that was running Red Hat 6.2. I have SUSE Linux 9.2 but only installed it once but ran to slow on a P2-400 with 384MB. I created a Ubatu live CD and checked out the packages but there were not any thing for programming/development.

Also what kind of system specs should I have for running linux smoothly. I have a an AMD 2400+ 2.0Ghz with 1 GB of RAM as my main Win XP system should I get something as good as that to run linux well or do I need a better system. I could dual boot if I free a partition but I have not dual booting Windows/Linux in a while when I used to use LILO.
Should I just buy a $250 used HP/Compaq off of ebay or build a cheap new linux box using New Egg?

Any input would be appricated.

[Cabhan]

Any distro will be fine for development. All that you need for development is a text editor and a compiler, which can be obtained for any system. Ubuntu does have them: I don't remember the name of the package (I think it's build-essential), but it is there.

As far as a text editor, the CLI options are generally vi and Emacs, and then you have the GUI options: kate (KDE) or gedit (Gnome). There also IDEs, such as Eclipse (mostly for Java), KDevelop, Anjuta, etc.

As far as a compiler, gcc is what you'll want. This has C, C++, and most other languages. For Java, you'll generally want the official Sun Java compiler (gcc comes with gcj, but unless you really care about using only free software, it's probably not worth it). And interpreted languages (Perl, Python, Ruby, etc.) don't need compilers at all, obviously. Just install the interpreter.

As far as your system specs, those will be fine. If your graphics card isn't a nVidia or ATI (or if you refuse to use the binary drivers for such a card), you can't run the newest trend in desktops (Xgl / 3D desktops) or games that require 3D acceleration, but otherwise you'll be fine.

As far as dual-booting, LILO has pretty much been replaced by GRUB these days (though you can definitely use LILO if you'd prefer). It's still just as easy to dual-boot as it's always been.

If you have any specific questions, feel free to ask!

[Oxygen]

For development you may want a distro that you can modify with config to your needs, something a bit more in-depth like Debian or Slackware. I think this may be locked because it's a "which distro" thread but I just want to help.

I'd get a Debian net install cd, put the build-essential package and KDevelop on it, and you can code to your heart's content.

[VintagePCGamer]

Thanks for the replies Cabhan and Oxygen alot of good information. I have been out of the loop for a while and has linux evovled quite a bit. I'll into those distros. I remember slackware so that has been around for a while.