Why is Linux better than Windows for developing software?

Question

I see and hear all over the place that Linux is better than Windows for developing. But I never hear any real concrete reasons. I'd like to know just some general ideas (or detailed if you feel like typing) why people use Linux over Windows for development. Note, the question is not why to choose Linux over Windows as an OS for any reason. I am interested specifically in why to use it for developing. Thanks.

Answer 1

1. Major distros have awesome package managers, so it is usually very easy to setup your development environment and to download development libraries.



2. Usually good documentation in man pages and online.



3. The GNU toolchain is good (make, gcc, gdb,...)

Answer 2

The two main reasons I can think of are



1) The incredible number of different tools you can use to create software

2) The vast majority are free



If you're developing C++ software maybe you try out KDevelop. If you decide you don't like it for whatever reason that's no problem because you've got dozens of alternatives you can quickly and easily install completely free. And if you still can't find exactly what you want you can always modify some existing tool because it's almost all open source.



A lot of the web development stuff got it's start on Linux. There are still some functions in PHP that don't work on Windows.



Also, just the very nature of Linux - since it's open source it's been designed literally from the beginning to make development easier and more efficient.



There's also some definite appeal in having your software be cross-platform. If you use Windows to develop a C++ program for instance, it's almost certainly only going to run on Windows. However someone in the Linux world can use the KDE library which is cross platform (admittedly it's still beta quality on Windows) or a mature library like wxWidgets (http://www.wxwidgets.org/).

Answer 3

Personally the reason that I think people say linux is better than windows for developing is based on the fact that linux is open source. And you can get development packages for most any language for free. I also find that linux has been a little more forgiving of some of my programming errors than windows. But when it comes completely down to it, I think they are both on fairly equal footing as far as developing software goes. It's just a matter of learning the particular quirks of the OS you're running.



So I think the biggest deciding factor is the costs involved. You can set up a linux web server with all the trimmings for the cost of the server and internet connection. Where if you wanted to do the same thing with Windows you'd have to add in the cost of the OS and any commercial software you add to the mix.

Answer 4

I use Linux over Windows because of the terminal that is provided in it. It's just so easy to be able to open a Unix based terminal and then open any program that I want using a variety of text editors including Vim, Emacs, GEdit, etc.. On Windows you would have to open that specific editor on its own.



Compiling is a cinch in Linux! Say I want to compile a Java program I've written? I've already got the terminal open from when I was writing the program (no need to go to the command prompt on Windows that I am less familiar with and find the directory that I'm working in). I can just type "javac programname" or something similar to that. Want to compile C? C++? No problem! It just feels so natural.