shifting from windows to *nix programming platform

Question

How to migrate to *nix platform after spending more than 10 years on windows? Which flavor will be easy to handle to make me more comfortable and then maybe I can switch ove

Answer 1

Any modern version of Unix (or Linux) you can get running on your machine will be fine.

Here are the ones that I would consider:

• Ubuntu. As others have noted, this is often considered to be the easiest to use. However some parts are not "standard" Unix. For example, the startup scripts do not use init. This is mostly a good thing, but if you're trying to learn Unix may not be what you need.
• Fedora. Bleeding edge but with rough edges.
• Slackware. Possibly the most Unix-like Linux distribution (some would say dated!).
• One of the *BSDs: FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD. Different approach to some things than Linux.
• Solaris. This is "proper" Unix. Seems bare-bones compared with Linux but worth playing with to see what's "standard."

In fact, I would consider running at least a couple of them, most run fine as a VM. One of the good and bad things about Unix is that what's standardised is more the philosophy than many of the details. There's no Visual Studio, there's no C# (by that I mean no canonical high level language; I know about Mono).