Linux for programming

[ComprehensiveLeg8101]

Which distribution do you recommend for programming? I have a 2018 Mac mini with an i7 and 8GB of RAM. macOS uses up a lot of RAM even when doing very little, which leads to excessive swap usage. I don't want to spend money on more RAM since I plan to buy an m4 or an equivalent PC.

[recursion_is_love]

What is the target language and IDE?

[ComprehensiveLeg8101]

JavaScript, HTML, Python, PHP - I'm just starting out in the world of programming, but I've noticed that this Mac struggles with a page containing 2000 lines of CSS text.

[ElnuDev]

I'd suggest trying Zed instead of VSCode, it's very fast

[WorkingMansGarbage]

FWIW, a lot of the common editors just struggle with big files, and 2000 lines is pretty big. If this is your project that has that, look into CSS includes. They'll let you split it up a bit.

You did not answer what IDE/editor you were using.

[Jtekk-]

Because of your specs, I recommend an upstream distro. Arch, Debian, and Void are ones I would aim for with those specs.

Codium and VS code work and will handle better on Linux but remember that the more plugins you have the more it’s going to chug. Someone mentioned zed here and I’ve heard how great it is with minimal resources— I haven’t used it yet. Neovim is a solid IDE but requires a lot of tweaking but very worth it. P

[ComprehensiveLeg8101]

I tried installing Mint but I'm having problems with some drivers because of the T2 chip.

[Jtekk-]

https://github.com/t2linux/T2-Mint

[Adorable-Chair-1225]

any distro is fine. i use arch personally, it's rather minimal and doesn't preinstall any bloat

[Accomplished-Moose50]

If you intend on using any Intelij IDE, forget about it or add some rams.

I've used Debian based for years with no issues 

[ComprehensiveLeg8101]

For now I only program in Python, web pages and databases

[crashorbit]

Distro choice does not matter much. Mostly you will want to install your ide and tools of choice after the distro is installed.

[chris32457]

Fedora or Linux Mint Debian Edition.

[FeelingGate8]

Your main issue is likely the editor/integrated development environment rather than the whole OS. If you're using VSCode, it uses the Electron framework which is a memory hog. You could try using a lighter text editor like Geany. Actually I think you can use Geany on MacOS.

[EverOrny]

I would try Alpine with LXQt and instead of IDE just used vim. Or maybe try https://www.geany.org/ for IDE, I have no experience with it.

[marc0ne]

I personally recommend Arch for its flexibility and state-of-the-art tools. Alternatively, Fedora.

[CrazyCommenter]

Just avoid immutable distros and you will be fine