Ask HN: What is the best Linux distro for a development laptop?
Your post seems to suggest that you won&#x27;t be developing <i>for</i> Linux and just need something that&#x27;s a good virtualization host and all-round desktop. In this case, any distribution that you can get along with will do. Especially if you don&#x27;t have much experience with Linux, Ubuntu and Fedora are both excellent choices. I tend to recommend the latter over the former.<p>If you do actually need to develop <i>for</i> Linux, I would suggest something with a rolling release model, otherwise it won&#x27;t be long before you&#x27;ll need to start compiling things from source because you need a more recent version of &lt;something&gt; than your distro is packaging.<p>&quot;Rolling release&quot; means that there is no Arch Linux 1, 2, 3 and so on, as in Fedora&#x27;s case. Arch periodically releases an install image, which you use to bootstrap your system, but the latest tested version of every package is what&#x27;s available in the package repository, for everyone, and as soon as a newer version is packaged, you can install it. This seems to be the best way to guarantee that you get the latest packages and the most stable system that you can get with them (spoiler alert: it&#x27;s not <i>that</i> stable, but not disastrously unstable, either; I&#x27;ve ran rolling release distros on my laptop for years).<p>Arch is an usual recommendation in this case. Red Hat Enterprise Beta, uh, I mean, Fedora, is also a good choice -- it&#x27;s not a rolling release, but it regularly ships with very recent packages. It&#x27;s also a testbed for new technologies, and does have the advantage that you get a fully setup (and generally mostly working) system from the beginning.<p>If you&#x27;re a more experienced user, you might want to have a look at Gentoo and Void Linux.