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Re: [OCLUG-Tech] Distro Recommendations

Hi,

On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 09:18:50AM -0400, Shawn H Corey wrote:
> I've upgraded by Ubuntu to 11.04.  What a piece of junk.  If this is the 
> best Canonical can do, it's time to switch distro.
> 
> I'm looking for one that can do some development work.  My favourite 
> language is Perl, so it's got to be able to do that.  Now, you're 
> thinking all the distros come with Perl, so it's a minor point but I 
> need to run the latest and greatest.  Most distros come with Perl 5.10 
> (some still have 5.8) but I need to run 5.12 (stable) and 5.14 (beta).
> 
> Any recommendations?
> 

If you want perl to be _that_ new, there won't be many distros that can satisfy you.  Distros that build from source have a decent chance of using the developer tree, so Gentoo/funtoo maybe.  However that's a considerable time investment to install a whole system from source.

How about using whatever distro you like and installing perl from source?

	$ clone git://perl5.git.perl.org/perl.git perl
	$ cd perl
	$ git tag | tail
	v5.13.2
	v5.13.3
	v5.13.4
	v5.13.5
	v5.13.6
	v5.13.7
	v5.13.8
	v5.13.9
	v5.14.0-RC1
	v5.14.0-RC2
	$ git checkout v5.13.9  (or 5.14.0-RC2 if you are feeling brave.)

You'd be able to follow the development tree however close you want.

In fact:

	$ git log
	commit 19bfff0f437aaac271c0658c51d56954ab685688
	Author: Jesse Vincent <jesse [ at ] bestpractical [ dot ] com>
	Date:   Mon May 9 11:31:27 2011 -0400

	    Remove the "RC2" marker in preparation for Wednesday's final release.

You can even go back to an old version.  http://perl5.git.perl.org/perl.git/tags
Perl 1.0 anyone?

I like how the "The master branch, where the development takes places, is named blead."

> 
> -- 
> Just my 0.00000002 million dollars worth,
>    Shawn
> 
> Confusion is the first step of understanding.
> 
> Programming is as much about organization and communication
> as it is about coding.
> 
> The secret to great software:  Fail early & often.
> 
> Eliminate software piracy:  use only FLOSS.

Cheers!
-Phil

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