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was wondering - if knowing The Linux way of life or the Linux architecture, would give a better frame of mind for programming on embedded devices especially when they have some kind of OS in them.
Just want to be sure that I did not miss a major thing :)
Note:
I come from a windows background, can program in C and C++.
Passionate and finally want to get started into Embedded programming. I would like to start by doing typical hobbyists project at home.
It would be nice if anyone would also comment on BeagleBoard as a starting point for me.
"Embedded" is a fuzzy word. There are two categories:
There are realtime embedded systems: microcontroller/microprocessor applications that are intimately communicating directly with the hardware on a low abstraction level. Typical applications are control systems/automation, industrial, automotive, medtech, household electronics, data/telecom communications etc.
And then there are fluffy embedded systems: various laptop:ish computers, embedded linux, embedded windows, phones and phoney operative systems, anything involving internet, human-machine intefaces etc.
People working in both categories will firmly state that they are working with embedded systems, while the latter kind are often just doing another flavour of desktop applications. Depending on which category you are aiming for, Linux may or may not be a merit. The telecom branch for example, overlaps both of these categories, and they are often using embedded Linux even for non-fluffy applications.
In either case, *nix may be used as the development platform, so knowing it won't hurt.
Yes and no. Mostly yes.
Lundin correctly described the "two worlds of embedded" (although the border between them is very fuzzy).
If you're writing for "higher embedded", like Android, or other devices that run Linux, then definitely expert knowledge of Linux will be of much help. You still need to know some "bare bones" and don't get scared when you see the likes of &=~ operator in C, but knowing Linux - the Linux of the old, where you configured stuff by editing files in /etc, where you compiled your own kernels for everyday use, where you would build software from tarballs, that's what helps. Knowing modern Linux - Gnome, gconf-editor, Synaptic and the likes will not be of much help.
Then next, if you're programming devices without OS, in the middle area - fast and strong enough to run C programs, but not the OS, you still need Linux. Because crosscompile. You don't need actual Linux. Cygwin is okay for that. MinGW may suffice. Still, you will probably need to be able to build your own crosscompiler (based on GCC), linker, debugger, make tools, and the rest of "backbone" of the IDE. Unless your chip supplier is awesome and provides a complete toolchain with IDE.
Only when you're into tiny processors, you don't need Linux. Stuff like car alarm remote, christmas lights blinker, car tire pressure sensor, battery level monitor - stuff that can have 16 bytes RAM, 1KB EEPROM, and the rest of CPU to match, you will need to use an IDE that works with this CPU, no OS, no C compiler, nothing remotely close to Linux - the IDE will most likely be Windows based.
I'd say you really do not need to know Linux for embedded programming. Many companies developing embedded software do it on windows and have no contact with other OS.
But sure, knowing more makes you more versatile, and general knowledge makes you a better engineer. This includes different OS as many other things.
When it comes to BeagleBoard, it depends on the kind of application you are interested in.
If you want to understand the low-level, I would start on a simpler processor and learn how to use peripherals, hardware interrupts, debouncing signals... There is an educational point in doing this yourself some time.
I suppose you can also skip that and start with an ARM-A8 and possibly an embedded OS, it's just not the path I followed.
What I am about to say may cause a flame war, but...
I have found that Linux is a much more productive development environment than Windows. At my previous job, we were developing firmware for managed switches and industrial automation equipment, which ran an embedded Linux operating system. All the developers had both Windows and Linux boxes, as the user interface software only ran on Windows. We all used Linux for developing, though, as it was simply easier.
At my current job, the only choice is to run Windows, but to make it more productive we are running Cygwin, which provides a Linux-like environment. It is very difficult to develop software on Windows that is not specifically for Windows.
As for developing for an embedded system without an OS... I have an Arduino that I play with occasionally. I have programmed it both from Windows and Linux, and have found the experiences fairly similar. Using Arduino's own tools, Windows seems to run a bit more smoothly, but if you want to hack on it and make something interesting, you're better off using Linux.
Personally (and this will likely provoke some nasty comments), I feel that Linux is best for doing productive work, and Windows is best for playing games.
So basically, this all boils down to this: Try using Linux for developing your project. You will probably find it to be a much smoother, more productive experience. If you don't like it, you don't have to keep using it. But the experience will probably be worth it.
Edit (due to question rewording): Knowing the "Linux way of life" is unlikely to help much when coding for an embedded project that is not running Linux itself. As I understand it, the Unix philosophy is about two main issues:
Each tool should do one thing and do it well (don't make something that tries to be everything).
Whenever possible, data should be plain text (allows for simple piping through processes and searching for content).
If you are working on a system without an operating system, you are writing code for a compiler and not likely working with a full shell at any point. You also are unlike to have any sort of file system. So both of these points are moot; you are not likely to gain anything concretely related to embedded programming by studying Linux, although it certainly couldn't hurt :-)
I really think if you want to learn a little about embedded sphere you should not start by using an OS directly. Prefer to have hands on a small low level project then add an OS if it's really needed for your final application.
I don't think setting up an OS into an embedded device will be easier than starting from scratch. It will bring you some functionalities (that I am not sure you really need to learn embedded) but it will bring you lot of hard debugging time in case of problems in the OS port.
I have been doing embedded programming for 10 years, currently for networking equipment and before that Apache helicopters. Both companies had POSIX-like operating systems on the target, but not embedded Linux directly. My current company uses mostly Windows for individual developer environments. However, we do have a few Linux boxes hanging around for special purposes. My previous company used a mix of Windows and Sun Solaris Unix. So wherever you go, you may not use Unix or Linux on your day to day computer, but you are likely to come across it at least occasionally.
On the other hand, I've known developers who have programmed on Linux for embedded Linux targets their entire careers. It really depends on the company, as smaller or newer companies have a tendency to use Linux more than corporations. However, using embedded forms of Windows on targets is very rare in my experience. I know devices are out there, but I've never personally met a developer who worked on one.
Anyway, Linux is free to use and has other benefits besides being good for a job. There's really no downside to giving it a try for a couple of months, other than giving up some of your time.
Linux is growing in embedded... see latest research:
Top 10 trends for the embedded software and tools market in 2011 - VDC research
Android Becomes Number One in U.S. Smartphone Market Share
Knowing the Linux way of life will definitely be a plus in embedded domain provided the kind of apps you are interested in are contained in the above mentioned links.
understanding Linux architecture will be over kill (although basic overview is good) before just starting in embedded field
e.g. to cut a tree you don't have to invent an axe - just start using one, then gradually you could learn to sharpen the axe
Its better to get started small - get hands-on, and focus on specific areas as is the need of the hour. grow with your work and work keeping your goals in mind
you will surely gain much faster and not get stuck in self loop - R&D to do R&D ;)
Only if you want to embed Linux! And as an embedded systems developer of some 22 years, I would suggest that Linux is unsuitable and unnecessary for a very large proportion of embedded systems projects.
Understanding the workings of an RTOS, and real-time priority based pre-emptive scheduling and IPC mechanisms would stand you in better stead. Take a look at this for example.
I like to program at my college's computer labs (a Windows environment). Unfortunately, the labs have IDEs & compilers for classes being taught that particular semester, which usually comes down to C, C++, and Java. I'm at a point where it's good for me to play around with a lot of different languages. I'd like to be able to do with from my flash drive.
I am also considering scripting languages (like portable Python) or languages/frameworks/runtimes that may require other programs (PHP needs a whole web stack).
What languages and tools can I use (scripted is OK!) to code and compile without having to install anything on the lab computers, and can be run from and saved on a USB flash drive?
Anything that runs on any operating system...
Qualification: the QEMU virtualizer is a fairly typical sort of PC emulator with the very unique feature that it can run without the help of an installer to set up it's environment. Thus you can create a VM image on your USB drive with the programming tools of your choice, for the operating system of your choice, and along side that, the QEMU executable, and you're set.
That said, the Windows port of QEMU appears to be abandoned, and its latest, 0.9.1, is dog slow.
You might be able to get another emulator with better performance to work, but this isn't supported out of the box, as far as i'm aware.
This kind of setup has some advantages, since the environment you'll be running is really your own, no matter which computer you happen to be sitting in front of.
you can try Portable Python.
Javascript. Works everywhere with a browser and a text editor (in your case, Notepad).
You can run XAMPP from a USB flash drive. And if you need an IDE, you can put eclipse on your flash drive, too.
Have you looked at DevC++ Portable? Also, Portable Python plus a portable editor like Notepad++ will give you a fairly sweet setup.
Eclipse is nice because it requires no install - just copy the eclipse directory to wherever you want it. If java is too boring for you, install the scala plugin and blow your mind away.
Any language can be done provided you can fit your libraries and compiler (or interpreter) on it.
Quick Basic works off of a flash drive...
Strawberry Perl Portable will give you Perl.
You can program Tcl/Tk by installing the single file distribution called "tclkit". You can even put tclkits for multiple platforms on a single drive so you can develop on windows, the mac or most unix boxes from the same drive.
For each platform there's nothing to install but the single executable to get a full implementation of tcl/tk including all of the GUI components.
AutoHotkey is good for windows.
emacs with its elisp is portable as well.
Clojure is impressively portable, it just requires a JVM (which your college machines should have, since you mention they're used for Java development)
Go to the downloads, get the latest release (currently 1.0.0), extract it and run from the command line:
java -cp clojure-1.0.0.jar clojure.lang.Repl
..and you'll get dropped to the Clojure REPL.
You can run a script, saved as a text file (named myscript.clj) with:
java -cp clojure-1.0.0.jar clojure.main myscript.clj
You can use Groovy. Works using JVM ...
Is there any lightweight *nix OS dedicated for programming purposes?
Actually, I have a full installation of Mandriva in my computer; but sometimes in Windows I must use Virtualbox to run some *nix OS.
Because I only need the OS for only programming in this case, so I just want to ask you about it. Of course, I searched about this on the net; but I also want to have your opinions...
Basically I need C/C++, Java, Python environment.
The only Linux distro you should use is Arch Linux. Please read why it is so great for developers :)
I'm an Arch Linux user, so my opinion may be biased.
Actually, a machine that you do development on shouldn't be lightweight. It should be heavy. full of compilers, interpreters, profilers, debuggers, IDEs, editors, benchmarks, checked-out code from repos, development versions of system libraries, test suites, generated large test files, backup tools, virtual machines, chroots, music to set-up comfort environment, mail, office suite to do the paperwork.
I mean, install Putty and connect to your machine (a), or do all development on virtual machine (b), that is kept on external hard drive (that's what I did, when I needed this), so you can use it everywhere where VirtualBox can run.
As for linuxes, I personally would like to use Gentoo Linux, as it can be customized to be lightweight. But unless you're really experienced with all linux administration stuff, customization may take a lot of time. So as a (c) variant, I'd advise to use any distribution (like your Mandriva), because normally base system takes about 10% of "weight" that you need for development on top of that.
And, by the way, boot speed is irrelevant on VirtualBox, since you can save virtual machine state entirely on hard drive and restore it within seconds.
I recommend xubuntu. I keep a full programming environment on a 4GB thumb drive with me at all times... just in case. :-)
I have a Debian install with X, windowmaker, firefox, vim, gcc, make and dependencies. Also, source control tools. Not much more, other than stuff that's useful in shell scripts. About 1.4G used on disk. Boots quickly. Very little BS involved.
I used to use OpenBSD on my old laptop. Similar to the above, but even more minimalist. You upgrade the OS with tar and patch. :-) Very nice, very small. Only reason I switched away from it is because I got a new machine which needed ndiswrapper for wifi...
PS: seems like this should be a community wiki...
Don't forget about Cygwin, which gives you a Unix-like environment right within your Windows box.
What about something like Puppy or DSL?
They aren't dedicated to programming, but they are small and lightweight.
I'd use something like GRML.
It really depends on what you are trying to do in terms of development.
Questions I would ask myself before development.
a) Who is the audience of the applications?
b) Is it a web based application or a desktop application?
c) How heavy is the number crunching part?
The first questions sometimes dictate the programming language you will be using. If it is for system administrator, I believe you will be writing a console application with command line interface, that the choice would be using programming language like shell scripts languages, C, C++, and a few other script languages like Python and Ruby.
For second question, If you are doing a web based application or mobile application, you would need to get the SDK with the libraries, and it would pretty much dictate the environment you will be working on.
For the number crunching part, you would need to look into libraries like CUDA or Fortran libraries that are designed for these type of applications.
Personally I use the Gentoo and Puppy Linux distro. If you need do C, Java and python, you could just download the stage3 tar ball of Gentoo linux, download the SDK from Oracle, and you are set to go.
Sometimes people want to do the developement in Windows environment, and don't want to miss the Unix tools, using cygwin and mingw in Windows environment would be viable options.
I recommend trisquel mini is the best which is also ubuntu based. I am using it.I installed eclipse ide in it with 1 gb ram. It uses only 200 mb for running os for more information visit my https://hassan004.blogspot.com/2022/01/weight-linux-distro-trisquel-mini.html
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 over to more stadard *nix flavors?
I have been postponing for a while now. Help me with the extra push.
Linux is the most accessible and has the most mature desktop functionality. BSD (in its various flavours) has less userspace baggage and would be easier to understand at a fundamental level. In this regard it is more like a traditional Unix than a modern Linux distribution. Some might view this as a good thing (and from certain perspectives it is) but will be more alien to someone familiar with Windows.
The main desktop distributions are Ubuntu and Fedora. These are both capable systems but differ somewhat in their userspace architecture The tooling for the desktop environment and default configuration for system security works a bit differently on Ubuntu than it does on most other Linux or Unix flavours but this is of little relevance to development. From a user perspective either of these would be a good start.
From a the perspective of a developer, all modern flavours of Unix and Linux are very similar and share essentially the same developer tool chain. If you want to learn about the system from a programmer's perspective there is relatively little to choose.
Most unix programming can be accomplished quite effectively with a programmer's editor such as vim or emacs, both of which come in text mode and windowing flavours. These editors are very powerful and have rather quirky user interfaces - the user interfaces are ususual but contribute significantly to the power of the tools. If you are not comfortable with these tools, this posting discusses several other editors that offer a user experience closer to common Windows tooling.
There are several IDEs such as Eclipse that might be of more interest to someone coming off Windows/Visual Studio.
Some postings on Stackoverflow that discuss linux/unix resources are:
What are good linux-unix books for an advancing user
What are some good resources for learning C beyond K&R
Resources for learning C program design
If you have the time and want to do a real tour of the nuts and bolts Linux From Scratch is a tutorial that goes through building a linux installation by hand. This is quite a good way to learn in depth.
For programming, get a feel for C/unix from K&R and some of the resources mentioned in the questions linked above. The equivalent of Petzold, Prosise and Richter in the Unix world are W Richard Stevens' Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment and Unix Network Programming vol. 1 and 2.
Learning one of the dynamic languages such as Perl or Python if you are not already familiar with these is also a useful thing to do. As a bonus you can get good Windows ports of both the above from Activestate which means that these skills are useful on both platforms.
If you're into C++ take a look at QT. This is arguably the best cross-platform GUI toolkit on the market and (again) has the benefit of a skill set and tool chain that is transferrable back into Windows. There are also several good books on the subject and (as a bonus) it also works well with Python.
Finally, Cygwin is a unix emulation layer that runs on Windows and gives substantially unix-like environment. Architecturally, Cygwin is a port of glibc and the crt (the GNU tool chain's base libraries) as an adaptor on top of Win32. This emulation layer makes it easy to port unix/linux apps onto Cygwin. The platform comes with a pretty complete set of software - essentially a full linux distribution hosted on a Windows kernel. It allows you to work in a unix-like way on Windows without having to maintain a separate operating system installations. If you don't want to run VMs, multiple boots or multiple PCs it may be a way of easing into unix.
Ubuntu is nicely balanced, with a user friendly desktop but the potential to set up a fully functional programming environment.
I would advise experimenting with virtual machines - there is no reason to ditch your current setup until you've tried a few of the major distributions. VMware and others have a wide variety of server and desktop builds available.
I guess it also depends on what programming languages your are comfortable with.
If you worked with C# in the past then you could look at using the knowledge by running Mono , or maybe look at using Java (which is syntactically very similar). Either way Linux would be good.
I personally would recommend you look at the Mac's OS X. Its a unix BSD based OS, but with a really slick user interface over the top. To me it feels like the best of both the Windows and Unix worlds.
I do all my unix development on it, deploying onto Ubuntu servers. If you do look at a Mac, definitely take a look at the MacPorts project, which packages a large amount of the open source unix/linux software up making installation of programming tools incredibly easy.
Ubuntu seems to be very user-friendly, and has a lot of specific information for it in forums etc. So support-wise you'll be covered.
I experienced the shift from windows to ubuntu as very much do-able, things you can do graphically in windows can be done exactly the same in ubuntu (maybe some exceptions) and a bit more. A computer savvy individual should not have any problems.
However, it helps greatly if you are familiar with the basic shell commands (you'll need them as a programmer!). Some are the same as on windows but especially ls (dir) sometimes has me wracking my brain for "what was that command again", and vice versa when I'm back on windows.
Take some time to try them out. (for example: pwd, ls, mv, rm, ps, kill)
Finally, when installing programs often a simple "sudo apt-get install X " does all the work for you, even more user friendly than the windows installer executables I find.
Edit: You might want to try a VMware player and try a few linux distributions to play around in before you install the dual boot.
Get a macbook pro. OSX is the smoothest flavour of unix and the laptop should give you the push you need.
Then when you're feeling more confident, you can decide whether or not you want to spend most of your time configuring your soundcard, running ./autoconfigure && make, and debugging package manager screwups.
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).
Excellent answers. A few comments:
Almost all distros support LiveCDs, to let you try before installing. folks mentioned VMWare and VirtualBox, also note that Ubuntu's WUBI installer lets you install Linux under Windows without repartitioning; very nice; I used it when I first switched to my 64-bit system, since I wasn't sure how good the driver support was. Ubuntu 9.04 works great in 64, though. Also, since Ubuntu is so popular, that are many versions, Kubuntu uses KDE instead of Gnome, Mint and Xubuntu are both lighter weight.
Expect to run side-by-side for a while when transitioning from Windows. Cygwin has some nice downloadable manuals for people getting used to bash, and basic information about how *nix works underneath, targeted at Windows users. There are tons of useful sites; the Ubuntu community forums have a tremendous amount of information, for both beginners and advanced.
For getting used to developing under Linux, check the Linux documentation project. In addition to KDevelop, there's Anjuta, Eclipse, and many more. Some are light, some are heavyweight.
One thing that can ease the transition is to use software that runs in both operating systems. Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, Subversion, and hundreds if not thousands of others run fine in both Linux and Windows. And with very little effort, you can use the same folders for application settings and data for many of these. Firefox and Thunderbird can easily use the same folders/files on an NTFS partition. Makes dual booting much easier. Instructions are on the Ubuntu community site and other locations.
Note that some Linux software isn't NTFS friendly; in Linux keep your Subversion working folders on a native partition.
One caveat for sharing application settings; some applications store absolute paths; as a workaround, you can create symlinks that look like Windows drive letters.
After you get comfortable with Linux, branch out and try non-Windowsy applications and tools. Sometimes different is better. Lots of people use Emacs and Vim for good reasons.
Try Kubuntu as a distro and Kdevelop and Qt to start programming with, it's all very civilised.
Kate's an ok notepad-esque text editor if you want to go that way but I don't see why you'd want to get in to Vi or Emacs apart from the geeky appeal of using something really arcane.
As I come up with linux ,I found the commands are different in OpenSuse and Ubuntu.
Which of them is suitable to somebody who was new in linux and want to master the command
needed when programming and using linux?
I got the impression that OpenSuSE did some things a little unconventionally (kdesu, gksu), but it's a fine (KDE) distro. I've found (K)Ubuntu is a little better for beginners since it has access to huge compiled package repositories, plus the community is unbeatable.
They're pretty similar for most things, including programming.
Whichever one the people around you can ask questions of know. The value of a knowledgeable support network vastly outweigh the benefits of a particular distribution. If you don't have a local support network, I'd go with Ubuntu, they tend to have more useful resources on the 'net (and it's the distro I'd prefer out of those two options).
Any of Ubuntu/Slackware/Gentoo should be fine as a development environment. You didn't mention what kind of programming you're interested in, and that may have some influence on the answer, too.
If you are at all interested in making better code I also recommend dual booting (or running a 2nd computer) into a non-Linux system such as OpenBSD/FreeBSD, OpenSolaris, etc. Writing code that's portable across UNIX systems isn't just a good idea for portability's sake, it can also help shake out some bugs. The same can be said for working with 32-bit vs. 64-bit, big endian vs. little endian platforms. You can pick up an old 64-bit Sun workstation for cheap and use it to test your code.
We'd have to know your preferences better to be able to answer that. Basically any LINUX would do i guess. I heard nice feedback from Ubuntu, though.
I'm running on Ubuntu right now. It was easier than windows to get running. Very smooth. Of course, advanced functions are beyond me right now. With C# classes and everything else I gave up on trying to learn too much and just run it as is. It has a very good user interface, and I've heard a new version is out or coming out as well, probably more eye candy.
Check out Ubuntu. Doing a dual boot can't hurt since then you can try it out! You can also run some distributions straight off the disc to try them out.... Can't hurt to try it when it is free. Much more stable for me than XP, and faster. I HOPE Windows 7 ends up being less of a monster! I'd stick with Ubuntu if it was more compatible with windows programs. .NET development while in school typically isn't done on a Linux distribution!
best wishes, try it out!
I prefer Ubuntu. my 2 cents...
They are tools. Use the one that you are most comfortable with. Really calling them tools isn't a good analogy. Better is to call them vehicles. Use the vehicle that fits your needs and desires.
Actually , as a programmer you would face such questions everyday. Which framework? which language? which data structure ? ... you get the idea. There is no right answer.
Choose any. They are not too different. Soon you would not be a "new learner" and then it wouldn't matter anyway.
Depending on how deeply you want to learn, one possible candidate distro would be Linux From Scratch. It also has awesome documentation and by playing with it will surely make you think more "Linux"-way.
This is a very hard question; most distros aim to be "the best", or at least "good enough" for a wide variety of activities, of course including programming.
It's also an issue that easily spawn "wars", where people fight to claim that the distribution they use is the best, and that all others should conform. Heh.
My current preference is for Gentoo, and I think one (probably minor) advantage it has when programming is that since it is a source-based distribution, you typically never need to bother to get the "development version" of packages. If you have e.g. readline installed, you will have its header file(s) too, and so on. Many other distros split packages into "user" and "developer" versions, so you need to install both packages.
Of course, I guess in those cases the developer packages depend on the non-developer versions anyway, so if you always install developer versions, you'd be all set. Oh well. Nevermind, then. :)
When choosing a linux distro I usually consider two things:
1: packaging system (and release cycle):
Opensuse probably has the most up to date packages of any distro (without building your own), Ubuntu's packaging system tends to hold your hand a little bit more though. I have used both and found that as a developer I slightly preferred Opensuse since it was easier to get the latest versions of development packages (for example, IDEs).
2: default configuration/ease of administration:
All linux distros have their quirks here. Both Opensuse and Ubuntu are well documented and have good support forums. Opensuse has Yast which is a nice one stop shop for most configuration tasks. Ubuntu seems to be slightly better at automatically configuring itself. Really, either distro is fine here.
The good news is that there is not a wrong decision per se. I have used a lot (more than 10) linux distributions and I now stick to Opensuse. Ubuntu was a close second, the only reason that I don't use it is that I found I was often stuck waiting for its 6 month release cycle to get up to date dev packages (building the monodevelop beta was not feasible at the time). Opensuse's build service and the Packman third party repository seem to keep nearly current packages for everything I've ever wanted.
I use Gentoo and Ubuntu for development.
Gentoo I love because I can so easily select which packages I have available and which versions. The guy that did Flash 9 and 10 does his development on a Gentoo system as well.
Ubuntu I enjoy now because it's so stable. After a few years, a Gentoo installation will tend toward some instabilities that require sometimes rebuilding the whole installation.
Another I'd look at is Slackware.
The principles are mostly the same over the different distributions, so I'd suggest you to choose one and dig in. However, there are some considerations to make. If you want to program gui programs you need to make a decision about which graphic toolkit library to use (Qt, Gtk+ ...), which would also imply the choice of your desktop environment (GNOME, KDE, XFCE). As you will notice, in Linux world everything (or almost everything) depends on something else. I'm talking about the packages. It is quite common to reuse available libraries and not write your own so the decisions you would probably have to make are about which libraries/frameworks to use and which language.
I, however, chose Ubuntu and don't feel sorry at all.
It depends on what you want to do. If you want something easy to setup and basically just works, use Ubuntu. If you want to /learn/ Linux, I would recommend Slackware. Getting Slackware up and running will force you to know HOW and WHAT is going on with your installation. This can be good or bad, depending on your desires.
Ubuntu fits the build and the community is very helpful.
If your exploring Linux / GNU as a programmer, you might consider selecting a distribution that uses the apt packaging tool.
You will likely need to install lots of libraries with development headers and obtain the source code to other things. Apt makes it quite simple to do such things, it is very good at resolving package dependencies and fetching source packages.
Distributions using apt (either with .deb or .rpm packages) are Debian, Ubuntu (and its forks) and others.
That being said, Ubuntu does a really good job at keeping up to date with recent libraries and tools, while resisting the urge to cherry pick alpha / unstable code. My desktop is my development machine, I use Ubuntu.
I would vote for Ubuntu. The principles are the same while some of the "commands" are different. I assume you mean differences such as "sudo".
I'm very happy with my Ubuntu Server which handles all my development Windows VMs. I even used Ubuntu desktop on my laptop for a time...at least until I needed Visual Studio on it again. :-)
EDIT - "sudo" does exist in OpenSUSE
Gentoo is the easiest to use. I'd go with that