Dear Arduino friends- Forgive re-opening something discussed many times? Here's why I did it... I'm hoping there are some experts out there which a foot in TWO camps. I long to leave Windows. Linux here I come. But I NEED my Arduino work! So... which Linux? So far so "use Google"... But: I want to use BOTH Pi and a bigger computer. Anyone already doing this? Which Linux for the bigger computer do you like? (I assume Rasbian in Pi... beginners should do the "ordinary"?)...
Thoughts? In general. A specific worry: Are "versions" a big issue? Do I have to use an older Arduino IDE, or an older distro of a particular Linux to get them to "play nicely"? Is this an ongoing woe for the Linux user? Thanks!
I can't recommend which Linux you should use but I can explain the reason why you'll commonly see Linux people using an incredibly outdated and non-standard version of the Arduino IDE. From all reports I've ever seen, all recent versions of the Arduino IDE work fine on Linux. The problem is the Linux package managers have not been able to use any version of the Arduino IDE since 1.0.5 due to Arduino being sloppy about their open source licensing documentation. The Linux package managers have very strict rules about this and unfortunately Arduino has not made it a priority to fix this, very sad. On top of this for some reason the version they do have is some weird modified thing called "Arduino 2:1.0.5+dfsg2-4" or something like that, who know what the hell that even means. So Linux people are used to being able to install things via a simple apt-get command. When they do this they assume they are getting the latest version. Little do they realize that by doing this they are getting some garbage when if they had only download the latest from:
they would have a much better experience and a greater likelihood of getting help with any problems they might encounter.
It would be SO nice if that little issue could be overcome! And good for Arduino, don't you think?
The "experts" might be happy to do the things to load Arduino as an unsupported third party app, but there's a group of novice Linux users who would do the installation things installed at their peril.
Of couse the problems to be overcome may be bigger than I infer from the able, but, if not, are the people who are trying to move away from Windows really of so little interest to the relevant people? I get the sense that more and more people ARE moving away from Windows. Would be a pity if they turned away from Arduino as they move to Linux. The Pi, being a Linux machine anyway, will be a serious contender for their "little computer" attentions. I don't think serious people are going to both with outdated and wierd forks of the Arduino IDE for very long.