Hi guys.
I hope my message finds you all in good health. I have simple question. I have decided to build one Linux development machine, for JME3 only, and eventually, I would love to have Open Office running on such machine, for my documentation and what not. No other purpose is needed but JME3 only. Having said this, what would be the best Linux variant i should use, for such purpose? I have decided to move my development away from Windows, and Ill be happy if i could use Linux with JME3. Ill be still using Windows due 3dsmax license i have, but coding i want to entirely move away from windows. So, what would be best Linux version for me to build new dev machine on to ? Thank you very much for assistance.
Weāre using ubuntu for testing the SDK etc.
I worked on kubuntu and ubuntu and they were both good for developing with JME. Only difference is that kubuntu doesnāt support SDKās theme very well by default.
Talking from experience, if you donāt care about free software philosophy/cult but you need something that let you be as productive as possible, you should absolutely pick one of the *ubuntu distros.
Since they are considered like standard de facto, for software that is not really mainstream sometime you find only the ubuntu build or the ubuntu one is the only one that works after the download without installing or upgrading libraries that might not be in the official repositories.
And I suggest you also to use an LTS release, so you donāt have to update the entire distro every few months (that is a thing i wouldnāt do frequently on a production machine, in order to avoid problems with broken dependencies etcā¦).
I use kubuntu 14.04 LTS myself on my workstation.
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I use Kubuntu also, but word of advice. Stay away from 15.04. KDE 5 (?) somehow messes up the screen mode etc. set and soon the screen is corrupted beyond recognition and reboot is needed. You can start a JME project random amount of times before this happens. Iām on NVIDIA and on 14.10 & 14.04 worked just fine. Iām blaming the not so mature KDE 5.
I use ArchLinux, but I didnāt suggest you to use it if you donāt want know about Linux inside, how to setup.
ArchLinux is for user who want to control/understand/setup (UI, ā¦) and prefer rolling release than ubuntu.
So I suggest you to start with Ubuntu, then later move to an ubuntu based distro or something else that should match more your requirements.
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I use arch as well, as I found the aur to be way more ressourceful than any ubuntu ppa ever was.
But arch is not for a linux beginner.
If you donāt mind doing a little configuration, I would recommend fedora. Fedora is going to give you more upto date applications out of the box, but installing gpu drivers will require adding a repo.
If you want an out of the box donāt have to do anything other than click some radio buttons to get drivers installed then i would recommend Ubuntu or Mint. If you want something more like a mac experience āElementary OSā works and will give you a good out of the box experience.
If you are using Linux on older hardware or a laptop, try Ubuntu Mate. Its lightweight and fast.
Oh, sidenote, I use jme3 with mesa(opensource drivers on amd, and must say they are pretty good. You wont have performance as the properitary offer, and a few less modern opengl features like tesselation, but for pure development its way simpler.
ā If i manage to get far enough to have a benefit from tesselation I can always still install them.
ā Hopefully by then the amd driver to mesa base switch is done, wich should make this wayyyyy better.
Personally I use Linux Mint with Cinnamon desktop. Its an Ubuntu clone, but community driven more than Ubuntu without the corporate overtones and has more customization. It has a huge software repository and I code JME3 on it, as well as it having LibreOffice already installed. For anyone coming from Windows, I found Mint the easiest to learn, has the best customization options and even has a windows xp theme you can get.
This is nice to hear. I have four Mint machines here but havenāt tried āhard coreā development on them yet. (Three or part of a lab to teach my kids coding but weāre still in the land of scripting languages.)
Good to know itās capable in this area though I had no reason to doubt it.
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I use slackware 14.1 64 bits stable, no problems, all cool 
(jME sdk, blender, makehuman).
+1 on the suggestions for Ubuntu LTS releases (14.04 is the current one).