witch one?

[pdieken]

I am trying to put together a designated system for programming micro controllers and i have been using a raspberry pi to do some of it but i am finding it to be a bit limiting and would like to step it up. I never thought i would say this, but i am actually finding myself favoring the linux base of the raspberry pi to my windows 7 machine...lol. I have a long dis-used windows 7 netbook that i am thinking about changing into a linux based machine for that purpose, but since i am still pretty green about it i would like to know what distro would be the best option and what kinds of hardware changes i may have to make on my netbook to get it all working correctly. Even tough it would be primarily used for programming micro controllers i would like it to have some of the same functionality on my regular windows 7 machine. Any help or info that can be provided on this matter would be greatly appreciated.

[adafruit_support_mike]

There are dozens of different Linux distributions out there, but Ubuntu and Mint seem to be two of the most common. There's no such thing as a 'best' distro, just try a few and find the one you like best.

You shouldn't have to change your hardware to get Linux running on it. Most of the machines currently running Linux were probably sold with some version of Windows. Again, check around and see which versions work with your machine.

[pdieken]

ok i will start there then and see how it goes.

thanks for the info