Revision history [back]

Note that it is really hard to advice users on these matters. Much depends on your specific use of packages, OS and (robot) hw. But, as of 2017-02-16:

• I think the (Ubuntu Trusty; ROS Indigo) combination (both amd64) still has the largest set of packages build by the buildfarm. Trusty and ROS Indigo are supported till May 2019 (wiki/Distributions).

• If you would be ok with a little more building from sources (as also for Indigo you'll occasionaly run into packages that don't have a binary distributed), then Kinetic on Ubuntu Xenial would be a good choice. Supported till May 2021 (again: wiki/Distributions).

Note that I obviously cannot determine beforehand whether any Linux distribution will work properly with your hardware. You should search around a bit for user experiences with your particular hw / laptop.

Note that it is really hard to advice users on these matters. Much depends on your specific use of packages, OS and (robot) hw. But, as of 2017-02-16:

• I think the (Ubuntu Trusty; ROS Indigo) combination (both amd64) still has the largest set of packages build by the buildfarm. Trusty and ROS Indigo are supported till May 2019 (wiki/Distributions).

• If you would be ok with a little more building from sources (as also for Indigo you'll occasionaly run into packages that don't have a binary distributed), then Kinetic on Ubuntu Xenial would be a good choice. Supported till May 2021 (again: wiki/Distributions).

Note that I obviously cannot determine beforehand whether any Linux distribution will work properly with your hardware. You should search around a bit for user experiences with your particular hw / laptop.

Note that it is really hard to advice users on these matters. Much depends on your specific use of packages, OS and (robot) hw. But, as of 2017-02-16:

• I think the (Ubuntu Trusty; ROS Indigo) combination (both amd64) still has the largest set of packages build by the buildfarm. Trusty and ROS Indigo are supported till May 2019 (wiki/Distributions).

• If you would be ok with a little more building from sources (as also for Indigo you'll occasionaly run into packages that don't have a binary distributed), then Kinetic on Ubuntu Xenial would be a good choice. Supported till May 2021 (again: wiki/Distributions).

In general: the community is moveing moving to Xenial/Kinetic, so all development will be moving there as well. Trusty/Indigo is an LTS release, so should remain supported, but developers could decide to put their packages in maintenance mode on that distribution. New features will go into Kinetic.

Note that I obviously cannot determine beforehand whether any Linux distribution will work properly with your hardware. You should search around a bit for user experiences with your particular hw / laptop.

Note that it is really hard to advice users on these matters. Much depends on your specific use of packages, OS and (robot) hw. But, as of 2017-02-16:

• I think the (Ubuntu Trusty; ROS Indigo) combination (both amd64) still has the largest set of packages build by the buildfarm. Trusty and ROS Indigo are supported till May 2019 (wiki/Distributions).

• If you would be ok with a little more building from sources (as also for Indigo you'll occasionaly run into packages that don't have a binary distributed), then Kinetic on Ubuntu Xenial would be a good choice. Supported till May 2021 (again: wiki/Distributions).

In general: the community is moving to Xenial/Kinetic, so all development will be moving there as well. Trusty/Indigo is an LTS release, so should remain supported, but developers could may decide to put their packages in maintenance mode on that distribution. New features will go into Kinetic.

Note that I obviously cannot determine beforehand whether any Linux distribution will work properly with your hardware. You should search around a bit for user experiences with your particular hw / laptop.

Note that it is really hard to advice users on these matters. Much depends on your specific use of packages, OS and (robot) hw. But, as of 2017-02-16:

• I think the (Ubuntu Trusty; ROS Indigo) combination (both amd64) still has the largest set of packages build by the buildfarm. Trusty and ROS Indigo are supported till May 2019 (wiki/Distributions).

• If you would be ok with a little more building from sources (as also for Indigo you'll occasionaly run into packages that don't have a binary distributed), then Kinetic on Ubuntu Xenial would be a good choice. Supported till May 2021 (again: wiki/Distributions).

In general: the community is moving to Xenial/Kinetic, so all development will be moving there as well. Trusty/Indigo is an LTS release, so should remain supported, but developers may decide to put their packages in maintenance mode on that distribution. New features will would go into Kinetic.Kinetic in those cases.

Note that I obviously cannot determine beforehand whether any Linux distribution will work properly with your hardware. You should search around a bit for user experiences with your particular hw / laptop.