[ros-users] [Discourse.ros.org] [General] Choice of operating system

[Hunter L. Allen]

[quote="dabeegmon, post:5, topic:5447"]

It is interesting in that the repositories are called debian repositories and then upon examination the repositories are ubuntu repositories.

[/quote]



The fact of the matter is simplu Ubuntu is Debian based. While they have diverged rather greatly over the years, the still share the same core package management system. So, both operating systems _understand_ what to do with being `.deb` file.



This, however, does not mean that any `.deb` file can be installed on either system. It could be the case, for instance, that a certain version of a dependency is not available in Debian, whereas it is available in Ubuntu.



So, will it work? Probably. It definitely should. The fact that I don't know for a fact that 100% of the packages on ubuntu can also be installed on Debian leads me to say that.



I can't say for Gentoo, for example, that 100% of the packages can be installed and work on Gentoo, despite my best efforts.



As for whether or not these operating systems are "supported", I suppose that is up to how you define "support".



There are certainly people who will help you get things going. I think I can say rather confidently that there's not a single platform in existence that any of us don't want to see ROS working on. So play around. If you _need_ stability, use Ubuntu (as it is the most well-tested). If you're willing to play around and do some hacking, I'd encourage you to do so (but, to be clear, Debian should basically just work -- the Debs are definitely there).











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