RE: Linux Recommendations

["BUTLER, Tony, FM" <roaming@xxxxxxx>]

> Tony,
> 
> You're really not keen on linux, are you? But are you sure 

How did you guess? :-)

> If you don't want to use linux, why don't you look for 
> another way round
> this? If the software you need to install on linux is 
> open-source, why don't
> you have a look at whether you can adapt it to run on 
> Windows? Thanks to

I'm looking for the 'least hassle' route here.
The stuff I need is in perl or some other such language that I have no
truck
with.
I don't want to go learning another language just do I can run this
app.....

> I looked at Windows 3.0 many moons ago, and it was a dog. You may
be
> pleasantly surprised with the progress that linux has made 
> since you last used it.

Hmm..... we'll see :)

> are intuitive, as I said in my previous message, it depends 
> what you are
> used to, but I assure you, you could get used to the linux 
> way of working if you wanted to.

I'm sure I could Bruno, but I don't want to have to.
I don't want to turn this into a windoze vs *nix debate.
I am used to X (hmm, a bad choice of letter there perhaps!) and want to
stick with X as much as possible.
I don't have the time to 'waste' learning new ways of doing things.  I
need
*nix for a simple task and do not feel it would be worthwile spending
days/weeks setting up a linux installation to do it.  
This is why I want the least hassle route.....

> to resort to the commandline nowadays. But most linux users 
> still use it
> from time to time, because it can be more efficient when you 
> know what to do

Indeed.  And I know the *nix philosophy tends to be to write small
efficient
routines that can be strung together to perform some useful function - eg
ps
-ewf  grep <username>  to find my active processes is all very
well, but I
need to know about the ps command, piping, and grep in order to do
this.
Ctrl-Alt-Del & Task Manager does the same for me on win nt/2k.
Similarly, unzipping a file (usually a tar.gzip in *nix) involved
gzip -d <filename.tar.gz
and then 
cpio -H tar -i < filename.tar

Again, less intuitive than using winzip or zip folders etc.

> other hand, I
> tend to find reading the docs a sensible thing to do in most 
> walks of life,
> not just when installing linux packages. In the long run, it 
> usually saves you time.

Ah, that is where we differ.  I believe something should be pretty
intuitive
and easy to use out of the box.
Anyone can install Word and get word processing with no previous
knowledge
of the product.
IME, manuals are there for reference now and then, or for reading on
the
train to pick up more advanced features.  If you have to wade through
a
manual just to install something, then the install is simply too complex
and
needs to be simplified.

> of subsequent packages. You should find the original 
> installation of modern
> linux distros at least as hassle-free as the installation of 
> Windows (at

Hardware compatibility problems aside of course :)

> subsequent packages go, if they are compiled for the version 
> of the distro you are using, they should install just fine, but if
they
are 
> not compiled specially, you may need to put a little more work in. I
think

> you would find the same with many programs if you tried to install
them on
the wrong
> version of Windows. But at least with linux, you have the raw 

That is very rarely the case.
I can install the same version of Word on win 95,98, 98SE,ME, NT 4, Win
2k,
Win XP.
There are a very few specific NT only apps out there which are server
oriented.
And there are some multimedia packages that don't work on NT/2k etc
And indeed games don't like NT because they are accessing the hardware
directly.
But on the whole, one size fits all.......
> that need to be compiled from source, even this is fairly standard
now
> (./configure; make; make install, or variations on this 
> theme), but if you

Bruno - you have just said this is fairly standard and then gone on
immediately to list 3 different ways of doing it and stated 'or
variations
on this theme'!  That is a contradiction in terms if I ever saw one
:-)

> have problems, ask yourself how much easier it would be to 
> compile programs from source on Windows.

If it's a .Net program and I have Visual Studio installed then it's
File,
Open, Project, <choose project name> then Build, Build solution -
it's that
simple :-)

> > Ah yes, the shells designed to make linux look like 
> windoze..... says
> > something about windoze methinks :-D
> 
> As the windoze design says something about the Apple desktop, 
> and the Apple
> desktop says something about the work done at Xerox PARC? A 
> windoze advocate
> really shouldn't get drawn into debates about the merits of
various
> user-interfaces. ;-) The Windows shell is a nice shell; so 

I know full well the history of the GUI and I see no problem in
advocating
the merits of one GUI over another regardless of who's idea it was first
-
sure you can knock the 'innovation' in Windoze or Mac because they
copied
others, but that does not mean they have no merit - just that they are
based
on other people's ideas.
I was thinking rather that windows-alike GUI's for linux are there to
make
windows users feel more comfortable, to lure them to a new environment
that
looks just like their old one.
I have to wonder what is the point in moving to a new environment that
looks
just like your old one but can't run your old apps (WiNE etc aside - has
it
got Word working yet or are we still on wordpad working 50% of the
time?).  

> little like Windows as you want. And if you want something
completely
> different, there are dozens of other window managers you can 
> try. At least

Yeah.  I liked OpenLook (it was that or ....twm? I think when I tried
*nix
all those years ago) but I think it's gone now.
I've seen other more recent ones running but they didn't seem so nice -
either so like windoze it's unbelievable or they are trying to so NOT
look
like windoze yet provide the equivalent of a start bar etc that it's
painful!.

> the linux designers didn't wreck the stability of the OS by 
> building the GUI into the kernel. :-(

No they just ensured that if you wrote an app that looked good under
Open
Look or KDE that it would look like sh*t under Gnome or simply wouldn't
work
under twm :-))

> Ahh yes, those were the days ;-) Nowadays, you will have to 

Proper installations them.  Recompiling the kernel was the first
(and
probably second and third) thing you had to do and took at least an
hour
:-))

> you go with a user-friendly OS like Mandrake or SuSE, you 
> should be able to
> achieve pretty-well anything you can on Windows without 
> having to edit a
> config file. Of course, they're still there if you want to....

I'll give it a go and we'll see........

> > > are now leaving, not joing the dark side. May the force 
> be with you.
> > Ah but I'm not leaving, merely operating on the edge :-)
> 
> That's what you think now, but eventually you will see the light.

That's what all cult members say once they've been subsumed.
Oh, and u r Borg too. :->

> Actually, a lot of the free server stuff works _better_ than 
> the commercial
> stuff (classic examples being Apache and Samba). :-)

Maybe.  Still a b*tch to install.
About 6 months ago I downloaded apache for windoze, installed it
and.....now
what?
No frikkin idea.  had to wade thru docs to find out how to set up a
website.
Gave up, went back to IIS - right click, New Web - that's it :-)

The main problem it seems to me with *nix stuff is that nobody seems to
have
heard of a GUI when it comes to configuring/running apps.
Usually it seems, someone writes some really cool app, totally
controllable
>from
Then later, if you're lucky, someone else writes a gui layer for it and
then
more ppl get in on the act so you have 1/2 a dozen different GUI's for
MySQL
for example, none of which actually come with the product, so you have to
be
aware of them to go find and install them, and then you have to know
which
one is the 'best' to do what you want.
At least SQL Server comes with Enterprise Manger and I/SQL out of the
box!!

> > but I don't think I could _ever_ see it as a
> > desktop OS.
> 
> I would have agreed with you until quite recently. But the 
[...]
> Excel, even as recently as that. So I decided to avoid the 
> rebooting route
> by running Windows under linux, using Netraverse Win4Lin. I made a
bad

You still need to run windows though so again, as a desktop OS, what is
the
point of running Linux just so you can run windows on it?

It's like a guy I know recently bought a new Apple power book.  The
best
thing about it?  It comes with a windows emulator that runs any
flavour of
windows about the same speed as a PII 300.
Why bother?
What else is the guy using the thing for?  oh, to run IE for the
MAC.

Sure if you need to do dev work (for the server) as you say, then you
probably need linux on your machine.
> it does in its own partition. And when it crashes (as it 
> inevitably does),
> or needs rebooting for one of the myriad reasons that Windows 
> seems to find
> to require this action, the reboot is an order or magnitude quicker
on

It only needs this IME if you change hardware or sometimes when you
install
other software.
Maybe it is less stable under win4lin?

> place. Codeweavers have released a product called Crossover 
> Office, which
> will allow you to install and run MS Office direct on linux 
> if you want. And

But when the next version of office comes out, how long before
codeweavers
catch up so you can install it?

> Sun have released StarOffice 6 (and alongside it, OpenOffice 

I thought that was buggy as hell, slow, feature free - or was that v5
of
Star Office?
I remember there was a lot of hype when it was announced, then it very
much
didn't live up to expectation......

> As for Visual Studio, it's kind of predictable that you would 
> not find an equivalent Windows development tool outside the Windows
> platform, but there are other IDEs available on linux. However, I
cannot
comment 

I wouldn't expect to find a windows dev environment outside windows, but
I
would like to think that the richness an IDE can offer would be
available
elsewhere....

Maybe it comes down to what I said before about someone develops a
product
and then other people in the community may develop a GUI that works with
it
to varying degress of success - the trick is to know about them and to
know
which to go for.  This is the sort of thing that puts ppl off linux
IMO.

> on these, as my
> main (practically only) language is perl, so I tend just to 

> use emacs (which
> you should never, I repeat never, try to use, given your dislike
of
> commandlines, config files and others of their ilk).

Indeed.  I can just about handle using joe on the TiVo :-)
I know emacs is yet another cult product, and ppl use it for word
processing, programming etc, but I don't see the attraction of seeing
[b]bold[/b] or whatever in a document vs seeing the text actually in bold
in
a GUI.
Dev tools wise, command line completion, dynamic help, syntax
highlighting
etc all make me wonder why anyone would want to use a glorified ascii
editor
:-)

> > Thanks Bruno and everyone else for your suggestions.  I 
> think I'll just
> > have to take a flier and download either Red Hat or Mandrake and
see
> > what happens.
> 
> Quite right. Best way to learn something is to get your hands 
> dirty. But if
> you really want an easy ride, please try Mandrake or SuSE 
> before RedHat.
> RedHat is an excellent distro in many ways (as is Debian and 
> many others),
> and arguably more suitable for more experienced users and for 
> businesses,
> but if all you want is a cheap and easy ride, you will 
> honestly be better with one of these two.

And of course I've already downloaded the 3 red hat CD's :(
NEver mind, will get the Mandrake ones also and see how painless it is!

cheers,


Tony


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