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Learn just enough Linux to get things done

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Re: Learn just enough Linux to get things done

#61
post #25

Mentioning strace in an article titled "Learn just enough Linux to get things done" seems so out of place as to be absurd, even in an "Advanced" section. Anyone who needs the rest of this advice is going to be absolutely baffled by strace. Otherwise, decent little primer.

Even 'netstat | head -n20' is out of place for introductory Linux.

Also curious was the inclusion of pushd/popd without explaining what a 'stack' is

Re: Learn just enough Linux to get things done

#62
post #57
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What?!? Are we talking about Windows 1.0 and 2.0 here? I was using Turbo Pascal and Turbo C++ quite nice IDEs on Windows 3.x. Windows has always been a popular development environment for the demoscene, and games developers. The only alternatives being Mac and Amiga, none of them UNIX friendly.

But... the point was that "windows" per se wasn't designed for software development. The fact that you had to buy an IDE from a separate supplier supports that point, it doesn't refute it. In fact, as pointed out, Microsoft's own development environment (and the one used to create windows itself and most of MS's windows apps) until 1993 was a DOS command line compiler and separate editor. No one is saying you couldn'…

Then by that point of view no commercial OS is made for developers, including UNIX ones.

It was the way that commercial UNIX vendors started selling their SDKs, with Sun being the first one, that made people actually contribute to gcc.

Re: Learn just enough Linux to get things done

#63
I don't think I could disagree more with having `man` at the bottom of the advanced/infrequently-used section. Learning how to read and search through the documentation that comes with the system is a very beneficial thing to learn how to do.

Re: Learn just enough Linux to get things done

#64
post #59

I’ve always felt there are two different kinds of Unix/Linux: sysadmin vs user. While Linux distros have been getting better and easier for many years, installing and maintaining Linux on my own machine still requires sysadmin Linux knowledge to this day. I personally believe this is why Macs have been so popular since OSX, it’s really the only machine out there that comes with Unix but doesn’t require any sysadmin k…

> While Linux distros have been getting better and easier for many years, installing and maintaining Linux on my own machine still requires sysadmin Linux knowledge to this day.

I'm not sure that's true. You can buy a few computers (including from Dell) with Linux pre-installed, and maintenance doesn't take a lot more than clicking on the upgrade button with the daily update-manager prompt.

I _do_ have sysadmin knowledge and find the shell more efficient than the GUI in 99% of everyday-use cases (I can't remember the last time I opened a file browser). So it's entirely possible that there's some day-to-day work required that I'm not even thinking about.

But my dad is running a Linux Mint system and I switched him to it (about ~10 years ago) because it required so much _less_ maintenance than running a Windows machine did. The number of phone calls for tech support I got from him plummeted from twice a week to zero when I switched him from Windows: I did so because I got tired of fielding constant questions about antivirus software, defragmentation, startup programs littering his systray, possible viruses installed, etc etc etc etc. It's really beyond me why anybody thinks that Windows is an appropriate OS for a non-technical user (er, or for a technical user, or really anyone who doesn't need specialty software).

Re: Learn just enough Linux to get things done

#66

Great list for starters. But getting real work done requires much more. Having just walked through some basic steps with a novice, I can concur, modern linux is impossible without "recipes". Just setting up a hello world web app can involve: ssh login to running instance, using curl to download the gcloud sdk, tar to unpack, sudo to install, systemctl to start local processes, useradd dedicated www, chmod and chroot…

> For beginners, without a trusted hand to guide them, its beyond intimidating. These systems must become more accessible to the average human.

They are not meant for beginners or average people. We have Windows and MacOS for that, once you get to a point where you are thinking about linux you shoudln't be soon 'green'. Just because we have an OS doesn't mean it's meant for everybody.

Re: Learn just enough Linux to get things done

#67
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Early windows development (for years after it became popular) was done at a DOS command line ... I could just as easily flip this and claim that Linux development is all backwards because it's still done on the command line. Given Microsoft's commitment to tooling, backwards compatibility and extensive documentation I think it's pretty lame to try and paint windows as not targeted towards developers. The difference…

> I could just as easily flip this and claim that Linux development is all backwards because it's still done on the command line Except that it is isn't an equivalent comparison for that point. OTOH if you made the point about GNOME etc being developed on the command line...

You mean like this? ;)

https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GnomeShell/Debugging

Re: Learn just enough Linux to get things done

#68
post #59

I’ve always felt there are two different kinds of Unix/Linux: sysadmin vs user. While Linux distros have been getting better and easier for many years, installing and maintaining Linux on my own machine still requires sysadmin Linux knowledge to this day. I personally believe this is why Macs have been so popular since OSX, it’s really the only machine out there that comes with Unix but doesn’t require any sysadmin k…

> While Linux distros have been getting better and easier for many years, installing and maintaining Linux on my own machine still requires sysadmin Linux knowledge to this day. I'm not sure that's true. You can buy a few computers (including from Dell) with Linux pre-installed, and maintenance doesn't take a lot more than clicking on the upgrade button with the daily update-manager prompt. I _do_ have sysadmin knowl…

Good point that some people are there already, I agree with that. I’m not though, and I give it a shot about once a year to see what’s new. I’m curious if your dad installs much software? As a developer myself, I should have more sysadmin Linux under my belt, I’m happy to get very technical and nitty gritty with my own work. But I lose patience if my OS wants me to learn super arcane things for stuff that should just work and does on other OSes. Display drivers, networking, installing new drives, this is the kind of stuff that seems to trip me up in Unix.

Re: Learn just enough Linux to get things done

#69
post #43
post #37

This is not a surprise - the Windows ecosystem simply wasn't designed with software development in mind. Aha? What is C# and Visual Studio? Or .NET? Was Linux designed for software development? This article is so bad, I'm really getting mad over here. Stop publishing such crap, you feed a lot of people's resentment against all those hipster developers who don't want to learn by RTFM, but want to have handled everythi…

> Was Linux designed for software development? Linux was designed to emulate Unix and run the pre-existing Unix-like userspace from GNU. And absolutely yes , Unix was "designed" for software development. That's exactly what it was in its early days: a hacker playground for the geeks at Bell Labs to try new ways of doing things. And windows wasn't. Early windows development (for years after it became popular) was done…

Yeah, software development on Unix was so natural and enjoyable, even today half the time building a Linux library or app is typically spent in byzantine shell scripts trying to determine which particular occult incantation of incompatible or broken Unix you are not running and throwing various test programs at your compiler that last made sense in 1995.

The true essence of delightful and plain right software development must be over in OpenBSD land, where they run the one and only gcc 4.2.1

Re: Learn just enough Linux to get things done

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And git does work on Windows. There's even a windows logo on the official download page. https://www.git-scm.com/downloads

The originally released Git did not run on Windows. The first Windows-compatible release was msysgit, which was effectively a mingw/msys Linux emulation layer for Windows. Not quite native, but it worked. Kind of. Not really very well at first. The current Windows download - "Git for Windows" - is still msys-based, just with a lot of compatibility/package-management/ux-polish changes. All that and the fact that recen…

Here's the full quote:

"What resulted was an expansive suite of programs and utilities (collectively, software) that were written in Linux, for Linux - much of which was never ported to Windows. One example of this is the popular version control system (VCS) called git. Developers could have written this software to work on Windows, but they didn't. "

It's just wrong.

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