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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

#131

Post by stevenwoo »

hackits wrote: post #104
stevenwoo wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Effective early Windows development required a surprisingly thorough knowledge of DOS and x86 memory management/pointers that one had to get through books (unless one was poring through Intel chip specs). Even though Petzold's books were/are sold through Microsoft in my opinion is it's a stretch to call it documentation. For a long time, the best debugger was a third party tool - Soft-Ice. Their documentation/tools f…

Those books where widely published from the start from Microsoft and Developers. There was aspects of the API were not released to the general public but it didn't stop a developer from knowing about them. You also has the MSDN subscription that did cover a lot about the development.

Yes the MSDN subscription which seemed like kind of a racket at several hundred dollars ( it was up to $1000+ by 2001 depending upon support level/media ). Also they would frequently have documentation about something in one year, then drop it from the CD's/DVD's and if you got lucky you had those or someone was really nice and posted it on the internet. I remember having to figure out the IME's for Far East/etc input circa 2000 from a usenet post then handing that information down to a someone else on usenet so they could implement it as well.

Re: Learn just enough Linux to get things done

#132

Post by lamby »

AlexB138 wrote: post #21

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.

Agree, although strace is a curious tool in that — by exposing the fact that userspace is "just" syscalls — it's highly educational about UNIX in general.

Re: Learn just enough Linux to get things done

#133

Post by geezerjay »

lelandbatey wrote: post #74
bunderbunder wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Git for Windows relies pretty heavily on MinGW, though. And it's best used from the included bash shell.

I do want to point out that Git being built with MinGW doesn't do anything to affect its compatibility. MinGW is basically just the GCC compiler suite ported Windows. It doesn't do anything about making C code written for Linux compatible with Windows. Now typically, when you install MinGW it also installs some tools that let you operate within Windows a little bit more like you're working under Linux, such as by ins…

> MinGW is basically just the GCC compiler suite ported Windows.

That's where you get it wrong. MinGW is a compatibility layer that helps port unix apps to windows. Yeah, it comes with GCC, but it also comes with support for POSIX, including a unix shell and other standard components.

Claiming that MinGW was just GCC would imply that to run Git on windows would be just a matter of recompiling the source code. But it isn't.

Re: Learn just enough Linux to get things done

#134

Post by geezerjay »

grx wrote: 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…

> Aha? What is C# and Visual Studio? Or .NET?

How many GB of pure crap are you forced to install on any windows system to be able to tweak, let alone develop, any software project developed with C#?

Even you acknowledged that you need to install a full blown IDE, such as the monstrocity that is MS Visual Studio, to do any software development in Windows.

In unix-like OSs, such as any linux distribution, all you have to do is pop open a basic text editor and compile/run the program.

Re: Learn just enough Linux to get things done

#135

Post by therealdrag0 »

geezerjay wrote: post #134
grx wrote: 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…

> Aha? What is C# and Visual Studio? Or .NET? How many GB of pure crap are you forced to install on any windows system to be able to tweak, let alone develop, any software project developed with C#? Even you acknowledged that you need to install a full blown IDE, such as the monstrocity that is MS Visual Studio, to do any software development in Windows. In unix-like OSs, such as any linux distribution, all you have…

And then there's Mac's XCode. A many gigabyte artifact that you have to install for many non-IDE related activities -_-

Re: Learn just enough Linux to get things done

#136

Post by wutbrodo »

Bartweiss wrote: post #90
wutbrodo wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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. Is it really that good these days? I can definitely appreciate the constancy of Linux, it feels like Windows/Chrome/etc stacks move under my feet constantly. But my experience with Linux is still that w…

> Is it really that good these days?

Honestly, I constantly doubt myself on this because other people keep claiming you need to be some sort of tech-savvy god in order to use Linux: but I've had various Linux systems as my primary and only OS since 2007 and I pretty much haven't had any problems to speak of since like, 2012.

To the extent that I can take myself out of my own head and try to model someone not that tech-savvy, I find Windows _much_ harder to use on a day-to-day basis. This is further validated by the experience of my dad: I went from 1-2 tech support calls a week to maybe once a YEAR.

> But my experience with Linux is still that when problems do arise, I have to escalate to shell commands and arcane sysadmin-ry for all but the simplest problems.

I actually prefer the command line for pretty much everything (I haven't opened a GUI file browser in years), so I'm leaning primarily on the experience of a few friends/family who switched to Linux when they saw how awesome my system in college was (where awesome = not plagued with the ridiculous problems that every Windows user has to rationalize out of existence). I've tried to evangelize the command line to most of them and they remain pretty firmly uninterested. And yet none of them ever really _have_ any problems with their system[1] to speak of: clicking "install now" on the Update Manager pop-up is the only interaction they have to have with their system beyond usage. They usually tend to be on something like Linux Mint, which has all the GUI-heavy config tools pre-installed already. When they feel like dipping a toe in the water of customization, they can do so to the precise extent that they're comfortable and think that the trade-off is worth it (e.g. re-arranging their panel).

AFAICT, all the work in Linux is upfront and pretty quick: make sure that you buy hardware that supports Linux well (an easy Google search) and either buy pre-installed or spend 20 minutes installing it.

[1] These include my best friends and girlfriend, people I've talked to almost literally every day for the last decade.

Re: Learn just enough Linux to get things done

#137

Post by wutbrodo »

dahart wrote: post #68
wutbrodo wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> I’m curious if your dad installs much software?

Surprisingly, he actually does. This is in large part because this is WAY easier in Linux than anywhere else, because they've been following the "curated marketplace" model (like iOS and Android) for like, a decade (without the restrictions on other modes of install, obviously: Linux systems have an incentive to be user-friendly, but not anti-user the way Apple does). He was in the menu and found the "Software Hub" or whatever Mint calls it, and spends time randomly looking around at stuff. On Windows, he would oscillate between being too paranoid about viruses to go around installing random .exes to being _not paranoid enough and actually installing a virus_ haha.

Re: Learn just enough Linux to get things done

#138

Post by lostmsu »

geezerjay wrote: post #134
grx wrote: 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…

> Aha? What is C# and Visual Studio? Or .NET? How many GB of pure crap are you forced to install on any windows system to be able to tweak, let alone develop, any software project developed with C#? Even you acknowledged that you need to install a full blown IDE, such as the monstrocity that is MS Visual Studio, to do any software development in Windows. In unix-like OSs, such as any linux distribution, all you have…

I think MSBuild was part of all .NET Framework distributions. Even if it was not, you could download SDK without VS. Its just that people use VS because they like it over a clueless text editor.
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