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Joy of using linux

minhajuddin.com

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Re: Joy of using linux

#61

Post by zwieback »

mbubb wrote: post #53
zwieback wrote: post #42

My main take away from this post is that you shouldn't make bad assumptions about data formats. However, my Linux experience is much like the author's: assume you'll get something to work, find out what's missing, apt-get to the rescue. The problem for me is when things go out of date. I try to install something and it triggers 250MB of seemingly unrelated updates. In all fairness, that usually happens when I build s…

I hope for your sake that yo are not letting it get that much behind on security updates. I recommend that you do at least this: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AutomaticSecurityUpdates The idea that Linux does not need to be updated is a dangerous one.

I do try to stay up to date on my desktop systems. The embedded Linux systems are usually hopelessly out of date, though.

Re: Joy of using linux

#62

Post by minhajuddin »

For guys who say it would be easier to do this on windows: I have worked on windows a lot but nothing on windows would stand against the simplicity of mdb-export myfile.mdb marks > marks.csv, this is obviously subjective.

Re: Joy of using linux

#63

Post by generalk »

roel_v wrote: post #2

I like Linux as much as the next guy, but his argument is basically 'Linux couldn't open a file that everybody else could, but by dicking around with random half-assed documented tools we could do it anyway!'. Basically, 'we managed to do something that is absolutely trivial for everybody else by jumping through hoops and spending a bunch of time on it to do it the convoluted way.'. Hmm right, not exactly a compellin…

No need to shit on the guy.

TFA boils down to: "I was emailed a proprietary format for an application that doesn't exist on my platform. I was able to find and install a third-party utility to convert it to something usable."

An astonishing tale of Linux superiority it's not, but I wouldn't say they jumped through hoops or spent hours researching anything here.

  > [..] we managed to do something that is 
  > absolutely trivial for everybody else [...]
Where everybody else means anyone with a copy of Microsoft Access. Take it for what it is: guy's excited that he was able to use free tools to perform a task 1) that he thought would be much harder, and 2) potentially faster than his colleagues with the official tool. So what his conclusion's a bit of a leap?

Re: Joy of using linux

#64

Post by Joakal »

mbubb wrote: post #51
Joakal wrote: post #10

Wouldn't using the synaptic package manager work better? I've heard it touted as one of the reasons for Linux being superior than Windows and Mac (except for App store) by having a central repository of many programs. Want Gimp? sudo apt-get install gimp or mark Gimp in the package manager and it'll download and install all the related packages and dependencies. My only gripe is that the search is not good but Google…

The search is not an internet based search. It is looking though the repositories that you have selected (cached on your system). If you don't have the right repos you will not find what you need.

There are over hundreds of thousands of packages. When I look up something like python to use for development, I'm getting a lot of non-main packages.

Re: Joy of using linux

#65

Post by imojito »

lloeki wrote: post #36
imojito wrote: post #17

Or use best of both worlds http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/gentoo-alt/prefix/bootstrap-ma...

Or MacPorts [1], or Homebrew [2] [1] http://www.macports.org/ [2] http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/

Quite not the same (full distro repository vs small amount of ported apps). Easier and useful, though.

Re: Joy of using linux

#66

Post by lloeki »

imojito wrote: post #65
lloeki wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or MacPorts [1], or Homebrew [2] [1] http://www.macports.org/ [2] http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/

Quite not the same (full distro repository vs small amount of ported apps). Easier and useful, though.

Small is not quite exact. MacPorts has 8,000+ ports. Homebrew has 1600+ formulae but this is an awful metric due to the distributed nature of its development (2000+ forks, with some very specialized) and it is barely two years old!

Take the package count for Debian as a reference: http://ftp-master.debian.org/users/joerg/pkg-nums

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