Linux: Ready to try again

[Dogmudgeon]

(WARNING: Includes a rant about Microsoft from a long-time MS developer.)

(NOTE: Flames about the morality of copied software will only be tolerated on receipt of a new, fully-licensed, single-developer copy of Visual Studio Dot Net, MSRP $589.)

I gave Linux two tries already, and came to the conclusion that it was mainly a method of self-torture.

However, I have been a Microsoft developer since 1998, and I think that the company is riding for a fall from which it will not recover. It has become difficult to pirate its overpriced software, piracy which for a long time was the only thing that kept its intake of self-trained developers robust. Such "piracy" (and I use the word loosely) also kept home users up with the changes.

Now that multiple serial numbers, passwords, and special activation is required, Microsoft has shot itself in the foot. My brother used to be a computer tech, and toward the end the only calls he was getting was from people who were irate that they needed permission to use their own computer. It seems that activation wasn't foolproof and a number of people had actually been compelled to buy second copies of WinXP -- and the second copy also didn't authenticate correctly!

Then there is the .Net initiative. I think .Net is cool, but it's not something everyone wants to, or needs to, use. Never the less, MS junked a decade-and-a-half of development and decreed that the future would be All Dot-Net. This hit the Visual Basic developers especially hard, but since our ranks had already been decimated by wholesale transfer of our livelihoods to Asia, we had to assume that it was a permanent situation. Gates and Co. spent 11 years developing a sub-empire based on one of the best development languages ever invented, and decided to junk it.

This nonsense has been going on since 2002, and Mr. Gates shows no signs of correcting his mistake(s). In fact, most of the initiatives in development are directed toward the Asian markets (which, ironically, are almost entirely stocked with pirate versions of MS software!)

The future of staying with Microsoft does not look too pleasant at this point, so I figured that Linux might be a better route, especially now that Linux has a commanding 5% cut of the home market. In the event of an economic downturn, though, it will quickly become more competetive since no one will be able to afford to upgrade to XP and beyond. Sales figures for .Net products have been anemic at best. Self-taught programmers are sticking with VB6 and VC++6, although active development ended in March and support will end in a few years.

I have the typical litany of questions, but modified by the detail that I am a programmer and truly enjoyed working in VB. I'm ready to commit to learning C++, too, but want an IDE and libraries of templates like MFC and ATL/STL. I'm already familiar with OpenOffice and its VBA clone, but its programming tools suck. I've also looked at TK/TCL, Perl, Python, Eiffel and Ruby. The programming scene in Linuxland is beyond anarchic. Is there any kind of approach that makes sense?

I downloaded Ubuntu 5.04 to try it out, which means I'll probably be using a Debian distro eventually. I tried Red Hat, SuSE, and Yggdrasil; Y went out of business, and R and S are complicated by proprietary pieces of software.

So ... WWLD (What Would Linus Do?)

TIA,

--p!

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

1. Have you tried Mandriva(ex-Mandrake)?

I have it here in the x86_64 version. It is surprisingly stable and if you join Mandriva Club for a year, you can download the "Powerpack" version that is chock full of developer tools.

[Dogmudgeon]

6. Isn't that a 64-bit distro?

The other problem is that it seems to cost money. I'm on a very tight budget, and part of the challenge is to do all of this for no more than the cost of a new hard disk -- just the hard disk.

I'll look into it anyway; I haven't yet failed to get something out of checking out new things.

--p!

[billyskank]

8. Comes in 32-bit and 64-bit versions

so does SuSE.

[Kellanved]

2. here is a pretty good article about the current situation

I can't say MS is unaware of the problem - they're giving their software to developers and techie students for free (thanks Bill), in an attempt to keep the developer base. I doubt that it will do much good.

Anyway, it is a good read:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html



Edit:
PS. I'm still a SuSe fan.

[Dogmudgeon]

11. That's a great website, by the way

"Joel on Software".

I remember reading the article last year, but it didn't sink in. I basically had to figure out most of it myself.

I know MS is giving away free software, but not to people in my situation -- I'm not connected with an institution, but my income is nearly zero (some health disasters saw to that) and the market in the skill for which I trained has been decimated. Sure, I could download a crack and/or bluff a MS customer service wonk on the phone, but the problem is that the market will shrivel up when more people have to pay and pay again for their OS and essential apps. Which is why my emphasis is on free or low-cost computing.

Microsoft (IMHO) will only be able to keep their corporate user base, unless they open up. If a significant economic downturn hits (which is likely in the next decade as oil resources become expensive), their business model is going to doom them, and right at a time when "telecommuting" to work will become vital to a recovery.

Don't misunderstand -- I'm not a Microsoft-hater and think highly of Bill. But their recent decisions (and absolute loyalty to money) are NOT promoting agility in the IT marketplace.

--p!

[Guy Fawkes]

3. In answer...

Microsoft won't be using .net in Longhorn. Nevertheless, they plan to go pay-to-use with the version *after* Longhorn, so switching to Linux isn't a bad idea.

Because you already have some knowledge of programing, I'd recommend Gentoo Linux (www.gentoo.org). You can choose what to do every step of the way, and the install is very well documented.

Good luck!

[mrfrapp]

4. Yggdrasil?

Sheesh. That's old.

I use Slackware myself but unless you're coming from a UNIX background that's probably not what you want. Ubuntu is supposedly good but I can't vouch for it myself. Fedora is also a nice modern distribution.

With regards to programming environment Eclipse is good and probably closest to VisualStudio. Libraries wise, you've got a fairly complete .NET implementation in Mono or alternatively, you've always got Boost, QT and what-not.

I'm puzzled why you think its programming tools "suck". What's missing? What's wrong with the languages you mentioned? They're all excellent in their own little way.

[Dogmudgeon]

5. Yggdrasil and so on

Yep -- 1995, the first time I really gave Linux a try. The Yggdrasil disks had enough wares on them to make changing over worth it. The only real deficiency was that X windows was very new and needed a separate manager like KDE. Open GL was also available, but it was proprietary and cost $130. Ultimately what sunk me, though, was that it took me over a month to get a video driver, and there weren't any WYSIWYG word processors. Emacs was a nasty thicket of thorns without a GUI (though I hear it has one now), VI was much nicer but couldn't be personalized nearly as well, and nothing like WordPerfect existed for free (WordPerfect cost a ton of money back then, no matter what platform version you bought.)

Debian has been the distro I've heard I should use since a number of user-friendly variants (like Ununtu) exist and as my skills grow, I will be able to hack into it a little at a time. But my main need is to get something I can have up and running in a few hours.

I also heard that Linux uses a different file system than Windows 2000 or XP (I use Win2k now). Can it also read and write to FAT32 and/or NTFS?

The remark that I think the programming tools suck pertains to the OpenBasic environment in OpenOffice. It is a bare-bones IDE and even that might be giving it too much credit. However, it appears that the preferred way of adding functionality is to write plug-ins or to modify/add code to the suite itself. Since I am utterly in the dark about the various levels of the architecture, I have to assume it can be done. (.Net is going to a similar system for programming Office.)

I'm still looking at those other languages (other than C++, that is). What I want is something like Visual Basic -- a RAD language that gives me quick and easy access to X (or whatever level the graphic interface works at). Is this what "widgets" are about in TK/TCL?

There's an entire jargon to learn; Microsoft's geek-slang is different, and I assume Apple's is, too.

And I will definitely have to check out Eclipse. Thanks for the tips!

--p!

[mrfrapp]

14. Links

"I also heard that Linux uses a different file system than Windows 2000 or XP (I use Win2k now). Can it also read and write to FAT32 and/or NTFS?"

It can read/write FAT32 but only read NTFS. But honestly, the native filesystems are better. ReiserFS is excellent and Resier4 even better.


"I'm still looking at those other languages (other than C++, that is). What I want is something like Visual Basic -- a RAD language that gives me quick and easy access to X"

Borland produce Kylix for Linux but I'm unsure what its current status is.

http://www.borland.com/us/products/kylix/index.html

I've heard good things about Gambas but have not used it myself.

http://gambas.sourceforge.net/


Personally though, I would invest time in learning Python along with the wxWidgets libraries. Python doesn't come bundled with an IDE but there seems to be quite a few out there.

http://freshmeat.net/search/?q=python+ide§ion=projects&Go.x=0&Go.y=0

Boa Constructer claims to be a RAD tool.

http://boa-constructor.sourceforge.net/


You commented that Vi wasn't very customisable. It still isn't but Vim is very configurable.

http://www.vim.org/

If you don't like the Vi method of text input, you could always install Cream on top of.

http://cream.sourceforge.net/

[retread]

7. One of the things I have always liked about Linux is the abundance of

programming tools. If you want IDE's try this link.

http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Devtools/ides.html

[billyskank]

9. IDEs? Visual Basic? Pah! ;-)

I have a text editor (vi) and a C compiler! (gcc) I need no other weapons! :P

Actually, I'd like to learn Qt, which means I'll have to learn C++ too. IDEs aren't really the spawn of the devil. Although Microsoft is definitely the company that fell out of his arse. :(

[aePrime]

10. We're nearly polar opposites

I'm a Unix/Linux developer (C++ mostly) that is forced to work on Windows for my day job. I have to use .NET 2003. We don't use any of the .NET features though, which is fine by me, since I'm not impressed by the technology. It's slow, clunky, and has too many layers.

You say you've given Linux two tries. It's tough to make the big change, especially if you're a Visual Basic programmer, since VB-like programming has not been the focus of the Linux community. The only way to really make the change is to commit to it.

As for missing MFC, I'm not fond of that either. Thankfully, at work, we're transitioning our products over to wxWidgets, which is a C++ toolkit. The nice thing is, it's a multi-platform toolkit, open source, and free (as in beer). Other GUI toolkits to look at include Qt, which isn't free (unless you're doing open source work), but is also C++ and multi-platform, and GTK, for C. There's also a C++ front-end (wrapper) for GTK, called GTCC maybe? Can't remember.

As for the STL (are you talking about the C++ STL?), that's not a Microsoft thing, that's a C++ standards thing, and it's available on Linux and all of the other Unixes.

Linux typically doesn't run FAT32 or NTFS. *Nix file systems use iNodes, which is a different beast from the like-to-be-sequential file system of FAT and NTFS, but Linux can read and write FAT32 and NTFS file systems.

I don't use an IDE if I don't have to, but Eclipse is they way to go if you want one. Eclipse is, at first glance, a Java IDE, but it's more like an IDE IDE, and there are projects for other languages that stem from the base. I find the command line and a good bunch of Gvim windows the way to go. At work I have a hotkey mapped in .NET to launch my current file in Gvim so that I can do some real editing. I also don't know how people program on Windows without a good command line. I have to install Cygwin at work to get my Bash on. I guess that this goes to show that it's all a matter of knowing your environment. I find programming in Windows to be very frustrating.

As for Visual Basic, there are a couple of projects on Linux for a VB-like development environment. The one I found in my brief search is here: http://realsoftware.com/products/ . There's also the Mono project, but I don't know if they're doing a VB-like language.

[Dogmudgeon]

13. Maybe not so opposite

Over the last 18 hours or so, I've learned quite a bit, and your post is probably closest to what I'm looking for in programming advice.

I think .Net is an excellent idea, but it's not something that would be compulsory in Pigwidgeopia. I was sure that MS was pushing it because it would allow domination of the primary computing environments by MS and .Net developers -- and now I see that Longhorn is going to abandon it, at least to some degree. I have to wonder how much Salvia herb ol' Bill has been smoking these days.

My disappointments with Linux were not based on lack of commitment to change. Linux did not have much GUI capability then, and the suitability of its software for writers was very poor compared to MS. Plus, installing it was a complete annoyance, especially when I had to shelve plans for several weeks until I could get a driver from the company that made my video card. (It was a very expensive video card, top-drawer for 1995, and I wasn't about to replace it just to use Linux).

The last time I looked seriously at Linux was around 2002, and I didn't even install it, since I wanted audio software to do multi-track audio recording. What existed was in flux. Today, there are several well-documented audio architecture standards, and I daresay that since so many of them are free, it should be easy to get recording engineers to forgo getting a copy of Sonic ($1000) and instead use one of the superior Linux suites (free to $100). As it turned out, I abandoned my project. (And to think, I had my spandex suit let out for bupkes!)

The C/C++ programming stuff is still a little confusing, mainly because in C++ I have never gone much beyond futzing my way through making simple DLLs to use in VB6. But I have discovered most of the major pieces of software for C++ development, including GTK, which is pretty much what I was looking for in VB-like GUI integration ... I think.

Eclipse also looks good, but I suspect it will be tough to really get going, since it is still in early widespread use. A "late beta", so to speak. On the other hand, nothing I've seen (in the last 12 hours) looks nearly as good.

MFC, ATL and STL, I have discovered, are different libraries of classes and templates, and it appears that there is more-than-adequate coverage for these in Linuxland.

Your remark about command lines was interesting. A few weeks ago, I was wondering how and why MS could compile its VB code from a window unless it routed it through a "console" process (the equivalent of a command line). Well, that's exactly what it does, except that it goes around the graphic representation of the command line, although you can look at it in the Visual Studio "immediate window". But if you learned programming at the command line, I'm sure it would seem like a tremendous waste of effort. My point of view is that I like the interactive visual tools enough to forgo the immediacy of a command line system. (I'm sure it's mainly a case of familiarity.)

The file system idea is still one I'm reading up on, but iNodes looks pretty good, too. Reading and writing NTFS/FAT volumes is there, but I've seen little activity on the Windows side of independent software that allows a Windows system to read and write iNodes. But I've just begun to read about it.

Now all I have to do (right!) is to figure out how to make my system do dual-boot without destroying it!

Thanks for your reply -- I looked up nearly everything you wrote about, and have already had several hours of enlightening reading. The big test will come when I actually install something!

--p!

[NawlinsNed]

12. Some suggestions

Install Ubuntu, then go to http://www.ubuntuguide.org and follow the directions on the web site. You should have multimedia and DVD support, including a full suite of software up and running in less than an hour.

If you don't know yet, apt is Debian's software management system which allows you to access thousands of pieces of software. And if you install synaptic, they're just a click away. Ubuntu, being a Debian based distro, has both. Do a search on Ubuntu and apt. You should be able to find additional repositories.

Also, do a search for Gnome clipboard daemon. Gnome doesn't support a persistant clipboard by default, so if you copy something and close the program, you'll lose whatever you copied. This is one of the reasons I use KDE over Gnome (there's also a version of Ubuntu called Kubuntu which uses KDE as the default desktop). Less of a pain in the butt.

I'm currently running Fedora Core 4 for x86_64, but this is because they offered JPackage compatibility and it's also compatible with a piece of software called Smart, which eliminates some of the hairier issues with library dependencies.

With regards to programming, you can develop in Linux using a variety of IDEs. There's even an open source .NET framework called mono. Some VB programmers get confused because there's nobody there to hold their hands in the Linux world. This, however, can be a benefit. Develop what you want, how you want to. There are some VB clones for Linux too, but I'm not familiar with any of them offhand.

[Crazy Guggenheim]

15. I don't want to start a flame war on this but I've tried to get

into Linux, but I just gave up after a while. Some of the problems have been installing the updates and primarily *security*!! I know this may go against the grain with some people but I don't trust Linux security. There's way too much manual configuration with it and it does not have any packages like Norton, Zone Alarm, McAfee, etc. It seems that security updates come out every week - literally - for it. Also the only reason that Linux has the reputation as more secure is *Linux has not been targeted yet*! As Linux becomes prevalent the system will become more targeted for crackers and virus writers.

[NawlinsNed]

19. have you tried to change a file in /bin without running as root?

You can't, which gives Linux a tremendous advantage over your basic Windows home PC setup. The worst a virus writer can do to anyone with a Linux system which is set up correctly is wipe their home directory, which is easy to avoid if you store data on other drives with permissions set correctly. And if you aren't downloading random pieces of warez off the internet, then you probably don't need to worry about viruses... ever... because those software repositories are maintained by volunteers and the software is tested before it ever gets out to the general public.

Also, Ubuntu is secure simply because, by default, it doesn't have any software sitting around and listening for things.

Virtually the entire PC security market was created because of Windows' many security flaws. Your complaint is akin to complaining that the steel hulled vessel you just bought doesn't come with any duct tape because the rubber raft you're used to floating around in always gets holes.

[billyskank]

20. Flame invitation accepted

Security updates do *not* come out every week for Linux. You get security updates for all manner of software that runs on Linux, and because said third party software tends to get shipped with Linux distributions then the security update tends to get reported as a "Linux Security Update." But that's as fair as blaming Windows for a deficiency in Adobe Photoshop.

You say that it's hard to set up security with Linux? You're right. It is. I'm still no expert myself; setting up your packet filtering firewall with iptables is not easy to grok. Nevertheless Linux still ships with a packet filtering firewall built into the kernel, and has done for years; how long has Windows XP had a firewall built-in that is enabled by default? Service Pack 2, if I recall correctly.

As for packages like Norton Antivirus; there's no need for them. As for firewall programs like Zone Alarm, there's no need for them either. I tested an installation of Mandrake 9.1 and found that all ports were stealthed bar the ident port, which was closed. This was default setup, out of the box. Now that I'm also running behind a router - a good hardware firewall itself - I think I'm pretty secure.

[Crazy Guggenheim]

16. Question. Does anyone know of a security application like

Norton that works on Linux.

[Solon]

17. Guarddog I believe is a decent firewall...

Also, if you are that paranoid, get SELinux, that's the NSA version, they modified the kernel to be the most secure possible. I don't know if its development has been merged with the 2.6 kernel branch, but it might have been.

As far as general security, Linux's default settings are more secure than Windows, in a vanilla installation. Even with SP2, Windows has holes, mainly default settings that you have to change to get more secure. An excellent example is default administrator access in a user login on WindowsXP. Linux has limited accounts only, with a master root account for administrative tasks. Both, however have one thing in common, you do need to take control to make sure that either is secure. In Linux, however, it can be done a little bit easier, without jumping over so many hoops.

[Crazy Guggenheim]

18. Thanks I'll take a look at it! Also ...

"Even with SP2, Windows has holes, mainly default settings that you have to change to get more secure."

I so not like the default settings! When ever I set up a client's system I *always* go through the settings in Internet Options, Folders, etc., same with the firewall. But I usually use Norton Internet Security on their system.