On Sun, 20 Jan 2002, Clarence Verge wrote: > The library problem isn't likely to turn me off Linux nearly as > easily as the requirement that I be prepared to compile my own > code if I want to use a particular application with what may be > my existing Linux version. > > I understand and agree with your point re: freedom. But that's > only freedom to a Linux programmer - not a computer user.
Really Clarence. Compiling is easy. It's ofen as easy as typing 'make' and <enter>. Then again, sometimes it's as complicated as $ ./configure $ make $ make install > Heck, I wouldn't even be able to write my own applications or > bits for myself unless I was willing to use "C". I barely recognize C when I see it. You don't need to be a programmer to type 'make'. You'll likely use bash scripts to a far greater extent than C. Think of bash as a supercharged command.com, and scripts as more capable batch files. If your application is heavily loaded with text manipulation, you might use awk/sed, or you might go with perl. If you want to write programs that will be available over a web server, you'll probably want to look into any of the above as CGI, or php or python as Apache modules. If you want to write GUI stuff, you might be more interested in GTK or tcl/tk. I could go on, but the point is that you don't need to know C. Just about any programming language that's ever existed is available for Linux... even cobol and BASIC... Use whichever one (or more) does the job for you. - Steve
