> Excuse me!!! (Mock shock horror and disbelief)
>
> > I think it's worth noting that programming for Linux requires a bit of a
> > paradigm shift for those of us used to working in Windoze. You have to
> > remember that Linux is a flavour of Unix, and there's a very good reason
> why
> > most people don't have a Unix box on their desktop :-) It's not designed
> as
> > a desktop operating system. It's designed as a server operating system,
>
> What exactly defines a 'Server OS' and a 'Desktop OS'? - M$ did to justify
> the crap they were delivering
> vs the slightly better crap they were intending to deliver - think before
> you tout the company line
I thought my use of the term "Windoze" might have clued you in to my
feelings about M$ without having to spell it out, but I guess it was a bit
subtle.
With regard to the terms "Server O/S" and "Desktop O/S" I personally
wouldn't want to run any mission critical server application on a Windows
box because it's not reliable enough IMHO. Therefore I'd be looking for an
O/S suitable for use on a server box (ie: a Server O/S). Other Server O/S's
I could choose might be VMS, AIX, or a variant of SUN Unix, etc. I class
these as Server O/S's because they are designed primarily for the job, and
have a variety of tools to make the job easier. They're also very reliable.
Linux fits this definition reasonably well.
I see Windows (including NT) as a "Desktop O/S" because it is reasonably
easy to configure, looks nice, and has a bucket-load of "Desktop style"
applications available for it (in contrast to the "Server" style O/S's I
mentioned before). Try getting a 3D video card going on Linux. I'm not ready
to give up the huge range of productivity tools and entertainments I can use
on Windows just because the O/S needs rebooting every few days, and crashes
for no apparent reason every so often.
I don't see any reason to get religeous about it. It's just a case of
choosing the right tools for the job.
>
> > and
> > it's designed by, and for, geeks and nerds who prefer a command-line
> driven
> > operating system. Sure, it has an X-Windows GUI (GNOME or KDE) but it
has
> a
> > long way to go before Bill Gates starts having trouble sleeping.
>
> Simply because Linux has a command line utilities doesn't mean in was
> designed that way - duh - most of it is
> inherited.
1) I'm a geek / nerd, and I like the command line.
2) Perhaps I misunderstand you, but I've yet to read a Linux book which
doesn't point out that you get a hell of a lot more power out of Linux from
the command line than from any GUI. And what exactly are you suggesting
Linux inherited the command line from ? Linux is a flavour of Unix, one of
the oldest operating systems on the planet. Unix and Linux _were_ designed
to use command line utilities and shells. What's your point ?
> Bill Gates is having major problems with linux for the following reasons
>
> - It's free so he can't kill it
> - It's growing fast..so it stands to majorly undermine the M$ assertion
that
> their applications division is independant from OS divivsion
> (because as yet M$ have made no pledges to support Linux with it's Apps)
> - It's reliable!
Talk about "touting the company line" :-)
Just a couple of observations:
- Netscape is free, and it's nearly dead - now less than 25% market share
and dropping..
- You don't get to be the worlds richest man if you can't turn lemons into
lemonade. If Linux really gets under Bills skin you'll know about it (It
will be in a box marked MS Linux 1.0 - and God help us all ).
>
> > While we certainly need database and gui tools, the sort of applications
> > we're likely to be asked to create using Kylix are not necessarily the
> same
> > types of apps we're building for Windows. Linux is much more likely to
be
> > used as a server operating system that as a workstation in the average
> > office. I see Kylix providing us with a general purpose programming
> language
> > and environment that will enable us to become productive with a new and
> > growing O/S. Possible uses would include writing console-style programs
> > ("filters" in unix parlance) which can be used to provide
number-crunching
> > services for specific applications or as plug-ins for web-servers, etc.
> >
>
> If that was the case there would be little point in Kylix - we might as
well
> all learn Perl/TCLTK/Python et al
Who the hell wants to learn Perl ? It's a horrible language :-) Python is
ok, Rebol is ok too, and I can't speak for TCL, but I'd rather use
Pascal/Kylix since it lets me do things the way I do them now.
If C/C++/Perl/TCLTK/Python et al were enough then we wouldn't have a couple
of thousand other languages to choose from on all sorts of platforms. There
is no "one size fits all" in programming. Don't forget: the ultimate "point"
of Kylix is to make money for Borland, and they see a market here.
> and it would be unlikely the Corel would ship Linux with and office suite
> (yes there are office suites other than M$ Office)!
> and Star Office would be pointless!
As I said, it's all about marketing. Corel see big money here, and they've
got in early. Possibly like M$ and DOS. As long as people want choice,
someone will supply an alternative.
> The point of Kylix is that we can 'port' our win32 code to Linux (which
also
> implys we use linux on the desktop)
Sure, we could do that. And many of us will (where appropriate). But that
presupposes that our clients / users are going to be running Linux on their
desktops, and that's certainly not the case for most users today (and I
can't see it becoming a huge trend tomorrow either - maybe in five years -
there's too much corporate inertia to overcome, and the home market is
almost worse since they don't have the corporate support services available
to configure their machines).
That's just my opinion. Time will tell.
> > Linux/Unix has a number of very powerful features that are either
> > unavailable in windows, or generally ignored, but which shine in a
server
> > environment. For a start, it has a decent scheduler (cron) which means
> that
> > all the "service" programs you've written with built-in timers to tell
> them
> > when to activate can be written much more simply. Because of Unix's
> ability
> > to chain programs or "filters" together to provide quite complex
> behaviour,
> > you may find yourself writing smaller general purpose programs where a
lot
> > of the potential nightmares are dealt with by existing "filter" or
control
> > software (almost all of which is free). And Unix/Linux comes with a
couple
> > of decades worth of really useful scripting languages to handle any
really
> > complex stuff.
> >
>
> Virtually every decent unix util (grep, cron) has been ported to
> windows..but they have little
> point in an OS that explodes all the time.
Absolutely. Which is one of the reasons they're not used much in Windows. It
might also have something to do with the fact that Windows has only had
decent scripting languages available (most originally from unix) to tie them
together for a couple of years. The power of the utilities is as much in the
way unix allows them to be used as in the utilities themselves (although
anything beats the Windows "AT" scheduler).
Simon.
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