Everyone should spend at least a little time coding on Linux.
Why?
Not because of the ideals of Linux or OSS or whatever. Not because it''s "better" or "worse" in any way. It''s the pure educational value. Many developers are so firmly bound into a Windows mindset that once they get dropped into the real world, and often a UNIX based system, all hell breaks loose. With Linux, you learn alternate ways of doing things, you learn how a more "classic" server style OS works, and you learn a lot of other things. Porting to Linux is also a fantastic way of finding bugs. Let me give you an example.
I had a BSP loader class I was working on, which I was gradually expanding to process more of the file. It looked something like this:
fopen
fread
fread
...
fclose
At one point, I accidentally added more fread calls AFTER the fclose, because I wasn''t paying attention. Since Windows buffers all its file I/O, it didn''t even care, because the file handle wasn''t actually gone.
Enter Linux. This project was actually cross-platform, but I committed before testing in Linux. My teammate works exclusively in Linux, and immediately foudn the BSP rendering to be mangled. After a rather painful 2 hour debug session, I finally found the error I had made. I would literally *never* have noticed the mistake if I wasn''t developing on Linux.
The educational value of Linux alone is worth it, even if you don''t work with it actively or often.
____________________________________________________________
This message comes from the original user of "ok.", and don''t ever forget it.
Should I get Linux?
quote:Since Windows buffers all its file I/O, it didn't even care, because the file handle wasn't actually gone.
Linux buffers all it's file I/O, to a greater extent then windows. That's why you have to unmount floppy drives before you can eject them on linux while with windows you can eject as long as the light ain't on. I guess Linux is just more anal about using file handles after they're closed then Windows is
As for getting linux I wouldn't really recomend it as a desktop. Linux can be used a desktop without too much trouble but I reackon Windows is just plain better as a desktop. I agree with Promit that it's still a good idea to try using linux even if you never really need to use it. You will see things from another perspective and can get some experience at writing platform independent code.
[edited by - Monder on May 22, 2004 12:28:41 PM]
[ edit ] Okay, rephrased: This thread has gotten off track.
Some of you (Not mentioning any names, cavemanbob) ignored the OP's questions, apparently excited by a thread with 'linux' in the title, and went on to add your own little 2 cents.
I find it funny that people complaining about "linux meanies" being unhelpful are at the same time being unhelpful.
[edited by - C-Junkie on May 22, 2004 1:00:19 PM]
Some of you (Not mentioning any names, cavemanbob) ignored the OP's questions, apparently excited by a thread with 'linux' in the title, and went on to add your own little 2 cents.
I find it funny that people complaining about "linux meanies" being unhelpful are at the same time being unhelpful.
[edited by - C-Junkie on May 22, 2004 1:00:19 PM]
Hardly off-topic, what good are the naming advantages if you never see some of the disadvantages. For the other 3 questions:
How long it takes to get used to, probably not to long but there''s a lot you will likely need to fiddle with at some point or other.
I''ve used mandrake, redhat, gentoo, redhat was awful, mandrake is probably better for beginners, gentoo is better for power users, but better IMO.
Dual booting is installed automatically.
How long it takes to get used to, probably not to long but there''s a lot you will likely need to fiddle with at some point or other.
I''ve used mandrake, redhat, gentoo, redhat was awful, mandrake is probably better for beginners, gentoo is better for power users, but better IMO.
Dual booting is installed automatically.
Gentoo is a great learning distro. You don''t learn anything if you don''t make mistakes. With Gentoo, you''re bound to since it''s mostly manual configuration. I was a newbie with Linux and I was able to build and maintain a Gentoo system.
Also, Gentoo has some of the nicest people when it comes to questions. No question is a stupid question as far as I''ve seen. I''ve never seen a "RTFM" from any of the forum users.
I''m sure you''ll like that distro .
Also, Gentoo has some of the nicest people when it comes to questions. No question is a stupid question as far as I''ve seen. I''ve never seen a "RTFM" from any of the forum users.
I''m sure you''ll like that distro .
I highly disagree with the little to no games thing on Linux. I am a proud subscriber to Transgaming Network, which for a very very small fee allows you to pklay literally the "TONS of games" mentioned before via a program known as Winex. Winex is basically Wine with DX support, which atm they have support for up to Direct X 9.
Yes it costs money but the profits go into development.
http://www.transgaming.com/
Great service if your a gamer, I love it anyway...
Yes it costs money but the profits go into development.
http://www.transgaming.com/
Great service if your a gamer, I love it anyway...
quote:
I highly disagree with the little to no games thing on Linux. I am a proud subscriber to Transgaming Network, which for a very very small fee allows you to pklay literally the "TONS of games" mentioned before via a program known as Winex. Winex is basically Wine with DX support, which atm they have support for up to Direct X 9.
Yes it costs money but the profits go into development.
http://www.transgaming.com/
Great service if your a gamer, I love it anyway...
Or you can get the free cvs source. Ofcourse, they only have that up there for free so developers can contribute; I do plan on contributing somehow if I ever do use it and/or get it working properly.
quote:Original post by haroquote:Original post by Raptor85
tons of games for linux, lots of freeware, and tons of commercial game versions. (the unreal games, quake games, etc...)
Yes a shoddy number of UT ports and the ID fps series. Awesome you''ve got two game sets. Care to name 5 more, what constitutes "tons"? This guy most likely does not know what he''s getting into and you''re just plain distorting the truth to get him to do so.
You can use wine X to run a whole bunch of windows games under Linux, a whole lot of games , 90 % of my game Library runs fine under Linux with the cvs version of wineX. Check transgaming.com.
I like linux because it''s a no bullshit OS (as i write this from an XP machine). All the windows and guis become an obstacle to me. I know what the directory structure is and i know what the setup files do (and drivers and etc). I''d much rather change them myself than have to go through some wizard every step of the way. So much of windows is aimed at a less computer savvy portion of the population that the easy things are oversimplified for me and the hard things can be impossible or very difficult to do.
yes, the *nix systems have a steeper learning curve. If you''ve never worked on a unix type system before, it''s gonna take a while to figure it out. Once you do, however, i think you''ll find that stripping all the training wheels off your computer can allow you to be more productive. A bash script is infinately more powerful than a drag and drop system. Say you have a directory full of *.sav files and you want to change them to *.old files. I just feel more comfortable doing that kind of stuff in unix than windows. no guis, no complex tools, just a single line shell script. Simple, but powerful.
Anyways, those are the advantages as i see them
Dual booting is easy if you install linux later. However, if you don''t have a free partition to install linux on, you could run into trouble. You''ll either have to do some complicated repartitioning, or (and i''d suggest this one) just buy a new harddrive. They''re cheap enough.
I''d recommend red hat for your distribution (though other distributions mentioned so far are good as well). just spend a weekend downloading it.
yes, the *nix systems have a steeper learning curve. If you''ve never worked on a unix type system before, it''s gonna take a while to figure it out. Once you do, however, i think you''ll find that stripping all the training wheels off your computer can allow you to be more productive. A bash script is infinately more powerful than a drag and drop system. Say you have a directory full of *.sav files and you want to change them to *.old files. I just feel more comfortable doing that kind of stuff in unix than windows. no guis, no complex tools, just a single line shell script. Simple, but powerful.
Anyways, those are the advantages as i see them
Dual booting is easy if you install linux later. However, if you don''t have a free partition to install linux on, you could run into trouble. You''ll either have to do some complicated repartitioning, or (and i''d suggest this one) just buy a new harddrive. They''re cheap enough.
I''d recommend red hat for your distribution (though other distributions mentioned so far are good as well). just spend a weekend downloading it.
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