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digitalmars.D - Multithreaded I/O in the DMD compiler (DDJ article by Walter)

reply Daniel Keep <daniel.keep.lists gmail.com> writes:
http://dobbscodetalk.com/index.php?option=com_myblog&show=Multithreaded-I-O.html&Itemid=29

  -- Daniel


P.S.  "It really seems barbaric in our digital age that we all have
motors and levers and gears and spinning things in our boxes."  Those
damned spinning things!
Apr 04 2009
next sibling parent Walter Bright <newshound1 digitalmars.com> writes:
Daniel Keep wrote:

 http://dobbscodetalk.com/index.php?option=com_myblog&show=Multithreaded-I-O.html&Itemid=29


Reddit too: 
http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/8a2y9/walter_bright_multithreaded_io/
Apr 05 2009
prev sibling next sibling parent reply bearophile <bearophileHUGS lycos.com> writes:
Daniel Keep:

 http://dobbscodetalk.com/index.php?option=com_myblog&show=Multithreaded-I-O.html&Itemid=29


Is this an improvement of the DMD backend? Now I'm curious: isn't DMD a legacy
backend? If this is true, isn't improving it a waste of time, and time is
better spent improving something like LLVM? (I am not trying to offend anyone
here, I am just curious).

Bye,
bearophile
Apr 05 2009
next sibling parent reply dennis luehring <dl.soluz gmx.net> writes:
bearophile schrieb:

 Daniel Keep:

 http://dobbscodetalk.com/index.php?option=com_myblog&show=Multithreaded-I-O.html&Itemid=29


 
 Is this an improvement of the DMD backend? Now I'm curious: isn't DMD a legacy
backend? If this is true, isn't improving it a waste of time, and time is
better spent improving something like LLVM? (I am not trying to offend anyone
here, I am just curious).
 
 Bye,
 bearophile


i don't think that llvm is a good playground for walters ideas in 
backend and frontend development because he knows is backend very well 
(for many years now) - its bugs, sleeping features, way to compile and 
extend it

llvm is still missing windows execptions and maybe many others things
and it is more that 50% of the whole project (except the language 
itselfe) even the gcc-guys still mantain there own backend
Apr 05 2009
parent reply dennis luehring <dl.soluz gmx.net> writes:
dennis luehring schrieb:

 bearophile schrieb:

 Daniel Keep:

 http://dobbscodetalk.com/index.php?option=com_myblog&show=Multithreaded-I-O.html&Itemid=29


 
 Is this an improvement of the DMD backend? Now I'm curious: isn't DMD a legacy
backend? If this is true, isn't improving it a waste of time, and time is
better spent improving something like LLVM? (I am not trying to offend anyone
here, I am just curious).




 bearophile

ask yourself - would you throw away your own backend?

and not to extend you backend and work on llvm is like throwing it away
Apr 05 2009
parent dennis luehring <dl.soluz gmx.net> writes:
dennis luehring schrieb:

 dennis luehring schrieb:

 bearophile schrieb:

 Daniel Keep:

 http://dobbscodetalk.com/index.php?option=com_myblog&show=Multithreaded-I-O.html&Itemid=29


 
 Is this an improvement of the DMD backend? Now I'm curious: isn't DMD a legacy
backend? If this is true, isn't improving it a waste of time, and time is
better spent improving something like LLVM? (I am not trying to offend anyone
here, I am just curious).




 
  bearophile
 
 ask yourself - would you throw away your own backend?
 
 and not to extend you backend and work on llvm is like throwing it away


that does not mean that i don't want to see an llvm based backend - it 
seems to be a very good and fast "compiler"
Apr 05 2009
prev sibling next sibling parent Robert Fraser <fraserofthenight gmail.com> writes:
bearophile wrote:

 Daniel Keep:

 http://dobbscodetalk.com/index.php?option=com_myblog&show=Multithreaded-I-O.html&Itemid=29


 
 Is this an improvement of the DMD backend? Now I'm curious: isn't DMD a legacy
backend? If this is true, isn't improving it a waste of time, and time is
better spent improving something like LLVM? (I am not trying to offend anyone
here, I am just curious).
 
 Bye,
 bearophile


DMD still produces better integer code (on x86) than GDC or LLVMDC.  And 
it's fast at generating code. So "legacy" as it may be, it still has 
some strengths.
Apr 05 2009
prev sibling parent Walter Bright <newshound1 digitalmars.com> writes:
bearophile wrote:

 Is this an improvement of the DMD backend? Now I'm curious: isn't DMD
 a legacy backend? If this is true, isn't improving it a waste of
 time, and time is better spent improving something like LLVM? (I am
 not trying to offend anyone here, I am just curious).


Those changes were to the front end.
Apr 05 2009
prev sibling next sibling parent reply BCS <none anon.com> writes:
Hello Daniel,


 http://dobbscodetalk.com/index.php?option=com_myblog&show=Multithreade
 d-I-O.html&Itemid=29
 
 -- Daniel
 
 P.S.  "It really seems barbaric in our digital age that we all have
 motors and levers and gears and spinning things in our boxes."  Those
 damned spinning things!
 


Some sort of fixed size thread pool might work better than thread-per-file 
after the files are loaded as the overhead of threads isn't going to do you 
any good if you have many more threads than you have cores
Apr 05 2009
parent reply Brad Roberts <braddr puremagic.com> writes:
BCS wrote:

 Hello Daniel,
 

 http://dobbscodetalk.com/index.php?option=com_myblog&show=Multithreade
 d-I-O.html&Itemid=29

 -- Daniel

 P.S.  "It really seems barbaric in our digital age that we all have
 motors and levers and gears and spinning things in our boxes."  Those
 damned spinning things!


 
 Some sort of fixed size thread pool might work better than
 thread-per-file after the files are loaded as the overhead of threads
 isn't going to do you any good if you have many more threads than you
 have cores
 


Careful.. that rule of thumb applies to compute bound use of threads.

In this example, it's parallelization to achieve file io activity
overlapping with compute activity.  If we were talking about physical
disks, I'd say that one thread dedicated to "while(filetoread)
open/read/close" would be sufficient.  Two would just add competing
seeks.  But the picture likely changes once the files are in page cache.
And SSD's are closer to memory than spindles, so it's unclear what the
'right' threading model there is too.  Regardless, with the model of
most compilers today, as long as the data is ready by the time the main
thread is ready for it, it's good enough.

It's fun to envision a really seriously multi-threaded compiler, but,
like for any app, it requires a lot more care.. and dmd would need some
cleanup to not use global state, but not a whole lot from the quick
glances I've made at the source.  The devil, as always, is in the
details.  There's enough to do and enough bugs to fix already that I
can't see it as worth the investment right now, though.

Later,
Brad
Apr 05 2009
next sibling parent reply BCS <none anon.com> writes:
Hello Brad,


 Careful.. that rule of thumb applies to compute bound use of threads.


I did qualify that as "after the files are loaded".
Apr 05 2009
parent Brad Roberts <braddr puremagic.com> writes:
BCS wrote:

 Hello Brad,
 

 Careful.. that rule of thumb applies to compute bound use of threads.


 
 I did qualify that as "after the files are loaded".
 


In the current impl, after files are loaded, it's all one thread still. :)
Apr 05 2009
prev sibling parent reply Robert Fraser <fraserofthenight gmail.com> writes:
Brad Roberts wrote:

 BCS wrote:

 Hello Daniel,


 http://dobbscodetalk.com/index.php?option=com_myblog&show=Multithreade
 d-I-O.html&Itemid=29

 -- Daniel

 P.S.  "It really seems barbaric in our digital age that we all have
 motors and levers and gears and spinning things in our boxes."  Those
 damned spinning things!


 Some sort of fixed size thread pool might work better than
 thread-per-file after the files are loaded as the overhead of threads
 isn't going to do you any good if you have many more threads than you
 have cores


 
 Careful.. that rule of thumb applies to compute bound use of threads.
 
 In this example, it's parallelization to achieve file io activity
 overlapping with compute activity.  If we were talking about physical
 disks, I'd say that one thread dedicated to "while(filetoread)
 open/read/close" would be sufficient.  Two would just add competing
 seeks.  But the picture likely changes once the files are in page cache.
 And SSD's are closer to memory than spindles, so it's unclear what the
 'right' threading model there is too.  Regardless, with the model of
 most compilers today, as long as the data is ready by the time the main
 thread is ready for it, it's good enough.
 
 It's fun to envision a really seriously multi-threaded compiler, but,
 like for any app, it requires a lot more care.. and dmd would need some
 cleanup to not use global state, but not a whole lot from the quick
 glances I've made at the source.  The devil, as always, is in the
 details.  There's enough to do and enough bugs to fix already that I
 can't see it as worth the investment right now, though.
 
 Later,
 Brad


Compilers seem like they'd be easier to parallelize than other 
applications... but I think the last version of DSSS launches as many 
DMD processes as there are cores anyway.
Apr 05 2009
parent bearophile <bearophileHUGS lycos.com> writes:
Robert Fraser:

 Compilers seem like they'd be easier to parallelize than other 
 applications...


Because compilers are (almost) pure functions :-)
This is less silly than it sounds.

Bye,
bearophile
Apr 05 2009
prev sibling next sibling parent reply "Saaa" <empty needmail.com> writes:
I always thought people who would need to reinstall their windows to keep it 
clean were like the ones that didn't know how computers works.
I haven't reinstalled my windows box in like 6 years and it doesn't startup 
any slower then before.
If only you keep to the simple things like: ccleaner, autoruns, program 
control (online armor) and noscript for firefox you should be able to keep 
it clean.
The only thing I can't really be sure of are rootkits and alike but icesword 
and online scans at least give me the impression it is also ok on that part.
btw. adware normaly doesn't really make your box start up any slower
Apr 06 2009
next sibling parent "Saaa" <empty needmail.com> writes:
Also, microsoft bootvis.
Apr 06 2009
prev sibling parent reply Christopher Wright <dhasenan gmail.com> writes:
Saaa wrote:

 I always thought people who would need to reinstall their windows to keep it 
 clean were like the ones that didn't know how computers works.
 I haven't reinstalled my windows box in like 6 years and it doesn't startup 
 any slower then before.
 If only you keep to the simple things like: ccleaner, autoruns, program 
 control (online armor) and noscript for firefox you should be able to keep 
 it clean.
 The only thing I can't really be sure of are rootkits and alike but icesword 
 and online scans at least give me the impression it is also ok on that part.
 btw. adware normaly doesn't really make your box start up any slower 


Wow, that seems like a lot of work.
Apr 06 2009
next sibling parent reply Jarrett Billingsley <jarrett.billingsley gmail.com> writes:
On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 11:07 AM, Christopher Wright <dhasenan gmail.com> wrote:

 Saaa wrote:

 I always thought people who would need to reinstall their windows to keep
 it clean were like the ones that didn't know how computers works.
 I haven't reinstalled my windows box in like 6 years and it doesn't
 startup any slower then before.
 If only you keep to the simple things like: ccleaner, autoruns, program
 control (online armor) and noscript for firefox you should be able to keep
 it clean.
 The only thing I can't really be sure of are rootkits and alike but
 icesword and online scans at least give me the impression it is also ok on
 that part.
 btw. adware normaly doesn't really make your box start up any slower


 Wow, that seems like a lot of work.


It's not.  It's actually quite simple to keep a clean Windows box.
You _don't go to dangerous websites or download screensavers like the
thousands of twits who don't understand computers or malware_.  I got
my first virus in ten years of using Windows last December, and I
don't have anything but a basic virus scanner.  It got in through an
ad that took advantage of Acrobat Reader.

Before that, I was running an install of XP that hadn't been modified
for close to four years, which had run in two different computers.  My
laptop is coming up on its four year mark as well.

Surprising, no?  That when you know how to use computers, Windows
_doesn't actually suck_!
Apr 06 2009
next sibling parent reply dsimcha <dsimcha yahoo.com> writes:
== Quote from Jarrett Billingsley (jarrett.billingsley gmail.com)'s article

 On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 11:07 AM, Christopher Wright <dhasenan gmail.com> wrote:

 Saaa wrote:

 I always thought people who would need to reinstall their windows to keep
 it clean were like the ones that didn't know how computers works.
 I haven't reinstalled my windows box in like 6 years and it doesn't
 startup any slower then before.
 If only you keep to the simple things like: ccleaner, autoruns, program
 control (online armor) and noscript for firefox you should be able to keep
 it clean.
 The only thing I can't really be sure of are rootkits and alike but
 icesword and online scans at least give me the impression it is also ok on
 that part.
 btw. adware normaly doesn't really make your box start up any slower


 Wow, that seems like a lot of work.


 It's not.  It's actually quite simple to keep a clean Windows box.
 You _don't go to dangerous websites or download screensavers like the
 thousands of twits who don't understand computers or malware_.  I got
 my first virus in ten years of using Windows last December, and I
 don't have anything but a basic virus scanner.  It got in through an
 ad that took advantage of Acrobat Reader.
 Before that, I was running an install of XP that hadn't been modified
 for close to four years, which had run in two different computers.  My
 laptop is coming up on its four year mark as well.
 Surprising, no?  That when you know how to use computers, Windows
 _doesn't actually suck_!


Yeah, I've always wondered why some people put so much emphasis on the 10% of
computer security that's highly technical in nature when 90% of the problem of
computer security is between the keyboard and the chair.
Apr 06 2009
parent reply Jarrett Billingsley <jarrett.billingsley gmail.com> writes:
On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 3:31 PM, dsimcha <dsimcha yahoo.com> wrote:

 Yeah, I've always wondered why some people put so much emphasis on the 10% of
 computer security that's highly technical in nature when 90% of the problem of
 computer security is between the keyboard and the chair.


ComputerIlliterateFriend: Hey Jarrett, can you come over and fix my computer?
Jarrett: What's it doing?
CIF: It's popping up all sorts of dialog boxes telling me I need to
get Spyware Aweseom Remover and stuff, and it's running really slow,
and my files keep disappearing.
Jarrett: And where have you been on the internet?
CIF: Oh you know, normal sites.
Jarrett: Like?
CIF: Porn, more porn, horse porn, warez.  I also used Limewire to
download *every song and program ever made*, and I make it a habit to
click on interesting-looking [read: violently-flashing] ads.
Jarrett: ...
CIF: What?  Did I do something wrong?

Seriously.  It's like sleeping with every prostitute on the East Coast
and acting surprised when you have seventeen STDs.
Apr 06 2009
next sibling parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
Jarrett Billingsley wrote:

 On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 3:31 PM, dsimcha <dsimcha yahoo.com> wrote:

 Yeah, I've always wondered why some people put so much emphasis on the 10% of
 computer security that's highly technical in nature when 90% of the problem of
 computer security is between the keyboard and the chair.


 
 ComputerIlliterateFriend: Hey Jarrett, can you come over and fix my computer?
 Jarrett: What's it doing?
 CIF: It's popping up all sorts of dialog boxes telling me I need to
 get Spyware Aweseom Remover and stuff, and it's running really slow,
 and my files keep disappearing.
 Jarrett: And where have you been on the internet?
 CIF: Oh you know, normal sites.
 Jarrett: Like?
 CIF: Porn, more porn, horse porn, warez.  I also used Limewire to
 download *every song and program ever made*, and I make it a habit to
 click on interesting-looking [read: violently-flashing] ads.
 Jarrett: ...
 CIF: What?  Did I do something wrong?
 
 Seriously.  It's like sleeping with every prostitute on the East Coast
 and acting surprised when you have seventeen STDs.


I think this is a large exaggeration. People of all walks of life are 
exposed to dangers when using a Windows machine. My father-in-law knows 
virtually (no, literally) nothing about computers, but I taught him 
enough to double-click an icon on the desktop to read the news off a 
reputable site. He virused the computer without typing (he has no notion 
of address bar etc.). So I moved him to an ubuntu box.

Whenever the endless debate of windows vs. linux vs. mac comes up, I 
repeat my comment: if you are a programmer, you better acquire some 
experience in each. For Windows/Mac it's not as easy because they may 
cost money, but now with virtual machines, good distributions etc. I 
think there is no excuse for a programmer to not seriously looking into 
Unix.


Andrei
Apr 06 2009
next sibling parent reply Jarrett Billingsley <jarrett.billingsley gmail.com> writes:
On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 4:13 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu
<SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote:


 ComputerIlliterateFriend: Hey Jarrett, can you come over and fix my
 computer?
 Jarrett: What's it doing?
 CIF: It's popping up all sorts of dialog boxes telling me I need to
 get Spyware Aweseom Remover and stuff, and it's running really slow,
 and my files keep disappearing.
 Jarrett: And where have you been on the internet?
 CIF: Oh you know, normal sites.
 Jarrett: Like?
 CIF: Porn, more porn, horse porn, warez. =A0I also used Limewire to
 download *every song and program ever made*, and I make it a habit to
 click on interesting-looking [read: violently-flashing] ads.
 Jarrett: ...
 CIF: What? =A0Did I do something wrong?

 Seriously. =A0It's like sleeping with every prostitute on the East Coast
 and acting surprised when you have seventeen STDs.


 I think this is a large exaggeration.


Except this has actually happened to me, modulo a couple details.
Three or four times.
Apr 06 2009
next sibling parent reply superdan <super dan.org> writes:
Jarrett Billingsley Wrote:


 On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 4:13 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu
 <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote:
 

 ComputerIlliterateFriend: Hey Jarrett, can you come over and fix my
 computer?
 Jarrett: What's it doing?
 CIF: It's popping up all sorts of dialog boxes telling me I need to
 get Spyware Aweseom Remover and stuff, and it's running really slow,
 and my files keep disappearing.
 Jarrett: And where have you been on the internet?
 CIF: Oh you know, normal sites.
 Jarrett: Like?
 CIF: Porn, more porn, horse porn, warez. I also used Limewire to
 download *every song and program ever made*, and I make it a habit to
 click on interesting-looking [read: violently-flashing] ads.
 Jarrett: ...
 CIF: What? Did I do something wrong?

 Seriously. It's like sleeping with every prostitute on the East Coast
 and acting surprised when you have seventeen STDs.


 I think this is a large exaggeration.


 
 Except this has actually happened to me, modulo a couple details.
 Three or four times.


browsin' porn or fuckin' hookers?
Apr 06 2009
next sibling parent "Saaa" <empty needmail.com> writes:
"superdan" <super dan.org> wrote in message 
news:grdoag$1hdn$1 digitalmars.com...

 Jarrett Billingsley Wrote:


 On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 4:13 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu
 <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote:


 ComputerIlliterateFriend: Hey Jarrett, can you come over and fix my
 computer?
 Jarrett: What's it doing?
 CIF: It's popping up all sorts of dialog boxes telling me I need to
 get Spyware Aweseom Remover and stuff, and it's running really slow,
 and my files keep disappearing.
 Jarrett: And where have you been on the internet?
 CIF: Oh you know, normal sites.
 Jarrett: Like?
 CIF: Porn, more porn, horse porn, warez. I also used Limewire to
 download *every song and program ever made*, and I make it a habit to
 click on interesting-looking [read: violently-flashing] ads.
 Jarrett: ...
 CIF: What? Did I do something wrong?

 Seriously. It's like sleeping with every prostitute on the East Coast
 and acting surprised when you have seventeen STDs.


 I think this is a large exaggeration.


 Except this has actually happened to me, modulo a couple details.
 Three or four times.


 browsin' porn or fuckin' hookers?


:D
I read an ior there
Apr 06 2009
prev sibling next sibling parent Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
superdan wrote:

 Jarrett Billingsley Wrote:
 

 On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 4:13 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu
 <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote:


 ComputerIlliterateFriend: Hey Jarrett, can you come over and fix my
 computer?
 Jarrett: What's it doing?
 CIF: It's popping up all sorts of dialog boxes telling me I need to
 get Spyware Aweseom Remover and stuff, and it's running really slow,
 and my files keep disappearing.
 Jarrett: And where have you been on the internet?
 CIF: Oh you know, normal sites.
 Jarrett: Like?
 CIF: Porn, more porn, horse porn, warez.  I also used Limewire to
 download *every song and program ever made*, and I make it a habit to
 click on interesting-looking [read: violently-flashing] ads.
 Jarrett: ...
 CIF: What?  Did I do something wrong?

 Seriously.  It's like sleeping with every prostitute on the East Coast
 and acting surprised when you have seventeen STDs.


 I think this is a large exaggeration.


 Except this has actually happened to me, modulo a couple details.
 Three or four times.


 
 browsin' porn or fuckin' hookers?


Ouch. pwn of the year.

Andrei
Apr 06 2009
prev sibling parent Jarrett Billingsley <jarrett.billingsley gmail.com> writes:
On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 4:22 PM, superdan <super dan.org> wrote:

 Jarrett Billingsley Wrote:


 On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 4:13 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu
 <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote:


 ComputerIlliterateFriend: Hey Jarrett, can you come over and fix my
 computer?
 Jarrett: What's it doing?
 CIF: It's popping up all sorts of dialog boxes telling me I need to
 get Spyware Aweseom Remover and stuff, and it's running really slow,
 and my files keep disappearing.
 Jarrett: And where have you been on the internet?
 CIF: Oh you know, normal sites.
 Jarrett: Like?
 CIF: Porn, more porn, horse porn, warez. =A0I also used Limewire to
 download *every song and program ever made*, and I make it a habit to
 click on interesting-looking [read: violently-flashing] ads.
 Jarrett: ...
 CIF: What? =A0Did I do something wrong?

 Seriously. =A0It's like sleeping with every prostitute on the East Co=








ast

 and acting surprised when you have seventeen STDs.


 I think this is a large exaggeration.


 Except this has actually happened to me, modulo a couple details.
 Three or four times.


 browsin' porn or fuckin' hookers?


lol
Apr 06 2009
prev sibling parent reply "Saaa" <empty needmail.com> writes:
Except this has actually happened to me, modulo a couple details.
Three or four times.
You should install noscript or maybe better: sandboxie
Apr 06 2009
parent reply Jarrett Billingsley <jarrett.billingsley gmail.com> writes:
On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 4:41 PM, Saaa <empty needmail.com> wrote:

 Except this has actually happened to me, modulo a couple details.
 Three or four times.
 You should install noscript or maybe better: sandboxie


/facepalm, I'm not talking about getting viruses, I'm talking about
dealing with morons who don't realize that going to bad sites make
their computer break.
Apr 06 2009
next sibling parent reply grauzone <none example.net> writes:
Jarrett Billingsley wrote:

 On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 4:41 PM, Saaa <empty needmail.com> wrote:

 Except this has actually happened to me, modulo a couple details.
 Three or four times.
 You should install noscript or maybe better: sandboxie


 
 /facepalm, I'm not talking about getting viruses, I'm talking about
 dealing with morons who don't realize that going to bad sites make
 their computer break.


Mankind sure sucks. Is that what we need to tell people? I mean I've 
went to quite some bad sites, and my computer never broke.
Apr 06 2009
parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
grauzone wrote:

 Jarrett Billingsley wrote:

 On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 4:41 PM, Saaa <empty needmail.com> wrote:

 Except this has actually happened to me, modulo a couple details.
 Three or four times.
 You should install noscript or maybe better: sandboxie


 /facepalm, I'm not talking about getting viruses, I'm talking about
 dealing with morons who don't realize that going to bad sites make
 their computer break.


 
 Mankind sure sucks. Is that what we need to tell people? I mean I've 
 went to quite some bad sites, and my computer never broke.


You can replace "sites" and "computer" with different words and keep the 
meaning of the sentence intact!

Andrei
Apr 06 2009
parent reply grauzone <none example.net> writes:
Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 grauzone wrote:

 Jarrett Billingsley wrote:

 On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 4:41 PM, Saaa <empty needmail.com> wrote:

 Except this has actually happened to me, modulo a couple details.
 Three or four times.
 You should install noscript or maybe better: sandboxie


 /facepalm, I'm not talking about getting viruses, I'm talking about
 dealing with morons who don't realize that going to bad sites make
 their computer break.


 Mankind sure sucks. Is that what we need to tell people? I mean I've 
 went to quite some bad sites, and my computer never broke.


 
 You can replace "sites" and "computer" with different words and keep the 
 meaning of the sentence intact!


Let's see...

Mankind sure sucks. Is that what we need to tell people? I mean I've 
went to quite some bad bananas, and my compiler never broke.

Nope. Doesn't work.


 Andrei
Apr 06 2009
parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
grauzone wrote:

 Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 grauzone wrote:

 Jarrett Billingsley wrote:

 On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 4:41 PM, Saaa <empty needmail.com> wrote:

 Except this has actually happened to me, modulo a couple details.
 Three or four times.
 You should install noscript or maybe better: sandboxie


 /facepalm, I'm not talking about getting viruses, I'm talking about
 dealing with morons who don't realize that going to bad sites make
 their computer break.


 Mankind sure sucks. Is that what we need to tell people? I mean I've 
 went to quite some bad sites, and my computer never broke.


 You can replace "sites" and "computer" with different words and keep 
 the meaning of the sentence intact!


 
 Let's see...
 
 Mankind sure sucks. Is that what we need to tell people? I mean I've 
 went to quite some bad bananas, and my compiler never broke.
 
 Nope. Doesn't work.
 

 Andrei




I meant it in the wake of the comment about prostitutes and STDs.

Andrei
Apr 06 2009
parent grauzone <none example.net> writes:
Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 grauzone wrote:

 Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 grauzone wrote:

 Jarrett Billingsley wrote:

 On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 4:41 PM, Saaa <empty needmail.com> wrote:

 Except this has actually happened to me, modulo a couple details.
 Three or four times.
 You should install noscript or maybe better: sandboxie


 /facepalm, I'm not talking about getting viruses, I'm talking about
 dealing with morons who don't realize that going to bad sites make
 their computer break.


 Mankind sure sucks. Is that what we need to tell people? I mean I've 
 went to quite some bad sites, and my computer never broke.


 You can replace "sites" and "computer" with different words and keep 
 the meaning of the sentence intact!


 Let's see...

 Mankind sure sucks. Is that what we need to tell people? I mean I've 
 went to quite some bad bananas, and my compiler never broke.

 Nope. Doesn't work.


 Andrei




 
 I meant it in the wake of the comment about prostitutes and STDs.


<insert witty response>

But seriously, computers ought to be secure.


 Andrei
Apr 06 2009
prev sibling next sibling parent "Saaa" <empty needmail.com> writes:
 Except this has actually happened to me, modulo a couple details.
 Three or four times.
 You should install noscript or maybe better: sandboxie


 /facepalm, I'm not talking about getting viruses, I'm talking about
 dealing with morons who don't realize that going to bad sites make
 their computer break.


Sorry, that wasn't obvious.
But going to sites shouldn't be a problem, being a moron when you get there 
might.
Apr 06 2009
prev sibling parent Christopher Wright <dhasenan gmail.com> writes:
Jarrett Billingsley wrote:

 On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 4:41 PM, Saaa <empty needmail.com> wrote:

 Except this has actually happened to me, modulo a couple details.
 Three or four times.
 You should install noscript or maybe better: sandboxie


 
 /facepalm, I'm not talking about getting viruses, I'm talking about
 dealing with morons who don't realize that going to bad sites make
 their computer break.


That's sufficient reason, I think, to use Unix: you can claim that you 
don't know enough about Windows to help these people.
Apr 06 2009
prev sibling parent reply Sean Kelly <sean invisibleduck.org> writes:
== Quote from Andrei Alexandrescu (SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org)'s article

 Jarrett Billingsley wrote:

 On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 3:31 PM, dsimcha <dsimcha yahoo.com> wrote:

 Yeah, I've always wondered why some people put so much emphasis on the 10% of
 computer security that's highly technical in nature when 90% of the problem of
 computer security is between the keyboard and the chair.


 ComputerIlliterateFriend: Hey Jarrett, can you come over and fix my computer?
 Jarrett: What's it doing?
 CIF: It's popping up all sorts of dialog boxes telling me I need to
 get Spyware Aweseom Remover and stuff, and it's running really slow,
 and my files keep disappearing.
 Jarrett: And where have you been on the internet?
 CIF: Oh you know, normal sites.
 Jarrett: Like?
 CIF: Porn, more porn, horse porn, warez.  I also used Limewire to
 download *every song and program ever made*, and I make it a habit to
 click on interesting-looking [read: violently-flashing] ads.
 Jarrett: ...
 CIF: What?  Did I do something wrong?

 Seriously.  It's like sleeping with every prostitute on the East Coast
 and acting surprised when you have seventeen STDs.


 I think this is a large exaggeration. People of all walks of life are
 exposed to dangers when using a Windows machine.


I followed a link in Firefox on Windows not too long ago, and the simple
act of doing so installed a trojan on my computer.  I was unable to get rid
of it manually so I downloaded a trial copy of Norton AntiVirus and in the
process of trying to get rid of the trojan, NAV killed my PC... completely.
I was still able to boot it, but login was impossible, as was every attempt
to rebuild from the recovery console.  Fortunately, I had network shares
for most of my important data and I siphoned it all onto a Mac.  My
Windows machine is now used exclusively for playing games.  I have no
intention of ever using Windows for anything else again.  Games are
the only thing the other OSes lack compared to Windows anyway.


 Whenever the endless debate of windows vs. linux vs. mac comes up, I
 repeat my comment: if you are a programmer, you better acquire some
 experience in each. For Windows/Mac it's not as easy because they may
 cost money, but now with virtual machines, good distributions etc. I
 think there is no excuse for a programmer to not seriously looking into
 Unix.


I desperately wish my computer-illiterate family members would move
off of Windows as well, since it would eliminate basically every tech-
support call I field from them.  Perhaps I've simply had good luck with
other OSes, but Windows is the only one I've had regular problems with.

As for programming specifically... I made a deliberate shift away from
Windows years ago because it's a nightmare to develop for (aside from
Visual Studio, which is a great debugging environment).  Best move I
ever made.
Apr 06 2009
next sibling parent "Saaa" <empty needmail.com> writes:
 I desperately wish my computer-illiterate family members would move
 off of Windows as well, since it would eliminate basically every tech-
 support call I field from them.  Perhaps I've simply had good luck with
 other OSes, but Windows is the only one I've had regular problems with.


Maybe as I get the exact opposite. 'How do I install skype/graphics 
drivers/Office .. in ubuntu etc.'
I'd wish I switched years ago and had the years of experience with linux.
But then again, I develop games ;)
Apr 06 2009
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
Sean Kelly wrote:

 As for programming specifically... I made a deliberate shift away from
 Windows years ago because it's a nightmare to develop for (aside from
 Visual Studio, which is a great debugging environment).  Best move I
 ever made.


Yah, I too remember my Windows-only days the way I'd remember a 
temporary disability. (I recall to this day: any little thing I wanted 
to do, I'd start off a wizard in Dev Studio. It was kind of a surprise 
for me to find out that all those programs had been written, along with 
plenty more.) Being a user is one thing, but I think a programmer who 
only does Windows is seriously impaired.

Andrei
Apr 06 2009
parent reply "Saaa" <empty needmail.com> writes:
 Yah, I too remember my Windows-only days the way I'd remember a temporary 
 disability. (I recall to this day: any little thing I wanted to do, I'd 
 start off a wizard in Dev Studio. It was kind of a surprise for me to find 
 out that all those programs had been written, along with plenty more.) 
 Being a user is one thing, but I think a programmer who only does Windows 
 is seriously impaired.

 Andrei


Could you please convince me to add a Linux install again.
I'd rather use open source than a commercial os, but until now I don't know 
what I am missing.
Apr 06 2009
next sibling parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
Saaa wrote:

 Yah, I too remember my Windows-only days the way I'd remember a temporary 
 disability. (I recall to this day: any little thing I wanted to do, I'd 
 start off a wizard in Dev Studio. It was kind of a surprise for me to find 
 out that all those programs had been written, along with plenty more.) 
 Being a user is one thing, but I think a programmer who only does Windows 
 is seriously impaired.

 Andrei


 
 Could you please convince me to add a Linux install again.
 I'd rather use open source than a commercial os, but until now I don't know 
 what I am missing. 


It's not my place to tackle this kind of challenge. Plenty of essays, 
articles, and entire books have been written about the subject of OS 
culture and such. Unfortunately, I noticed that that kind of preaching 
mostly works for the choir and does little to budge anyone in any 
direction. Said literature reinforces what those in the know already 
understand, and leaves most others nonplussed. It's a complex phenomenon.

If I were to quickly give the most significant bit of my opinion, that 
would be this: Unix is for programmers and Windows is for end users. As 
such, even though both ultimately accomplish the task of putting a 
computer's resources at your disposal, their foci are different. You're 
a programmer. So the notion that there is an operating system catering 
to your needs may warrant a closer look.

Also - for me at least, learning Unix as an occasional activity (e.g. 
cygwin, the occasional ssh, trying a couple of things) has had very 
little value. Didn't work for me in the least. I remember how I 
installed cygwin for the first time and started it. It was very exciting 
- I could try Unix in a sandbox! So I started cygwin.bat and there it 
was - one black window with a "% " prompt. I knew only ls and pwd, so I 
ran those, and then closed the box. Unix wasn't telling me anything. I 
had to complete a sizable task before I felt I'd started to get the point.


Andrei
Apr 06 2009
next sibling parent reply "Saaa" <empty needmail.com> writes:
 Also - for me at least, learning Unix as an occasional activity (e.g. 
 cygwin, the occasional ssh, trying a couple of things) has had very little 
 value. Didn't work for me in the least. I remember how I installed cygwin 
 for the first time and started it. It was very exciting - I could try Unix 
 in a sandbox! So I started cygwin.bat and there it was - one black window 
 with a "% " prompt. I knew only ls and pwd, so I ran those, and then 
 closed the box. Unix wasn't telling me anything.


I did exactly that :D


 I had to complete a sizable task before I felt I'd started to get the 
 point.


If I were to switch right now it would take me a few days to install all the 
programs.
Most programs I use are open source anyways, so that wouldn't be a problem.
Even my old Photoshop is gold or so in wine.
But then I would just have a slightly crippled windows box
(less games, cs4 and office are garbage on ubuntu).
When would I start using things that aren't on windows?
Apr 06 2009
parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
Saaa wrote:

 Also - for me at least, learning Unix as an occasional activity (e.g. 
 cygwin, the occasional ssh, trying a couple of things) has had very little 
 value. Didn't work for me in the least. I remember how I installed cygwin 
 for the first time and started it. It was very exciting - I could try Unix 
 in a sandbox! So I started cygwin.bat and there it was - one black window 
 with a "% " prompt. I knew only ls and pwd, so I ran those, and then 
 closed the box. Unix wasn't telling me anything.


 I did exactly that :D
 

 I had to complete a sizable task before I felt I'd started to get the 
 point.


 
 If I were to switch right now it would take me a few days to install all the 
 programs.
 Most programs I use are open source anyways, so that wouldn't be a problem.
 Even my old Photoshop is gold or so in wine.
 But then I would just have a slightly crippled windows box
 (less games, cs4 and office are garbage on ubuntu).
 When would I start using things that aren't on windows?


When you'd be writing computer programs.

Andrei
Apr 06 2009
parent reply "Saaa" <empty needmail.com> writes:
 When you'd be writing computer programs.


But that would go like this: install eclipse, check how to compile under 
Linux and start programming.
Apr 06 2009
parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
Saaa wrote:

 When you'd be writing computer programs.


 
 But that would go like this: install eclipse, check how to compile under 
 Linux and start programming. 


Nope :o). When you'll figure why not, that's where the fun starts. I'm 
sure you know about the phenomenon "writing Fortran in C" etc. 
Installing eclipse and starting programming as you would under windows 
would be a moral equivalent. (Not that I would advise against using 
eclipse, which I also like.)

Andrei
Apr 06 2009
parent reply "Saaa" <empty needmail.com> writes:
"Andrei Alexandrescu" <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote in message 
news:grduhp$1rk0$1 digitalmars.com...

 Saaa wrote:

 When you'd be writing computer programs.


 But that would go like this: install eclipse, check how to compile under 
 Linux and start programming.


 Nope :o). When you'll figure why not, that's where the fun starts. I'm 
 sure you know about the phenomenon "writing Fortran in C" etc. Installing 
 eclipse and starting programming as you would under windows would be a 
 moral equivalent. (Not that I would advise against using eclipse, which I 
 also like.)

 Andrei


Then, how should I start, or: where do I learn how I should start? :D
Apr 06 2009
next sibling parent reply Jason House <jason.james.house gmail.com> writes:
Saaa Wrote:


 
 "Andrei Alexandrescu" <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote in message 
 news:grduhp$1rk0$1 digitalmars.com...

 Saaa wrote:

 When you'd be writing computer programs.


 But that would go like this: install eclipse, check how to compile under 
 Linux and start programming.


 Nope :o). When you'll figure why not, that's where the fun starts. I'm 
 sure you know about the phenomenon "writing Fortran in C" etc. Installing 
 eclipse and starting programming as you would under windows would be a 
 moral equivalent. (Not that I would advise against using eclipse, which I 
 also like.)

 Andrei


 
 Then, how should I start, or: where do I learn how I should start? :D 
 
 


That's a really tough question. To use unix effectively requires relearning a
lot of things. You have to relearn how to do little things, usually without a
mouse, and then start putting it all together. 
For example, as an emacs user, I can easilly program for an hour without
touching my mouse. 

The problem with GUI interfaces is that common things are easy and uncommon
things are impossible.  One unix tool you will use over and over again is grep.
As a commandline utility, it can be combined with other stuff such as ls, sort,
grep, sed, awk, etc... I don't know if I'd start there though...
Apr 06 2009
next sibling parent dsimcha <dsimcha yahoo.com> writes:
== Quote from Jason House (jason.james.house gmail.com)'s article

 The problem with GUI interfaces is that common things are easy and uncommon


things are impossible.  One unix tool you will use over and over again is grep.
As
a commandline utility, it can be combined with other stuff such as ls, sort,
grep,
sed, awk, etc... I don't know if I'd start there though...

Yes, but often the command line tool has so many switches and tries to be so
general and is such a PITA to use that it may as well be its own little
programming language.  (See inner platform effect.)  At that point, for anything
non-trivial (i.e. far beyond the default use of said tool), I'd rather just
write
a small, quick and dirty program in a general-purpose programming language and
standard library that I already know than learn the intricacies of these command
line tools.
Apr 06 2009
prev sibling parent reply Jussi Jumppanen <jussij zeusedit.com> writes:
Jason House Wrote:


 For example, as an emacs user, I can easilly program for an hour 
 without touching my mouse. 


I would say 'not using the mouse' is clear sign the programmer is
coding using a programmer's editor and not a modern day IDE. 

I would also say many Windows programmers are completely lost 
without their IDE, and this can makes them less productive as a 
developer.

They could make themselves better programmers by overcoming their 
addiction to the IDE.

  http://www.charlespetzold.com/etc/DoesVisualStudioRotTheMind.html

But programming on Windows without a mouse driven, language specific 
IDE, using nothing but the command line and a good editor is possible 
and really quite easy to do.


 As a commandline utility, it can be combined with other stuff such 
 as ls, sort, grep, sed, awk, etc... I don't know if I'd start there 
 though...


Replace ls with dir, download the Win32 version of grep, sed, awk 
and you can run all those tools just fine from the Windows command 
line, or from within any decent editor.

You don't have to go to Unix to find the command line.
Apr 06 2009
next sibling parent "Denis Koroskin" <2korden gmail.com> writes:
On Tue, 07 Apr 2009 04:19:40 +0400, Jussi Jumppanen <jussij zeusedit.com> wrote:


 Jason House Wrote:


 For example, as an emacs user, I can easilly program for an hour
 without touching my mouse.


 I would say 'not using the mouse' is clear sign the programmer is
 coding using a programmer's editor and not a modern day IDE.

 I would also say many Windows programmers are completely lost
 without their IDE, and this can makes them less productive as a
 developer.

 They could make themselves better programmers by overcoming their
 addiction to the IDE.

   http://www.charlespetzold.com/etc/DoesVisualStudioRotTheMind.html

 But programming on Windows without a mouse driven, language specific
 IDE, using nothing but the command line and a good editor is possible
 and really quite easy to do.


 As a commandline utility, it can be combined with other stuff such
 as ls, sort, grep, sed, awk, etc... I don't know if I'd start there
 though...


 Replace ls with dir, download the Win32 version of grep, sed, awk
 and you can run all those tools just fine from the Windows command
 line, or from within any decent editor.

 You don't have to go to Unix to find the command line.


IDE has nothing to do with mouse. I am programming with both Visual Studio 2008
and Notepad++ (50/50) and almost never use a mouse.
Visual Studio is nothing, it's Visual Assist that boosts my performance. I use
it very extensively, and all of its functionality is short-cut'ed.
Apr 06 2009
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
Jussi Jumppanen wrote:

 Jason House Wrote:
 

 For example, as an emacs user, I can easilly program for an hour 
 without touching my mouse. 


 
 I would say 'not using the mouse' is clear sign the programmer is
 coding using a programmer's editor and not a modern day IDE. 
 
 I would also say many Windows programmers are completely lost 
 without their IDE, and this can makes them less productive as a 
 developer.
 
 They could make themselves better programmers by overcoming their 
 addiction to the IDE.
 
   http://www.charlespetzold.com/etc/DoesVisualStudioRotTheMind.html
 
 But programming on Windows without a mouse driven, language specific 
 IDE, using nothing but the command line and a good editor is possible 
 and really quite easy to do.


 As a commandline utility, it can be combined with other stuff such 
 as ls, sort, grep, sed, awk, etc... I don't know if I'd start there 
 though...


 
 Replace ls with dir, download the Win32 version of grep, sed, awk 
 and you can run all those tools just fine from the Windows command 
 line, or from within any decent editor.
 
 You don't have to go to Unix to find the command line.
 


But all else is lacking, starting with a good shell. I guess it's 
possible with cygwin et al, but then it feels a bit artificial and 
second-hand.

Andrei
Apr 06 2009
parent reply "Denis Koroskin" <2korden gmail.com> writes:
On Tue, 07 Apr 2009 04:41:39 +0400, Andrei Alexandrescu
<SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote:


 Jussi Jumppanen wrote:

 Jason House Wrote:


 For example, as an emacs user, I can easilly program for an hour  
 without touching my mouse.


  I would say 'not using the mouse' is clear sign the programmer is
 coding using a programmer's editor and not a modern day IDE.  I would  
 also say many Windows programmers are completely lost without their  
 IDE, and this can makes them less productive as a developer.
  They could make themselves better programmers by overcoming their  
 addiction to the IDE.
    http://www.charlespetzold.com/etc/DoesVisualStudioRotTheMind.html
  But programming on Windows without a mouse driven, language specific  
 IDE, using nothing but the command line and a good editor is possible  
 and really quite easy to do.


  >

 As a commandline utility, it can be combined with other stuff such as  
 ls, sort, grep, sed, awk, etc... I don't know if I'd start there  
 though...


  Replace ls with dir, download the Win32 version of grep, sed, awk and  
 you can run all those tools just fine from the Windows command line, or  
 from within any decent editor.
  You don't have to go to Unix to find the command line.


 But all else is lacking, starting with a good shell. I guess it's  
 possible with cygwin et al, but then it feels a bit artificial and  
 second-hand.

 Andrei


There is FAR, which is an amazing tool. Properly configured, it can do
everything you will ever need. An it's Open-Source, too!
Apr 06 2009
next sibling parent reply Bill Baxter <wbaxter gmail.com> writes:
On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 9:47 AM, Denis Koroskin <2korden gmail.com> wrote:

 On Tue, 07 Apr 2009 04:41:39 +0400, Andrei Alexandrescu
 <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote:


 Jussi Jumppanen wrote:

 Jason House Wrote:


 For example, as an emacs user, I can easilly program for an hour witho=








ut

 touching my mouse.


 =A0I would say 'not using the mouse' is clear sign the programmer is
 coding using a programmer's editor and not a modern day IDE. =A0I would
 also say many Windows programmers are completely lost without their IDE=






, and

 this can makes them less productive as a developer.
 =A0They could make themselves better programmers by overcoming their
 addiction to the IDE.
 =A0 http://www.charlespetzold.com/etc/DoesVisualStudioRotTheMind.html
 =A0But programming on Windows without a mouse driven, language specific
 IDE, using nothing but the command line and a good editor is possible a=






nd

 really quite easy to do.


 =A0>

 As a commandline utility, it can be combined with other stuff such as
 ls, sort, grep, sed, awk, etc... I don't know if I'd start there thoug=








h...

 =A0Replace ls with dir, download the Win32 version of grep, sed, awk an=






d

 you can run all those tools just fine from the Windows command line, or=






 from

 within any decent editor.
 =A0You don't have to go to Unix to find the command line.


 But all else is lacking, starting with a good shell. I guess it's possib=




le

 with cygwin et al, but then it feels a bit artificial and second-hand.

 Andrei


 There is FAR, which is an amazing tool. Properly configured, it can do
 everything you will ever need. An it's Open-Source, too!


Link?  Google gave me this: http://www.helpware.net/FAR/  which
doesn't seem to be what you are talking about.

--bb
Apr 06 2009
parent Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
Bill Baxter wrote:

 Link?  Google gave me this: http://www.helpware.net/FAR/  which
 doesn't seem to be what you are talking about.


http://www.farmanager.com/

Andrei
Apr 06 2009
prev sibling parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
Denis Koroskin wrote:

 On Tue, 07 Apr 2009 04:41:39 +0400, Andrei Alexandrescu 
 <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote:
 

 Jussi Jumppanen wrote:

 Jason House Wrote:


 For example, as an emacs user, I can easilly program for an hour 
 without touching my mouse.


  I would say 'not using the mouse' is clear sign the programmer is
 coding using a programmer's editor and not a modern day IDE.  I would 
 also say many Windows programmers are completely lost without their 
 IDE, and this can makes them less productive as a developer.
  They could make themselves better programmers by overcoming their 
 addiction to the IDE.
    http://www.charlespetzold.com/etc/DoesVisualStudioRotTheMind.html
  But programming on Windows without a mouse driven, language specific 
 IDE, using nothing but the command line and a good editor is possible 
 and really quite easy to do.


  >

 As a commandline utility, it can be combined with other stuff such 
 as ls, sort, grep, sed, awk, etc... I don't know if I'd start there 
 though...


  Replace ls with dir, download the Win32 version of grep, sed, awk 
 and you can run all those tools just fine from the Windows command 
 line, or from within any decent editor.
  You don't have to go to Unix to find the command line.


 But all else is lacking, starting with a good shell. I guess it's 
 possible with cygwin et al, but then it feels a bit artificial and 
 second-hand.

 Andrei


 
 There is FAR, which is an amazing tool. Properly configured, it can do 
 everything you will ever need. An it's Open-Source, too!
 


I remember having used FAR back in the day... it was fun. But then I 
feel there's a disconnect somewhere in the dialog. Will, for example, 
FAR take a text file, create a dictionary with its words, assign a 
unique number to each word in decreasing order of frequency, and output 
a file with each word replaced with its number?


Andrei
Apr 06 2009
parent "Denis Koroskin" <2korden gmail.com> writes:
On Tue, 07 Apr 2009 04:55:43 +0400, Andrei Alexandrescu
<SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote:


 Denis Koroskin wrote:

 On Tue, 07 Apr 2009 04:41:39 +0400, Andrei Alexandrescu  
 <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote:


 Jussi Jumppanen wrote:

 Jason House Wrote:


 For example, as an emacs user, I can easilly program for an hour  
 without touching my mouse.


  I would say 'not using the mouse' is clear sign the programmer is
 coding using a programmer's editor and not a modern day IDE.  I would  
 also say many Windows programmers are completely lost without their  
 IDE, and this can makes them less productive as a developer.
  They could make themselves better programmers by overcoming their  
 addiction to the IDE.
    http://www.charlespetzold.com/etc/DoesVisualStudioRotTheMind.html
  But programming on Windows without a mouse driven, language specific  
 IDE, using nothing but the command line and a good editor is possible  
 and really quite easy to do.


  >

 As a commandline utility, it can be combined with other stuff such  
 as ls, sort, grep, sed, awk, etc... I don't know if I'd start there  
 though...


  Replace ls with dir, download the Win32 version of grep, sed, awk  
 and you can run all those tools just fine from the Windows command  
 line, or from within any decent editor.
  You don't have to go to Unix to find the command line.


 But all else is lacking, starting with a good shell. I guess it's  
 possible with cygwin et al, but then it feels a bit artificial and  
 second-hand.

 Andrei


  There is FAR, which is an amazing tool. Properly configured, it can do  
 everything you will ever need. An it's Open-Source, too!


 I remember having used FAR back in the day... it was fun. But then I  
 feel there's a disconnect somewhere in the dialog. Will, for example,  
 FAR take a text file, create a dictionary with its words, assign a  
 unique number to each word in decreasing order of frequency, and output  
 a file with each word replaced with its number?


 Andrei


Yes, given a cygwin installed and present in PATH. You can use your favorite
unix tools then.
Apr 06 2009
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Jason House <jason.james.house gmail.com> writes:
Jussi Jumppanen wrote:


 Jason House Wrote:
 

 For example, as an emacs user, I can easilly program for an hour
 without touching my mouse.


 
 I would say 'not using the mouse' is clear sign the programmer is
 coding using a programmer's editor and not a modern day IDE.


That's true, but that really wasn't the point...  I was more trying to make 
a point about how different some things can be.


 I would also say many Windows programmers are completely lost
 without their IDE, and this can makes them less productive as a
 developer.


As Andrei said, it's likely to take a lot of use to get back to prior 
productivity levels... It takes a lot of work to shift to unix and be 
comfortable. I'm not really sure what makes Andrei think unix is so much 
better for productivity :)  Maybe it's something along the lines of learning 
a new programming language in order to expand your programming skill set...


 They could make themselves better programmers by overcoming their
 addiction to the IDE.
 
   http://www.charlespetzold.com/etc/DoesVisualStudioRotTheMind.html
 
 But programming on Windows without a mouse driven, language specific
 IDE, using nothing but the command line and a good editor is possible
 and really quite easy to do.
 

 As a commandline utility, it can be combined with other stuff such
 as ls, sort, grep, sed, awk, etc... I don't know if I'd start there
 though...


 
 Replace ls with dir, download the Win32 version of grep, sed, awk
 and you can run all those tools just fine from the Windows command
 line, or from within any decent editor.
 
 You don't have to go to Unix to find the command line.


When on windows, that's exactly what I do.  After having used them enough, I 
can't live without them.  It's a real shame that my current job tries to 
provide a unified framework and completely destroyed all utility of the 
command line.  I'm not allowed to download cygwin.  ugh...
Apr 06 2009
parent superdan <super dan.org> writes:
http://artlung.com/smorgasborg/C_R_Y_P_T_O_N_O_M_I_C_O_N.shtml

oldie but goldie. 

my take. cygwin on windoze == fuckin' with two condoms.
Apr 06 2009
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Christopher Wright <dhasenan gmail.com> writes:
Jussi Jumppanen wrote:

 Replace ls with dir, download the Win32 version of grep, sed, awk 
 and you can run all those tools just fine from the Windows command 
 line, or from within any decent editor.
 
 You don't have to go to Unix to find the command line.


The Windows terminal emulator sucks. This is not subject to debate. I 
have never seen a terminal emulator that is worse, and I have never seen 
one that was only slightly better.

There is little incentive in Windows to make commandline utilities. If 
you are using the command line to a significant degree in Windows, you 
are either going to use [possibly incomplete] ports of Unix utilities or 
Cygwin.

If you go through the trouble of finding each of these utilities 
individually, whether ports or written specifically for Windows, you are 
wasting time on a solved problem. A default install of Cygwin or any 
Unix will include these utilities.

Cygwin qualifies as Unix, but it has not been a painless, seamless 
experience for me. It's far easier for me to work under Linux than with 
Cygwin.

If you need to use the command line, you really should use Unix, if it's 
reasonable. The Windows filesystem structure is a source of pain, and 
it's hard to work around. It's hard to get information about interacting 
with the OS from the command line. Windows and Cygwin just isn't that 
great a fit.
Apr 06 2009
next sibling parent reply "Adam D. Ruppe" <destructionator gmail.com> writes:
On Mon, Apr 06, 2009 at 10:29:57PM -0400, Christopher Wright wrote:

 The Windows terminal emulator sucks. This is not subject to debate.


What terminal emulator?

This might be a bit of a nitpick, but Windows doesn't try to emulate a
terminal (not in the OS anyway; there are hundreds of third party programs
to do such) and it is better off for it.

Unix hurls chunks for the actual terminal system. The programs are pretty
decent, but the terminal itself - TERRIBLE.

Tried to write an interactive program that makes full use of the keyboard
and mouse? You can't get the shift key's state. It is a whole todo just
to get the arrow keys. You can't depend on the escape key. You can't
output data and expect it to be reliable (you have to depend on an environment
variable to figure out what you're writing to and it often isn't accurate!)

It gets worse as a user.

Have you ever pressed delete and just got a ~? Pressed home and got a ~[B
(or whatever the hell it is)? Tried to use a program with color after
changing the background color of your window? Resized a window and had
your text cut off? Go up through your history and get corrupted lines?


The Unix terminal system is barely usable - NOT something anyone should ever
try to emulate.

The Windows console, on the other hand, is a lot better, though still has its
warts. At least it is predictable though.

-- 
Adam D. Ruppe
http://arsdnet.net
Apr 06 2009
next sibling parent Christopher Wright <dhasenan gmail.com> writes:
Adam D. Ruppe wrote:

 On Mon, Apr 06, 2009 at 10:29:57PM -0400, Christopher Wright wrote:

 The Windows terminal emulator sucks. This is not subject to debate.


 
 What terminal emulator?
 
 This might be a bit of a nitpick, but Windows doesn't try to emulate a
 terminal (not in the OS anyway; there are hundreds of third party programs
 to do such) and it is better off for it.


Yes, that is a nitpick. By "terminal emulator" I mean the GUI program 
housing the command interpreter.


 Have you ever pressed delete and just got a ~? Pressed home and got a ~[B
 (or whatever the hell it is)? 


The defaults are set up so that you don't get this issue. The exception 
is when you are logging in on a virtual terminal -- you don't have a 
shell yet. Fixing this on the rare occasions that it happened (which 
pretty much only involved using cygwin) was quick and straightforward.


 Tried to use a program with color after
 changing the background color of your window? 


First, very few programs use color. Second, it's rare to change the 
background color of your window. Third, it's always worked perfectly for 
me on the rare occasions in which I have done so.


 Resized a window and had
 your text cut off?


No.


 Go up through your history and get corrupted lines?


No.


 The Unix terminal system is barely usable - NOT something anyone should ever
 try to emulate.
 
 The Windows console, on the other hand, is a lot better, though still has its
 warts. At least it is predictable though.


Just speaking of the GUI, there's no competition. Windows sucks.
Apr 06 2009
prev sibling parent =?UTF-8?B?QWxleGFuZGVyIFDDoW5law==?= writes:
Adam D. Ruppe wrote:

 On Mon, Apr 06, 2009 at 10:29:57PM -0400, Christopher Wright wrote:

 The Windows terminal emulator sucks. This is not subject to debate.


 
 What terminal emulator?
 
 This might be a bit of a nitpick, but Windows doesn't try to emulate a
 terminal (not in the OS anyway; there are hundreds of third party programs
 to do such) and it is better off for it.
 
 Unix hurls chunks for the actual terminal system. The programs are pretty
 decent, but the terminal itself - TERRIBLE.
 
 Tried to write an interactive program that makes full use of the keyboard
 and mouse? You can't get the shift key's state. It is a whole todo just
 to get the arrow keys. You can't depend on the escape key. You can't
 output data and expect it to be reliable (you have to depend on an environment
 variable to figure out what you're writing to and it often isn't accurate!)
 
 It gets worse as a user.
 
 Have you ever pressed delete and just got a ~? Pressed home and got a ~[B
 (or whatever the hell it is)? Tried to use a program with color after
 changing the background color of your window? Resized a window and had
 your text cut off? Go up through your history and get corrupted lines?
 
 
 The Unix terminal system is barely usable - NOT something anyone should ever
 try to emulate.
 
 The Windows console, on the other hand, is a lot better, though still has its
 warts. At least it is predictable though.


I am sincerely puzzled. Do you know vim? It's a console program. It 
sports all of what you're describing as impossible (ncurses says hi!).

Have you ever tried to resize your cmd.exe window on Windows? It's funny 
since you can only really resize its height with the mouse. Have you 
ever tried to copy & paste multiple lines *not* as x*y block of 
characters including whitespace (aka hardcopy), but as multiple lines of 
text as you would expect it, even though a few might be wrapped? Good 
luck on that. Tried pasting? Tried... using a proper editor inside 
cmd.exe? Screen? dvtm? An IRC client? A mail client? Proper tab 
completion of segments of your argument, not the whole argument?

cmd.exe is a severe pain in the ass compared to ANY terminal emulator 
you would find on any Unix. Even xterm on any Linux or Terminal on OS X 
work way better.

Kind regards, Alex

P.S.: No offense intended, I'm just really puzzled. Srsly.
Apr 07 2009
prev sibling next sibling parent Rainer Deyke <rainerd eldwood.com> writes:
Christopher Wright wrote:

 If you need to use the command line, you really should use Unix, if it's
 reasonable. The Windows filesystem structure is a source of pain, and
 it's hard to work around. It's hard to get information about interacting
 with the OS from the command line. Windows and Cygwin just isn't that
 great a fit.


I have both Linux and OS X readily available, but I still end up using
the Windows command line (without cygwin) most of the time.  I won't
deny that the Unix-like systems have some nice utilities, but in my
day-to-day activities, cmd.exe, Python, and my collection of custom
utilities are all I need.


-- 
Rainer Deyke - rainerd eldwood.com
Apr 06 2009
prev sibling parent reply Yigal Chripun <yigal100 gmail.com> writes:
On 07/04/2009 05:29, Christopher Wright wrote:

 Jussi Jumppanen wrote:

 Replace ls with dir, download the Win32 version of grep, sed, awk and
 you can run all those tools just fine from the Windows command line,
 or from within any decent editor.

 You don't have to go to Unix to find the command line.


 The Windows terminal emulator sucks. This is not subject to debate. I
 have never seen a terminal emulator that is worse, and I have never seen
 one that was only slightly better.

 There is little incentive in Windows to make commandline utilities. If
 you are using the command line to a significant degree in Windows, you
 are either going to use [possibly incomplete] ports of Unix utilities or
 Cygwin.

 If you go through the trouble of finding each of these utilities
 individually, whether ports or written specifically for Windows, you are
 wasting time on a solved problem. A default install of Cygwin or any
 Unix will include these utilities.

 Cygwin qualifies as Unix, but it has not been a painless, seamless
 experience for me. It's far easier for me to work under Linux than with
 Cygwin.

 If you need to use the command line, you really should use Unix, if it's
 reasonable. The Windows filesystem structure is a source of pain, and
 it's hard to work around. It's hard to get information about interacting
 with the OS from the command line. Windows and Cygwin just isn't that
 great a fit.


ever heard of powershell? it is in fact a superior design for a shell 
compared to most unix shells.

also, have you ever heard of rush? http://rush.heroku.com/
Apr 07 2009
next sibling parent reply Christopher Wright <dhasenan gmail.com> writes:
Yigal Chripun wrote:

 ever heard of powershell? it is in fact a superior design for a shell 
 compared to most unix shells.


I have tried it briefly. Too briefly to give a good analysis of it.

The GUI is better than that of cmd.exe, but not anywhere near as good 
as, say, GNOME Terminal. (It's still fixed width, as I recall; just 
wider by default.)

Another issue is integrating it with existing utilities.


 also, have you ever heard of rush? http://rush.heroku.com/


It's an interesting concept. I think I'll try it out. But it has nothing 
to do with GUIs for housing shells.
Apr 07 2009
next sibling parent reply Jussi Jumppanen <jussij zeusedit.com> writes:
Christopher Wright Wrote:


 The GUI is better than that of cmd.exe, but not anywhere near 
 as good as, say, GNOME Terminal. (It's still fixed width, as 
 I recall; just wider by default.)


The cmd.exe terminal window can be resized.

With the cmd.exe window visible click on the icon in the top 
left corner and bring up the Properties window.

Select the Layout panel and change the terminal size to what 
ever width/height combination required and save the changes 
against the title of the console window.

From then on all new console windows with that title will take 
on those attributes.

On a new machine this is usually on of the first things I do, 
since the default properties are pretty poor.
Apr 07 2009
parent Jesse Phillips <jessekphillips gmail.com> writes:
On Tue, 07 Apr 2009 22:39:03 -0400, Jussi Jumppanen wrote:


 Christopher Wright Wrote:
 

 The GUI is better than that of cmd.exe, but not anywhere near as good
 as, say, GNOME Terminal. (It's still fixed width, as I recall; just
 wider by default.)


 
 The cmd.exe terminal window can be resized.
 
 With the cmd.exe window visible click on the icon in the top left corner
 and bring up the Properties window.
 
 Select the Layout panel and change the terminal size to what ever
 width/height combination required and save the changes against the title
 of the console window.
 
 From then on all new console windows with that title will take on those
 attributes.
 
 On a new machine this is usually on of the first things I do, since the
 default properties are pretty poor.


In his previous post he specifically talked about resizing with the 
mouse, which I believe was to carry over into the last one. In any case, 
going to the settings to resize the window is troubling if it is 
something commonly done. (may not be for you, but others do)
Apr 07 2009
prev sibling parent reply Yigal Chripun <yigal100 gmail.com> writes:
On 08/04/2009 02:48, Christopher Wright wrote:

 Yigal Chripun wrote:

 ever heard of powershell? it is in fact a superior design for a shell
 compared to most unix shells.


 I have tried it briefly. Too briefly to give a good analysis of it.

 The GUI is better than that of cmd.exe, but not anywhere near as good
 as, say, GNOME Terminal. (It's still fixed width, as I recall; just
 wider by default.)

 Another issue is integrating it with existing utilities.


 also, have you ever heard of rush? http://rush.heroku.com/


 It's an interesting concept. I think I'll try it out. But it has nothing
 to do with GUIs for housing shells.


both options above are shells not terminals. in fact powershell just 
runs inside a cmd.exe window.
both shells are orders of magnitude better than unix standard shells and 
of course bat files. btw, windows admins use different tools than BAT 
files for scripting windows - based on VB/js up until XP. now the MS 
recommended way is powershell. windows as an infrastructure of WMI 
_objects_ (as opposed to UNIX files) that provide everything you need to 
manage windows with scripting.
Windows has a different design than Unix's "everything is a file" which 
IMO is a stupid legacy design from the 70's. therefore, trying to do the 
unix way on windows with BAT files is simply the wrong way. it doesn't 
work because it is not designed to work like that.
my take on all this, I'm not a huge fan of windows and it sure has its 
own problems, but this specific aspect is done much better than UNIX and 
all those comments about "windows doesn't support unix's "everything is 
a file" design and therefore it's crap" just show a lot of ignorance.

btw, if you want a different _terminal_ for windows, check out console2 
and also the next version of powershell (beta) has a new graphical
Apr 08 2009
parent reply "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:
On Wed, 08 Apr 2009 06:38:53 -0400, Yigal Chripun <yigal100 gmail.com>  
wrote:


 On 08/04/2009 02:48, Christopher Wright wrote:

 Yigal Chripun wrote:

 ever heard of powershell? it is in fact a superior design for a shell
 compared to most unix shells.


 I have tried it briefly. Too briefly to give a good analysis of it.

 The GUI is better than that of cmd.exe, but not anywhere near as good
 as, say, GNOME Terminal. (It's still fixed width, as I recall; just
 wider by default.)

 Another issue is integrating it with existing utilities.


 also, have you ever heard of rush? http://rush.heroku.com/


 It's an interesting concept. I think I'll try it out. But it has nothing
 to do with GUIs for housing shells.


 both options above are shells not terminals. in fact powershell just  
 runs inside a cmd.exe window.
 both shells are orders of magnitude better than unix standard shells and  
 of course bat files. btw, windows admins use different tools than BAT  
 files for scripting windows - based on VB/js up until XP. now the MS  
 recommended way is powershell. windows as an infrastructure of WMI  
 _objects_ (as opposed to UNIX files) that provide everything you need to  
 manage windows with scripting.


My experience with WMI is that it is buggy and very slow, not to mention  
really complicated.  I would hate to rely on it for scripting.  On the  
other hand, having everything as a file allows me to use all existing file  
processing tools to deal with anything on a UNIX system.  The file API is  
simple and doesn't require me to look at an object spec to do simple tasks.


 Windows has a different design than Unix's "everything is a file" which  
 IMO is a stupid legacy design from the 70's.


The old "technology from the 70's" chestnut.  Your opinion varies from 90%  
of people who actually use scripts.  New technology for the sake of being  
new isn't better.


 therefore, trying to do the unix way on windows with BAT files is simply  
 the wrong way. it doesn't work because it is not designed to work like  
 that.
 my take on all this, I'm not a huge fan of windows and it sure has its  
 own problems, but this specific aspect is done much better than UNIX and  
 all those comments about "windows doesn't support unix's "everything is  
 a file" design and therefore it's crap" just show a lot of ignorance.


It's not crap, just not as good.  It's a poor replacement for the  
"Everything is the same" design.  Having everything use the same API has  
huge advantages in modularity.  One of my hugest pet peeves with Windows  
is that it has several different APIs for I/O objects, and ony sockets  
support the select interface.  I have no idea what Windows devs were  
smoking when they decided not to allow select on any object.  Making  
efficient I/O driven apps that use more than just sockets is really  
difficult.

-Steve
Apr 08 2009
next sibling parent reply Yigal Chripun <yigal100 gmail.com> writes:
On 08/04/2009 14:34, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:


 My experience with WMI is that it is buggy and very slow, not to mention
 really complicated. I would hate to rely on it for scripting. On the
 other hand, having everything as a file allows me to use all existing
 file processing tools to deal with anything on a UNIX system. The file
 API is simple and doesn't require me to look at an object spec to do
 simple tasks.


well, WMI is supposed to be replaced and enhanced by powershell. So you 
should check that out.
I agree that a uniform and consistent API is important and I'm sure that 
MS managed to mess that up :) but that's besides the point. "Everything 
is a file" does not provide a uniform API but rather provides no API. 
Each unix tool has its own mini-syntax and its own set of command-line 
arguments and you need to learn how to use each tool separately beyond 
trivial use cases.
At my work, we program in a *nix environment (Solaris) and I also use 
Linux extensively So I know my way on *nix systems but I simply cannot 
remember all the different argument for each util. every time I need to 
find a file I need to ask a co-worker how to use "find". So in my 
experience there's nothing simple and uniform about unix tools and I use 
those constantly at work.

given that both options suck - I'd prefer dealing with objects rather 
than raw files that need to be parsed.
i.e. someDir.list() which returns an array of files is better than using 
ls on unix.


 Windows has a different design than Unix's "everything is a file"
 which IMO is a stupid legacy design from the 70's.


 The old "technology from the 70's" chestnut. Your opinion varies from
 90% of people who actually use scripts. New technology for the sake of
 being new isn't better.


Was Colombus wrong when he said the world is round and 99.9% of people 
told him he's a fool?
My opinion is that there where better OS designs in the _60s_ than what 
we use today. "everything is a file" is a complete failure.

 therefore, trying to do the unix way on windows with BAT files is
 simply the wrong way. it doesn't work because it is not designed to
 work like that.
 my take on all this, I'm not a huge fan of windows and it sure has its
 own problems, but this specific aspect is done much better than UNIX
 and all those comments about "windows doesn't support unix's
 "everything is a file" design and therefore it's crap" just show a lot
 of ignorance.


 It's not crap, just not as good. It's a poor replacement for the
 "Everything is the same" design. Having everything use the same API has
 huge advantages in modularity. One of my hugest pet peeves with Windows
 is that it has several different APIs for I/O objects, and ony sockets
 support the select interface. I have no idea what Windows devs were
 smoking when they decided not to allow select on any object. Making
 efficient I/O driven apps that use more than just sockets is really
 difficult.


see above, MS got the it wrong. are you surprised? I'm not.

 -Steve
Apr 08 2009
next sibling parent reply "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:
On Wed, 08 Apr 2009 08:55:19 -0400, Yigal Chripun <yigal100 gmail.com>  
wrote:


 On 08/04/2009 14:34, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:


 My experience with WMI is that it is buggy and very slow, not to mention
 really complicated. I would hate to rely on it for scripting. On the
 other hand, having everything as a file allows me to use all existing
 file processing tools to deal with anything on a UNIX system. The file
 API is simple and doesn't require me to look at an object spec to do
 simple tasks.


 well, WMI is supposed to be replaced and enhanced by powershell. So you  
 should check that out.
 I agree that a uniform and consistent API is important and I'm sure that  
 MS managed to mess that up :) but that's besides the point. "Everything  
 is a file" does not provide a uniform API but rather provides no API.


Sure it does, open, read, select, etc.  The API is all the same.  So you  
can use standard tools to work with all files, even dynamically generated  
ones.


 Each unix tool has its own mini-syntax and its own set of command-line  
 arguments and you need to learn how to use each tool separately beyond  
 trivial use cases.


how is this different from some powershell set of commands?  I think you  
are confusing the parameters for running tools with the API for system  
objects.

If I don't know how to use a command to do what I want, I first try cmd  
--help, then man cmd if that doesn't show what I need.  I'm sure it's not  
much different than powershell commands.


 At my work, we program in a *nix environment (Solaris) and I also use  
 Linux extensively So I know my way on *nix systems but I simply cannot  
 remember all the different argument for each util. every time I need to  
 find a file I need to ask a co-worker how to use "find". So in my  
 experience there's nothing simple and uniform about unix tools and I use  
 those constantly at work.


Again, you are confusing tool usage with OS object API.  Do you actually  
use powershell?  Do you find that it's objects or tools beam their usage  
directly into your brain or do you have to look up a manual to see how it  
works?  Maybe you don't have to ask your coworkers about powershell  
objects because *nobody uses it*.


 given that both options suck - I'd prefer dealing with objects rather  
 than raw files that need to be parsed.
 i.e. someDir.list() which returns an array of files is better than using  
 ls on unix.


The question is not whether you want to deal with that, it's whether other  
tools deal with that.  Since the interface between tools is well defined  
on unix (file descriptors), all tools can be made to work with eachother.   
If some powershell object expects an array of File objects, but your  
directory tool is outputting an array of strings, you're SOL (this  
probably isn't the case, but I'm sure some more obscure objects suffer  
 from this).  Since most unix tools treat input data as whitespace/newline  
delineated tokens, you only need to deal with rare special cases.  Most of  
the time, they just work together without any effort.


 Windows has a different design than Unix's "everything is a file"
 which IMO is a stupid legacy design from the 70's.


 The old "technology from the 70's" chestnut. Your opinion varies from
 90% of people who actually use scripts. New technology for the sake of
 being new isn't better.


 Was Colombus wrong when he said the world is round and 99.9% of people  
 told him he's a fool?


Sure, but I'm sure he felt like one when he found out America wasn't India  
:)

This is a rediculous point.  You ain't Chris Columbus, and you're not  
saying anything radical here, just ignorant.


 My opinion is that there where better OS designs in the _60s_ than what  
 we use today. "everything is a file" is a complete failure.


Yes, I pity all those poor helpless Unix script writers who can't seem to  
accomplish anything.  "If only things were objects instead of files" I  
always hear them say.  What a load of crap.


 therefore, trying to do the unix way on windows with BAT files is
 simply the wrong way. it doesn't work because it is not designed to
 work like that.
 my take on all this, I'm not a huge fan of windows and it sure has its
 own problems, but this specific aspect is done much better than UNIX
 and all those comments about "windows doesn't support unix's
 "everything is a file" design and therefore it's crap" just show a lot
 of ignorance.


 It's not crap, just not as good. It's a poor replacement for the
 "Everything is the same" design. Having everything use the same API has
 huge advantages in modularity. One of my hugest pet peeves with Windows
 is that it has several different APIs for I/O objects, and ony sockets
 support the select interface. I have no idea what Windows devs were
 smoking when they decided not to allow select on any object. Making
 efficient I/O driven apps that use more than just sockets is really
 difficult.


 see above, MS got the it wrong. are you surprised? I'm not.


No, definitely not surprised.  MS always seems to make things more  
complicated for the sake of, well I have no idea why.

-Steve
Apr 08 2009
parent reply Daniel Keep <daniel.keep.lists gmail.com> writes:
Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

 [snip]
 
 -Steve


This is getting rather inflammatory, so let me clarify a few things.

What Yigal should have said was that when everything is a file, there is
no API for the CONTENTS of files.  Yes, you can manipulate files, but
it's a bit like Variants in D: you can't do anything useful with the
contents unless you specifically know what they are.

Powershell is designed to work with managed (.NET) objects.  It can
dynamically introspect these objects and pull them apart, mutate them,
convert them, etc.  Imagine if every file on a UNIX system also carried
around a reference to its own parser, and a description of how to
interpret the data.  THAT is what Powershell has over UNIX shells.

For example, the output of the "ls" equivalent is a table of objects.
By default, it gets toString'd and displayed as a table.  However, you
can pipe this into a command that reorders columns.  Or sorts.  And you
don't have to dick about with ensuring the filenames don't contain
whitespace or newlines because the file names are carried around as
actual strings that know their own length.

Unlike UNIX, where everything is a file, to powershell everything is an
object.  So the list command can be used on a directory or on an object
that is an aggregate of stuff.  For example, you can use powershell to
browse the registry as if it was just another part of the filesystem.

I won't say that "everything is a file" is a failure, but powershell
*definitely* exposes a superset of UNIX's functionality.  Anything you
can do with a UNIX-style environment, powershell can potentially do better.

Microsoft really hit one out of the park with powershell, although it
remains to be seen if anyone will actually use it.

  -- Daniel.
Apr 08 2009
next sibling parent Yigal Chripun <yigal100 gmail.com> writes:
On 08/04/2009 17:10, Daniel Keep wrote:

 Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

 [snip]

 -Steve


 This is getting rather inflammatory, so let me clarify a few things.

 What Yigal should have said was that when everything is a file, there is
 no API for the CONTENTS of files.  Yes, you can manipulate files, but
 it's a bit like Variants in D: you can't do anything useful with the
 contents unless you specifically know what they are.

 Powershell is designed to work with managed (.NET) objects.  It can
 dynamically introspect these objects and pull them apart, mutate them,
 convert them, etc.  Imagine if every file on a UNIX system also carried
 around a reference to its own parser, and a description of how to
 interpret the data.  THAT is what Powershell has over UNIX shells.

 For example, the output of the "ls" equivalent is a table of objects.
 By default, it gets toString'd and displayed as a table.  However, you
 can pipe this into a command that reorders columns.  Or sorts.  And you
 don't have to dick about with ensuring the filenames don't contain
 whitespace or newlines because the file names are carried around as
 actual strings that know their own length.

 Unlike UNIX, where everything is a file, to powershell everything is an
 object.  So the list command can be used on a directory or on an object
 that is an aggregate of stuff.  For example, you can use powershell to
 browse the registry as if it was just another part of the filesystem.

 I won't say that "everything is a file" is a failure, but powershell
 *definitely* exposes a superset of UNIX's functionality.  Anything you
 can do with a UNIX-style environment, powershell can potentially do better.

 Microsoft really hit one out of the park with powershell, although it
 remains to be seen if anyone will actually use it.

    -- Daniel.


Thank you. You explained this much better than me. :)
Apr 08 2009
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Christopher Wright <dhasenan gmail.com> writes:
Daniel Keep wrote:

 Powershell is designed to work with managed (.NET) objects.  It can
 dynamically introspect these objects and pull them apart, mutate them,
 convert them, etc.  Imagine if every file on a UNIX system also carried
 around a reference to its own parser, and a description of how to
 interpret the data.  THAT is what Powershell has over UNIX shells.


You are rarely going to write a program that uses reflection more often 
than direct calls. It's inefficient in terms of the amount of code you 
need to write. It's inefficient in terms of running time. And you need 
to have a very good idea of what you're looking for in the first place. 
So that doesn't much matter.

What *does* matter is standard interfaces. If a command will usually 
only return, say, a DataTable or an IEnumerable or a string or an 
integer, then you're down to a manageable range.

In this regard, Unix has a standard interface: text. This turns out to 
be usable >90% of the time. It has the advantage that you can write a 
program in any language that can process text. But it has disadvantages, 
too.


 For example, the output of the "ls" equivalent is a table of objects.
 By default, it gets toString'd and displayed as a table.  However, you
 can pipe this into a command that reorders columns.  Or sorts.  And you
 don't have to dick about with ensuring the filenames don't contain
 whitespace or newlines because the file names are carried around as
 actual strings that know their own length.


That's awesome. It's an annoying and unsolvable issue with bash. That 
would remove issues where you have to escape a string multiple times -- 
which can result in hard-to-find bugs.

Of course, it only helps when you're working within powershell. But that 
would still be an improvement.
Apr 08 2009
parent reply Jarrett Billingsley <jarrett.billingsley gmail.com> writes:
On Wed, Apr 8, 2009 at 11:09 AM, Christopher Wright <dhasenan gmail.com> wrote:


 In this regard, Unix has a standard interface: text. This turns out to be
 usable >90% of the time. It has the advantage that you can write a program
 in any language that can process text. But it has disadvantages, too.


Sure, as long as you're comfortable using a slew of
incredibly-hard-to-read (and hard to write) domain-specific languages,
e.g. sed, grep, and to a large extent Perl.  Even if you're fluent in
those languages, you still have to know what the format of the data is
that they're parsing, and what all the pieces mean.
Apr 08 2009
parent reply Christopher Wright <dhasenan gmail.com> writes:
Jarrett Billingsley wrote:

 On Wed, Apr 8, 2009 at 11:09 AM, Christopher Wright <dhasenan gmail.com> wrote:
 

 In this regard, Unix has a standard interface: text. This turns out to be
 usable >90% of the time. It has the advantage that you can write a program
 in any language that can process text. But it has disadvantages, too.


 
 Sure, as long as you're comfortable using a slew of
 incredibly-hard-to-read (and hard to write) domain-specific languages,
 e.g. sed, grep, and to a large extent Perl.  Even if you're fluent in
 those languages, you still have to know what the format of the data is
 that they're parsing, and what all the pieces mean.


Sed? I only know one command, and two options. It uses regular 
expressions, which I already use everywhere.

Grep? I only ever use two or three options. It uses regular expressions.

Perl? I don't know it at all.

The only other text processing language I've used is awk. I barely use 
it, and when I do, I only use one command.

I could learn all that in an hour. Probably more like ten minutes, but 
an hour would certainly suffice.

With Powershell, you need to be familiar with the tools for dealing with 
System.Data.DataTable or whatever. Maybe it would only take ten minutes. 
The most time it could save in that regard is an hour.

The cost of learning is not a significant factor here. You might have 
plenty of other good arguments (and I offered some), but this isn't one 
of them.
Apr 08 2009
parent reply Daniel Keep <daniel.keep.lists gmail.com> writes:
Christopher Wright wrote:

 With Powershell, you need to be familiar with the tools for dealing with
 System.Data.DataTable or whatever. Maybe it would only take ten minutes.
 The most time it could save in that regard is an hour.


The syntax for these commands is so simple, you don't even really need
to learn them.

It's stuff like "get-columns" and "sort-list".  I don't think I ever ran
across a powershell command where I couldn't accurately guess it's
purpose.  Most of the time, I even got the syntax first try without
needing to check the help.

What's more, it's the SAME set of tools for EVERY kind of object.  If it
helps, imagine if in UNIX you could treat any file as a folder of files
containing the parsed contents (each of which may, themselves, be
folders of files.)

You wouldn't need sed or awk for parsing any more because the
environment has already done it for you.


 The cost of learning is not a significant factor here. You might have
 plenty of other good arguments (and I offered some), but this isn't one
 of them.


It took me a year or more to become fluent and comfortable with
scripting in UNIX.  I don't think you CAN learn things like sed or grep
straight away because you've got to learn the regex language first (and
they're always bloody different in every different environment.)  You
then have to learn how the program works, and which options are actually
useful.  And then you need to practice with it.

When I first started using sed, I had to constantly check the man page
because I forgot which options I wanted to use.  Same thing with grep (I
only recently started remembering when I needed the -v switch, for
example, and I've been using it for years!)

Powershell's learning curve is practically non-existent.  There are no
domain-specific languages; just standard commands with regular, obvious
names that all do one thing really well.

Within about an hour of first seeing powershell in action, I felt
comfortable writing simple scripts to munge data.  An hour versus a
year+ with UNIX; that's not something you can simply ignore.

If you're happy with UNIX, then that's fine.  But discounting the things
powershell does well is just doing yourself a disservice.

What really saddens me is that, assuming powershell is better, UNIX will
never match it; at least not for a very long time.  UNIX has so much
history in its CLI, whereas Windows doesn't.  Microsoft can afford to
"reboot" the Windows CLI and start from scratch; UNIX can't.

Then again, Microsoft could just flub the whole thing anyway.  :P

  -- Daniel
Apr 08 2009
next sibling parent Jesse Phillips <jessekphillips gmail.com> writes:
On Thu, 09 Apr 2009 10:52:02 +1000, Daniel Keep wrote:


 Christopher Wright wrote:

 With Powershell, you need to be familiar with the tools for dealing
 with System.Data.DataTable or whatever. Maybe it would only take ten
 minutes. The most time it could save in that regard is an hour.


 
 The syntax for these commands is so simple, you don't even really need
 to learn them.
 
 It's stuff like "get-columns" and "sort-list".  I don't think I ever ran
 across a powershell command where I couldn't accurately guess it's
 purpose.  Most of the time, I even got the syntax first try without
 needing to check the help.
 
 What's more, it's the SAME set of tools for EVERY kind of object.  If it
 helps, imagine if in UNIX you could treat any file as a folder of files
 containing the parsed contents (each of which may, themselves, be
 folders of files.)
 
 You wouldn't need sed or awk for parsing any more because the
 environment has already done it for you.
 

 The cost of learning is not a significant factor here. You might have
 plenty of other good arguments (and I offered some), but this isn't one
 of them.


 
 It took me a year or more to become fluent and comfortable with
 scripting in UNIX.  I don't think you CAN learn things like sed or grep
 straight away because you've got to learn the regex language first (and
 they're always bloody different in every different environment.)  You
 then have to learn how the program works, and which options are actually
 useful.  And then you need to practice with it.
 
 When I first started using sed, I had to constantly check the man page
 because I forgot which options I wanted to use.  Same thing with grep (I
 only recently started remembering when I needed the -v switch, for
 example, and I've been using it for years!)
 
 Powershell's learning curve is practically non-existent.  There are no
 domain-specific languages; just standard commands with regular, obvious
 names that all do one thing really well.
 
 Within about an hour of first seeing powershell in action, I felt
 comfortable writing simple scripts to munge data.  An hour versus a
 year+ with UNIX; that's not something you can simply ignore.
 
 If you're happy with UNIX, then that's fine.  But discounting the things
 powershell does well is just doing yourself a disservice.
 
 What really saddens me is that, assuming powershell is better, UNIX will
 never match it; at least not for a very long time.  UNIX has so much
 history in its CLI, whereas Windows doesn't.  Microsoft can afford to
 "reboot" the Windows CLI and start from scratch; UNIX can't.
 
 Then again, Microsoft could just flub the whole thing anyway.  :P
 
   -- Daniel


I'll probably agree powershell is better than bash/other Unix shells. But 
in truth, it would be easy to replace the shell with one that works like 
powershell, no one has created one and if they did it wouldn't take off.

I liked your note that Windows can completely redo the CLI because it 
hasn't been the heart, yet most of their issues have come from not being 
able to redo the Win32 API :) With having to deal with all the backward 
compatibility and security issues, their users experience has degraded.
Apr 08 2009
prev sibling parent reply =?UTF-8?B?QWxleGFuZGVyIFDDoW5law==?= writes:
Daniel Keep wrote:

 Christopher Wright wrote:

 With Powershell, you need to be familiar with the tools for dealing with
 System.Data.DataTable or whatever. Maybe it would only take ten minutes.
 The most time it could save in that regard is an hour.


 
 The syntax for these commands is so simple, you don't even really need
 to learn them.
 
 It's stuff like "get-columns" and "sort-list".  I don't think I ever ran
 across a powershell command where I couldn't accurately guess it's
 purpose.  Most of the time, I even got the syntax first try without
 needing to check the help.
 
 What's more, it's the SAME set of tools for EVERY kind of object.  If it
 helps, imagine if in UNIX you could treat any file as a folder of files
 containing the parsed contents (each of which may, themselves, be
 folders of files.)
 
 You wouldn't need sed or awk for parsing any more because the
 environment has already done it for you.
 

 The cost of learning is not a significant factor here. You might have
 plenty of other good arguments (and I offered some), but this isn't one
 of them.


 
 It took me a year or more to become fluent and comfortable with
 scripting in UNIX.  I don't think you CAN learn things like sed or grep
 straight away because you've got to learn the regex language first (and
 they're always bloody different in every different environment.)  You
 then have to learn how the program works, and which options are actually
 useful.  And then you need to practice with it.
 
 When I first started using sed, I had to constantly check the man page
 because I forgot which options I wanted to use.  Same thing with grep (I
 only recently started remembering when I needed the -v switch, for
 example, and I've been using it for years!)
 
 Powershell's learning curve is practically non-existent.  There are no
 domain-specific languages; just standard commands with regular, obvious
 names that all do one thing really well.
 
 Within about an hour of first seeing powershell in action, I felt
 comfortable writing simple scripts to munge data.  An hour versus a
 year+ with UNIX; that's not something you can simply ignore.
 
 If you're happy with UNIX, then that's fine.  But discounting the things
 powershell does well is just doing yourself a disservice.
 
 What really saddens me is that, assuming powershell is better, UNIX will
 never match it; at least not for a very long time.  UNIX has so much
 history in its CLI, whereas Windows doesn't.  Microsoft can afford to
 "reboot" the Windows CLI and start from scratch; UNIX can't.
 
 Then again, Microsoft could just flub the whole thing anyway.  :P
 
   -- Daniel


The thing is, I don't *want* my _shell_ to be able to parse anything. 
It's a shell, not a framework with everything and two kitchensinks built 
in to parse every imaginable file format on my computer. That's the 
whole point of the UNIX philosophy: small, encapsulated tools that do 
one or a few tasks very well.

So instead of just writing a program that reads text from STDIN or a 
file, parses the input and spits something about the file out in another 
form of text, I'd have to write, maintain and distribute that exact 
program AND an additional .NET "cmdlet". Not only that it's another part 
of my software I will have to maintain, it only works on one OS with one 
shell. On any UNIX, I can just use it. Compile it, use it. Pretty 
straight forward.

When I write a sh script, it will work on a multitude of OSes, no matter 
how old or young it might be, no matter what purpose it serves. Granted, 
the syntax is a big downside, but you will usually fall back to the 
scripting language of your (or your project's) choice anyways at some 
point. E.g. the deploy process of Rails applications is not written 
using sh. They're simply written in Ruby (as rake/capistrano tasks).


I'm not saying the powershell is a bad thing. The bad thing is that it 
doesn't work everywhere. When the powershell was released I couldn't use 
it because the Windows I was running was too old. So Microsoft has this 
awesome shell that only works on their newest OS. What if I wanted to 
automate something on my grandmother's PC with Windows 98? Or for less 
suckage, lets say Windows 2000? I can automate processes on *any* UNIX, 
as long as it provides a shell and every UNIX I could possibly think of 
does that. So the same automation that I made on my opensolaris server 
works on my aunt's completely different computer with Linux on it.

.02
Alex
Apr 09 2009
parent reply Jarrett Billingsley <jarrett.billingsley gmail.com> writes:
On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 3:17 AM, Alexander P=E1nek
<alexander.panek brainsware.org> wrote:

 The thing is, I don't *want* my _shell_ to be able to parse anything. It'=


s a

 shell, not a framework with everything and two kitchensinks built in to
 parse every imaginable file format on my computer. That's the whole point=


 of

 the UNIX philosophy: small, encapsulated tools that do one or a few tasks
 very well.


The point is that Unix uses text (and parses text) because it forces
you to make everything into a file.  One program has to spend a whole
lot of effort producing nicely-formatted output, only to have it piped
to another program which just undoes all that work.  Then you have
"magical" files like the things in /proc where they query the OS for
data and output it as text.  The point of Powershell is to keep the
data in the format that it started as, avoiding all the annoying (and
inefficient) transcoding to and from text files.
Apr 09 2009
parent "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:
On Thu, 09 Apr 2009 10:10:35 -0400, Jarrett Billingsley  
<jarrett.billingsley gmail.com> wrote:


 On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 3:17 AM, Alexander Pnek
 <alexander.panek brainsware.org> wrote:

 The thing is, I don't *want* my _shell_ to be able to parse anything.  
 It's a
 shell, not a framework with everything and two kitchensinks built in to
 parse every imaginable file format on my computer. That's the whole  
 point of
 the UNIX philosophy: small, encapsulated tools that do one or a few  
 tasks
 very well.


 The point is that Unix uses text (and parses text) because it forces
 you to make everything into a file.  One program has to spend a whole
 lot of effort producing nicely-formatted output, only to have it piped
 to another program which just undoes all that work.  Then you have
 "magical" files like the things in /proc where they query the OS for
 data and output it as text.  The point of Powershell is to keep the
 data in the format that it started as, avoiding all the annoying (and
 inefficient) transcoding to and from text files.


Yeah, somebody should make a d shell that shows us how it *really* should  
be done, then we might be convinced ;)

-Steve
Apr 09 2009
prev sibling next sibling parent reply "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:
On Wed, 08 Apr 2009 10:10:29 -0400, Daniel Keep  
<daniel.keep.lists gmail.com> wrote:


 Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

 [snip]

 -Steve


 This is getting rather inflammatory, so let me clarify a few things.

 What Yigal should have said was that when everything is a file, there is
 no API for the CONTENTS of files.  Yes, you can manipulate files, but
 it's a bit like Variants in D: you can't do anything useful with the
 contents unless you specifically know what they are.

 Powershell is designed to work with managed (.NET) objects.  It can
 dynamically introspect these objects and pull them apart, mutate them,
 convert them, etc.  Imagine if every file on a UNIX system also carried
 around a reference to its own parser, and a description of how to
 interpret the data.  THAT is what Powershell has over UNIX shells.

 For example, the output of the "ls" equivalent is a table of objects.
 By default, it gets toString'd and displayed as a table.  However, you
 can pipe this into a command that reorders columns.  Or sorts.  And you
 don't have to dick about with ensuring the filenames don't contain
 whitespace or newlines because the file names are carried around as
 actual strings that know their own length.

 Unlike UNIX, where everything is a file, to powershell everything is an
 object.  So the list command can be used on a directory or on an object
 that is an aggregate of stuff.  For example, you can use powershell to
 browse the registry as if it was just another part of the filesystem.


This does sound useful.  More so than was explained, sorry to Yigal for  
being so inflammatory, but what can you expect when you say Unix is a  
"stupid" design ;)  It's just a different design, one that works very well  
for script writers.


 I won't say that "everything is a file" is a failure, but powershell
 *definitely* exposes a superset of UNIX's functionality.  Anything you
 can do with a UNIX-style environment, powershell can potentially do  
 better.


This kind of thing is useful only for cases where OS objects were  
converted into strings (such as via ls), actual files still have to be  
read and parsed I'm guessing.  But having .NET at your disposal gives you  
a lot of potential parsers for things like XML files or whatever.

BTW, /proc is a lot like this.  You don't need to have a manual to  
understand what it means, since you can browse through it just like any  
other directory.  However, there are some files that have undescribed  
values in them, where you do need a manual.  But these files are built to  
be parsed for the most part, so it doesn't take a lot of work to get  
information out of it.  I think the advantage to having everything be  
represented as files is that you already have a bazillion tools to  
manipulate and parse files in unix.  The same is not for Windows, but it  
does have .NET which has a great API to OS objects.


 Microsoft really hit one out of the park with powershell, although it
 remains to be seen if anyone will actually use it.


It sounds a lot like it is geared toward .NET programmers rather than  
script writers.  Do you use it?

-Steve
Apr 08 2009
parent Yigal Chripun <yigal100 gmail.com> writes:
On 08/04/2009 18:10, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

 This does sound useful. More so than was explained, sorry to Yigal for
 being so inflammatory, but what can you expect when you say Unix is a
 "stupid" design ;) It's just a different design, one that works very
 well for script writers.


sorry for not explaining it more clearly the first time. Thanks again to 
Daniel who helped clarify this. :)


 I won't say that "everything is a file" is a failure, but powershell
 *definitely* exposes a superset of UNIX's functionality. Anything you
 can do with a UNIX-style environment, powershell can potentially do
 better.


 This kind of thing is useful only for cases where OS objects were
 converted into strings (such as via ls), actual files still have to be
 read and parsed I'm guessing. But having .NET at your disposal gives you
 a lot of potential parsers for things like XML files or whatever.

 BTW, /proc is a lot like this. You don't need to have a manual to
 understand what it means, since you can browse through it just like any
 other directory. However, there are some files that have undescribed
 values in them, where you do need a manual. But these files are built to
 be parsed for the most part, so it doesn't take a lot of work to get
 information out of it. I think the advantage to having everything be
 represented as files is that you already have a bazillion tools to
 manipulate and parse files in unix. The same is not for Windows, but it
 does have .NET which has a great API to OS objects.


 Microsoft really hit one out of the park with powershell, although it
 remains to be seen if anyone will actually use it.


 It sounds a lot like it is geared toward .NET programmers rather than
 script writers. Do you use it?

 -Steve


powershell has its own syntax specifically designed for scripting. It's 
integrated with the platform but it is geared towards script writers.
powershell allows:
a) you can call external programs just like in bash
b) you can write scripts in powershell just like you'd do with bash 
using the powershell language.
c) you can extend powershell with cmdlets -


you do not need to parse any files unless you use external programs.
fo example, let's look at "ls | grep ..." :
ls, grep, etc are just aliases for cmdlets, which are clases that can 
communicate with objects and no file parsing is required between them.
Apr 08 2009
prev sibling parent reply Jesse Phillips <jessekphillips gmail.com> writes:
On Thu, 09 Apr 2009 00:10:29 +1000, Daniel Keep wrote:


 Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

 [snip]
 
 -Steve


 
 This is getting rather inflammatory, so let me clarify a few things.
 
 What Yigal should have said was that when everything is a file, there is
 no API for the CONTENTS of files.  Yes, you can manipulate files, but
 it's a bit like Variants in D: you can't do anything useful with the
 contents unless you specifically know what they are.
 
 Powershell is designed to work with managed (.NET) objects.  It can
 dynamically introspect these objects and pull them apart, mutate them,
 convert them, etc.  Imagine if every file on a UNIX system also carried
 around a reference to its own parser, and a description of how to
 interpret the data.  THAT is what Powershell has over UNIX shells.
 
 For example, the output of the "ls" equivalent is a table of objects. By
 default, it gets toString'd and displayed as a table.  However, you can
 pipe this into a command that reorders columns.  Or sorts.  And you
 don't have to dick about with ensuring the filenames don't contain
 whitespace or newlines because the file names are carried around as
 actual strings that know their own length.
 
 Unlike UNIX, where everything is a file, to powershell everything is an
 object.  So the list command can be used on a directory or on an object
 that is an aggregate of stuff.  For example, you can use powershell to
 browse the registry as if it was just another part of the filesystem.
 
 I won't say that "everything is a file" is a failure, but powershell
 *definitely* exposes a superset of UNIX's functionality.  Anything you
 can do with a UNIX-style environment, powershell can potentially do
 better.
 
 Microsoft really hit one out of the park with powershell, although it
 remains to be seen if anyone will actually use it.
 
   -- Daniel.


Ah, then the problem was using the term "everything is a file." $ ls is 
unrelated to that philosophy. "Everything is a file" refers to how you 
communicate to your kernel, not the tools used to manipulate files. That 
is you can open a text file and use a file descriptor, you open a socket 
and use a file descriptor.

Maybe it would have been better to use the *nix philosophy of "chaining 
tools together." I've never used powershell so I'm not familiar wit the 
alternative.
Apr 08 2009
parent Yigal Chripun <yigal100 gmail.com> writes:
On 08/04/2009 18:11, Jesse Phillips wrote:


 Ah, then the problem was using the term "everything is a file." $ ls is
 unrelated to that philosophy. "Everything is a file" refers to how you
 communicate to your kernel, not the tools used to manipulate files. That
 is you can open a text file and use a file descriptor, you open a socket
 and use a file descriptor.

 Maybe it would have been better to use the *nix philosophy of "chaining
 tools together." I've never used powershell so I'm not familiar wit the
 alternative.


powershell allows chaining tools together... the big thing is that those 
tools comunicate via .net objects instead of plain text.
powershell provides sets of aliases for cmd.exe user as well as unix 
users, so stuff like
ls | grep exp
work out of the box.
Apr 08 2009
prev sibling next sibling parent superdan <super dan.org> writes:
Yigal Chripun Wrote:


 I agree that a uniform and consistent API is important and I'm sure that 
 MS managed to mess that up :) but that's besides the point. "Everything 
 is a file" does not provide a uniform API but rather provides no API. 
 Each unix tool has its own mini-syntax and its own set of command-line 
 arguments and you need to learn how to use each tool separately beyond 
 trivial use cases.


was almost feelin'  pity fer yer being such an idiot. but then saw this:


 At my work, we program in a *nix environment (Solaris) and I also use 
 Linux extensively So I know my way on *nix systems but I simply cannot 
 remember all the different argument for each util. every time I need to 
 find a file I need to ask a co-worker how to use "find". So in my 
 experience there's nothing simple and uniform about unix tools and I use 
 those constantly at work.


give me a fuckin' break willya. how the motherfuckin' motherfuck can you say
yer know yer way on unix but dunno how to use fuckin' find? in the same fuckin'
sentence? know how to drive but dunno which pedal is which? 

doubt u even know whothefuckami.

geez what an inbred.


 Was Colombus wrong when he said the world is round and 99.9% of people 
 told him he's a fool?


no. but yer still a fool. bring grandgrandgrandmotherfuckin' columbus now.


 My opinion is that there where better OS designs in the _60s_ than what 
 we use today. "everything is a file" is a complete failure.


yer opinion is worth its weight in shit. hey, pipl, mr yigal d. bagger here sez
unix files n pipes are a failure. what? yeah, i heard. nobody gives a flyin'
fuck.
Apr 08 2009
prev sibling parent "Joel C. Salomon" <joelcsalomon gmail.com> writes:
Yigal Chripun wrote:

 Windows has a different design than Unix's "everything is a file"
 which IMO is a stupid legacy design from the 70's.






<snip>

 I agree that a uniform and consistent API is important and I'm sure that
 MS managed to mess that up :) but that's besides the point. "Everything
 is a file" does not provide a uniform API but rather provides no API.
 Each unix tool has its own mini-syntax and its own set of command-line
 arguments and you need to learn how to use each tool separately beyond
 trivial use cases.


You need Plan 9 to really show the power of “everything is a file”. And
they’ve removed all the extra option from the little tools, so there
aren’t ten trillion languages. Just one language—the shell rc is much
more regular than any *sh—with easy-to-read commands.

And the terminal window program is *much* better than just about
anything else. Line wrap, copy-paste, filename expansion (*not* embedded
into individual programs), &c.

—Joel Salomon
Apr 08 2009
prev sibling parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

 On Wed, 08 Apr 2009 06:38:53 -0400, Yigal Chripun <yigal100 gmail.com> 
 wrote:

 Windows has a different design than Unix's "everything is a file" 
 which IMO is a stupid legacy design from the 70's.


 
 The old "technology from the 70's" chestnut.


I hear the "everything is a file is obsolete" pickup line once in a 
while. I don't buy it. Clearly there are limitations, but equally 
clearly it's an extremely powerful paradigm. The sheer fact that other 
OSs failed, in spite of numerous attempts, to inch ahead of Unix, is 
very telling.

My perception of Windows APIs is that they force programmers to learn 
new ways of doing the same old things every five years. (I think it has 
a lot to do with marketing strategies.) There is improvement, but not 
nearly as marked at they'd want to make it, and the old technology just 
stays around, accumulates, and hardens like old lava on a volcano's slopes.

I wrote Windows programs professionally for about 10 years. Only during 
that period, the sanctioned way of brokering objects, accessing 
databases, or writing GUI applications has changed 3-4 times (each). 
ODBC, ADO, RDO, ..., CrapDO... remember? Then MFC, WTL, and now Windows 
Forms et al. Then OLE, ActiveX (what a Potemkin village!), DCOM, 
Transaction Server, and of course many I forgot.

At a company we were using MS Transaction Server. I went around and 
asked my bosses why. Nobody knew. I asked what features of it we need. 
Nobody knew, and they didn't knew even what the MTS was supposed to do. 
The fact the company had bought it was a pure marketing trick from MS' 
part. To continue the anecdote: my boss at the time woke up every 
morning, came in early, checked out the new code - from Visual Source 
Safe (another useless make-believe product that has never hold a candle 
to even the, um, obsolete cvs that uses equally obsolete text files), 
built it, deregistered each of a dozen objects from the graphical MTS 
console, and then registered each again. This was the only known way to 
make our updates work. The task could not be automated. The man wasn't a 
great programmer and to him coming in early and moving the mouse a few 
hundred yards a day was a great way of feeling useful. He was rather 
disquieted by my insistence that something is really flawed in our way 
of doing things.


Andrei
Apr 08 2009
parent reply Sean Kelly <sean invisibleduck.org> writes:
== Quote from Andrei Alexandrescu (SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org)'s article

 At a company we were using MS Transaction Server. I went around and
 asked my bosses why. Nobody knew. I asked what features of it we need.
 Nobody knew, and they didn't knew even what the MTS was supposed to do.
 The fact the company had bought it was a pure marketing trick from MS'
 part. To continue the anecdote: my boss at the time woke up every
 morning, came in early, checked out the new code - from Visual Source
 Safe (another useless make-believe product that has never hold a candle
 to even the, um, obsolete cvs that uses equally obsolete text files),
 built it, deregistered each of a dozen objects from the graphical MTS
 console, and then registered each again. This was the only known way to
 make our updates work.


The registration aspect of MS programming technology has got to be about
the most broken concept I've encountered in Windows.  It's abstruse, brittle,
and incredibly error-prone.  In my brief exposure to .NET programming, this
feature had me tearing my hair out more often than any other.
Apr 08 2009
parent Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
Sean Kelly wrote:

 == Quote from Andrei Alexandrescu (SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org)'s article

 At a company we were using MS Transaction Server. I went around and
 asked my bosses why. Nobody knew. I asked what features of it we need.
 Nobody knew, and they didn't knew even what the MTS was supposed to do.
 The fact the company had bought it was a pure marketing trick from MS'
 part. To continue the anecdote: my boss at the time woke up every
 morning, came in early, checked out the new code - from Visual Source
 Safe (another useless make-believe product that has never hold a candle
 to even the, um, obsolete cvs that uses equally obsolete text files),
 built it, deregistered each of a dozen objects from the graphical MTS
 console, and then registered each again. This was the only known way to
 make our updates work.


 
 The registration aspect of MS programming technology has got to be about
 the most broken concept I've encountered in Windows.  It's abstruse, brittle,
 and incredibly error-prone.  In my brief exposure to .NET programming, this
 feature had me tearing my hair out more often than any other.


Yah, and the anecdote also illustrates the contempt that Windows has 
towards automation. Back then I didn't know any Unix, but I did have the 
intuition "it's a computer, so I'm supposed to have it do what I want... 
right?"

Speaking of which, due to my participation in MSR/UW symposia, I happen 
to know a tad more about MS' server technology than I care. I could 
summarize that in a thought: MS will have trouble getting on the Net 
where Google, Yahoo, or Amazon are, simply because they are constrained 
to using Windows. Even some internal big wigs acknowledge that. It would 
be terrible PR if they started using Unix technology, so they *have* to 
use Windows Server. IMHO they'll never get anywhere interesting with it.


Andrei
Apr 08 2009
prev sibling parent Christopher Wright <dhasenan gmail.com> writes:
Yigal Chripun wrote:

 ever heard of powershell? it is in fact a superior design for a shell 
 compared to most unix shells.
 
 also, have you ever heard of rush? http://rush.heroku.com/


I tried rush. Its documentation is lacking. The lack of a working 
directory is annoying. The lack of formatting and color when listing the 
contents of a directory is a show stopper, especially when combined with 
no equivalent to less. I have very few directories that have more than 
one pageful of files when using ls -C, but many of them would go to 
multiple pages with rush.

Maybe in a few years it'll be a good shell, but for now, I don't want to 
reinvent 'ls --color=always -C' in Ruby.
Apr 08 2009
prev sibling parent reply Sergey Gromov <snake.scaly gmail.com> writes:
Mon, 06 Apr 2009 20:19:40 -0400, Jussi Jumppanen wrote:


 As a commandline utility, it can be combined with other stuff such 
 as ls, sort, grep, sed, awk, etc... I don't know if I'd start there 
 though...


 
 Replace ls with dir, download the Win32 version of grep, sed, awk 
 and you can run all those tools just fine from the Windows command 
 line, or from within any decent editor.
 
 You don't have to go to Unix to find the command line.


Windows shell (cmd) sucks.  And Windows scripting (BAT-files) suck.
Using Cygwin tools is a pain because Cygwin emulates a Unix-like file
system view while other tools produce and expect native Windows paths.
And FAR, being the best shell available, still doesn't support path
auto-completion while even standard CMD does.

Windows is my main development platform, and it drives me nuts.  I'd
move to Linux but I'm afraid of little important things getting in the
way, like a requirement to use Outlook for my corporate mail, and Flash
CS4 for development.  Even if it's possible I can't afford being
semi-paralyzed for at least a couple of weeks while all those nuances
are being sorted out.
Apr 07 2009
next sibling parent reply Sean Kelly <sean invisibleduck.org> writes:
== Quote from Sergey Gromov (snake.scaly gmail.com)'s article

 Windows is my main development platform, and it drives me nuts.  I'd
 move to Linux but I'm afraid of little important things getting in the
 way, like a requirement to use Outlook for my corporate mail, and Flash
 CS4 for development.  Even if it's possible I can't afford being
 semi-paralyzed for at least a couple of weeks while all those nuances
 are being sorted out.


In the rare instance where I haven't been able to find a native app to do
some Windows thing I just use the actual Windows app running in a VM.
But there's still a tipping point where if you find yourself using more
non-native apps than native apps then there's just no point in using
that OS no matter how much better it is.  I ran into this problem with
OS/2 when one day I realized that I was mostly using it as an execution
shell for Windows apps... it was difficult to justify using OS/2 after that,
even though it was a million times better than Windows.
Apr 07 2009
parent Don <nospam nospam.com> writes:
Sean Kelly wrote:

 == Quote from Sergey Gromov (snake.scaly gmail.com)'s article

 Windows is my main development platform, and it drives me nuts.  I'd
 move to Linux but I'm afraid of little important things getting in the
 way, like a requirement to use Outlook for my corporate mail, and Flash
 CS4 for development.  Even if it's possible I can't afford being
 semi-paralyzed for at least a couple of weeks while all those nuances
 are being sorted out.


 
 In the rare instance where I haven't been able to find a native app to do
 some Windows thing I just use the actual Windows app running in a VM.
 But there's still a tipping point where if you find yourself using more
 non-native apps than native apps then there's just no point in using
 that OS no matter how much better it is.  I ran into this problem with
 OS/2 when one day I realized that I was mostly using it as an execution
 shell for Windows apps... it was difficult to justify using OS/2 after that,
 even though it was a million times better than Windows.


That was _exactly_ my experience too. I used OS/2 2.1 for about a year. 
I felt that it genuinely was "a better Windows than Windows", but I 
didn't have a single OS/2 app...
Apr 08 2009
prev sibling parent reply "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:
On Tue, 07 Apr 2009 18:48:19 -0400, Sergey Gromov <snake.scaly gmail.com>  
wrote:


 Using Cygwin tools is a pain because Cygwin emulates a Unix-like file
 system view while other tools produce and expect native Windows paths.


just as an aside, have you looked at cygwin's cygpath tool?  Not a  
complete solution, but it certainly helps.

-Steve
Apr 07 2009
parent Sergey Gromov <snake.scaly gmail.com> writes:
Tue, 07 Apr 2009 19:06:04 -0400, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:


 On Tue, 07 Apr 2009 18:48:19 -0400, Sergey Gromov <snake.scaly gmail.com>  
 wrote:
 

 Using Cygwin tools is a pain because Cygwin emulates a Unix-like file
 system view while other tools produce and expect native Windows paths.


 
 just as an aside, have you looked at cygwin's cygpath tool?  Not a  
 complete solution, but it certainly helps.


Great, I didn't know such tool existed.  Thanks!

Though with as limited stdout capture support as in .BAT files it's a
pain anyway.
Apr 07 2009
prev sibling next sibling parent Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
Saaa wrote:

 "Andrei Alexandrescu" <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote in message 
 news:grduhp$1rk0$1 digitalmars.com...

 Saaa wrote:

 When you'd be writing computer programs.


 But that would go like this: install eclipse, check how to compile under 
 Linux and start programming.


 Nope :o). When you'll figure why not, that's where the fun starts. I'm 
 sure you know about the phenomenon "writing Fortran in C" etc. Installing 
 eclipse and starting programming as you would under windows would be a 
 moral equivalent. (Not that I would advise against using eclipse, which I 
 also like.)

 Andrei


 
 Then, how should I start, or: where do I learn how I should start? :D 


I intently stayed vague because there's no simple advice that can be 
given on a complex phenomenon. The question is about as general and 
complicated as "how do I get a date", and the problem with short answers 
is that they can never be meaningful because, well, they are too short 
and the problem is too large. Think of the "just be yourself" advice, 
which is completely moronic, but on the surface it does make sense to 
some extent and with the due qualifications.

I'll try my "just be yourself" advice by just telling how it worked for 
me. I had a real large project to implement on Unix and that's that. 
Initially Unix ripped my leg and beat me to death with it. Then I've 
been through a number of exaggerated stages (e.g. writing big shell 
scripts - there's something to be said about the joy of seeing .bat 
files done right). Then I got to the point where I was reasonably 
productive, and finally got to a point where I could occasionally look 
amused over the shoulder of someone trying to get work done in Windows. 
It's like watching an accident, and in slow motion.


Andrei
Apr 06 2009
prev sibling parent reply "Saaa" <empty needmail.com> writes:
Thanks,
I really do feel impaired. Not so much as in that I don't use unix, but more 
in that I see software lagging behind hardware.
I think maybe this lag is a bit less when using unix but only if I would 
start using the right tools (yes I'm a mouse fanatic and found it 
surprisingly stupid that 'save all' needed a plugin to appear as a gui 
button in eclipse)
At least for my current project I don't see any advantage in using a unix 
based os. Mind you that I've never had the need to write a single .bat file 
for any of my projects.

Maybe I should simple start by using vim :)
Apr 06 2009
next sibling parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
Saaa wrote:

 Thanks,
 I really do feel impaired. Not so much as in that I don't use unix, but more 
 in that I see software lagging behind hardware.
 I think maybe this lag is a bit less when using unix but only if I would 
 start using the right tools (yes I'm a mouse fanatic and found it 
 surprisingly stupid that 'save all' needed a plugin to appear as a gui 
 button in eclipse)
 At least for my current project I don't see any advantage in using a unix 
 based os. Mind you that I've never had the need to write a single .bat file 
 for any of my projects.


Me neither. Later I realized that of course I wouldn't be thinking of 
painting the walls when I was living in a yurt.

Andrei
Apr 06 2009
parent "Saaa" <empty needmail.com> writes:
 Saaa wrote:

 Thanks,
 I really do feel impaired. Not so much as in that I don't use unix, but 
 more in that I see software lagging behind hardware.
 I think maybe this lag is a bit less when using unix but only if I would 
 start using the right tools (yes I'm a mouse fanatic and found it 
 surprisingly stupid that 'save all' needed a plugin to appear as a gui 
 button in eclipse)
 At least for my current project I don't see any advantage in using a unix 
 based os. Mind you that I've never had the need to write a single .bat 
 file for any of my projects.


 Me neither. Later I realized that of course I wouldn't be thinking of 
 painting the walls when I was living in a yurt.

 Andrei


The analogy is kind of strange :) Which is the painting and which is the 
yurt?

I meant to say that my projects are quite simplistic in that last sentence.
So I guess my projects are the yurt :)
Apr 06 2009
prev sibling parent reply Jesse Phillips <jessekphillips gmail.com> writes:
On Tue, 07 Apr 2009 01:10:38 +0200, Saaa wrote:


 Thanks,
 I really do feel impaired. Not so much as in that I don't use unix, but
 more in that I see software lagging behind hardware. I think maybe this
 lag is a bit less when using unix but only if I would start using the
 right tools (yes I'm a mouse fanatic and found it surprisingly stupid
 that 'save all' needed a plugin to appear as a gui button in eclipse)
 At least for my current project I don't see any advantage in using a
 unix based os. Mind you that I've never had the need to write a single
 .bat file for any of my projects.
 
 Maybe I should simple start by using vim :)


Actually if all you are programming with is Java and Eclipse that might 
be the best time to switch. Since that combination is the same for both 
Windows and Linux, you be able to familiarize yourself with the OS 
without hindering your performance in coding.

You will find little things that make your life easier, I will state some 
here, but they don't sound very important and some you may not like. 
Multiple desktops (If you have tried this on Windows you have been 
cheated in how it really should work). The middle mouse copy/past (True X-
Mouse is a poor substitute). Sloppy-Focus (A window is activated for 
keyboard input, but is not raised when the mouse is over it.)

When I when exclusively Linux I had some relapse where I'd end up in 
Windows for months without touching Linux (Wanted quick access to games). 
This happened several times, and each time the initial switch to Windows 
was a pain, I'd get use to it. Then when I'd go back in Linux, no pain. I 
wasn't using the "little things" but it didn't hurt. (Now I only run 
Windows games on the weekends, if even that)

Linux's power really comes from how configurable it is, for many people 
Windows is configured to what they need/want, others not so much. There 
isn't any way to say Linux is good for you until you try and decide for 
yourself. Many people suggest Live-CDs for introduction, but this is only 
go to show that you have a browser in Linux. It doesn't give a true Linux 
experience. Also since Linux is so customizable there are lots of default 
setups that you will hate, which means there is lots of experimentation/
reading to find the right one. I say choose one, if you struggle at an 
early stage (installation) try another. Once you get most of what you 
want, ie not wine, stick to that distro.

Also, always place your /home on a different partition than /
Apr 07 2009
next sibling parent Ellery Newcomer <ellery-newcomer utulsa.edu> writes:
Jesse Phillips wrote:

 You will find little things that make your life easier, I will state some 
 here, but they don't sound very important and some you may not like. 
 Multiple desktops (If you have tried this on Windows you have been 
 cheated in how it really should work). The middle mouse copy/past (True X-
 Mouse is a poor substitute). Sloppy-Focus (A window is activated for 
 keyboard input, but is not raised when the mouse is over it.)


Middle mouse copy/paste + dodgy KVM switch was fun.
Apr 07 2009
prev sibling parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
Jesse Phillips wrote:

 Many people suggest Live-CDs for introduction, but this is only 
 go to show that you have a browser in Linux. It doesn't give a true Linux 
 experience.


I agree. Somehow I'm surprised that the discussion drifted into a pure 
user-level feature comparison though.

Below I'll give another shot at making a point.

There's an old joke circulating on the net about "Hello, world" written 
by programmers in various stages of their career, see e.g. 
http://www.ariel.com.au/jokes/The_Evolution_of_a_Programmer.html. I've 
seen that a long time ago. The "Unix guru" program looks like this:

echo "Hello, world"

I sort of got a chuckle out of it ten years ago "Heh, this guru doesn't 
even bother to write in C..." But there's a layer in the joke that I'd 
missed: In Unix you can do quickly and easily a large amount of work 
that would be routinely considered programming in Windows, without even 
really programming. You can automate a lot of things that are not even 
considered candidates for automation under Windows, unless you have some 
specialized tools that automate the exact problem you care about. 
Furthermore, the way of doing things in Windows is not conducive to 
certain sorts of automation - simply because most of Unix is dedicated 
to you writing programs, whereas in Windows only a handful of 
specialized tools are  dedicated to you writing programs.

If your notion of programming is "I plan to write Java" or whichever 
language and your notion of work is "I fire off the IDE" then you'll get 
little added value from Unix. If, on the other hand, the plan is "I plan 
to write programs" then a federation of languages and tools will be 
readily at your disposal, and you'll laugh at the narrow-mindedness of 
your former self who thought that if you wanted to index a file you'd 
have to fire your IDE.

I'll risk an example. A while ago my wife was looking for a place for 
her medical residency. There was an online service that would give her a 
long webpage with links to all institutions she was interested in. The 
links were in the hundreds. She had to click each, then a couple of 
others, then look through their program highlights to see some details 
she was interested in. Getting back or opening in new window were 
difficult due to some Javascript (of which disabling messed things up). 
All in all it was a very tedious task.

It took me a couple of minutes to write under her eyes a script that 
downloaded HTML, scraped the code for links, followed those of interest, 
and output a concatenation of all pages she was interested in, with 
details highlighted, that was loadable back in the browser. I'd show her 
one iteration, get feedback, and get the next iteration within seconds. 
All without "coding" in any sense as regularly understood by Windows 
programmers. She was pleasantly surprised as her entire framework of 
using the computer not only didn't include such tasks, but also didn't 
include a notion that it's possible to accomplish such tasks on a 
computer. My point is that I myself, a programmer, would have been 
surprised if I'd seen the same only five years ago. My only hope back 
then would have been that some add-on implements what she needs by 
accident, or that I could fire off my IDE and write a program to do what 
she needed before she'd actually do it by hand.


Andrei
Apr 07 2009
next sibling parent reply Walter Bright <newshound1 digitalmars.com> writes:
Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 It took me a couple of minutes to write under her eyes a script that 
 downloaded HTML, scraped the code for links, followed those of interest, 
 and output a concatenation of all pages she was interested in, with 
 details highlighted, that was loadable back in the browser. I'd show her 
 one iteration, get feedback, and get the next iteration within seconds. 
 All without "coding" in any sense as regularly understood by Windows 
 programmers.


I have no idea how to do that under unix. I obviously have not learned 
anywhere near enough about it.
Apr 07 2009
next sibling parent reply "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:
On Tue, 07 Apr 2009 14:11:44 -0400, Walter Bright  
<newshound1 digitalmars.com> wrote:


 Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 It took me a couple of minutes to write under her eyes a script that  
 downloaded HTML, scraped the code for links, followed those of  
 interest, and output a concatenation of all pages she was interested  
 in, with details highlighted, that was loadable back in the browser.  
 I'd show her one iteration, get feedback, and get the next iteration  
 within seconds. All without "coding" in any sense as regularly  
 understood by Windows programmers.


 I have no idea how to do that under unix. I obviously have not learned  
 anywhere near enough about it.


Probably start with wget, but I wouldn't know even close to enough about  
information in that HTML to be able to do something like this :)

But shell scripting in itself is so powerful for this kind of stuff.  I've  
written lots of little scripts to do fantastic things that on Windows  
would be so painful (without cygwin of course).  Like renaming all files  
of a certain type to something else, or copying select files to another  
directory.

For example, here's a script I wrote to change which D compiler I want to  
use:



dir=$1
if [ "$2" = "" ]
then
     mode=dmd
else
     mode=$2
fi

if [ "$dir" = "" ]
then
         echo please provide dmd directory argument
fi

if [ ! -f $dir/$mode.conf ]
then
     echo invalid mode specified -- $mode
fi

rm -f ~/bin/dmd/*
ln -s $dir/dmd ~/bin/dmd/dmd
ln -s $dir/$mode.conf ~/bin/dmd/dmd.conf
hash -d dmd 2>/dev/null


just run it like:

. setupd ~/dmd2.021/dmd/bin

And now from now on, running dmd runs the right dmd with the right config  
file (which is optionally specified).

Stuff like that is so painfully difficult on Windows.

-Steve
Apr 07 2009
next sibling parent reply grauzone <none example.net> writes:
 But shell scripting in itself is so powerful for this kind of stuff.  
 I've written lots of little scripts to do fantastic things that on 
 Windows would be so painful (without cygwin of course).  Like renaming 
 all files of a certain type to something else, or copying select files 
 to another directory.


Now wouldn't that be much more powerful to use an actual programming 
language for this, instead of bash? I claim with something like python, 
bash doesn't really have any right to exist anymore.
Apr 07 2009
parent reply "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:
On Tue, 07 Apr 2009 14:35:04 -0400, grauzone <none example.net> wrote:


 But shell scripting in itself is so powerful for this kind of stuff.   
 I've written lots of little scripts to do fantastic things that on  
 Windows would be so painful (without cygwin of course).  Like renaming  
 all files of a certain type to something else, or copying select files  
 to another directory.


 Now wouldn't that be much more powerful to use an actual programming  
 language for this, instead of bash? I claim with something like python,  
 bash doesn't really have any right to exist anymore.


I can log into ANY Linux, Solaris, BSD, OSX, etc system and have a  
reasonable /bin/sh that allows at least bourne shell functionality.  The  
same can't be said for almost any other scripting language you can throw  
at me.

Of course, aside from that, I hate python syntax...  And can python be  
used as a user shell?

How would you do the same thing in python?  Would it be any clearer or  
shorter?  Probably not.

I'm sure some would argue that there is no point for python if you can run  
perl...

-Steve
Apr 07 2009
parent reply grauzone <none example.net> writes:
Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

 On Tue, 07 Apr 2009 14:35:04 -0400, grauzone <none example.net> wrote:
 

 But shell scripting in itself is so powerful for this kind of stuff.  
 I've written lots of little scripts to do fantastic things that on 
 Windows would be so painful (without cygwin of course).  Like 
 renaming all files of a certain type to something else, or copying 
 select files to another directory.


 Now wouldn't that be much more powerful to use an actual programming 
 language for this, instead of bash? I claim with something like 
 python, bash doesn't really have any right to exist anymore.


 
 I can log into ANY Linux, Solaris, BSD, OSX, etc system and have a 
 reasonable /bin/sh that allows at least bourne shell functionality.  The 
 same can't be said for almost any other scripting language you can throw 
 at me.


Sure, /bin/sh is the least common denominator. But is there a UNIX that 
can't run python?


 Of course, aside from that, I hate python syntax...  And can python be 
 used as a user shell?


Don't tell me you hate it more than the clusterfuck that is sh syntax? 
Reading or writing sh scripts always feels like screwing in bolts into 
my head.

And regarding using it as an user shell: there's an interactive command 
line interpreter.


 How would you do the same thing in python?  Would it be any clearer or 
 shorter?  Probably not.


Not in all cases. But in general, I'd expect it to be clearer. Python is 
just more similar to normal programming than sh, which is why I'd prefer it.

sh scripts aren't very reliable either. I remember that script that 
invoked another program. That other program produced some warning, and 
the script interpreted it as normal output. And escaping. I don't think 
there are many scripts that still work correctly if they encounter 
"strange" filenames, like filenames with spaces, special characters, or 
even line breaks. Yes, \n is a valid character in UNIX filenames.


 I'm sure some would argue that there is no point for python if you can 
 run perl...


Perl doesn't have any right to exist either. It has the same brainfuck 
quirks like sh. For example, defining magical global variables and such. 
And clusterfuck syntax. It even has a reputation as read-only language.

For that matter, any language better than sh or Perl would be better for 
a shell.


 -Steve
Apr 07 2009
next sibling parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
grauzone wrote:

 Sure, /bin/sh is the least common denominator. But is there a UNIX that 
 can't run python?


Well one good part about these tools is that there's plenty of overlap 
between them. Like stick-shift cars, you can drive at a given speed in 
two gears without ruining the engine.

I use zsh for shell scripting and don't find it half bad for what I ask 
from it. One good thing about shell scripting is that its paradigm is 
nicely constrained: you operate at file level. In a general language you 
open file, process file, close file. In a shell your file is a unit, and 
a program is a unit. Of course you could also do the same in a general 
language with the right libs, but the playfield is too vast; in a Python 
or Perl script you could find pretty much any code. But as soon as I 
open a shell script, I know where to set my level of expectations. 
Here's where I operate at file and program level, and for the actual 
programs I use another language. That nicely modularizes and 
compartmentalizes my work.

Could you have written Steve's script in python? Absolutely. It'd be the 
same way as driving your car one block to buy a bread - possible, not 
entirely unreasonable, just a bit inefficacious.

There's been a number of experiments to replace the shell with scheme, 
perl, or python. I'm not sure how successful they were for particular 
people, but they didn't quite take. My speculation is that general 
languages are "too powerful" for shell scripting.


Andrei
Apr 07 2009
next sibling parent grauzone <none example.net> writes:
About your general point, I think that's only because all the shell 
commands are available by default. To delete a file, there's simply 
"rm". A general purpose language would normally require more code to 
delete a file, and that additional code is perceived as "noise". The 
thing to do would be to reduce that noise to almost nothing.


 There's been a number of experiments to replace the shell with scheme, 
 perl, or python. I'm not sure how successful they were for particular 
 people, but they didn't quite take. My speculation is that general 
 languages are "too powerful" for shell scripting.


First, there's not really a high need for it. There might be many people 
who dislike sh, but sh works "well enough", and there's no pressure to 
replace it. And sh is standard and available anywhere.

Second, an alternative absolutely had to be standard to be successful, 
because else you couldn't "compose" the various utilities to write 
larger programs, like in sh. Or you had to start processes and pass 
command line arguments and use stdin/stdout, but sh is better at this.
Apr 07 2009
prev sibling parent reply Walter Bright <newshound1 digitalmars.com> writes:
Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 There's been a number of experiments to replace the shell with scheme, 
 perl, or python. I'm not sure how successful they were for particular 
 people, but they didn't quite take. My speculation is that general 
 languages are "too powerful" for shell scripting.


rdmd?
Apr 07 2009
parent reply grauzone <none example.net> writes:
Walter Bright wrote:

 Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 There's been a number of experiments to replace the shell with scheme, 
 perl, or python. I'm not sure how successful they were for particular 
 people, but they didn't quite take. My speculation is that general 
 languages are "too powerful" for shell scripting.


 
 rdmd?


Some things wouldn't be so beautiful with rdmd:
1. You need a main function, you can't just start typing.
2. You need at least one import statement. This is kind of annoying, 
because you'd probably always import the same single module, that 
contains all your favourite D-functions-substituting-shell-stuff.

Any suggestions?
Apr 07 2009
parent Walter Bright <newshound1 digitalmars.com> writes:
grauzone wrote:

 Walter Bright wrote:

 rdmd?


 
 Some things wouldn't be so beautiful with rdmd:
 1. You need a main function, you can't just start typing.
 2. You need at least one import statement. This is kind of annoying, 
 because you'd probably always import the same single module, that 
 contains all your favourite D-functions-substituting-shell-stuff.
 
 Any suggestions?


I don't think it's a good idea to remove that stuff from D. I was 
thinking more of how the body text looks.
Apr 07 2009
prev sibling next sibling parent reply "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:
On Tue, 07 Apr 2009 15:03:54 -0400, grauzone <none example.net> wrote:


 Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

 On Tue, 07 Apr 2009 14:35:04 -0400, grauzone <none example.net> wrote:


 But shell scripting in itself is so powerful for this kind of stuff.   
 I've written lots of little scripts to do fantastic things that on  
 Windows would be so painful (without cygwin of course).  Like  
 renaming all files of a certain type to something else, or copying  
 select files to another directory.


 Now wouldn't that be much more powerful to use an actual programming  
 language for this, instead of bash? I claim with something like  
 python, bash doesn't really have any right to exist anymore.


  I can log into ANY Linux, Solaris, BSD, OSX, etc system and have a  
 reasonable /bin/sh that allows at least bourne shell functionality.   
 The same can't be said for almost any other scripting language you can  
 throw at me.


 Sure, /bin/sh is the least common denominator. But is there a UNIX that  
 can't run python?


I would guess there isn't. But when someone says, "hey, I need a script  
that does this," I don't ever have to say "oh, you don't have /bin/sh  
installed?  Sorry, can't help you."


 Of course, aside from that, I hate python syntax...  And can python be  
 used as a user shell?


 Don't tell me you hate it more than the clusterfuck that is sh syntax?  
 Reading or writing sh scripts always feels like screwing in bolts into  
 my head.


Yes, I hate it more.  sh is a simple syntax (described in 34 pages, most  
of which are builtin functions, of my Unix in a Nutshell book), and has no  
standard library.  All the "library" is are standard unix commands.  I had  
to fix some shit in the live CD creator script written in python on  
Fedora.  It took me a long, long time to figure out what it was doing.   
Does it *really* require you to type self every time you want to access a  
member?  And what's up with all the freakin underscores?  You consider  
that a good programming syntax?  The syntax of python is horrendous.  The  
only thing I can think of that's worse is VBScript.  It might be a good  
language, but I can't get past the syntax.


 And regarding using it as an user shell: there's an interactive command  
 line interpreter.


if you type ls, does it work, or do you have to type __run__("ls") or  
whatever?


 How would you do the same thing in python?  Would it be any clearer or  
 shorter?  Probably not.


 Not in all cases. But in general, I'd expect it to be clearer. Python is  
 just more similar to normal programming than sh, which is why I'd prefer  
 it.


You thought my script was unclear?  I thought you could know exactly what  
it's doing without even knowing sh syntax.  Maybe the most confusing part  
was the 'fi' denoting an end of an if statement.

Prove me wrong, show me a python script that does the same thing, and  
we'll see if it's clearer.


 sh scripts aren't very reliable either. I remember that script that  
 invoked another program. That other program produced some warning, and  
 the script interpreted it as normal output.


Oh yeah, that *must* have been the scripting language's fault.  I have  
bugs in my D programs too, must be because D sucks?


 And escaping. I don't think there are many scripts that still work  
 correctly if they encounter "strange" filenames, like filenames with  
 spaces, special characters, or even line breaks. Yes, \n is a valid  
 character in UNIX filenames.


That is what single quoting is for.  'xy
*$123' is that string exactly, no interpretation of any special characters.

Want to know a good trick to play on a unix newbie?  Make a file in their  
home directory called *

touch '*'

Not knowing what it is, they try to remove it:

rm *

hilarity ensues :)


 I'm sure some would argue that there is no point for python if you can  
 run perl...


 Perl doesn't have any right to exist either. It has the same brainfuck  
 quirks like sh. For example, defining magical global variables and such.  
 And clusterfuck syntax. It even has a reputation as read-only language.

 For that matter, any language better than sh or Perl would be better for  
 a shell.


So basically, you don't like other scripting languages so they don't have  
a right to exist?  Interesting point of view.

-Steve
Apr 07 2009
next sibling parent reply grauzone <none example.net> writes:
Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

 On Tue, 07 Apr 2009 15:03:54 -0400, grauzone <none example.net> wrote:
 

 Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

 On Tue, 07 Apr 2009 14:35:04 -0400, grauzone <none example.net> wrote:


 But shell scripting in itself is so powerful for this kind of 
 stuff.  I've written lots of little scripts to do fantastic things 
 that on Windows would be so painful (without cygwin of course).  
 Like renaming all files of a certain type to something else, or 
 copying select files to another directory.


 Now wouldn't that be much more powerful to use an actual programming 
 language for this, instead of bash? I claim with something like 
 python, bash doesn't really have any right to exist anymore.


  I can log into ANY Linux, Solaris, BSD, OSX, etc system and have a 
 reasonable /bin/sh that allows at least bourne shell functionality.  
 The same can't be said for almost any other scripting language you 
 can throw at me.


 Sure, /bin/sh is the least common denominator. But is there a UNIX 
 that can't run python?


 
 I would guess there isn't. But when someone says, "hey, I need a script 
 that does this," I don't ever have to say "oh, you don't have /bin/sh 
 installed?  Sorry, can't help you."


You have to distinguish between "what would a perfect system look like" 
and "how could we improve UNIX". The latter would be replacing sh by 
python, I'm well aware that this doesn't work in practice.


 Of course, aside from that, I hate python syntax...  And can python 
 be used as a user shell?


 Don't tell me you hate it more than the clusterfuck that is sh syntax? 
 Reading or writing sh scripts always feels like screwing in bolts into 
 my head.


 
 Yes, I hate it more.  sh is a simple syntax (described in 34 pages, most 
 of which are builtin functions, of my Unix in a Nutshell book), and has 
 no standard library.  All the "library" is are standard unix commands.  
 I had to fix some shit in the live CD creator script written in python 
 on Fedora.  It took me a long, long time to figure out what it was 
 doing.  Does it *really* require you to type self every time you want to 
 access a member?  And what's up with all the freakin underscores?  You 
 consider that a good programming syntax?  The syntax of python is 
 horrendous.  The only thing I can think of that's worse is VBScript.  It 
 might be a good language, but I can't get past the syntax.


The complete language reference (including index) has 102 pages. 
Considering that it's probably more formal than the sh description in 
your Nutshell book, it's not that much compared to sh.

Regarding the syntax: OK, that's probably about tastes. But I still like 
it more than, say, the funny way how you have to use the find program.


 And regarding using it as an user shell: there's an interactive 
 command line interpreter.


 
 if you type ls, does it work, or do you have to type __run__("ls") or 
 whatever?


If you'd go and use python as a shell, you had a ls() function. It would 
return an array of names. Instead of text garbage like ls does. How can 
you reliably list all files, without getting incorrect results (like 
when there's a line break in a file), or falling into the escape trap 
(your script, that takes the ls output, interprets part of the filename 
as program)?


 How would you do the same thing in python?  Would it be any clearer 
 or shorter?  Probably not.


 Not in all cases. But in general, I'd expect it to be clearer. Python 
 is just more similar to normal programming than sh, which is why I'd 
 prefer it.


 
 You thought my script was unclear?  I thought you could know exactly 
 what it's doing without even knowing sh syntax.  Maybe the most 
 confusing part was the 'fi' denoting an end of an if statement.


It doesn't really do anything complicated anyway.


 Prove me wrong, show me a python script that does the same thing, and 
 we'll see if it's clearer.


Sorry, I'm not going to write a script to prove someone else wrong over 
the internet. And my point was anyway to extend a _real_ scripting 
language by adding simple functions as substitutes for common UNIX 
programs like rm, ln etc.


 sh scripts aren't very reliable either. I remember that script that 
 invoked another program. That other program produced some warning, and 
 the script interpreted it as normal output.


 
 Oh yeah, that *must* have been the scripting language's fault.  I have 
 bugs in my D programs too, must be because D sucks?


Interpreting data as programs are the "buffer overflows" of scripting 
languages. Nothing to defend here. The script in question was relatively 
large, and probably written by some guru, if that helps.


 And escaping. I don't think there are many scripts that still work 
 correctly if they encounter "strange" filenames, like filenames with 
 spaces, special characters, or even line breaks. Yes, \n is a valid 
 character in UNIX filenames.


 
 That is what single quoting is for.  'xy
 *$123' is that string exactly, no interpretation of any special characters.
 
 Want to know a good trick to play on a unix newbie?  Make a file in 
 their home directory called *
 
 touch '*'
 
 Not knowing what it is, they try to remove it:
 
 rm *
 
 hilarity ensues :)


Yeah, or doing something like "rm -rf this/directory /". Or deleting all 
hidden directories.

That demonstrates a particularly disgusting issue with the shell: escape 
hell.

One time, I unzipped a file, and the files were encoded with some weird 
multibyte garbage. How do I delete the files? I had to start a GUI 
program to do this. In Python, with an appropriate extension library, 
that would have been ls() followed by a rm(ls[1]). How to do this in sh?


 I'm sure some would argue that there is no point for python if you 
 can run perl...


 Perl doesn't have any right to exist either. It has the same brainfuck 
 quirks like sh. For example, defining magical global variables and 
 such. And clusterfuck syntax. It even has a reputation as read-only 
 language.

 For that matter, any language better than sh or Perl would be better 
 for a shell.


 
 So basically, you don't like other scripting languages so they don't 
 have a right to exist?  Interesting point of view.


Yes. I usually destroy what I dislike.


 -Steve
Apr 07 2009
parent "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:
On Tue, 07 Apr 2009 15:58:34 -0400, grauzone <none example.net> wrote:


 The complete language reference (including index) has 102 pages.  
 Considering that it's probably more formal than the sh description in  
 your Nutshell book, it's not that much compared to sh.


The nutshell description is formal and complete for bourne/korn shell (it  
does not have any bash extensions), which mostly sufficient for everything.


 Regarding the syntax: OK, that's probably about tastes. But I still like  
 it more than, say, the funny way how you have to use the find program.


It depends on what you want to get used to.  I agree it's about tastes.


 And regarding using it as an user shell: there's an interactive  
 command line interpreter.


  if you type ls, does it work, or do you have to type __run__("ls") or  
 whatever?


 If you'd go and use python as a shell, you had a ls() function. It would  
 return an array of names. Instead of text garbage like ls does. How can  
 you reliably list all files, without getting incorrect results (like  
 when there's a line break in a file), or falling into the escape trap  
 (your script, that takes the ls output, interprets part of the filename  
 as program)?


You can use the shell's filename wildcard feature to get an array of  
filenames that are properly delineated.

For example:

for file in *
do
   echo filename is: $file
done

Will print out individual files, including ones that have escape sequences  
or spaces.  echo re-interprets newlines as spaces, so you won't see those  
exactly, but the file variable does contain the exact characters.


 Prove me wrong, show me a python script that does the same thing, and  
 we'll see if it's clearer.


 Sorry, I'm not going to write a script to prove someone else wrong over  
 the internet. And my point was anyway to extend a _real_ scripting  
 language by adding simple functions as substitutes for common UNIX  
 programs like rm, ln etc.


what happens when you want to run non-standard programs, then do you have  
to run them using a python function?  I imagine that simply interpreting  
any symbol that doesn't match a library function as a command to run might  
result in a lot more collisions in python than in sh.


 sh scripts aren't very reliable either. I remember that script that  
 invoked another program. That other program produced some warning, and  
 the script interpreted it as normal output.


  Oh yeah, that *must* have been the scripting language's fault.  I have  
 bugs in my D programs too, must be because D sucks?


 Interpreting data as programs are the "buffer overflows" of scripting  
 languages. Nothing to defend here. The script in question was relatively  
 large, and probably written by some guru, if that helps.


All I was saying is that bugs can occur in any programming or scripting  
language.  Blaming the language isn't the answer (although complicated  
scripts in any language you are not familiar with certainly can be hard to  
debug).


 Yeah, or doing something like "rm -rf this/directory /". Or deleting all  
 hidden directories.

 That demonstrates a particularly disgusting issue with the shell: escape  
 hell.

 One time, I unzipped a file, and the files were encoded with some weird  
 multibyte garbage. How do I delete the files? I had to start a GUI  
 program to do this. In Python, with an appropriate extension library,  
 that would have been ls() followed by a rm(ls[1]). How to do this in sh?


I'm assuming you had an issue because those files were intermixed with  
files you wanted to keep?

for file in *
do
   echo Do you want to remove file $file?
   read answer
   if [ "$answer" = "y" ]
   then
     rm "$file"
   fi
done

or something like that would have worked.

-Steve
Apr 07 2009
prev sibling parent reply Jarrett Billingsley <jarrett.billingsley gmail.com> writes:
On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 3:30 PM, Steven Schveighoffer
<schveiguy yahoo.com> wrote:


 And regarding using it as an user shell: there's an interactive command
 line interpreter.


 if you type ls, does it work, or do you have to type __run__("ls") or
 whatever?


I think it's things like this that are the reason a lot of attempts at
turning general-purpose scripting languages into shells has failed.
Despite the horrid mess that is bash's syntax, the syntax for simple
commands is.. simple.  Elegant, to a point.

So what I've been considering is creating a modified version of MiniD.
 All that would be required is some modifications to the syntactic
analyzer and a small library of functionality for very common shell
tasks.  The important part is the modifications to the syntactic
analyzer.

So suppose you started up this minishell or mdsh or whatever it's called.

$ mdsh

 _


OK, go ahead and type some stuff.


 ls


foo.d    bar.d    baz.d

 ls -a


.    ..    foo.d    bar.d    baz.d

 grep "hello" | sort


a: hello!
b: hello!

 _


Uh, ok, so it looks just like bash.  What's happening under the hood
is that when in interactive mode, the compiler is in "bash mode."  It
parses each line as a bash statement.  But it's not actually bash: all
it's doing is parsing the line and turning it into some kind of MiniD
code under the hood.  so `grep "hello" | sort` becomes instead
"shell.exec("grep", "hello").pipe("sort")", or something like that.
Then that is compiled into MiniD code and executed.  The shell.exec
function just spawns a new process and returns some process object
which can be piped to another one.

Then you have a simple "escaping" mechanism to switch between MiniD
mode and bash mode.  Something like %.


 %foreach(file; shell.ls())


.. {
..      writeln("processing file ", file)
..      %something $file
.. }
processing file foo.d
processing file bar.d
processing file baz.d

 _


There.  Now you have sane syntax for complex language constructs, but
it's still simple to escape into bash mode to do shell-y stuff.
Notice the "$file", which is a signal to the compiler to convert
'file' as a variable reference rather than as a string argument to the
command.

(It also follows that if you wrote a full shellscript, in a .mdsh file
or something, the compiler would, when compiling it, start in MiniD
mode by default so you wouldn't have to escape every statement with a
%.)

I know Alex wants to see this happen :P
Apr 07 2009
parent reply "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:
On Tue, 07 Apr 2009 18:17:12 -0400, Jarrett Billingsley  
<jarrett.billingsley gmail.com> wrote:


 On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 3:30 PM, Steven Schveighoffer
 <schveiguy yahoo.com> wrote:


 And regarding using it as an user shell: there's an interactive command
 line interpreter.


 if you type ls, does it work, or do you have to type __run__("ls") or
 whatever?


 I think it's things like this that are the reason a lot of attempts at
 turning general-purpose scripting languages into shells has failed.
 Despite the horrid mess that is bash's syntax, the syntax for simple
 commands is.. simple.  Elegant, to a point.

 So what I've been considering is creating a modified version of MiniD.
  All that would be required is some modifications to the syntactic
 analyzer and a small library of functionality for very common shell
 tasks.  The important part is the modifications to the syntactic
 analyzer.

 So suppose you started up this minishell or mdsh or whatever it's called.

 $ mdsh

 _


 OK, go ahead and type some stuff.


 ls


 foo.d    bar.d    baz.d

 ls -a


 .    ..    foo.d    bar.d    baz.d

 grep "hello" | sort


 a: hello!
 b: hello!

 _


 Uh, ok, so it looks just like bash.  What's happening under the hood
 is that when in interactive mode, the compiler is in "bash mode."  It
 parses each line as a bash statement.  But it's not actually bash: all
 it's doing is parsing the line and turning it into some kind of MiniD
 code under the hood.  so `grep "hello" | sort` becomes instead
 "shell.exec("grep", "hello").pipe("sort")", or something like that.
 Then that is compiled into MiniD code and executed.  The shell.exec
 function just spawns a new process and returns some process object
 which can be piped to another one.

 Then you have a simple "escaping" mechanism to switch between MiniD
 mode and bash mode.  Something like %.

  > %foreach(file; shell.ls())
 .. {
 ..      writeln("processing file ", file)
 ..      %something $file
 .. }
 processing file foo.d
 processing file bar.d
 processing file baz.d
  > _

 There.  Now you have sane syntax for complex language constructs, but
 it's still simple to escape into bash mode to do shell-y stuff.
 Notice the "$file", which is a signal to the compiler to convert
 'file' as a variable reference rather than as a string argument to the
 command.

 (It also follows that if you wrote a full shellscript, in a .mdsh file
 or something, the compiler would, when compiling it, start in MiniD
 mode by default so you wouldn't have to escape every statement with a
 %.)

 I know Alex wants to see this happen :P


This reminds me of jsp, where java is intermixed into html.  When you want  
HTML, it's there, when you want java, you simply escape into java.

It's not a bad idea.  Not sure I'd use it, but I'd certainly try it :)  I  
certainly could deal with D-like syntax more than python syntax.

I'm a little confused on the escaping.  In one example, it looks like %  
turns MiniD alternately on and off, yet you say you'd have to escape every  
line in a script file?

If you meant the "on/off" style, the escaping should be more like  
open/closing (e.g. %< minid code >% ).  Otherwise, it'd be hard to tell in  
the middle of the file whether you're in miniD or bash syntax.

You should also be able to alias any miniD function that takes an array of  
strings to a shell "command".  This would allow you to have a selected  
overlap between miniD and your PATH's namespace.  Something like:


 %shell.alias("foo", &foo)
 foo a b "c d e"


which would be equivalent to calling foo("a", "b", "c d e"), even if there  
was a foo command in your path.

BTW, never used miniD, so I don't know what's already possible.

-Steve
Apr 07 2009
parent reply Jarrett Billingsley <jarrett.billingsley gmail.com> writes:
On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 7:14 PM, Steven Schveighoffer
<schveiguy yahoo.com> wrote:


 (It also follows that if you wrote a full shellscript, in a .mdsh file
 or something, the compiler would, when compiling it, start in MiniD
 mode by default so you wouldn't have to escape every statement with a
 %.)





 I'm a little confused on the escaping. =A0In one example, it looks like %
 turns MiniD alternately on and off, yet you say you'd have to escape ever=


y

 line in a script file?


I'm sure if you read what I've quoted here, you'll see your mistake ;)


 If you meant the "on/off" style, the escaping should be more like
 open/closing (e.g. %< minid code >% ). =A0Otherwise, it'd be hard to tell=


 in

 the middle of the file whether you're in miniD or bash syntax.


A shellscript would always be compiled in MiniD mode, and you'd have
to escape into bash mode with %, and that would only work on a single
statement.


 You should also be able to alias any miniD function that takes an array o=


f

 strings to a shell "command". =A0This would allow you to have a selected
 overlap between miniD and your PATH's namespace. =A0Something like:


 %shell.alias("foo", &foo)
 foo a b "c d e"


 which would be equivalent to calling foo("a", "b", "c d e"), even if ther=


e

 was a foo command in your path.


Oh totally.  I've got all sorts of ideas.


 BTW, never used miniD, so I don't know what's already possible.


Anything!  ;)
Apr 07 2009
parent reply "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:
On Tue, 07 Apr 2009 19:41:36 -0400, Jarrett Billingsley  
<jarrett.billingsley gmail.com> wrote:


 On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 7:14 PM, Steven Schveighoffer
 <schveiguy yahoo.com> wrote:


 (It also follows that if you wrote a full shellscript, in a .mdsh file
 or something, the compiler would, when compiling it, start in MiniD
 mode by default so you wouldn't have to escape every statement with a
 %.)





 I'm a little confused on the escaping. In one example, it looks like %
 turns MiniD alternately on and off, yet you say you'd have to escape  
 every
 line in a script file?


 I'm sure if you read what I've quoted here, you'll see your mistake ;)


What it looks like to me then is:

if you are in interactive mode, the default is script mode, and % turns  
miniD on and off, which continues beyond a single line
if you are in a script mode, then you are always in miniD mode, unless it  
sees %, which turns it to script mode for a single line.

This is very confusing to me :)

I'm citing your original example:

  > %foreach(file; shell.ls())  -> clearly % escaped to miniD mode
.. {
..      writeln("processing file ", file) -> still in miniD mode, right?
..      %something $file   -> back to shell mode, right?
.. } -> um... in shell mode still maybe?  or not?

If I'm still mistaken, don't worry about trying to help me understand.   
I'm sure you wouldn't release something like this, so I'll wait until I  
have mdsh to play with before I complain :)

-Steve
Apr 07 2009
parent reply "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:
On Tue, 07 Apr 2009 19:52:12 -0400, Steven Schveighoffer  
<schveiguy yahoo.com> wrote:


 On Tue, 07 Apr 2009 19:41:36 -0400, Jarrett Billingsley  
 <jarrett.billingsley gmail.com> wrote:


 On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 7:14 PM, Steven Schveighoffer
 <schveiguy yahoo.com> wrote:


 (It also follows that if you wrote a full shellscript, in a .mdsh file
 or something, the compiler would, when compiling it, start in MiniD
 mode by default so you wouldn't have to escape every statement with a
 %.)





 I'm a little confused on the escaping. In one example, it looks like %
 turns MiniD alternately on and off, yet you say you'd have to escape  
 every
 line in a script file?


 I'm sure if you read what I've quoted here, you'll see your mistake ;)


 What it looks like to me then is:

 if you are in interactive mode, the default is script mode, and % turns  
 miniD on and off, which continues beyond a single line
 if you are in a script mode, then you are always in miniD mode, unless  
 it sees %, which turns it to script mode for a single line.


OK, that was *really* confusing, let me re-explain:

if you are in interactive mode, the default is shell mode, and % turns  
miniD on and off, which continues beyond a single line
if you are in a script file, then you are always in miniD mode, unless it  
sees %, which turns it to shell mode for a single line.
Apr 07 2009
parent reply Jarrett Billingsley <jarrett.billingsley gmail.com> writes:
On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 7:53 PM, Steven Schveighoffer
<schveiguy yahoo.com> wrote:


 OK, that was *really* confusing, let me re-explain:

 if you are in interactive mode, the default is shell mode, and % turns miniD
 on and off, which continues beyond a single line
 if you are in a script file, then you are always in miniD mode, unless it
 sees %, which turns it to shell mode for a single line.


Close.  In either mode, % switches to the other mode for a single
*statement*, and statements can span multiple lines.  In interactive
mode, the interpreter will compile and run your code when you have
finished a single statement, no matter if it's a single line or if
it's a huge multi-line loop statement.
Apr 07 2009
parent reply "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:
On Tue, 07 Apr 2009 20:02:33 -0400, Jarrett Billingsley  
<jarrett.billingsley gmail.com> wrote:


 On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 7:53 PM, Steven Schveighoffer
 <schveiguy yahoo.com> wrote:


 OK, that was *really* confusing, let me re-explain:

 if you are in interactive mode, the default is shell mode, and % turns  
 miniD
 on and off, which continues beyond a single line
 if you are in a script file, then you are always in miniD mode, unless  
 it
 sees %, which turns it to shell mode for a single line.


 Close.  In either mode, % switches to the other mode for a single
 *statement*, and statements can span multiple lines.  In interactive
 mode, the interpreter will compile and run your code when you have
 finished a single statement, no matter if it's a single line or if
 it's a huge multi-line loop statement.


Ah HA!

Yes, I see that now, interesting idea.

Might I suggest that this not be the case.  I'd rather see a statement  
like the following in the script (if you wish to do miniD by default):


%shell.setMode(scripted)

// and to set it back
shell.setMode(interactive)

Just my opinion.  I often try out individual lines of a script to see  
what's happening as a form of debugging, it would be maddening to have to  
insert % everywhere (for those cases where my script file is mostly  
shell-style commands).

Or, I guess if you gave the ability as stated above, I could insert the  
shell.setMode(interactive) in such scripts...

My intuition tells me that having things execute differently depending on  
whether it's scripted or interactive is going to cause bug reports...

Anyways, looking forward to trying it.

-Steve
Apr 07 2009
parent reply Jarrett Billingsley <jarrett.billingsley gmail.com> writes:
On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 8:21 PM, Steven Schveighoffer
<schveiguy yahoo.com> wrote:


 Might I suggest that this not be the case. =A0I'd rather see a statement =


like

 the following in the script (if you wish to do miniD by default):


 %shell.setMode(scripted)

 // and to set it back
 shell.setMode(interactive)


Sadly that would make the lexical/semantic passes of the compiler
dependent upon the semantic analysis.  Beyond that, even - it'd
require that the code be compiled and executed before you knew how to
parse it.  Sounds like Perl.  However...


 Just my opinion. =A0I often try out individual lines of a script to see w=


hat's

 happening as a form of debugging, it would be maddening to have to insert=


 %

 everywhere (for those cases where my script file is mostly shell-style
 commands).


How about something like:

%{
// lots of bash-style commands!
}

That is, an entire brace-block in which the default parsing mode is bash mo=
de?


 My intuition tells me that having things execute differently depending on
 whether it's scripted or interactive is going to cause bug reports...


It's not that it's executing differently; it's just parsed
differently, with a different "reasonable default" for interactive vs.
batch mode.  I'm sure people might complain but meh :P
Apr 07 2009
parent "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:
On Tue, 07 Apr 2009 21:55:34 -0400, Jarrett Billingsley  
<jarrett.billingsley gmail.com> wrote:


 How about something like:

 %{
 // lots of bash-style commands!
 }


That works :)

-Steve
Apr 08 2009
prev sibling next sibling parent Sergey Gromov <snake.scaly gmail.com> writes:
Tue, 07 Apr 2009 21:03:54 +0200, grauzone wrote:


 I can log into ANY Linux, Solaris, BSD, OSX, etc system and have a 
 reasonable /bin/sh that allows at least bourne shell functionality.  The 
 same can't be said for almost any other scripting language you can throw 
 at me.


 
 Sure, /bin/sh is the least common denominator. But is there a UNIX that 
 can't run python?


Sure there is.  My external disk array runs one.  It's OS fits on a 16
MiB ram-drive, with 3 MiB free, with almost all the shell commands
implemented by an extremely stripped BusyBox.  Still I can telnet into
it and run scripts which Windows can only dream of.
Apr 07 2009
prev sibling parent Yigal Chripun <yigal100 gmail.com> writes:
On 07/04/2009 22:03, grauzone wrote:

 Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

 On Tue, 07 Apr 2009 14:35:04 -0400, grauzone <none example.net> wrote:


 But shell scripting in itself is so powerful for this kind of stuff.
 I've written lots of little scripts to do fantastic things that on
 Windows would be so painful (without cygwin of course). Like
 renaming all files of a certain type to something else, or copying
 select files to another directory.


 Now wouldn't that be much more powerful to use an actual programming
 language for this, instead of bash? I claim with something like
 python, bash doesn't really have any right to exist anymore.


 I can log into ANY Linux, Solaris, BSD, OSX, etc system and have a
 reasonable /bin/sh that allows at least bourne shell functionality.
 The same can't be said for almost any other scripting language you can
 throw at me.


 Sure, /bin/sh is the least common denominator. But is there a UNIX that
 can't run python?


 Of course, aside from that, I hate python syntax... And can python be
 used as a user shell?


 Don't tell me you hate it more than the clusterfuck that is sh syntax?
 Reading or writing sh scripts always feels like screwing in bolts into
 my head.

 And regarding using it as an user shell: there's an interactive command
 line interpreter.


 How would you do the same thing in python? Would it be any clearer or
 shorter? Probably not.


 Not in all cases. But in general, I'd expect it to be clearer. Python is
 just more similar to normal programming than sh, which is why I'd prefer
 it.

 sh scripts aren't very reliable either. I remember that script that
 invoked another program. That other program produced some warning, and
 the script interpreted it as normal output. And escaping. I don't think
 there are many scripts that still work correctly if they encounter
 "strange" filenames, like filenames with spaces, special characters, or
 even line breaks. Yes, \n is a valid character in UNIX filenames.


 I'm sure some would argue that there is no point for python if you can
 run perl...


 Perl doesn't have any right to exist either. It has the same brainfuck
 quirks like sh. For example, defining magical global variables and such.
 And clusterfuck syntax. It even has a reputation as read-only language.


I think you meant "write-only language".

 For that matter, any language better than sh or Perl would be better for
 a shell.


 -Steve




I completely agree with the above, only thing is that my personal 
preference would be Ruby instead of python nad my second choice would be 
Javascript.

But in general I agree that Perl and all variants of unix shell (csh, 
ksh, bash, zsh, etc) are obsolete tech.

google for Rush, that's a Ruby Shell.
Apr 08 2009
prev sibling parent Walter Bright <newshound1 digitalmars.com> writes:
Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

 For example, here's a script I wrote to change which D compiler I want 
 to use:


What would be fun is seeing how that script would look written in D, 
then run using rdmd!
Apr 07 2009
prev sibling next sibling parent "Adam D. Ruppe" <destructionator gmail.com> writes:
On Tue, Apr 07, 2009 at 11:11:44AM -0700, Walter Bright wrote:

 Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

It took me a couple of minutes to write under her eyes a script that 
downloaded HTML, scraped the code for links, followed those of interest, 
and output a concatenation of all pages she was interested in, with 
details highlighted, that was loadable back in the browser. I'd show her 
one iteration, get feedback, and get the next iteration within seconds. 
All without "coding" in any sense as regularly understood by Windows 
programmers.


 
 I have no idea how to do that under unix. I obviously have not learned 
 anywhere near enough about it.


Load up vi, write the program, compile it with dmd, run it :P

The command line is great for one line programs, but for anything complex,
it gets to be really hard to follow. Writing D is no harder and much safer.

-- 
Adam D. Ruppe
http://arsdnet.net
Apr 07 2009
prev sibling next sibling parent =?UTF-8?B?QWxleGFuZGVyIFDDoW5law==?= writes:
Walter Bright wrote:

 Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 It took me a couple of minutes to write under her eyes a script that 
 downloaded HTML, scraped the code for links, followed those of 
 interest, and output a concatenation of all pages she was interested 
 in, with details highlighted, that was loadable back in the browser. 
 I'd show her one iteration, get feedback, and get the next iteration 
 within seconds. All without "coding" in any sense as regularly 
 understood by Windows programmers.


 
 I have no idea how to do that under unix. I obviously have not learned 
 anywhere near enough about it.


I suppose you know all the tools you need for that: a POSIX shell, wget, 
sed, maybe sort, some xargs and pipes!
Apr 07 2009
prev sibling parent bearophile <bearophileHUGS lycos.com> writes:
Walter Bright:

 Andrei Alexandrescu:

 It took me a couple of minutes to write under her eyes a script that 
 downloaded HTML, scraped the code for links, followed those of interest, 
 and output a concatenation of all pages she was interested in, with 
 details highlighted, that was loadable back in the browser. I'd show her 
 one iteration, get feedback, and get the next iteration within seconds. 
 All without "coding" in any sense as regularly understood by Windows 
 programmers.


 
 I have no idea how to do that under unix. I obviously have not learned 
 anywhere near enough about it.


You may need some Python, Walter. You can do that with a small enough script,
and then it works equally on Win and Linux.

Bye,
bearophile
Apr 07 2009
prev sibling parent reply Jarrett Billingsley <jarrett.billingsley gmail.com> writes:
On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 12:38 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu
<SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote:

 I'll risk an example. A while ago my wife was looking for a place for her
 medical residency. There was an online service that would give her a long
 webpage with links to all institutions she was interested in. The links were
 in the hundreds. She had to click each, then a couple of others, then look
 through their program highlights to see some details she was interested in.
 Getting back or opening in new window were difficult due to some Javascript
 (of which disabling messed things up). All in all it was a very tedious
 task.

 It took me a couple of minutes to write under her eyes a script that
 downloaded HTML, scraped the code for links, followed those of interest, and
 output a concatenation of all pages she was interested in, with details
 highlighted, that was loadable back in the browser. I'd show her one
 iteration, get feedback, and get the next iteration within seconds. All
 without "coding" in any sense as regularly understood by Windows
 programmers.


I did pretty much the exact same thing in Python on Windows.  For that
matter, if it's bash scripting that really sets Unix apart from
Windows, well no thanks, I'll have no part in it.  It's a horrible
language.  I rank it lower than PHP.  Virtually any other scripting
language is better, and they're all cross-platform.
Apr 07 2009
parent Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
Jarrett Billingsley wrote:

 On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 12:38 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu
 <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote:

 I'll risk an example. A while ago my wife was looking for a place for her
 medical residency. There was an online service that would give her a long
 webpage with links to all institutions she was interested in. The links were
 in the hundreds. She had to click each, then a couple of others, then look
 through their program highlights to see some details she was interested in.
 Getting back or opening in new window were difficult due to some Javascript
 (of which disabling messed things up). All in all it was a very tedious
 task.

 It took me a couple of minutes to write under her eyes a script that
 downloaded HTML, scraped the code for links, followed those of interest, and
 output a concatenation of all pages she was interested in, with details
 highlighted, that was loadable back in the browser. I'd show her one
 iteration, get feedback, and get the next iteration within seconds. All
 without "coding" in any sense as regularly understood by Windows
 programmers.


 
 I did pretty much the exact same thing in Python on Windows.  For that
 matter, if it's bash scripting that really sets Unix apart from
 Windows, well no thanks, I'll have no part in it.


Relax, it ain't.

Andrei
Apr 07 2009
prev sibling next sibling parent Kagamin <spam here.lot> writes:
Andrei Alexandrescu Wrote:


 So the notion that there is a kernel catering 
 to your needs may warrant a closer look.


fix
Apr 07 2009
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Jason House <jason.james.house gmail.com> writes:
Saaa Wrote:


 
 "Andrei Alexandrescu" <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote in message 
 news:grduhp$1rk0$1 digitalmars.com...

 Saaa wrote:

 When you'd be writing computer programs.


 But that would go like this: install eclipse, check how to compile under 
 Linux and start programming.


 Nope :o). When you'll figure why not, that's where the fun starts. I'm 
 sure you know about the phenomenon "writing Fortran in C" etc. Installing 
 eclipse and starting programming as you would under windows would be a 
 moral equivalent. (Not that I would advise against using eclipse, which I 
 also like.)

 Andrei


 
 Then, how should I start, or: where do I learn how I should start? :D 
 
 


Another part of this thread reminded me. "Live CDs" provide an easy way to play
around. Ubuntu's Live CD is not set up for programming though. I don't know if
another live CD would be better.

If you install ubuntu you'll want to add the "build-essential" package (sudo
apt-get install build-essential). A similar thing can be done to install
eclipse, subversion, or whatever your favorite stuff is...

Maybe that would be a good starting point?
Apr 07 2009
next sibling parent Lutger <lutger.blijdestijn gmail.com> writes:
Jason House wrote:


 Saaa Wrote:
 

 
 "Andrei Alexandrescu" <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote in message 
 news:grduhp$1rk0$1 digitalmars.com...

 Saaa wrote:

 When you'd be writing computer programs.


 But that would go like this: install eclipse, check how to compile 








under 

 Linux and start programming.


 Nope :o). When you'll figure why not, that's where the fun starts. I'm 
 sure you know about the phenomenon "writing Fortran in C" etc. 






Installing 

 eclipse and starting programming as you would under windows would be a 
 moral equivalent. (Not that I would advise against using eclipse, which 






I 

 also like.)

 Andrei


 
 Then, how should I start, or: where do I learn how I should start? :D 
 
 


 
 Another part of this thread reminded me. "Live CDs" provide an easy way to 


play around. Ubuntu's Live CD is not set up for programming though. I don't 
know if another live CD would be better.

 
 If you install ubuntu you'll want to add the "build-essential" package 


(sudo apt-get install build-essential). A similar thing can be done to 
install eclipse, subversion, or whatever your favorite stuff is...

 
 Maybe that would be a good starting point?


That, or with usb, or in virtualbox is all good. But I think the question 
was more where to start using the specific benefits of linux over other OS  
as a programming environment.

Fedora 10 has a live-cd spin specifically aimed at developers, haven't used 
it though.  

http://spins.fedoraproject.org/
Apr 07 2009
prev sibling parent Jesse Phillips <jessekphillips gmail.com> writes:
On Tue, 07 Apr 2009 09:48:57 -0400, Jason House wrote:


 Saaa Wrote:
 
 

 "Andrei Alexandrescu" <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote in message
 news:grduhp$1rk0$1 digitalmars.com...

 Saaa wrote:

 When you'd be writing computer programs.


 But that would go like this: install eclipse, check how to compile
 under Linux and start programming.


 Nope :o). When you'll figure why not, that's where the fun starts.
 I'm sure you know about the phenomenon "writing Fortran in C" etc.
 Installing eclipse and starting programming as you would under
 windows would be a moral equivalent. (Not that I would advise against
 using eclipse, which I also like.)

 Andrei


 
 Then, how should I start, or: where do I learn how I should start? :D
 
 
 


 Another part of this thread reminded me. "Live CDs" provide an easy way
 to play around. Ubuntu's Live CD is not set up for programming though. I
 don't know if another live CD would be better.
 
 If you install ubuntu you'll want to add the "build-essential" package
 (sudo apt-get install build-essential). A similar thing can be done to
 install eclipse, subversion, or whatever your favorite stuff is...
 
 Maybe that would be a good starting point?


I always suggest Koppix, it has lots of programs and the latest version 
has great improvements in boot up time. v6 defaults to a screen reader 
version so when it brings up a prompt one should type 'knoppix' to get 
the GUI version.

http://knoppix.net/
Apr 07 2009
prev sibling parent reply Ralf Schneider <lists gestaltgeber.com> writes:
 If I were to quickly give the most significant bit of my opinion, that 
 would be this: Unix is for programmers and Windows is for end users. As 
 such, even though both ultimately accomplish the task of putting a 
 computer's resources at your disposal, their foci are different. You're 
 a programmer. So the notion that there is an operating system catering 
 to your needs may warrant a closer look.


Well,

to have at least one different opinion:

I'm playing around with Linux since the first year when Linus released 
the source code. I have hacked the kernel for fun.
I'm usix AIX, HP-UX, Red Hat, Solaris and Windows at work as a programmer.

And my opinion is: *NIX sucks. Linux was great comapred to DOS and 
Windows 3.11. But since Windows NT4.0 - Linux (POSIX) just seems 
outdated. Quality and stability of APIs, general Architecture, 
documentation, etc.

I prefer Windows any time.

I hate emacs and vi. The command line tools are OK, but nothing compared 
to a modern IDE with a stable debugger and analysis tools like "Source 
Insight". Everything on Unix feels like it was 20 years ago. Nothing 
seems to change, the old poor tools. No progress, just stagnation. Oh I 
forgot to mention "Shell scripts!" - UAHHHHH! Ever tried python or ruby?
I seriously think Unix fetishists are masochists... Yes I can programm 
in vi and compile on the command line - if necessary. But I expect more 
after 20 years of tools development!!!

To be fair: I think AIX and HP-UX are really rock solid! But I would 
never use a server os as a desktop os!

What I want from an OS as a progammer: Performance! High responsive GUI. 
Powerfull professional tools, like a modern IDE. Stable APIs. Good 
documentation.

Windows can deliver.

I have never touched OSX. So I don't know.

Linux as a desktop is a kindergarten of wannabe design archtiects: 
Wobbling windows, KDE disaster, permanent changing APIs, slow 
performance (ever compared Eclipse on Windows and Linux?).

Linux as a server: Is OK. I mean it's free! I don't expect the same 
reliability as AIX...

- Ralf
Apr 07 2009
parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
Ralf Schneider wrote:

 If I were to quickly give the most significant bit of my opinion, that 
 would be this: Unix is for programmers and Windows is for end users. 
 As such, even though both ultimately accomplish the task of putting a 
 computer's resources at your disposal, their foci are different. 
 You're a programmer. So the notion that there is an operating system 
 catering to your needs may warrant a closer look.


 
 Well,
 
 to have at least one different opinion:
 
 I'm playing around with Linux since the first year when Linus released 
 the source code. I have hacked the kernel for fun.
 I'm usix AIX, HP-UX, Red Hat, Solaris and Windows at work as a programmer.
 
 And my opinion is: *NIX sucks. Linux was great comapred to DOS and 
 Windows 3.11. But since Windows NT4.0 - Linux (POSIX) just seems 
 outdated. Quality and stability of APIs, general Architecture, 
 documentation, etc.
 
 I prefer Windows any time.
 
 I hate emacs and vi. The command line tools are OK, but nothing compared 
 to a modern IDE with a stable debugger and analysis tools like "Source 
 Insight". Everything on Unix feels like it was 20 years ago. Nothing 
 seems to change, the old poor tools. No progress, just stagnation. Oh I 
 forgot to mention "Shell scripts!" - UAHHHHH! Ever tried python or ruby?
 I seriously think Unix fetishists are masochists... Yes I can programm 
 in vi and compile on the command line - if necessary. But I expect more 
 after 20 years of tools development!!!
 
 To be fair: I think AIX and HP-UX are really rock solid! But I would 
 never use a server os as a desktop os!
 
 What I want from an OS as a progammer: Performance! High responsive GUI. 
 Powerfull professional tools, like a modern IDE. Stable APIs. Good 
 documentation.
 
 Windows can deliver.
 
 I have never touched OSX. So I don't know.
 
 Linux as a desktop is a kindergarten of wannabe design archtiects: 
 Wobbling windows, KDE disaster, permanent changing APIs, slow 
 performance (ever compared Eclipse on Windows and Linux?).
 
 Linux as a server: Is OK. I mean it's free! I don't expect the same 
 reliability as AIX...
 
 - Ralf


Well at least you've got to make up your mind. It's amazing how you 
mention instability in three instances and stagnation in two instances, 
without ever noticing the irony. What's happening?


Andrei
Apr 07 2009
next sibling parent Don <nospam nospam.com> writes:
Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 Ralf Schneider wrote:

 If I were to quickly give the most significant bit of my opinion, 
 that would be this: Unix is for programmers and Windows is for end 
 users. As such, even though both ultimately accomplish the task of 
 putting a computer's resources at your disposal, their foci are 
 different. You're a programmer. So the notion that there is an 
 operating system catering to your needs may warrant a closer look.


 Well,

 to have at least one different opinion:

 I'm playing around with Linux since the first year when Linus released 
 the source code. I have hacked the kernel for fun.
 I'm usix AIX, HP-UX, Red Hat, Solaris and Windows at work as a 
 programmer.

 And my opinion is: *NIX sucks. Linux was great comapred to DOS and 
 Windows 3.11. But since Windows NT4.0 - Linux (POSIX) just seems 
 outdated. Quality and stability of APIs, general Architecture, 
 documentation, etc.

 I prefer Windows any time.

 I hate emacs and vi. The command line tools are OK, but nothing 
 compared to a modern IDE with a stable debugger and analysis tools 
 like "Source Insight". Everything on Unix feels like it was 20 years 
 ago. Nothing seems to change, the old poor tools. No progress, just 
 stagnation. Oh I forgot to mention "Shell scripts!" - UAHHHHH! Ever 
 tried python or ruby?
 I seriously think Unix fetishists are masochists... Yes I can programm 
 in vi and compile on the command line - if necessary. But I expect 
 more after 20 years of tools development!!!

 To be fair: I think AIX and HP-UX are really rock solid! But I would 
 never use a server os as a desktop os!

 What I want from an OS as a progammer: Performance! High responsive 
 GUI. Powerfull professional tools, like a modern IDE. Stable APIs. 
 Good documentation.

 Windows can deliver.

 I have never touched OSX. So I don't know.

 Linux as a desktop is a kindergarten of wannabe design archtiects: 
 Wobbling windows, KDE disaster, permanent changing APIs, slow 
 performance (ever compared Eclipse on Windows and Linux?).




Is Eclipse SLOWER on Linux than Windows? It's notoriously slow on Windows!


 Linux as a server: Is OK. I mean it's free! I don't expect the same 
 reliability as AIX...

 - Ralf


 
 Well at least you've got to make up your mind. It's amazing how you 
 mention instability in three instances and stagnation in two instances, 
 without ever noticing the irony. What's happening?
 
 Andrei


The instability seemed to be about "Linux as a desktop".
Apr 07 2009
prev sibling parent reply Ralf Schneider <lists gestaltgeber.com> writes:
 Well at least you've got to make up your mind. It's amazing how you 
 mention instability in three instances and stagnation in two instances, 
 without ever noticing the irony. What's happening?


Instability: Red hat crashes most often. AIX, Solaris and HP-UX just 
run. Windows crashes sometimes. (Very personal observation, of course)

Instable APIs: POSIX is stable. Most other *NIX APIs regarding Audio, 
GUI, Graphics and others are constantly changing, with very little 
visible progress. What is not covered by POSIX is different on ever Unix 
flavour: Hot do you get the peak virtual memory usage on AIX, Linux and 
Solaris?
Windows: APIs are usually stable. New APIs with new concepts are 
introduced beside existsing APIs. Yes there is a lot of cruft. And 
windows is defintetly not "perfect"!!! In no way!
It just sucks less (TM)

Stagnation: On *NIX: same (command line) tools, same concepts 
(everything is a file) as decades ago. New ideas are usually copied 
badly from Apple or Windows years later.

So, again: As a desktop and programming environment I prefer Windows. 
May be I would prefer OS X if I knew it.

As a server: I would use and suggest UNIX. May be even Red Hat is OK and 
the crashes we experience is a temporary problem and are hardware related.
Apr 07 2009
next sibling parent reply grauzone <none example.net> writes:
 Stagnation: On *NIX: same (command line) tools, same concepts 
 (everything is a file) as decades ago. New ideas are usually copied 
 badly from Apple or Windows years later.


What exciting new concepts are there under Windows? Drive letters?
Apr 07 2009
parent superdan <super dan.org> writes:
grauzone Wrote:


 Stagnation: On *NIX: same (command line) tools, same concepts 
 (everything is a file) as decades ago. New ideas are usually copied 
 badly from Apple or Windows years later.


 
 What exciting new concepts are there under Windows? Drive letters?


fuckin' ole. bill gates deserves a double dry fisting only for ole. fuck
windows. cant believe theres actual windows fans out there. its like pedophilia
or sum'th'n'. "windows delivers." eat shit. at least keep the dirt to yerself
so i dun puke my funckin' lunch. what a moron.
Apr 07 2009
prev sibling parent Jesse Phillips <jessekphillips gmail.com> writes:
On Tue, 07 Apr 2009 22:12:07 +0200, Ralf Schneider wrote:


 Well at least you've got to make up your mind. It's amazing how you
 mention instability in three instances and stagnation in two instances,
 without ever noticing the irony. What's happening?


 
 Instability: Red hat crashes most often. AIX, Solaris and HP-UX just
 run. Windows crashes sometimes. (Very personal observation, of course)
 
 Instable APIs: POSIX is stable. Most other *NIX APIs regarding Audio,
 GUI, Graphics and others are constantly changing, with very little
 visible progress. What is not covered by POSIX is different on ever Unix
 flavour: Hot do you get the peak virtual memory usage on AIX, Linux and
 Solaris?
 Windows: APIs are usually stable. New APIs with new concepts are
 introduced beside existsing APIs. Yes there is a lot of cruft. And
 windows is defintetly not "perfect"!!! In no way! It just sucks less
 (TM)
 
 Stagnation: On *NIX: same (command line) tools, same concepts
 (everything is a file) as decades ago. New ideas are usually copied
 badly from Apple or Windows years later.
 
 So, again: As a desktop and programming environment I prefer Windows.
 May be I would prefer OS X if I knew it.
 
 As a server: I would use and suggest UNIX. May be even Red Hat is OK and
 the crashes we experience is a temporary problem and are hardware
 related.


The only thing I'm interested in is, what new ideas are badly copied from 
Apple and _Microsoft_?
Apr 07 2009
prev sibling parent Sean Kelly <sean invisibleduck.org> writes:
Saaa wrote:

 Yah, I too remember my Windows-only days the way I'd remember a temporary 
 disability. (I recall to this day: any little thing I wanted to do, I'd 
 start off a wizard in Dev Studio. It was kind of a surprise for me to find 
 out that all those programs had been written, along with plenty more.) 
 Being a user is one thing, but I think a programmer who only does Windows 
 is seriously impaired.

 Andrei


 
 Could you please convince me to add a Linux install again.
 I'd rather use open source than a commercial os, but until now I don't know 
 what I am missing. 


Ubuntu is the easiest OS install I've ever done.  Assuming you've got 
the drive space or some VM software there's no reason not to at least 
try it.
Apr 07 2009
prev sibling parent reply Daniel Keep <daniel.keep.lists gmail.com> writes:
Warning: semi-rant ahead.  Feel free to ignore.  :)

Sean Kelly wrote:

 My
 Windows machine is now used exclusively for playing games.  I have no
 intention of ever using Windows for anything else again.  Games are
 the only thing the other OSes lack compared to Windows anyway.


Winamp.  More specifically, Winamp 5 + the DSP plugins I use; without
that, all my music sounds *wrong*.  Wine just can't seem to run Winamp
properly.  And please don't anyone "recommend" any of the linux-specific
players... they're either too bare-bones to be usable, or are pretending
to be iTunes.  I HATE iTunes.

That and general usability.  It's likely I'm just biased because I've
used Windows for so long, but there seems to be a long stream of things
that don't work "right" in Linux.  Little things like mounting media,
keyboard shortcuts on GUI widgets, navigating folders in the GUI with
the keyboard, or that every second application uses different dialogs. :S


 Whenever the endless debate of windows vs. linux vs. mac comes up, I
 repeat my comment: if you are a programmer, you better acquire some
 experience in each. For Windows/Mac it's not as easy because they may
 cost money, but now with virtual machines, good distributions etc. I
 think there is no excuse for a programmer to not seriously looking into
 Unix.




I have an Ubuntu VM lying around somewhere.  Aside from being broken, I
could never find any reason to use the thing.


 I desperately wish my computer-illiterate family members would move
 off of Windows as well, since it would eliminate basically every tech-
 support call I field from them.  Perhaps I've simply had good luck with
 other OSes, but Windows is the only one I've had regular problems with.


It's funny, but for me it's exactly the opposite.  I make an effort to
switch to linux about once a year.  There's always, ALWAYS, something
that goes horribly wrong that just can't be fixed.

Up until about two/three years ago, it was sound; I simply could not
make noise come out of the speakers [1].  Weird thing was that it would
sometimes work with the Live CD, but once installed it would stop
working.  I only got it working when I accidentally discovered that the
open-source drivers for my Creative card DISABLE SOUND BY DEFAULT.  I'm
hard pressed to think of a stupider default setting.

Currently, the major technical issue with linux is that it's seemingly
incapable of doing multiple monitors properly.  I've got two monitors in
a specific physical arrangement with different resolutions.  This causes
no end of issues, since X or Gnome or something seems to assume all
monitors are the same size.

But it IS improving.  The previous time I tried it, I had one LCD and
one CRT.  The built-in multi-monitor config applet ended up rendering my
machine unbootable.  And if nothing else, at least it isn't showing new
windows up between the two monitors, although it still has trouble
working out WHICH monitor to show any given window on.

Let's not even touch goddamn graphics drivers.

Windows is a pain in the arse, and there isn't a day that goes by where
I don't wish I could get rid of it from my life.  But the fact is that
it's STILL better than Linux.

Andrei said that Windows is for users, and unix is for programmers.
That's fine; I'm a programmer!  But I'm also a user.  I shouldn't have
to spend all day to work out how to do something in linux that's trivial
in Windows.

I'd almost be tempted to switch to Mac OSX if it weren't for the entire
machine, hardware and software (sans BSD), driving me up the wall...


 As for programming specifically... I made a deliberate shift away from
 Windows years ago because it's a nightmare to develop for (aside from
 Visual Studio, which is a great debugging environment).  Best move I
 ever made.


I don't really see this.  From the last several years of using Cygwin,
I'm not sure what it is that would be markedly better.

I WANT to get off Windows.  But whatever I switch to would have to be
better by a fair margin to offset the cost of re-learning how to do
stuff.  And as far as I've been able to discern, Linux isn't it.

  -- Daniel


[1] Which is sad when you consider the last time I had sound problems
was with Win 95; by Win 98SE, sound always just worked.
Apr 06 2009
next sibling parent "Saaa" <empty needmail.com> writes:
Ignoring the rant way of putting things this is exactly my experience :D
plus: I'd ike to be able to run every tiny indiegame out there.


 Warning: semi-rant ahead.  Feel free to ignore.  :)

 Sean Kelly wrote:

 My
 Windows machine is now used exclusively for playing games.  I have no
 intention of ever using Windows for anything else again.  Games are
 the only thing the other OSes lack compared to Windows anyway.


 Winamp.  More specifically, Winamp 5 + the DSP plugins I use; without
 that, all my music sounds *wrong*.  Wine just can't seem to run Winamp
 properly.  And please don't anyone "recommend" any of the linux-specific
 players... they're either too bare-bones to be usable, or are pretending
 to be iTunes.  I HATE iTunes.

 That and general usability.  It's likely I'm just biased because I've
 used Windows for so long, but there seems to be a long stream of things
 that don't work "right" in Linux.  Little things like mounting media,
 keyboard shortcuts on GUI widgets, navigating folders in the GUI with
 the keyboard, or that every second application uses different dialogs. :S


 Whenever the endless debate of windows vs. linux vs. mac comes up, I
 repeat my comment: if you are a programmer, you better acquire some
 experience in each. For Windows/Mac it's not as easy because they may
 cost money, but now with virtual machines, good distributions etc. I
 think there is no excuse for a programmer to not seriously looking into
 Unix.




 I have an Ubuntu VM lying around somewhere.  Aside from being broken, I
 could never find any reason to use the thing.


 I desperately wish my computer-illiterate family members would move
 off of Windows as well, since it would eliminate basically every tech-
 support call I field from them.  Perhaps I've simply had good luck with
 other OSes, but Windows is the only one I've had regular problems with.


 It's funny, but for me it's exactly the opposite.  I make an effort to
 switch to linux about once a year.  There's always, ALWAYS, something
 that goes horribly wrong that just can't be fixed.

 Up until about two/three years ago, it was sound; I simply could not
 make noise come out of the speakers [1].  Weird thing was that it would
 sometimes work with the Live CD, but once installed it would stop
 working.  I only got it working when I accidentally discovered that the
 open-source drivers for my Creative card DISABLE SOUND BY DEFAULT.  I'm
 hard pressed to think of a stupider default setting.

 Currently, the major technical issue with linux is that it's seemingly
 incapable of doing multiple monitors properly.  I've got two monitors in
 a specific physical arrangement with different resolutions.  This causes
 no end of issues, since X or Gnome or something seems to assume all
 monitors are the same size.

 But it IS improving.  The previous time I tried it, I had one LCD and
 one CRT.  The built-in multi-monitor config applet ended up rendering my
 machine unbootable.  And if nothing else, at least it isn't showing new
 windows up between the two monitors, although it still has trouble
 working out WHICH monitor to show any given window on.

 Let's not even touch goddamn graphics drivers.

 Windows is a pain in the arse, and there isn't a day that goes by where
 I don't wish I could get rid of it from my life.  But the fact is that
 it's STILL better than Linux.

 Andrei said that Windows is for users, and unix is for programmers.
 That's fine; I'm a programmer!  But I'm also a user.  I shouldn't have
 to spend all day to work out how to do something in linux that's trivial
 in Windows.

 I'd almost be tempted to switch to Mac OSX if it weren't for the entire
 machine, hardware and software (sans BSD), driving me up the wall...


 As for programming specifically... I made a deliberate shift away from
 Windows years ago because it's a nightmare to develop for (aside from
 Visual Studio, which is a great debugging environment).  Best move I
 ever made.


 I don't really see this.  From the last several years of using Cygwin,
 I'm not sure what it is that would be markedly better.

 I WANT to get off Windows.  But whatever I switch to would have to be
 better by a fair margin to offset the cost of re-learning how to do
 stuff.  And as far as I've been able to discern, Linux isn't it.

  -- Daniel


 [1] Which is sad when you consider the last time I had sound problems
 was with Win 95; by Win 98SE, sound always just worked.
Apr 06 2009
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
Daniel Keep wrote:

 Warning: semi-rant ahead.  Feel free to ignore.  :)


[...]

 Windows is a pain in the arse, and there isn't a day that goes by where
 I don't wish I could get rid of it from my life.  But the fact is that
 it's STILL better than Linux.
 
 Andrei said that Windows is for users, and unix is for programmers.
 That's fine; I'm a programmer!  But I'm also a user.  I shouldn't have
 to spend all day to work out how to do something in linux that's trivial
 in Windows.


What you don't realize is that you spend all day to work out how to do 
something in Windows that's trivial in Unix. And that "something" is 
writing computer programs. I agree that winamp, games, ..., are much 
more polished in Windows. I mean, it's a foregone conclusion. It's the 
core market of Windows!

Now here's the thing: mono-culturalism is worse than either Windows or 
Unix bigotry. If you know the OS, go ahead, rant all you want about it. 
But I have little consideration for rants against some OS from people 
who don't know it.

And the situation isn't symmetric, which is liable to raise an eyebrow. 
I only know two persons who know Unix and prefer Windows. One worked for 
Microsoft, the other loves every big American company and is in fact a 
Microsoft fan (nothing wrong with that). All others I know disliking 
Unix actually don't know it. On the other hand, I know plenty of 
programmers who know both Unix and Windows programming and can't bring 
themselves to think seriously about getting work done in Windows. I also 
know Unix zealots who have no idea about Windows, and their rants are 
pretty damaging (Richard Stallman only tried to use Word once and was 
unable to do anything with it - too many confusing menus and buttons... 
a sad case of monoculture.) Finally, programmers who only know Windows 
kind of just don't know better so they take it as a given without 
becoming fans and that's that.


 I'd almost be tempted to switch to Mac OSX if it weren't for the entire
 machine, hardware and software (sans BSD), driving me up the wall...
 

 As for programming specifically... I made a deliberate shift away from
 Windows years ago because it's a nightmare to develop for (aside from
 Visual Studio, which is a great debugging environment).  Best move I
 ever made.


 
 I don't really see this.  From the last several years of using Cygwin,
 I'm not sure what it is that would be markedly better.
 
 I WANT to get off Windows.  But whatever I switch to would have to be
 better by a fair margin to offset the cost of re-learning how to do
 stuff.  And as far as I've been able to discern, Linux isn't it.


I guess it sort of depends what "it" is. I agree that getting Unix to 
install with drivers and all can be a bitch, even with Ubuntu. Even 
beyond installation, all OSs have annoying quirks that take getting used 
to. And for someone with the attitude "I'll give you this long to 
impress me" the initial hurdles can be a deal breaker.


Andrei
Apr 06 2009
next sibling parent reply Bill Baxter <wbaxter gmail.com> writes:
On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 9:36 AM, Andrei Alexandrescu
<SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote:

 Daniel Keep wrote:

 Warning: semi-rant ahead. =A0Feel free to ignore. =A0:)


 [...]

 Windows is a pain in the arse, and there isn't a day that goes by where
 I don't wish I could get rid of it from my life. =A0But the fact is that
 it's STILL better than Linux.

 Andrei said that Windows is for users, and unix is for programmers.
 That's fine; I'm a programmer! =A0But I'm also a user. =A0I shouldn't ha=




ve

 to spend all day to work out how to do something in linux that's trivial
 in Windows.


 What you don't realize is that you spend all day to work out how to do
 something in Windows that's trivial in Unix. And that "something" is writ=


ing

 computer programs. I agree that winamp, games, ..., are much more polishe=


d

 in Windows. I mean, it's a foregone conclusion. It's the core market of
 Windows!

 Now here's the thing: mono-culturalism is worse than either Windows or Un=


ix

 bigotry. If you know the OS, go ahead, rant all you want about it. But I
 have little consideration for rants against some OS from people who don't
 know it.

 And the situation isn't symmetric, which is liable to raise an eyebrow. I
 only know two persons who know Unix and prefer Windows. One worked for
 Microsoft, the other loves every big American company and is in fact a
 Microsoft fan (nothing wrong with that). All others I know disliking Unix
 actually don't know it. On the other hand, I know plenty of programmers w=


ho

 know both Unix and Windows programming and can't bring themselves to thin=


k

 seriously about getting work done in Windows. I also know Unix zealots wh=


o

 have no idea about Windows, and their rants are pretty damaging (Richard
 Stallman only tried to use Word once and was unable to do anything with i=


t -

 too many confusing menus and buttons... a sad case of monoculture.) Final=


ly,

 programmers who only know Windows kind of just don't know better so they
 take it as a given without becoming fans and that's that.


I think your "for users" vs "for programmers" distinction is quite
apt.  Overall I would prefer to program under Unix (although I'd still
like to keep the Visual Studio debugger :-P), but to do user things
under Windows.  Problem is those user-things sort of happen
intermittently throughout the day, and in the end I find that with
Cygwin, emacs, etc. the programming environment under Windows is more
tolerable to me than the user environment under Linux.  So I'm happier
overall under Windows.  I do keep a VMware Ubuntu handy, though, and
fire it up once a week or so.   Usually to play around with some 3rd
party code that hasn't been ported to Windows, or use some tool that I
couldn't get to work easily under cygwin.

As for pathetic little cmd.com, Microsoft seems to be trying to do
something new in the shell area with the PowerShell.  I tried it out a
bit, but it's quite a change from a typical command line shell.  Not
sure how long it would take to get the hang of it.  The impression I
get is that the main point of it is to give you a way to control
everything about Windows using scripts, which is good.  Kind of
reminiscent of AppleScript in that sense.  I think it also has a
not-so-brain-dead programming language for scripting.  The fact that
they are at least attempting to do something to improve the shell
under Windows is promising, at least.

--bb
Apr 06 2009
parent BCS <none anon.com> writes:
Hello Bill,


 Overall I would prefer to program under Unix (although I'd still
 like to keep the Visual Studio debugger :-P), but to do user things
 under Windows.  Problem is those user-things sort of happen
 intermittently throughout the day,


My solution is to have a windows desktop and a linux server sitting side 
by side, NFS and SSH keep me happy.
Apr 06 2009
prev sibling parent Christopher Wright <dhasenan gmail.com> writes:
Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 Daniel Keep wrote:

 Warning: semi-rant ahead.  Feel free to ignore.  :)


 [...]

 Windows is a pain in the arse, and there isn't a day that goes by where
 I don't wish I could get rid of it from my life.  But the fact is that
 it's STILL better than Linux.

 Andrei said that Windows is for users, and unix is for programmers.
 That's fine; I'm a programmer!  But I'm also a user.  I shouldn't have
 to spend all day to work out how to do something in linux that's trivial
 in Windows.


 
 What you don't realize is that you spend all day to work out how to do 
 something in Windows that's trivial in Unix. And that "something" is 
 writing computer programs.


I disagree. While it is easier to write small programs in Unix, 
non-trivial programs are nearly always written with IDEs, and IDEs tend 
to try to take over most of the tasks for which you would typically use 
a command line. Non-trivial programs need semantics-aware refactoring 
rather than simple sed-style replacements.

Still, I think vim + screen makes a pretty good IDE.
Apr 06 2009
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Walter Bright <newshound1 digitalmars.com> writes:
Daniel Keep wrote:

 Windows is a pain in the arse, and there isn't a day that goes by where
 I don't wish I could get rid of it from my life.  But the fact is that
 it's STILL better than Linux.


What I've found about Windows is it consistently renders things better 
on the same display. In other words, text is more readable and easier on 
the eyes. I've spent a lot of time tweaking settings on Ubuntu, but it's 
still not as good (especially in firefox).

I was recently told that the trouble must be the graphics driver. I 
haven't spent any effort yet trying to track that one down.

On the other hand, I've found Ubuntu to be far smoother at multitasking 
than Windows, which frequently freezes for several seconds for no 
obvious reason.

I find myself more and more switching back and forth between the two for 
specific tasks (I use a KVM switch to go back and forth).

For example, my music files are hosted on a windows share but the player 
is running on Ubuntu.
Apr 06 2009
next sibling parent Brad Roberts <braddr puremagic.com> writes:
Walter Bright wrote:

 Daniel Keep wrote:

 Windows is a pain in the arse, and there isn't a day that goes by where
 I don't wish I could get rid of it from my life.  But the fact is that
 it's STILL better than Linux.


 
 What I've found about Windows is it consistently renders things better
 on the same display. In other words, text is more readable and easier on
 the eyes. I've spent a lot of time tweaking settings on Ubuntu, but it's
 still not as good (especially in firefox).
 
 I was recently told that the trouble must be the graphics driver. I
 haven't spent any effort yet trying to track that one down.
 
 On the other hand, I've found Ubuntu to be far smoother at multitasking
 than Windows, which frequently freezes for several seconds for no
 obvious reason.
 
 I find myself more and more switching back and forth between the two for
 specific tasks (I use a KVM switch to go back and forth).
 
 For example, my music files are hosted on a windows share but the player
 is running on Ubuntu.


For me, I just use windows as the portal to the linux machines.  That
way I get the nicer user level apps but do all my development on my
preferred platform for code.  That said, exactly none of my development
work involves GUIs.

Best of both worlds.

Later,
Brad
Apr 06 2009
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Christopher Wright <dhasenan gmail.com> writes:
Walter Bright wrote:

 Daniel Keep wrote:

 Windows is a pain in the arse, and there isn't a day that goes by where
 I don't wish I could get rid of it from my life.  But the fact is that
 it's STILL better than Linux.


 
 What I've found about Windows is it consistently renders things better 
 on the same display. In other words, text is more readable and easier on 
 the eyes. I've spent a lot of time tweaking settings on Ubuntu, but it's 
 still not as good (especially in firefox).


This is a matter of opinion and particular fonts. I have found fonts 
that render horribly on Ubuntu and wonderfully on Windows, and I have 
found fonts that render wonderfully on Ubuntu and horribly on Windows. 
But another person might have the opposite opinions of the same fonts.

The fonts I end up using on Windows are the MS ClearType designed fonts. 
The ones I use on Linux are Chaparral Pro and Cronos Pro. (I use Droid 
Sans Mono on both platforms as a monospace font.)

I have never gotten MS core fonts to look good on Linux.

This is all assuming that you turned on subpixel rendering in Linux.
Apr 06 2009
parent Walter Bright <newshound1 digitalmars.com> writes:
Christopher Wright wrote:

 This is all assuming that you turned on subpixel rendering in Linux.


Yes, I turned it on <g>.
Apr 06 2009
prev sibling next sibling parent reply grauzone <none example.net> writes:
Walter Bright wrote:

 Daniel Keep wrote:

 Windows is a pain in the arse, and there isn't a day that goes by where
 I don't wish I could get rid of it from my life.  But the fact is that
 it's STILL better than Linux.


 
 What I've found about Windows is it consistently renders things better 
 on the same display. In other words, text is more readable and easier on 
 the eyes. I've spent a lot of time tweaking settings on Ubuntu, but it's 
 still not as good (especially in firefox).



The free fonts suck, and I still use some Microsoft fonts on Linux. 
Especially Courier New and Verdana. I also used Microsoft Sans Serif, 
but somehow the freetype renderer (which all applications use nowadays) 
had problems with this particular font.
Apr 07 2009
parent reply bearophile <bearophileHUGS lycos.com> writes:
grauzone:

The free fonts suck, and I still use some Microsoft fonts on Linux.<


Have you tried my version of Inconsolata? :-)
http://www.fantascienza.net/leonardo/ar/inconsolatag/inconsolata-g_font.zip

Bye,
bearophile
Apr 07 2009
parent reply grauzone <none example.net> writes:
bearophile wrote:

 grauzone:

 The free fonts suck, and I still use some Microsoft fonts on Linux.<


 
 Have you tried my version of Inconsolata? :-)
 http://www.fantascienza.net/leonardo/ar/inconsolatag/inconsolata-g_font.zip


Will try later. Success depends from how well freetype renders it at low 
resolutions.


 Bye,
 bearophile
Apr 07 2009
parent reply bearophile <bearophileHUGS lycos.com> writes:
grauzone:

 Will try later. Success depends from how well freetype renders it at low 
 resolutions.


I use it as my default programming font on my Ubuntu (for Python, D, etc), it's
nonproportional. But I use it at high enough sizes, to spot bugs better.

Bye,
bearophile
Apr 07 2009
parent reply grauzone <none example.net> writes:
bearophile wrote:

 grauzone:

 Will try later. Success depends from how well freetype renders it at low 
 resolutions.


 
 I use it as my default programming font on my Ubuntu (for Python, D, etc),
it's nonproportional. But I use it at high enough sizes, to spot bugs better.


The font rendering is very very ugly. At which point size/DPI is this 
font supposed to be displayed?


 Bye,
 bearophile
Apr 07 2009
parent reply bearophile <bearophileHUGS lycos.com> writes:
grauzone:

 The font rendering is very very ugly. At which point size/DPI is this 
 font supposed to be displayed?


I use it at about this size, and I find it the most readable among all the ones
I have tried so far:
http://www.fantascienza.net/leonardo/ar/inconsolatag/two_inconsolata_20090213.png

Bye,
bearophile
Apr 07 2009
parent grauzone <none example.net> writes:
bearophile wrote:

 grauzone:

 The font rendering is very very ugly. At which point size/DPI is this 
 font supposed to be displayed?


 
 I use it at about this size, and I find it the most readable among all the
ones I have tried so far:
 http://www.fantascienza.net/leonardo/ar/inconsolatag/two_inconsolata_20090213.png


Maybe my text editor (kate) is screwing up.

And normally, I'm using a much smaller font. Courier New 9 pt at (I 
think) 96 DPI, without anti-aliasing, on a CRT.


 Bye,
 bearophile
Apr 07 2009
prev sibling parent reply Lutger <lutger.blijdestijn gmail.com> writes:
Walter Bright wrote:
...

 I find myself more and more switching back and forth between the two for 
 specific tasks (I use a KVM switch to go back and forth).


Have you ever tried virtualbox? It has a seamless mode, which tears out 
windows apps in the virtual instance and make them behave just as if you 
started them under linux. It's very pleasant, you don't have to switch 
anything anymore and just run those windows userthings next to your gnome / 
kde applications.
Apr 07 2009
parent reply Walter Bright <newshound1 digitalmars.com> writes:
Lutger wrote:

 Have you ever tried virtualbox? It has a seamless mode, which tears out 
 windows apps in the virtual instance and make them behave just as if you 
 started them under linux. It's very pleasant, you don't have to switch 
 anything anymore and just run those windows userthings next to your gnome / 
 kde applications.


Nope, never tried it! I just have a bad experience with multiboot 
systems in the past, and have tended to avoid them.
Apr 07 2009
parent reply Jarrett Billingsley <jarrett.billingsley gmail.com> writes:
On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 2:26 PM, Walter Bright
<newshound1 digitalmars.com> wrote:

 Lutger wrote:

 Have you ever tried virtualbox? It has a seamless mode, which tears out
 windows apps in the virtual instance and make them behave just as if you
 started them under linux. It's very pleasant, you don't have to switch
 anything anymore and just run those windows userthings next to your gnome /
 kde applications.


 Nope, never tried it! I just have a bad experience with multiboot systems in
 the past, and have tended to avoid them.


VMs have nothing to do with multiboot.  I have Ubuntu in a Sun
Virtualbox on my desktop and it's wonderful.  It's fun to watch an OS
start in a window.  I can also share a folder across the boundary; the
clipboard works seamlessly; input grabbing is nearly seamless.  And
since I can share folders, I can do fun things like work on a DS
project in my favorite Windows code editor, make graphics for it in
CS2, compile it using GDC on the Linux side, and run it in an emulator
on the Windows side.  I have the best of both worlds without any need
to have multiple partitions or reboot.
Apr 07 2009
parent reply Walter Bright <newshound1 digitalmars.com> writes:
Jarrett Billingsley wrote:

 VMs have nothing to do with multiboot.  I have Ubuntu in a Sun
 Virtualbox on my desktop and it's wonderful.  It's fun to watch an OS
 start in a window.  I can also share a folder across the boundary; the
 clipboard works seamlessly; input grabbing is nearly seamless.  And
 since I can share folders, I can do fun things like work on a DS
 project in my favorite Windows code editor, make graphics for it in
 CS2, compile it using GDC on the Linux side, and run it in an emulator
 on the Windows side.  I have the best of both worlds without any need
 to have multiple partitions or reboot.


I know. I really must try it!
Apr 07 2009
parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
Walter Bright wrote:

 Jarrett Billingsley wrote:

 VMs have nothing to do with multiboot.  I have Ubuntu in a Sun
 Virtualbox on my desktop and it's wonderful.  It's fun to watch an OS
 start in a window.  I can also share a folder across the boundary; the
 clipboard works seamlessly; input grabbing is nearly seamless.  And
 since I can share folders, I can do fun things like work on a DS
 project in my favorite Windows code editor, make graphics for it in
 CS2, compile it using GDC on the Linux side, and run it in an emulator
 on the Windows side.  I have the best of both worlds without any need
 to have multiple partitions or reboot.


 
 I know. I really must try it!


sudo apt-get install virtualbox

Highly recommended.

Andrei
Apr 07 2009
next sibling parent reply Walter Bright <newshound1 digitalmars.com> writes:
Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 sudo apt-get install virtualbox


That's too hard for me. Can you make it easier?
Apr 07 2009
next sibling parent Michel Fortin <michel.fortin michelf.com> writes:
On 2009-04-07 16:55:05 -0400, Walter Bright <newshound1 digitalmars.com> said:


 Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 sudo apt-get install virtualbox


 
 That's too hard for me. Can you make it easier?


	alias please="sudo apt-get"

then

	please install virtualbox


-- 
Michel Fortin
michel.fortin michelf.com
http://michelf.com/
Apr 07 2009
prev sibling parent =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Anders_F_Bj=F6rklund?= <afb algonet.se> writes:
Walter Bright wrote:

 Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 sudo apt-get install virtualbox


 
 That's too hard for me. Can you make it easier?


apt://virtualbox-ose

You would still need your administrator password,
and to have "apturl" installed (http://apturl.net)
and it doesn't handle virtual packages very well.
But it still is "easier"... ? See also PackageKit.

--anders
Apr 08 2009
prev sibling parent reply Walter Bright <newshound1 digitalmars.com> writes:
Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 sudo apt-get install virtualbox
 
 Highly recommended.


Ok, gave it a try. The install worked. So, I set up a virtual box per 
instructions, and tried to boot my netbsd CD in it. (netbsd because it's 
small so I can get a quick test.) I get this message (copied from the 
internet as it's the same someone else got):

====================================================
FuLio says:
December 12, 2008 at 3:05 am

VirtualBox kernel driver not installed. The vboxdrv kernel module was 
either not loaded or /dev/vboxdrv was not created for some reason. 
Please install the virtualbox-ose-modules package for your kernel, e.g. 
virtualbox-ose-modules-generic..
VBox status code: -1908 (VERR_VM_DRIVER_NOT_INSTALLED).

Result Code:
080004005
Component:
Console
Interface:
IConsole {1dea5c4b-0753-4193-b909-22330f64ec45}

Reply
=====================================================

The helpful reply is:

=====================================================

Damien Reply:
December 12th, 2008 at 3:22 am

There is a conflict in kernels in the latest Ubuntu Intrepid kernel 
update. Try to rebuild the vbox kernel:

sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup

Reply

====================================================

So, I "try" it:

====================================================
~> sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup
  * Usage: /etc/init.d/vboxdrv {start|stop|restart|status}
~> sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv status
  * VirtualBox kernel module is not loaded.
~> sudo /etc/init.d/vboxdrv start
  * Starting VirtualBox kernel module vboxdrv 

  * No suitable module for running kernel found.
~>
=====================================================

Oh well.
Apr 08 2009
parent reply Walter Bright <newshound1 digitalmars.com> writes:
I saw another 'fix' on another forum that listed some commands to 
rebuild the vbox. That dies with compilation errors.
Apr 08 2009
parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
Walter Bright wrote:

 I saw another 'fix' on another forum that listed some commands to 
 rebuild the vbox. That dies with compilation errors.


What happens is that the release in the apt repository lagged behind 
updates in the kernel. You may want to go to www.virtualbox.org and 
install the latest and greatest straight from there (their .deb package 
which you need to also integrate in the build proces for dmd).

Andrei
Apr 08 2009
next sibling parent torhu <no spam.invalid> writes:
On 09.04.2009 03:53, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 Walter Bright wrote:

  I saw another 'fix' on another forum that listed some commands to
  rebuild the vbox. That dies with compilation errors.


 What happens is that the release in the apt repository lagged behind
 updates in the kernel. You may want to go to www.virtualbox.org and
 install the latest and greatest straight from there (their .deb package
 which you need to also integrate in the build proces for dmd).

 Andrei


Virtualbox works like charm on Windows. ;)
Apr 08 2009
prev sibling parent reply Walter Bright <newshound1 digitalmars.com> writes:
Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 Walter Bright wrote:

 I saw another 'fix' on another forum that listed some commands to 
 rebuild the vbox. That dies with compilation errors.


 
 What happens is that the release in the apt repository lagged behind 
 updates in the kernel. You may want to go to www.virtualbox.org and 
 install the latest and greatest straight from there (their .deb package 
 which you need to also integrate in the build proces for dmd).


Downloaded it. First, it refused to install because it conflicted with 
"virtualbox-ose". So I did:

sudo apt-get purge virtualbox-ose

Tried again to install it. Now I get:

Error: Dependency is not satisfiable: libqt4-core

So I tried:

sudo apt-get libqt4-core

but apt-get said it couldn't find it.

Just for fun, I now tried:

sudo apt-get install virtualbox

and apt-get replies with: "Couldn't find package virtualbox"

Evidently, my system is completely hosed now.
Apr 08 2009
next sibling parent reply "Adam D. Ruppe" <destructionator gmail.com> writes:
On Wed, Apr 08, 2009 at 08:33:11PM -0700, Walter Bright wrote:

 and apt-get replies with: "Couldn't find package virtualbox"
 
 Evidently, my system is completely hosed now.


Aren't package managers swell?

Waste of bloody time that would better be spent on solving the underlying
problem: too damn many combinations of options and dependencies. What works
for one person is unlikely to work for another.

This is one reason why I rather like Phobos being statically linked like it
is. If you download a D binary, it is going to run; it is self contained.

(I also really love dmc and dmd for being self-contained too.)

If it was dynamically linked, someone would be tempted to package it up
separately and you'd get into all kinds of dependency hell. And for what?
300k in the binary? Not worth it.

-- 
Adam D. Ruppe
http://arsdnet.net
Apr 08 2009
next sibling parent dsimcha <dsimcha yahoo.com> writes:
== Quote from Adam D. Ruppe (destructionator gmail.com)'s article

 On Wed, Apr 08, 2009 at 08:33:11PM -0700, Walter Bright wrote:

 and apt-get replies with: "Couldn't find package virtualbox"

 Evidently, my system is completely hosed now.


 Aren't package managers swell?
 Waste of bloody time that would better be spent on solving the underlying
 problem: too damn many combinations of options and dependencies. What works
 for one person is unlikely to work for another.
 This is one reason why I rather like Phobos being statically linked like it
 is. If you download a D binary, it is going to run; it is self contained.
 (I also really love dmc and dmd for being self-contained too.)
 If it was dynamically linked, someone would be tempted to package it up
 separately and you'd get into all kinds of dependency hell. And for what?
 300k in the binary? Not worth it.


Yeah, it seems like in this age of dirt cheap storage and memory, dynamic
linking
is often more trouble than it's worth.  It definitely makes things more
complicated.  When _is_ the tradeoff worth it for dynamic linking?

Also, as far as Phobos being dynamically linked, that would never work well
anyhow
because so much of it is templates.
Apr 08 2009
prev sibling parent reply Sean Kelly <sean invisibleduck.org> writes:
Adam D. Ruppe wrote:

 On Wed, Apr 08, 2009 at 08:33:11PM -0700, Walter Bright wrote:

 and apt-get replies with: "Couldn't find package virtualbox"

 Evidently, my system is completely hosed now.


 
 Aren't package managers swell?
 
 Waste of bloody time that would better be spent on solving the underlying
 problem: too damn many combinations of options and dependencies. What works
 for one person is unlikely to work for another.
 
 This is one reason why I rather like Phobos being statically linked like it
 is. If you download a D binary, it is going to run; it is self contained.
 
 (I also really love dmc and dmd for being self-contained too.)
 
 If it was dynamically linked, someone would be tempted to package it up
 separately and you'd get into all kinds of dependency hell. And for what?
 300k in the binary? Not worth it.


I've always felt the same way about dynamic libraries.  They're useful 
for solving certain problems like plug-ins, but for simply saving app 
memory the problems vastly outweigh the benefits.
Apr 08 2009
parent reply Christopher Wright <dhasenan gmail.com> writes:
Sean Kelly wrote:

 Adam D. Ruppe wrote:

 On Wed, Apr 08, 2009 at 08:33:11PM -0700, Walter Bright wrote:

 and apt-get replies with: "Couldn't find package virtualbox"

 Evidently, my system is completely hosed now.


 Aren't package managers swell?

 Waste of bloody time that would better be spent on solving the underlying
 problem: too damn many combinations of options and dependencies. What 
 works
 for one person is unlikely to work for another.

 This is one reason why I rather like Phobos being statically linked 
 like it
 is. If you download a D binary, it is going to run; it is self contained.

 (I also really love dmc and dmd for being self-contained too.)

 If it was dynamically linked, someone would be tempted to package it up
 separately and you'd get into all kinds of dependency hell. And for what?
 300k in the binary? Not worth it.


 
 I've always felt the same way about dynamic libraries.  They're useful 
 for solving certain problems like plug-ins, but for simply saving app 
 memory the problems vastly outweigh the benefits.


On the other hand, I don't want every application to include its own 
libssl or libpam; I want to be able to get security updates to those 
without updating every individual program.

And then I think of all the times that there have been buffer overflow 
issues in jpg libraries and the like, and I want those to share security 
updates.

I wouldn't mind updating every application that depends on said 
libraries normally, but I'm usually on a very good internet connection 
(30Mbps). Right now, I'm on 2Mbps, and that would suck.
Apr 09 2009
parent Sean Kelly <sean invisibleduck.org> writes:
Christopher Wright wrote:

 Sean Kelly wrote:

 I've always felt the same way about dynamic libraries.  They're useful 
 for solving certain problems like plug-ins, but for simply saving app 
 memory the problems vastly outweigh the benefits.


 
 On the other hand, I don't want every application to include its own 
 libssl or libpam; I want to be able to get security updates to those 
 without updating every individual program.


Yeah true, that's a good reason for using them.
Apr 09 2009
prev sibling parent reply Walter Bright <newshound1 digitalmars.com> writes:
Walter Bright wrote:

 Evidently, my system is completely hosed now.


I took this opportunity to upgrade from 8.04 to 8.10. This seems to have 
gotten it working again.
Apr 08 2009
next sibling parent Tomas Lindquist Olsen <tomas.l.olsen gmail.com> writes:
On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 7:42 AM, Walter Bright
<newshound1 digitalmars.com> wrote:

 Walter Bright wrote:

 Evidently, my system is completely hosed now.


 I took this opportunity to upgrade from 8.04 to 8.10. This seems to have
 gotten it working again.


I always wondered why Ubuntu got so popular with the surprisingly
crappy package management it provides. More users should try ArchLinux
;)

-Tomas
Apr 09 2009
prev sibling parent Walter Bright <newshound1 digitalmars.com> writes:
Walter Bright wrote:

 I took this opportunity to upgrade from 8.04 to 8.10. This seems to have 
 gotten it working again.


I tried to install netbsd under it, and it repeatedly failed with "disk 
write" errors, different every time. I finally gave up.



iso, which failed in the same way in the same place. Next I tried 
mounting the .iso's directly instead, and that worked. Go figure.

Anyhow, the R.H. install works fine.
Apr 09 2009
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Olli Aalto <oaalto gmail.com> writes:
Check out Portable Ubuntu for Windows: 
http://portableubuntu.sourceforge.net/index.php

I haven't done any extensive testing yet, but the short session I had 
yesterday worked just fine.

Daniel Keep wrote:

 Warning: semi-rant ahead.  Feel free to ignore.  :)
 
 Sean Kelly wrote:

 My
 Windows machine is now used exclusively for playing games.  I have no
 intention of ever using Windows for anything else again.  Games are
 the only thing the other OSes lack compared to Windows anyway.


 
 Winamp.  More specifically, Winamp 5 + the DSP plugins I use; without
 that, all my music sounds *wrong*.  Wine just can't seem to run Winamp
 properly.  And please don't anyone "recommend" any of the linux-specific
 players... they're either too bare-bones to be usable, or are pretending
 to be iTunes.  I HATE iTunes.
 
 That and general usability.  It's likely I'm just biased because I've
 used Windows for so long, but there seems to be a long stream of things
 that don't work "right" in Linux.  Little things like mounting media,
 keyboard shortcuts on GUI widgets, navigating folders in the GUI with
 the keyboard, or that every second application uses different dialogs. :S
 

 Whenever the endless debate of windows vs. linux vs. mac comes up, I
 repeat my comment: if you are a programmer, you better acquire some
 experience in each. For Windows/Mac it's not as easy because they may
 cost money, but now with virtual machines, good distributions etc. I
 think there is no excuse for a programmer to not seriously looking into
 Unix.




 
 I have an Ubuntu VM lying around somewhere.  Aside from being broken, I
 could never find any reason to use the thing.
 

 I desperately wish my computer-illiterate family members would move
 off of Windows as well, since it would eliminate basically every tech-
 support call I field from them.  Perhaps I've simply had good luck with
 other OSes, but Windows is the only one I've had regular problems with.


 
 It's funny, but for me it's exactly the opposite.  I make an effort to
 switch to linux about once a year.  There's always, ALWAYS, something
 that goes horribly wrong that just can't be fixed.
 
 Up until about two/three years ago, it was sound; I simply could not
 make noise come out of the speakers [1].  Weird thing was that it would
 sometimes work with the Live CD, but once installed it would stop
 working.  I only got it working when I accidentally discovered that the
 open-source drivers for my Creative card DISABLE SOUND BY DEFAULT.  I'm
 hard pressed to think of a stupider default setting.
 
 Currently, the major technical issue with linux is that it's seemingly
 incapable of doing multiple monitors properly.  I've got two monitors in
 a specific physical arrangement with different resolutions.  This causes
 no end of issues, since X or Gnome or something seems to assume all
 monitors are the same size.
 
 But it IS improving.  The previous time I tried it, I had one LCD and
 one CRT.  The built-in multi-monitor config applet ended up rendering my
 machine unbootable.  And if nothing else, at least it isn't showing new
 windows up between the two monitors, although it still has trouble
 working out WHICH monitor to show any given window on.
 
 Let's not even touch goddamn graphics drivers.
 
 Windows is a pain in the arse, and there isn't a day that goes by where
 I don't wish I could get rid of it from my life.  But the fact is that
 it's STILL better than Linux.
 
 Andrei said that Windows is for users, and unix is for programmers.
 That's fine; I'm a programmer!  But I'm also a user.  I shouldn't have
 to spend all day to work out how to do something in linux that's trivial
 in Windows.
 
 I'd almost be tempted to switch to Mac OSX if it weren't for the entire
 machine, hardware and software (sans BSD), driving me up the wall...
 

 As for programming specifically... I made a deliberate shift away from
 Windows years ago because it's a nightmare to develop for (aside from
 Visual Studio, which is a great debugging environment).  Best move I
 ever made.


 
 I don't really see this.  From the last several years of using Cygwin,
 I'm not sure what it is that would be markedly better.
 
 I WANT to get off Windows.  But whatever I switch to would have to be
 better by a fair margin to offset the cost of re-learning how to do
 stuff.  And as far as I've been able to discern, Linux isn't it.
 
   -- Daniel
 
 
 [1] Which is sad when you consider the last time I had sound problems
 was with Win 95; by Win 98SE, sound always just worked.
Apr 06 2009
parent reply grauzone <none example.net> writes:
Why does everyone think "Ubuntu" when talking about Linux? I find the 
Ubuntu desktop almost as annoying as the Windows one. Even worse, Ubuntu 
feels like a Windows clone. Most of this is because it uses GNOME by 
default.

If you really want to use Linux, don't use a crappy desktop environment 
(they're all crappy), pick a small window manager (like fluxbox), and 
live in the command line.

Neither user nor programmers should pretend that Linux is a Windows 
replacement. It's different. You will be disappointed if you expect a 
replacement. Actually, using Windows is better in this case.
Apr 07 2009
next sibling parent reply bearophile <bearophileHUGS lycos.com> writes:
grauzone:

 Why does everyone think "Ubuntu" when talking about Linux?


I am ignorant about this topic, but I think the answers to your questions are:
1) Because it's one of the very few distros that seem designed by people that
care a bit about ergonomics, usability studies, user interfaces, etc.
2) Because in it things seems to mostly work. It's able to recognize most of my
hardware. I have tried few other distros with worse results.
3) Because it's famous. And the more famous you are, the more famous you get.
Having a single famous linux distro is very good, because more people will try
it, find its bugs, fix the bugs and improve the user interfaces, compile things
for it, give server space for it for the updates, and so on.

Bye,
bearophile
Apr 07 2009
parent reply grauzone <none example.net> writes:
bearophile wrote:

 grauzone:

 Why does everyone think "Ubuntu" when talking about Linux?


 
 I am ignorant about this topic, but I think the answers to your questions are:
 1) Because it's one of the very few distros that seem designed by people that
care a bit about ergonomics, usability studies, user interfaces, etc.


Forget about this. Look at GNOME and what happened to it because of that 
usability crap. Not to say that usability is a bad thing, but they just 
don't get it right. Look at the file open dialog in GNOME/GTK, and see 
how frustrating it is.

I'm not expecting anything from Linux GUIs anymore. Seriously, Linux on 
the desktop sucks. God, does it suck!


 2) Because in it things seems to mostly work. It's able to recognize most of
my hardware. I have tried few other distros with worse results.


It's not like Ubuntu has additional drivers in the kernel. Maybe it's 
slightly better at hardware detection than other distros (I don't know), 
but with some _work_, any other distro should work equally well.

You don't like "work"? Linux is not for you, even Ubuntu won't be able 
to safe you. Actually, Ubuntu discourages you to find out how the system 
_really_ works, and how things are actually done. What do you do if the 
automatisms of Ubuntu crap up? Reinstall the system?


 3) Because it's famous. And the more famous you are, the more famous you get.
Having a single famous linux distro is very good, because more people will try
it, find its bugs, fix the bugs and improve the user interfaces, compile things
for it, give server space for it for the updates, and so on.


Because it's "Linux for Windows users". That's not a bad thing per se, 
but I fear it will degrade into something that shares both disadvantages 
of Windows and Linux.

It might be that I'm not really in the position to criticize Ubuntu, 
because it's been a long time since I last tried it. (Yeah, with real 
arguments this post would be actually worthwhile.) I can just say, that 
even though I'd like to have a good desktop, and although I'm someone 
who switched from Windows to Linux only some years ago, I never could 
get used to GNOME or Ubuntu. Even though they're supposed to be better 
at the desktop.

Then again, Ubuntu is derived from the glorious, superior Debian. I'm 
sure Ubuntu is still better than crap like Red Hat. xD


 Bye,
 bearophile
Apr 07 2009
parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
grauzone wrote:

 I'm not expecting anything from Linux GUIs anymore. Seriously, Linux on 
 the desktop sucks. God, does it suck!


What standard are you holding it against? The Mac GUI is snappier, but 
overall the Mac is still not as stable as Ubuntu. I don't miss anything 
from the Windows GUI.

Andrei
Apr 07 2009
parent reply grauzone <none example.net> writes:
Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 grauzone wrote:

 I'm not expecting anything from Linux GUIs anymore. Seriously, Linux 
 on the desktop sucks. God, does it suck!


 
 What standard are you holding it against? The Mac GUI is snappier, but 


First, I didn't ever use a Mac. Hell, these things even require special 
hardware.

Generally, the look and feel "style" of the popular Linux toolkits GTK 
and QT is almost the same as Windows. They look the same. They use the 
same keyboard shortcuts. They regularly clone Windows GUI controls (just 
look at the "tabbed notebook" controls). GTK2 was more like Win32 than 
GTK1. Konqueror is (was) basically an Explorer clone. The GNOME control 
center is a clone of Window's control panel. The taskbar doesn't really 
exist in classic X11 window managers, but KDE and GNOME have it and 
insist on it.

It's obvious the Linux desktop is cloning from Windows (and maybe Mac), 
but they are bad at it. I always get this feeling when using Windows.

Of course it could be because I was used to Windows. But hey, there are 
dozens of things GTK/QT/GNOME/KDE cloned from Windows _after_ I switched 
to Linux.


 overall the Mac is still not as stable as Ubuntu. I don't miss anything 
 from the Windows GUI.


Me too. Without doubt, there are cases where Linux GUIs do better than 
Windows.

And then there's the fact that some parts I used to do in a GUI moved to 
the command line. Although I normally prefer GUIs. Seriously, Linux GUI 
file managers suck. Here I prefer bash.


 Andrei
Apr 07 2009
next sibling parent Lutger <lutger.blijdestijn gmail.com> writes:
grauzone wrote:


 Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 grauzone wrote:

 I'm not expecting anything from Linux GUIs anymore. Seriously, Linux 
 on the desktop sucks. God, does it suck!


 
 What standard are you holding it against? The Mac GUI is snappier, but 


 
 First, I didn't ever use a Mac. Hell, these things even require special 
 hardware.
 
 Generally, the look and feel "style" of the popular Linux toolkits GTK 
 and QT is almost the same as Windows. They look the same. They use the 
 same keyboard shortcuts. They regularly clone Windows GUI controls (just 
 look at the "tabbed notebook" controls). GTK2 was more like Win32 than 
 GTK1. Konqueror is (was) basically an Explorer clone. The GNOME control 
 center is a clone of Window's control panel. The taskbar doesn't really 
 exist in classic X11 window managers, but KDE and GNOME have it and 
 insist on it.
 
 It's obvious the Linux desktop is cloning from Windows (and maybe Mac), 
 but they are bad at it. I always get this feeling when using Windows.
 
 Of course it could be because I was used to Windows. But hey, there are 
 dozens of things GTK/QT/GNOME/KDE cloned from Windows _after_ I switched 
 to Linux.


That's funny, because I have the opposite experience. Whenever I use windows 
explorer now, it feels so crippled compared to konqueror and that is the 
case in general with windows vs kde for me. Now I'm starting to use KDE apps 
under windows whenever I have to...
Apr 07 2009
prev sibling parent reply Don <nospam nospam.com> writes:
grauzone wrote:

 Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 grauzone wrote:

 I'm not expecting anything from Linux GUIs anymore. Seriously, Linux 
 on the desktop sucks. God, does it suck!


 What standard are you holding it against? The Mac GUI is snappier, but 


 
 First, I didn't ever use a Mac. Hell, these things even require special 
 hardware.
 
 Generally, the look and feel "style" of the popular Linux toolkits GTK 
 and QT is almost the same as Windows. They look the same. They use the 
 same keyboard shortcuts. They regularly clone Windows GUI controls (just 
 look at the "tabbed notebook" controls). GTK2 was more like Win32 than 
 GTK1. Konqueror is (was) basically an Explorer clone. The GNOME control 
 center is a clone of Window's control panel. The taskbar doesn't really 
 exist in classic X11 window managers, but KDE and GNOME have it and 
 insist on it.
 
 It's obvious the Linux desktop is cloning from Windows (and maybe Mac), 
 but they are bad at it. I always get this feeling when using Windows.


I agree. OS's copy even incredibly crappy ideas from each other. (My pet 
hate is the way Windows copied the 'folder' idea from the Mac as an 
analogy for a directory structure, and also got the insane idea that you 
could associate a file with ONE application????).
It's really sad when poor designs get imitated. Nearly always, the copy 
is even worse than the original.



 Of course it could be because I was used to Windows. But hey, there are 
 dozens of things GTK/QT/GNOME/KDE cloned from Windows _after_ I switched 
 to Linux.
 

 overall the Mac is still not as stable as Ubuntu. I don't miss 
 anything from the Windows GUI.


 
 Me too. Without doubt, there are cases where Linux GUIs do better than 
 Windows.
 
 And then there's the fact that some parts I used to do in a GUI moved to 
 the command line. Although I normally prefer GUIs. Seriously, Linux GUI 
 file managers suck. Here I prefer bash.
 

 Andrei
Apr 07 2009
parent reply Walter Bright <newshound1 digitalmars.com> writes:
Don wrote:

(My pet 
 hate is the way Windows copied the 'folder' idea from the Mac as an 
 analogy for a directory structure,


I agree. It is especially annoying when trying to help someone with 
their Windows box, and you say "go to this directory" and they say 
"what's a directory"?

I learned this lesson long ago when writing technical documentation. To 
confuse people, keep changing the name of the contents of an array. 
Switch randomly between "elements", "members", "items", etc. They'll 
never get comfortable with it.
Apr 07 2009
parent Don <nospam nospam.com> writes:
Walter Bright wrote:

 Don wrote:

 (My pet hate is the way Windows copied the 'folder' idea from the Mac 
 as an analogy for a directory structure,


 
 I agree. It is especially annoying when trying to help someone with 
 their Windows box, and you say "go to this directory" and they say 
 "what's a directory"?


And manilla folders aren't even nestable! A manilla folder is a simple 
container for storing pieces of paper. I find it mind-boggling that so 
many people thought it was a good analogy for a tree structure.


 I learned this lesson long ago when writing technical documentation. To 
 confuse people, keep changing the name of the contents of an array. 
 Switch randomly between "elements", "members", "items", etc. They'll 
 never get comfortable with it.


Applies to APIs, too.
Apr 08 2009
prev sibling parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
grauzone wrote:

 Why does everyone think "Ubuntu" when talking about Linux? I find the 
 Ubuntu desktop almost as annoying as the Windows one. Even worse, Ubuntu 
 feels like a Windows clone. Most of this is because it uses GNOME by 
 default.
 
 If you really want to use Linux, don't use a crappy desktop environment 
 (they're all crappy), pick a small window manager (like fluxbox), and 
 live in the command line.
 
 Neither user nor programmers should pretend that Linux is a Windows 
 replacement. It's different. You will be disappointed if you expect a 
 replacement. Actually, using Windows is better in this case.


Well obviously Windows is the best if you're looking for something 
exactly like Windows. Other than that it's a matter of opinion. I use 
KDE on one laptop and Gnome on another, and I like both miles better 
than Windows. Use what you like. There's no canonical way to use a Unix 
machine.

Andrei
Apr 07 2009
parent grauzone <none example.net> writes:
Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 grauzone wrote:

 Why does everyone think "Ubuntu" when talking about Linux? I find the 
 Ubuntu desktop almost as annoying as the Windows one. Even worse, 
 Ubuntu feels like a Windows clone. Most of this is because it uses 
 GNOME by default.

 If you really want to use Linux, don't use a crappy desktop 
 environment (they're all crappy), pick a small window manager (like 
 fluxbox), and live in the command line.

 Neither user nor programmers should pretend that Linux is a Windows 
 replacement. It's different. You will be disappointed if you expect a 
 replacement. Actually, using Windows is better in this case.


 
 Well obviously Windows is the best if you're looking for something 
 exactly like Windows. Other than that it's a matter of opinion. I use 


People, who used only Windows in their life, seem to expect all OSes to 
be like Windows. Even if they're aware that the system is supposed to be 
different, they might unconsciously prefer the Windows way. Of course, 
this is only natural.


 KDE on one laptop and Gnome on another, and I like both miles better 
 than Windows. Use what you like. There's no canonical way to use a Unix 
 machine.


This is what's good about Unix. I'm not forced to use GNOME or KDE. At 
least not their window managers and root window thingies (aka desktops).


 Andrei
Apr 07 2009
prev sibling parent reply "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:
On Mon, 06 Apr 2009 19:36:11 -0400, Daniel Keep  
<daniel.keep.lists gmail.com> wrote:


 I desperately wish my computer-illiterate family members would move
 off of Windows as well, since it would eliminate basically every tech-
 support call I field from them.  Perhaps I've simply had good luck with
 other OSes, but Windows is the only one I've had regular problems with.


 It's funny, but for me it's exactly the opposite.  I make an effort to
 switch to linux about once a year.  There's always, ALWAYS, something
 that goes horribly wrong that just can't be fixed.


I had the same experience.  Recently, I switched my laptop from XP pro to  
Fedora 10, and was pleasantly surprised:

1. The graphics look better than Windows, it's almost MAC like.  better  
Anti-aliasing of fonts.
2. The sound just "worked".  I've not had a problem from the beginning.
3. It automatically detected my wireless network card and the little  
applet that is used to configure it is better than the windows one.
4. I was disappointed in the lack of media playing support, but I found  
that there was a yum repository that has "questionably" licensed packages,  
which include support for playing almost all media formats, including WMV  
(rpmfusion.org).
5. The updates work just as cleanly as windows.

Once I had that, I'm not finding much missing.  I use Firefox in windows,  
and firefox works just fine in Linux.  It's faster, uses less memory for  
apps (my antivirus "guard" uses 70MB of virtual memory on my windows PC,  
does that make any sense at all?), and looks better.  The only thing it  
lacks is iTunes (yeah, screw you, I like iTunes :) and it doesn't support  
my printer properly (but it looks like it supports a ton of other  
printers).  I also don't really like nautilus, but I'm too lazy to try and  
install another file manager :)  BTW, does anyone know how to make  
nautilus NOT pop up a new window when you open another folder?  That  
drives me nuts!

It's been about 8 months now, and I'm still using Linux, haven't had any  
major issues.  Maybe eventually I can kill the windows install on my other  
box, and just put it on a virtual machine for games.

-Steve
Apr 07 2009
next sibling parent reply "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:
On Tue, 07 Apr 2009 13:02:34 -0400, Steven Schveighoffer  
<schveiguy yahoo.com> wrote:


 The only thing it lacks is iTunes (yeah, screw you, I like iTunes :)


The probability of iTunes on Linux just got a whole lot higher

http://tech.yahoo.com/news/macworld/20090407/tc_macworld/itunesisdrmfreeaddsvariablepricing_1

:D

-Steve
Apr 07 2009
parent reply Christopher Wright <dhasenan gmail.com> writes:
Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

 On Tue, 07 Apr 2009 13:02:34 -0400, Steven Schveighoffer 
 <schveiguy yahoo.com> wrote:
 

 The only thing it lacks is iTunes (yeah, screw you, I like iTunes :)


 
 The probability of iTunes on Linux just got a whole lot higher
 
 http://tech.yahoo.com/news/macworld/20090407/tc_macworld/itunesisdrmfreea
dsvariablepricing_1 


I doubt it will happen within the next five years. Apple admits that 
Windows exists because it has to; it won't ignore >85% of the market. 
But it will never admit that any other desktop operating system exists, 
if there is any choice in the matter.
Apr 07 2009
parent "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:
On Tue, 07 Apr 2009 14:26:21 -0400, Christopher Wright wrote:


 Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

 On Tue, 07 Apr 2009 13:02:34 -0400, Steven Schveighoffer  
 <schveiguy yahoo.com> wrote:


 The only thing it lacks is iTunes (yeah, screw you, I like iTunes :)


  The probability of iTunes on Linux just got a whole lot higher
   
 http://tech.yahoo.com/news/macworld/20090407/tc_macworld/itunesisdrmfreeaddsvariablepricing_1


 I doubt it will happen within the next five years. Apple admits that  
 Windows exists because it has to; it won't ignore >85% of the market.  
 But it will never admit that any other desktop operating system exists,  
 if there is any choice in the matter.


OK, so maybe the probability went up from 1/1000000 to 1/100000 :)

But still, the sole purpose of iTunes is to support the iPod/iPhone and to  
make money through music downloads.  Not to sell Macs.  It makes logical  
sense to port iTunes to other platforms.  Or even open the protocol for  
open source development.

And porting from OSX to Linux has got to be a hell of a lot easier than  
porting to Windows...

-Steve
Apr 07 2009
prev sibling next sibling parent reply grauzone <none example.net> writes:
 only thing it lacks is iTunes (yeah, screw you, I like iTunes :) and it 


There are lots of iTunes clones. Maybe you should try to get used to one 
of them?

(Personally, I'm still looking for a decent music player, now that xmms 
got removed from Debian. xmms was very crappy, but useable.)
Apr 07 2009
parent reply "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:
On Tue, 07 Apr 2009 13:56:34 -0400, grauzone <none example.net> wrote:


 only thing it lacks is iTunes (yeah, screw you, I like iTunes :) and it


 There are lots of iTunes clones. Maybe you should try to get used to one  
 of them?


I'm sorry, but I'm ignorant of such issues.  Do they allow downloading  
music from iTunes, and syncing with an iPod?

-Steve
Apr 07 2009
next sibling parent grauzone <none example.net> writes:
Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

 On Tue, 07 Apr 2009 13:56:34 -0400, grauzone <none example.net> wrote:
 

 only thing it lacks is iTunes (yeah, screw you, I like iTunes :) and it


 There are lots of iTunes clones. Maybe you should try to get used to 
 one of them?


 
 I'm sorry, but I'm ignorant of such issues.  Do they allow downloading 
 music from iTunes, and syncing with an iPod?


Oh, that's what you want. With all that DRM crap, I guess the 
probability of any open source software supporting this is very low. 
Sorry about my non-advice before.


 -Steve
Apr 07 2009
prev sibling parent Lutger <lutger.blijdestijn gmail.com> writes:
Steven Schveighoffer wrote:


 On Tue, 07 Apr 2009 13:56:34 -0400, grauzone <none example.net> wrote:
 

 only thing it lacks is iTunes (yeah, screw you, I like iTunes :) and it


 There are lots of iTunes clones. Maybe you should try to get used to one  
 of them?


 
 I'm sorry, but I'm ignorant of such issues.  Do they allow downloading  
 music from iTunes, and syncing with an iPod?
 
 -Steve


Amarok is the big one, it does have ipod support of sorts but I wouldn't 
know what that means exactly. What's really awesome though is that it has 
wikipedia support ;)
Apr 08 2009
prev sibling parent reply Lars Kyllingstad <public kyllingen.NOSPAMnet> writes:
Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

 BTW, does anyone know how to 
 make nautilus NOT pop up a new window when you open another folder?  
 That drives me nuts!


I don't know if this works on Fedora, because I suspect it may be an 
Ubuntu-specific feature, but, in a Nautilus window:

   Edit -> Preferences -> Behaviour
   -> Always open in browser windows (should be checked)

If this isn't applicable to your Nautilus build, there's the following, 
slightly hackish, way:

   1. Run 'gconf-editor'.
   2. Navigate to /apps/nautilus/preferences
   3. Turn on the always_use_browser property.

-Lars
Apr 08 2009
parent "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:
On Wed, 08 Apr 2009 05:55:51 -0400, Lars Kyllingstad  
<public kyllingen.nospamnet> wrote:


 Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

 BTW, does anyone know how to make nautilus NOT pop up a new window when  
 you open another folder?  That drives me nuts!


 I don't know if this works on Fedora, because I suspect it may be an  
 Ubuntu-specific feature, but, in a Nautilus window:

    Edit -> Preferences -> Behaviour
    -> Always open in browser windows (should be checked)

 If this isn't applicable to your Nautilus build, there's the following,  
 slightly hackish, way:

    1. Run 'gconf-editor'.
    2. Navigate to /apps/nautilus/preferences
    3. Turn on the always_use_browser property.

 -Lars



Awesome!  thanks (BTW, worked as you said in Fedora 10)

-Steve
Apr 08 2009
prev sibling parent "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:
On Mon, 06 Apr 2009 15:53:56 -0400, Jarrett Billingsley  
<jarrett.billingsley gmail.com> wrote:


 On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 3:31 PM, dsimcha <dsimcha yahoo.com> wrote:

 Yeah, I've always wondered why some people put so much emphasis on the  
 10% of
 computer security that's highly technical in nature when 90% of the  
 problem of
 computer security is between the keyboard and the chair.


 ComputerIlliterateFriend: Hey Jarrett, can you come over and fix my  
 computer?
 Jarrett: What's it doing?
 CIF: It's popping up all sorts of dialog boxes telling me I need to
 get Spyware Aweseom Remover and stuff, and it's running really slow,
 and my files keep disappearing.
 Jarrett: And where have you been on the internet?
 CIF: Oh you know, normal sites.
 Jarrett: Like?
 CIF: Porn, more porn, horse porn, warez.  I also used Limewire to
 download *every song and program ever made*, and I make it a habit to
 click on interesting-looking [read: violently-flashing] ads.
 Jarrett: ...
 CIF: What?  Did I do something wrong?

 Seriously.  It's like sleeping with every prostitute on the East Coast
 and acting surprised when you have seventeen STDs.


Windows' security is wrong from the ground up.  Consider that without  
having any anti-virus installed, your computer would be at risk from the  
conficker worm unless you have all latest windows updates installed.

Just the other day we shipped a system to a customer with a 6-year old  
worm on it.  Because the customer's image is that old, and we have other  
systems running test images that are that old that can propogate the worm  
around (still don't know where the source is).  The "let everyone have  
free access to my system for the sake of productivity, then try to patch  
holes later" mentality of Microsoft is seriously flawed.  The number of  
Linux/Mac/FreeBSD installs out there is getting to (or has gotten to) the  
point where the whole "there's no viruses for Unix because it isn't as  
popular" argument is moot.

Then on top of that, you are required to run your system as an  
administrator to get any work done.  Windows is the equivalent of a  
rest-area bathroom toilet seat with no ass gaskets avialable as far as  
breeding malware.  The only way they can fix it is to dump backwards  
compatibility and start over (which will never happen IMO).

And yeah, I've had those friends too.  Not running as Administrator would  
be a better solution to those idiots ;)

My $.02

-Steve
Apr 06 2009
prev sibling next sibling parent Walter Bright <newshound1 digitalmars.com> writes:
Jarrett Billingsley wrote:

 It's not.  It's actually quite simple to keep a clean Windows box.
 You _don't go to dangerous websites or download screensavers like the
 thousands of twits who don't understand computers or malware_.  I got
 my first virus in ten years of using Windows last December, and I
 don't have anything but a basic virus scanner.  It got in through an
 ad that took advantage of Acrobat Reader.


The problem is not knowing if your computer is compromised or not.
Apr 06 2009
prev sibling parent reply BCS <none anon.com> writes:
Hello Jarrett,


 Before that, I was running an install of XP that hadn't been modified
 for close to four years, which had run in two different computers.  My
 laptop is coming up on its four year mark as well.


I have a XP install that's comeing up on 6 or 7 years old. It's just now 
starting to have problems (of the BSOD type). That said, it doesn't /have/ 
a net connection so...
Apr 06 2009
parent reply Walter Bright <newshound1 digitalmars.com> writes:
BCS wrote:

 I have a XP install that's comeing up on 6 or 7 years old. It's just now 
 starting to have problems (of the BSOD type). That said, it doesn't 
 /have/ a net connection so...



My main XP dev machine is 7 years old now. I've reinstalled XP from 
scratch 3 times, once because I got rootkitted, once because the hard 
disk failed, and I forgot the third.
Apr 06 2009
parent BCS <none anon.com> writes:
Hello Walter,


 BCS wrote:
 

 I have a XP install that's comeing up on 6 or 7 years old. It's just
 now starting to have problems (of the BSOD type). That said, it
 doesn't /have/ a net connection so...
 


 My main XP dev machine is 7 years old now. I've reinstalled XP from
 scratch 3 times, once because I got rootkitted, once because the hard
 disk failed, and I forgot the third.
 


My issues started when I installed more RAM and the video drives flaked out. 
Disable them and stuff works, unistall the drives so I can install the new 
ones and like magic, the old one auto reinstall befor I can run the installer 
(thanks Dell) I now have had "issues" with both nVidia and ATI chipsets.

On that note, I've heard good thing about Matrox for it-just-work non-gamer 
performance: anyone have any experence.

http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/products/graphics_cards/g_series/g550dualdvi/
Apr 06 2009
prev sibling parent "Saaa" <empty needmail.com> writes:
"Christopher Wright" <dhasenan gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:grd5rq$f7g$1 digitalmars.com...

 Saaa wrote:

 I always thought people who would need to reinstall their windows to keep 
 it clean were like the ones that didn't know how computers works.
 I haven't reinstalled my windows box in like 6 years and it doesn't 
 startup any slower then before.
 If only you keep to the simple things like: ccleaner, autoruns, program 
 control (online armor) and noscript for firefox you should be able to 
 keep it clean.
 The only thing I can't really be sure of are rootkits and alike but 
 icesword and online scans at least give me the impression it is also ok 
 on that part.
 btw. adware normaly doesn't really make your box start up any slower


 Wow, that seems like a lot of work.


Compared to the ubuntu install I once had I do put a lot more work in 
keeping my windows clean.
But then again I had (as a linux beginner) no control over the ubuntu box, 
so its not really a fair comparison.

Autoruns after install
Ccleaner after uninstall.
And a get a lot more questions from my computer because of program control 
and noscript.
Disabled as many services as possible etc.
But, I will only search for a rootkit when I think I got something strange 
happening.
So especially 3 takes a bit of extra time.
btw. I want to be able to click on any link and until now this has never 
been a problem.
(noScript works perfectly for tht purpose)
I will probably start using sandboxie  the moment I get paranoid about the 
internets.
Apr 06 2009
prev sibling next sibling parent reply "Saaa" <empty needmail.com> writes:
I'm not really sure about this, but doesn't running the error check tool 
clean the cache?
Apr 06 2009
parent Walter Bright <newshound1 digitalmars.com> writes:
Saaa wrote:

 I'm not really sure about this, but doesn't running the error check tool 
 clean the cache? 



I have no idea.
Apr 06 2009
prev sibling parent bearophile <bearophileHUGS lycos.com> writes:
Olli Aalto:


 Check out Portable Ubuntu for Windows: 
 http://portableubuntu.sourceforge.net/index.php


I have just started using it few days ago:
- First of all graphics seems very slow. If I run the update manager it shows a
little window that asks me the password, and it darkens the screen. Such
darkening takes about 15 seconds. I don't know why.
- It uses only one core, and at 32 bits.
- Audio doesn't seem to work yet to me.

Beside that, it's the only one of such systems that works on my PC, and it
allows me to run the LDC compiler, Chapel compiler and more. The running speed
of programs is high enough (70%-90% of native, it seems).

Bye,
bearophile
Apr 07 2009