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Goodbye Windows, Hello Linux [advice needed for a Linux workstation at home]

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rsjsouza:

--- Quote from: Nominal Animal on January 20, 2019, 03:04:53 pm ---
--- Quote from: rstofer on January 19, 2019, 06:13:00 pm ---The problem with Linux distros is the number of branches.  It makes the developer's job a lot harder.
--- End quote ---
No, I've never had any issues with that.  Sure, there is a few hours of work to verify the package dependencies for each root distribution and write the package scripts, but it isn't a big deal at all.

The people who have trouble with that, are the ones who cobble together particular versions of particular libraries, and write code that only works with those.  They need Snap or similar, because "modularity" is not something they grasp.
--- End quote ---
In my experience this is not something so simple. We have limited resources and, given the Linux version comprises about 10% of our total downloads, we cannot simply spend "a few extra hours" per distro and per version when the general public is using a wide combination of tools out there. We simply choose the most popular (Ubuntu in our case) and let the customers figure out how to install in their distro of choice.

Having to also support Windows (7 and 10, both 32 and 64-bit) and macOS (Sierra, High Sierra), there's no way to fully appease to the entire Linux crowd. Of all these, macOS is the one that has been giving us the most grief lately, as people tend to update their OSes without thinking and several munor changes come to bite us - although all three had shown issues before.

Regarding usability, *nix can be made quite easy to use, as macOS and ChromeOS can show. IME the biggest issue going agains MS and Linux is to properly support the widest range of custom HW arrangements in the marketplace. That is why the procedure to do proper HW setup or obtain a given graphics performance is so much harder.

nctnico:

--- Quote from: rsjsouza on January 20, 2019, 09:38:29 pm ---
--- Quote from: Nominal Animal on January 20, 2019, 03:04:53 pm ---
--- Quote from: rstofer on January 19, 2019, 06:13:00 pm ---The problem with Linux distros is the number of branches.  It makes the developer's job a lot harder.
--- End quote ---
No, I've never had any issues with that.  Sure, there is a few hours of work to verify the package dependencies for each root distribution and write the package scripts, but it isn't a big deal at all.

The people who have trouble with that, are the ones who cobble together particular versions of particular libraries, and write code that only works with those.  They need Snap or similar, because "modularity" is not something they grasp.
--- End quote ---
In my experience this is not something so simple. We have limited resources and, given the Linux version comprises about 10% of our total downloads, we cannot simply spend "a few extra hours" per distro and per version when the general public is using a wide combination of tools out there. We simply choose the most popular (Ubuntu in our case) and let the customers figure out how to install in their distro of choice.

--- End quote ---
The easiest way to support many different kinds of OS configurations is to link all libraries statically OR supply the binaries with the binaries. Not depending on any libraries installed on the system has served me very well regardless the OS. BTW Windows 10 has caused me some grief as well because it seems quite a few things have changed under the hood where it comes to scheduling the user interface events and how serial ports are handled.

free_electron:

--- Quote from: nctnico on January 19, 2019, 09:13:50 pm ---
--- Quote from: rstofer on January 19, 2019, 06:13:00 pm ---Nobody wants to pay for Linux or Linux applications.  It's "free" software, after all.  The flip side is also true:  Why would a professional developer want to work for free?

--- End quote ---
Sorry but this is utter nonsense. There is lots of commercial software available which runs on Linux. Think about Cadence Allegro, Xilinx FPGA tools, Altera FPGA tools, Sonnet Professional (EM solver), etc. Each of these cost several $k at least.

--- End quote ---

and why ? because solaris and sun workstations disappeared , became underpowered and more expensive than commodity pc hardware.
So those guys wanted a simple port ... unix ( solaris / bsd ) -> linux . done. adapting to windows was too difficult. but now the point is moot as those packages also run on windows.

free_electron:

--- Quote from: Monkeh on January 19, 2019, 01:29:39 am ---
And you rant on and on and I spend more time unfucking your beloved Windows than I ever have dealing with Linux.

Give me a call next time the licensing tool for your software causes the machine to hard reset shortly after boot with no error and nothing in the logs, absolutely nothing to indicate where to start looking, and tell me how it 'always works'.

--- End quote ---
My current laptop hasn't been rebooted in at least a year. Last boot was due to a power-cycle to install new hardware ( more ram and a quadro 5100)
Win7-64 bit Enterprise. Stock install.
And what licensing tool ? None of the software i use is dependent on a license tool.

rsjsouza:

--- Quote from: nctnico on January 20, 2019, 10:02:28 pm ---
--- Quote from: rsjsouza on January 20, 2019, 09:38:29 pm ---
--- Quote from: Nominal Animal on January 20, 2019, 03:04:53 pm ---
--- Quote from: rstofer on January 19, 2019, 06:13:00 pm ---The problem with Linux distros is the number of branches.  It makes the developer's job a lot harder.
--- End quote ---
No, I've never had any issues with that.  Sure, there is a few hours of work to verify the package dependencies for each root distribution and write the package scripts, but it isn't a big deal at all.

The people who have trouble with that, are the ones who cobble together particular versions of particular libraries, and write code that only works with those.  They need Snap or similar, because "modularity" is not something they grasp.
--- End quote ---
In my experience this is not something so simple. We have limited resources and, given the Linux version comprises about 10% of our total downloads, we cannot simply spend "a few extra hours" per distro and per version when the general public is using a wide combination of tools out there. We simply choose the most popular (Ubuntu in our case) and let the customers figure out how to install in their distro of choice.

--- End quote ---
The easiest way to support many different kinds of OS configurations is to link all libraries statically OR supply the binaries with the binaries. Not depending on any libraries installed on the system has served me very well regardless the OS. BTW Windows 10 has caused me some grief as well because it seems quite a few things have changed under the hood where it comes to scheduling the user interface events and how serial ports are handled.

--- End quote ---
Nico, that is an alternative we have for specific components of our software, but there are many other libraries that, when statically linked, still showed incompatibilities with certain untested distros.

Another issue is download size: I wonder how much adding absolutely everything would add to an already hefty 1GB package.

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