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View Full Version : My Move To Linux & Kylix In The New Year



WILL
18-12-2003, 04:24 AM
OR "Farewell Windows, You've Been A Fine Punching Bag" ;)
Warning this may yet be my longest rant in the history of being a member of this board!!!


Hi everyone! I just wanted to let all of you guys know of the huge challenge I'm going to partake in over my holiday trip back home. Windows for me has been a bit of a love-hate relationship since Windows 3.0.(I've actually held an original disk copy of 2.0, but lets not talk about my authentic 5.25" Borland Turbo C 2.something floppies :D) When I start to think of operating systems I go way back to my first OS(technically it could be considered LOGO since I was first learning how to program simple quiz games in grade 5, OR AppleTalk and HyperCard in grade 6 and then there was Turing in highschool which was a University of Toronto based project to make an even simplier language for students to learn proper programming practices; Yes Pascal could be evil too.) DOS. Oh it was great! A command to do this and a command to do that, loved it. Never thought it could get better. But wait... Whats this? A visual enviroment for PCs that closely resembled a Macintosh?(You have to remember that all of this was new back then) No way!!! :) Installed it, ran it fell in love with the concept even with all of its vast many flaws. Heck, back then if Windows crashed all you had to do was close the damn thing, if it didn't already do so itself, and type "win" to get it back up and running. Remember OS2(by IBM)? Yup... it was aroud here that it was still well known. I guess IBM realized that Microsoft had pulled their underwear over their heads. :) Day late and a dollar short I guess.

Around this time Turbo Pascal 7 was my compiler/language of choice and I was primarily a DOS programmer. Protected Mode Memory management was a bitch. :? Funny thing is I never really played with Borland Pascal 7(the latest version of the DOS-based Pascal compilers from Borland) until after I had discovered Delphi. Go figure. ;) Well soon after followed Windows 95(wow a visual based operating system8)). What a peice of... well... "work" that was. ;) Install, crash, reboot, crash, install, crash, etc, etc... This is where the hate part comes in. It took a good few versions to get the Blue Screen of Death to eventually not show up ALL THE TIME. :P I'm supprise I managed to stay sane for the next 3 or so years. It was around this time, I believe(oh, so long ago) that I had first heard of Linux. Oh neat whats that, I asked my friend. It's a new Free Operating system that is based off of UNIX, but is open source. Open source, I asked?(This was all so new a concept to me back then) He told me a bunch of the features, etc and told me the bad news. Lack of hardware support. "Patch of the week" OS it was dubbed by some. :) Nothing I wanted to get my feet wet in yet.

Well soon there after is was indeed time for a change of sorts, Windows 98! Hmm... a bit more stable, but still had it's Blue Screen moments. :) It was around this time or closer to the Windows 98 SE release that I had discovered Delphi. :D Now I was programming! At this point I was actually starting to think, "Hey Windows is actaully pretty darn neat"... well in a Borland way of seeing it, it is. Everything decending from each other, TForms, TObjects, TControls, TButtons, etc... Object Oriented Programming at it's best. I bought a huge 3000 or so 'Delphi 3 VCL Super Bible' to go with my copy off Delphi 3. :) Soon enough Windows 2000 came about based on the infamous Windows NT stability claim and code. It wasn't that bad. Some few fustrated moments, but overall a huge improvement over all other existing versions, though many would argue that point. Windows ME was junk. I tried it myself hated it. Memory leaks galore. However the eye-candy was nifty.

Around this point I believe Delphi 4 and 5 had come out and Borland recently had a change of heart and renamed it's company's name to Inprise(so the stories that I've read tell it that way). There was this one seminar on the latest a greatest new thing to come around Kylix(Delphi for Linux, shame on you if you didn't know that already! ;)). Wow, Delphi for Linux! How could I resist. I went to the seminar I sat as saw in amazement as he did exactly the same things that I had been doing for the last few years in Windows on a Linux machine. It was incredible! :) I mean I had known about Linux before and all the neat GUIs that came with it, but that it was at this level where non-rocket scientists could use it. Wow! This is where I first contemplated changing over. If only it weren't for all of those neat programs that I'd be missing. Being not too far off as it is today, alot has changed. Linux is getting to be more mainstream(in the sense that Linux distros are getting closer to the point where the average user will be able to use it like they do Windows) and with such RAD tools as Kylix, it wouldn't be long. We litterally are standing at the brink of a cross-platform computer world soon enough. Linux will be in and Windows out, eventually. Or at the very least not the end-all-be-all of the OS market.

Delphi 6 and 7 were released in a quicker period of time than any other compiler had been in such a long while along with Kylix 2 and 3. Now that is Borland pushing the envelope for sure. :) All we need is for programmers to take hold of this bold new move and get cross-platform compatable. I myself have taken a look at all of the pros cons and other stuff inbetween and have come to the same very conclusions that most people probably have over the longest time.

1) I'm sick of my system crashing and crapping out on me because a peice of my OS wasn't coded properly.
2) Windows is a pig on my resources, i know it can run faster than this.
3) Why do all of my maintenance tools(Defrag, Backup, chkdsk, etc) not cut it when my system gets all screwed up and I have to resort to a 3rd party set of software to fix my registry, file system and installed programs and services.
4) Why do I have to pay each time Microsoft remakes a new Windows out of the same old code it's been using since 95/NT?
5) Can I find programs for every single type of program that exists in Windows for Linux? And are the just as good or better. Well for the most part, yes!


So my mind is made up. I'm going to drop this bad OS like a bad habit and switch to a much better OS that is faster, more stable, fully modifible(I loves open source ;)) and FREE. Free to upgrade free to install and use as I wish. This is however going to mean I will be a big user of Kylix. Delphi still if the team working on wine or winex can solve that Delphi 7 issue. Other than that I'm going to be stuck to whatever is cross compatable. All my projects that I wish to continue will have to be changed over to OpenGL/OpenAL, etc and I'll be looking at everything from a Linux perspective. Unfortunately this also means that my backing of a DirectX component suite will have to be dropped too. (Sorry, Kai :() All in all it's for the best, but I will be going through some odd type changes in the process. Thank goodness for the web huh? :)

I thank you all for listening to my rather long rant and hope that my bold move doesn't screw up my chances to maintain my current on goings with this site and my Delphi projects. :)

Harry Hunt
18-12-2003, 07:35 AM
I'm not trying to change your mind here, but quite frankly, I'm no big fan of Linux as an OS for home computers (It's all different when you use it at work, as a server OS or for scientific purposes) even though I like how it's all open source and stuff.
The biggest argument against Linux in my eyes if of course the lack of commercial quality games...
There, I took your key arguments and commented on them:


> 1) I'm sick of my system crashing and crapping out on me because a peice of my OS wasn't coded properly.

Linux with KDE/X-Windows crashes just as often as Windows 2k. Linux is super stable without a GUI but with KDE/X-Windows there's no big difference.


> 2) Windows is a pig on my resources, i know it can run faster than this.

On slower systems, Linux is definitely a lot faster. Especially when you compare it to XP.


> 3) Why do all of my maintenance tools(Defrag, Backup, chkdsk, etc) not cut it when my system gets all screwed up and I have to resort to a 3rd party set of software to fix my registry, file system and installed programs and services.

When something doesn't work, I re-install :)


> 4) Why do I have to pay each time Microsoft remakes a new Windows out of the same old code it's been using since 95/NT?

Because Money makes the world go round.


> 5) Can I find programs for every single type of program that exists in Windows for Linux? And are the just as good or better. Well for the most part, yes!

No! Definitely not! Kylix is cool (thanks Borland!) but other than that the Software you get for Linux usually can't compare with the commercial Software you get for Windows. There are no real alternatives to Photoshop (GIMP sucks!), Dreamweaver, Flash, Premiere, After Effects... on Linux. Also, I like IE. Mozilla is no better than Netscape.

WILL
23-12-2003, 09:55 PM
I rearranged you're points so that I can better explain mine.


> 2) Windows is a pig on my resources, i know it can run faster than this.

On slower systems, Linux is definitely a lot faster. Especially when you compare it to XP.

Not just slower machines my friend. :) Mind you PIII 800's aren't the wonder-powerhouses they used to be. But, the OS is just *faster*.


> 1) I'm sick of my system crashing and crapping out on me because a peice of my OS wasn't coded properly.

Linux with KDE/X-Windows crashes just as often as Windows 2k. Linux is super stable without a GUI but with KDE/X-Windows there's no big difference.

> 3) Why do all of my maintenance tools(Defrag, Backup, chkdsk, etc) not cut it when my system gets all screwed up and I have to resort to a 3rd party set of software to fix my registry, file system and installed programs and services.

When something doesn't work, I re-install :)

Ah ha! Exactly what I don't want to have to keep doing needlessly. You know how annoying it is to have to reinstall everything from scratch just so the OS will work well only to have some 3rd party software, if not some other peice of software that you paid for mess it up. You want to protect your system from viruses ok theres a paid program there then theres protecting your system if it's connected online 24/7 another program to do that and if you have problems with your registry(you would not know the amount of companies that do not know how to properly add/remove things from you're registry when the program is uninstalled/installed, etc...) so you'll need software to take care of this. Window's defrag program is worth crap for optimizing your drive so you you get speeddisk or something like that and that you're supposed to buy. Etc, etc, etc...

It's too much hastle. Now you can guess that I don't actually want to pay for these, but those solutions only end up costing my technical problems that end up in reinstalling again and again. :P Enough! At least this way I can resolve the problem with enough given knowlage and so maybe I have to play the reinstall game with Linux a few times until I learn, fine. At least I'm not in the Windows trap.



> 4) Why do I have to pay each time Microsoft remakes a new Windows out of the same old code it's been using since 95/NT?

Because Money makes the world go round.

Not when it comes to my computer. :) You go in there and; You in my world now. ;) This is really only a selling point on the concept to be serious, though.


> 5) Can I find programs for every single type of program that exists in Windows for Linux? And are the just as good or better. Well for the most part, yes!

No! Definitely not! Kylix is cool (thanks Borland!) but other than that the Software you get for Linux usually can't compare with the commercial Software you get for Windows. There are no real alternatives to Photoshop (GIMP sucks!), Dreamweaver, Flash, Premiere, After Effects... on Linux. Also, I like IE. Mozilla is no better than Netscape.

See here (http://www.codeweavers.com/) and here (http://f4l.sourceforge.net/) and here (http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1210083,00.asp)(this is a very good one to look at --> "Disney powerhouse + Linux = Good") and here (http://www.ac3d.org/)(this looks neat, but there is also others like POVray, etc...)

You have me on one thing though, I like IE too. But there are programs out there that mimic or emulate it in Linux. There are alternatives, but you have to look for them. Besides eventually there will be stronger free versions of the existing Win32 programs in the near future. Much like there will be a stronger Delphi/Kylix game development community soon. (Sorry I had to put that in there. ;)) It's all about what you can and can't put up with on you're OS.

In conclusion, I'm not saying that Linux is the prefect solution, but rather a BETTER solution than Windows for me. It(depending on the distrobution/version you get ad maybe with a slight bit of tweaking) can be just as resourceful and stable(if not more) than Win32. It'll even run faster with the right modifications and optimizing to you're hardware. The only problems that stand in my way right now is the hardware compatability. If that falls thorugh then Bob is my uncle. :)

tux
23-12-2003, 11:03 PM
hello :)

i stoped reading on line 4 :P

WILL
24-12-2003, 02:44 PM
Are you kidding? It took me 2 hours to babble all that into that little text box. Now read, you! *cracks whip* :twisted:


;)

tux
24-12-2003, 03:01 PM
*starts reading*

cya next week :)