Author: Don Dailey
Date: 04:46:41 08/01/98
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>Hi Don, > >Thank you for your informative post - it's made me think more seriously about >making the switch, at some point even if not now. My requirements of an OS are >certainly not most peoples' idea of what they want, but then you made some very >good points about usage. Personally, I hate flashy gizmo gimmicks. My PC was an >extravagance, but having bought the best I could afford it's all mine - that is >to say, no-one else uses it like family and so on. Unlike most computer users, I >use the computer more for writing programs than for running them. Most of what >you say about Unix and Linux sounds perfect for me. Do you know a good site to >take a closer look, maybe dowload some info about it? The idea of an OS >comprised of a large number of utility programs sounds similar to the way DOS >functioned, and I had no trouble with that. Is the syntax very different? > >I am at a disadvantage to some extent, because everything seems to be coded in >C, and I program in Basic. I am, however, quite pleased with the compiler that I >use - it's a new product, a 32-bit compiler, but it depends on a Windows based >OS. Interestingly though, the vendor (PowerBasic Inc) has announced their >intention to develop versions for Unix and Linux. I would probably wait for that >to happen before making the switch, but in the mean time I would be interested >to find out more. It sounds like one or the other of these is probably the best >choice for my particular needs. > >Thanks again, >Roberto Hi Roberto, I don't know how standard different versions of Basic are, but there is a "Quickbasic to C" conversion program available. There is also a basic interpreter but I think it's a fairly minimal implementation. You may want to wait for PowerBasic. I have programmed in many different dialects of Basic in the past, a couple of microsoft versions, "north star basic", a powerful DEC version of Basic and 2 or 3 other microcomputer Basics. The DEC Basic was really powerful and the OS it ran on was very unix like, sort of like a Unix with Basic as the fundamental language instead of C. It was pretty cool. If you get a chance, try to install a version of linux on a spare computer or small disk partition. You can install very little of it or quite a bit of it depending on how much disk space you have free for it. A minimal installation (without xwindows) can be quite small and you still get several consoles to work on, alt-fkeyN will switch from one virtual console to the other. There is no other OS, in my opinion, that is as cool to work on with no graphical support because the command line interface blows away anything else and virtual consoles gives you much of the functionality of multiple windows. But very few people run unix without Xwindows, Xwindows is is very nice and gives you all the bells and whistles of a GUI and a lot more programs and utilities (graphical) come with it than Windows. There are also several ways to program xwindows applications that will just already be there when you do a full install. This is usually the way it is with Linux, the stuff you need is just there already, no need to surf for weeks gathering your tools and compilers together and spending lot's of money. However in your case, with Basic there is not a compiler but only an interpreter. There are still many things you CAN add to your system but they are not usually the hard core items you can't live without. An example of this is compression utilities, you have to dig them up for Windows unless this has changed recently. Even as a chess programmer, if you do a full linux install you will boot up your machine and Xboard and gnuchessx will already be ready to run, fully ready to go! This is not unusual, it's typical of linux. If you like graphics editors, there are 2 or 3 already there, one of them (gimp) is supposed to be extremely powerful like photoshop but I cannot vouch for this since I'm not interested in this kind of thing. I'm not crazy about the editor choices however. Emacs is the most powerful editor and is incredibly powerful, more than any editor I have ever seen. But I just don't like it for aesthetic reasons. It's the only one I use and I'm quite comfortable with it but never have learned to love it. I used to use brief and think it's wonderful. I understand there are commercial look-alike versions for sale for unix and am considering getting this. Linux has a choice of 4 or 5 editors but I don't like any of them! But it turns out a lot of people absolutely love emacs, so I may just be the exception. I recently downloaded a free editor for linux that I might be very happy with, time will tell. Linux is more at home on the internet and Web than other OS's are, since the internet was built around unix. If you do a full install you will have a full blown web server built into your OS! People can dial in, or get to your machine via the internet and ftp files, log in to your machine (if you give them an account) or even run graphical programs FROM your machine. If they are on an Xwindows machine or device of any kind they might forget they are on your machine, everything looks and acts the same. Before I was at MIT, most of my ISP's used LINUX. The only one who didn't used NT and it was the least reliable one. If your ISP in UNIX based, you probably also have an account and password and can log onto their machine and run programs assuming they don't restrict this. I actually logged in and WROTE programs on my ISP's computer! You won't be doing this with a Windows ISP since you do not even have the option of remote logging onto any windows machine. Of course that's probably not why you would use an ISP anyway, but it's just another example of how Unix is designed to give you as much power as possible, not to control your use of it. Anyway, you can find out for yourself, just do a search for linux on the web. There is a ton of stuff on it. There a several distributions of linux available, I recommend RedHat version 5.1 or greater. You might start with www.redhat.com or something similar. You can go to ANY bookstore and find a ton of books on Linux too. The number of linux users is growing incredibly fast and wishful thinkers are hoping it will overtake windows, but this is completely unlikely unless it "dumbs down" to attract the new computer user. I would never recommend a new computer user start with Linux and changing linux for this kind of user would probably be counterproductive and hurt it. I probably won't post any more on this subject since it is a bit off topic and I have subjected everyone to it but if you decide to give it a try someday, send me some email and let me know how you like it. It's an OS you can really get excited about and it's absolutely free! - Don
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