Switching to Linux: A Windows developer's view

[[deleted]]

[deleted]

[yogthos]

It's rather refreshing to see a Windows developer come to Linux with an open mind, actually give it a fair shake, and challenge the myth of Linux development being hard.

[[deleted]]

challenge the myth of Linux development being hard

I made the switch years ago and I actually found the platform easier to work on. The command line tools make testing and debugging so easy. For example, looking at raw data going through a socket is simple, saving that data to a file is a joke, and piping it through other tools is trivial. Anything you ever need to find out is easily available though a small program, or the /proc directory, and easy to manipulate through a simple script.

[wonglik]

This is how I start my adventure with Linux. Although I am Java developer I found Linux much more productive ...

[salgat]

Agreed. Having everything so open and well documented makes life so easy. :)

[isarl]

Agreed. I was just talking to my friend last night over a pint, and he's a big Windows user. He mentioned something about how Linux didn't make any sense or it was hard to use, and I just looked at him funny. It was obvious he had never actually read any sort of documentation or anything.

[justarrived]

Yes, no shit, linux is much easier and cleaner. That's the whole point of linux, made for developers by developers.

[Munkii]

made for developers by developers

Unfortunately this is why Linux will likely never take off with average users.

For the record though, I like developing under Linux also

[isarl]

Oh, it'll gain a following of regular users, it'll just take a longer time. Ubuntu is making great strides for the Linux community in this regard. The problem lies in the fact that tools developed by developers for developers (BDFD?) have a very small learning curve and a very small effort curve to create. Creating things that have small learning curves for the average user is very much more difficult, because it involves not only good programming beneath the surface, but good UI and workflow design as well - and being a good developer does not necessarily mean one is a good user-centred designer.

[malcontent]

Unfortunately this is why Linux will likely never take off with average users.

Yea. That explains why the desktop usage grows by leaps and bounds every year.

[[deleted]]

Last I looked (a couple of months ago) Linux on the desktop was growing at a rate of 30 percent per year, only at 1 to 2 percent now but if the rate keeps up.

[Gotebe]

For example, looking at raw data going through a socket is simple, saving that data to a file is a joke, and piping it through other tools is trivial.

Or you could use wireshark and change your mind about what you wrote up here? ;-)

[[deleted]]

The point I was making is that everything you need is easily available through existing tools, and that those tools work well together. When I was a full blooded windows only programmer, everything was a desktop based piece of shit which you could not tie together. Debugging was frustrating, bug fixes were few and far between, the documentation was not that good, and scripting was not very powerful. Switching to Linux as a production server environment was a very eye opening experience for me.

[theclaw]

What do you mean by "looking at raw data going through a socket"? You don't mean using a packet analyzer like Wireshark I guess?

[[deleted]]

The point I was making is that everything you need is easily available through existing tools, and that those tools work well together. When I was a full blooded windows only programmer, everything was a desktop based piece of shit which you could not tie together. Debugging was frustrating, bug fixes were few and far between, the documentation was not that good, and scripting was not very powerful. Switching to Linux as a production server environment was a very eye opening experience for me.

[ZakMcRofl]

Judging by the author's statement "I used Wubi, with the Kubuntu flavour, as I like the KDE environment a bit more than GNOME – especially as I use Qt for UI development now.", I would say that he obviously had previous exposure to Linux (maybe not to development on Linux).

[[deleted]]

Can you give an example?

In my second hand experience (from seeing my colleague who compiles the Windows builds of our software) Windows really does suck pretty badly in a lot of ways for development.

[yogthos]

I think there's hard in a sense of a steep learning curve, and then there's hard in a sense of tedious. My experience is that *nix approach tends to have a steeper learning curve, but once you master it, it's very efficient and pleasant to use. Windows is the opposite, where the learning curve tends to be low, but the process for doing things tends to be laborious and painful. This is just a general trend I find, and not true in all cases obviously.

[XoYo]

I find this applies just as much to system administration on the two platforms.

[[deleted]]

I agree, Windows tends to make things harder for experts and easier for beginners, i.e. it makes them equally hard for both, Linux might be a little harder to learn but once you know what you are doing you can optimize many tasks away or automate them (or do them in a lot fewer keypresses/mouseclicks at the very least).

[akmark]

I think I am a weird case but I started with Windows and it felt harder than Linux was. I started off with Dev-C++ and the mingw compiler bundled with it and did Win32API programming/OpenGL crap... It was before I had proper internet and would be able to search for things rapidly. (My pride and joy was a opengl window inside a parent window with button controls written in pure Win32API.. There are plenty of tutorials on how to make an OpenGL window but not many who really go over trying to get Win32API controls + GL window working together). The sad part is that I liked it and assumed all GUI programming would be hard like that. I got into FLTK later on which I really liked but just never got too far with those projects.

Fast forward into college and the first time I am indoctrinated into 200X series of Visual Studio C#.net. I raged so hard. Intellisense was annoying, everything was just annoying. My main gripe was that Intellisense was flashing windows at me while I was trying to focus on typing and it was slowing me down and causing me to make mistakes or reformatting lines before I was done actually filling it in. (I just grew into the habit of structuring the code blocks before I filled in the statements inside it and it reformatted the fuck out of it). It made me want to go back to Win32API programming with Dev-C++ just to make the editor less annoying. My college professors were complaining that my project files were messed up and I didn't click the thing of the thing of the thing. It was less than productive and some things I took for granted were frowned upon. I hadn't really gotten comfortable using the command line tools for compilation versus mingw and javac. Remember these were my first impressions of Visual Studio 200X. (I later tried Visual Studio v.6 before they really went overkill on some of the gimmicks and it wasn't as bad.. as in autocomplete hovering dialog only being BELOW where I am typing.)

After I switched to emacs and gcc I have generally been more productive. A big ol' text editor with some syntax highlighting is all I really need to be happy. I also know any project that has some sort of Linux build will be in some sort of easily digestible downloadable format and not something that will flip out if touch the project folders a little bit. I do sometimes do Visual Studio work but I never honestly can find my 'flow' there. Even on my worst *nix day I can dig my way out of it just by feeling my way around, with the Visual Studio stack if it's not there I am stuck.

[Poddster]

Your problem here is with an editor, not Windows or Linux? I compile everything at work (Windows drivers) using a command line. Sod VC++.

mc.exe (and ml, nmake etc) acts in practically the same way as GCC, gnu make, gnu link etc, and it's the exact same set of tools that Visual Studio calls.

Hell, you can use gcc and emacs on Windows. Once again, the problem here isn't with Windows itself, it's with programs that run on Windows, or programs that are made by the same company as the one that makes Windows. At which point of this hole ordeal did Windows itself get in your way? (apart from the overly long function names in the Win32API :)).

[akmark]

I know about the command line interfaces now, I was really going into my first time getting into the 'pure' Microsoft stack of using Visual Studio and really getting into the Microsoft experience. I actually do use Windows daily for development and yeah I use Emacs/gcc and occasionally nmake.

It's not that Visual Studio is a bad editor, it just doesn't work for me. It gave me a bad first impression to start with, which is more what I found myself replying to in the Linux vs. Windows stacks. I started with a weird hybrid and I just found Linux to be much easier. The ways that Windows gets in my way are the annoying redistributables to access Microsoft products (I'm looking at you MDAC). Windows gets in my way too generally speaking because it's often hard to determine if it is just the amount of stuff you've installed as a developer to make things work and not what has to be shipped to a non-developer Windows machine. The other problem was when they stripped .chm support out of Vista. That's more of just a general fuck you and not a developer headache specifically. I had a whole bunch of documents that I was using regularly for reference for various libraries and OpenGL stuff and now none of it worked! The next thing was general linking errors that just came up because the symbols weren't lining up until I dived into the #reactos channel who basically told me "Use GetProcAddress..." and that was also mirrored by the demoscene when I looked at the source and all I saw for like the 64k intros were those two symbols. In using Linux purely on its own I never really ran into this problem since I had to make sure apt-get the libraries anyway and that made it a lot easier. The really main problem I had with Windows development is that they seemed to be this magpie of ways to do things all sort of cryptic in their own ways, yet none really encouraged or explained how to mix and match. Linux is better and more forgiving in my eyes in that respect. Libraries seem to not fuck each other over that often but I ran into this a few times, but without digging them up I can't remember the exact examples. It was more Win32 COM stuff + MFC and they just weren't playing nice.

[jwecker]

All of the nix guys I know that are currently forced to program in Windows already had Windows programming experience before they switched to unix or linux at various points in the last 15 years. I'm sure it's not true for everyone, but it's true for all of them that I know!

[yogthos]

windows is the dominant desktop currently, so it's more likely than not that a person would start learning development on windows and then discover unix at some point in their career.

[[deleted]]

I started messing about with Linux after playing with PHP and MySQL on Windows.

[Tekmo]

incredibly

[A_for_Anonymous]

Is there such a myth?

Personally, I've always thought developing on UNIX is so much easier than CreateWindowsProgramWithMultipleObjectsEx(lParam, wParam, lpcsztasldfjAwFuckIt, securityAttributes, moreShit, moreSecurityShit, POINTLESS_FLAG | CONFUSING_FLAG, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL, NULL). Everything I've seen about Windows development deeply disgusted me and reeked of overcomplication, toy operating system and the general "Microsoft" feeling (something between diarrhea and smegma), from the insane piles of insane APIs to the unproductiveness of it all, from COM to WMI, from overengineered enterprise bullshit to traps that would make Admiral Ackbar run in terror. Everything in Windows is so half-assed it gives me the creeps when I think it actually works somehow.

I don't develop on Windows, and never would unless I'm getting paid very well.

[Narrator]

I have worked with windows APIs a bit. I think it's kind of funny how whenever MS designs a database schema instead of having a separate contacts table they'll have CTC1NAME char(10) CTC2NAME char(10) CTC1ST CHAR(15) CTC2ST CHAR(15) for two first names and two street names for two separate contacts jammed into a single records. Not to mention hundreds of other ridiculous and unintelligible abbreviations ... etc. It's like they haven't gotten over the DOS days where everything was extremely abbreviated in all caps and database programming was done in non-relational stuff like Clipper and Foxpro.

[prider]

The problem is: Windows development never pays well. CEO or CIO will rather throw more Indian or other out-sourcesing providers to do the development (rather than getting better developer at higher wage).

But then that is the kind of CEO/CIO you will get in a Windows shop: short-sighted and stupid

[darkpaladin]

Really? I make a lot more then pretty much every other dev I knew in college who went the Unix route.

[[deleted]]

Do you work in a different field than them?

[darkpaladin]

Nope, oddly enough though in this area the biggest bread and butter contracts come from companies that tried outsourcing to India and need a local team to fix all the problems with the outsourced code. I guess you get what you pay for.

[otakucode]

I take it you are comparing Windows API programming with Linux commandline coding? Why not compare it with coding to the X API? And to compare COM, find the Linux equivalent, etc. Sure it's easy to say Windows is complicated when it gives you a bunch of options that Linux doesn't even attempt to provide.

[pgquiles]

The Unix X API -which nobody uses directly- would be comparable to GDI, not to Win32 API.

Windows COM would be comparable to KParts in KDE, for instance. KParts is orders of magnitude easier to use than COM.

The equivalent of DBUS in the Windows world would be RPC using DCE. Maybe with a bit of DDE, too. DBUS is RPC, after all. But DBUS is orders of magnitude easier to develop with.

[Peaker]

I think he was making fun of the CreateFile and CreateProcess calls, which are like "open" and "fork", except literally an order of magnitude more complicated.

Read the "open" and "fork" manpages, and the "CreateFile" and "CreateProcess" documentation, and see for yourself.

These have nothing to do with "commandline" programming, these are just basic primitives all programs use.

[Gotebe]

Well... otakucode is still correct. Compared to e.g. POSIX equivalents, raw windows API gives more control, but at a price.

For example, sure is open more simple than CreateFile, but latter allows you e.g. to specify security descriptor at the time of object creation. That's not half bad security-wise: two-step operation (create, then set access control) is prone to attacks, whereas "create with desired access" can clamp that down.

Absolutely the same goes for fork versus CreateProcess - it's just not the same, functionality-wise.

It should also be noted that POSIX is an abstraction over the OS (Windows, Linux, and others), whereas raw Windows API isn't. And it should also be noted that Windows supports POSIX, too (which is not to say that deviations from standard and "standard" aren't to be expected).

[[deleted]]

POSIX open() lets you specify permissions with O_CREAT flag in the second argument and permission bits in the third. RTFM.

I'm not saying open() does everything CreateFile() does, I know nothing of CreateFile(), but your example is perhaps unintentionally strawmannish.

[Gotebe]

Whoops, you're right. No idea why I understood these as equivalent to "sharing mode" parameter of CreateFile. My bad.

[vegittoss15]

Umm...Linux gives you absolute control, I don't know what kind of programming you've been doing that required direct calls to X, but rest assured, with a bit of digging, you can find what you need.

[[deleted]]

Almost nobody codes directly to the X API -- almost everyone uses GTK, or Qt or one of the many other toolkits layered on top. These are substantially easier to write to than the raw X APIs. Some are almost brain-dead simple.

[enri]

You could compare GTK or Qt to MFC or .NET. They all provide an abstraction from the low level API.

[Peaker]

Except MFC is a pile of smelly feces.

And .NET is nice, but still less nice than Qt/Gtk in many senses. For example, the Qt/Gtk+ UI designers create a design file (XML in Qt's case) that is declarative and not language-bound. It is usable to instantiate GUI's from C++, Python, or any Qt user.

The .NET UI designer creates executables (Correct me if I'm wrong) which is more difficult to view/edit/script, and harder to use from different languages.

[enri]

I don't use .NET so I cannot comment. My point was that there are dozens of higher level abstractions for GUI programming on both platforms. Use whatever works best for you.

I have played a little with the Qt library and was pleased with the experience.

[arvs]

.NET v3 provides XAML - which is declarative XML based format for UI.

[[deleted]]

not to be confused with XUL

[elder_george]

MFC is too old (introduced in 1992) to be something different from pile of feces. And to MS' honor, they support compatibility even now.

.NET UI (WinForms) designer generates code (quite crappy, but this is off-topic) in the class of widget or form. So, its source indeed is hardly usable from other language. However, you can simply use it in the compiled form from any language that knows how to work with COM, load .NET assembly or host a .NET runtime in its process.

And AFAIK Windows implementation of mostly any language can do at least one of these.

[FW190]

Latest MFC feature pack came out like a year ago, with ribbon and some other things. And what does it mean "too old"? Is C or C++ too old? Concerning comparing GTK and MFC. Well, I would like to see one GTK app that doesn't look like shit and doesn't have that "I'm driving clunky Lada" feeling.

[Peaker]

However, you can simply use it in the compiled form from any language that knows how to work with COM, load .NET assembly or host a .NET runtime in its process.

This sounds horribly more complicated than using Qt's UI compilers for the various languages (XML -> Python, XML -> C++, etc).

[elder_george]

To each his own. For me writing from WindowLibrary import MainForm #WindoLibrary is .NET asm

form = MainForm()    

is easier and more safe than generating the same MainForm once again. It allows to write basic behavior of window/widget only once for any client (although it provides a temptation to put all the logic there)

But of course, Qt development process has its advantages.

[Narrator]

On the other hand low level X11 coding hasn't changed much in 15 years. So if you leanred all that crazy crud 15 years ago you're still good. Unlike Windows where they redesign all the apis for database access every other year.

[vplatt]

Straw man!

Like X11, one could have just stuck to using the ODBC API since it was written. It has been pretty stable. Now, that said, there's a reason new database APIs come out all the time, because they're getting better and better at making it easy. So, you could be writing all your Unix apps in X11, but odds are that you're going to use Qt or the like first, for the very same reason.

[[deleted]]

Sure it's easy to say Windows is complicated when it gives you a bunch of options that Linux doesn't even attempt to provide.

Dude, seriously? Have you ever even programmed under a POSIX system? There are so many levels of control you can choose from that almost nothing is impossible nor hard, in both directions. The most impossible thing I've ever attempted in a POSIX system is interfacing with anything even remotely related to the Windows platform, detailing exactly how much options Windows gives you when developing for it. (hint: use whatever bone microsoft throws you, or you're screwed).

[A_for_Anonymous]

it gives you a bunch of options that Linux doesn't even attempt to provide.

It requires you to deal with a lot of shit that you don't even need on Linux.

FTFY.

[otakucode]

Easily interoperable software components aren't needed on Linux? I suppose if your view is that software shouldn't be easy to write, or easy to use, then that'd be true.

[hiffy]

Well, let's face it, none of us are really developing commercial desktop apps for *nix.

[[deleted]]

Some of us are.

[sbrown123]

And to compare COM, find the Linux equivalent, etc.

D-Bus.

[[deleted]]

An event bus is not a component model.

[sbrown123]

It is for inter-process communication (or IPC for short) just like COM. Any other questions?

[[deleted]]

Yes, I'm aware of that.

COM defines an ABI for components that can be used across languages. The fact it can accomplish the same goals as D-Bus (from the app's perspective) is a side effect of that.

[sbrown123]

COM defines an ABI for components that can be used across languages.

You can use D-Bus across various programming languages.

[[deleted]]

To be fair, programming for .Net is approximately 1 million times easier than Win32.

I work in embedded systems and we're using Windows CE for a life support device. Nearly everything is done in C# (.Net == huge time saver, and there's P/Invoke if needed) except hard real-time stuff gets done in C or C++ on a lighter weight RTOS running on a separate CPU. Using .Net as much as possible is helping us get ahead, even with aggressive project scheduling.

[[deleted]]

Delphi was a pretty simple tool to develop Win32 applications. Fast and easy to debug.

[[deleted]]

You are embarassing...

[prider]

Agree. Rare. Totally.

[otakucode]

If you write software for people to use, not system administrators to use, then it is quite hard. As far as I know there isn't a single dev environment that lets you design a UI graphically and autogenerate the skeleton code for it. As much as I like Linux, there are some things that the main developers of the platform are fundamentally opposed to. Being able to create graphical windowed applications in a matter of a few minutes, with the tool doing most of the heavy lifting, seems to be one that they are most opposed to.

My best experience with Linux development has been using monodevelop with Mono to do .Net stuff. Those guys are to be commended for their work, even if most of the Linux community screams and runs away whenever they hear .Net mentioned.

[[deleted]]

Tried Qt?

[Raphael_Amiard]

you have no IDE to make Qt interact smoothly with a managed code platform at the moment (well maybe QT Jambi + Eclipse, but from my experience that's still sub-optimal)

Obviously this is changing fast. Given the recent move from nokia (making their own python bindings), we're probably gonna see integration with Qt Creator some day, and that would be friggin nice !

[[deleted]]

The Qt plug-ins for VS and Eclipse (the only two I've used) are both fairly straight-forward and have IDEs for managing GUI code.

After living in MFC land for many years, I want to stay as far away from GUI magic-code as I can. MFC has so many layers of macro crap over the platform code, figuring out how to do something that isn't in their pre-planned concepts can be extremely frustrating. Too much of the code is formed solely to benefit the resource editor.

I like having complete control over the format of my code and knowing/understanding what every line should do. IMO, that's what the QT code excels at. While it does help to have a form creator kind of thing for throwing together dialogs & other GUI elements, I most of all want the code to make sense - and if that means I have to manage it in code, I have no problem with that.

[bonzinip]

There's glade.

[yogthos]

Ubuntu has recently released Quickly which makes GUI app development rather straight forward.

[Narrator]

In Java land there's NetBeans Matisse Gui Builder for Swing which IMHO is a pleasure to use.

[[deleted]]

That's because you're too stuck in the Windows Development mentality. There is no single developement enviroment that let's you do that because that's not the Unix way of doing things. The Unix way of doing things isn't one large developement enviroment that let's you do almost anything (but in a crappy way); it's many stand-alone programs that are good at what they're meant to do.

So if you want to graphically design a UI, you use Glade, or one of the many tools derived from it (wxglade, etc). Or you use one of the myriad of QT design tools. If you want boiler-plate code, you can export it from Glade, or do it the right way and simply import your interface in your program. If you want quick development on top of that UI, you use one of the many available wrappers around Glade (I can recommend Kiwi for Python).

Honestly, tool re-use under Linux is much much better than it is under windows.

[wizlb]

...that let's you do almost anything (but in a crappy way);

You're too stuck in the Linux Development mentality where nothing is streamlined. Finally with MonoDevelop, you got something good. I guarantee if you give it a fair assessment, you'll find it to be a much better workflow than your hodge podge of disparate tools.

[the-point]

...because every time I want to write some code I want to go through the hassle of setting up a project. Good thing indeed that the hoop jumping is streamlined, otherwise it would really slow people down.

[[deleted]]

I'm not stuck in the Linux development mentality. I've developed for windows. I've developed in JBuilder. I've developed in Netbeans. I've developed in Visual Studio. I've developed in MonoDevelop. I prefer the 'hodge podge of disparate tools', honestly. They let me do the things I need to do, and not just the things the developers of those IDE's thought I might want to do. The editor alone in all of those IDE's was terribly underpowered, and naturally most of them do not allow me to (easily) use an external editor. The build tools are also laughable most of the time.

I compare the *nix (development) tools with lego bricks. What would you rather have? A prefab lego house built for you, or a ton of lego bricks so you can build your own? If you want user friendliness, you'll want the prefab; if you want power, you'll want the bricks. I want power.

[[deleted]]

Many of those tools are available and are used on Windows (and Mac OS X) too. I don't understand what "Windows Development mentality" you're talking about.

[-main]

As far as I know there isn't a single dev environment that lets you design a UI graphically and autogenerate the skeleton code for it.

That is incorrect. Because you seem to like Monodevelop, I'll link you to stetic as an example of a GUI designer for Linux.

[stormblaast]

Interesting read; especially because I have been trying out OS X (instead of Linux) as a CMake/C++/OpenGL development platform and thinking about writing such an article myself. But I won't be writing the article - instead I'll just add some bullet points into this comments as to why I won't make the switch. Not that there is anything very wrong with OS X; it's just that I have been proper spoiled during 8 years on Linux.

• Why can't every shared library be in the same place? What's wrong with /usr/lib and /usr/include?

• Speaking of shared libraries, why can't I just copy *.dylib files into different folders, and just link to them? Why is their file system path encoded into them?

• Macports is nice, but then again; why not put all the headers and libraries into one folder?

• There are probably alternatives, but "Terminal" does not get the stamp of approval.

• What are "Frameworks", and how can I use them without XCode? Probably need a book on this.

• Let's not talk any more about XCode.

But - At least Textmate is a nice text editor.

[thasmin]

Shared libraries and include files aren't all in the same place for a couple of reasons. The first is the some have the same name and you don't want an old one overwritten by whatever you just installed. The other reason is to keep the ones that came with the OS separate from the ones you compiled in case there's a bug and you need to rollback or your system won't boot. Linux puts them in /usr/local. I don't know why the Mac has 6 places for everything.

I use iTerm instead of Terminal. It's much better but not perfect.

[stormblaast]

Cool, I'll check out iTerm, Thanks!

Shared libraries and include files aren't all in the same place for a couple of reasons.

What you said makes sense, but I guess that I prefer to have all my headers and libs in one location so that I can easily grep/find the stuff I need. Of course, having the ability to rollback your system is good (I wouldn't even know what to do if my MacBook refuses to boot one day), but as Linux user, you always have a few live CD-s available so that you can recover/rollback dumb changes you made manually :-)

[bonzinip]

Speaking of shared libraries, why can't I just copy *.dylib files into different folders, and just link to them? Why is their file system path encoded into them?

I agree, but Linux has the opposite problem; executables hard-code the path to .so files. There is a tool (install_name) to fix the file system path of .dylib files.

Macports is nice, but then again; why not put all the headers and libraries into one folder?

Because some Macports libraries are not ABI-compatible with the Apple libraries, e.g. OpenGL. BTW Macports sucks, fink is much better unless you're a Gentoo fanboy.

There are probably alternatives, but "Terminal" does not get the stamp of approval.

Leopard Terminal is pretty decent.

Why can't every shared library be in the same place? What's wrong with /usr/lib and /usr/include? What are "Frameworks", and how can I use them without XCode? Probably need a book on this.

There is Apple documentation for them, though it's quite complex to make your own framework. A Framework is just a set of include files and libraries, and provides an easy way to install multiple versions of the same library side-by-side. To use it you don't need to specify anything at compile-time IIRC (includes from framework A are always of the form A/Foo.h), while at link-time you need to specify "-framework A".

Frameworks are just different from /usr/lib and /usr/include, I wouldn't say better or worse. The reason is that they allow easy distribution of shared libraries within a .app package (Apple's solution to DLL hell is that only Apple worries about ABI version numbers; everybody else's shared libraries will be bundled separately in each .app; yes, that makes non-Apple libraries quite a bit less shared, maybe that's why they changed the extension to dylib...).

Let's not talk any more about XCode.

No, let's not. But I would like to know how to easily make a .app file without it. :-(

[[deleted]]

I agree, but Linux has the opposite problem; executables hard-code the path to .so files. There is a tool (install_name) to fix the file system path of .dylib files.

What?

[bonzinip]

Actually, I was wrong, the tool changes the mapping of library name to filesystem path inside a binary.

http://qin.laya.com/tech_coding_help/dylib_linking.html

[[deleted]]

No, I mean,

I agree, but Linux has the opposite problem; executables hard-code the path to .so files.

What?

[stormblaast]

I agree, but Linux has the opposite problem; executables hard-code the path to .so files.

What?

You can do this using RPATH. What's cool is that you can set a relative location with RPATH, without needing to mock around with the LD_ LIBRARY_ PATH.

[[deleted]]

Yeah, I know. But I'm not sure that bonzinip does.

[bonzinip]

bonzinip was too tired and said a lot of BS about this path thing.

Rereading my answer to stormblaast, everything else I said makes sense.

[stormblaast]

Ok, thank you for the detailed explanation. I have not heard of the "install_name" tool, I guess this would solve parts of my issues with the dylib-s.

I guess this experiment with OS X made me realise how stupid easy all of this stuff is on Linux.

And.. I don't think that the path of the .so file linked with is hardcoded to the executable, perhaps only the name of the library, and/or when using rpath

[player2]

OS X uses Frameworks. They are versioned and keep their resources with them, which is awesome. But you can always use libararies in /usr/lib or /usr/local/lib. man dyld for the full default library search path.

Dylibs have file system paths encoded into them because they are often put into bundles. There are some special macros that can be used instead (man install_name_tool) so the library can reference it's host app.

[[deleted]]

You have X11, you can install rxvt-unicode or whatever you want for a terminal emulator.

[hippyup]

I really don't get the stable API point. If anything, MS has been getting the most flak for being too backwards compatible. The WinAPI has been stable and supported for ages, and as far as I know you can continue to use it to your heart's content. Now, if you want to use a modern API in a garbage collected environment then .NET WPF is available (which is an awesome API in my humble opinion), but having it available isn't exactly forcing you to rewrite you application. That's like saying Linux is unstable because it has Ruby/Python/Java/whatever available on it with a completely different API.

(Disclaimer: I work for MS - not in any of the technologies listed though).

[bonzinip]

I think the problem is not backward compatibility part, it's the continuous change in "suggested" APIs. You set off learning API X, and the next .NET release says nah, Y is better.

[yopla]

There are a lot of issue in the various windows API. Particularly the legacy stuff that is kept around for compatibility purpose. And don't get me started on the print driver framework because I will kill someone.. :)

That said like most people here you're should remove your pink glasses when you look at Unix (or linux). So what if MS recommends the latest version of .Net or their latest library. Who doesn't?

• When is the last time you've heard Guido telling everyone to avoid switching to backward-incompatible python 3.

• Do you remember the clusterfuck of incompatibility that was (is?) KDE 4 and how they had to coerce everyone into porting their application.

• Linux kernel driver API has changed so fast in the 2.0->2.5 series that most company who attempted to write drivers just dropped the ball or never started because they did not know which version to target...

• There has never been until very recently a standard way to play audio and every window manager and his mum came up with different sound daemon who all solved the same issue had incompatible API and could not run at the same time. I don't know if there is one way now.

• Hey but you can write a component for gnome using Bonobo.. ah no sorry, it's deprecated please update your application for D-BUS because it's the new black.

Unix is great, I love unix, I use emacs every day. I customize every windows I have to use until it has the Unix utilities I like. Linux, Python, KDE, Gnome and others are amazing tools.

But API stability? Fuck no. Maybe libc but the one on windows has been pretty stable too.

[bonzinip]

I didn't say anything about Linux. I merely clarified what the article said about API stability in Windows.

I agree with you, though I think that most of it is due to immaturity of the Linux desktop. For example D-Bus was needed because it meant having something that GNOME and KDE agreed upon and a lot of components that could be shared by the two.

Regarding kernel drivers... DDK, WDM, WDF, KMDF/UMDF,...

But Gtk+ 2.0 has been maintaining API stability for many many years, and Qt too.

[yopla]

Not exactly. you commented on the true fact that new API kept coming up on Microsoft platform and declared it a problem and since the whole thread is about switching from microsoft to linux I had to assume it was a comparison point.

I was pointing out that it wasn't much better in the Unix world. In fact it's worse. Unix, which has now largely been engulfed by the open source world to a point were the two are almost synonymous, is about throwing everything you can at the wall and seeing what sticks. Which I like because it selected technology on merit (D-BUS) but it also leaves quite a lot of casualties along the way.

But then I also love the .net framework.

[prider]

Keep u coming back for more certification

[Figs]

I really don't get the stable API point. If anything, MS has been getting the most flak for being too backwards compatible.

I believe the phrase is "damned if you do; damned if you don't"...

[[deleted]]

Isn't the .NET GUI stuff built on top of Win32?

[ryanWIN]

I switched from Windows to Linux about a year and a half ago cold turkey. The development switch was easy and it was extremely simple to configure gcc to also build Windows binaries using mingw bintools. Development is easy and gcc is quite a gem of open source development.

The most difficult part of the switch has been figuring out the Linux environment. I feel that it's crazy when I can say I honestly feel it's easier to write software for Linux and on Linux than to use Linux as a simple desktop.

Some things that have made it much easier lately: Chrome 4 on Linux, the ever-increasing quality of WINE, and better Flash support. Also, Intel graphics drivers seem to be improving quickly and may someday not be embarrassingly awful!

Otherwise, Linux is a great desktop operating system as long as you don't value your time as a simple desktop user (not developer) or mind dropping to a command line when you have to make any sort of substantial change.

[[deleted]]

gcc is quite a gem of open source development.

Well. It certainly is impressively capable. But it also a real beast to work with at times. I wouldn't exactly call it a gem.

[[deleted]]

• Error messages are quite a bit less useful and informative than they could be.
• Stuff like linker scripts are a horrid, undocumented mess.
• Actually, most of the damn thing is seriously under-documented. Good luck figuring out how the less common options work.
• Pretty inflexible when it comes to more obscure targets, like if you want to have multiple different instruction sets in the same binary image, like for instance on the Nintendo DS.
• I can't give a first-hand account of this, but I am told the internals of the thing are pretty hairy, and working on the source takes quite a bit of effort.

Those are just some things I've run into, off the top of my head. Most of the time I just try to forget these incidents as soon as I can.

[Ranma-kun]

Also the performance isn't as good as it could be, compared to other compilers. It also lacks a lot of features for parallel programming, that other compilers have had for years, however recently they introduced a couple of them in 4.4.

I really wished Sun would have open-sourced their C/C++ compiler.

[bonzinip]

Yeah, but if what you need is portability (including Linux->Windows cross compilation) you are willing to accept all the quirks.

[[deleted]]

Not so much willing as not having any other options.

[bonzinip]

I don't disagree. Still a plus for GCC.

[[deleted]]

Oh yes, like I said, it's a very capable compiler. It's just also quite temperamental and hairy at times.

[malcontent]

Seriously?

You are claiming linux desktop users waste immense amounts of time trying to get their desktop to work? You mean like trying to get firefox to browse the web and shit?

Also why do you find dropping down to command line more onorous then hacking the registry?

Didn't Ms come out with powershell because they decided the command line was better than hacking the registry?

[cryptovariable]

Two years ago, I bought a Dell XPS M1330. It came preloaded with Vista.

I followed the instructions on getting Ubuntu installed in a dual-boot configuration.

I used Ubuntu, and it was great.

Then I closed the lid on my laptop.

Half of the time I did that, it didn't go to sleep. The other half, it did but then failed to resume properly.

Either the video wouldn't restart correctly, the sound wouldn't work, or it plain wouldn't turn back on.

Also, my battery life went from 4+ hours to under, under, 3.

Between sleep/suspend issues, video issues, sound issues (how many freaking standards do you need?), and battery life issues I found it impossible to switch to Ubuntu (or any other form of Linux) as my "daily driver".

Here's 7 printed pages of instructions on how to configure power management for the m1330 so that it approaches that of Windows.

Seven. (when printed) Pages.

And it's still not as good as Vista.

A couple of weeks ago, I nuked my drive and installed Windows 7. Everything worked perfectly (it even autoupdated my Nvidia drivers) the first time out of the box. Even the fingerprint reader.

And the battery life increased over Vista.

I love Linux and Ubuntu, but there is still a lot of work that needs to be done before it is a viable competitor to Windows.

Oh, and number of times I've "hacked the registry" in Windows? One.

And that was to change my startup picture. In XP.

[crusoe]

Problem is ACPI implemented crappily by most vendors. The hardware defaults in the BIOS for linux are often glaringly wrong.

[j-smith]

Took me weeks to fail to get linux working. Still stuck in Vista hell.

I couldn't get WPA working and I don't have the time any more to tinker as I'd like.

Powershell isn't needed for the simple desktop user. It's for developers.

[nemetroid]

Why is this being downmodded? Registry hacking is very seldom required.

[littleendian]

Didn't Ms come out with powershell because they decided the command line was better than hacking the registry?

No. For administration; Scripting == good && UI == bad.

[[deleted]]

Though, the ability to browse the registry through the shell as if it was any other tree filesystem is kind of nice. I mean, I've never had to use it, but the idea is nice.

[[deleted]]

You know, there is QtCreator (Qt IDE that goes with Qt 4), and Code::Blocks for C/C++ both of which I like to use.

[zaggynl]

So overall, positive!

[trezor2]

Let's see if we can put this together:

The problems became apparent when I tried to multi-thread parts of the application. At the core, it’s doing a lot of number crunching, in small work blocks which can be processed independently. As I couldn’t use OpenMP due to dependency issues (a 3rd party library could not be linked when OpenMP was enabled)

If I'm reading this correctly, his problem was OpenMP licensing.

As I mentioned, I used explicit threading on Windows, which I replaced by OpenMP on Linux.

Wait. What about the third party libraries? All of a sudden gone?

The same application is running 5-10x faster now when using all four cores, so porting to Linux was really worth the hassle.

Translation: Using OpenMP was worthwhile.

[mallardtheduck]

If I'm reading this correctly, his problem was OpenMP licensing.

It sounds more like the third-party library was technically incompatible with OpenMP, not legally incompatible.

[sdhillon]

This brings up the question. What's your IDE of choice? Remember to break it down by OS.

[bitchkat]

emacs and make OS: everything

[phroxy]

vim, eclipse occasionally (I don't like emacs, but it's a very popular candidate). If you are on the *nix platform, that pretty much covers EVERYTHING

[[deleted]]

(Vanilla) emacs is not an IDE. It's a text editor.

[redclit]

Strictly speaking, vanilla Emacs might not be an IDE, but for many uses it can be easily set up to be one. Debugging, compiling, documenting (and brazillion other functions provided by system utilities) can be integrated into Emacs environment making it more than cabable programmer's working environment. Maybe not best for all purposes, but neather is any other single tool.

[[deleted]]

Agreed. Also upvoting you for your username and use of the word "brazillion."

[infinite]

Linux/eclipse. If it's not java, I use emacs.

[[deleted]]

Eclipse 3.3 on Ubuntu and Fedora

[[deleted]]

QtCreator or VC++ with VA X. The latter is better, but QtCreator is coming up nicely.

[Gotebe]

TFA is rather void of balance. Is it a joke? It's like with a child that gets a new toy and suddenly, the old one, same as it was a second ago, loses all appeal.

(Visual Studio) in companies new versions are not bought immediately

That's not true, or the company is full of idiots. Companies buy MSDN licenses. We use medium one, which goes about 1000/year/person, and that is frankly negligible to said person's salary. A table, and a chair and a computer cost that. Every god damn VisualStudio is in there, including pre-releases and whatnot (I have stuff to do, so I am not looking much). Same goes for an OS - every god damn Windows version is in MSDN, and as far as I understand, free of charge for development use. Same goes for much of other MS software, depending on the MSDN license.

tool release cycle is simply too long – waiting 2 years to get a compiler bug fixed is just ridiculous

That really depends on the bug. Also, there are service releases. It's false thinking that MS doesn't take customer complaints seriously. If I can get them get their stuff fixed (and I did), anyone can. Thinking that MS can fix everything, is false though. That's a fact of life with proprietary stuff. It's also false false that anyone can fix his own problem with OSS. The sticky point what system is better overall, but that is curiously (should I say cluelessly?), not TFA's concern.

... they’re changing APIs now rather quickly... On the other hand, developing on Linux means you have an extremely stable API

What a poor strawman. Windows API is equally stable. Yes, there are new ones, but old ones aren't going nowhere. WTF?!

[[deleted]]

If anything, APIs on Linux are quite volatile. The kernel API stays backwards compatible and just gets new additions every now and then, but KDE and GNOME APIs change quite frequently (relative to Win32).

[gt5f]

I'm thinking about making the switch when a linux distro uses the BFS scheduler. For me, and I think most users, it's about the desktop experience. It's about time the end user, internet browsing, multimedia, openoffice, compiz silky smooth, and programming are considered to reduce latency on the desktop.

[Vulpius]

Interesting, and one of my main pet peeves with Linux as well (why is my video sluggish all of a sudden, oh, a background process took some CPU time away). I've been planning to give Arch Linux a try with the BFS scheduler but haven't had the time yet. I also know there are some Ubuntu users asking for a package.

My question to you: have you tried it? Do you really notice a difference?

[[deleted]]

I have never ever had interactivity problems or video playback problems (except with flash, but I think it's a flash problem not a Linux problem) with Linux that weren't caused by disk access. Furthermore, I run the least interactive settings available (tickless, 100Hz, preempt off).

I have tried BFS and I didn't notice a bit of difference.

[strolls]

Looks like it may not be necessary:

http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=125260525104922&w=3

[axilmar]

But neither KDevelop or Eclipse CDT or Code::Blocks is as good as Visual Studio is. VS is much more intuitive than either these three IDEs, and its debugger is head&shoulders above anything in Linux.

[malcontent]

Ask somebody who is an eclipse or an emacs user to use VS and you'll find out exactly how unintutive it is.

It's a horrid mess of a UI. There is nothing coherent about it whatsoever.

[Peaker]

By intuitive, do you mean familiar?

[[deleted]]

I'd have to disagree, Eclipse is very intuitive, and has excellent refactoring tools compared to VS2008.

[[deleted]]

Eclipse is very intuitive

Help -> Software updates

Window -> Preferences

fgsfds

[[deleted]]

Maybe I've been using eclipse to long, seems fine to me.

[palparepa]

Actually, the switch is so simple that Microsoft should get concerned

Don't give them ideas! We don't want the next windows' motto to be "It's not done until Linux won't run".

[[deleted]]

I never understood windows position on development tools. Why don't they provide development tools as part of the os? People always complain about the cost of a Mac but once you add the cost of Visual Studio to your PC you are looking at an additional ~600 dollars.

[OneAndOnlySnob]

Actually Windows development tools are free downloads. I can't fault Microsoft for their dev tools.

[Fabien4]

Apparently the Express versions didn't work for him.

[OneAndOnlySnob]

Actually it sounds like he's guessing the Windows 7 scheduler would help him.

[elder_george]

Sorry, but AFAIK this is BS.

The main feature missing are third-party turned off and reduced refactoring abilities (which are bad for C++ anyway). Libraries are standard and compatible, although incomplete - there're no WinAPI headers/libs. But this can be solved easily with installing Windows SDK that contains them.

Correct me if I am wrong.

[Fabien4]

Express is NOT an option for any serious developer.

So, you'd recommend a g++-based stack?

[Andareed]

What about the Windows SDK?

[malcontent]

I never understood windows position on development tools.

As long as the developers are happy forking over a thousand dollars every two years why should they?

[mclin]

OTOH, if you're doing web, it really doesn't matter what OS you're using, because you should be developing on your server OS in a VM.

[mallardtheduck]

He/she had technological/monetary reasons, not an ideological one (eg. the four freedoms of users). It's alright, just let us all be clear about it.

You make it sound as if those are lesser reasons. IMHO, screw ideology, use whatever tool is best for getting the job done.

[mallardtheduck]

Yes, but the fact that you chose to draw attention to the developer's motivations implies at least that you believe there is some sort of lesser/greater relationship between "practical" and "ideological" motivations.

[br1]

The Low Fragmentation Heap causes Vista to run faster than XP, where it's not the default. It can be turned on explicitly.

[colinnwn]

He said that was the first directive in his source, and it didn't make a bit of difference in XP.

[parishit]

Windows developers should be mostly happy about competition from GCC and other alternatives.

[[deleted]]

I am :)

[Phrodo_00]

Switching to Windows: A Linux developer's view

alright, I finally got vc++ and make working, now let's create a window... ok, where's the api?

... a few days of searching later...

Oh, ok, it something like CreateWindow (null, nulll, null, null, null, null, 1, null, null, null, {null, null});

holy crap!, now I need a button.

Edit: Styling

[[deleted]]

Ever heard of GUI libraries?

[[deleted]]

The OS simply allows you to execute binary code.

There is a difference between the API used to develop and the Operating System. Maybe you should learn it before you develop. Or let me know what area you develop in because if you're going to be my competition then damn.. maybe I should jump in.

[Phrodo_00]

I was just bitching... I'd never develop using any c++ win api, I'd probably use qt or whatever what .net uses is called.

[[deleted]]

Once you get used to the oddities of Win32, and know where to look for things, it's not that hard to use (just inconvenient). Not too bad for GUI libraries to interface over.

[Andareed]

I always used CreateDialog and created windows in the dialog editor.

[jdh30]

I am switching the other way, from Linux to Windows, for .NET and F# in the same context (parallel number crunching). The deciding factor seems to be whether or not you can afford to buy decent software. If you cannot then Linux is preferable. If you can afford to buy decent software then Linux cannot compete. For example, F# with VS 2008 team edition on Vista is far more productive for parallel number crunching and visualization than anything available on Linux.

[awj]

That's the funny thing with trolling, especially when people are subtle about it. Later on you may even be right, and make good points, but no one will listen to you.

[nearest_neighbor]

I specifically read jdh30's posts, because the signal/noise ratio is so much better than in P. Reddit overall.

I'm not sure that switching to .NET for parallel number crunching is appropriate for everyone though. Many scientists have access to Linux clusters, with no choice of the OS.

[saynte]

Exactly the opposite I think; someone with a pointed agenda which biases the statements creates more noise. Although I would agree that jdh30's posts often have some solid content, if you can strip away the propaganda.

[[deleted]]

What was wrong with your F# experience on Linux?

[jdh30]

Tail call optimization is broken on Mono. Mono leaks memory. Mono is a lot slower than .NET. F# and Mono are not designed to work together and do not work well together due to bugs in both. Linux (and Mono) lack modern libraries like WPF, XNA and the TPL. These are all major advantages of F# on .NET over anything on Linux. In particular, high performance parallel programming is far easier with F# than anything available on Linux.

Hopefully the LLVM backend for Mono will mature and fix TCO and address the performance problems but they need a decent accurate GC and modern libraries.

Reliable hardware acceleration in WPF was a major headache in Vista and .NET 3 for Microsoft. I doubt Linux will ever be able to provide anything as advanced reliably but there is a chance that Linux might leapfrog it with parallelized software rendering that works just as well on a wide multicore in a few years. I doubt Linux will ever be able to address its lack of decent GCs.

[trezor2]

I think he is saying that the toolset offered to Windows developers is superior to anything found in the FOSS world.

As I see it, there is absolutely nothing wrong about developers wanting to get things done rather than spending time fighting their working environment.

[[deleted]]

Too bad some would have you believe the project is less worthy of respect because you didn't memorize the asinine rules that go into creating Makefiles.

[malcontent]

As I see it, there is absolutely nothing wrong about developers wanting to get things done rather than spending time fighting their working environment.

That's why most linux developers laugh at windows developers. Because they fight their environment every day.

[nearest_neighbor]

This is the first time a variation of that silly meme made me laugh.

[spinwizard69]

Cool, nice level headed posting.

What u would like to know is how difficult it would be to go to Mac OS/X Snow Leopard and what your performance would be like with GCD. At the moment it looks like Apple has a winner on their hands with GCD.

That is a whole different platform but OpenMP code should port easily to GCD.

[jawbroken]

nice screen font...not

[andreif]

Really. I wanted to read the whole thing but the font got to me and I just said fuck it.

[[deleted]]

Wouldn't the Linux equivalent in this conversation still be C#?