Sometimes I wish there were fewer Linux variants and that the developers would concentrate on making a few really easy to use. I think one of the things that makes Linux "too hard" is that things are done differently on every variant and there is no easy way to make a program like SimpleIDE run on all Linux platforms.
Dave, I am curious about your comment on simpleIDE. Did you mean without recompiling?
Sometimes I wish there were fewer Linux variants and that the developers would concentrate on making a few really easy to use. I think one of the things that makes Linux "too hard" is that things are done differently on every variant and there is no easy way to make a program like SimpleIDE run on all Linux platforms.
Dave, I am curious about your comment on simpleIDE. Did you mean without recompiling?
Yes, I mean without recompiling. While I like the option of building from source, it ought to be easier to install prebuilt binaries.
So, I asked the vendors if they would guarantee a machine to run linux. Only Lenovo said yes. So I bought one and would do it again in a heartbeat!
Thanks for that Mike, I have been looking at those super-lightweight Lenovo/NEC laptops - there's one in a shop near here (I'm currently in Japan) which has a 13.3"/2560x1440 screen, non-compromise CPU, and is made from some magnesium alloy. Super-thin and weighs only 779 grams (1.74 pounds according to a conversion site). American reviewers hate the keyboard due to the layout, but that Japanese layout is perfect for remapping to Norwegian because of those extra keys. Expensive, but less than half price if I buy a wi-fi router too.. it's just that I have one already. But I didn't know how well these Lenovo-designed PCs work for Linux. Well, maybe not all are equally good anyway.
In my experience, getting linux to run on a PC depends largely on the graphics. X-windows does it's best at install but sometimes you have to try a different setup. Dell often uses some proprietary graphics which is tailored to a particular version of MS-Windows. I don't know if is stupidity or some obscure marketing reason (but then I repeat myself).
If you download ubuntu to a DVD and boot from it you can run it off the DVD and test the machine out without committing to an install. I did this on my daughters machine and it ran well except that ubuntu did not know what to do with the internet wan modem they were forced to use by comcast, frontier? on their POTS line. On the Dell it was obvious it could not handle the on board graphics.
Hope that helps
In the past, when I followed the PC world more closely, Dell was notorious for doing things in proprietary, non-standard ways. I guess that hasn't changed much.
It's a classic case of idealism vs pragmatism. What has been accomplished by fsf and gnu is fabulous. I'm the grateful recipient of many of their wonders. But when a problem like Quartus or PropTool arises, I just don't have the time or patience to tilt at windmills. A Windows machine can be so cheap and can last such a long time that, unless my time is worth nothing, the way to proceed seems obvious.
But I didn't know how well these Lenovo-designed PCs work for Linux.
Don't know about any Lenovo-NEC machines, but Lenovo makes Thinkpads. NASA runs various versions of Linux on the laptops and PCs aboard the ISS, and Thinkpads are the only laptops used there. And I don't think they have anything up there running Windows.
To my mind, low cost, low maintenance, high reliability, independence, multiple suppliers, freedom to do what I like where I like with my code, transparency, cross platform support, etc etc etc have very real, tangible, practical benefits.
Would I break down and go to all the trouble of acquiring a machine, installing a proprietary OS and maintaining them if I really had to? Say for the purposes of using a tool that was essential for some profitable venture. You bet I would.
Luckily, or unluckily depending how you look at it, I have never had to make that choice.
What is the issue with Quartus anyway? To play with the old P 2 image I downloaded and used Quartus, it did not require any "tilting at windmils".
My free time is not worthless, it's priceless, to me at least. We get so little of it in life.
@Heater
Sorry to depress you on this! I do like Linux but for me and others here its more work then its worth. I respect you for your views and help over the years but in my situation I can do more easier and in less time on windows. It just works for me! No problems installing programs, this is not true for some Linux users around here! <GRIN>
@Mike yes I know command line in both is more flexiable, sort of like driving a stick transmission here in the mountains and snow. With only one hand to type command line is a challange. For that I have used Dragon which you cant get for any Linux!
Bottom line is everyone has to go with what is best for them. If everyone was the same what a boreing world this would be! Also I use windows for more then an internet appliance!!!
Sounds like a nice platform. Are you able to run Quartus on it?
Haha!! Why, yes, yes I can!!
I just got done loading Quartus to my SSD (E: drive actually) and compiling a P1V image for the 1-2-3 FPGA board...it took 27 minutes to do everything in the compile process and flogged that poor little CPU for most of the time but it got it done!! I haven't tried loading a .pof file through the USB Blaster since I don't have my DE2 with me but I see no reason that wouldn't work. The .rbf loads with Chip's px.exe sure work!
The Quartus install also would have fit on the internal C:drive if I wanted to go that route. The Quartus install took longer than the P1V compile. I probably could have cut some of the steps (the timing analysis took a bunch of time) from the process.
All this means you can have basically a tablet that you can program FPGAs from! It's a bit slow but once again, slow is better than nothing!!
It's not an I7 Surface 3 but I did get change back from my $xxx!!
I should elaborate on the "getting old and grumpy enough that all operating systems are beginning to annoy me greatly" part.
Take any random computer and any random operating system and try to run any random program on it. What is the most likely result? It does not work!
Which is kind of odd because a general purpose computer only has one reason to exist, to run programs.
People have been working on this issue ever since the idea of portable, cross-platform, programming was first thought of. Around about 1950. Billions of dollars have been spent. Thousands of programmer careers have been wasted. And after nearly 7 decades we still have not solved that problem.
In that time we have put man on the moon, discovered the Higgs boson, and reduced the size, cost and energy consumption of computers by many orders of magnitude.
We've had the automobile for a century, and aside from fuel/UI they are not interchangeable at a similar level.
There has been no economic incentive to cross-platform as a standard, so no surprise really.
And, TBH, we do have something akin to that, its called the browser and Javascript, right?
Cobol, I love it, cough. Which as I said dates from the 1950's... Any tutorials for porting my 3D, GPU accelerated, networked data visualizations to COBOL?
@koehler,
I love a good car analogy.
I suggest the more realistic analogy is to liken the road system to the operating system and my car to an application.
Road networks are huge, expensive and complex things that have been developed over decades. With their curves and gradients, roundabouts and slip roads, bridges, tunnels and toll roads, and traffic lights and God knows what else. They are built by different government and private entities. They are mostly standardized and compatible all around the world. My car will run on most roads. I can get a new car without having to worry about road compatibility. I can even go "mobile" with my car, drive it onto a train or ferry boat, everything connects up fine and I get where I want to go.
Then there is the gas stations and the huge fuel delivery infrastructure...
I'm with you with the Javascript thing. Only in recent years has it become a viable application platform without having to deal with tons of platform incompatibilities (Mostly not Javascript's fault). Still not quite there.
Aside: Yesterday I tried joining a conference call with CISCOs Webex system. It runs in the browser using cross platform HTML/CSS and Javascript. It also requires installing plugins for FLASH, a cross-browser system, and Java the famous "write once run anywhere" language. Did it work in my Chrome or Firefox on Linux? No. Why the hell not?
On thing to consider on this excellent OS discussion is our time investment. Some of us have a lot of time invested in Windows. Others have a more mixed experience.
That's true for me.
What I find interesting is watching how others, who are good at whatever OS, happen to do their work. I see or learn something almost every time despite considerable experience using and administering many OSes. The one I've done the least with is Mac OS. It can be treated largely like a Linux, but that's not using it well. Apple had some specific use cases in mind, and when one sees somebody, who "gets it" whatever "it" is for Apple work, it's notable. Not quite Windows. Not quite Linux, etc...
The same is true for Android users. I thought I really understood my Note 4. Not! Had kind of a phone jam session with somebody in an Airport last week. Watching them blast through stuff on that phone was totally interesting! I'm a notch better at the Samsung variant of Android now. And that means doing a bit more with the phone. I can actually be productive on a freaking phone way more of the time than I thought made any kind of sense.
I see these gaming videos, and now we've got those live programming videos too. I really like those, and for reasons I've put here too.
Maybe it makes sense to do some "rock the OS" type videos. Not just tips and tricks. Those are handy, but not really inclusive. Good for a little boost here and there.
No, the really good stuff comes from somebody just doing some admin, configuration, installing, using programs, etc...
Getting back to the thread, it's largely about our time investment. Windows "just works" partially due to the efforts put into making drivers, hardware, applications, etc... all play well together, but another big part of that is actually our own ways and means.
And that clashes big when we try or need to use another OS. While they all do basically the same thing, the ideas behind them are different.
Despite these dynamics and our limited free time, I still find a lot of worth in running OSes well enough to be productive. I don't like being locked in. With open tools and open OSes, the time investment ends up being a few months spread out over 1 to 2 years for the average Joe. A couple of hard months in seems to be the turning point where the core ideas seem to sink in and the well beaten paths seem more obvious.
I've been going through this with Mac OS. It was the least familiar, but I ended up needing to run it, and I ended up with a nice machine. I didn't give it all the time I could have, and the product of that was a fairly rough 6 months, bursts of using it here and there. After that?
MacOS is kind of fun. It's now my "play" OS. Linux was that, and it still can be, but the truth is, I have put Linux and Windows both into the "work" OS bucket. If using them results in some income, I'm good. Will do the work. But when I want to play? MacOS and I suspect Android might get there at some point. Depends on hardware, and I don't have much but a couple of phones and a tablet. Not enough to get invested.
This time around, I'm getting started on the P2 work, and have moved Propeller stuff over to MacOS with Parallels. For the longest time, and you all know this because I've written it here, Windows was the play OS mostly because my hardware was Windows, and I would blend my play and work time. The result was most P1 work / play happened on a Windows box, with only the occasional Linux experience.
It's all about incremental exposure and having some anchor applications, etc... too.
The trouble with Linux and "anchor" type apps and needs is a whole pile of stuff simply isn't there, or requires investments in things like Wine, or Virtual Machines. For some people, the core of what they do is right there in Linux. That's Heater for sure. (lucky dog!)
For a lot of us, that's just not true! So Windows is compelling in that way.
What I found was MacOS and Parallels offers up a very compelling way to run the anchor programs. More compelling and friendly, robust than Linux is. Given some time on MacOS, I find it's interaction model much more refined than anything I find on Linux too. But it takes a little to get there.
I guess what I'm saying is maybe we all can take more of this OS discussion in context.
Windows 7 is a pretty good OS. So was XP. The current Win 10 / 8? Meh. Microsoft needs to resolve it's schism and figure out who it wants to be. Until then, it's not optimal. The core ideas are in conflict.
Linux is as good as the effort you put in. It can be really good, but you gotta take the time to own it and take the time to really internalize those basic ideas.
MacOS is a pretty good OS. Apple largely knows who it is and the OS reflects that reality in that it presents a pretty great user interaction model that has been well thought through. Linux has many different models, not as much thought, but a lot of personal choice and freedom too.
Rather than hash out one or the other, maybe just put time in. Pick a few things and just do 'em on Linux, or MacOS, or maybe even Android. Why not?
The overall skill and perspective might be worth a lot more than you think. And while you are at that, get onto the open programs that run in all these OSes. Knowing those means adding some new choices and those choices remain valid across all the OSes.
To me, that's worth a lot more than multi-OS skill. I can go somewhere, grab a computer and download a great environment gratis, and I almost don't care what computer it is! (Android is the odd man out, but that's just due to time) When I show people this stuff, they seem to care more now. I'm not sure what has changed. Maybe it's just cost. Maybe it's just the much better state of most open tools now too. But something has changed, and it's good.
Free time is expensive, but for some of us, so are dollars right? That's why I do it.
If people are willing to buy proprietary licenses, I'll run 'em. Don't care. Seriously. Often they give me one for doing it too. Great! Free beer and access to some really expensive stuff. That skill I can always sell, so it's a no brainer.
But if they aren't? I don't want to pay much at all. Open Code, both in terms of OSes and applications / tools, has saved me about $1,000 / year when I look at what I would most likely buy and what I see my non OSS peers spend on average.
What does that mean?
Means I didn't care about dropping $400 on the A7 board, for one. That's a cost I totally paid for by using open tools, and once it's paid, my free time has an A7 board in it for P2 testing. (once I get free at the beginning of the month that is. Another story)
Make no mistake, in the 90's, I caught the IRIX / Linux fever. Went in big, and that was worth doing. Didn't cost me anything, as the IRIX machines were there for the taking and building a Linux one didn't cost much, if anything with all the spares laying around. For some of that time, I went whole hog on ideological parts of it too. Honestly, that was a mistake. The open ideology, FSF, etc... is a great thing. Similar things play out with Creative Commons too. It's worth understanding, but it's not worth following to any extremes. Turns out, there are too many practicalities in play for many people, and balancing those and getting the skill to balance those is worth a lot more. So...
Maybe it's also worth it to think about this stuff on more than a simple, "easy / hard" type axis. Again, that's what I do. And I would never have learned much about MacOS, and didn't for many years prior, because I wasn't getting revenue either from skills or activities on the OS. Now that I do get revenue from the OS, why not? Add it to the tool box, get the skills, get paid and go!
Sublime is the only thing I've bought a license for in the last couple of years. Just wanted it. Killer program. The guy earned it.
Every other thing I use is either open, or it was funded somehow. I've played it that way for some 20 years now. Worth it, that's all I can say. Maybe worth it for you too. Instead of seeing other OSes as a burden of sorts, consider them opportunities. Wait for something to come up, nail it, get paid, get skills, next. I made sure I picked up the skills to use the freebies of all kinds, and a pile of proprietary stuff too, so long as somebody else paid for it, who was I to care?
I submit, given you consider thinking this way, it won't take long before you won't care so much about OSes and a lot of other little things in computing. I don't. And I'm much happier now too. If it makes sense, I run it. If it doesn't, I don't, and it's just not worth the worry beyond that and some hardware considerations, depending. The easiest way to think about it is I've lowered the cost of choice, one little bit at a time. Now it's easy, and when it's easy, then it's easy on a lot of fronts, not just use, but cost.
And it's a set of hedged bets too. If some ugly lock in happens, I'll move on with a lot fewer worries than I might have had sometime back when my ONE investment may have been put at risk.
1) Should the entire world have to pay money and give up control of their machines to a company in Redmond in order that they can use a computer? For ever?
2) Same question again but with where ever Apple comes from?
3) Same question again but with where ever Google comes from?
Etc, etc.
I say no.
Many times I'm told that attitude is "ideology". I say no, it's a very practical reality.
On one side, you have proprietary code that gives you a pile of black boxes and tells you 'trust me'; on the other side, you have open source code and end up with a wide array of distributions just because everything is open.
Either way, you get stuck with something that you have to manage. I have migrated through several distributions of Linux -- started with Ubuntu 10.04, eventually went to Mint, then to Debian, and now Fedora. On the side, I use Puppy Linux to do administrative work as a Virtual Machine, I have a router in Linux, and a Cubieboard in Linux.
These days, going back to Windows drives me nuts. I have had to do so in order to use software that supports FPGA devices. Yes, it does install other's proprietary software cleanly, but one has no idea of what's going on.
So the truth is, I really have enjoyed the clarity I gained by using Linux even with the additional study load. Proprietary systems hide a lot from the user, cloak the generic principles in jargon, and tend to demand money to do things that really can be done for free.
I suppose it is up to you to decide which is more empowering. For me, I'd rather borrow books from a library than try to buy all the books on any given subject. But others feel the library never has what they want or is an inconvience. (Try living next to a big university library and libraries work better for you.)
I do have to admit that some of these proprietary applications are purposely locking out good Linux support in solidarity for proprietary OS software. Now that I have looked at it, it seems the free FPGA Linux software is not equal to the same free software available for Windows.. maybe purposely degraded.
1) Should the entire world have to pay money and give up control of their machines to a company in Redmond in order that they can use a computer? For ever?
2) Same question again but with where ever Apple comes from?
3) Same question again but with where ever Google comes from?
Etc, etc.
I say no.
Many times I'm told that attitude is "ideology". I say no, it's a very practical reality.
Not that I disagree with you much, however thats some of the linux ideology that is easily flipped back on itself.
Should the entire world have to learn incredibly arcane knowledge and give up control of their machines to a small group of nerds in order that they can use a computer? For ever?
Many current Linux LiveCD's are great, Mint and Ubuntu especially in my experience.
However, I've got the latest OpenSuse, and no audio on my TPad 430. 5-10 minutes on Google and nothing simple jumped out at me, just similar models with suggestions to use ALSA or other long expanses of terminal input and apt get stuff. To actually fix something in Linux, you need a higher level of knowledge compared to fixing most Windows issues, comparatively speaking it seems.
Until Linux coalesces around 1 standard distro, there is never going to be a year of Linux on the desktop. Even though I'm not thrilled with Android/Chrome, Google at least is going in the right direction by using the Linux kernel and forsaking a lot of the baggage of LINUX the Distro/OS...
I really don't need a Server OS on my personal computer, and maybe I need to rethink Chrome more...
The fact that your sound does not work o is not really a Linux issue i would think. Try downgrading a windows machine and you might find that a lot of things don't work anymore. If the manufacturer's were not held in the Redmond NDAs they might even release open source drivers/info for every device they manufacture. So even older versions of Windows are victims of the Windows' stranglehold.
Once you have made the switch to Linux fully without sitting on the fence doing it half-heartedly then you may find like many of us that you will never want to go back to windows. Or you may go back to windows and realise then what a restrictive kludge it is.
Should the entire world have to learn incredibly arcane knowledge and give up control of their machines to a small group of nerds in order that they can use a computer? For ever?
I'm not sure you have flipped what I said around properly. This does not make any sense, to me at least.
Yep, arcane knowledge is required to use any operating system on any computer. Unless you are limiting your self to the most basic uses.
Not giving up control of your computing infrastructure to a single corporation in a foreign country, for most, does not imply you are giving up control to anyone else.
Who is this "small group of nerds" of which you speak? Open Source software is developed by thousands of people all over the world. It has input from companies large and small, think Google, Apple, Intel, IBM, Linaro, Redhat and so on and so on. By comparison we could say that MS or Apple have small groups of nerds working on their products.
To actually fix something in Linux, you need a higher level of knowledge compared to fixing most Windows issues, comparatively speaking it seems.
I don't really like to argue the toss over technical details of this OS vs that OS but my observation is that it's pretty much a wash. When things go bad they all equally difficult to impossible to sort out. Most people turn to their family geek or friend at that point. Why do so many turn to me with their computer woes?
...there is never going to be a year of Linux on the desktop.
I am not, and never have been, waiting for the fabled "Year of Linux on the desktop". It's been doing what I want on my desktop since 1997! Besides, for most people the desktop is dead already.
I really don't need a Server OS on my personal computer...
You don't? So don't run any services on it. It just so happens that the qualities that make a good server OS also make it much more useful on your PC. Have a look in a Windows task manager, it's running a ton of services.
I do agree though, going Open Source is a bit of a stretch for most people. Unless they have it all set up and ready to go like they do when buying a machine with a proprietary OS already on it. I would imagine it should be fairly trivial for the tech-savvy types that hang around here though.
And yes there are issues with devices and drivers and such. Mostly the result of the mono-culture in the PC world that I'm arguing against.
In my opinion repairs corrections in ANY OS is more complex and time consuming then it should. DOS was easy. I havr issues with my Linux systems as well as Windows. None that easy for ME to correct.
Sometimes I think the last system I used that actually did what I told it reliably was VMS on a DEC VAX, circa 1996.
For example, why is it that the first thing you have to do after installing almost any system is to turn off all the "helpful" features that just get in your way, consume resources for no useful purpose or spy on you in some way?
It's as if the default configurations are deliberately set to maximize annoyance.
Sometimes I think the last system I used that actually did what I told it reliably was VMS on a DEC VAX, circa 1996.
I agree; everything just worked, and everyone I ever talked to at DEC was very impressively knowledgeable and cared deeply. I wept when Compaq bought them, and fortunately was gone by the time HP bought Compaq. The biggest problem I ever had was when I made a VMScluster with an Alpha Workstation (OpenVMS 7.1) and a VAX server (VMS 5.5), which was definitely not supported, but once I did get it to work (it took me about 20 hours), it just worked from that day forward.
My favorite DEC story is that my sister company in my building used a VAX workstation that they were having trouble accessing their data on after a 24-hour power outage. I took a look at it and found that the data disk was not mounted. I mounted it, and fixed the fact that it was not being mounted in the startup file (hmmm... what gives ? - they were not having any trouble accessing their data before...). It turns out that their parent company in France had installed the workstation 3 years before, but they had never turned it off or rebooted it until the power outage. I hope any Windows users have picked their jaws up off the floor, because of course that would *never* happen with Windows.
However, it is not fair to compare Linux (or even Windows) to VMS; the price disparity is just too large. I knew when I left the offshore oil business in 2000 and went into industries with a little less fat in their midsection that I would never enjoy VMS again, even if DEC still existed.
Sometimes I think the last system I used that actually did what I told it reliably was VMS on a DEC VAX, circa 1996.
I agree; everything just worked, and everyone I ever talked to at DEC was very impressively knowledgeable and cared deeply. I wept when Compaq bought them, and fortunately was gone by the time HP bought Compaq. The biggest problem I ever had was when I made a VMScluster with an Alpha Workstation (OpenVMS 7.1) and a VAX server (VMS 5.5), which was definitely not supported, but once I did get it to work (it took me about 20 hours), it just worked from that day forward.
My favorite DEC story is that my sister company in my building used a VAX workstation that they were having trouble accessing their data on after a 24-hour power outage. I took a look at it and found that the data disk was not mounted. I mounted it, and fixed the fact that it was not being mounted in the startup file (hmmm... what gives ? - they were not having any trouble accessing their data before...). It turns out that their parent company in France had installed the workstation 3 years before, but they had never rebooted it until the power outage. I hope any Windows users have picked their jaws up off the floor, because of course that would *never* happen with Windows.
However, it is not fair to compare Linux (or even Windows) to VMS; the price disparity is just too large. I knew when I left the offshore oil business in 2000 and went into industries with a little less fat in their midsection that I would never enjoy VMS again, even if DEC still existed.
When I first started working with VAX C under VMS, it was a pain dealing with RMS. It had no way of handling files that were just a stream of bytes. It wanted everything to be a "record". I suppose they must have fixed that eventually.
When I first started working with VAX C under VMS, it was a pain dealing with RMS. It had no way of handling files that were just a stream of bytes. It wanted everything to be a "record". I suppose they must have fixed that eventually.
Fortunately for me, I couldn't afford VAX C and was spared your pain. On VMS I used GCC for personal stuff and FORTRAN and DCL for the company I worked for. I cussed GCC at the time (I was used to Turbo C for the PC), but it has come a long way, and I hear that it even runs on some mult-core microcontrollers now.
Comments
https://gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
In my experience, getting linux to run on a PC depends largely on the graphics. X-windows does it's best at install but sometimes you have to try a different setup. Dell often uses some proprietary graphics which is tailored to a particular version of MS-Windows. I don't know if is stupidity or some obscure marketing reason (but then I repeat myself).
If you download ubuntu to a DVD and boot from it you can run it off the DVD and test the machine out without committing to an install. I did this on my daughters machine and it ran well except that ubuntu did not know what to do with the internet wan modem they were forced to use by comcast, frontier? on their POTS line. On the Dell it was obvious it could not handle the on board graphics.
Hope that helps
It's a classic case of idealism vs pragmatism. What has been accomplished by fsf and gnu is fabulous. I'm the grateful recipient of many of their wonders. But when a problem like Quartus or PropTool arises, I just don't have the time or patience to tilt at windmills. A Windows machine can be so cheap and can last such a long time that, unless my time is worth nothing, the way to proceed seems obvious.
Don't know about any Lenovo-NEC machines, but Lenovo makes Thinkpads. NASA runs various versions of Linux on the laptops and PCs aboard the ISS, and Thinkpads are the only laptops used there. And I don't think they have anything up there running Windows.
To my mind, low cost, low maintenance, high reliability, independence, multiple suppliers, freedom to do what I like where I like with my code, transparency, cross platform support, etc etc etc have very real, tangible, practical benefits.
Would I break down and go to all the trouble of acquiring a machine, installing a proprietary OS and maintaining them if I really had to? Say for the purposes of using a tool that was essential for some profitable venture. You bet I would.
Luckily, or unluckily depending how you look at it, I have never had to make that choice.
What is the issue with Quartus anyway? To play with the old P 2 image I downloaded and used Quartus, it did not require any "tilting at windmils".
My free time is not worthless, it's priceless, to me at least. We get so little of it in life.
Sorry to depress you on this! I do like Linux but for me and others here its more work then its worth. I respect you for your views and help over the years but in my situation I can do more easier and in less time on windows. It just works for me! No problems installing programs, this is not true for some Linux users around here! <GRIN>
@Mike yes I know command line in both is more flexiable, sort of like driving a stick transmission here in the mountains and snow. With only one hand to type command line is a challange. For that I have used Dragon which you cant get for any Linux!
Bottom line is everyone has to go with what is best for them. If everyone was the same what a boreing world this would be! Also I use windows for more then an internet appliance!!!
Haha!! Why, yes, yes I can!!
I just got done loading Quartus to my SSD (E: drive actually) and compiling a P1V image for the 1-2-3 FPGA board...it took 27 minutes to do everything in the compile process and flogged that poor little CPU for most of the time but it got it done!! I haven't tried loading a .pof file through the USB Blaster since I don't have my DE2 with me but I see no reason that wouldn't work. The .rbf loads with Chip's px.exe sure work!
The Quartus install also would have fit on the internal C:drive if I wanted to go that route. The Quartus install took longer than the P1V compile. I probably could have cut some of the steps (the timing analysis took a bunch of time) from the process.
All this means you can have basically a tablet that you can program FPGAs from! It's a bit slow but once again, slow is better than nothing!!
It's not an I7 Surface 3 but I did get change back from my $xxx!!
(Sorry, KMeyers to go slightly off topic)
If you have something that let's you get stuff done then that cannot be all bad.
To be honest, I'm getting old and grumpy enough that all operating systems are beginning to annoy me greatly.
Take any random computer and any random operating system and try to run any random program on it. What is the most likely result? It does not work!
Which is kind of odd because a general purpose computer only has one reason to exist, to run programs.
People have been working on this issue ever since the idea of portable, cross-platform, programming was first thought of. Around about 1950. Billions of dollars have been spent. Thousands of programmer careers have been wasted. And after nearly 7 decades we still have not solved that problem.
In that time we have put man on the moon, discovered the Higgs boson, and reduced the size, cost and energy consumption of computers by many orders of magnitude.
It's shameful.
just google GNU Cobol.
It runs in Windows, Linux, Mainframe, Emscripten, wherever.
Cobol is build from the ground up as portable language. And most code still is portable.
Getting used to COBOL is another thing. You may feel like a Windows user discovering Linux.
Completely lost at first, then astonished about the things you can (must?) do.
Anyways
Mike
We've had the automobile for a century, and aside from fuel/UI they are not interchangeable at a similar level.
There has been no economic incentive to cross-platform as a standard, so no surprise really.
And, TBH, we do have something akin to that, its called the browser and Javascript, right?
Give it another 50 years...
Cobol, I love it, cough. Which as I said dates from the 1950's... Any tutorials for porting my 3D, GPU accelerated, networked data visualizations to COBOL?
@koehler,
I love a good car analogy.
I suggest the more realistic analogy is to liken the road system to the operating system and my car to an application.
Road networks are huge, expensive and complex things that have been developed over decades. With their curves and gradients, roundabouts and slip roads, bridges, tunnels and toll roads, and traffic lights and God knows what else. They are built by different government and private entities. They are mostly standardized and compatible all around the world. My car will run on most roads. I can get a new car without having to worry about road compatibility. I can even go "mobile" with my car, drive it onto a train or ferry boat, everything connects up fine and I get where I want to go.
Then there is the gas stations and the huge fuel delivery infrastructure...
I'm with you with the Javascript thing. Only in recent years has it become a viable application platform without having to deal with tons of platform incompatibilities (Mostly not Javascript's fault). Still not quite there.
Aside: Yesterday I tried joining a conference call with CISCOs Webex system. It runs in the browser using cross platform HTML/CSS and Javascript. It also requires installing plugins for FLASH, a cross-browser system, and Java the famous "write once run anywhere" language. Did it work in my Chrome or Firefox on Linux? No. Why the hell not?
See why I'm grumpy?...
That's true for me.
What I find interesting is watching how others, who are good at whatever OS, happen to do their work. I see or learn something almost every time despite considerable experience using and administering many OSes. The one I've done the least with is Mac OS. It can be treated largely like a Linux, but that's not using it well. Apple had some specific use cases in mind, and when one sees somebody, who "gets it" whatever "it" is for Apple work, it's notable. Not quite Windows. Not quite Linux, etc...
The same is true for Android users. I thought I really understood my Note 4. Not! Had kind of a phone jam session with somebody in an Airport last week. Watching them blast through stuff on that phone was totally interesting! I'm a notch better at the Samsung variant of Android now. And that means doing a bit more with the phone. I can actually be productive on a freaking phone way more of the time than I thought made any kind of sense.
I see these gaming videos, and now we've got those live programming videos too. I really like those, and for reasons I've put here too.
Maybe it makes sense to do some "rock the OS" type videos. Not just tips and tricks. Those are handy, but not really inclusive. Good for a little boost here and there.
No, the really good stuff comes from somebody just doing some admin, configuration, installing, using programs, etc...
Getting back to the thread, it's largely about our time investment. Windows "just works" partially due to the efforts put into making drivers, hardware, applications, etc... all play well together, but another big part of that is actually our own ways and means.
And that clashes big when we try or need to use another OS. While they all do basically the same thing, the ideas behind them are different.
Despite these dynamics and our limited free time, I still find a lot of worth in running OSes well enough to be productive. I don't like being locked in. With open tools and open OSes, the time investment ends up being a few months spread out over 1 to 2 years for the average Joe. A couple of hard months in seems to be the turning point where the core ideas seem to sink in and the well beaten paths seem more obvious.
I've been going through this with Mac OS. It was the least familiar, but I ended up needing to run it, and I ended up with a nice machine. I didn't give it all the time I could have, and the product of that was a fairly rough 6 months, bursts of using it here and there. After that?
MacOS is kind of fun. It's now my "play" OS. Linux was that, and it still can be, but the truth is, I have put Linux and Windows both into the "work" OS bucket. If using them results in some income, I'm good. Will do the work. But when I want to play? MacOS and I suspect Android might get there at some point. Depends on hardware, and I don't have much but a couple of phones and a tablet. Not enough to get invested.
This time around, I'm getting started on the P2 work, and have moved Propeller stuff over to MacOS with Parallels. For the longest time, and you all know this because I've written it here, Windows was the play OS mostly because my hardware was Windows, and I would blend my play and work time. The result was most P1 work / play happened on a Windows box, with only the occasional Linux experience.
It's all about incremental exposure and having some anchor applications, etc... too.
The trouble with Linux and "anchor" type apps and needs is a whole pile of stuff simply isn't there, or requires investments in things like Wine, or Virtual Machines. For some people, the core of what they do is right there in Linux. That's Heater for sure. (lucky dog!)
For a lot of us, that's just not true! So Windows is compelling in that way.
What I found was MacOS and Parallels offers up a very compelling way to run the anchor programs. More compelling and friendly, robust than Linux is. Given some time on MacOS, I find it's interaction model much more refined than anything I find on Linux too. But it takes a little to get there.
I guess what I'm saying is maybe we all can take more of this OS discussion in context.
Windows 7 is a pretty good OS. So was XP. The current Win 10 / 8? Meh. Microsoft needs to resolve it's schism and figure out who it wants to be. Until then, it's not optimal. The core ideas are in conflict.
Linux is as good as the effort you put in. It can be really good, but you gotta take the time to own it and take the time to really internalize those basic ideas.
MacOS is a pretty good OS. Apple largely knows who it is and the OS reflects that reality in that it presents a pretty great user interaction model that has been well thought through. Linux has many different models, not as much thought, but a lot of personal choice and freedom too.
Rather than hash out one or the other, maybe just put time in. Pick a few things and just do 'em on Linux, or MacOS, or maybe even Android. Why not?
The overall skill and perspective might be worth a lot more than you think. And while you are at that, get onto the open programs that run in all these OSes. Knowing those means adding some new choices and those choices remain valid across all the OSes.
To me, that's worth a lot more than multi-OS skill. I can go somewhere, grab a computer and download a great environment gratis, and I almost don't care what computer it is! (Android is the odd man out, but that's just due to time) When I show people this stuff, they seem to care more now. I'm not sure what has changed. Maybe it's just cost. Maybe it's just the much better state of most open tools now too. But something has changed, and it's good.
Free time is expensive, but for some of us, so are dollars right? That's why I do it.
If people are willing to buy proprietary licenses, I'll run 'em. Don't care. Seriously. Often they give me one for doing it too. Great! Free beer and access to some really expensive stuff. That skill I can always sell, so it's a no brainer.
But if they aren't? I don't want to pay much at all. Open Code, both in terms of OSes and applications / tools, has saved me about $1,000 / year when I look at what I would most likely buy and what I see my non OSS peers spend on average.
What does that mean?
Means I didn't care about dropping $400 on the A7 board, for one. That's a cost I totally paid for by using open tools, and once it's paid, my free time has an A7 board in it for P2 testing. (once I get free at the beginning of the month that is. Another story)
Make no mistake, in the 90's, I caught the IRIX / Linux fever. Went in big, and that was worth doing. Didn't cost me anything, as the IRIX machines were there for the taking and building a Linux one didn't cost much, if anything with all the spares laying around. For some of that time, I went whole hog on ideological parts of it too. Honestly, that was a mistake. The open ideology, FSF, etc... is a great thing. Similar things play out with Creative Commons too. It's worth understanding, but it's not worth following to any extremes. Turns out, there are too many practicalities in play for many people, and balancing those and getting the skill to balance those is worth a lot more. So...
Maybe it's also worth it to think about this stuff on more than a simple, "easy / hard" type axis. Again, that's what I do. And I would never have learned much about MacOS, and didn't for many years prior, because I wasn't getting revenue either from skills or activities on the OS. Now that I do get revenue from the OS, why not? Add it to the tool box, get the skills, get paid and go!
Sublime is the only thing I've bought a license for in the last couple of years. Just wanted it. Killer program. The guy earned it.
Every other thing I use is either open, or it was funded somehow. I've played it that way for some 20 years now. Worth it, that's all I can say. Maybe worth it for you too. Instead of seeing other OSes as a burden of sorts, consider them opportunities. Wait for something to come up, nail it, get paid, get skills, next. I made sure I picked up the skills to use the freebies of all kinds, and a pile of proprietary stuff too, so long as somebody else paid for it, who was I to care?
I submit, given you consider thinking this way, it won't take long before you won't care so much about OSes and a lot of other little things in computing. I don't. And I'm much happier now too. If it makes sense, I run it. If it doesn't, I don't, and it's just not worth the worry beyond that and some hardware considerations, depending. The easiest way to think about it is I've lowered the cost of choice, one little bit at a time. Now it's easy, and when it's easy, then it's easy on a lot of fronts, not just use, but cost.
And it's a set of hedged bets too. If some ugly lock in happens, I'll move on with a lot fewer worries than I might have had sometime back when my ONE investment may have been put at risk.
My .02 on the subject.
@Heater thanks for understanding.. FWIW I am a grumpy old man also and get frustrated when thinks dont work like they should...
1) Should the entire world have to pay money and give up control of their machines to a company in Redmond in order that they can use a computer? For ever?
2) Same question again but with where ever Apple comes from?
3) Same question again but with where ever Google comes from?
Etc, etc.
I say no.
Many times I'm told that attitude is "ideology". I say no, it's a very practical reality.
Either way, you get stuck with something that you have to manage. I have migrated through several distributions of Linux -- started with Ubuntu 10.04, eventually went to Mint, then to Debian, and now Fedora. On the side, I use Puppy Linux to do administrative work as a Virtual Machine, I have a router in Linux, and a Cubieboard in Linux.
These days, going back to Windows drives me nuts. I have had to do so in order to use software that supports FPGA devices. Yes, it does install other's proprietary software cleanly, but one has no idea of what's going on.
So the truth is, I really have enjoyed the clarity I gained by using Linux even with the additional study load. Proprietary systems hide a lot from the user, cloak the generic principles in jargon, and tend to demand money to do things that really can be done for free.
I suppose it is up to you to decide which is more empowering. For me, I'd rather borrow books from a library than try to buy all the books on any given subject. But others feel the library never has what they want or is an inconvience. (Try living next to a big university library and libraries work better for you.)
I do have to admit that some of these proprietary applications are purposely locking out good Linux support in solidarity for proprietary OS software. Now that I have looked at it, it seems the free FPGA Linux software is not equal to the same free software available for Windows.. maybe purposely degraded.
Not that I disagree with you much, however thats some of the linux ideology that is easily flipped back on itself.
Should the entire world have to learn incredibly arcane knowledge and give up control of their machines to a small group of nerds in order that they can use a computer? For ever?
Many current Linux LiveCD's are great, Mint and Ubuntu especially in my experience.
However, I've got the latest OpenSuse, and no audio on my TPad 430. 5-10 minutes on Google and nothing simple jumped out at me, just similar models with suggestions to use ALSA or other long expanses of terminal input and apt get stuff. To actually fix something in Linux, you need a higher level of knowledge compared to fixing most Windows issues, comparatively speaking it seems.
Until Linux coalesces around 1 standard distro, there is never going to be a year of Linux on the desktop. Even though I'm not thrilled with Android/Chrome, Google at least is going in the right direction by using the Linux kernel and forsaking a lot of the baggage of LINUX the Distro/OS...
I really don't need a Server OS on my personal computer, and maybe I need to rethink Chrome more...
Once you have made the switch to Linux fully without sitting on the fence doing it half-heartedly then you may find like many of us that you will never want to go back to windows. Or you may go back to windows and realise then what a restrictive kludge it is.
Yep, arcane knowledge is required to use any operating system on any computer. Unless you are limiting your self to the most basic uses.
Not giving up control of your computing infrastructure to a single corporation in a foreign country, for most, does not imply you are giving up control to anyone else.
Who is this "small group of nerds" of which you speak? Open Source software is developed by thousands of people all over the world. It has input from companies large and small, think Google, Apple, Intel, IBM, Linaro, Redhat and so on and so on. By comparison we could say that MS or Apple have small groups of nerds working on their products. I don't really like to argue the toss over technical details of this OS vs that OS but my observation is that it's pretty much a wash. When things go bad they all equally difficult to impossible to sort out. Most people turn to their family geek or friend at that point. Why do so many turn to me with their computer woes? I am not, and never have been, waiting for the fabled "Year of Linux on the desktop". It's been doing what I want on my desktop since 1997! Besides, for most people the desktop is dead already. You don't? So don't run any services on it. It just so happens that the qualities that make a good server OS also make it much more useful on your PC. Have a look in a Windows task manager, it's running a ton of services.
I do agree though, going Open Source is a bit of a stretch for most people. Unless they have it all set up and ready to go like they do when buying a machine with a proprietary OS already on it. I would imagine it should be fairly trivial for the tech-savvy types that hang around here though.
And yes there are issues with devices and drivers and such. Mostly the result of the mono-culture in the PC world that I'm arguing against.
In my opinion repairs corrections in ANY OS is more complex and time consuming then it should. DOS was easy. I havr issues with my Linux systems as well as Windows. None that easy for ME to correct.
Grumble grumble.....
Sometimes I think the last system I used that actually did what I told it reliably was VMS on a DEC VAX, circa 1996.
For example, why is it that the first thing you have to do after installing almost any system is to turn off all the "helpful" features that just get in your way, consume resources for no useful purpose or spy on you in some way?
It's as if the default configurations are deliberately set to maximize annoyance.
I agree; everything just worked, and everyone I ever talked to at DEC was very impressively knowledgeable and cared deeply. I wept when Compaq bought them, and fortunately was gone by the time HP bought Compaq. The biggest problem I ever had was when I made a VMScluster with an Alpha Workstation (OpenVMS 7.1) and a VAX server (VMS 5.5), which was definitely not supported, but once I did get it to work (it took me about 20 hours), it just worked from that day forward.
My favorite DEC story is that my sister company in my building used a VAX workstation that they were having trouble accessing their data on after a 24-hour power outage. I took a look at it and found that the data disk was not mounted. I mounted it, and fixed the fact that it was not being mounted in the startup file (hmmm... what gives ? - they were not having any trouble accessing their data before...). It turns out that their parent company in France had installed the workstation 3 years before, but they had never turned it off or rebooted it until the power outage. I hope any Windows users have picked their jaws up off the floor, because of course that would *never* happen with Windows.
However, it is not fair to compare Linux (or even Windows) to VMS; the price disparity is just too large. I knew when I left the offshore oil business in 2000 and went into industries with a little less fat in their midsection that I would never enjoy VMS again, even if DEC still existed.
Fortunately for me, I couldn't afford VAX C and was spared your pain. On VMS I used GCC for personal stuff and FORTRAN and DCL for the company I worked for. I cussed GCC at the time (I was used to Turbo C for the PC), but it has come a long way, and I hear that it even runs on some mult-core microcontrollers now.