[OT] Trying to change my OS from Windows to Linux/Mac

[Sam_Kong]

Hi!

Curt Sampson wrote:

I think that's an awful reason to ask here. This mailing list already
gets a couple of hundred messages per day (142 since I last looked about
15 hours ago), and is hard enough to follow as it is.

I would give a lot for a list that a) didn't have blatently off-topic
stuff, and b) restricted all members to one post per thread and one new
thread per day. As it is, too often I come in and just delete everything
because I don't have time to figure out what's worthwhile and what's not.

Ok, there's my complaint for the day.

You're right.
Actually I hesitated when I posted my question in this group.
Beside the *awful* reason I gave, I also wanted to know how ruby
developers select and use their OS.
I didn't care about other people in other groups.
I respect ruby users and wanted to get opinions from them and follow
them.

By the way, I put [OT] in the subject line when I posted via google but
it doesn't show up now.
Is google hiding it?

Please accept my apology for the off-topic posting.

Sam

[Mitch]

well, cannot say anything about mac - my overall-use of it comes to about...
well - 2 hours
i just never got around to buy one of these things.

Tried a mac lately? I find os x to be unix enough that it doesn't matter. And /opt/local is my new favorite for "special" compiles.

I have some questions to linux users and Mac users.

1. When you use Ruby on Linux or just in general on Linux, do you use
text-mode or graphic-mode?

Text mode for almost everything. I am a Windows->Linux->Linux+Mac+Solaris convert.

If anybody has experience of moving from Windows to Linux or Mac,
please share the success story.

Hi my name is Mitch, and I converted from Windows to almost a pure Unix setup about 7 years ago. Kept windows only for mmorpgs. Which thankfully I am over now. BeOS fits in there somewhere too.

I prefer Gentoo for my Linux though. Less cruft if you install it properly from stage 1, though this is NOT for new to unix users(that is stage 3 :). And Vim is your friend. Just get the ruby-macros.vim so you have less to type.

Trying to keep this short because I bet nobody cares about my conversion.

Ciao!

···

Le Nov 21, 2005 à 7:48 PM, Michael Fellinger a écrit :

[Rob_Rypka]

Generally this is frowned upon, but I don't see a situation where you
would get jail time from it. It never hurts to ask, but you might get
away with more if you try it first and play dumb if you get caught

Checking out these linux laptop compatibility pages are still a good
first step. There are a lot of people who are less conservitave with
their capital than I, and buy laptops before they're sure Linux will
run on them. You'll at least know what to expect.

And, heck, if the fix to your laptop's problem is simple enough, you
could bring a USB key with necessary files along with your Live CD to
the store.

···

On 11/21/05, James Britt <james_b@neurogami.com> wrote:

Rob Rypka wrote:
> Many people keep journals of what they had to do to get Linux running
> on a particular laptop. I suggest you look into this for your laptop.
> If you're planning on purchasing a laptop for linux use, make sure
> you do the research first.

Is it feasible (e.g., no jail time) to go to CompUSA or Fry's with a
Knoppix disk and just try out some machines?

--
Rob

[Greg_Brown1 (Greg Brown)]

I have a WM in textmode.

From the manual page: "Screen is a full-screen window manager that
multiplexes a physical terminal between several processes (typically
interactive shells)."

Actually, i use that too

But even under X + IceWM, I'm using lots and lots of xterms.

I count about 12 open presently, and that's a light load for me

···

On 11/21/05, Kero <kero@chello.single-dot.nl> wrote:

[Gene_Tani]

James Britt wrote:

Rob Rypka wrote:
..

>
>
>>2. I've never succeeded to make my laptops work perfectly on Linux.
>>Sometimes, network card is not working, other times, USB is not
>>recognized, or Sound card is not working. I've tried on 5 different
>>laptops with different Linux but none was perfect. How do you overcome
>>this problem? Well... if you use just a text-mode, this might not be a
>>problem.
>
>
> Many people keep journals of what they had to do to get Linux running
> on a particular laptop. I suggest you look into this for your laptop.
> If you're planning on purchasing a laptop for linux use, make sure
> you do the research first.

Is it feasible (e.g., no jail time) to go to CompUSA or Fry's with a
Knoppix disk and just try out some machines?

Don't know where you are, but find a dealer with a reasonable
restocking fee (like 0%) & return period like, you know, Amazon).
stick to the best known lines (Toshiba, IBM have been pretty good as
far as compatibility, reasonable component life. Well, good Toshibas
are good, bad Toshibas are real lemons), I'm too lazy to try anything
beyond FreeBSD and SUSE linux (ok, shoot me), but they seem to do APM
and ACPI (don't do Logitech scroll wheels, tho). Remember Larry Wall's
1st virtue! Larry was right about this! FreeBSD: the Complete FreeBSD
(greg lahey) and FreeBSD handbook are all you need to get your window
manager up (or you can do everythin in emacs. I don't, but you can ;-}

And I've been using OS X for a few days. Think different, look at
Oreilly's OS X Tiger for unix geeks. Metadata? Objective-C++? Fink?
Darwinports? For me, there's going to be lot sof adaptation required,
but they fixed the scary stuff, like you can "cp" and "mv" files
without screwing up resource forks and metadata (that's what the book
says, anyway). If you still want a slow descent into do-it-yourself
WTF-ness, try to get a python 2.4 install on it without resorting to
(the brand-new) ActiveState release. Powerbooks have nice displays and
video cards now, the mighty mouse I'm not sure about.

···

> On 11/21/05, Sam Kong <sam.s.kong@gmail.com> wrote:

[Curt_Sampson]

After a twelve-year relationship, Usenet and I "unmet" around 1995, for
pretty much exactly posts like yours.

cjs

···

On Tue, 22 Nov 2005, Timothy Hunter wrote:

Curt, meet Usenet. Usenet, Curt.

--
Curt Sampson <cjs@cynic.net> +81 90 7737 2974
   Make up enjoying your city life...produced by BIC CAMERA

[Curt_Sampson]

(Oh, and yes, I do use a threading reader for this list.)

cjs

···

On Tue, 22 Nov 2005, Timothy Hunter wrote:

Curt, meet Usenet. Usenet, Curt.

--
Curt Sampson <cjs@cynic.net> +81 90 7737 2974
   Make up enjoying your city life...produced by BIC CAMERA

[Jacob_Quinn_Shenker]

I highly recommend Ubuntu for a laptop - almost all the time Stuff
Just Works. Wifi, audio, you name it. It's running great on my
thinkpad, and it has a good Ruby environment to boot (if you remember
to install an updated Ruby from a .deb or from source, the packaged
one it broken).

Right now, I use Enlightenment 17 (from cvs), which both looks cool
and it quite resource-friendly. I lay out my environemt with 4 virtual
desktops, one for play, one for administiation (where I put all those
SSH sessions), one for development, and one extra ("just in case").
Each has an Eterm running screen, which often amounts to more than 12
bash processes running total. and I usually have two firefox window
up, each with between 10 and 20 tabs.

I like to use a graphical environment becase I need to see the web
graphically (e.g. for web design, elinks just won't cut it and I
get pretty screen antialiasing and fonts. I really like seeing
multiple window at a time, and screen by itself (in text-mode) can't
provide that. That said, I very much prefer using text-based programs
for pretty much anything besides the web:
- irssi for IRC is awesome. All GUI clients give me bad-design hives.
It can be hacked to do various IM services as well... but who uses IM
anymore?!
- Mutt. "All mail clients suck, this one just sucks less." --
Somebody(sorry, forgot the name). I tend to think I sucks *quite a
bit* less Everything's customizable, you can use external programs
for various tasks (Vim, GPG, etc.) It's hooks feature simply provides
unparalleled flexibility.
- Vim. I've been using it for a while, and I really like it. Once you
get the basics, it's pretty easy. Fast, efficient, and powerful. I
haven't seriously learned Emacs, but if I get the time I'd really like
to, if only for comparison. I happen to prefer Vim's modes over Emacs'
arcane key sequences, though my mind is open to the Emacs way of
life...
- Eterm. I've been using it only just recently. The jury's still out
on this one, it has issues with ncurses and mutt, but I think it's
actually a font/encoding issue. Also, there are some pretty themes
available for it. Anyway, mrxvt is another terminal to check out, it's
very lightweight but has tabs too! (but with screen, that doesn't
matter as much to me) Konsole, as bloated as it is, I have to say does
an awesome job (I don't use KDE, alas). SHIFT-<arrow> to switch
between terminals is just *so* useful. I need to see if screen can do
that...

Well. Hope you gleaned some useful information from that.

Using Linux, and text-mode interfaces, and all the other things that
come with *nix is intimidating. But it's worth it. Really!

Jacob

[Bill_Kelly]

Curt, meet Usenet. Usenet, Curt.

(Oh, and yes, I do use a threading reader for this list.)

Can your reader be configured to automatically junk [OT]
posts? (Not intended as a snide retort, just honestly
wondering.)

Regards,

Bill

···

From: "Curt Sampson" <cjs@cynic.net>

On Tue, 22 Nov 2005, Timothy Hunter wrote:

[Jacob_Quinn_Shenker]

Forgot to add:
If you want *nix tools on a Windows box, cygwin is quite good. I used
it in my "transitioning" phase, so I could learn *nix while still
retaining the familiar yet ugly Windows desktop

···

On 11/21/05, Jacob Quinn Shenker <jqshenker@gmail.com> wrote:

I highly recommend Ubuntu for a laptop - almost all the time Stuff
Just Works. Wifi, audio, you name it. It's running great on my
thinkpad, and it has a good Ruby environment to boot (if you remember
to install an updated Ruby from a .deb or from source, the packaged
one it broken).

Right now, I use Enlightenment 17 (from cvs), which both looks cool
and it quite resource-friendly. I lay out my environemt with 4 virtual
desktops, one for play, one for administiation (where I put all those
SSH sessions), one for development, and one extra ("just in case").
Each has an Eterm running screen, which often amounts to more than 12
bash processes running total. and I usually have two firefox window
up, each with between 10 and 20 tabs.

I like to use a graphical environment becase I need to see the web
graphically (e.g. for web design, elinks just won't cut it and I
get pretty screen antialiasing and fonts. I really like seeing
multiple window at a time, and screen by itself (in text-mode) can't
provide that. That said, I very much prefer using text-based programs
for pretty much anything besides the web:
- irssi for IRC is awesome. All GUI clients give me bad-design hives.
It can be hacked to do various IM services as well... but who uses IM
anymore?!
- Mutt. "All mail clients suck, this one just sucks less." --
Somebody(sorry, forgot the name). I tend to think I sucks *quite a
bit* less Everything's customizable, you can use external programs
for various tasks (Vim, GPG, etc.) It's hooks feature simply provides
unparalleled flexibility.
- Vim. I've been using it for a while, and I really like it. Once you
get the basics, it's pretty easy. Fast, efficient, and powerful. I
haven't seriously learned Emacs, but if I get the time I'd really like
to, if only for comparison. I happen to prefer Vim's modes over Emacs'
arcane key sequences, though my mind is open to the Emacs way of
life...
- Eterm. I've been using it only just recently. The jury's still out
on this one, it has issues with ncurses and mutt, but I think it's
actually a font/encoding issue. Also, there are some pretty themes
available for it. Anyway, mrxvt is another terminal to check out, it's
very lightweight but has tabs too! (but with screen, that doesn't
matter as much to me) Konsole, as bloated as it is, I have to say does
an awesome job (I don't use KDE, alas). SHIFT-<arrow> to switch
between terminals is just *so* useful. I need to see if screen can do
that...

Well. Hope you gleaned some useful information from that.

Using Linux, and text-mode interfaces, and all the other things that
come with *nix is intimidating. But it's worth it. Really!

Jacob

[Curt_Sampson]

Yes. I use Pine, which is actually fairly sophisticated these days
(sophisticated enough that I, as a programmer, haven't yet found it
worth switching to mutt). Surprisingly, it's also still reasonably easy
for a novice to use.

Or I could junk them in my procmail filters as well. But whilst that
helps the S/N ratio somewhat, I still find even the on-topic stuff more
wordy than it has to be.

I don't know how many people are on this list, but I'm suspecting
several thousand. That means that a post that takes someone three
seconds to open, scan and delete could easily be using up 2-3 hours
of the collective time of people on this list. Programmers are paid
reasonably well, so you could say that a short post to this list is
going to cost a minimum of $50, and could easily go into the thousands
of dollars for something that takes a bit more reading time.

So ask yourself, when you post: is it really worth spending that much
money on my posting?

cjs

···

On Tue, 22 Nov 2005, Bill Kelly wrote:

From: "Curt Sampson" <cjs@cynic.net>

(Oh, and yes, I do use a threading reader for this list.)

Can your reader be configured to automatically junk [OT] posts? (Not
intended as a snide retort, just honestly wondering.)

--
Curt Sampson <cjs@cynic.net> +81 90 7737 2974
   The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism
   by those who have not got it. --George Bernard Shaw

[Greg_Brown1 (Greg Brown)]

Before this thread alerts Austin, I should mention that not everyone
really believes in cygwin as being a good transitional phase system,
as it has a lot of problems with it.

I myself install MSys and MinGW on windows boxes just to get me *nix
style commands, but if you are seriously planning on transitioning to
Linux and want to play around with it first, try one of the live
distros such as Knoppix or the Ubuntu live CD, or use a shell account.

You won't get the 'real' feel for things unless you do this.

···

On 11/21/05, Jacob Quinn Shenker <jqshenker@gmail.com> wrote:

Forgot to add:
If you want *nix tools on a Windows box, cygwin is quite good. I used
it in my "transitioning" phase, so I could learn *nix while still
retaining the familiar yet ugly Windows desktop