4 ms·

I'm not a fanboy of Linux or Windows (I use both at work and at home), but I would venture application install experience? I was reading (http://blog.vrplumber

• rjbond3rd 15y ago
  To be honest, when installing on Linux is hard, to me it feels worthwhile -- I'm gaining experience and knowledge. And in contrast, the slightest annoyance on Windows confirms my worst feelings about Windows, and I give up quickly in disguest. For whatever (illusory) reason, Linux comes across as logical and an interesting puzzle that is worth the time invested, whereas Windows comes across as arbitrary and makes me feel like I've wasted my time. Yes, it's a double standard but what can I say. At least with Linux, you can drill down as far as you want (and with Windows, I feel that I can't but it's partially a case of "Why should I bother, I can't see the source.")
  • mattgreenrocks 15y ago
    Obviously, you haven't played with anything that uses autotools, have you? :) > it's partially a case of "Why should I bother, I can't see the source." I used to think this too. Then I noticed that my Ubuntu 10.04 machine exhibits hard-lock like symptoms anytime I make -j. I know approximately what the problem is: the kernel scheduler isn't giving enough time to the UI while it does this, but, even with source, it isn't something I can fix trivially. Just reading the source and seeing where it happens doesn't do anything to make me feel better. It shouldn't ever happen. Period.
    • nitrogen 15y ago
      Then I noticed that my Ubuntu 10.04 machine exhibits hard-lock like symptoms anytime I make -j. I know approximately what the problem is: the kernel scheduler isn't giving enough time to the UI while it does this, but, even with source, it isn't something I can fix trivially. Just reading the source and seeing where it happens doesn't do anything to make me feel better. It shouldn't ever happen. Period. Try upgrading to the latest version of Linux (or just upgrade your entire Ubuntu distribution). This problem was fixed by a tweak to the scheduler that creates a scheduling group for each pseudoterminal. For that matter, you probably shouldn't use make -j anyway, since AIUI it just forks until it can't anymore, and doesn't pay any attention to how much RAM gcc/g++ is using. I use make -j [ncpus] instead, which is very nearly optimal (and is optimal with the BFS scheduler).
      • mattgreenrocks 15y ago
        Thanks. I think we're stuck on 10.04 but I'll try it again one of these days.
• SwellJoe 15y ago
  Do you realize how ridiculous this argument is? Package management is laughably bad on Windows (not as bad as Mac OS X, but still at least a decade behind yum or apt-get on Linux). It's perhaps my least favorite thing about managing Windows systems, in fact, and the thing I hold up as an example of what's horribly wrong with Windows. I've built and maintained a Python distribution for Windows (Python Enthought Edition, which is used pretty widely in scientific computing environments) that had to work alongside other versions, and I also maintained a Linux version for RHEL/CentOS/Fedora. I would choose a Linux deployment every time. Not because I didn't know how to make it work on Windows; I did, and it did work quite well. But, because of how awful the whole process was. There isn't even a standard mechanism for third party package updates on a Windows system. How stupid is that? Everybody has to roll their own updater if they want to provide automatic updates on Windows. It's like living in the stone age. Might as well hand out floppy disks.
  • Bo102010 15y ago
    You're attributing more to my tentative venture than I intended. I'm not saying updating or wide-scale deployment is better on Windows than Linux. I'm saying that, for example, installing Python 2.5 alongside several other versions of Python is easier on Windows.
    • icebraining 15y ago
      No, it's better than on Ubuntu. On Debian, installing 2.5, 2.6 and 3.0 at the same time is a matter of doing "aptitude install python2.5 python2.6 python3.0"