Miscellaneous Operating Systems/Hardware

jwp wrote: These are the normal everyday GUI applications that most people would use.

Exactly right. Which could be why the iPad is so popular. Except an iPad is well-designed, small, portable, good screen, consistent interface, has the "Geek squad" (bunch of teenager twits but they get paid to help , not tell you it's open source fix it yourself) and oh yeah : Apple has quality control. If you pay $2 for a program, there's a good chance it will work.

Could this be why the Linux desktop ecosystem has collapsed ?

A lot of users in our hotel management parent company have already transitioned to ipads, since all they really need a computer for is email and office. The IT guys love it, could you imagine them having to support linux desktops???

guardian452 wrote: A lot of users in our hotel management parent company have already transitioned to ipads, since all they really need a computer for is email and office. The IT guys love it, could you imagine them having to support linux desktops???

We should write a note to Ginny :

Dear Madam,

It has come to our attention that 2015 will be the Year of the Dinosaur. The fickle public has now decided that yes indeedy, a glitzy terminal which stores all your data three continents away in the hands of the Russian mafia is by far the best 'solution' to all our computing problems. Accordingly, we would like to offer you this opportunity to drag some of your much-despised dinosaurs out from storage, paint them robin's egg blue with a selection of warm fuzzy clouds, a rainbow or two and perhaps a unicorn : and we will present them to the unwashed masses as the newest thing in high-tech computing*.

Sincerely yours, Mr Ziff and Mr Davis

*This special offer good for thirty days, with billing at double our normal shyster rates. Sorry but the economy is bad and we have big mortgage payments.

vishnu wrote: Okay you smarites, how about Arbortext_Advanced_Print_Publisher Arbor then...

Us smarites usually use OpenOrifice

Seriously, looks okay, kind of like another version of Framemaker ? But I don't see where it runs on Linux but it does cost a king's ransom ...

Looking around tho I did see mention of HP ME10 running on Linux at one time. For 2D that would be really really good. That's a nice program. Rare as a kind-hearted Chinese girl tho, I guess. I can't even find the Irix version and I know that exists, there were links on a Hotmix cd.

guardian452 wrote: As for CAD, I use Dassault's Draftsight.

It's interesting that Dassault also got into the life sciences software business, including Linux desktop software, when it recently purchased Accelrys, including its DiscoveryStudio product line.

i think for graphics linux is actually getting quite good - or so i hear.
i'm not using it myself at the moment since some of the software i rely on is windows exclusive but my second hand info is:

krita - 2D paint
blender, maya, houdini, mudbox - 3d
mari - 3d paint
nuke, piranha, mistika - compositing
maxwell, octane - renderer

most of these are commercial grade, current apps. there's probably a good deal more compositing/simulation/rendering related stuff on linux.

wouldn't recommend an old version of windows - current apps are now more and more no longer compatible with XP and previous versions. you'd have to stick with older software - fine for some applications, a bummer in other cases.

Real question is if there is anything on Linux that is not available for Windows first? Otherwise there is no real reason to use Linux at all and might just as well use Windows as Windows versions are most likely better in every way anyway.

Linux is good for browsing the web and lot of things need to happen first before it actually gets more useful for general purpose computing.

guardian452 wrote: A lot of users in our hotel management parent company have already transitioned to ipads, since all they really need a computer for is email and office. The IT guys love it, could you imagine them having to support linux desktops???

IT guys having to support Linux desktops? Ya, I can imagine that, I've seen it. At every major visual effects house. They almost all use Linux. The IT guys HATE Windows, hate it with a ferocity that must be at the DNA level. Maybe that should be "competent IT guys", though. There's nothing tough about Linux desktops. Irritating and annoying, yes, but that holds for the other options, too, when you're dealing with hundreds of finicky artists and never-satisfied deadlines. Visual effects runs everything on Linux, all the 3D and 2D software packages like Houdini, Maya, Nuke, Massive, Renderman, Mental Ray, etc., and it makes writing Python scripts to stitch all that together a straightforward issue. Only Photoshop doesn't run on it and that's because Adobe is run by idiots. How is it that Photoshop Elements is compiled for Android yet Photoshop isn't for Linux? Laziness or arrogance, nothing else.

theinonen wrote: Real question is if there is anything on Linux that is not available for Windows first? Otherwise there is no real reason to use Linux at all and might just as well use Windows as Windows versions are most likely better in every way anyway.

Linux is good for browsing the web and lot of things need to happen first before it actually gets more useful for general purpose computing.

Most servers, supercomputers, phones, and tablets run either run some version of Linux or some version of BSD / Darwin. There are so many engineers, scientists, animators, developers, and mathematicians using Linux that it's huge for that crowd too. Lots of software support in those areas. Big business software has mostly moved to Java, or to the Web, and big companies like IBM and Oracle are pushing Unix and Linux (Oracle Linux, Solaris, AIX). Flashy new Apple computers? Just BSD derivatives. Chromebooks? Just Linux derivatives. Most everything has been quietly moving toward Unix and Linux over the last 15 years.

Basically, MS Windows is around for compatibility reasons on x86 PCs (MS Office). At some point in the future, computing will change enough that Microsoft will become irrelevant. Then everyone will sail away into the future with Plan 9...

jwp wrote: ...Big business software has mostly moved to Java, or to the Web...

This is the part that makes me sad. This shoehorning of "The Web" as some kind of OS, and Java as if it was a C library. You can barely get by loading a Java app up these days without about five different security nag screens bugging you, then browsers force-disabling Java when a new version comes out, then the Java update resetting your security prompts when you tell it not to. Makes me miss the days of Geocities for hosting, <HR> & <BLINK> as attention-getters, <FRAME> for layout, and Crescendo to play a snazzy MIDI file. Simpler times.

jwp wrote: Then everyone will sail away into the future with Plan 9...
8-)

I actually just installed 9front into a VM the other day. I don't think I have fiddled with an OS that weird/different since my first crack at NetWare a few years ago. 9term needs a bit of work, and that noscroll functionality has got to bloody go, or at least become optional. But outside of that, it's a neat OS.

jwp wrote:

theinonen wrote: Basically, MS Windows is around for compatibility reasons on x86 PCs (MS Office). At some point in the future, computing will change enough that Microsoft will become irrelevant. Then everyone will sail away into the future with Plan 9...

Uhhh... I run MS office 2011 on unix everyday. So that's not it. Computing will eventually evolve enough that computers are irrelevant. I like microsoft, I like my xbox and I used to have a zune for christsakes... Just what I need, above and beyond office of course, windows doesn't offer, and what it does offer I don't need.

guardian452 wrote: I like microsoft, I like my xbox and I used to have a zune for christsakes... Just what I need, above and beyond office of course, windows doesn't offer, and what it does offer I don't need.

Seriously?

What do you use for schematic capture and circuit sim?

Eagle, and I don't do much circuit sim but NI multisim (in vmware fusion) for the few instances it has come in handy. I have toyed with a dozen different EDA programs for unix but have never really stuck with just one, or had the need to stick with just one. Multisim seems to be the simplest for me, tho.

I also spend a fair bit of time with matlab/simulink, but the support costs for our current ECU ("turn-key" from an engineering outfit since before I started here) are fairly outrageous. I am evaluating a system that uses either pure C or Codesys instead. Per-ECU hardware costs are higher but software and support drop to just about nothing. Unless we magically start building hundreds of vehicles per month it is a win. At which point I would seriously consider a DIY approach. We (me and our rep) have been bit by odd bugs in an unknown 3rd party wrapping layer many times as there are many different parties to blame (us, the support engineer, the hardware manufacturer, their software, and mathworks)

The simulink approach would make more sense if we had an ICE. An EV is just not complicated enough to justify it.

There is also a fair amount of semi-automated scripted stuff I've set up for small production runs that I'm sure could be done in windows but it either isn't easy or I just don't know how

My point is that many people for an example with Apple systems and OS X are still using the same software that works just as fine on Windows and some even better as the Windows versions usually come first and other versions are just put together with left hand and in a hurry.

Windows is not the best operating system in the world but is not that bad if you only run software on top of it and not care about the rest. I do not find Unix or derivates that good for desktop use also as the strenghts it has are also the biggest weaknesses and frankly people deserve something better than either of those. Something new and fresh and not the same thing only in different package.

theinonen wrote: software that works just as fine on Windows and some even better as the Windows versions usually come first and other versions are just put together with left hand and in a hurry.

Talking about 'other versions' you're preaching to the choir on this site. But I'm not concerned about having the latest and greatest, almost all of the programs I use are at least a few years old. And work just fine.

My wife's laptop has windows on it, I would not buy a windows computer now until they come out with a new version. She likes it but I don't. At least apple doesn't radically change anything (like microsoft did with windows 8 ) with each release... oh, wait..

My plan is when I upgrade to the next version of Ubuntu (unfortunately not the LTS one because I've read odd things about certain libraries and programs that one is still using that don't really match the "long-term" claim), I suppose 14.10, I'm going to try Fvwm with a 4Dwm theme because I really want that SGI vibe. And I'll use Gimp and the free version of Houdini and LibreOffice and Firefox and whatever else is available.

Well, those chips lack multi-media extensions. Linux in general is painful on anything less than a pentium4 for this reason for what 'normal people' use it for.

My pentium 3 has always ran swell using fvwm. Almost sort-of looks like 4dwm.