(no subject)

[torkell]

Seen on a web site distributing a RTSP implementation in source code form:

How to configure and build the code on Windows

To configure the code for Windows, first unpack it on a Unix machine

The justification for this is, apparently, "it's rather hard to imagine anyone doing serious development of networking software without having any access to a Unix machine". I do have access to a unix machine, however that machine happens to be at the university, which is not where I am.

Come on, you unix fanboys need to learn that not everyone uses unix or unix-variants. Would you be happy if I distributed code that compiled on linux, but only if you first unpacked it on a windows box?

Comments

[torkell]

The binaries folder did once upon a time contain some executables (I went for a wander round there with the wayback machine), but either they never worked or (more likely, given past experience) the wayback machine has problems archiving binaries.

Oh, and the reason behind concatenating files is apparently so a common section can be used in the makefile. I'm guessing it's done this way because that's how it was done for the unix build (with a magic shell script that detected what headers you had and what system you're running).

Hmm, I think I did go a bit overboard there. I should really get hold of or hack a version of notepad that actually understands unix line endings, as apart from that it's a rather nice quick'n'dirty editor. I suppose there's good reasons as to why each platform (unix and derivatives, windows, and macs - I don't know about others) uses different combinations of CR and LF, but it'd have been nice if they had all agreed on one standard.

I think some of that rant stemmed from my current general anger towards computers, after having my desktop wedge itself in interesting ways (where "interesting" involves the computer refusing to shut down, and an application of the Big Red Button), as well as the previous trials in getting various things to compile. Anyway, I'll attempt to tone down the attitude somewhat. I should really inflict Linux on myself, so I get to rant about things from both points of view.

[pewterfish.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. I've experienced zealotry from many fields, and I try never to put up with it. Though that was, of course, mild (and correctly spelled, which is always nice) ;)

The line-endings thing dates all the way back to the origin of the personal computer, I'm afraid: I don't remember the details of the reason it happened that way. Annoying though, I agree. Converting them can be done in a single line of Perl (and there exist binaries of Perl for Windows, I know that much). Failing that, a decent text editor should be able to do it, as I say: TextPad comes to mind, but there are many more.

Interesting failure modes are fun, certainly. Just the other day, I opened a firefox window (my fifth, admittedly, but still) and my entire GUI black-screened. The machine recovered rather nicely to a shell prompt, but it was ... jarring. Between us, Nick and I have somewhere on the order of ten different Unices in the house, so I'm sure we can match you up with an appropriate one, if you like.

[torkell]

Thanks, I do try to speel stuf corectly :)

My current theory as to this problem that I've got (there's more than one thing going on with the desktop) is that a service/driver (under WinNT drivers are services) to do with SecuRom copy prevention wedges in kernel mode anything that tries to access the CD drives (including getting a listing of My Computer). Exactly what causes the service to start is beyond me, but I've only seen it running wha I've had this problem. I've disabled the service, and am now waiting to see if it does it again.

Anyway, regarding unix or unix-like OS's... I have a ye olde IBM Aptiva here (I think 96MB of ram, 300MHz Pentium clone, about 20GB of disk, onboard or PCI graphics, ISA ethernet, CD drive) as the sacrificial lamb, and enough bandwidth to download Linux ISOs with impunity (Demon recently bumped everyone up to 2 meg uncapped for £25/month). So, what variant of Unix/Linux/BSD would you recommend for that, and any big gotchas as regards installing and running it?

[pewterfish.livejournal.com]

Well, personally I'm a big fan of Slackware. If you know Red Hat, you know Red Hat. If you know Slackware, you know Linux. This is because Slack doesn't include ANY fancy graphical config and so on: you're working in the guts of the system so you can see exactly what goes where.

Ubuntu is often recommended for newbies to linux, but since you've got me and Nick in house as of September, and you're not clueless on the 'internals of the comp-yoo-tar' bit, I'd personally recommend Slackware. Trial by fire, and all that.