Re: Choosing a Linux development platform

[Nicholas Lee <N.J.Lee@statslab.cam.ac.uk>]

On Sun, 20 Jun 1999, Rick Genter wrote:

> 1) How similar are the various Linux's (Linuxii?) right now? I plan to
> support Intel Linux under Red Hat as well as LinuxPPC. If I do development
> under LinuxPPC, how portable will my efforts be to Red Hat Intel (machine
> architecture differences aside)?

The main differences are:
i) Initialisation (rc.d/init.d) script locations
  Debian is just /etx/init.d and /etc/rc.[1-6]
  Red Hat is /etc/rc.d/[whatever]
  Suse is (I think) /sbin/init.d, etc
ii) Package management systems
  Debian use deb
  Reb Hat and SuSe use rpm, although incompatiable.
  Slackware use tgz
  Stampede use slps

There are various merits to either system, however a good package building
system can make it a straight forward process.



> 2) The last time I looked at Linux (about a year ago), there was a
> Win95-like window manager that worked reasonably well. Is there a
> Finder-like window manager available for Linux?

Gnome and KDE are probably the best windom managers to look at.  As usual
with unix/linux software they can do whatever you tell them to do.


> 3) Are there GUI IDEs available for Linux (other than Codewarrior, which I
> am aware of)? Commercial, shareware and freeware leads are all welcome.

Ibm are are releasing a VisualAge for Linux preview:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/06/17/158214&mode=thread
It looks good, although I haven't had a chance to test it much.


Cygnus are meant to be releasing something soon as well.  I'm sure in a
while there will be a flood of IDEs to linux.

Still a solid .emacs config file, make files and maybe DDD are a pretty
productive enviroment.

 
> 4) What is the current state of gcc with respect to: a) C++ language

Since the egcs group is now the gcc maintainers, there is no real reason
to worry about this any more.

Given that, if you want to produce fast (C++) binaries a commerical
compiler like www.kai.com is probably a worthy investment.

> support, b) optimization proficiency, and c) stability? Note that fast
> compiles are NOT of interest to me as much as correct compiles and compiled
> binaries that run fast.

So benchmarks I've seen still show VC++ faster than pgcc.  However it's
worth noting that microsoft cheat by adding optimisations that hook into
the OS kernel.  This is a bad idea as it makes the OS unstable.  

Well written unix applications hardly every crash, and as gcc optimisation
is constantly improving it's win-win.


 
> 5) Though as a developer who takes pride in his work I find a certain


Of course other than the data being restricted, some particular service
related to the application can be sold as well.  For instance a network
matching server. 



Nicholas

--
      "I reserve the right to contradict myself"
Nicholas Lee (Li Peng Ming)         n.j.lee at cam.ac in uk
Somewhere Out There           Life the MCMC of the Universe