Trying to change my OS from Windows to Linux/Mac

Ruby
21

On Monday 21 November 2005 11:12, Sam K. wrote:

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

X for me is a tool to open more consoles and be able to switch quickly.
It
also is nice to have pretty apps every once in a while.

  1. 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.

Depends on the distro. Depends on the problem. Linux is not perfect,
but
neither is any other OS I’ve ever used. Ubuntu specifically has a goal
for
the next release that they’re going to take 5 or so laptops and make
them
work PERFECTLY with Ubuntu out of the box. As they continue to add
other
laptops things will magically start working for the rest of us.

  1. For Mac users, do you feel OK with the simple mouse? Probably I’m
    too accustomed to Windows mouse. Whenever I use Mac, I miss the
    right-button and scroll-wheel.

Control click works. What else works very well is to simply use a USB
mouse
with right mouse button and scroll wheel. In fact, being that the Mini
didn’t come with a mouse, you could have bought one with a right mouse
button
and scroll wheel and not known the difference.

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

I really just migrated over time to Linux and then had to give mac a
whirl.
I’m working right now on my Kubuntu laptop with a G5 sitting on the
other
side. I feel alienated on Windows any more, because I simply don’t know
the
toolset very well. My job is writing Ruby code for Linux (KDE
currently), so
life is good. There’s really not a whole lot to say but start using it,
and
you’ll break it a few times, sure, but you’ll learn and start feeling
like
you mastered it too.

22

Curt S. wrote:

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.

Curt, meet Usenet. Usenet, Curt.

I read comp.lang.ruby with Thunderbird. I can hide an entire thread
(including this one) by typing “K”. I do it frequently.

23

On Tue, 22 Nov 2005, Sam K. wrote:

This is not about Ruby itself but about OS.
The reason that I ask this question in this group is that I’ve been
motivated to use other OS’s than Windows by this group while I learned
Ruby.

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. :slight_smile:

cjs

24

Am Montag 21 November 2005 18:12 schrieb Sam K.:

This question is not meant to bring flame wars!

I use Windows at my work and home.
Of course, I tried several linux OS’s (RedHat, SUSE, Debian, Gentoo,
Ubuntu) and this year I even purchased Mini Mac.
However, I haven’t succeeded to make myself used to these OS’s.

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

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?

both… it depends on the task at hand.
when i’m working on web-apps i my ubuntu-box is going to be the tool fo
doing
it - i have KDE running (with 3d and all fancy stuff - even osx feeling
:slight_smile: -
and i love eye-candy from time to time.
The stuff i have running on it is Kontact (for RSS, mail and
addressbook) -
gaim (for kopete is crashing all the time) and of course three different
editors, fitting for my tasks at hand. When i’m doing quick editing of
some
stuff i use nano, wich saved me so far from learning both vi or emacs -
(actually i know a bit vi, but it is just enough for survival), when i’m
doing web-related stuff i tend to use Kate - and for heavy
web-api-editing i
prefer JEdit, wich has excellent features and plugins for ruby
(highlighting,
code-completion, rdoc-integration, automagically adding ‘end’ and some
other
stuff [oh, almost forgot the code-browser that displays your
classes/methods
in a nice way])
My console on this computer is yakuake, it just feels good to have your
console behaving like a quake one (but with having tabs for switching
around).
My equipment is a nice trackball (that has saved me from RSI) and one of
those
highend-ergonomic-keyboards that just cry out to be used for coding ^^

  1. 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.

right next to this box is the extreme opposite - a really minimal WM on
top of
grml ( http://www.grml.org ) wich is a distribution for ‘users of the
commandline and system-administrators’ - i’m in love with it as well -
it
runs on my laptop and serves me well when i’m traveling.
another use for it is IRC - wich is one of the permanent things that i
have
open, as well as my music that i play using xmms… i rarely use the
mouse on
this one at all, maybe on one of the rare occassions that i open a
webpage on
it - but i can even control xmms without a mouse at all.
WIFI, sound, usb, burning cd/dvd… everything working fine on it.

  1. For Mac users, do you feel OK with the simple mouse? Probably I’m
    too accustomed to Windows mouse. Whenever I use Mac, I miss the
    right-button and scroll-wheel.

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

[ONLY READ THAT IF YOU HAVE LOTS OF TIME - I AM TIRED AND ONLY ENJOY MY
KEYBOARD WHILE TYPING THE STORY OF MY LIFE ;]

well, my little success-story is a quite long one - but everything
started
with one of the first linux-live-cds that were ever released (i just
cannot
remind what the name of it was) - for everyone reading gamestar since a
long
time you might know it…
I tried it - installed it - used it - kicked it from my harddisk again.
the problem was that while it wasn’t that bad - i just didn’t know what
do do
now - i tried to start some games that i had from windows but it didn’t
work

  • so since my main-use for a computer was playing back then i went back
    to
    windows… but with a big deal of critizism of what M$ was doing
    wrong…
    So i was lurking around, always on the quest for a linux that i could
    use -
    some day my brother brought me a copy of suse 6.4 - and i was
    overwhelmed
    what had changed in the meanwhile (might have been 2 years) - compared
    to the
    changes of windows (well - no changes at all)
    since that day i’m a kde-monkey… i just never got used to the
    look’n’feel of
    gnome.
    while having linux was great - it still wasn’t mature enough for me -
    crashing
    stuff - bad sound-drivers and worst of all - no really addictive games
    :slight_smile:
    so i used it for about a week and gave it a good-bye-wave after that.

After that experience i always waited for some distro that was
ultimate…
later i tried suse 7.2 and finally it was what i searched for (or so i
thought) - after about a month of using it i was deeply disappointed -
the
reason? RPM - after searching some days for all neccesary rpms for
upgrading
your kde you don’t laugh about it… after a while my skills in
searching
rpms was getting better, but it still was less than satisfying…
some day i stumbled upon apt-rpm and found what i was searching for:
automagically searching for my dependencies.
It worked well, until it broke my system.

This was the day i decided to try the distro where the idea for apt-rpm
was
from - that was debian.
downloading some cds and burning them was a matter of some hours - and
when i
finally installed it, it was great!
apt-get install this that and this one as well

until i tried to compile stuff, wich worked for some time - but after a
while
my system got messed up.
so i came to the conclusion that i would try yet another distro… after
some
searching i found what i was looking for: gentoo - a distro made from
source
for source.

gentoo was a great experience - it taught me a lot of stuff, how the
internal
systems worked together, how to compile efficiently, what the stuff in /
is
all about, how to edit configs… short - everything i needed to
administrate
a linux-system fairly well.
It was a hard school, but i enjoyed it - some day ubuntu was appearing
on the
horizont, and i have had enough of hours compiling stuff. I decided to
get
back to apt-get, and so i came to kubuntu.

Installing it was a joy, everything was going smooth (i tried it on my
laptop
before) - i had what i needed, after about a year of gentoo, finally no
need
for intensive system-care anymore :slight_smile:

this was, until i realized how inefficient KDE for some tasks is - and i
decided to split it like what i have now - a design-overloaded
system-for-joy, and one for real crunching and relaxing. Now i’m almost
at
the limit of my own effectivness and can say that the game i play now,
is
linux and ruby :slight_smile:

I don’t look back to windows at all, it was the most unproductive time
in my
life.

25

Curt S. wrote:

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,

But blatantly OT items usually have [OT] in the subject line, so
filtering is trivial.

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.

How about if we have to raise our hand to go to the bathroom, too?

Seriously, I often have problems scanning the new items to see what’s
worth perusing and what’s not, but the use of filters and virtual
folders in Thunderbird helps a great deal.

I learn all sorts of handy stuff quite unexpectedly, and figure if
anything earthshaking is discussed, and I miss the thread, I’ll hear
about one way or another.

The accidental is part of the fun.

James

–

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Ruby Code & Style - Ruby Code & Style: Writers wanted
http://www.rubystuff.com - The Ruby Store for Ruby Stuff
http://www.jamesbritt.com - Playing with Better Toys
http://www.30secondrule.com - Building Better Tools

26

Hi!

Curt S. 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. :slight_smile:

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

27

James B. wrote:

this problem? Well… if you use just a text-mode, this might not be a

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.

28

On Tue, 22 Nov 2005, Timothy H. wrote:

Curt, meet Usenet. Usenet, Curt.

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

cjs

29

On Tue, 22 Nov 2005, Timothy H. wrote:

Curt, meet Usenet. Usenet, Curt.

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

cjs

30

From: “Curt S.” [email protected]

On Tue, 22 Nov 2005, Timothy H. wrote:

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

31

On Tue, 22 Nov 2005, Bill K. wrote:

From: “Curt S.” [email protected]

(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.)

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

32

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

well, cannot say anything about mac - my overall-use of it comes to
about…
well - 2 hours :slight_smile:
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. :slight_smile: 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!