Three reasons to hold off on Windows 10

[Terry N4TLF]

It's funny Pete, I saw another complaint about Linux and the magical moving 
library links problem in another amateur radio forum just today.  I'll try 
to find which one.

Note that I haven't really complained about writing or compiling the code 
itself nearly as much as dependencies (libraries, etc) constantly changing. 
One time, they are in /etc, the next time they may be in /usr/etc, the next 
time they may be in /bin/etc, or somewhere else.  Even the soft/hard links 
are changing around.  Also, stuff gets "deprecated" way too often, leaving 
one holding an empty bag, trying to fix problems.

Try messing with GNU radio as an example.  If you had a GNU Radio setup that 
worked just fine under Ubuntu 8.04 (which I have several), and try to run it 
under 12.04 or 14.04, you will find that it can't run anymore.  Libraries 
don't exist, modules have different names or don't exist.  I gave up trying 
to fix my old SoftRock and Charleston SDR GNU Radio stuff.

Similar issues with QT and its dependencies.  Old libraries from a few years 
ago don't exist anymore, or have been moved, which breaks present-day code. 
These are just a couple of examples.  Another is trying to get java running 
right, so work can be done on the "jl" contest log program.  The list goes 
on and on.

This has NOTHING to do with the actual OS (Linux) - I readily admit.  It has 
everything to do with the distro gurus and program maintainers.  There is 
much more of a wild-west, we can do anything we want, mentality that seems 
to prevail.

In summary, you may be correct about the actual writing of software, and the 
necessary documentation for doing that.  But, as an end-user that must rely 
on a consistent "load-n-run" sequence over a period of years, my experience 
seems to be different.  Maybe our experiences are just apples vs oranges.

Lest this become perceived as a religious war, I also have issues with 
Windows.  But that's for another time!
73, Terry, N4TLF


-----Original Message----- 
From: kf4hcw
Sent: Saturday, September 05, 2015 7:00 PM
To: tacos at amrad.org
Subject: Re: Three reasons to hold off on Windows 10

On 2015-09-04 17:59, Alberto di Bene wrote:
> "all") the programs I wrote in the
> course of the last 20 years, without changing a single bit in the
> code. Try that with Linux...

I have been writing cross-platform code for all of that time and have
never had a problem with Linux. I have had problems with Windoz. I
suspect this means YMMV, but it definitely discounts the idea that linux
is difficult as a dev platform. I find precisely the opposite. More than
10% of the code in production cross-platform apps is there to account
for and overcome Windows problems and inconsistencies... on the linux
side of the chart I've never (as far as I can remember) had to write
special code to get around it's behavior... it always just works as
expected.

My $0.02.

_M

-- 
kf4hcw
Pete McNeil
lifeatwarp9.com/kf4hcw

_______________________________________________
Tacos mailing list
Tacos at amrad.org
https://lists.amrad.org/mailman/listinfo/tacos