Testing under Unix, installing under Windows

[Bill Vlahos]

(Standing on soapbox)

Richard,

While Linux has made good progress as a server platform, it is almost 
non-existent on the desktop. It is too hard to install, too difficult to 
use, and there is very little "consumer type" software available for 
most users to work with.

The first two items will take a long time to get better but I believe 
they eventually will. These limitations also constrain the types of 
customers currently using it to potentially a very different demographic 
than what you might be used to. The last item illustrates the importance 
of Revolution in overcoming the lack of software for Linux (and other 
Unixes like Solaris). No other programming environment makes it 
possible, let alone easy, to build rich software for anything other than 
Windows and Macintosh. I have built some simple applications here on the 
Mac in Rev and built standalones for virtually all of the platforms 
without any problems from the same code base. These were not multimedia 
though; and QuickTime is more limited for Linux and Solaris. Someone 
please correct me if I'm wrong here.

The most popular Linux seems to be the Red Hat distribution on x86 
hardware (i.e. Intel, AMD, etc). Mandrake is also based on Red Hat. We 
also have a small number of other distributions (SuSE, Yellow Dog, etc) 
and people running it on PPCs too. One of the potential pitfalls for the 
Linux consumer market is that the users don't really want to pay for 
software (including their OS) and want to put it on the cheapest 
hardware they can find (PCs). It will be interesting to see how 
successful people who write software are at actually getting money from 
these folks.

Another interesting point is that Apple is now the largest distribution 
of Unix OS with OS X.

Bill Vlahos
(Stepping off soapbox)

On Friday, January 18, 2002, at 05:20  AM, Richard D. Miller wrote:

> Troy:
>
> Thanks for the feedback. Of course, I (like probably many other folks 
> here)
> no nothing about the Unix environment. When you say Linux is not
> specifically UNIX, what does that mean? Is it significantly similar? Is 
> Rev
> supposed to run under Linux? What about Mandrake? How does that fit in?
> Which UNIX system will we most likely encounter out there...in other 
> words,
> which UNIX environments would most likely be accessing multimedia-based
> CD's?
>
> Thanks.
> Richard
>
>> Richard D. Miller  wrote:
>>
>>> Is there a reliable way to test a Rev project on a Mac in a simulated 
>>> Unix
>>> environment? I use virtual PC and that seems to do a good job of 
>>> emulating
>>> the Windows environment. Is there something similar for Unix on Max 
>>> OSX?
>>
>> While not specifically UNIX, Virtual PC can run Linux as well as 
>> Windows.
>> Mandrake runs fine, last I heard Red Hat still has installation issues 
>> in
>> VPC.
>
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