Accursed backdrop

[Richmond]

On 26/05/15 22:17, Richard Gaskin wrote:
> Richmond wrote:
> > Last time I was in Embro (about 5 year ago), I saw only Macs in their
> > office. If that is still the case it needs to be corrected.
>
> In all fairness, I've corresponded about Linux specifically with 
> Peter, Mark, and others, and had a long and pleasant discussion about 
> it in person with Fraser.
>
> So I know the engine team uses Linux extensively.  What I don't know 
> is whether IDE team members use Linux at least a full day each week, 
> as would seem useful for Windows as well.

I am sure they don't.

It might not be a bad idea if they were to hire one Windows expert and 
one Linux expert "just" to run their Linux and Windows versions
and see what goes wrong and then liase witht he core Dev team right 
there in the office: at which point the old "a picture is worth a thousand
words" thing would kick in as the expert could point out a problem right 
there, on screen, rather than in some badly written bug report by
someone half a world away.

>
> After all, one of the strongest selling points of LiveCode is that it 
> liberates us from the whims of any single OS vendor.  For many years I 
> enjoyed deploying to Windows from my Mac, just as I now enjoy 
> deploying to Windows and Mac from Linux.  Being able to move from OS 
> to OS is what LiveCode is all about, so if there's any productivity 
> loss with one OS over another that's not an OS issue, but an issue 
> with LiveCode on that OS.
>
> Cross-OS workflows among the IDE team would seem very valuable, and 
> I've been told that happens to some degree.  But given the scope of 
> Linux issues I'm hoping that was a misunderstanding, that instead the 
> Linux use is more among the engine team, since it would be 
> unflattering to an IDE team that sees the label of an option control 
> become unreadable each time they use it but thinks nothing of it.
>
> Everyone I've talked to at the company is super-smart and very 
> earnest.  I'd like to think the state of the Linux engine is merely a 
> matter of priorities, correctable with reasonable time and attention.
>
>
> > I would recommend a fairly current PC with Debian, and another with
> > Windows 8.1.
>
> I would add Ubuntu to the mix as well, not just because it's pleasant 
> but mostly because that one distro has some 30 million desktop users, 
> far more than any other.

Well, I deploy only Ubuntu derivatives (I prefer XFCE as my desktop of 
choice) both at home and at school. But I tend to think of
Ubuntu as Debian's baby brother, so I wonder if it differs sufficiently 
from Debian to justify that.

Or, put another way; if Ubuntu, why not MINT as well? At which point 
RunRev have to buy/rent/steal another very large chunk of office space
to run 25 PCs with a wide selection of Linux distros - a tendency that 
can lead to several people having nervous breakdowns.

>
> And Linux runs on just about anything, so it's not like they'd have to 
> spend a bundle on expensive machines.  Older machines, or newer 
> machines with enough RAM for a comfortable VM, would be quite fine.

Linux may run "on just about anything", but the vast majority of 
current, popular distros require quite 'greedy' specs. I tried, last 
week, to install
MINT 17 XFCE on a Pentium V with 512 MB RAM and the installer in the DVD 
drive got so sluggish that the computer froze solid.

Now, for the sake of argument, I think it unlikely that there are going 
to be many people out there trying to run LiveCode on Damn Small
or Puppy Linux, and even fewer deploying standalones to those distros.

---------------------------------------

Whichever way one cuts thing, I do believe that Linux is not just "an 
operating system for nutters and geeks" any more and needs to
be taken just as seriously as Windows and Macintosh. The fact that, at 
the moment, the Linux version of LiveCode is not up to
parity witht he versions for Windows and Macintosh demonstrates that 
RunRev don't take Linux ans seriously as Windows and Macintosh.

--------------------------------------

Next week I shall begin teaching my 6 week course in LiveCode [3 times a 
week for 90 minutes] deploying across machines ALL now
running Xubuntu 14.04.2: all those children will be taking their 
homework stacks to work on on either their machines or Mum and Dad's
running almost exclusively Windows XP through 8.1. Let us hope that the 
fact that they will do their homework on one OS and their classwork
on another does not screw things up badly.

Richmond.