The Linux engine...

Malte Brill revolution at derbrill.de
Sat Feb 25 15:25:19 EST 2012


Thanks for all who chimed in, especially Richard for the very detailed post.

A few thoughts on Joes suggestion first... 
I do not think it would be a good idea to split the list into platform specific ones. We would all use a lot of expertise, as if the lists are devided people will tend to only subscribe to the list containing the platform they are using. This could be handled easier in the forum (well, not the current one, as that is not really accepted by the community and while I am one of those who prefers reading forums (and this list online for that matter) I can understand people who do not. If we were to split the lists, people would also post their general questions (and answers to those) to the platform specific lists, so in the end we would all loose knowlege. Maybe it would be easier for those who do not want to hear about iOs or Linux or Windows or Mac to set up a filter rule in their email client...

 That said, non Linux interested users, please skip now.

As I am one of those who (tries to) make(s) a living from writing Software and my tool of choice is liveCode in most cases, it comes natural that I need the engines to be as solid as they can be. I spend a lot of time just testing if application written (by me or my clients) still behave the way they did, or even better than they used to with the previous engine. In most cases I am an early adopter. I am subscribed to the developer program, I am a marketplace vendor blahblahblah...

I did not do a lot using Linux up till now and me being a little bit naive, am thinking I should be able to just build a standalone and be set. That is why I use liveCode in the first place. I am aware that linux is somewhat a creature with many heads and faces, so I am aware that I might need to do some naked dancing around fires, voodoo and maybe even prayer to make stuff work like I would expect on a system I only use on a daily basis server sides. Right now I am in a situation where I MUST support Linux as a platform of choice for my customers. No way around that. I did some testing with existing apps by now with engines starting from 4.6.4 up to the latest developer preview. Not all set with that yet. All I can see is that there is room for improvement, if the mothership is comitted to continue Linux as a target platform (which I believe they are and reading Richards post I am convinced even more so). Leads to this question

So, who is in for detailed analysis of the current state? If others feel annoyed about discussing this here, I would also gladly take this over to the dev list, or even off list. My main problem is that I am just too green with Linux as a desktop environment to being able to judge if the things I see are caused by me, the distribution I chose, missing dependencies or finally the liveCode engine. Could be so many things. Things are definetly easier to test on a Mac here (or iOs for that matter). You know there is a limited set of Hardware components that can play a role. You know the OS comes as it comes out of the box in most cases. If things go wrong, it is normally relatively easy to debug, find a recipe, mail it to the mothership or enter it into Godzilla and get a response from the mothership relatively quick (they really got good at that, didn't they). With windows it is a little harder, but doable for me. I know nothing about android and a little less about Linux desktop. :-)

After all that blah... Who would be interested to help test some stuff and discuss where possible problems might come from and if they are engine problems help letting the mothership know?

Excuses to all the uninterested, but if you read this far, you are either bored, or my mail was hopefully not that uninteresting after all. :-) 

All the best,

Malte



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