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Pardon me, i run a pretty customized OS and setup takes about 1h. From a blank disk that is. Admittedly i've spend quite a bit of time refining it to the point where it's just install minimal OS, install this, install that, copy scripts, copy config, go.
Either that or you know what you are doing. I know my setup. It's so mind numbingly simple that if anything breaks it's no real problem. The big desktop environments on the other hand... At the point you'll really have to deal with any of the underlying complexity all i can say is: Have fun and most importantly time.
Maybe but that's not the point I was talking about. Let's have a look at Alpine which I like and which is not very exotic. But still, suddenly there's another package management system plus lots and lots of packages that we take for granted with .rpm or .deb distros are not available. Some of those may be compilers for exotic languages like Ocaml or Crystal or even for plain and presumably omnipresent FreePascal. And you can't just download and build them yourself because Alpine is musl based.
Plus google for something Ubuntu related and you get a massive amount of answers. Try the same question but Alpine related and you might end up empty handed.
And well noted that's not theory. When I tried to build my benchmark I expected no problems as C and FreePascal are supposed to be available everywhere. Well, no, they aren't (at all or in quite different versions only). Then the Posix "standard" alone is everything but a standard and lots of things aree done quite differently on different Unices or even linux distros. And again for some documentation, forums etc. is plenty while for others it's meager. Building vpsbench for linux was easy but linux is a quite weird player in terms of standards, FreeBSD was quite easy too plus more standards conforming, OpenBSD decided to change the DNS resolution interface(!), and NetBSD seems to not even have a FreePascal package and is generally let's call it "quite different from the others". And of course documentation, forums etc. are also quite different at least in terms of quantity.
I have my systems (Plural) installed and up and running too in less than one hour but to get at that point I have grown years and years of experience and quite some scripts. That's what I call costs and I'm confident you weren't born as Unix guru either.
Also keep in mind that users like you or me have quite different needs from some clicky clicky Ubuntu user. For those running a graphical Ubuntu installer and then having everything they need installed readily available is "cheap" much cheaper than say Alpine. Actually based on bad experience I do advise even most "admins" at clients to use Mint because I've wasted lots of time solving the problems that arise and bite me when I recommended say Slack or a BSD. Part of that pain was that I couldn't simply point them to some idiot proof forum. With Mint I can. Cheap.
Most importantly though my work is what I'm interested in. Learning lots and lots about this or that OS or distro can easily turn into wasting time and energy. I'm not demanding the ease of Ubuntu and actually quite strongly dislike it but at the end of the day I'm asked to and payed for producing code and not for mucking around with OS weirdnesses. Building clang myself (just recently did it again) because it's necessary for some development tool is worth my time but to build it because some distro or BSD doesn't have it as a package or only as an old one is not worth my time but simply a pita.
That's MY point of view. Others may have different ones and I accept those as valid for them. I'm not preaching here but just telling my view.
Record a love story movie about it.
OK, i get where you are coming from. I'd still argue that if a person chooses a certain system there have to be reasons for it. One of them probably being that they can handle it. Choosing a system for productive work i know next to nothing about and that will slow me down in any considerable way seems absurd. Sure i might toy around with it on the side and see if i can get a handle on it but before that no way.
Sure the availability of packages is something to factor in. None of the indie distros will even come close the massive pools of Debian or Redhat. How that plays out is something i'd evaluate while toying around. Also calling FreePascal omnipresent is a bit of a stretch. Sure, from what i hear in your field it is but outside of it if people even know Pascal they probably think it died together with the 80s.
Not sure where the big problem is with building on musl based systems. I build a couple things against it now and then (admittedly linked statically on a non musl distro) and apart from some quirks with libtool i didn't notice anything to bad. I figure it's going to be even more straight forward on a system that's actually based on musl. Still i don't like compiling stuff and would avoid it if possible.
Well, alpine has a manual i guess (which may or may not be all that great at explaining it's concepts). Besides, seriously, most problems really come down to distro agnostic questions unless you want to be spoonfed. I often get useful information from Arch or Gentoo centered sites and i am not using anything even close.
Besides all that information on mainstream distributions out there didn't just randomly materialize (not even getting into quality vs. quantity here). Usually it is because someone had a problem, couldn't solve it and asked. So why not do the world a favor and get on a forum, mailinglist or even be the nice guy(tm) that debugs that problem and posts how to solve it. I mean one is using the distro in question for a reason after all and it cost nothing so why not give back at least something? It's not an instant solution but if you value your distro of choice it's the right thing to do.
Well, about FreePascal see above but C? Yeah there are a couple different compilers but i am seriously curious as to what distros don't supply gcc in some form or at least something that works as a drop in replacement. Slightly offtopic: Any reason for not just building a static binary?
While i don't disagree that there is quite a bit of variation i don't necessarily see it as a bad thing. Yeah, it's going to take a couple ifdefs and some extra code paths if you really want to be cross OS but so what?
Agreed but those costs are totally worth it in my opinion.
Interesting i've recommended Mint to non techie users for some time too but more less moved to going for Debian/Devuan + Xfce which while i get complaints about it being simplicistic seems to have lowered the rate of broken systems. I'd feel a bit bad (don't get me wrong i fully understand you here) about sending people to some large distro forum. Sure there is tons of advice but then lots of it is just bad.
I don't really have an answer to the problem though. Imo in general Unix and end user simply doesn't mix all that well or at least has little advantage over Windows in terms of problems. In the end i am toying with the idea of building a more user friendly version of my own desktop but that is something i really can't justify on a cost/use level. Still it would be nice to have something i could actually recommend without having second thoughts. A lot of end user really don't care about bling bling but rather stability and productivity. Still they don't want to deal with a terminal.
This supposed ease of Ubuntu comes at a huge cost itself but i guess you know that.
I guess those distros would make a bad choice for you then. In terms of BSD package is a bit confusing though. Are we talking port here, package or even both?
Sure, in the end it always comes down to personal preference.
OK, i get where you are coming from. I'd still argue that if a person chooses a certain system there have to be reasons for it. One of them probably being that they can handle it. Choosing a system for productive work i know next to nothing about and that will slow me down in any considerable way seems absurd. Sure i might toy around with it on the side and see if i can get a handle on it but before that no way.
Sure the availability of packages is something to factor in. None of the indie distros will even come close the massive pools of Debian or Redhat. How that plays out is something i'd evaluate while toying around. Also calling FreePascal omnipresent is a bit of a stretch. Sure, from what i hear in your field it is but outside of it if people even know Pascal they probably think it died together with the 80s.
Not sure where the big problem is with building on musl based systems. I build a couple things against it now and then (admittedly linked statically on a non musl distro) and apart from some quirks with libtool i didn't notice anything to bad. I figure it's going to be even more straight forward on a system that's actually based on musl. Still i don't like compiling stuff and would avoid it if possible.
Well, alpine has a manual i guess (which may or may not be all that great at explaining it's concepts). Besides, seriously, most problems really come down to distro agnostic questions unless you want to be spoonfed. I often get useful information from Arch or Gentoo centered sites and i am not using anything even close.
Besides all that information on mainstream distributions out there didn't just randomly materialize (not even getting into quality vs. quantity here). Usually it is because someone had a problem, couldn't solve it and asked. So why not do the world a favor and get on a forum, mailinglist or even be the nice guy(tm) that debugs that problem and posts how to solve it. I mean one is using the distro in question for a reason after all and it cost nothing so why not give back at least something? It's not an instant solution but if you value your distro of choice it's the right thing to do.
Well, about FreePascal see above but C? Yeah there are a couple different compilers but i am seriously curious as to what distros don't supply gcc in some form or at least something that works as a drop in replacement. Slightly offtopic: Any reason for not just building a static binary?
While i don't disagree that there is quite a bit of variation i don't necessarily see it as a bad thing. Yeah, it's going to take a couple ifdefs and some extra code paths if you really want to be cross OS but so what?
Agreed but those costs are totally worth it in my opinion.
Interesting i've recommended Mint to non techie users for some time too but more less moved to going for Debian/Devuan + Xfce which while i get complaints about it being simplicistic seems to have lowered the rate of broken systems. I'd feel a bit bad (don't get me wrong i fully understand you here) about sending people to some large distro forum. Sure there is tons of advice but then lots of it is just bad.
I don't really have an answer to the problem though. Imo in general Unix and end user simply doesn't mix all that well or at least has little advantage over Windows in terms of problems. In the end i am toying with the idea of building a more user friendly version of my own desktop but that is something i really can't justify on a cost/use level. Still it would be nice to have something i could actually recommend without having second thoughts. A lot of end user really don't care about bling bling but rather stability and productivity. Still they don't want to deal with a terminal.
This supposed ease of Ubuntu comes at a huge cost itself but i guess you know that.
I guess those distros would make a bad choice for you then. In terms of BSD package is a bit confusing though. Are we talking port here, package or even both?
Sure, in the end it always comes down to personal preference.
Well, I guess I need to create my own better version of github now...
Microsoft: the driving force behind web innovation everywhere.
Oh well... now is the time to say "goodbyes", later it may be too late.
Goodbye Github, it was great while it lasted.
FreePascal IS quite omnipresent. For one it's meant to be cross platform plus there's still plenty Delphi guys out there plus it was designed with cross platform in mind. And yes, of course I judge from my field.
No, there are quite massive differences. A lot of source code and certainly in my field has certain expectations wrt compiler switches, pragmas, attributes etc. Often "just a C compiler" won't do and you need a specific version range and sometimes even a specific compiler.
Look at the error distributions. Cross platform #ifdefs are fertile grounds for problems. Plus it's not just that linux has something #define 0x1234abcd while some BSD has it #define abcd1234. Not so rarely the whole logic and structure is different.
Both but primarly packages although I myself prefer to build from ports.
Not in my case. My choice is and must be defined by the tools I need. For the average developer that's no problem because gcc or clang and jdk or lua or whatever they use is available pretty much everywhere. I need quite some quite special tools which have a weird and complex set of requirements and interdependencies that I simply can't get on say OpenBSD no matter how much I like it. For that I need among other things a non KDE desktop but QT 3 and 5, Ocaml bot not the one the distro offers clang first distro installed the built then distro deinstalled and more fun like that.
That whole zoo is complex enough. I did not have the freedom to choose whatever I please and I can not afford to unnecessarily waste time on reaching expert level on every OS I have to work with or develop for.
But again that's MY situation. Others almost certainly have different situations and probably more freedom of choice.
Yeah, i remember Delphi being quite popular at some point. Must have been around 2000. Still i can't even remember when was the last time stumbled upon some code written in Pascal or know any general use application written in it. Mind you i have written Pascal myself somewhere during the dark ages and i am intrigued to give it another try but i guess even 10-20 years ago the average computer science student hasn't heard anything about it besides maybe that it's a programming language and that it's old.
OK, i get what you mean. I don't see how overly problematic (not going to call it bad as i guess there is actual reasons for being so extremely specific) code would be something that can be reasonable expected to be well handled on a general basis though.
Not sure what you mean by error distributions, sorry. While i a agree that ifdefs aren't something to be desired they are just a fact which hasn't stopped people from writing solid code as far as i know. Also, sure you are not always going to get away with swapping some bits and how you tackle it is up to you. Reducing the amount of alternate code paths to a bare minimum is part of the fun isn't it? I don't know what exactly you are doing but i seriously can't envision you rewriting pages and pages of code.
I see.
Well, i'd say your preference is pretty much influenced by your special requirements. You would'nt prefer something that'll make your life painful, would you?
Agreed.
It's about in what kind of code errors typically are to be found more or less frequently. Cross plattform #ifxxx have a clearly above average share of errors. Also keep in mind that as I said quite often it's not as simple and short as in my example but there are long stretches of code inside.
I see but i am unsure why cross platform precompiler use would be more prone to errors than precompiler use in general. I have a feeling the average programmer simply avoids using the precompiler as far as possible.
No offense, again i don't know what you are doing, but regularly splitting out large code parts due to cross platform differnces between unices has me wonder if there wasn't a more flexible approach that could have been chosen. I am not even saying it should never happen but quite often? Imo at that point it should at least be isolated to a function and not left to bloat the originating place even further.
I'll mention here OSDN as an alternative.
_OSDN is a free-of-charge service for open source software developers. We offer SVN/Git/Mercurial/Bazaar/CVS repository, mailing list, bug tracking system, bulletin board and forum, web site hosting, release file download service, permanent file archive, complete backup, shell environment and environment that allows easy and integral projects management of these services run on web. _