[OT] Which IDE / Editor do you use?

[H. S. Teoh]

On Sat, Sep 14, 2013 at 12:09:35AM +0200, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:
> On Friday, 13 September 2013 at 21:45:06 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> >Xterm has a 256-color mode that can be used for subtler
> 
> You can do a palette swap in hardware text mode too (fiddling the
> vga palette registers, I think it is the same as in mode 13h but
> it's been a looooong time since I've played with that), the linux
> console in vga text mode (see man console_codes(4)), and in Windows
> console:
> http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms686039%28v=vs.85%29.aspx
> 
> 
> Perhaps bad practice to change that stuff, at least not without
> changing it back when you're done, but it is doable.
> 
> 
> Actually, my biggest problem with linux is how terrible the
> operating system is compared to DOS and Windows. I'm not even
> kidding, the unix terminal debacle sucks (maybe good when you had
> various hardware, but it is weak next to what the PC hardware
> offers), the available system facilities suck (Win32 is plenty
> usable and reliably there! Even on linux, using a Windows .exe tends
> to work better than using a linux binary - exe's just work there
> thanks to wine, whereas linux binaries always have some
> incompatibility).

Really?  The only time I've actually had trouble with linux binaries is
when there's a problem with libc upgrades (the most disastrous one being
the libc5 -> libc6 upgrade, as I remember it). On Windows, when
installing stuff I used to always get messages like "this installer
wants to overwrite the file C:\\windows\system\asdf1234.dll, proceed
(y/n)?" -- which totally freaks me out. I mean, I don't even know what
on earth that file is supposed to do, and to top it off it's often the
same few files that every other installer and his neighbour's download
utility wants to overwrite for no discernible reason. They don't call it
"DLL hell" for no reason, I suppose. And then once I make the choice
just by pure blind guessing, the installation just barges onward with no
indication whatsoever as to whether it actually worked, or some subtle
problem was introduced to the system. Needless to say, I find myself
reformatting and reinstalling windows all the time, which I suspect is
due to these kinds of dependency problems. (But TBH, the last time I
touched windows in any serious way was almost 15 years ago, so none of
the above may be true anymore.)

Having said that, though, linux *is* more geared to building from source
than anything else, so downloading random "linux" binaries tends to not
work very well. Manually downloading binaries is a windows-centric
concept, methinks. It works OK when there's only a small number of
possible OS configurations in Windows (esp. with MS's obsession with
backward-compatibility), but linux's customizability means you're
dealing with an exponential number of mutually-incompatible OS
configurations -- binary compatibility goes out the window right there.

Building from source, OTOH, tends to work pretty well, if you can get
the thing to compile at all. (Thanks to apt-get, this is relatively
painless nowadays, once you figure out which libraries are needed... I
remember the early days before apt was born. It was a nightmare chasing
down all those package dependencies *transitively*, esp. when I had to
use sneakernet to download packages from my school's network due to a
2400 baud internet connection at home -- impractical for downloading big
source packages.) Nowadays, with people finally learning how to handle
.so versioning and ABI compatibility properly, these kinds of problems
are no longer a big issue for me, as long as I can build from source.
Binary distribution is still a royal pain, though. IMO it *inherently*
doesn't work very well in the linux ecosystem, which is definitely more
favorable towards open source software.


> Eh I'm getting off topic.

Isn't this thread already [OT]? ;-)


T

-- 
Obviously, some things aren't very obvious.