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Take a look at Webserver stats

Konqueror, a Unix/Linux-only browser has 1.23% marketshare and Mozilla, which is also strong on Linux has over 7%.

So I'd say 5% Linux marketshare is realistic for that site. Of course it is a developer site, but 1% to 2% overall desktop-Linux marketshare is realistic.

Things that beat any Microsoft offering are:

here
here
here
here
here
and here

And if you want to delve deeper into Answer #1:

Included when you buy a Mac:
iTunes
iMovie
Mac OS X
Quicktime

Things worth paying for (if they're your can of soup):
Final Cut Pro
FileMaker
AppleWorks

I hear complaints that the cheapest Mac is still more expensive than the cheap PC's. So what? You get what you pay for. Does the PC include a Unix-based OS that's fast and slick as hell (KDE & Gnome are neither.)? No. Does it come with a full-fledged MP3 manager/player/ripper? No. Gotta pay the Microsoft Tax if you actually want to legally convert your CD's into a digital format. Do they come with a real movie editing program? Nope, don't have that either. MS Movie Maker is a poor excuse for anything. And best of all, I don't need Microsoft ANYTHING to use my Mac! Or use my Sun workstation, either!

Here are just a few of the tools that are considered traditionally in UNIX/Linux/BSD territory that are available for Win32. In all actuality, there's enough out there to get as much of Linux running on Win32 as Win32 running under WINE.
XFree86: http://sources.redhat.com/cygwin/xfree/
KDE: http://kde-cygwin.sourceforge.net/
GTK/PHP/Libglade: http://gtk.php.net/download.php

Apache: http://www.apache.org
PHP: http://www.php.net
PHPTriad: http://www.phpgeek.com
Perl: http://www.activestate.com
Ruby: http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/ruby/downloads/ ruby-install.html
Python: http://www.python.org/download/download_windows.ht ml
TCL/TK: http://www.pconline.com/%7Eerc/tclwin.htm

MySQL: http://www.mysql.com
MySQL ODBC: http://www.mysql.com/downloads/api-myodbc.html
PostgreSQL: Included in cygwin (only works on NT)

ATT's U/WIN* Unix for Windows: http://www.research.att.com/sw/tools/uwin/
Cygwin: http://sourceware.cygnus.com/cygwin/
DJGPP: http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/
Native UNIX command-line binaries: http://www.wzw.tu-muenchen.de/~syring/win32/UnxUti ls.html

vi: http://www.cs.vu.nl/~tmgil/vi.html
Emacs: http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/voelker/ntemacs .html
OpenOffice: http://www.openoffice.org

Mozilla: http://www.mozilla.org
GIMP: http://user.sgic.fi/~tml/gimp/win32/

List of GNU software for Windows: http://www.gnusoftware.com/
And so on . . .

There's a list over at DMOZ.org of a lot of this.

Here are just a few of the tools that are considered traditionally in UNIX/Linux/BSD territory that are available for Win32. In all actuality, there's enough out there to get as much of Linux running on Win32 as Win32 running under WINE.
XFree86: http://sources.redhat.com/cygwin/xfree/
KDE: http://kde-cygwin.sourceforge.net/
GTK/PHP/Libglade: http://gtk.php.net/download.php

Apache: http://www.apache.org
PHP: http://www.php.net
PHPTriad: http://www.phpgeek.com
Perl: http://www.activestate.com
Ruby: http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/ruby/downloads/ ruby-install.html
Python: http://www.python.org/download/download_windows.ht ml
TCL/TK: http://www.pconline.com/%7Eerc/tclwin.htm

MySQL: http://www.mysql.com
MySQL ODBC: http://www.mysql.com/downloads/api-myodbc.html
PostgreSQL: Included in cygwin (only works on NT)

ATT's U/WIN* Unix for Windows: http://www.research.att.com/sw/tools/uwin/
Cygwin: http://sourceware.cygnus.com/cygwin/
DJGPP: http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/
Native UNIX command-line binaries: http://www.wzw.tu-muenchen.de/~syring/win32/UnxUti ls.html

vi: http://www.cs.vu.nl/~tmgil/vi.html
Emacs: http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/voelker/ntemacs .html
OpenOffice: http://www.openoffice.org

Mozilla: http://www.mozilla.org
GIMP: http://user.sgic.fi/~tml/gimp/win32/

List of GNU software for Windows: http://www.gnusoftware.com/
And so on . . .

There's a list over at DMOZ.org of a lot of this.

Yes, it's shame that PHP doesn't has native unicode support.
But if you use utf-8 and don't touch the strings and just pass them to the (unicode-capable) DB from the Webbrowser (or the reverse) it seem to work (at least for me using latin-1 and japanese characters).

And there is an experimental multi-byte string module

In the development todo for mySQL 4, they have a list of "Things that must be done in the real near future". Quite far down on that list I found:

"* Add support for UNICODE."

That's great, because mySQL 4 is about to be released any day now.
As a PHP developer I wanted to know if php supports unicode. This is what I found:

Strings:
"A string is series of characters. In PHP, a character is the same as a byte, that is, there are exactly 256 different characters possible. This also implies that PHP has no native support of Unicode."

• Install PHP on your IIS server.
• Convert your ASP to PHP using ASP2PHP and get it running on Windows/IIS/PHP.
• Install Apache with PHP on the Windows box. Get your site running on Windows/Apache/PHP.
• Install a new box with some securish Unix lookalike or other and move the site over.

Whose idea was it to put Windows servers on the 'net in the first place, anyway?

Cheers //Johan

• Download and install PHP for IIS on Windows.
• Convert your ASP pages to PHP (using ASP2PHP).
• Get it running on IIS.
• Replace IIS with Apache (still on Windows).
• Replace Windows with some secure Unix lookalike or other.

Cheers //Johan

Hi, and welcome to the club. I am glad that you are now considering the transition. Just to give some of my credentials: I am ungraduate at a fairly well known university, taking computer science. I also have about 3 years of summertime employment in ASP, VB, and minimal web server management.

Well now to the point. I have made the transition to linux environment about a year ago -- and I now consider myself an average user/admin. The main question in performing the transition is to ask yourself, how much unix/linux/BSD you already know. If the answer is none -- I recommend to not do an immediate transition, but instead get a separate computer, install a distro of linux, and just play with it, to get stuff figured out and working. This step will take a few weeks of devoted time. The main thing is DO NOT GIVE UP. Linux has all the features, but if you do not know where they are, stuff won't work. In which cases post questions to those who know. Or even better yet get a book. $50 will give you up front useful info on networking, and may tell you how to get the webserver running. I am using the book Using Linux, Sixth Edition SE. It has been a lifesaver, although it is oriented towards redhat, debian, and caldera versions.

Some usefel links:

RedHat Linux

Mandrake Linux

Debian

Linux Documantation Project

I recommend downloading (or purchasing) one of the distros above. The first two try to be really user friendly, and do a decent job at it. The third one is a bit more cryptic, but you will probably want that version for your real server, since it does not have a ton of annoying unnecessary flashy things, like graphical bootup. Besides the install the real diference is update management, which both redhat and mandrake do using rpm system. It is easy to figure graphical rpm. Once you get comfortable with that, consider using that book that yau bought, along with linuxdoc (the fourth link) to figure out how to get all that networking, like VPN, DNS, etc, using the configuration files -- the only good way of setting up the network.

After you figure out basic administartion, Try getting some simple pages to learn apache.

Apache web server
Perhaps a book on apache Perl and PHP programming might help. Do not actually know any specific titles. Basic idea is the same as in IIS. There is a public directory, similar to inetpub\wwwroot. where you can put the files. I believe that PHP is most similar to ASP. And since you did not use SQL server for database access, but Access, I assume that you do not need the speed of a full blown server. In this case MYSQL will do the trick. For something more significant you should check out Postgres db, or a commercial product such as db2. Learning these will take some time, but remember, these things have been written with an simplicity in mind. It just takes a little bit, to see where this simplicity is.

Well this msg is already too long. To sum it up, do not throw away your old system yet. Take time to learn linux, and in a little time you will possess the necessary skills to do transition. As for the tools that will make the transition for you, I have not heard of them, however they probably do exist. And starting somewhat anew is not always a bad thing. A lot of us hope that some version of windows will be written anew, but I doubt it will happen.

Well, good luck! The switch is not easy, but there are plenty of benefits in the long run. Do not give up, and you will see them soon.

Step 1: Learn HTML
Step 2: Learn CSS (!!!)
Step 3: Learn Graphics (GIMP, Photoshop, Paintshop etc.)

Now you have basic Webdesign knowlededge and you can choose between two ways:
1. The developer way:
Step 4: Learn Perl/PHP
Step 5: Learn SQL/databases in general
Step 6: Get better in everything...
2. The desginer way:
Step 4: Learn Flash
Step 5: Get better in graphics, video design etc.
Step 6: Buy a Mac ;)

Of course, you can try doing both ways, but in fact you will become only "master" of one of them.
X

but I'm curious as to why PHP is so popular when JSP provides a much more robust solution

PHP is not a one-fits-all type of solution. It does not provide the same infrastructure that Java solutions do, and it is not a pure OO language. However, there are some good reasons to use it, depending on your situation:

[1] Easier to learn than Java
[2] Simpler to setup than many Java solutions
[3] A great selection of extremely useful, easily accessible, built-in functions
[4] Wide selection of books that don't assume you're already an experienced engineer

The creators of PHP went to great lengths to remove as many of the needless annoyances of web development as possible. They provide a lot of ready made solutions to small, but annoying common problems. The language has bent itself to developer needs, rather than the other way around.

PHP's creators realize that people just want the damn thing work, which is even evident in the installation instructions and documentation. This philopsophy, while starlingly rare in the open source world, is probably at the core of why PHP has such a devoted following.

The strip_tags function is probably a good example of this. You give it a text string and it will remove all HTML tags contained therein. That's it. You can optionally tell it specific tags that you would like to leave in. This function is built into the language. PHP users love this. Many other languages would expect you to write a custom regex routine or go find some code somewhere to take care of it. Or you can start playing the module dependency game. These isn't the kind of stuff I want to do at 2am.

- Scott

I don't know if this really is appropriate for an SDK, but several of the online documentations for programs (ie. PHP Manual) have user provided comments which I think are usually the best part of the doc. They contain what users don't find in the normal documentation, and automatically completes your doc.

Get somebody who knows how to copyedit and knows a thing or two about programming, and pump out as much stuff as possible. Locate it centrally on a website somewhere so that anybody can access it immediately. Accept feedback for corrections, suggestions and examples.

Take a look at PHP's website (currently they have a sympathy message on their homepage, you can progress from there). It's support section is great, and many people can help themselves through it.

I don't see what all the complaints about ext3 are - there doesn't seem to be any reason about.

People like to have choice - RedHat is simply adding a lot more choice open to the public. Surely this is a good thing, is it not ?

From what I've heard, ext2 is really easy to deal with, is a delight to write low-level (such as perl or python). By including it in the distribution, RedHat are offering not only to the consumer but to the developer as well.

As it is, ext2 is widely used in other Liunx distro's, so what's the problem ? It means that if you decided to change distro's to RedHat then you'd no longer have to do a backup and reformat all your drives. No! Your old linux installation running ext2 will now be able to be read by RedHat.

Admitedly there are a few problems with ext2 - such as if you suffer from a power failure and say you have an eighty-gig drive... that's gonna take a *long* time to check. This is not good.

I just can't wait until ext3 is finally out - but who knows how long it'll take RedHat to come up with it ? Hopefully not as long as it's taken them to start supporting ext2!

See the PHP Manual's section on security as a good place to start.

Personally, I just find Python cleaner than Perl, as it has a better syntax, using whitespace to delimit rather than brackets. Also, it is a lot faster for my purposes. Anyway, now you can take the docs with you anywhere you go.

Try html_errors 0

Enjoy!

"I took a quick walk around the manual and checked out some of the examples, but it seems to me that C (or C-like languages) just aren't all that suitable for scripts. "

Gee, it's a good thing PHP doesn't look at all like C, or have stdlib like fuctions, eh?
--

"I took a quick walk around the manual and checked out some of the examples, but it seems to me that C (or C-like languages) just aren't all that suitable for scripts. "

Gee, it's a good thing PHP doesn't look at all like C, or have stdlib like fuctions, eh?
--

"I took a quick walk around the manual and checked out some of the examples, but it seems to me that C (or C-like languages) just aren't all that suitable for scripts. "

Gee, it's a good thing PHP doesn't look at all like C, or have stdlib like fuctions, eh?
--

if(strstr($HTTP_USER_AGENT, "MSIE 6.0")) {
&nbsp&nbsp echo "This page will not properly display in your browser, get a real one."
}

(If you don't know php, I think an explanation of this is still in the tutorial.)

I've gone through this situation in several discussions for mid- and large-scale operations. Your answer will somewhat depend on how much money, time, and work you want to put into this system, with the usual tradeoff of ( more dollars ) = ( less ( time + effort ) ).

For a free solution, I've found that a sendmail-based solution works quite nicely on Solaris. We ran some internal mailservers with a combination of sendmail for smtp, qpopper for pop3, apache and php for web access, and ActiveState PerlMx for mail filtering. There are many passable imapd programs that would fulfill your IMAP requirement, among other things, cyrus imapd

Don't be fooled, though; this took some elbow grease, and a little tweaking with sendmail and qpopper (mostly for the remote-administration bit; you don't want all of your customers in /etc/passwd on your server!)

If you'd prefer to just lay down a little cash to get a working solution out the door, Openwave has a very reasonable email platform or two. It seems like it supports everything you're looking for, above.

Also, don't forget that Sendmail, Inc. creates some very sophisticated sendmail-based products; it looks like Advanced Message Server may have all of the solutions you're looking for.

There are patches to use Python or Perl with AOLserver, but I don't know how well they are supported. PHP 4.05 supports "out of the box": server API versions for Apache, AOLserver, ISAPI and NSAPI.

Have a look at the DocBook/XML system. It is used by a lot of Open Source projects, including PHP and phpOpenTracker. A variety of XSL stylesheets exist, for transformation from XML to HTML, PDF or LaTeX for instance.

Why not use HTML? I've been using HTML for years for all of my documentation. It works perfectly for a cross-platform manual accessable from anywhere.

If you need powerpoint-type presentations, Flash is easy to use, fast, and readable on nearly all modern browsers. You can even generate it with PHP or PERL.

PHP is a great language, but there are a couple minor problems. While PHP is an Apache module, you can't actually write other modules in PHP.

ahem, yes you can

With any PHP-based solution, you have to hit the DB every time you want to get anything dynamic.

You must not have a clue how slashcode works, or you have never heard of database caching.

Also, psuedo-compiled versions of Perl modules are stored and re-used in Apache. PHP scripts have to be interpreted every time they're accessed. Unless, of course, you use the Zend optimizer, but it is not open source.

You may also be thinking of the Zend Cache, or the Alternative PHP Cache, which is open. You really need to check your facts before you bash on PHP. :)

---

He also got the PHP example wrong. Setting variables, escaping out with "?>", and then using a bunch of "" statements is ludicrous and wasteful.

You can just do this:

$myvar = "Some text";
echo "<html>
<title>$myvar</title>
Here is some text, and here is my string: $myvar
";

The PHP interpreter will also insert newlines in the above echo statement, since it is multiline. This is especially useful since you can pipe the resulting string through nl2br.

http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.pcre.php

Of course, strftime's got nothing on PHP's date() function... :)

Oh, and without scalar context, you get a mess ("54222018310131070") -- not to mention list context is very bad for you.

...I am the Raxis.

Actually, this sort of thing is what we need more of in computer documentation. Compare the fluid vast documentation of say, PHP, to the rigid cold nothing that is MySQL. Stories, fables, whatever... it worked in the past to convey complex ideas, and we must as a whole develop man pages for masses.

HotelNIX is my idea to have stories contributed from the public that convey complex computer programming or administrative tasks in clear, easy to relate stories. I need help with developing a submission/content management system. Anyone interested?

----

Seriously, I have been very happy with PHP. It has proven easy to maintain and code as well as a stellar performer where dynamic content is concerned. Read more at http://www.php.net.

what i can suggest, from playing around with multiple languages (jsp, perl, python, php) on FreeBSD/apache, is to use php optimized with zend's optimizer.... the speed boost is about 15%, and if apache is configured correctly, or even patched for speed, php will outperform any other similarly prepared language.

--

How can I set up a local server to test my PHP and CGI scripts [which use Sendmail and MySQL along the road]?

Apache for Windows
PHP for Apache for Windows
MySQL for Windows (which works with PHP for Apache for Windows)
I use this software daily on my Win2K machine for developing PHP for use on my Linux servers.
I wouldn't dream of using Windows as a big server - same as I wouldn't dream of using Linux as a decent desktop.

As for macs, well...

In fairness, this is moderately useful, I could run Apache/PHP locally for development work on my standard desktop,

Hrm, I've been running Apache on my windows desktop for years, it wasn't really hard, seening as how they've had a windows port available. You can getphp for windows as well.

Rate me on Picture-rate.com

You can already run Apache / PHP on windows. You can even run Perl, Python, and MySQL!

Personally, I love (in the platonic sense, you sickos!...) PHP. I'm looking forward to playing with this new stuff.

Just a few random comments/opinions on some issues that have come up here:

The "but it's not GPL!" issue seems to revolve around two things. One is that there is a clause in the license for PHP that says, to paraphrase, "if you use any of our code for something else, give us credit". This is apparently GPL-incompatible, but I don't personally have a moral problem with this. The other licensing issue is the Zend stuff, which when dealt with separate from PHP is under a different, more restrictive license (the "Zend Optimizer" which if I remember right is a separate product, is under the much-maligned QPL, apparently.

I tend to think of PHP as "PERL-lite". It's not as big or "full-featured" as PERL is, and is therefore of more limited (but more focused!) use. PHP does have what to me seems to be a very PERL-like syntax, though. Perhaps one might think of PHP as "Programming marijuana" which leads to escalation to Harder programming languages like PERL* :-). Like PERL, PHP can be worked with in either Object Oriented or standard Procedural ways (or a combination thereof), and both are similar (though I must admit I'm still slightly baffled on PERL OO - PHP doesn't use anything like bless(), for example...)

It LOOKS like "PHP-gtk" and the standard PHP will be separate projects, which is probably good, as it should keep bloat down while allowing each project to borrow relevant improvements from each other.

Mind you, I think the "bloat" issue is mostly nonexistent. The Linux Kernel itself might be considered extremely bloated...except that running "make config" "de-bloatifies" it by setting up to only compile what you need or want. PHP will almost certainly remain the same way.

Maybe now somebody will come up with a "flash authoring" tool for Linux using PHP's swf support (I've been wanting to "dabble" with flash animation, but I don't know of any linux tools for putting them together...)

Apparently, PHP-GTK gets by with linking to version 4 because GTK is released under the LGPL.

I'm surprised Richard Stallman hasn't released a blistering condemnation of the project yet.

Apparently, PHP-GTK gets by with linking to version 4 because GTK is released under the LGPL.

I'm surprised Richard Stallman hasn't released a blistering condemnation of the project yet.

Apparently, PHP-GTK gets by with linking to version 4 because GTK is released under the LGPL.

I'm surprised Richard Stallman hasn't released a blistering condemnation of the project yet.

Apparently, PHP-GTK gets by with linking to version 4 because GTK is released under the LGPL.

I'm surprised Richard Stallman hasn't released a blistering condemnation of the project yet.

Sure.

www.php.net/manual. The manual is great. You can learn everything you need to know about specific things from there. Before that, you need a basic tutorial.

A PHP page looks like this:

<html>
<title>Hello</title>
<form action=<?php print $PHP_SELF; ?>
<input name=message>
<input type=submit>
</form>
<?php
print $message;
?>

Try that. Also, to get hold of PHP, use PHP Triad (on Linux, you can probably install it from your distribution CD), a win32 installer of PHP, Apache and MySQL.

Basically:

PHP is HTML with the code embedded between blocks starting
<?php

and ending
?>

within that you put your PHP code.

For example:

<?php
print "hello";
?>
would display hello - just like perl.

Similarly, as in Perl, variables are preceded by $.

So:

<?php
$message="chese";
print "I like $message";
?>

It's convenient - all form variables get put into variables of the same name:

<form action=apage.php>
<input name=thing>
<input type=submit name=action value=Submit>
</form>

would send apage.php two variables - $action='Submit'; and $thing= whatever you typed in there.

You should investigate PHP's object-orientation functions too. Here's an example class [class omitted due to slashdot's lameness filter :-(], which should be pretty explanatory.

Anyway, start here; read here for more, as well as here. Also subscribe to the mailing list at php-general@lists.php.net for help from others.
--

Sure.

www.php.net/manual. The manual is great. You can learn everything you need to know about specific things from there. Before that, you need a basic tutorial.

A PHP page looks like this:

<html>
<title>Hello</title>
<form action=<?php print $PHP_SELF; ?>
<input name=message>
<input type=submit>
</form>
<?php
print $message;
?>

Try that. Also, to get hold of PHP, use PHP Triad (on Linux, you can probably install it from your distribution CD), a win32 installer of PHP, Apache and MySQL.

Basically:

PHP is HTML with the code embedded between blocks starting
<?php

and ending
?>

within that you put your PHP code.

For example:

<?php
print "hello";
?>
would display hello - just like perl.

Similarly, as in Perl, variables are preceded by $.

So:

<?php
$message="chese";
print "I like $message";
?>

It's convenient - all form variables get put into variables of the same name:

<form action=apage.php>
<input name=thing>
<input type=submit name=action value=Submit>
</form>

would send apage.php two variables - $action='Submit'; and $thing= whatever you typed in there.

You should investigate PHP's object-orientation functions too. Here's an example class [class omitted due to slashdot's lameness filter :-(], which should be pretty explanatory.

Anyway, start here; read here for more, as well as here. Also subscribe to the mailing list at php-general@lists.php.net for help from others.
--

Just look under "Web Development Companies" on PHP's site, or under "Some MySQL Consultants" on MySQL's site. My company has been doing (almost exclusively) PHP/MySQL website development and consulting since the spring of 1999. Thanks in part to our listings on these sites, we get a good amount of site traffic (and therefore business) from folks looking for exactly what we do best.

-Waldo

A quick search turned up this:
http://www.php.net/manual/en/features.http-auth.ph p
Which shows how to get browsers to forget, by sending a 401 status at them...

Hopefully this helps someone...

I'll admit up front that I haven't read the article - the comments already posted about it tell me that it's probably a waste of time. The theme, apparently, is that "geeks" are preventing the internet from being a spiffy, flashy experience. Obviously, that's ignorant foolishness. Not only would getting geeks out of the 'net not make it prettier, it would prevent the continued development of the "Rich Experience®" that the marketroids are pushing...:

• MNG for animated graphics
  
• PNG for still images
• Ogg Vorbis for sound and music
• Icecast for "Internet Radio"
• PHP for dynamic web page generation
• (Not to mention PERL for the same sort of thing!)
• The Infrastructure to deliver all this stuff affordably in the first place (too many links to post! OS's, servers, etc...)

And I'm certain there are plenty more examples people could add to this list...

-bp

Sure. Look at mod_perl, newer versions of PHP, and (I think) the Java-Apache project.

For those who want to find out more about this, see the SWF info on PHP's site, or grab a copy of libswf (aka Flash Synthisesizer.)

-Waldo

http://www.php.net/manual/ref.swf.php.

also check out swift-generator - also perl based. Quite possibly the coolest .swf based tool of all.

- daniel

For a new generation of product we want to use a "thin" browser based interface. We can generate most of the pages on the server using html and php to generate reports and static graphics but we are going to need some live data from the server presented as changing statistics and graphs with a little interactivity. The data comes from a network connection to the server.

While share many doubts about java, particularly that because we want people to be able to connect to the server from any machine with a reasonably modern browser installed we are going to have to limit ourself to the subset of java that works on most browsers. I really don't see any other solution to this other than proving java applets embedded in a web page to link to our server and draw the graphics.

What other technologies could I use?

Did anyone else think he was a bit confused saying that because embedded devices must run unchanged for years, java is unsuitable because it changes all the time. It doesn't cause your software to change unless you go and change it