ssh1 vs. ssh2 vs. openssh vs. telnet over ssl
on
SSH vs SSL/Telnet
·
· Score: 2
i'm not a security expert, but i have had ample opportunity to ponder this and related questions. my (admittedly basic) research has led me to these conclusions.
ssh 1.x - this is the most common ssh implementation, and when people say "ssh" this is most often what they mean. ssh 1.x clients are common, exist for most major platforms, many are very good, and some are even free.
ssh 2.x - fixes a lot of the bugs in ssh 1.x, adds some nifty new features (like a secure ftp daemon), but i have never seen a functional ssh2 implementation. i beleive it is because of both the more stringent licensing than ssh 1.x and the fact that ssh 1.x is firmly entrenched.
openssh uses the ssh 1.x protocols, and is completely compatible with ssh 1.x. you should not notice the difference between the two in regular usage.
telnet over ssl - the actual telnet connection is still sending passwords in plaintext, and the ssl connection has to be made in a separate step.
some random notes:
ssh (1.x and 2.x) allow for RSA authentication, where a public/provate keypair are used for authentication rather than passwords. clients can be set up to do authentication automatically using this method from specific hosts, based on signatures. this makes ssh a more attractive option for automated, secure transactions such as regular (up|down)ploads and updates. another useful feature of this type of authentication (as opposed to password authentication) is that other users can be given access to the ssh-protected machine, without having to distribute passwords and accounts, from certain controlled environments.
ssh 1.x and ssh 2.x are incompatible. if you have ssh1 installed when you install ssh2, the ssh2 client will give you the option to fall back to ssh1 if the server you are connecting to is ssh1. without ssh1, however, ssh2 will complain and die. so, it seems that ssh2 only is not the way to go.
i haven't used openssh, but it seems like a wonderful alternative to ssh. ssh has licensing issues which make it less attractive if you are a commercial entity, but free for non-commercial and educational use (use for a church's web server would probably qualify as non-commercial).
the thing that interested me was that the poll ("Should e-signatures be legal signatures") was slpit 54/46 Yes/No when I voted. what does this indicate? lack of trust in digital signatures? lack of understanding? or does just no one care enough to be bothered?
That worthless side panel is still there, and I still see no way to turn it off.
view -> sidebar (boolean toggle)
t crashed twice after I started it. First, I went to www.logitech.com and it crashed in necko.dll. Restarted, went to www.logitech.com and crashed in mscvrt.dll. Restarted, went to www.logitech.com and it worked fine.
that's funny, i had no problems with {necko,mscvrt}.dll... i did get this:
JavaScript Error: TypeError: treeitem.getAttribute is not a function URL: chrome://related/content/related-panel.js LineNo: 216
Segmentation fault (core dumped).
My Logitech wheel mouse doesn't scroll (even after the latest drivers downloaded from Logitech)
also doesn't work with linux (Cordless Wheelman Mouse).
I would like to see just a little bit less coverage of these patent infringement/privacy type news posts and get a little more of the science and programming content we used to get.
I agree--perhaps the patent infringement stuff could be its own section? there's definitely enough of it.
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In my view, the logs themselves aren't as important as the information they contain. Therefore, use a comprehensive analysis tool, whether one of the commercial tools, a free one written in Perl, or write your own, and extract the relevant information, and then remove your logs.
Tape backups do indeed work well here, but not all logs entries are created equal. If your site is very image-heavy, you probably don't want to keep the thousands of entries for each inline jpeg; you want the records of the page views.
Sites running Apache/mod_perl (or sites where the administrator is not afraid of Apache and their C compiler) can modify Apache so that it logs only what you want. A PerlLogHandler under mod_perl with return DONE if $r->content_type =~/image/ at the top will save you hundreds, if not thousands, of (possibly useless) log entries in your logs files. On the other hand, a 30 Gig tape will hold years worth of bzipped logfiles...
If I want to package a bunch of GPL software onto a CD and sell that CD, then that's legal, isn't it? (as long as I include the source)
Of course it's legal, and lots of companies do it (The Written Word does only that). But in actuality, the GPL says you have to make the source code available for free or, at most, for the cost of the media on which is is given to you, i.e., the source code must be available upon request.
Although many people point to the ease of writing Perl as the primary reason it is on top for CGI programming, there are many other reasons. I would imagine that topping this list is the fact that more people know and use Perl regularly than most other languages, since it is such a flexible and portable language; when people start writing CGI scripts, Perl is a natural for them.
Perl has tons of freely available libraries and modules that encapsulate almost every bit of functionality that you could ever want. Anything that takes more than a few lines of code has probably been done and encapsulated before. You just need to get it (CPAN).
Perl is a very expressive language, more so than most other languages I've seen or used. Because of this, people get very attached to Perl and what it can do.
Perl has better support for regular expressions, parsing, and string manipulation than any other language or tool in existance. This becomes extrememly important when converting data on the fly, from text files, other formats (such as XML), from databases, or from any other thing you can think of. Grabbing raw data and parameters from the URLs and from POSTed scripts is easier in Perl than in most other languages, due to this support.
What people usually bring up as downside to using Perl as a CGI language are not specific to Perl, they're specific to CGI. "Perl is a huge executable," they say, "and it is expensive to run a Perl script." But most of the overhead comes from the webserver forking a process, not from Perl itself. Yes, Perl scripts can become bogged down with tons of modules and libraries, but so can any language that has the capability to use libraries. As far as being a huge executable, take a look at the binaries produced by some of the Microsoft Web solutions (ahem, VB, ahem) and we'll talk about huge executables. The Tcl binary is about the same size as the Perl binary, and many complex C programs end up being very large also, once you incorporate regex parsing routines, CGI libraries, and image processing libraries.
To me, this was the most interesting line of the story:
The Clinton administration is now considering the possibility of a National Nanotechnology Initiative as early as next January to set up financing and help organize diverse research activities in nanotechnology.
Not that government involvement is always a good thing, but the field can only benefit if a government with the resources of the United States decides to provide official backing. Also, it will help to lend more credibility to the field, in the eyes of Universities and other governments that might not be as convinced of the possibilities as we are.
Of course, if this happens, in a few years we'll have to listen to Al Gore tell us how he invented Nanotechnology, just like he invented the Internet.
I've used some of the commercial GIS tools, and the worst aspect of most of them was the clunky interface. Why does GRASS have to have a GUI? I personally would be happier with a command line tool that could output data into different formats. One export format for a vector-based graphics displayer, one export format for a raster-based graphics displayer, one for VRML, one suitable for plotting with Gnuplot or whatever, one for importing into a database, etc.
Isn't that the Unix way? A series of small, fast, specialized tools to do something, not one huge, monolithic tool that tries to be all things to all people? If the developers of GRASS created a strong backend, with ties to SQL and customizable export capabilities, with a well-documented API and perhaps minimal Tk/GTK/Qt/whatever hooks, then GRASS would end up being a much more poweful and flexible tool.
Why bother with letter DoubleClick decide to remove their cookies? Do it yourself! In WebTechniques, Randal Schwartz wrote an Anonymizing Proxy server in Perl that can run as a console app in the background that you can use to strip out all your cookies (as he wrote it), or, with a slight modification, you can have it strip out only DoubleClicks's cookies.
Although it make take a little work, and might be considered by your co-workers as overkill, perhaps you should consider building your own management/SQL-builder/whatever tool. If you know some Perl, you can use DBI and the Oracle DBD, possibly along with Tk, to build a pretty slick interface that will perform well and do almost everything you should need it to do. Throw in GD, ImageMagick, or GIFgraph to generate some on-the-fly images to impress your boss and co-workers (they're very fast once you load them into memory), and you have the beginnings of a wonderful tool.
I'm operating on the assumption that you know exactly what you need the tool to do, since that's what it sounds like. This should be a pretty simple task (although possibly time-consuming) for someone who knows SQL and Perl.
The article seems like a pretty straightforward intro to the topic, but it reads like most introductions do: it contains a lot of useful information, but misses some pretty obvious stuff. He also seems to glaze over some of the more profound implications of nanotechnology.
The author seems to be making a huge leap--that the creation of nanobots will automatically lead to the creation of other things, such as food, energy, textiles, etc. But the creation of nanobots is only a small part; creating the rest of the stuff would be just as difficult as creating the nanobots, or else we'd be creating that stuff now (albeit more slowly than a nanobot could). Even allowing that once we perfect nanobots we could apply those techniques to synthesizing other products, each item would still likely take years to create.
The idea of using nanobots as a replacement for surgery or in conjunction with other medical practices is an interesting idea--load them up with the appropriate antibodies and send them into the body. But it also presumes that we will have the ability to fight these diseases and infections--which we don't. We still can't 100% cure or precent the common cold, and many other diseases remain uncurable. Although using nanobots as a new method of applying currently-existing medications is a good idea (perhaps a better way to do chemotherapy, or to stimulate hormone production).
The key lies in building the perfect assembler.
Can't that be said for all kinds of technology?
Bill Spence believes that all industry would disappear except software engineering and design. We'd simply design, engineer, and do a molecular model of any product we wanted, and then software could tell a nanobot how to make it.
This seems a little farteched to me. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Weren't they saying in the 60's that by the turn of the century robots would be doing all of the manual labor? Weren't there scares that factory workers would be replaced by automated workers? None of these things have come to pass... And nanobots taking over this aspect of our lives is probably in the same vein.
Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age relies upon nanobots very heavily throughout the story, and he does it very well. I would recommend that book as a fictional introduction to nanotechnology for anyone who finds technical articles too try (and have recommended it in the past).
Sporum is one of free web-based dicussion board software package available on the internet. What sets the Sporum apart from other online bulletin board systems is its unique interface, extensive administrative features, and easy installation procedure. You can read through the features here and check out our demo site to see the many ways which Sporum has been implemented.
Sporum is at version 1.2b3 and is definitely worth the time to download and install it.
It is truly a mistake in perception to attribute human behavioural characteristics such as "caring" to a corporate machine. . . But rest assured that every action taken by the CORPORATION is carefully weighed and executed based on its short and long run potential impact on that all-powerful share price, and you should keep this in mind as you evaluate a company's behaviour.
Yes, very cynical indeed... but very true, unfortunately. While I also believe that there are people at RedHat who believe in what they're doing, they are in many selling linux down the river. It is extremely difficult to maintain your integrity while selling it (your integrity, that is).
For too many newcomers to linux, RedHat == Linux. Is this a good thing? Well, no. But, perhaps more importantly, is this a bad thing? Well, not necessarily. But maybe.
A year ago, we were saying that everything and anything that puts the name Linux out there into the popular media and "technical" press is a Good Thing -- there's no such thing as bad publicity. But, as one poster mentioned, RedHat is rapidly becoming the Microsoft of Linux -- in the sense of being the most well-known and arguably the most popular (meaning RedHat is the version that non-technical people know and are most familiar with). An example: I was talking with a tech support guy who worked at one of the major universities here in Boston (ahem, Harvard, ahem), and he mentioned that they were starting to use Linux on some of their servers. Great, I said; which distribution? He looked at me as if I had asked him the stupidest question in the world, and said "6.0, of course."
To sum up -- while RedHat has done a great job of positioning Linux as a "corporate" solution, they have done it by becoming a Corporation themselves. And, as the previous poster wrote, as a corporation, they have more to worry about now -- shareholders, stock prices, turning a profit, and positioning themselves as a viable company. To assume that these guys can still maintain the kind of commitment to the Linux community, the FSF, and individual programmers/Linux users like me is perhaps a little naive. This is not your father's RedHat.
I have a dual-boot system at my house that runs Windows 95 and Linux. My wife uses Windows, and I avoid whenever I can; sometimes, however, she's using the machine and I need to check an email. I use Netscape's Messenger client, since it is cross platform, and I get around the multiple copies thing by mounting my FAT partition as/windows, and nfs-mounting the Communicator mail directory under my home directory on Linux (so/windows/program files/netscape/communicator/users/darren/mail maps to/home/darren/nsmail).
I am right now testing a new kernel (2.2.12, upgrade from 2.2.5), and I just used make bzImage on the recommendation of a coworker. He was having similar problems using make zimage, and make bzImage worked for him. I would give that a try.
Also, rather than compiling everything you are unsure of as modules, take the time to really check all your hardware and compile only exactly what you need into your kernel. This new kernel is 400K or so, with no modules (I don't have a network card but I do have a sound card and SCSI drives).
I'm a little unclear on what this app will do/be -- is it a server application or a client application?
Writing generic servers are very difficult, since servers have a greater need to be optimized than clients, and optimization is necessarily a function of the specific platform.
Writing a multi-platform client is simpler. The stock answer nowadays is to make it web-based, and then concentrate on the server end, where you would use (for example) a Java-based application server. I would say, in general, that one of the cross-platform scripting languages is going to be your best bet. Perl, Tcl, and Python are all multi-platform (*nix, Win32, and Mac (Perl, possibly the other two)), and all support Tk bindings, so you can make your application graphical. Python has a C-like syntax, so users of C, C++, and Java should pick it up pretty quickly. Same for Perl. Tcl has its own syntax, but it is not difficult for a trained programmer to learn.
However, if you are looking to create code that can be compiled into executables for multiple platforms from one code-base, I think your best option is going to be Java. Sure, it's slow (for now), and there are implementation issues between platforms, but porting a Java application from one platform to another is still hugely more simple than porting a C app (I'm assuming Win32 to Unix or a similar port). With the new grahpical libraries (Swing and such) you can create much more sophisticated GUI's than you can with Tk. And, of course, you can also create command-line/text-based apps with Java.
My personal recommendation? Use Perl. The Perl interpreter is fast and extrememly powerful. Unless you're writing something that has to interact with a server in real-time, the startup/compilation phase of Perl scripts is unimportant--but, of course, once the script is loaded, it runs at the speed of the computer.
The LDP is one of the best projects out there, and definitely one of the most useful. Did anyone else get their start with Linux and Slackware (1.2 kernel!) from Running Linux, like I did? I remember it well--my brother had a copy in his room, and it looked interesting. I had never heard of Linux, but had been using Unix for a while, so I tried it out, and loved it. Couldn't get it to connect to my ISP though... until I read the PPP Howto from the LDP
Even in this day and age where Linux books are coming out of every publishing house, the LDP is still the first place I go for information. Thanks to Matt for getting it started and thanks to everyone who has helped make the LDP what it is.
This is great. Two of the neatest technologies to come out in the last few years brought together. Quick, give them a prize, before Microsoft steals the idea, incorporates it into Win2K, and ruins it!
Slashdot Mirror
i'm not a security expert, but i have had ample opportunity to ponder this and related questions. my (admittedly basic) research has led me to these conclusions.
some random notes:
the thing that interested me was that the poll ("Should e-signatures be legal signatures") was slpit 54/46 Yes/No when I voted. what does this indicate? lack of trust in digital signatures? lack of understanding? or does just no one care enough to be bothered?
I like the ability to put content-boxes on both sides.
i think i missed this... where is this option?
view -> sidebar (boolean toggle)
that's funny, i had no problems with {necko,mscvrt}.dll... i did get this:
JavaScript Error: TypeError: treeitem.getAttribute is not a functionURL: chrome://related/content/related-panel.js
LineNo: 216
Segmentation fault (core dumped).
also doesn't work with linux (Cordless Wheelman Mouse).
I would like to see just a little bit less coverage of these patent infringement/privacy type news posts and get a little more of the science and programming content we used to get.
I agree--perhaps the patent infringement stuff could be its own section? there's definitely enough of it.
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in your spare time, come up with a great web site that generates thousand of hits every day and just wait for Andover.net to buy you out.
In my view, the logs themselves aren't as important as the information they contain. Therefore, use a comprehensive analysis tool, whether one of the commercial tools, a free one written in Perl, or write your own, and extract the relevant information, and then remove your logs.
Tape backups do indeed work well here, but not all logs entries are created equal. If your site is very image-heavy, you probably don't want to keep the thousands of entries for each inline jpeg; you want the records of the page views.
Sites running Apache/mod_perl (or sites where the administrator is not afraid of Apache and their C compiler) can modify Apache so that it logs only what you want. A PerlLogHandler under mod_perl with return DONE if $r->content_type =~ /image/ at the top will save you hundreds, if not thousands, of (possibly useless) log entries in your logs files. On the other hand, a 30 Gig tape will hold years worth of bzipped logfiles...
darren
If I want to package a bunch of GPL software onto a CD and sell that CD, then that's legal, isn't it? (as long as I include the source)
Of course it's legal, and lots of companies do it (The Written Word does only that). But in actuality, the GPL says you have to make the source code available for free or, at most, for the cost of the media on which is is given to you, i.e., the source code must be available upon request.
darren
Although many people point to the ease of writing Perl as the primary reason it is on top for CGI programming, there are many other reasons. I would imagine that topping this list is the fact that more people know and use Perl regularly than most other languages, since it is such a flexible and portable language; when people start writing CGI scripts, Perl is a natural for them.
Perl has tons of freely available libraries and modules that encapsulate almost every bit of functionality that you could ever want. Anything that takes more than a few lines of code has probably been done and encapsulated before. You just need to get it (CPAN).
Perl is a very expressive language, more so than most other languages I've seen or used. Because of this, people get very attached to Perl and what it can do.
Perl has better support for regular expressions, parsing, and string manipulation than any other language or tool in existance. This becomes extrememly important when converting data on the fly, from text files, other formats (such as XML), from databases, or from any other thing you can think of. Grabbing raw data and parameters from the URLs and from POSTed scripts is easier in Perl than in most other languages, due to this support.
What people usually bring up as downside to using Perl as a CGI language are not specific to Perl, they're specific to CGI. "Perl is a huge executable," they say, "and it is expensive to run a Perl script." But most of the overhead comes from the webserver forking a process, not from Perl itself. Yes, Perl scripts can become bogged down with tons of modules and libraries, but so can any language that has the capability to use libraries. As far as being a huge executable, take a look at the binaries produced by some of the Microsoft Web solutions (ahem, VB, ahem) and we'll talk about huge executables. The Tcl binary is about the same size as the Perl binary, and many complex C programs end up being very large also, once you incorporate regex parsing routines, CGI libraries, and image processing libraries.
darren
To me, this was the most interesting line of the story:
The Clinton administration is now considering the possibility of a National Nanotechnology Initiative as early as next January to set up financing and help organize diverse research activities in nanotechnology.
Not that government involvement is always a good thing, but the field can only benefit if a government with the resources of the United States decides to provide official backing. Also, it will help to lend more credibility to the field, in the eyes of Universities and other governments that might not be as convinced of the possibilities as we are.
Of course, if this happens, in a few years we'll have to listen to Al Gore tell us how he invented Nanotechnology, just like he invented the Internet.
darren
I've used some of the commercial GIS tools, and the worst aspect of most of them was the clunky interface. Why does GRASS have to have a GUI? I personally would be happier with a command line tool that could output data into different formats. One export format for a vector-based graphics displayer, one export format for a raster-based graphics displayer, one for VRML, one suitable for plotting with Gnuplot or whatever, one for importing into a database, etc.
Isn't that the Unix way? A series of small, fast, specialized tools to do something, not one huge, monolithic tool that tries to be all things to all people? If the developers of GRASS created a strong backend, with ties to SQL and customizable export capabilities, with a well-documented API and perhaps minimal Tk/GTK/Qt/whatever hooks, then GRASS would end up being a much more poweful and flexible tool.
darren
Why bother with letter DoubleClick decide to remove their cookies? Do it yourself! In WebTechniques, Randal Schwartz wrote an Anonymizing Proxy server in Perl that can run as a console app in the background that you can use to strip out all your cookies (as he wrote it), or, with a slight modification, you can have it strip out only DoubleClicks's cookies.
The original column is at http://www.stonehenge.com /merlyn/WebTechniques/col11.html (code here), and he updated it (a "Preforking, compressing proxy" (code)) last February. He also wrote a "Cookie Jar" (code here) application that can be used for the same purpose.
They all run on *nix, of course, but I have gotten the original proxy server running on a Win95 box and on WinNT boxes using ActivePerl.
Check it out. Take control for yourself--don't rely on their ridiculous "opt-out" option. Fight back.
darren
Although it make take a little work, and might be considered by your co-workers as overkill, perhaps you should consider building your own management/SQL-builder/whatever tool. If you know some Perl, you can use DBI and the Oracle DBD, possibly along with Tk, to build a pretty slick interface that will perform well and do almost everything you should need it to do. Throw in GD, ImageMagick, or GIFgraph to generate some on-the-fly images to impress your boss and co-workers (they're very fast once you load them into memory), and you have the beginnings of a wonderful tool.
I'm operating on the assumption that you know exactly what you need the tool to do, since that's what it sounds like. This should be a pretty simple task (although possibly time-consuming) for someone who knows SQL and Perl.
Just a thought.
darren
The article seems like a pretty straightforward intro to the topic, but it reads like most introductions do: it contains a lot of useful information, but misses some pretty obvious stuff. He also seems to glaze over some of the more profound implications of nanotechnology.
The author seems to be making a huge leap--that the creation of nanobots will automatically lead to the creation of other things, such as food, energy, textiles, etc. But the creation of nanobots is only a small part; creating the rest of the stuff would be just as difficult as creating the nanobots, or else we'd be creating that stuff now (albeit more slowly than a nanobot could). Even allowing that once we perfect nanobots we could apply those techniques to synthesizing other products, each item would still likely take years to create.
The idea of using nanobots as a replacement for surgery or in conjunction with other medical practices is an interesting idea--load them up with the appropriate antibodies and send them into the body. But it also presumes that we will have the ability to fight these diseases and infections--which we don't. We still can't 100% cure or precent the common cold, and many other diseases remain uncurable. Although using nanobots as a new method of applying currently-existing medications is a good idea (perhaps a better way to do chemotherapy, or to stimulate hormone production).
Can't that be said for all kinds of technology?
This seems a little farteched to me. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Weren't they saying in the 60's that by the turn of the century robots would be doing all of the manual labor? Weren't there scares that factory workers would be replaced by automated workers? None of these things have come to pass... And nanobots taking over this aspect of our lives is probably in the same vein.
Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age relies upon nanobots very heavily throughout the story, and he does it very well. I would recommend that book as a fictional introduction to nanotechnology for anyone who finds technical articles too try (and have recommended it in the past).
darrenThere is a great set of Perl scripts called Sporum, available at http://www.smallpig.net/sporum/. From the Sporum web site:
Sporum is one of free web-based dicussion board software package available on the internet. What sets the Sporum apart from other online bulletin board systems is its unique interface, extensive administrative features, and easy installation procedure. You can read through the features here and check out our demo site to see the many ways which Sporum has been implemented.
Sporum is at version 1.2b3 and is definitely worth the time to download and install it.
darren
Yes, very cynical indeed... but very true, unfortunately. While I also believe that there are people at RedHat who believe in what they're doing, they are in many selling linux down the river. It is extremely difficult to maintain your integrity while selling it (your integrity, that is).
For too many newcomers to linux, RedHat == Linux. Is this a good thing? Well, no. But, perhaps more importantly, is this a bad thing? Well, not necessarily. But maybe.
A year ago, we were saying that everything and anything that puts the name Linux out there into the popular media and "technical" press is a Good Thing -- there's no such thing as bad publicity. But, as one poster mentioned, RedHat is rapidly becoming the Microsoft of Linux -- in the sense of being the most well-known and arguably the most popular (meaning RedHat is the version that non-technical people know and are most familiar with). An example: I was talking with a tech support guy who worked at one of the major universities here in Boston (ahem, Harvard, ahem), and he mentioned that they were starting to use Linux on some of their servers. Great, I said; which distribution? He looked at me as if I had asked him the stupidest question in the world, and said "6.0, of course."
To sum up -- while RedHat has done a great job of positioning Linux as a "corporate" solution, they have done it by becoming a Corporation themselves. And, as the previous poster wrote, as a corporation, they have more to worry about now -- shareholders, stock prices, turning a profit, and positioning themselves as a viable company. To assume that these guys can still maintain the kind of commitment to the Linux community, the FSF, and individual programmers/Linux users like me is perhaps a little naive. This is not your father's RedHat.
darren
Crude, but effective.
darrem
I am right now testing a new kernel (2.2.12, upgrade from 2.2.5), and I just used make bzImage on the recommendation of a coworker. He was having similar problems using make zimage, and make bzImage worked for him. I would give that a try.
Also, rather than compiling everything you are unsure of as modules, take the time to really check all your hardware and compile only exactly what you need into your kernel. This new kernel is 400K or so, with no modules (I don't have a network card but I do have a sound card and SCSI drives).
darren
I'm a little unclear on what this app will do/be -- is it a server application or a client application?
Writing generic servers are very difficult, since servers have a greater need to be optimized than clients, and optimization is necessarily a function of the specific platform.
Writing a multi-platform client is simpler. The stock answer nowadays is to make it web-based, and then concentrate on the server end, where you would use (for example) a Java-based application server. I would say, in general, that one of the cross-platform scripting languages is going to be your best bet. Perl, Tcl, and Python are all multi-platform (*nix, Win32, and Mac (Perl, possibly the other two)), and all support Tk bindings, so you can make your application graphical. Python has a C-like syntax, so users of C, C++, and Java should pick it up pretty quickly. Same for Perl. Tcl has its own syntax, but it is not difficult for a trained programmer to learn.
However, if you are looking to create code that can be compiled into executables for multiple platforms from one code-base, I think your best option is going to be Java. Sure, it's slow (for now), and there are implementation issues between platforms, but porting a Java application from one platform to another is still hugely more simple than porting a C app (I'm assuming Win32 to Unix or a similar port). With the new grahpical libraries (Swing and such) you can create much more sophisticated GUI's than you can with Tk. And, of course, you can also create command-line/text-based apps with Java.
My personal recommendation? Use Perl. The Perl interpreter is fast and extrememly powerful. Unless you're writing something that has to interact with a server in real-time, the startup/compilation phase of Perl scripts is unimportant--but, of course, once the script is loaded, it runs at the speed of the computer.
darren
However, SGI is seeing a return to profitability.
Yeah, I'd make a profit too, if I laid off 3000 people.
This site was fantastic for TTF info. Thanks!
The LDP is one of the best projects out there, and definitely one of the most useful. Did anyone else get their start with Linux and Slackware (1.2 kernel!) from Running Linux, like I did? I remember it well--my brother had a copy in his room, and it looked interesting. I had never heard of Linux, but had been using Unix for a while, so I tried it out, and loved it. Couldn't get it to connect to my ISP though... until I read the PPP Howto from the LDP
Even in this day and age where Linux books are coming out of every publishing house, the LDP is still the first place I go for information. Thanks to Matt for getting it started and thanks to everyone who has helped make the LDP what it is.
darren
Does any one out there really use Gnome or KDE? WM is my favorite, I'm tiredof start menu's (This also includes stylized "K"'s and "little feet")
Nope, not me--I alternate between Window Maker and Black Box. Both GNOME and KDE are just too much for me. Plus, I hate icons on the desktop.
darren
This is great. Two of the neatest technologies to come out in the last few years brought together. Quick, give them a prize, before Microsoft steals the idea, incorporates it into Win2K, and ruins it!