Yes, if by "best", you mean $100k per seta best, that's fine. But Altera and Xilinx have free FPGA place-and-route tools for Windows only, and we're not going to spend more than $10k per seat for EDA software. So that pretty much rules out unix.
Sorry, but neither MacOSX nor Linux nor FreeBSD (mostly on account of being dead;-) )will do what I need to do, and that is engineering apps. No EDA software, no software for synthesising FPGA's. And that's why I can't switch. I'd love to run *nix here at work, but there just isn't the app support.
I had a physics prof at uni who suspected, without running the numbers, that the average solar cell used more energy in its production (combined direct and indirect energy) than it would produce in its lifetime...
I know at least one platform that netBSD runs on that Linux doesn't, and this one matters to me: DEC alphas running turbochannel busses. Yes, I know these things are old, and yes, I know my desktop runs rings around it, but gee it's cool to be able to say I have a DEC alpha (that I got for free...).
Why do you want Linux to "conquer the desktop"??!? Whether or not Linux becomes the OS on everyone's desk is irrelevent to its long term survival. It's not going anywhere soon, as long as there are users who choose to use and support it.
I like the fact that it's different to MS. I like the fact that I have a decent command line. I like the fact that what I use at home doesn't look anything like my work computer's (win2k) desktop.
YMMV, but I like Linux just the way it is, thankyouverymuch.
I think you'll find that "editing a video", depending of course on what you want to do, can be easy from the command line.
Now, try having to rotate 150 pictures using your gui - you'd get sick of it after having double-clicked, waited for photoshop (or whatever) to open it, navigated to the correct menu item, chosen your option, saved and closed, switched back to explorer, 3 or 4 times. Whereas you could just write:
for f in *.jpg ; do imagemagick [whatever the command is] $f ; done
And then walk away and have a cup of coffee, while your colleagues are still double-clicking away.
It's funny you should mention this, but I live a lot of my working life in a cygwin bash session. One day the technician saw me doing that, and asked: "why are you running DOS?"
It's hard for some people to realise that the command line is *far* more powerful that the gui, if you know what you're doing.
While listening to the radio, the first thing you notice is the advertising. Advertising on the radio is really hefty (at least on the stations I listen to)
For a radio station without ads, and GREAT music, point your browser at http://triplej.abc.net.au/ - it's a government-owned/funded independent radio station here in Australia. Quite simply, puts the commercial offerings to shame.
..yeah, and I really have the time to encode hundreds of different versions of the same audio file..
#!/bin/bash
# Note: parameters/options not checked - I don't have a linux box here to check these!!
# Note 2: Excuse the indenting, it's not me, it's slashcode, honest!
for f in *.mp3 ; do BASE=`basename $f.mp3` WAV=${BASE}.wav mpg123 <options to make wav from mp3> $f $WAV for RATE in 64 128 192 256 ; do bladeenc -r${RATE} $WAV ${BASE}-${RATE}.mp3 done done
# end
That's not all that hard to do; check the options, adjust for ogg, run overnight and bob's your mother's brother.
It's not your time that's important here, it's your computer's time that is going to be used doing something for you rather than somthing for the guys over at ssl.berkeley
And there's the classic sysadmin paradox: The better a sysadmin is, the less busy he will appear. If you see your sysadmin with his feet up on his desk, reading "Unix Today" or whatever trade magazine, odds are he's an excellent admin.
I have on my network at home the following ancient hardware:
486-DX 33 w/32MB RAM, running as dialup firewall for 2-3 users;
386-DX40 (with 387 co-pro), 20MB RAM, running slackware 8.0 (kernel 2.2.19 I think, although to be honest I don't turn it on all that often). I use this machine basically as a scsi box to format external scsi disks for my HP PA/RISC adventures.
I also have some other odd hardware on my network, that is so ancient that linux won't even run on it (2 DEC turbochannel machines, one MIPS-based and one Alpha, both running netBSD)...
I acquired all this hardware when it was being thrown out by various people - bang per buck is essentially infinite
And certainly Linux, as of this moment is not as end-user-friendly as Mac or Windows. But it will change. But till then be ready to be criticized.
Quite frankly, I don't care if anyone criticizes my use of Linux. I don't care if no-one else in the world uses it, as long as it still is available for me to use. For me, it's much much easier to use than windows (he says, typing this on a win2k box, but anyway...).
I'd much prefer to write a quick script to rename those 35 files in one hit than to click, F2, change name, click, F2, change name, etc etc...
For the average user, Linux is hard to use. But once you get used to it, and can use the CLI, it's much more powerful. That's what I like.
For me, there is much greater joy in creating a script to do what I want, then go and get a coffee while it runs, come back and it's finished, while if I hadn't done that, I'd still be pointing, clicking and probably drooling (and without coffee...)
Summarising: Easy-to-use isn't all it's cracked up to be. It might be an "elitist" attitude, but I prefer being able to automate things, script things, rather than trying to get the mouse to do the work...
Slashdot Mirror
You can still get all the best stuff for unix.
Yes, if by "best", you mean $100k per seta best, that's fine. But Altera and Xilinx have free FPGA place-and-route tools for Windows only, and we're not going to spend more than $10k per seat for EDA software. So that pretty much rules out unix.
Sorry, but neither MacOSX nor Linux nor FreeBSD (mostly on account of being dead ;-) )will do what I need to do, and that is engineering apps. No EDA software, no software for synthesising FPGA's. And that's why I can't switch. I'd love to run *nix here at work, but there just isn't the app support.
I had a physics prof at uni who suspected, without running the numbers, that the average solar cell used more energy in its production (combined direct and indirect energy) than it would produce in its lifetime...
Because of course your desk's back edge just has to be flush with the wall...
For Windows and linux (x86) cross-platform programming, the CLX library from borland (ships with kylix and delphi/cbuilder) is pretty good.
Surely you should have counted instances of "double" rather than "float"?
And here I was thinking it was a story about this guy
they'll simply not release a Corp version
And you think they'll do that, do you? Nose, cutoff, spite, face all are words that could be used here...
Also, for those who said hours is not a measure of power, you're idiots.
Methinks you is the idiot, unless you meant energy where you wrote power...
There's your problem right there; now, if you'd chosen slackware, you wouldn't have to fight that graphical installer...
I know at least one platform that netBSD runs on that Linux doesn't, and this one matters to me: DEC alphas running turbochannel busses. Yes, I know these things are old, and yes, I know my desktop runs rings around it, but gee it's cool to be able to say I have a DEC alpha (that I got for free...).
You play for hours, not because you're "enjoying" it, but because your brain is too numbed to stop.
And if you want to do something other than rotate them?
Then you choose a different option for Imagemagick - it's a very powerful program.
Why do you want Linux to "conquer the desktop"??!? Whether or not Linux becomes the OS on everyone's desk is irrelevent to its long term survival. It's not going anywhere soon, as long as there are users who choose to use and support it.
I like the fact that it's different to MS. I like the fact that I have a decent command line. I like the fact that what I use at home doesn't look anything like my work computer's (win2k) desktop.
YMMV, but I like Linux just the way it is, thankyouverymuch.
I think you'll find that "editing a video", depending of course on what you want to do, can be easy from the command line.
Now, try having to rotate 150 pictures using your gui - you'd get sick of it after having double-clicked, waited for photoshop (or whatever) to open it, navigated to the correct menu item, chosen your option, saved and closed, switched back to explorer, 3 or 4 times. Whereas you could just write:
And then walk away and have a cup of coffee, while your colleagues are still double-clicking away.
When you listen to the radio, you are supporting the RIAA via advertisers
Unless you listen to this, which is a non-commercial radio station, which also happens to play the best music...
10. Everyone will think you're running Linux!
It's funny you should mention this, but I live a lot of my working life in a cygwin bash session. One day the technician saw me doing that, and asked: "why are you running DOS?"
It's hard for some people to realise that the command line is *far* more powerful that the gui, if you know what you're doing.
While listening to the radio, the first thing you notice is the advertising. Advertising on the radio is really hefty (at least on the stations I listen to)
For a radio station without ads, and GREAT music, point your browser at http://triplej.abc.net.au/ - it's a government-owned/funded independent radio station here in Australia. Quite simply, puts the commercial offerings to shame.
That's not all that hard to do; check the options, adjust for ogg, run overnight and bob's your mother's brother.
It's not your time that's important here, it's your computer's time that is going to be used doing something for you rather than somthing for the guys over at ssl.berkeley
Cheers, MvdW
And there's the classic sysadmin paradox: The better a sysadmin is, the less busy he will appear. If you see your sysadmin with his feet up on his desk, reading "Unix Today" or whatever trade magazine, odds are he's an excellent admin.
I have on my network at home the following ancient hardware:
I also have some other odd hardware on my network, that is so ancient that linux won't even run on it (2 DEC turbochannel machines, one MIPS-based and one Alpha, both running netBSD)...
I acquired all this hardware when it was being thrown out by various people - bang per buck is essentially infinite
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these...
That's because he's already got a blow-up doll in there.
And certainly Linux, as of this moment is not as end-user-friendly as Mac or Windows. But it will change. But till then be ready to be criticized.
Quite frankly, I don't care if anyone criticizes my use of Linux. I don't care if no-one else in the world uses it, as long as it still is available for me to use. For me, it's much much easier to use than windows (he says, typing this on a win2k box, but anyway...).
I'd much prefer to write a quick script to rename those 35 files in one hit than to click, F2, change name, click, F2, change name, etc etc...
For the average user, Linux is hard to use. But once you get used to it, and can use the CLI, it's much more powerful. That's what I like.
For me, there is much greater joy in creating a script to do what I want, then go and get a coffee while it runs, come back and it's finished, while if I hadn't done that, I'd still be pointing, clicking and probably drooling (and without coffee...)
Summarising: Easy-to-use isn't all it's cracked up to be. It might be an "elitist" attitude, but I prefer being able to automate things, script things, rather than trying to get the mouse to do the work...
On the other hand since [newbies] will likely not be running it as root they are much less likely to seriously break something on their machine
But that's just the problem: Newbies are likely to be running as root. It's the Windows Way(tm).