Anybody know the first thing about Linux?

[Davey]

I hate OpenOffice with a passion (isn't it funny when the liberated alternative is more bloated than the "M$" product it's supposed to replace?)

OpenOffice actually isn't that bloated. Sun packed a lot into a relatively small package, including the bugginess, clunkiness, and performance hiccups of a far more bloated app.

That's to be expected if you build a good part of your office suite over Java underpinnings.

Actually, OO.o is mostly written in C++. Java is mainly used for Base, wizards, and some features that most people probably don't use. Assuming you don't need Base, I think it's actually possible to install it without Java, but I'm not 100% sure.

Regardless, while I wouldn't want to dissuade anybody from trying Linux, for me there really just isn't much of a point. Windows doesn't seem to suffer from the security and stability problems that it did 5+ years ago. I haven't had a BSOD or a virus in ages. Most of the big name FOSS programs have Windows ports. Firefox randomly dies on me in Ubuntu, which might be Adobe's fault (Flash), but it's a problem nonetheless. Full-screen videos don't always run smoothly, which is probably the fault of the video card manufacturers, but again, it's a problem nonetheless.

Aside from Sticking It To The Man and having a centralized place for software updates (instead of the Windows way of individual programs all running their own checks for updates ), I don't see much benefit. Perhaps I'm not doing anything hardcore enough to see any benefits.

[null1024]

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Mmkay, I've been using Linux almost exclusively since Ubuntu 10.04 came out [had Ubuntu installed before then, but when 10.04 came out, for some reason, I just stayed in it], and other than to play some games that don't work in Wine, I haven't had any reason to reboot into Windows.

And then I recently installed XP in VirtualBox [I use it for a few music programs that have problems in Wine, notably the fact that they stop emitting sound after a while...], and I have less reason to do a full reboot.

Fullscreen video is flawless for me [but eats CPU, I can't do it without at least one core running at 1.6Ghz or higher ], Chrome crashes less [had some problems when Windows brought up a file select dialog, Chrome doesn't crash at all for me in Linux, although Flash crashes more [no problem in Chrome though ]], I've gotten really used to Compiz, I can use Photoshop CS5 here [fuck Gimp, doesn't even have adjustment layers...], OpenOffice.org works well enough [it's more or less the same as MS Office, although it is definitely slower, especially the PowerPoint replacement], and after the initial setup of my wireless [easy enough, just plug into a wired internet connection to download the drivers, I had problems because I have no wireless light [or any light other than for power -_-], when I went back to Vista post-install, I noticed the fact that my wireless was down too, and hit the button], everything was a breeze.

The only terribly major problem I've had was with Renoise locking sound, Java refusing to output sound if anything else is trying to, and psX not working because of PulseAudio, which is really, really annoying.

Oh, and I've had problems with a 10.04 install on my dad's machine, tried to upgrade him, had to reinstall 9.10 because it wouldn't boot properly. But once I got it up, it's been working fine, and he's been able to get through with just fairly basic programs [word processor, browser, DOSBox].

So, Linux works, you can be completely happy in it, although you might still need Windows versions of some programs [example: I used Windows Renoise on the Linux machines at school because it didn't lock up sound for other apps, and I had Windows VST support [sadly, Windows Renoise will randomly fail to output sound on this machine, I dunno why]], or a copy of Windows nearby for stuff that doesn't work in Wine. It has it's share of flaws, but I have a far more comfortable setup in Linux than in Windows, and can't see myself going back [especially with the recent development that TrueCrypt is giving me BSODs in Windows, and I don't know why].

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[Warp_Rattler]

Actually, OO.o is mostly written in C++. Java is mainly used for Base, wizards, and some features that most people probably don't use. Assuming you don't need Base, I think it's actually possible to install it without Java, but I'm not 100% sure.

Not to my knowledge; most components rely on Java for some (common or seldom-used) functions, and I don't even think you can install it without some version of the JRE. I could be wrong, but I'm also not too concerned about it--Java or not, the whole thing is kludgy and slow and counterintuitive in some cases if you're an Office person. I find that Abiword is a much speedier word processing choice, and it's a lot easier to dive into from a Word background. I appreciate what Sun/the OpenOffice team is trying to do--a full office suite compatable with Microsoft's is a noble endeavor--but the execution and usability leave a lot to be desired, at least for my needs.

[Slump]

Actually, OO.o is mostly written in C++. Java is mainly used for Base, wizards, and some features that most people probably don't use. Assuming you don't need Base, I think it's actually possible to install it without Java, but I'm not 100% sure.

Not to my knowledge; most components rely on Java for some (common or seldom-used) functions, and I don't even think you can install it without some version of the JRE. I could be wrong, but I'm also not too concerned about it--Java or not, the whole thing is kludgy and slow and counterintuitive in some cases if you're an Office person. I find that Abiword is a much speedier word processing choice, and it's a lot easier to dive into from a Word background. I appreciate what Sun/the OpenOffice team is trying to do--a full office suite compatable with Microsoft's is a noble endeavor--but the execution and usability leave a lot to be desired, at least for my needs.

I got bored and took a look at openoffice's CVS history and found that it is indeed mostly written in C++. I'm surprised as well since I also thought it was a Java based program but sure enough, most of what's there is .cxx and .hxx. I agree with you that it can be a bit sluggish, especially on older systems, but it serves it's purpose well and is slowly becoming a suitable alternative to MS Office. I still wish writer was as efficient as our almighty VIM though...

[GaijinPunch]

Actually, OO.o is mostly written in C++. Java is mainly used for Base, wizards, and some features that most people probably don't use. Assuming you don't need Base, I think it's actually possible to install it without Java, but I'm not 100% sure.

Look how made it. It's a Solaris product. I'd shit my pants if I were to learn with 100% certainty it was not written in Java. I don't see them putting out a GTK or Qt GUI app (and I got no warning that I needed to install either when I put it on a Windows box which had neither). If it is mainly written in C++ then it's an even bigger hunk of shit than previously claimed.

DISCLAIMER: I still use it though.

[Jockel]

Could someone help me? Ubuntu 10.4 here.
I want to have pop-up notifications for new emails,
but so far it seems to require Evolution running,
and i want it to work without an open Evolution window.

[Davey]

I was just going off of vague memories, but this all got me curious, so I looked it up:

Java is required for complete OpenOffice.org functionality. Java is mainly required for the HSQLDB database engine (used by our database product Base) and to make use of accessibility and assistive technologies. Furthermore some wizards rely on Java technology. If you do not require these features, then you do not need to have Java installed for running OpenOffice.org.

Source

IIRC, OpenOffice's code base is like 20 years old; they only started using Java in 2005 or something like that.

[Ed Oscuro]

Yeah doggs, OpenOrifice (HA HA CUTTING EDGE JOKE) would be like 10x slower if it was written in Java (Java punks be quiet). But Oracle needs to tie it in to the Java stuffs and their database technology, which they do via the bundled Java and the Oracle-related bits.

OpenOffice's code base comes from StarOffice, I recall, but it's been open sourced for some years now and development has it right on a level with Microsoft Office, I feel. Sure, there's no ribbon, that's about it. You can save as highly compatible Microsoft Office files from every format they've had, plus a host of others. Plus it's free, and the open source would make me feel better as an IT maintainer. Not to mention the price. Perhaps nobody got fired for buying IBM / Microsoft, but free and highly compatible without lots of crashes is pretty good.

[Warp_Rattler]

You can save as highly compatible Microsoft Office files from every format they've had, plus a host of others. Plus it's free, and the open source would make me feel better as an IT maintainer. Not to mention the price. Perhaps nobody got fired for buying IBM / Microsoft, but free and highly compatible without lots of crashes is pretty good.

The compatibility leaves a little to be desired, at least when I last had anything to do with it. The wife had it on her netbook for a while and was running into all sorts of bizarre issues--minor formatting glitches, etc. when trying to open documents from work, which was either Office 2003 or 2007 (they weren't using the OpenXML format, in any case). It got to the point where I finally just installed an old version of Office 2000 I had lying around, along with Microsoft's compatibility packs, and the problems ceased. The compatibility in OO.o always struck me as 'good enough' the few times I was trying it out when on the fence about Office 2007; 93% of the time there were no issues, 5% of the time something was really off, and the remaining 2% I couldn't put my finger on anything screwy when opening Office files on OO.o or vice versa, but I still had a vague feeling of something being not quite right. Could have been psychological, and there might have been some simple solution to those compatibility bugs, but when a huge part of a product's selling (downloading?) point is playing nice with other formats, then my expectation is that it does so right from the get-go and I'm not forced to jump through a bunch of hoops to tweak it. Granted, most users may have no such issues with the program, which is great. I desperately want it to succeed, as a free office suite for people unable or unwilling to drop the big bucks on Microsoft's is a great idea. If nothing else, it'll provide a bit of competition to get Microsoft to step up their game.

I imagine people into digital design/photography might have the same issues with the Gimp as I have with OO.o, though I love the program and have not yet run into something it's unable to do. Then again, it seems like a lot more folks are in love with the idea of owning Photoshop, rather than requiring the handful of features that Gimp lacks or does in a different manner.

[GaijinPunch]

IIRC, OpenOffice's code base is like 20 years old; they only started using Java in 2005 or something like that.

That was interesting. What GUI Toolkit does it use then?

I imagine people into digital design/photography might have the same issues with the Gimp as I have with OO.o,

Most def. I tried some RAW plugin for Gimp one time. Pictures were pretty bad (color-wise) so it was not usable.

[Ex-Cyber]

What GUI Toolkit does it use then?

It has a "Native Widget Framework" that can wrap several toolkits (I've seen mention of GTK, Qt4, Win32, and Aqua). However, I've seen a description suggesting that it doesn't "really" use the native toolkit, but rather somehow draws the toolkit widgets on top of its own built-in ones, still using those for the actual behavior (?!). Prior to that it apparently used its own built-in widget toolkit, whose look was modeled after Win95.

[Warp_Rattler]

I imagine people into digital design/photography might have the same issues with the Gimp as I have with OO.o,

Most def. I tried some RAW plugin for Gimp one time. Pictures were pretty bad (color-wise) so it was not usable.

Could have been an issue with the plugin. Seems like every camera manufacturer has their own idea of how a raw image file should turn out; some are better supported than others. I'm not sure how Photoshop handles the various types; I use the UFraw program in conjunction with Gimp, and it works well enough for my Fujifilm point-and-shoot from about 5 years back. That's hardly an indicator of support across the board, though.

[Davey]

Yeah doggs, OpenOrifice (HA HA CUTTING EDGE JOKE) would be like 10x slower if it was written in Java (Java punks be quiet).

Java isn't (that) slow (anymore) (for most purposes). The JVM has improved immensely over the years, although startup times are still slow.

If nothing else, it'll provide a bit of competition to get Microsoft to step up their game.

Hopefully. Look how long IE stagnated until Firefox lit a fire under Microsoft's ass. Although in that case, Firefox was actually superior to IE, not just "good enough for most people."

Although maybe it's already happening... I wonder what Office 2007 would have looked like if there wasn't a viable free competitor. Love it or hate it, that was the first significant upgrade (IMHO) since Office 97.

What's the deal with KOffice? Every time I read about it, it seems like it's still "not quite there yet." Now that KDE apps can run under Windows, I thought it might be its time to really gain momentum.

[GaijinPunch]

What GUI Toolkit does it use then?

It has a "Native Widget Framework" that can wrap several toolkits (I've seen mention of GTK, Qt4, Win32, and Aqua). However, I've seen a description suggesting that it doesn't "really" use the native toolkit, but rather somehow draws the toolkit widgets on top of its own built-in ones, still using those for the actual behavior (?!). Prior to that it apparently used its own built-in widget toolkit, whose look was modeled after Win95.

That seems like an awful lot of work...especially for a platform-independent program. Can I get an amen?

Could have been an issue with the plugin. Seems like every camera manufacturer has their own idea of how a raw image file should turn out;

I'm quite sure it was, but I was just making the point of the pitfalls you can get with open source against commercial. There's also many types of RAW, so... probably hard to write a driver to support them all.

Java isn't (that) slow (anymore) (for most purposes). The JVM has improved immensely over the years, although startup times are still slow.

Yet if you ask an experienced programmer what to write in if you need raw speed, any good will always tell you C. From what little I know of Java, it can be written to rival C/C++ but it is actually more work (if you can believe that) and somewhat counter-intuitive.

But, the reason it's "slow" is the JVM altogether. You must have the JVM running, which no matter how crisp, still adds overheard, when compared to something that is compiled to run natively on the operating system.

Note that I'm talking about the millisecond world.

[Davey]

Yeah, Java wouldn't be the best choice for an OS or Doom 12 or anything like that*, but for a typical desktop app? Sure. For stuff like that, Java is now close enough to C++ that the quality of the code is more important than language choice when it comes to speed.

Also, I'd bet that some Java apps are slow due to culture, not technology. Java is the choice for people that value enterpriseyness over speed.

*Although that Java port of Quake 2 runs fairly fast, but as I understand it, it's really OpenGL that's doing most of the hard work in either C or Java. Link


EDIT: Oops, forgot this:

You must have the JVM running, which no matter how crisp, still adds overheard, when compared to something that is compiled to run natively on the operating system.

Supposedly, code from a JIT compiler can actually be better optimized than code from a static compiler, but I'm in no way qualified to argue the validity of that.

[Ex-Cyber]

Supposedly, code from a JIT compiler can actually be better optimized than code from a static compiler, but I'm in no way qualified to argue the validity of that.

There's a kernel of truth to that, but in most cases it's not a practical advantage. Basically, delaying compilation makes it possible to do things like analyze the specific workload that a function is running against and optimize the function appropriately. Static compilers can get much of that benefit at the cost of a little extra effort by profiling an application against a representative workload and then feeding that profiling data back into the optimization process.

You must have the JVM running

In some abstract sense you need to have "a JVM" available to call (not necessarily running, just available somewhere that the runtime library can get at it) because you might need to load other bytecode files, but AFAIK it's possible to pretty much statically compile everything for a given application. It's just that this isn't supported by Sun, so people tend to not pay attention to it.

[GaijinPunch]

but for a typical desktop app? Sure. For stuff like that, Java is now close enough to C++ that the quality of the code is more important than language choice when it comes to speed.

For Desktop stuff it is indeed probably not that big of an issue, but I've had people complain about Azereus running like shit on the Mac, which is all Java if I'm not mistaken. I realize I'm in a niche, where latency is an issue and you'd never use Java on the back end. The front you might, but at that point, you can't share code between the two, so something like Qt is a shoe-in.

Now, with all that said and done... I've never seen a Java app that blows me away. In fact, when I worked for BoA we had to pay a Sun consultant to come in and unfuck some of our code. This was long before I was programming though, so I don't know if we just sucked, were new, or if it was something simply not obvious. I realize this was a long time ago and things have changed drastically, but it leaves a bad taste in your mouth. And that's not a homosexual reference </Kenny Powers>.

[louisg]

but for a typical desktop app? Sure. For stuff like that, Java is now close enough to C++ that the quality of the code is more important than language choice when it comes to speed.

For Desktop stop it is indeed probably not that big of an issue, but I've had people complain about Azereus running like shit on the Mac, which is all Java if I'm not mistaken. I realize I'm in a niche, where latency is an issue and you'd never use Java on the back end. The front you might, but at that point, you can't share code between the two, so something like Qt is a shoe-in.

Now, with all that said and done... I've never seen a Java app that blows me away.

Yeah I dunno, there seems to be a lot of hype about Java being as fast as C++ now. I'm a programmer, but I don't program in Java very often. From a user's point of view, every Java app I've used has been slow and consumed much more memory than it should. I'm not sure if this is due to Java's garbage collection that tends to let chunks of memory linger for a long time, the quality of programmers that Java attracts, the coding habits that Java encourages, the quality of Java's libraries, or what. But, while Java might haul ass for raw number crunching or in benchmarks, for even basic applications I haven't seen it perform very well in practice.

[GaijinPunch]

If you get a CS major these days how much is Java & how much is C?

[louisg]

If you get a CS major these days how much is Java & how much is C?

Mostly Java. I remember that at my old university in Socal, the data structures class was originally going to be in any language you wanted to use. But the professor comes in the first day and announces that he was instructed to only let people use Java I think they might have gotten some free stuff/cash from Sun, because we also had a room full of useless Sunblade systems. Later, I transferred to SF state, and practically all of the classes there were Java also. This was in 2002 or so.

[brentsg]

If you get a CS major these days how much is Java & how much is C?

You know you're getting old when you were in school the CS majors either studied Fortran or Fortran.

[Warp_Rattler]

I was a CS major for two years before making the transition to a shitty major with no career path (couldn't get my head around translating psuedocode to the real thing; I really needed some sort of dictionary that just listed, in plain terms, the various functions/calls/whatever and what they did/what arguments they took, but I was led to believe by my professors that such a fanciful thing was nonexistant). After a beginning course in Visual Basic (version 6 back then, yo) the core programming courses were all in Java. Threw me for a total loop when I tried taking a pilot course in game programming and the teacher announced that we'd be coding in C and expected everyone to know it. At that time, I think the only courses taught in the last four years or so that used C were some sort of advanced Unix database classes for a certain emphasis within the major. I think they were still using Java when I graduated last year.

It kills me to this day that I'm apparently not smart enough to pick up any sort of coding beyond flavors of BASIC. Biggest regret ever.

[GaijinPunch]

If you get a CS major these days how much is Java & how much is C?

You know you're getting old when you were in school the CS majors either studied Fortran or Fortran.

I was at least told about it. The big thing was C/C++ when I was in school (early 90's). I guess brentsg has a few years on me.

[Ed Oscuro]

Hah, I have one of Microsoft's Visual Basic 6 books around here somewhere. Also seen some shit for COBOL and other...stuff. But like Warp Rattler BASIC is as far as I've gone (but unlike WR I don't think I've ever bothered writing anything *new* for it...)

[Ex-Cyber]

It took me years to learn C after being semi-proficient in QBasic. I can't put my finger on it, but I think there's something about BASIC that focuses your mind more on the text of the program than on its meaning.

[louisg]

It took me years to learn C after being semi-proficient in QBasic. I can't put my finger on it, but I think there's something about BASIC that focuses your mind more on the text of the program than on its meaning.

Yeah, me too.. basic is very bad for organization, probably because it doesn't really encourage the use of functions to lay out the program.. especially the old ones which only allowed for two-letter variable names and only had GOSUB.

[GaijinPunch]

I think the hardest part of C for me was (coming from Perl) the difficutly of manipulating and searching through strings... or even worse, char*. std::string is nice and all, but there's still a learning curve. Then object in general which isn't unique to C in the least, but there's a shit load of information to swallow... and of course, learning to do all this generically is a bit of a mind fuck to. But hey, that's why we're all millionaires, right!

[brentsg]

But hey, that's why we're all millionaires, right!

I thought you made your millions off our gaming bits.

[Davey]

If you get a CS major these days how much is Java & how much is C?

Mostly Java.

In 1999 we used C++. I think it was still C++ by the time I graduated (I only spent 3 semesters in CS before switching to Information Systems... terrible move in hindsight). I just check UT's website; course descriptions show they're using both Java and C++ these days.

Some knowledgeable people (most notably Joel Spolsky) lament that Java is the primary language being used in many CS programs these days. Their argument is that Java isn't low level enough to really understand what's going on under the hood. Surely it's good for teaching some things (OOP), and it's a good skill to have, but it wouldn't surprise me if it left you with some knowledge gaps if you never learned anything closer to the metal. Of course, that knowledge might be irrelevant for many programming jobs these days, and there's always the CS != Programming debate...

Anyway, I got a new SSD hard drive and will be reinstalling windows. What's the best route to go these days if I want to install Linux as well? Do people still dual boot? It seems like virtualization is the way to go these days.

[Ex-Cyber]

Some knowledgeable people (most notably Joel Spolsky) lament that Java is the primary language being used in many CS programs these days. Their argument is that Java isn't low level enough to really understand what's going on under the hood. Surely it's good for teaching some things (OOP), and it's a good skill to have, but it wouldn't surprise me if it left you with some knowledge gaps if you never learned anything closer to the metal. Of course, that knowledge might be irrelevant for many programming jobs these days, and there's always the CS != Programming debate...

Java makes a lot of concessions to a particular view of practicality, and so isn't the greatest thing for teaching the theoretical stuff. It's not purely object-oriented (it has frequently-used primitive types that follow different rules than objects), its syntax is mostly inherited from C (not the cleanest or most consistent syntax ever), and it lacks features needed for system programming (e.g. pointers and direct memory access). It's a great example of a "real-world" programming language, but its effectiveness as a tool for teaching CS is questionable.

Anyway, I got a new SSD hard drive and will be reinstalling windows. What's the best route to go these days if I want to install Linux as well? Do people still dual boot? It seems like virtualization is the way to go these days.

Dual-booting is still useful for things that depend on specialized drivers or are really performance-sensitive (virtualization is far better than pure software emulation, but you can still easily take a 20-50% performance hit when running virtualized, depending on the software involved). Generally, the way to go for dual-booting is to install Windows first (manually partitioning so that only part of the disk is used), then install Linux in the remaining space. Mainstream Linux distros will detect your Windows install and add it to the boot menu automatically, whereas if you install Linux first, Windows will quietly overwrite the bootloader with its own. The Windows bootloader actually is capable of chainloading a Linux bootloader, but most people go the other way around since it requires less manual effort.