As the founder and leader of the GNOME Foundation, Miguel is one of the foremost luminaries in the Linux development community. He brings this same excitement to his role as CTO of Ximian. Miguel was instrumental in porting Linux to the SPARC architecture and led development of the Midnight Commander file manager and the Gnumeric spreadsheet. He is also a primary author of the design of the Bonobo component model, which leads the way in the development of large-scale applications in GNOME. Today, his primary project is Mono. Read more for an exclusive mini-interview with Miguel.1. What is the current status of Mono? When do you think the project will be reaching a good level of functionality, enough to make big C# apps, like SharpDevelop, easier to port or run on Linux?
Miguel de Icaza: The core of Mono is pretty much done:
* An advanced runtime engine, with advanced Just-in-Time compilation features, found on high end JIT engines.
* The core of the class libraries, required to run most command line tools, and powerful enough to host the C# compiler, ASP.NET, System.Data and our own breed of classes: Gtk# and Vorbis#.
* A compliant C# compiler that can be used today to develop C# application on our supported platforms. Since the C# compiler is written in C# itself, the compiler binary is actually shared between x86 and non-x86 architectures, the only bit that changes is the runtime engine.
The C# compiler builds daily our entire set of class libraries and the compiler itself, roughly half a million lines of C# code.
I find the following anecdote interesting: originally the C# compiler was able to host itself, but it did not push the compiler to its limits, particularly because the code was authored by two developers.
But the class libraries were authored by about sixty different people who did use more of the features of the language, so it was a nice maturing point when we were able to compile all of our class libraries with it.
* Our runtime engine is easy to embed: any application can embed the Mono runtime into its address space, so it is possible to write extensions to the program in any CIL supported language, or use it as a scripting engine for your program.
I showed this at the recent O’Reilly Open Source Convention. We had Gnumeric extended to support scripting through Mono, and I also showed an embedded ASP.NET web server in Gnumeric that allowed people to remotely access Gnumeric through a Web-based ASP.NET interface.
Just a nice demo to do.
Our current work is focused on various areas:
* Runtime
* Performance improvements in the JIT engine. Paolo Molaro and Dietmar Maurer are busy improving our runtime engine to make it an even better compiler.
* We are hoping to integrate soon the code from Zoltan in some form into our engine to enable ahead-of-time compilation.
This means that code would be compiled to machine code before it is actually executed, typically at installation time. This serves two purposes: optimizing the code for the architecture it is being installed on, but most importantly reducing application startup time, as the JIT would not have to do any work at that point.
* Portability: A lot of of the work from Dietmar and Paolo has been on making our internal code generators use portable CIL code to reduce the amount of work that people porting the JIT
would face.
* Gnome support
* The Gtk# team has been doing a superb job at creating bindings for the various libraries that Gnome ships with. This includes the complete software stack from the Accessibility, to Pango, to Gtk, to Gnome, to GtkHtml and others.
* Compliance with Microsoft
* ASP.NET has drawn a lot of attention from contributors, and from people looking at Mono. Leen and Gaurav started this work, and it has now been taken over by Gonzalo and Patrik who have been developing all the missing pieces.
We recently demostrated ASP.NET at the OSCon conference. Many different pieces had to be put together: class libraries, the page compiler, the integration into the system, a simple web
server.
Hopefully we will be running the large applications that Microsoft uses to show the technology in October, as they use various other bits that are not yet implemented.
We should also offer a `mod_mono’ module to integrate this with their existing Apache installation.
* System.Data: Rodrigo Moya, Tim Coleman and Dan Morgan have done quite a lot of work on the area of supporting the various database interfaces in .NET, and we were also able to show various samples of this at the OSCon: a Gtk# based interface, a command line tool, and an ASP.NET clients.
* System.Web.Services: Tim Coleman just recently started work on the ASP.NET support for web services. The .NET way of doing Web Services is really nice and simple. This again, is interesting for people who are developing applications on Windows, but want to deploy on either large machines
running Unix, or on small cost Linux systems.
* Other projects
* The Spainish hackers have created a `Mono Hispano’ community which have authored a number of tutorials, and have started work on a CORBA implementation for Mono.
The CORBA implementation is interesting, because it integrates with .NET’s remoting infrastructure.
The foundation can then be reused to implement a full CORBA binding more along the lines of CORBA language bindings.
2. What is the status of Ximian Gnome/Desktop that would be based on Gnome2?
Miguel de Icaza: We are working on our Gnome2 based offering of the Ximian desktop currently. We need to address a number of usage scenarios that our corporate customers require, so we need to make sure that all of this bits are in place.
The best person to talk about our Gnome2 efforts is Nat Friedman who is in charge of the project.
3. What did you think of Gnome 2.0? In your opinion, which are its good points, and if any, which are its weak ones?
Miguel de Icaza: Gnome 2 marked the maturity of Gnome. Various groups of interest have taken over the different duties of releasing Gnome: from testing, to release, to feature definition, to usability and accessibility.
It was a very well coordinated release. Also, Gnome2 was a major transition for us in terms of the API and the underlying platform, as we had to add support for accessibility, and integrate things like Xft into the platform, as well as shifting libraries to the right places now that Gtk has refactored some of its code.
So overall, Gnome2 is a great foundation. The focus of the team is largely now on usability and user visible improvements: now that we have a great platform, we have great tools to build great applications and functionality on top of it. You can witness this excitement on the desktop development mailing lists today.
4. TheRasterman said a few weeks ago that there was never a battle for the desktop, that Windows was the winner all along. Do you agree? Do you think that the tables can turn? What would it take to do so?
Miguel de Icaza: I like what Maddog said a few years ago: “only 1% of the world population has chosen an operating system”. So I believe there is quite a lot of room to grow there. Various initiatives in various countries: both from the private industry and from the government are giving a lot of momentum to open source servers and desktops, and we are very excited on making this happen.
We are trying to encourage people to use it, we are listening to their problems and we are actively addressing usability concerns.
For instance, I recently went to Brasil, and the state of Rio Grande do Sul is using Gnome and KDE on the desktops. Banks, Government agencies, schools, tele-centers, and so on. I think that Open Source has a very bright future in countries that are just catching up technologically, as they can see big savings, and allows them to have a much better control over their systems.
Quote from article:
“For instance, I recently went to Brasil, and the state of Rio Grande do Sul is using Gnome and KDE on the desktops. Banks, Government agencies, schools, tele-centers, and so on ..”
And you will see the same thing is South Korea, and parts of China. And these are just average joe users getting their work done, not geeks. I tell you, windows rules on the desktop, but the primary reason isn’t because, other OSes aren’t useable.
“I tell you, windows rules on the desktop, but the primary reason isn’t because, other OSes aren’t useable.”
And, more importantly to the power users, Windows has better apps
> And, more importantly to the power users, Windows has
> better apps
>
For the office, yes, but for desktop-publishing, the Mac rules, and for web development, Unix is years ahead of Windows. Wizards in Visual Studio and a few rare gems like Dreamweaver are the only reason why Windows web development is tolerable.
You’ve got some kind of twisted definition of a “power user”. Any competent user can get their work done with linux-native apps, or even run some things with CW CrossOver or similar. Some would even argue that a REAL power user could just write his/her own apps to get the job done. In any event, a user who is bound to a particular OS/app/etc. is suffering the effects of a monopoly in action, and is definitely not a power user, but a powerless user.
> a few rare gems like Dreamweaver are the only reason why Windows web development is tolerable.
I disagree. If you are doing web development, you need to test with IE. And IE does not run on Linux (except if you actually do buy a copy of Windows to run under VMWare, in which case beats the purpose of not using windows), while its Solaris version is old. So, no matter how you put it, if you are doing any web development, you need a Windows machine to test with IE (95% of the browser market).
Also, when you do serious web development, you need a professional imaging app (Gimp won’t cut it, Photoshop or PSP7 or Fireworks which has special support for Web graphics speak here), you need a good *HTML* editor (which it might be WYSIWYG, or it might not be – on Windows you have plenty of choices, on unix you only have bluefish or quanta; and that’s that), and depending on your server (that your boss chooses and not yourself), you might even have to develop for ASP, or for PHP under a WinNT/2k server. Also, under Linux you can’t develop for Flash MX, while a zillion other plugins won’t work, like QuickTime, Media Player or even a recent Real. Windows is THE platform for web development, with distant second MacOS 9 and OSX. Linux/Unix is not even on the map in that particular respect.
Result: Web development is stronger and more logical to be done under Windows and not under Unix. Even Mac won’t truly cut it: In the past, my ex-company asked from a Mac web studio to do a web site for us, and they choke when we asked for dynamic (ASP, as our server was NT) pages, because they couldn’t test that with their MacOS 9.
> …The Spainish hackers have created a `Mono Hispano’
> community…
“Fighting for justice and lib-er-ty,
Wherever you find us is where we will be,
Oh the three brave amigos are we.”
🙂
partly OT, but here is a screenshot of Macromedia MX and front page running on my XP box.
http://users.adelphia.net/~geek/winxp.jpg
I love Macromedia’s UI
“Any competent user can get their work done with linux-native apps”
Yeah, and I can ride a bicycle 15 miles to work every day and back instead of driving a car, so what’s your point?
“or even run some things with CW CrossOver or similar.”
With Crossover Office, or VMWare, of the Crossover Plugins, so that we can run the apps that give us the most functionality (hence: apps that don’t run on *nix)
“Some would even argue that a REAL power user could just write his/her own apps to get the job done.”
Why don’t you read the part again that says I am not a hacker or programmer. Hello? There is a difference. Power users USE programs – we don’t write them
“In any event, a user who is bound to a particular OS/app/etc. is suffering the effects of a monopoly in action, and is definitely not a power user, but a powerless user.”
Yup, the same argument over and over again. Evil empire .. monopoly … most people don’t use those features … blah blah blah.
I’ve got apps that are in many cases 2x better than anything available in the open source sector, yet I’m powerless. Why does this not make sense?
If you’d like, I’ll email you a list of about 40 apps that use weekly (and most daily) and if you can find me FUNCTIONAL equivalent apps that run under *nix (and none of this ‘you don’t really need all those features’ shit), I’ll make the switch tomorrow. But I’ll tell you right now – functional equivalents for about half don’t exist, I’ve already looked.
Sure *nix has a few standout apps (especially on the IRC front) but by and large, the apps are merely ‘good enough’ for most people.
“and for web development, Unix is years ahead of Windows.”
I don’t personally do web development myself, but I think the other guy pretty much covered it. Anyway, what app in *nix is better than Dreamweaver that does the same thing?
For times when I need to do some HTML, I use Ultraedit, which many of its users said they would pay for it again if it were ever ported to Linux. Why? Because there’s nothing on Linux that can touch it.
>>Result: Web development is stronger and more logical to be done under Windows and not under Unix. Even Mac won’t cut it: In the past, my ex-company asked from a Mac web studio to do a web site for us, and they choke when we asked for dynamic (ASP, as our server was NT) pages, because they couldn’t test that with their MacOS 9.<<
In some cases probably, but the norm is web development/ design to be done on the Mac, since there are plenty of tools to be had on the Mac. You want an HTML Editor, there’s nothing better than BBedit (which doesn’t run on Windows), and of course DreamWeaver is the industry leader for building web content. Microsoft’s FrontPage just won’t cut it for professional web development (too much added proprietary code on top of the usual code)!
“and of course DreamWeaver is the industry leader for building web content.”
If it runs on both *nix (or Mac in this case) AND windows (ie Mozilla, Opera, etc), then it doesn’t count .. unless the *nix version happens to be superior to the Windows version.
>>If it runs on both *nix (or Mac in this case) AND windows (ie Mozilla, Opera, etc), then it doesn’t count .. unless the *nix version happens to be superior to the Windows version.<<
I wasn’t specifying that Dreamweaver was a Mac only product, since it is not… just pointing out that it’s the #1 choice amongst most web designers. The company I work for (my friend/colleague who maintains our website) uses Dreamweaver as well!
“I disagree. If you are doing web development, you need to test with IE.”
Actually, not entirely true. I do a LOT of web development. When the site works in both Mozilla and Opera, it *always* works in IE as well. If you need to test in every browser, you’re not using the standards and you’re not coding your pages decently.
IE, like all browsers has many quirks. I like small browsers as much as anyone, but not testing your site in a browser that has 90% of the market is lunancy.
Eugenia: “I disagree. If you are doing web development, you need to test with IE. And IE does not run on Linux (except if you actually do buy a copy of Windows to run under VMWare, in which case beats the purpose of not using windows), while its Solaris version is old. So, no matter how you put it, if you are doing any web development, you need a Windows machine to test with IE (95% of the browser market).”
That is not fair, of course, if you are doing windows development you should check your program runs in Windows…etc…etc…. There are O.S. based tasks that cannot be avoided by the moment. Even more, as there is an IE for Macs I would check it also if I where a web developer, this is just part of this particular task.
>if you are doing windows development you should check your program runs in Windows
What are you talking about? The Web does not know Windows and Linux. It knows HTML, CSS, Flash, Javascript. Normally, when you do *professionall* web development, you do it for all OSes, but especially for IE, which has the biggest market share.
>Even more, as there is an IE for Macs I would check it also if I where a web developer
IE for Mac is version 5.2, and matches technically IE for Windows 5.01 (for example, it does not support the CSS border-collapse property that comes with IE 5.5 and above). Therefore, having a Mac to test your site with its browsers is a good thing (and I do so), but having IE 6 on a Windows, is a must, if you are a web developer.
>>>>>>>>>>>>
IE for Mac is version 5.2, and matches technically IE for Windows 5.01 (for example, it does not support the CSS border-collapse property that comes with IE 5.5 and above). Therefore, having a Mac to test your site with its browsers is a good thing (and I do so), but having IE 6 on a Windows, is a must, if you are a web developer.
>>>>>>>>>>>>
Actually, no. As CattBeMac said, if your page works well in Mozilla and Chimera, it works well in IE6. As for IE 5.2 for the Mac, yes, it’s lousy. Use chimera and omniweb. Native, fast, and, in the case of chimera, renders great. Better than IE6, because it’s got Quartz font smoothing.
>As CattBeMac said, if your page works well in Mozilla and Chimera, it works well in IE6.
This is complete horsesh*t. You don’t know that for sure, unless you try it. ESPECIALLY if you are using a WYSIWYG editor that has heavy CSS on it. And especially if you want to make sure that they render exactly the same on all browsers.
To whom do you think you are talking to? Joe, who got connected to the net a month ago for the first time via AOL? I’ve eaten web development in the face for years now.
> Use chimera and omniweb. Native, fast…
Fast my a$$…
Work out these resizes and scrollbars! If you do it enough, it might get faster with time.
> in the case of chimera, renders great. Better than IE6, because it’s got Quartz font smoothing.
You really don’t want me to start about that. Read the Chimera mailing list last month for my replies there…
http://multizilla.mozdev.org/
The above web site renders fine in Mozilla but not in IE 6
How would I know that unless I tried it in IE6? Not testing in IE might be fine for a personal web site that gets 20 hits a day, but if you are building a professional website, it NEEDS to be tested in IE.
I agree that whether you like it or not, you have to test your web pages against IE if you are a web developer, I do so even when I wouldn’t like to have to. Doing so you win concerning the fact that 95% of the internet will render your page properly, but some times you loose something too as a programmer, and I mean standars, simplicity. Here is an example:
Most web development is asociated with showing database information in grids. The ideal solution for this (I am talking of a client side solution, not an ASP.NET one), is to use tables with scrollable body area so that you can load a good amount of the data to be shown in a reduced space without needing for javascript/server-side script paging algoritms, in most cases (and I say so because I work as a web programmer), that would sufice for your needs. Well I tried to implement that solution testing against IE6, it didn’t work, so I spent a lot of time thinking about what I was doing wrong, since the idea seemed so simple, so nice and so easy to implement, until I decided to give my code a try in mozilla, result: it worked!! Then even when I felt again confident with my skills as a programmer, I knew I couldn’t use that nice feature in my pages and would have to continue implementing more complicated an ugly solutions until microsoft decides to include that STANDAR in their browser. It is just a detail, but some times these kinds of details matter.
Is it not somewhat of a hypocracy to say that linux lacks a decent image editor, then talk about using WYSIWYG. How many people really need the power and professionalism of photoshop and then go destroy it by using a WYSIWYG?
Not really arguing the overall point much, just nitpicking…
Also depending what kind of web development you are doing it doesn’t really matter what platform you use, as long as you test it on the main ones.
I think if you have it working on several semi standards compliant browsers of your choice
Then later swap to IE or whatever, the changes required will be minimal.
None of this has *anything* to do with the posted topic, which is a shame. It would be interesting to hear what everyone has to say about Mono and Miguel’s interview, though. 😉
Personally, I’m looking forward to Mono reaching maturity. I spent the past four months working with C# and ASP.Net, and I must say it’s very slick. Seems like .Net’s new web development model is well thought out… I’m working with JSP’s right now, and it feels a bit clunky in comparison (anyone know of any good linux-based JSP editors?).
It seems to me that regardless of any future incompatibilities Microsoft might introduce into the .Net platform, the addition of C# as a viable linux development language can only be a good thing. Imagine what could happen if all those Windows developers out there were able to write Gnome and QT apps…
Anyway, it would be interesting to hear some thoughts on this, rather than re-hashing the short-comings of linux for bazillionth time.
JP
Darius:
“For times when I need to do some HTML, I use Ultraedit, which many of its users said they would pay for it again if it were ever ported to Linux. Why? Because there’s nothing on Linux that can touch it.”
What about emacs? Just kidding. On a serious note, even something as simple as a test editor, Windows APPS outperform the UNIX counterparts.
I agree with you & Eugenia. For Web development, work from your 2000 desktop.
I kinda like Vim and it works on almost any machine you could possibly have…from DOS and Windows to *NIX and Mac
in fact i use Vim constantly on a Win98 box for web-dev and it works beautifully…i almost never have to leave the keyboard
It has all the modern conveniences like syntax highlighting and auto-indents…it’s fully configurable, though admittedly not easily configurable…the price is right (it’s free)…and it’s a hell of a lot lighter than Emacs
my fav thing about Vim though is that it’s so fast to work with, it takes some getting used to, but after using it you wish everything from your e-mail program to your wordprocessor had VI bindings…oh well
just my rant for the day…and no this is not a “my editor kicks the sh*t outta yours” post…b/c i’m ignorant about UltraEdit – never used it and Vim meets and exceeds all of my text editing needs, so i’m not gonna pay for an editor
-bytes256
>>What about emacs? Just kidding.<<
You would laugh, but I prefer ‘ed’ and sometimes ‘pico’ (if it’s available that is)!
🙂
Just out of curiosity, how popular is Emacs really? I’ve only met two “hard-core” emacs users in my entire life…and one of them conceded that they only use emacs for coding…for system administration/configuration tasks he prefered vim…and the other was a first-class GNU zealot…
this is not a troll…i’m just curious…i’m a vim man myself
-bytes256
I really do not need Microsoft, Dreamweaver, IE or Opera.
I got those tools:
Gimp, Vi, Mozilla, Apache, Perl, PHP, PostgresSQL, Java, Tomcat
All a “GOOD” web developer needs, Dreamweaver? Ever tried building a “REAL” dynamic database website with that..come on only newbies and “clickers” use that kind of crap!
Anyway I love FreeBSD and Linux and i will never ever
will try Windows or all commercial crap again, even
if 99,999% of the “WORLD” is using it!
A real power user uses his power, a fake power user uses
the power of his application. I bet i can do more with vi that most so called “powerusers” can do with MS Office, Dreamweaver or Access…
Thanks for your Time.
Bas
You probably can do the same as us “users of commercial crap” with your tools. The difference is we can do it faster…a *LOT* faster. Thats why these tools exist.
For sure you can create a masterpiece in Windows paint but it sure is a lot easier to use something like Fireworks or Photoshop (depending on the ultimate use).
You can choose whatever platform you want to do web development on, Windows, Linux, Mac, etc. Just choose the platform that has the tools you want. Testing should not be done on your development workstation anyway. Most developers’ workstations never match a “regular user” setup and would *never* be a good platform to test on.
just on a rather unrelated to the story note, web development under linux isn’t a really terrible problem. our solution is to set up a few testing boxes and run the stuff through ie via vnc .. its a nice easy solution, and requires a minimum of movement. Now that mozilla is running reasonably well under linux, its a great browser for development. (in fact, its now my primary development browser)
the nice thing about that solution, is the ability to also use vnc over the macs … and do your mac testing at the same time ..
long live linux.
“Professional web development”, what do you think what that is? If you are talking about _real_ professional web development, you will of course have a Windows and a Mac machine standing there in one corner for testing, that has absolutely no impact on what system you use for developing. For not-so-big projects, why do you need to make sure that your application runs in IE? You don’t. I don’t. My website has currently 1,2 million page impressions per month and growing, that is not large but also not a small private homepage with ten clicks a day so I would call it mid-sized.
I develop for the standards and not a certain browser. This is how the web was meant to be used and it’s quite possible again while it was broken in the days of Netscape 4. So while I don’t especially test my website in IE/Konqueror/Opera/whatever, I usually find that they are working flawlessly with those browsers. So far, I don’t have a single complaint and the site is running for several years now.
As for development tools, come on… You don’t need dreamweaver! I wouldn’t even know what to do with this tool. 99% of my stuff is pure PHP/MySQL database driven and dynamically generated pages. How could dreamweaver help here? We are not talking about web design but web development, right? So all my stuff is text editing and I don’t depend on any specific tool. It is true that a real great graphical editor is still missing though (textbased editors are fine). I’m waiting for Moleskine 2. =) But this isn’t stopping me from doing my work. Text is text.
As for graphics, I’m find with Gimp, thank you. For not-so-big projects, Gimp is the perfect tool and even quite cheap (0,00$), while large projects will usually have a dedicated graphic designer and this one will use the system of his choice anyway (maybe a Mac)!
Now bite me.
I just want to make a couple of points clear:
– Professional web development can be done at the same speed regardless of whether it’s under Linux, Windows, etc. Professionals do not typically use “Dreamweaver”. They use Emacs/ultraedit/etc to write JSP/ASP/PHP/Perl/Servlets code. Web Graphic designers that know XML/XSL/Photoshop/etc forward and backwards might use Windows or a Mac.
– The assumption that one will get something done faster on a windows box is just moronic. Most developers I know, only need an Emacs window and that’s it.
– Testing web code is done by a group called QA. There is no reason to pay for Windows on desktops solely for the purpose of testing their code. The VNC idea that came up is indeed a very good one. If your company doesn’t have QA group then you are not doing Professional Web Development.
All these grips against Linux/Unix is all standard FUD. It really is too bad, as Opensource is going to be playing a much bigger role in everyone’s life.
-Dan
I have to wondering if doing PHP/MySQL development and running/programming database servers and web servers even counts as desktop use to begin with.
I think some people here find that “Professional” means slick like making nice graphics and flash stuff.
For me Professional is like making a website / portal
that is more than just a nice layout or flashy intro
i think of database driven, realtime transactions etc..
not Dreamweaver or M$sql crap.
As for my job, Our company designers (Mac/SGI) make the website “slick”, my team makes it professional.
I think the both a real jobs and should be seperated
if possible.
“If there is one thing that Microsoft would make that would not suck, it had to be a vacuum cleaner”
“And Tux said: E=MC2, and there was Linux!”
Bas
Serveral people at my workplace are using emacs. I am personally not an emacs power user. I use very few of its features, yet every time when i try a different editor i end up going back to emacs.
I tried replacing emacs with kate, vim, gedit and nedit, but went back to emacs every time.
When doing something in windows im using ultraedit. While i dont really like it much, i never bothered to install emacs on windows considering how little time i actually spend using windows these days.
What i like about emacs is that almost no matter what im working with, emacs has a suitable mode for it and a bunch of support functions that makes my work easier. What i don’t like is that you almost need to be a rocket scientist to figure out how to use it
>Result: Web development is stronger and more logical
>to be done under Windows and not under Unix.
Oh please.
You might need the flash tools, quicktime, etc, to do your web development, but you make it sound like any serious web developer needs this, and i disagree very much.
I dont use flash. I dont know what i should use it for really. I basically find flash to be a heavily overused annoyance, that usually do no good except make the load times go up and draw attention away from the content.
I would only need other plugins if i made content that requires them, but i dont -> i dont need any plugins.
While i agree that photoshop is a better program than gimp i still use gimp. Too lazy to go find a windows machine, and i get the job done in gimp.
Test on IE? I test that things dont look bad once in a while, but thats it. Maybe if i had vmware and a copy of windows i might do it more often, but i dont.
I certainly dont test with ie6 as you mentioned. Most people are using ie 5.5 or older, at least according to the stats i have seen. Testing with ie6 only would be silly.
Only lacking thing now is an editor, well, i could use quanta, dreamweaver, frontpage, you name it, but i prefer emacs. Sure if you just make static pages a different editor might be better, but i wouldnt call that web development.
While the web content im developing might not use the newest fancy plugin or try to look “lickable” it does what it is supposed to, delivers the information the users need.
While windows might be the best platform for you, please dont try to make it sound like it is the only thing professional web developers should use, or maybe i just dont count as professional? For what i do, windows would only slow me down.
All of my coemployees working daily with UNIX, as well as myself (which makes three =)) are more or less Emacs junkies. It is said that Emacs holds about a quarter of the UNIX editor “market”, where as vi and its clones have about half. I believe the source of these numbers come from USENET polls, and are backed up with team signups for the annual O’Reilly-sponsored Emacs vs. vi paintball game at Linux Expo.
Taking a step back and seeing that there is an annual paintball game whose teams are determined by editor preferences, I must say that geeks are very geeky. =)
If you gonna make a game for web, then probably you will need a Flash/Actionscript authoring tool(not emac) and the best app for this is Macromedia Flash MX until now… I don’t know if programming web games could be considered “web development”, but definately you can’t do it on Linux…
I’m totally pro-open source, I only use Mozilla for browsing, I report bugs, write comments and testcases and play with XUL in my free time. But I donṫ hold false hopes in deleting my windows partition cause that’s what puts food on my table right now
PS:sorry about my english.
Sure flash is probably a good tool for making web based games. Didnt say that linux was perfect, just questioning Eugenias very definitive sounding comment.
I personally would probably use java for web based games however, but that is probably because i’m more familiar with java than i am with flash. (despite the fact that i try to avoid working with java)
Don’t feed it please.
Troll gone, thank you. =)
http://librenix.com/?inode=1254
“But Samba’s Allison said the Mono Project is “a very bad idea — in fact, it’s a terrible idea. By doing this they are helping .Net become a standard. .Net will become important if a majority of the clients use it, but it will not be mandatory if only, say, 50 percent use it, as Web sites will then still have to do Java stuff,” Allison said. “By implementing an open-source version of this, they are making it easier for Microsoft to get to that magic monopoly figure.”
You save a hell of a lot of pain and suffering if you just throw the One Ring into Mt. Doom instead of taking it for yourself. It’s easy to think that “we’ll be strong enough to do the right thing with it”, but it’s a fool’s gambit.
#m
It is actually interesting to see that none of you mentions that IE
RUNS under Linux. IE 5.0 and 5.5. This is not 6.0 of course but
I would not be surprised if it would be supported soon.
You do not even need VmWare or Win4Lin or whatever. You
need CrossoverOffice.
So, naysayers go and visit this page:
http://www.codeweavers.com/products/office/supported_applications.p…
How about that for a surprise?
LU
>How about that for a surprise?
This is hardly a surprise.
Have actually tried running IE on Linux
i mean is it in a that good c layer that we
now also may enjoy all bugs, macro virusses and crashes?
Hail Microsoft, may i please log in now?
Bas
The comment was for those who said you can not do web development
on Linux because you can not test the result in IE without
having a Windows machine. (I did not make this clear in the comment.)
LU
I actually installed Crossover Office 1.2 this morning and installed IE 5.5 just to see if it runs..it runs but crashes often and this is prob. the fault of the codeweaving team but i would not be suprised if it would behave the same on Windows , i am sure it behaves like that on MACOS9/10 because i seen it live! @ my printers…
Who needs something else then Mozilla anyway….
For all those so called “powerusers” that need flash MX support, crossover is supporting that too.
The battle has just started so we will see in about 5 years
i bet my cards are in a good hand with a intelligent sent
of mind to go with it and i am betting on a Penguin but save some extra’s for a Darwin Theory. I think Microsoft has no future. The taller they get the harder the will fall is in this case an understatement.I the near future not may things will change but in the long run Open-Source and Free Software will Konquer the world…you know you may “sell” Open-Source or Free-Software, look at http://www.thekompany.com if you buy there product you get the sources with it..
ps. for everyone that is looking for a Ultraedit like app look at: katy.sourceforge.net, you may like it!
“When things go wrong you better go out of the way”
“No Mr. Gates you cannot use our toilet it is just cleaned
an we do not want to have bug infections”
“Dear Microsoft, My mother bought Windows XP and does have question about it: Does the shiny thing go in the separate powder box or directly with the clothes into the washing machine?”
Bas
The main catch with Web graphics is making sure one uses “Web-safe” colors (i.e. colors that even someone with a 256-color display can see correctly.) Gimp has a palette of Web-safe colors, and a way to convert pre-existing images so that they only use 256 colors (dithering the images if need be).
Photoshop is overkill for Web graphics, where CMYK separations and color calibration are non-issues. The GIMP has its limitations, but lets not sell it short, okay?
Agree.
And there is Photopaint 9 for Linux, its freely
downloadable on linux.corel.com it even can read/edit
*.cdr, *.eps (if editable), *.psd etc..
Go ahead do not be affraid…
“Dad do all computers run Windows? No son!, Dad can we buy one that does not run Windows? No son!”
Son is difficult to learn this Linux you are running?, Yes dad!, Can i try it son?, Yes dad!
Bas
I think Microsoft has no future. […]
I believe Microsoft do have a future, but Windows probably in a decade wouldn’t have a future. Reason: Linux. It beats Microsoft at what got it to #1: price. Unless Microsoft could price Windows as lower or lower than Linux without going inprofitable, I don’t think it’s markets would grow. This isn’t because Linux is so great and all (Longhorn would be enough to put Linux’s zealot technical merits arguement to rest) but rather so cheap – perfect for third world countries starting to adopt technology.
Probably this is why they are pushing .NET 😛
[This isn’t because Linux is so great and all (Longhorn would be enough to put Linux’s zealot technical merits arguement to rest) but rather so cheap – perfect for third world countries starting to adopt technology.]
I think you are somewhat wrong on this, the poperlarity
of Gnu/Linux has not all to do with its price. Sure i freely available on the net but the main thing is:
Its Open, its Free (freedom) its Not a Company, its scale-able (wrist, mainframe, Sun, i386, ia64 etc. ), its secure, its stable, its almost virus free etc.
I bet Microsoft never will come with a contra product
of this kind.
.Net is one big joke…its the Microsoft way of presenting the public with ( in their case) shit that
is already out their for years. C# is like picking up
Java and a bit of VB and mix it into a lot of shit and tell the public its great…Microsoft is marketing its
about selling products and making lots a money not about
freedom, innovation or quality.
Anyway i hope people will start realise that .Net and all other crap Microsoft is pushing are the same as
washingpowders its old wine in new bottles its
like you never get the stain out but the product always
improve…..
Gnu/Linux has a future because i have it and may use, copy and redistrubed it.
Bas