Surprised and Disappointed

[Chuck Allison]

Hello Charles,

Monday, May 5, 2003, 12:17:34 PM, you wrote:

>>   If on the other hand there is some great benefit on the other side
>>   of all this complexity (other than stability, which my XP box already
>>   has), please take a moment and convince me. Thanks.

CC> The typical Linux distribution is a much more powerful environment out
CC> of the box than Windows. E.g. with Windows you have to pay extra for
CC> an office suite or an integrated development environment. Red Hat has
CC> both as part of the package.

OpenOffice runs on Windows and I run gcc under Cygwin on Windows; so
far that's a tie.

CC> Also, Linux gives you standards. E.g.: Microsoft makes no effort to be
CC> ANSI C compliant. gcc is ANSI compliant, or at least tries to be, and
CC> its extensions are supersets of ANSI.

I have the EDG front end and Dinkumware library on Windows, the best
game in town. Also, the Comeau C++ compiler, which is also based on
EDG (it costs #50, but I got it for free). But I agree that much more
software comes for free on Linux. That's cool.

CC> Speaking of not having to reboot for 18 months except for upgrades: I
CC> don't think that figure will impress many folks on this list. I have a
CC> 486 here that has been running continuously, except for upgrades, my
CC> vacations (I shut down computers because of concerns about lightening
CC> strikes), and maintenance (I run fsck on the file systems and clean
CC> out /tmp every year or so) for more than four years.

Good point. That is impressive.

-- 
Best regards,
 Chuck Allison (The Harmonious CodeSmith)
 Senior Editor, C/C++ Users Journal
 cda at freshsources.com