[clue-talk] Re: Linux auto-install DB and other stuff

[Matt Gushee]

Collins Richey wrote:
> On 1/22/06, Greg Knaddison <greg.knaddison at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 1/20/06, rex evans <rexfordevans at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>> For experimentation with Open Source
>>> packages, MS Windows is not practical;
>>> that is why I am thinking Linux and
>>> (recently) Mac.
>> As various migration projects around the world have shown, you can
>> start going "open source" on the "upper layers" of the user
>> environment and then once you get used to those "top layers" the
>> switch of the rest of the system is not as hard.
>>
>> In less abstract terms, try out Cygwin (and it's myriad packages),
>> OpenOffice.org, Firefox, Thunderbird, the software in the OpenCD
>> project etc. and you can get a really good "open" experience on top of
>> your Windows system.  Then, the transition to a Linux/BSD operating
>> system is easier.
>>
> 
> Yeah. I'm not sure where Rex came up with the concept that OpenSource
> packages are not practical on Windows. OpenOffice.org, Firefox,
> Thunderbird, MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc. are all quite usable on Windows.
> You don't have to go whole hog and put up Linux to get familiar with
> these.

He said experimentation ... implying, I think, programming and compiling 
various things, maybe thinking in terms of the GNU tool chain. So, sure, 
there's Cygwin and MinGW, and they are certainly not impractical, but 
they're not exactly easy either. And if you want to use 3rd-party 
libraries, you have to install them manually, since Windows doesn't have 
package management as we know it.

-- 
Matt Gushee
The Reluctant Geek: http://matt.gushee.net/rg/
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