The Future Cource of PC OS'es

[Donald Darden]

I've reached a critical juncture in my thinking on this subject.  When does Windows become too much of a good thing?  My thought was when it became XP, with its elaborate efforts to protect Microsoft's profits by its registration and validation process.  So I stayed with Windows 2000 Pro instead of upgrading.

So how do you think I feel about Vista?  Now I didn't really object to XP, as long as Microsoft continued to support 2K and XP, and really didn't object to the step to get rid of Windows 9x/Me because they weren't true multitasking systems, and were holding a lot of improved development back as developers sought to stay in the mainstream as much as possible.

And I certanly do not object to the idea of a more secure OS, if one can be built.  But the glits and funky features promised for Vista, along with the massive hardware upgrades needed to run it, sounded ominous to me.

Some years ago, I began to distrust the weight that Ziff-Davis publications put behind the Microsoft OS, which was instrumental in turning the world away from IBM's OS/2 and other alternatives.  Ziff-Davis publications added a lot of clout to what Microsoft could muster, and helped make Microsoft the single vender of the most widely used OS of all time.  But was it really their place to do so?  I began to seriously doubt it.

Linux was there, along with Unix, and there were many people still using some version of DOS.  But by and large, the ZD Pubs, including PC World, PC Magazine, Computer Shopper, and many others, only featured Windows and Windows applications.  Then when something really new and capable came along, known as BeOS, it was virtually ignored by those same publications.  Now I know that people that tried BeOS were really impressed about how it got so much better performance out of the PCs of that day, but it was treated with distain by the ZD publications.  Even when the creators released BeOS to the public, so that you could just download it on your PC over the Internt, it failed to attact any favorable press.  I knew then that the bias or fix was in for sure.

Then we start hearing about Vista, and while some writers were cautious in their views, most felt it was way pass time for Microsoft to come out with a major upgrade.  When we started hearing about the major hardware upgrades needed, often mandating buying hew systems, nobody took the position that this is just plain stupid.  It was all about Microsoft and Intel making buckets of new money by selling new systems to us, and the ZD Pubs really did their best to convince all of us that this was our future.

But Vista is bloatware and a dog.  Many promised freatures never even made it into the package, and their idea of added security is to ask us, "Are you sure?"
before it will perform some operations.  Meanwhile you give up compatability with many existing applications, which means a lot of rebuys, upgrades, more money spent, and the aggrivation of solving all those problems.  Meanwhile the ZD Writers admit to a few problems, but are sure that given time, a few updates will make everything right.  Meanwhile, aren't the new looks really impressive, and which version of Vista should you set your sights on?

Sure, I'm being purposefully negative about Vista, but I really resent the hype and unfettered enthusiasm that ZD Pubs and others lavished on it, and still do in many cases.

So I found it interesting that the current issues of a couple of ZD Pubs are demonstrating what I would have to describe as an "editorial shift" away from Vista.  It disappoints, and finally somebody is speaking out and saying so.
The current issue of PC Magazine even talks up the option of moving to Linux in place (or in addition to) working with Vista.

I seriously doubt that I will (meaning I really do not intend to EVER) make the move to Vista.  And if Microsoft carries out its threat to discontinue its support of XP (which would mean 2K as well), then I can only plan to move to another OS,  So the question is, which version of Linux?  Now I wish that BeOS was still a real option, but while it has some fanatics still committed to it, I doubt that there are enough parties envolved to really revive it.

But let's hear what other people think.  What I do know though, is that as long as PowerBasic is locked into Windows, then its future and mine are not going to continue to be entertwined.  Since it currently meets my needs, I'm already discounting the idea of further upgrades, simply because it looks like my time left with Windows will be limited.  There are competing products that I can use under Linux, and in fact I already have access to these.  One is PureBasic, which I own through a fortuous purchase, and the other is FreeBasic, which costs nothing.

[Charles Pegge]

Here is a survey of Linux Desktops - Ubuntu is the most popular with about 1/3 of the market:

http://www.desktoplinux.com/cgi-bin/survey/survey.cgi?view=archive&id=0821200617613

Linux Desktops are now serious competition for Microsoft. We can only hpoe this will have a beneficial effect in constraining MS's monopolistic tendencies.

Working under Linux is very nice and I do at least half my coding there, but there is so much to learn. Fortunately most of Windows conventions: keyboard control etc are the same, so using applications is easy - but for developers there is a different engine under the bonnet.

[Frederick J. Harris]

What GUI toolkit are you using with Linux Charles, if you don't mind my asking?  Some time ago I installed Ubuntu (6.1 I believe) and managed to get the X software dev stuff installed, and I played with X some.  It is in my opinion very, very, very different from Win32 Api.  For example, no concept even vaguely resembling a Window Class and Window Procedure specific to that class.  I hope to get back to learning Linux some later this year, but I'm not sure what toolkit to adopt.  From what little exploration of the topic I did I wasn't able to find anything like the windows Api, which I love.  Everything I checked out looked a lot like PowerBASIC DDT, which doesn't do much for me.

How's this idea?  Years ago Coke did a major recipe change with Coke.  Remember that?  The uproar was so tremendous Coke had to come out with 'Classic Coke'.  Maybe Microsoft can come up with a 'Classic Windows' (something like 2000/XP) for people not wanting Vista.  And that would be me.

[Charles Pegge]

My programming in Linux (Mandriva) is in Freebasic, mostly console based, but some Opengl, so I have not had to deal with xWindows directly yet. I am really still a novice - getting aquainted with a new set of terminal commands is enough. But my approach to the GUI side is to make use of cross-platform libraries such as SDL and Opengl, learning what I can from good examples.

Your experience of Linux seems well ahead of mine Fred.

[Kent Sarikaya]

From what I have read, instead of writing for one api like windows or x, you read about using wxwidgets or QT as they allow your program to be crossplatform and not dependent on any one api. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qt_(toolkit)

I feel as you guys do pretty much. The more I read about Vista, the more I am convinced unless a miracle happens it is not for me. I am thinking of running XP as my game computer and slowly make the switch to linux in the coming year.

Also the more I think and look at things, .net and java are the wrong way to go. Look at all the .net and java installations in add and remove programs from the control panel. I think it is better to write once but compile many times for the platforms you want. That will offer the most freedom and less reliance on one company and their way of doing things.

I hope powerbasic offers a linux version, it would make it really nice. In the meantime you guys running linux at the moment might want to check out this basic:
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Programming/Coding-languages-Compilers/KBasic.shtml

I have not tried it as I am trying to focus on thinBasic and powerBasic at the time. It would be neat to hear your guys thoughts about it if you try it out.

[Charles Pegge]

kbasic website:

http://www.kbasic.org

Looks very promising QB and VB compatible for Windows,Linux and Mac.  but not much on their forum yet.

[Kent Sarikaya]

I have successfully installed Ubuntu before on my notebook with it supporting my wireless card, but in making the move to Linux, I want to make sure I move to a good all around version. I looked up Linux books in my local libraries catalog and there are plenty of generic Linux books. The only named Linux they have any books for are for Red Hat.

I did a search on Amazon Books, and you see books for Red Hat number one, Ubuntu second, a Suse and Fedora Core books I saw and one for Damn Small Linux. This is just in the first few pages of results, they had a huge return of results so I am sure a book must exist for some of the other ones as well. Also on forums, it seems Slackware Linux is very popular too.

Anyways,I found this cool site that tests you to see which Linux might be best for you. Thought it might be fun and beneficial to forum members to check it out.
http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/

[Charles Pegge]

For users of Freespire and Linspire there is a site where you can get automated installation, using a FireFox plugin, from a huge collection of applications:

Click'n Run

www.cnr.com

This service should be available to Ubuntu7,Debian, Fedora and OpenSuse users soon. The site seems to run a bit sluggishly - I hope they will have sufficient bandwidth to cope with the demand.

[Kent Sarikaya]

Thanks Charles, an interesting and useful link.

Follow up on the which linux test. I took the test numerous ways last night and made a scoring system. I just answered slightly differently on a question here or there, but pretty much followed what could apply to me. Here are the results:
OpenSuse and Mandravia tied and Ubuntu came in second. OpenSuse came in first in 3 tests and Mandravia in 2 tests. Ubuntu never came up first surprisingly in these tests.

The very very first time I took the test yesterday before the multi-tests, Ubuntu came up first.

This one was outside of the test, just to see what be the choices.
I answered not truthfully, but as a very hardcore Linux user might, two distros came up. 1 Gentoo and 2 Slackware

My overall rating of that test is that, wow it seems to find what you are looking for if you are not sure. I know Ubuntu works and would be more than enough for me, but something in me kept nagging me about it and it turns out the test offered two other distros over it. I was impressed, now to see if I can get them running

[Donald Darden]

Since there has been some mention of the various distributions of Linux, I thought I would mention one of the "live" distributions, the one I first read about in one of John Divorak's columns.  It is call Knoppix after the guy that put it together.
Here are some related links:

http://www.knoppix.net/
http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/Main_Page
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/knoppix_intro

The term "live" means that the distribution is designed to boot up from the image that you create on CD or DVD, so you do not have to actually install it on your hard drive.  This has the advantage of letting you test drive it before you think about actually installing it on your system.  Everything you need is included in the image file that you download.  the downside is that running from a CD or even a DVD disk does not give you a real feel for the performance that you can milk out of Linux.  And of course even with the 700 MB allowed on a CD-R disk, the distribution is slightly limited.  Still, it's a good start.

I also decided to see what might be sturring in the BeOS camp.  I never delved into it to any extent, but I read that it was not dissemular from Linux, and that there were a couple of books put out for migrating stuff from Linux or Unix over to BeOS.  Well, it turns out that BeOS has now become the Haiku OS, and is still under development.  Here are some links related to it as well:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeOS
http://www.bebits.com/app/2680
http://haiku-os.org/
http://haiku-os.org/about

[Charles Pegge]

Attempting to create a new operating system, like BEOs or Haiku may be a mistake, given the huge investment of the software community in Windows/Linux/Mac applications. Anything that introduces further compatibility barriers is unlikely to be welcomed. However, using the cross-platform libraries, (such as those for which Jose has produced PB headers)  it is possuble to have a system that breaks the OS boundaries while providing all the functionality needed for the job.

Perhaps a new super-operating system will emerge from a collection of these libraries. Something less complex than the present platform-dependent offerings.

[Donald Darden]

WINE of one of a number of projects to permit Windows-based applications to run on alternate operating systems.  Efforts to increase the level of compatability are ongoing.  I quote one source:

"Wine is an Open Source implementation of the Windows API on top of X, OpenGL, and Unix.

"Think of Wine as a compatibility layer for running Windows programs. Wine does not require Microsoft Windows, as it is a completely free alternative implementation of the Windows API consisting of 100% non-Microsoft code, however Wine can optionally use native Windows DLLs if they are available. Wine provides both a development toolkit for porting Windows source code to Unix as well as a program loader, allowing many unmodified Windows programs to run on x86-based Unixes, including Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, and Solaris.

"More information can be read in the articles Why Wine is so important, and Debunking Wine Myths. If you are wondering how well a particular application works in Wine, please examine the Applications Database. For installation instructions and step-by-step help with running Wine, take a look at the User Guide.

"Wine is free software. The licensing terms are the GNU Lesser General Public License."

http://www.winehq.org/

If WINE works as intended, then the documentation on using WINE in your own applications should consist of available Windows API literature.  But I've seen no one yet claim to be able to run and build applications using PB/Win up to this point, or even PB/CC under Linux.  All discussions found have centered around using the PB/DOS versionm and using DOSEMU (DOS Emulator) rather than WINE.

Now I haven't messed with any of this myself, but I wonder what would happen if an effort were made to first install WINE under Linux, then to run the IDE or some other editor typically used for creating source code.  I imagine it might work.  Then to call the powerbasic compiler to see if it will compile the code.  That might work as well.  And if the program compiles, depending upon what Windows API calls it uses, it might also execute under Linuix.  But this is just a guess.  If there is any real difficulty, I would suspect that it would be in terms of using the Debugger.  I would guess that the API calls for using the Debugger would not be fully implemented under Linux.  But it might be interesting to see what would happen without engaging the debuggerr.

The interesting thing, is that as WINE is supplied for a number of operating systems, you might end up being able to continue developing software to run in the Windows emulator, meaning that you and your clients may be able to forego continued adoption of Microsoft Windows versions in place of existing ones.

The other question would be just how much of the so-called Windows API calls have been emulated at this point?  Updates and revisions are on-going, so what does not work today may indeed work a month, or a year from now.  But the APIs are actually a series of documented, externally accessable functions and subs that appear in numerous DLLS that are included in Windows.  To use them, you need a DECLARE statement that identifies both the library, and the function or sub by name  Technically, a developer may call other libraries and functions or subs that he/she knows exists within the Windows environment, but which might not be emulated or available outside of Windows.

[Kent Sarikaya]

I think the big thing that can change everything is Apple. They have their OS working on intel machines, they have boot camp, let's you run windows apps, if Apple ever sold their OS not bound to hardware by them, that could change the world quickly. The OS is a linux distro underneath with that awesome interface and of course many hardware drivers exist for it.

I played with ubuntu, openSuse and Mandriva this weekend. They are all viable options, it is just a matter of getting your hardware to work, and that is not linux's fault, but hardware manufacturers not providing drivers. I sort of try out linux every 6 months to see what is happening, and each time you see more and more progress and it getting easier to install and use. It is not there yet, but you can see big improvements. I am pretty sure by the time XP is no longer supported that linux by the major distros at least will be good enough to go with instead of Vista.

I was surprised but I did like openSuse and Mandriva more than ubuntu this go around. And of the three I really liked Mandriva. But in the end I did reinstall XP, I like XP and will use it as long as it is supported.

But it feels good to know Vista can't be forced upon me and options will be there when the time comes!!

[Donald Darden]

As if we don't have enough choices, there is also Mimix 3:
http://www.minix3.org/
http://www.minix3.org/download/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MINIX_3
http://haiku-os.org/about
http://www.minix3.org/
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Minix_3/Minix_3_on_Bochs

I also found mention of Mimix 3.1 on a website last night, so apparently it is moving right along.

[Donald Darden]

There is a newer release of Knoppix out there, dated January 2007.  I decided to redownload it and take a look.  This is version 5.1.0, and it has had a face lift.  Actually, it really looks cool, and booted up nicely.  I even found I could use my USB/RF mouse with it without any problems.

I guess I will set aside some hard drive space and play with it a bit.  It comes with Wine, which can be configured right from the KDE desktop menu.  But I will probably redownload that off the internet as well, to make sure I get the latest and greatest.  Then I will se what happens when I try to access PB/CC under it.

When the KDE desktop starts up, it also automatically mounts your hard drives and provides icons for them,  It also gives you access to two web browsers from the toolbar, and the K-button (where Window's Start button lives) gives you quick access to many other programs and tools, including the OpenOffice software already included in the CD image.

This is a CD image that I downloaded.  It is available from numerous sources, including some univerisities here in the U.S.  Just an easy download, but a big one, so you really need a high speed connection.  You can buy any distribution on CD or DVD if you look for it.  Because they are using compression on the CD, they claim that they have upwards to 2 GB of actual content on the CD.  It decompresses automatically on the fly, and probably gives you faster access from the CD than you would get if uncompressed.

When you find Knoppix, you will probably see a large number of files listed.  There are just three things you need to know in picking the right one.  The date the distro was put together is included in the name, so go for the most recent.  And the DE or EN or whatever refers to the language being used on bootup (you can change this later after the boot is complete).  DE refers to german, EN refers to english, FR would be french, and so on.  The extension .ICO means it is a burnable image.  I used Nero to create the CD from the downloaded file, but if you don't have any burning software, you can find suitable programs by searching the Internet.  You will likely see other files with similar names but different extensions.  You can ignore them.  The large file with the .ico extension is the only one needed.

Most PCs will boot from the CD or DVD drive if you have a bootable disk there when it is powered on or rebooted.  If not, you may have to use your PC Setup options to specify booting from CD/DVD drive before booting from the hard drive.  Just rebooting without a boot image in the CD/DVD drive should cause it to boot from the hard drive as it did before.

There are some useful sites that specifically focus on the Knoppix distribution.  The Knoppix distribution is in turn based on the Debian distribution, which has been around for awhile.  And the Linux Kernal is the foundation for all Linux distributions, with a choice of supporting and additional packages out there to give each distribution its own distinctive flavor.  You can also install multiple versions of Linux on the same machine if it suits you to do so, along with DOS and various flavors of Windows.

What makes Linux something of a challenge today is not that it is severely limited, but that it is exactly the opposite.  You buy a Windows PC, and you get a small range of trial and vender-supplied products.  People then usually have to buy products specific to their need or interests, paying for each, and learning each in turn.  But Linux distributions are so extensive, that it can be daunting to face all at once the many things to learn and do with them.

By providing a desktop, such as KDE, configured to resemble Windows, you can quickly find common ground with a modern Linux distribution like Knoppix.  There are also many good books to help, including some that take those that know DOS, giving them similar command line actions in Linux.

One thing that might come hard to new users is the determination of which shell they want to employ in Linux.  Know the command line prompt that DOS
gives you, or that you get when you use the RUN command from Windows?  That is your introduction to the command level capabilities of DOS, or the DOS emmulation that later versions of Windows supply.  But in Linux, there are a number of different shells available, and it's your choice which one to use.  How to choose is often based on what you've heard or read, and you will generally find that authors of books on Linux often only cover one version in their text.   
For instance, you can get a Linux for Dummies book that covers several different Linux distributions, including Knippix, or you can get one that covers just Debian for Dummies.  So you can either chose to learn to do the same thing five or six different ways, or possibly learn more by focusing on just one version.

Here are a few related links:
http://www.ilearnlinux.com/Debian/index.html?gclid=CO6s5rfFrY4CFSBMGgodtAu0ZA
http://www.amazon.com/Debian-Linux-Dummies-Michael-Bellomo/dp/0764507133
http://www.theosfiles.com/os_linux/ospg_Linux_debian.htm