[olug] open source vs the world

[Will Langford]

Re: Development stuff...

At work, our primarily C compiler Metaware HighC.  Not the greatest
compiler on the market, but it was a management decision some years
back (96 or 98ish) that we're stuck with.  Given compiler options even
5 years ago... DJGPP was not a viaable alternative.  These days, it
might be, I dunno.

We also use a compiler for an AMD 186CC chip... the tool doesn't have
a whole lot of 'specific' support for the chip, but it's better than
the open sores offerings I went through (dcc, stuff from the elks
project, etc).  It's a $2500 modified borland 4.0ish (i think).

Our Windows tools are VB and VC.  There are plenty of options for
optimizations in VC, and just about any game programmer knows about
them.  In 2000, the cygwin project required extra dll's (bad voodoo
for us here), LCC is a joke, and DevCPP was in a horrid state.  I've
worked with DevCPP about 6 months ago, and although it's made HUGE
strides, it's still VERY finicky and not quite mature enough to
convert a 'bank' of coders over to.  Just visit the #SDL irc channel
and watch people complain about how DevCPP doesn't install the same on
their systems and such.

We'll be migrating to Linux as a target platform for one of our
projects soonish.  When we do, I can tell you we won't be using GCC --
every benchmark I've seen shows it lag behind intel's ICC.  I will
most likely be writing or porting video drivers to linux at that time
(and, if i can get the boss to let me, releasing them to the
public).... but that is probably the ONLY bit of kernel level code I
expect to touch.  Hacking the kernel is supposed to be a LAST resort,
not your first one.

Perhaps too many people hacking on the kernel is why my BT based video
tuner works in one kernel, but not the next, and then works again a
version later, and behaves slightly differently each go around.  "Well
it works on my system, fsck you!" ... grrr....

On a slightly different subject...

Linux is awesome.  If you ever need a networking/routing box, linux or
bsd are great choices.  Before KDE and GNOME, linux was also a viable
desktop alternative to Windows.  Thesedays, the aforementioned
desktops are equally (or worsely) bloated than windows 2000 or XP
(waiting 15-30 seconds for a file manager to simple startup on a
1.5ghz machine is simply apalling)  And if you want to have integrated
things that are nice for desktop usage (unified/simple printing, etc),
you *need* to run one of those desktops.

If the wm/desktop writing people tightened things up, I could be
tempted to run Linux as a day-to-day desktop again.  Oh, and the audio
system needs a rework under linux as well... I've been very tempted to
go about starting to write something for it, but time is always
against 'us' heh.  Until these things happen, it's OSX & XP for me.

7 or 8 years ago, Linux was my system of choice. It wasn't perfect for
server usage (more than just routing, that is) at the time, but it
made an acceptable desktop.  Now it's a horrible desktop (IMHO), but
much more capable as a server (as such, we use it here at work and in
the field as servers).  I hope in the coming 5-8 years, it will fill
both of those needs.

-Will