True that linux
doesn't have as many games as for windows. But that is only because the audience of the games mostly use windows and one or two other small factors.

Mac operating systems are the best at GUI and *nix is the best for programming. Windows doesn't stand a chance but what I hate the most about it is Microsoft trying to justify themselves after ripping off most of the features from Mac OS X.

Recently I read this article that said that Microsoft is trying to rip of linux apt-get and aptitude by having a software repository. This will utterly fail but again, proves that they're just using others' ideas.

I have dual boot windows on my desktop with debian linux (kubuntu release for filesystem compatibility) and I haven't logged into windows in a long time. It's a core i7 bloomfield with 4 megs 1.6 GHz DDR3, 2x Nvidia SLi 9800 GTX+ and I am sure wine can run any game smoothly.

Btw, my old 166 MHz Pentium III with 32 mb ram and 1 mb graphics card still runs linux without a problem.
(Archeleus hates cabbage, Tue 29 Jun 2010, 7:27, 1 reply)

I
have to disagree with the "Best for programming" comment.

It depends what you want to achieve. If you want fast development in an environment that people are familiar with then I think dot net wins hands down - C# and even VB are nice easy to use and powerful programming languages.

There's nothing that comes close for RAD for Linux.

I'm no Windows fanboy, but MS do know how to produce decent languages - although this will probably be shot down for not 'real' programming, it doesn't matter a tiny bit to the business that wants the program written - they just want it to work, and usually to work in Windows, they couldn't care less if you have avoided the use of pointers or other unmanaged programming language features, they want to be able to click a button on a screen and have something happen.

Having said that, at home I use Python and GTK+ - obviously I could use Mono, but don't.

I used to have a dual boot with Windows too, but realised that I hadn't touched it for 9 months due it taking so long to boot etc... when all I wanted to do was pick up a few emails, so reclaimed the HDD.
(dchurch bah, Tue 29 Jun 2010, 7:34, closed)

Ofcourse visual studio
is something that microsoft can be proud of. I don't do VB or .NET so I stick to linux for programming. In my experience I find using Linux GCC better than going for Cygwin in windows. Javascript and Java (core) performance, I don't know but I'd like to think they're faster on linux. Web-hosts don't like javascript pages because it hogs a lot of their resources I guess, which is why I think linux is better for that too.

Even for php, installing everything and configuration is much easier in linux.

I heard that VB is like really simple, with code that ordinary people can read and understand and I'll look into it sometime.
(Archeleus hates cabbage, Tue 29 Jun 2010, 8:25, closed)

I think
that used to be true of VB before it went *true* OO.

I've never been a fan of Java - specifically J2EE for the reasons you specify,although I was running this on Solaris, it was still a huge hog.

C# is like C and Java mixed - C in as much as you can pretty much do anything you like, including an in-line assembler if you want it - and Java as it's compiled down for a VM, in this case the dot net framework.

Like I say, at home I generally use Python as quite a lot of the stuff I do there is quite high level - switching switches to open doors, turn lights on etc...

The reason I went to dot net was simply for the employment value - there were more jobs around in my area for those skills than for C++ or ASM programming, and/or indeed anything to do with Linux (which is of course what I use at home exclusively these days).

...and yes, I'm with you on the PHP - generally I use gedit as I can connect it directly (or at least it looks that way to the user) to the server and simply click 'save' when I want it to update remotely.

Remotely (ssh) I use Joe['s own editor] which is a bit like nano, but with some really cool little features.

You can get a LAMP server up and running from scratch in less than 30 mins - which is bloody fantastic. Try doing the same with WAMP - you'll be there all week.
(dchurch bah, Tue 29 Jun 2010, 9:27, closed)

True
I set up MAMP and LAMP and each only took me like 10 minutes to set up, more for the downloading and stuff yeah.

apt-get is fantastic.

Btw, yeah your home sounds epic (talking about the DIY stuff), I wanted to do something like that but I always run out of motivation. Maybe I'll take some ideas from you and get it done.

But what do think? Python or C for the controls? I know both, but I am better at the latter.
(Archeleus hates cabbage, Tue 29 Jun 2010, 10:32, closed)

Either....or....
I use python simply because I don't have to compile it every time I make a change - which is frequently, and I can just open the file over SSH and change it without a lot of grief.

Although C would most likely be fine as well - I hear socket programming is a nightmare though, and in Python that's all done for you.

I did initially write the touch screen interface in C#, but have since rewritten it using GTK+ as I came home one night to see someone remotely controlling the machine! (It was the only Windows box on the network, and to be honest, after so many years of not having to worry about virus protection etc... I just got lazy. Rather than go back to that nightmare of updating patches/virus protection/spyware etc... I figured I'd install Linux on the box and rewrite the front end. I generally wrote all the *grunt* work as webservices in PHP, so it really was just a matter of placing buttons on the screen in a different language).
(dchurch bah, Tue 29 Jun 2010, 13:40, closed)

Ah yeah security
is best with *nix systems.

Well, I have only done socket programming in Java before, but it hogs too much resources so I'll stick to C I guess. Or Python if I can get better at it.

Thanks anyway.
(Archeleus hates cabbage, Wed 30 Jun 2010, 12:03, closed)