[PD] Operative systems and puredata

[carmen]

On Thu Sep 07, 2006 at 03:09:18PM -0500, David Powers wrote:
> I had a conversation with a PD developer who suggested that a majority
> of actual PD users (not developers) are on WinCrap. I'm not sure if
> this is worldwide, or more in the USA. egardless, based on what I see
> on the list here, it appears that most developers are on Linux
> exclusively. This causes some serious splits and problems for the
> community.

i dont think so. PD runs great on wincrap. and many develeopers use windows. thomas grill, charles henry, myself, etc. 


> 
> At least here, all PC's come with Wincrap, so it's certainly more
> accessible to the average person. The average working person is surely
> not going to have enough knowledge to run a Linux OS.

huh? it takes more knowledge to run a Windows OS than to run Ubuntu. at least run it without it getting infected with spyware 5 minutes after installation..

> average and I always run into problems. Yes, it's the fault of
> monopoly capitalism that this is so

monopoly and capitalism are mutually exclusive, imo. microsoft failed to conquer any market except low-common-denominator low-hanging-fruit of desktop OS installed-base. and by desktop OS, we mean that thing under firefox, that you dont really use for much of anything besidse an app list, and occasional file browsing. 

> I suggest, that developers ought to consider forming teams, and find
> people who will help with alternative operating systems not available
> to them. If it's not really viable to compile something for all
> systems, so be it - but I wonder if in many cases, it's more the case
> that Linux developers just don't care about the other OS's.

or that therse nothing in it for them. i mean most of htem dont get paid to make windows ports of their externals..


> Btw, if someone can tell me where I can learn to compile for win32, I
> might even be willing to participate in such things. I coded a little
> C++, but I just remember clicking on something in my IDE and the
> compiled program came out. I'm quite certain it's harder than that.

actually its that easy. 90% of the hassle on compiling with windows (assuming yo use GCC) is fixing up include paths. in the rare event somenoe used fork() or some sysV IPC in their external, its more work, but even Yves unauthorized externals all compile on windows, except 'playlist'..so presumably the one that started this thread should too..

> And, if some expensive commercial software is needed for this task, I
> have no problem stealing the software to do this (assuming it's from a
> big company).

hrm. i generally paid for software that i thought was worth it. but yeah. using MSVC, Borland, or ICL to compile linux software wll make things a lot more difficult.

> But, as is so typical in the Open Source world, there's almost no
> documentation.

i really disagree here. everything i ever wanted to know about an open source program, existed in either a) the manpage, b) /usr/share/doc or c) google. the documentation of open source is _much_ better than closed-source..and thats not even considering the source code as documentation (which it is)..

> When I try to open PD, nothing happens

i wouldn't be so quick to blame this on pure-dyne. when i open pd, it does one of a few things a) refuses to talk to the audio interface (miller version) b) freezes when trying to load up the gui (tim version) c) segfaults shortly after launch (mathu+chun version). or doest exist (my version)...