Finally Exorcised Windows from my Development Laptop
I’ve done some posting in the past about how nice Cygwin is if you find yourself forced to develop in a Windows environment. Even better than Cygwin is no Windows at all, a state which I finally achieved after my solid state drive crashed and I had to redo my system. As I was going about the task of installing Windows yet again I started asking myself if I really wanted to put up with:
- Vista’s annoying User Account Control permissions ‘protection’ which — no matter how I configured it — would always manage to prevent me from deleting or moving some of my own files.
- every day file locking issues which require you to endlessly implement work-arounds like the one mentioned here.
I could go on an on, but the final horror show that I’ll mention is the inability of the Windows file system to support symbolic links. I used to use Windows as the primary OS on a system which ran Ubuntu as a Vmware guest with about 10GB of space reserved for its system files, applications and data. That meant that when I needed working space, I would use VMware’s folder sharing to expose my Windows file system to Ubuntu. I paid the price when I tried to write or run scripts that used symbolic links — symlinks just don’t work under Windows. With Ubuntu Linux as the primary OS on my laptop the nightmare is finally over.
Installation Experience – Just One Glitch With Flash Support
My installation of Ubuntu 9.0 onto my Dell M6300 Precision went extremely smoothly. ( I bought this model because Dell has a pretty good reputation for supporting Linux, and it paid off — no driver problems whatsoever.) The only difficulty that I had was getting Flash to work on Firefox.
This article helped me through most of the rough spots. The key step is that you need to invoke the command:
sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree
However, Ubuntu’s 9.0 repositories don’t seem to include the repo that contains the ‘flashplugin-nonfree’ package. My solution was to sudo edit /etc/apt/sources.list and uncomment all lines that began with ‘# deb’. Then I ran the Synaptic Package Manager and hit reload to update my local catalog with indexes from those newly added repositories. After that I could run
sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree
with no issues.
Other Tips
Here are some commands and tips for those who want to set up a dev environment like mine (whether or not you’re comfortable with the tools I use is highly subjective, of course):
gvim:
sudo apt-get install vim-gnome
subversion:
sudo apt-get install subversion
To Swap Caps Lock and Control
use System Preferences / Keyboard / Layouts / Layout Options / Caps Lock Behavior
A good diff tool
I’m using ‘meld’, which I’m finding is even better than WinMerge.
Vmware Lets Me Revive Ol’ Blue Screen When I Need It
So in substantially escaping Windows Hell, have I relied on the browser’s relegation of Windows to a ‘a set of poorly debugged device drivers, as predicted by Mark Andreeson’s famous quote ? Well, not completely. What makes this all work for me are two things: first, the fact that the development tools that I need (like svn, vim, Eclipse, Intellij, and tools like Meld) are either Java-based or run natively on Linux. Second, is the fact that when I really do a need a tool that only works on Windows, VMware allows me to conveniently run ol’ Blue Screen right along side my other applications.
So, yes, I do occasionally need to fall back to Windows — mostly when I’m preparing presentations. For that purpose, I must admit that I find Powerpoint to be the best tool out there. But these days you don’t need suffer with a second rate operating system just because you need one application that runs on it. Virtualization technologies like VMware, Xen and Virtual Box let you invoke the beast when you need it, and make it go away when you don’t.
on February 3rd, 2010
Welcome to the club….! I’m 3 years clean (windows-free) & counting (not counting the unused windows dual-boot partition). Virtualization has proven to be the final push to get people to take that first step (it was for me…) …Just back up those VM’s before they blue screen. Because they will.
…I switch between ‘meld’ and kdiff3 for merging: ‘meld’ for bringing two files into unison; kdiff3 for merging two files into a third (e.g., revision control merges).
And, fwiw, OpenOffice might be worth the effort to replace that last component in your MS toolkit. It’s not exactly trivial to pick up (the docs are extensive however), but then again neither is MS ppt.
on February 28th, 2010
Thanks, Michael ~
I use open office for spread sheets and .doc style documents. But I have found the open office presentation app to be pretty buggy. i have to hand it to mickey soft, i prefer power point. Grudgingly, i will admit it.