Software

[saquarrier]

Unlike M$ linux comes with lots and lots of software.  And if your distro dosn't have a specific program you can surf the web and download it for free, if there isn't a program availible that does the specific task write one and we all can enjoy it  

[Sinistar]

The fact that it's so darn easy to find and download stuff online is perhaps a problem for the *NIX world... after all, you need a decent *dsl connection if you want to get hold of anything.

Also, because cd's aren't all that cheap (okay, so they quite cheap, but hey, for us poor students every penny counts...), people don't feel all that inclined to drop off some program packages at some local Net-Caf

[voidmain]

quote:Originally posted by Sinistar:
The fact that it's so darn easy to find and download stuff online is perhaps a problem for the *NIX world... after all, you need a decent *dsl connection if you want to get hold of anything.

Huh?  Who doesn't at least *know* someone with a high speed connection and a CD burner?  Shit, give me your address and I'll send you a copy, free of charge you poor soul...

 

quote:
Also, because cd's aren't all that cheap (okay, so they quite cheap, but hey, for us poor students every penny counts...), people don't feel all that inclined to drop off some program packages at some local Net-Caf

[<xcrasx>]

Anyone one know where I can find some good packages for Linux/Sparc. There are lots of distro's but view apps to go with it.

[voidmain]

quote:Originally posted by <xcrasx>:
Anyone one know where I can find some good packages for Linux/Sparc. There are lots of distro's but view apps to go with it.

What sort of packages?  I assume you already have Solaris and Linux and are looking for more apps.  Of course you should be able to find all the Sun written apps at http://www.sun.com, many other vendors sell software that runs on Solaris.  What sort of apps are you needing for Linux?  The new StarOffice 6.0 is worth downloading also found at http://www.sun.com.  There are also lots of vendors who sell software that runs on Linux, that is if the free stuff doesn't suit you, and if it's free stuff you're looking for there are zillions of places to find this. http://www.google.com/.  Can you be more specific?
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$ man Lesbians

[ December 06, 2001: Message edited by: VoidMain ]

[mchasse]

quote:Originally posted by VoidMain:


What sort of packages?  I assume you already have Solaris and Linux and are looking for more apps.  Of course you should be able to find all the Sun written apps at http://www.sun.com, many other vendors sell software that runs on Solaris.  What sort of apps are you needing for Linux?  The new StarOffice 6.0 is worth downloading also found at http://www.sun.com.  There are also lots of vendors who sell software that runs on Linux, that is if the free stuff doesn't suit you, and if it's free stuff you're looking for there are zillions of places to find this. http://www.google.com/.  Can you be more specific?
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$ man Lesbians

[ December 06, 2001: Message edited by: VoidMain ]

I am running Mandrake 7.1 on Sparc Ultra II 60, however being an ISP I am tied to alot of MS sh!t, I haven't been able to find a version of StarOfficce for linux/SPARC, and in general it is very hard to find packages that have been compiled for Linux/Sparc. There are plenty of Distro's but not many apps.

[voidmain]

quote:Originally posted by mchasse:


I am running Mandrake 7.1 on Sparc Ultra II 60, however being an ISP I am tied to alot of MS sh!t, I haven't been able to find a version of StarOfficce for linux/SPARC, and in general it is very hard to find packages that have been compiled for Linux/Sparc. There are plenty of Distro's but not many apps.

Ahh, I see your predicament. One reason open source is good (unlike StarOffice and Wordperfect Office) is that you can take the source code and compile it on whatever hardware architecture you want (in your cast Sparc).  And since StarOffice is now owned by Sun, and the Sparc architecture is owned by Sun, and Sun also distributes their own OS designed for the Sparc platform (Solaris) they would probably rather that people ran Solaris on the Sparc rather than any OS, and in a "Microsoft Like" fashion they don't distribute a copy of StarOffice for the Linux/Sparc.

I can think of a couple of office solutions.  KDE Office is coming along although it is not as mature as StarOffice.  You could run KDE Office on your Linux/Sparc installation.  You already stated that you have some Win* machines lying around.  Since you already paid Billy Bob for those copies of NT, you can download the Win* version of StarOffice and run it on them.  It's free and better than paying that rediculous price for MS Office.

Now you should be able to run ANY of the GNU and other open source apps.  Obviously you can't download the Binary packages, but you will have to download the Source RPMS and "rebuild" them to create your own binary package for installation.

There are even fewer of us who have Sparc machines running Linux so what non-open source commercial software there is out there mostly is targeted toward Linux/Intel.  Is an office suite the main thing you are interested in or are there other apps?
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find / | grep -i win.com | xargs rm -f

[Calum]

isn't openoffice able to compile on a sparc/linux?

[voidmain]

I don't believe there is a Linux/Sparc port of OpenOffice. At least not according to their porting page:

http://porting.openoffice.org/

It does show that there is progress on NetBSD/Sparc  and work being done on FreeBSD/Sparc, and of course there is already a port of Solaris/Sparc.

[Calum]

hmm, i just assumed that if it was totally open source, and if it were running on the same upper level software (linux/XWindows/and-so-on) that it would be compilable on a new machine. Does this mean there is low level machine specific code in it? or am i really missing the point?

[voidmain]

quote:Originally posted by Calum:
hmm, i just assumed that if it was totally open source, and if it were running on the same upper level software (linux/XWindows/and-so-on) that it would be compilable on a new machine. Does this mean there is low level machine specific code in it? or am i really missing the point?

Yes, there is hardware (processor) specific code that needs to be ported, especially if you include any ASM. A simple example is the different way in which memory is addressed (big endian vs little endian), and RISC chips have an entirely different set of registers which are not used the same as CISC processors, and you have 32 vs 64 bit etc etc.  

Simple helloworld.c programs will compile with no problems across the board using the GCC compiler but when you start getting into lower level stuff (something you usually want to do to get every bit of performance you can) then the code has to be written to the specific processor.

[Calum]

gracious! i hope this stuff is routinely covered once i get up to that stage in my mental development.

i can see how it might be a choice between performance and portability then.

[voidmain]

Well I oversimplified it. Really most anything you would write startig out using GCC on one platform will compile just fine using GCC on another platform. If you start getting into very large applications or something needing very low level raw access to resources then you need to put greater weight on portability. Usually apps written with portability in mind from the start aren't a problem. Most apps don't start out with portability in mind though.