Monday, October 29, 2007

 

PIttsburgh OpenSolaris meet up

I am trying to organize a OpenSolaris meet up here in Pittsburgh. Last week I posted a request on the OpenSolaris forums but so far I only have one person interested. I am hoping to get something going to see if we can start up an OpenSolaris user group. If you are interested send me an email.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

 

Slackware: Still my favorite distro

As part of my job I test my company's software product and many different Linux distros. So I get plenty of experience with all of the "popular" ones. I kind of figured that eventually I would eventually migrate to a different distro that is more user friendly or better package management but I never found one I like better. Here's a few reasons why:

1. Stability: Some distros have updates on an almost seemingly daily basis. In my experience updates break things almost as often as they fix things.
2. Developer tools: Slackware has one of those most complete sets of tools and libraries for development. I am still annoyed that some very popular distros still don't come with Sun's Java.
3. GUI not the default: I still like the fact that the default is still the console. Who needs a windowed environment for a server anyway?
4. The Subscription Service: I signed up for the CD subscription service at least 9 years ago and it has never stopped. I have moved several times, changed my email address a few times, and have forgot about on several occasions but some how they have tracked me down and got the CD to me shortly after a release. Sure I could just download it for free but I want to support the Slackware team.


One of these days I am going to get my chocolate with my peanut butter by getting Slackware working on OpenSolaris using BrandZ. From what I have read it will work.

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

 

A Good C++ Resource

After 10 years of programming Java* I am finally trying to master C++. Yes, I know I have it backwards. Since I am probably still in the stage of not knowing what I don't know with C++ yet a helpful resource is cplusplus.com. I like it because it reminds me of Javadoc. So if you have any other resources to recommend please comment. A very good book I found is "The C++ Programming Language" from the man himself, Bjarne Stroustrup. It's such a good book that if you read it and never even work on C++ you would still learn to be a better programmer.


*Yes, that is right 10 years of Java programming. I started with Java 1.0 as a hobby on OS/2 over 10 years ago and in a few months will be the 10 year anniversary of when I actually got paid to do Java 1.1 stuff. Wow, I'm old.

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