New noob with many questions

Interesting though this is, it does bring up something I recall from (more than) a few years back. I cut my coding teeth on a Commodore, and remember an experiment showing the difference between coding and compiling with an ultimately simple program that changed the colour of the screen through the basic range of 16 colours. Written in basic and then compiled into machine code, it took about 10 seconds to go through the range. The same exercise done directly in source code, altered the screen faster than the eye could see.
Is there a similar slowdown in compiling source code for Linux? It is my understanding that this is one of the reasons why Windows software needs such gigantic computing power for relatively simple tasks; too much redundant code from the compiler to make it all work.

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Originally Posted by benbob1

Interesting though this is, it does bring up something I recall from (more than) a few years back. I cut my coding teeth on a Commodore, and remember an experiment showing the difference between coding and compiling with an ultimately simple program that changed the colour of the screen through the basic range of 16 colours. .

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POKE 53280,1
POKE 53281,0

Argh!, my brain hurts just trying to remeber those!

Now, about coding and compiling. You code when you write a program, may it be in C or shell or basic, pascal, cobol, fortran, etc. . When you compile it, it is turned into machine code already and stored that way as a binary (executable) file. Shell scripts , like the old commodore basic is "interpreted" , a program takes the instructions and turns them into machine code "on-the-fly" and thats what makes it somewhat slow.

You can find most linux apps already compiled and prepackaged for your distro, if not, you can get the source code and compile it. No need to code. And sometimes when you compile a program in your system it can be even more efficient because it can detect the kind of system you have and load only the parts speciffically requiered, making it leaner.

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Originally Posted by arespi

POKE 53280,1
POKE 53281,0

Argh!, my brain hurts just trying to remeber those!

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Let Google do the hurtin'

You could also program the C64 in machine code which looked like a very small basic program and a whole load of hex in data statements (the real program) which was poked in to the appropriate locations if I remember rightly. Good days good days.

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Originally Posted by elija

Let Google do the hurtin'

You could also program the C64 in machine code which looked like a very small basic program and a whole load of hex in data statements (the real program) which was poked in to the appropriate locations if I remember rightly. Good days good days.

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Yep, I use to type lots of peeks and pokes from magazzines like Ahoy! I was so happy when my dad bought us the 1541 disk drive, no more typing and start the floppy flippin´. Now get off my lawn!

benbob:

Hopefully, I can shed some light. I've been a Linux recreational user for several years and was always on a dual boot machine. The problem is if you have the dual boot available, you seem to always end up back there for longer than expected, if there was a problem in Linux... I've tested many distributions and I guess it matters what you are wanting to get out of it.

If you want to run Linux on your PlayStation 3, Yellow Dog is the last one I tried. Try any ppc distro version. The others bogged down and YD didn't.
If you want the best user experience, I would say Ubuntu, with you being new. However, the new menus in gnome (in most releases) and Unity in Ubuntu are designed for a kid, IMO.
With that being said, I would strongly encourage you to try Linux Mint Cinnamon. The desktop experience is great!

If you want to use Linux for Audio Production, Ubuntu Studio is excellent.
If you want to run server type platform, a lot of companies use RH but I swear by SuSE. SuSE has been FAR more efficient than RH or Fedora on any machine (5) I've used it on over the years...

Problems with Mint:
The problem you might find with Cinnamon or any Mint setup (and I'm not sure) is it's "like" Ubuntu but it doesn't install all the features Ubuntu does... from what I can tell. The problem this creates is you will google something, ultimately to end up in an Ubuntu forum for advice and the instruction given isn't always available in Mint, without installing something or changing settings.
There is limited support with Mint, in regard to other distros but you can find what you need by way of Ubuntu support.
I've found it's visual configuration can be more cumbersome than other distros. Certain things work perfectly and others require configuration...


The last one should be a benefit if you are new and truly wanting to learn. It's a great way to start. I recently loaded Mint on my son's netbook and was running SuSE on my laptop. I've since converted over to Mint Cinnamon on my laptop and left SuSE on my desktop. Up until this, I hadn't used Linux in a while and said the next time I loaded a distro, I wouldn't let the dual boot save me and would truly learn Linux. I'm at that point... I've removed Windows from every machine I have and run it in Oracle VirtualBox inside Mint. I have a program for work that absolutely will not work with Wine, Crossover, or any other emulation software...

Mint seems reliable and has a good user feel to it. I personally think the most solid a release has ever felt to me would be SuSE. If you aren't interested in running a server, I don't know that I would jump into SuSE. If you are wanting to create a nntp server that is "hidden" and doesn't display proper nntp-posting-host information, SuSE is the way to go... If you want to learn Linux, I would start with Mint or Ubuntu. My suggestion would be to load the bare minimums and "sudo apt-get" your butt off. Learning comes with repeating and if you want to learn what separates Linux from Windows, learn it by command line - don't rely on GUIs all the time. By repeating and encountering errors, you will start to realize patterns and start to notice why it does the things it does... I always relied on GUIs over the years until recently.

When I finally converted over to Linux, I did exactly what I'm suggesting to you. I quit relying on GUIs and for the first time, I started to learn the system. I always thought I understood it for the most part but being GUI dependent, I didn't realize how much I truly didn't know until my latest install.


For the other things mentioned, what are you needing to do in PS that you can't in Gimp? You do know most (if not all) plugins, etc can be imported and aren't platform specific...? Ex: .8bf files can be copied over. I haven't used it in a while but think brushes, etc. can be as well. Is it the functionality you don't like or can't find?

As far as cross distro installation, you can find utilities like "Alien".
Example:
sudo apt-get alien
sudo alien -r filename.deb

I don't know that I would rely on that and would stay away from it if at all possible. To me, I could find an rpm file for SuSE or Fedora for whatever I wanted. Deb is a little hard to find in a repository but you can always find the source code. Installing from source is better IMO and might help you learn more as well.

It might seem like it takes forever to get something setup the way you want it but once you do, it feels so much better. Programs are crisper, resources are better, there is no fragmentation to speak of, and your machine is always in optimal shape. My system takes approximately 9% of my 8 gb of memory. I can open Gimp, LibreOffice, LMMS, Audacity, rip a video, and have 14 windows open in Chrome for an additional 4%. Windows would have crashed or hung. Once I closed all that, Windows would still lag. Linux picks back up as if nothing were ever opened and you don't notice a difference. Get rid of the Virtual Memory and registry of Windows and it's night and day... Kick Windows now or later but I'd take now...

Good luck!