Linux Newbie - Experienced Programmer - Help?

[DaveWest]

Greetings.

My Name is Dave West. I live in Okemos Michigan.

I am a Linux newbie and an experienced industrial control software programmer.

I have developed, over the last 25 years, some significant software to control the manufacture of asphalt, both in drum and batch plants. I use the company name “Human Touch Software”. ( I dabble in building guitar amplifiers on the side – “West Laboratories” ) I have over 600 asphalt plants world wide using my control software. This software was developed in Borland Pascal running on DOS! I control the plants with one industrial PC computer (14 slot) stuffed with computer cards I also make. (A to D, D to A, Counter, Discrete, Etc)

For some time my distributors have been telling me I am going to have to go to Windows to keep selling more software. I do not trust windows for control for a half a dozen reasons. These same distributors have told me that I could probably get away with running Linux! Multitasking would be nice for ME and others are demanding a GUI. I don’t feel a GUI is necessary, but the people with the purchasing decisions seem to think they need it.

I set up a computer with latest Ubuntu dist on a hard drive. So far so good! I had a several year old copy of Borland Kylix sitting on the shelf. It is Borland’s version of Delphi for Linux. Delphi for Windows of course being basically Borland Pascal for Windows. Kylix is no longer supported by anyone. However, I felt this would be a very good development tool for me. I tried to install the software from the CD, but every time I got a “Can’t open ****.SH file”. So here I am “Up the creek without a paddle”.

I have several questions.

1. What is probably the best Dist for writing Industrial control programs?

2. What might be a good language? ( I don’t want to program this in C for several well considered reasons ) I have downloaded FREE PASCAL (The Windows Version) for a look see. I installed it all right, but can’t get it to run right! It says it can’t find certain files. (The files are there) It does not seem to be a very good candidate.

I am anxious for any suggestions and would like to know how others have approached this kind of programming in Linux.

Some if my post keeps getting scrambled and why don't I have a BOLD Heading?

Thanx, Dave West

Dave@WestLabs.COM
Dave@ValveJr.COM

[kostasan]

Do you need a whole development environment, or you would be happy just with a compiler? Bexause Linux has a great compiler called gcc and it supports pascal as it says in this link:
GNU Pascal - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

If you change your mind about C, the hottest Application Framework at the moment is QT 4.4. It has a complete IDE and it is cross-platform, so if you want, you can port it easily to Windows, MacOS or even a cell phone in the future!! (KDE is writen exclusively in QT. Use Mandriva to see KDE live.)
Qt Cross-Platform Application Framework — Trolltech

By the way i know nothing about programming. I have only made a few Oracle forms, but i guess it does't count.. Maybe you should post this to the programming section.

[elija]

I have a Kylix 3 disk here and I have managed to get the install to run on by Workbench Linux. Workbench is ultimately based on Ubuntu so it should be very similiar.

I simply put the CD in and when it mounted opened a terminal and did the the following.

cd /mount/cdrom0
./install.sh

I have two DVD players in my computer so in your case cdrom0 may just be cdrom

Now although I got the script to run, it didn't install correctly and therefore I couldn't use it. Kylix 3 seems to be certified for older versions of Red Hat and Suse, so you may have better luck with Fedora or OpenSuse.