At 7/14/2003 11:30 AM (Monday), Phil Shrimpton wrote:

> > I guess I picked the wrong time to start looking into Linux + Firebird +
> > Kylix. Or, perhaps there will never be a good time!
>
>Taking Kylix out of the picture for the moment, Linux and Firebird has always
>been an excellent combination, as easy to install as on Windows, better
>performance, better stability etc. Until the FB1.5 RC's I never had any
>problems installing FB on any distro.

It is the relatively new FB 1.5 install issues that had me concerned. I
hope this all settles down significantly before 1.5 approaches release. I
intend to start with 1.03 in any case.

>Kylix is a different issue, but is only really a problem IMO for the
>'development machine', you should be able to deploy to a wider range of
>distos.

Ideally, of course, I'd like my development machine to match my server
rather closely. I'd hate to try something on one and then turn to the other
and have it just not work - or worse yet work in a different way.

> > This is a dismal situation, exacerbated by the fact that when it comes to
> > Linux I am a lowly user and do NOT want to get involved with
> > recompiling/linking applications in order to use them.
>
>I have rarely if ever had to do this, and when I have, the 'compile' has been
>part of the installation process.

Part of me yearns for a source-only starting point where I install once,
then rebuild it all from scratch. I guess Debian is the best distro for
that. But what has me nervous are the reports illustrating how fragile the
build scripts are. maybe I've been lurking on the FB-devel list too much
and I'm just spooked. Time will tell.

I don't envy Helen in attempting to chart out the various incompatibilities
for her book, though.

> > Mostly, I'm concerned about the upcoming Linux 2.6 release and what will
> > work with it.
>
>The kernel should not be an issue, its the 'C' library that causes the grief
>(bit like the comctrls issue on Windows).

If that is all it ends up being then I can adapt. After all, I've lived
with Windows for long enough and not hated it too much.

> > Let's stay on top of this issue, folks. Anyone having any news or success
> > with specific combinations of software, please share it right away!
>
>What type of application are you looking to develop? (server, GUI, etc.)
>There are other tools/languages that work well with FB, that might be an
>alternative to Kylix)

I don't have anything in particular in mind. Just want to move off Windows
as my main platform and see where it leads me. I've done test installs of
half a dozen Linux distros and watched the user friendliness of the choices
improve over the last few years. However, I've not spent much total time
with Linux compared to Windows.