Re: I've thought better of Linux

Tim X wrote:
"Brandon J. Van Every" <mylastnameruntogether@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: 

I consider the platform important.  When a platform wastes 1.5 weeks
of my time on nothing, it's important.  That's 1.5 weeks I could have
been writing an OpenGL binding from scratch, if I had had a mind to do
so. Instead it's compiling kernels for mouse drivers, a totally
uninteresting problem.


So, you were able to solve this totally uninteresting problem?

I could have, for 1..2 days more additional pain. I declined, on the grounds that I seriously doubted it would be the end of such problems. I think these kinds of Linux problems would find a way to go on forever. The whole point of moving to Linux was to get away from having to compile up tons of things manually for MinGW, and it turns out I wasn't actually saving any labor over that drill.

One thing I don't understand was all your stuff about having to
rebuild the kernel to get the support you needed - this seems very odd
to me and something I've not needed to do in years. Does the kernel
come with a driver for your mouse tablet thingy? If so, then surely
there was already a module which you simply needed to load? If it
doesn't come with support, then what was the point of rebuilding the
kernel.

The idea of explaining all the Wacom Graphire driver problems in detail bores me. That would be allowing the ghost to continue to make me work. There is some debate over whether I needed to compile a kernel, or just compile a driver and link it into the kernel. At any rate, there was still a learning curve left to go.



Putting all that aside, and even factoring in your terrible state of
poverty, surely, since your real stated aim was to evaluate Linux as a
development platform, the sensible and very simple solution would have
been to just go and buy a cheap mouse -

I have a PS/2 mouse sitting on my desktop, that worked with Linux. I don't like it. I think the drivers jolly well should work. And it wasn't only that 1 problem.

I evaluated Linux. It saves labor in software packages, but creates labor with driver support. Not as good a trade as I thought it would be. And I really don't like all these stacked packages. For portability and build sanity I want as few dependencies as possible. Instead the open source way is to keep piling on the library packages, and some of those are bound to be cantankerous to get going on Windows.

I mean, god, that would have
cost less than $10 and saved you loads of time - then if you decided
Linux was worth putting more effort into, you could have looked into
getting your flash mouse tablet working.

It only took 1.5 weeks to decide Linux wasn't worth my time. Remember, it's irrelevant as a consumer gaming desktop. I hadn't previously realized that.

This still seems like a weird way to go to me. Have you actually
written some lisp yet? Surely it would make more sense to prototype
one of your games or some simple game in Lisp first and decide if you
find it a good language for solving your problems and then see if you
can find an implementation with the right foreign function interface
once you know its a good development platform?

Why do people talk about getting ready to do things before doing them? Like prototyping is free time that doesn't take very long or something?

You may have heard of two common personality types - one type has a
fear of failure and consequently never actually starts anything
because if you don't start, you can't fail. The other has a fear of
success, they start things, but never finish them. I'm beginning to
suspect you fall into one of these groups - guess which one.

Would you like to go up to Marysville today and make $600 on signature gathering for me? Do any of you people actually have jobs and financial pressures apart from your Lisp habit?

--
Cheers,                     www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every           Seattle, WA


20% of the world is real.
80% is gobbledygook we make up inside our own heads.
.

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