[Cs-club] Change of e-addy again, and Linux/UNIX software development tips

[Rene Horn <rhorn@freeshell.org>]

I just wanted everyone to know that I'll be mainly using the following 
new email address from now on:

rhorn@freeshell.org

Also, sometime in the future I will populate http://rhorn.unixcab.org 
with lots of cool stuff on it (most likely information on porting 
software from Windows to UNIX or vice versa.)  For now it just say 
nothing, literally.  Check back on it in the future sometime.  I will 
include a zip file on that page that makes porting OpenGL applications 
from UNIX to Windows very easy (hopefully, there will be no need to 
change the source code, depending on how the port is done.)  If anyone 
would like it sooner than that, let me know and I'll email it to you as 
an attachment.

Also, since I'm on the topic of software development, I suggest that 
those people who are either starting out in Assembly, Data Structures, 
or any of the other courses that use the Linux workstations, and are 
still somewhat uncomfortable in them, there is some software that does 
some emulation of those environments:

MinGW + MSYS:  * http://www.mingw.org * MinGW stands for Minimalist GNU 
for Windows, which it is.  It's a fairly barebones gcc development tools 
(the ones used under Linux and most UNIX or UNIX-like operating systems) 
for Windows.  MSYS is a very limitied POSIX-like (i.e. Linux/UNIX-like) 
environment that you can use to do some of your Linux projects in.  For 
the most part, most applications that you develop in this enironment 
will likely work without any source code change in a Linux/UNIX 
environment.  However, MSYS is built on top of MinGW, so you do still 
have access to Windows-only libraries (e.g. conio.h.)

Cygwin: * http://www.cygwin.com * Cygwin is a very complete POSIX 
emulation environment (i.e. almost anything that can run in Linux/UNIX 
can run in a Cygwin session.)  However, it is not as fast as MSYS (MSYS 
applications run as fast as any Windows applications.)  I would not 
suggest running Cygwin on anything less than a Pentium 166 with at least 
64 MB RAM, even though the minimum system requirements is probably a 486 
with 32 MB RAM.  Even on a machine like that, I would still expect it to 
be a little slow.  However, anything that runs in Cygwin is almost 
guaranteed to run in Linux/UNIX, and it's an easy way to learn how to 
navigate within a Linux/UNIX environment.

VMware: * http://www.vmware.com * VMware does a lot more than either of 
the other two, and is most likely to be the slowest, but you'll be able 
to do more than just emulate a POSIX environment, you'll run one (i.e. 
you could install Red Hat Linux without risk to your Windows setup.) 
The other thing to be wary of is that this is commercial software, and 
so it will cost you some money to actually use it (there is student 
pricing, but I don't know what the student prices are.)  It will 
actually emulate a computer within your computer (this 
computer-in-a-computer is a "virtual machine"), onto which you can 
install a full operating system on.  There is no rebooting whatsoever. 
The minimum system requirements specify a Celeron 266 with at least 128 
MB RAM, but I would not put it on a machine with less than a Pentium II 
300 with at least 128 MB RAM.  Ideally, a Pentium III 500 with 256 MB 
RAM is what it should minimally run on without having to take a large 
performance hit.

Rene