Re: Windows Line Endings

[Gary V. Vaughan]

Hi Bob,

On 6 ต.ค. 2012, at 1:28, Bob Friesenhahn <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Sat, 6 Oct 2012, Gary V. Vaughan wrote:
>> 
>> I actually run a lot of virtual machines on my Mac, including a couple
>> of versions of Mac OS and Linux, and I certainly wouldn't want to
>> squander perfectly good hardware on an OS that I don't use, and wasn't
>> aware of the 180 days trials, so I'll take a look into that next time I
>> have half a day spare.
> 
> I just forked out $350 for Windows 7 to support free software development.  
> There just did not seem any way around it.  The pain is severe.

Ouch! I can't think of anything I'd like to waste $350 on less
than a piece of paper from Microsoft authorizing me to
depress myself by using their software! My Dell Mini came with Windows 
preinstalled, and cost only $255 from the Dell refurbished online store... of 
course the very first thing I did after taking delivery was reformat the disk 
and install a nicer OS. :-(

>> Do they also have similar trials for MSVC?
> 
> There is "free" MSVC ("Visual Studio Express" in Google) available. It is 
> really intended for .net/C# developers, but by following instructions on the 
> net and adding downloadable "free" SDKs (requires manually editing some 
> configuration files), one can create a Visual Studio capable of building C 
> and C++ code without spending any money.

Thanks for the tip, I'll look into that :-)

>> Any idea what the least painful version of Windows for a VM is these days
>> (I'm guessing XP is still the best)?
> 
> Windows 7 runs very well in VirtualBox.  My wife has been running Windows 7 
> in VirtualBox running on Ubuntu for almost a year now.  I wouldn't recommend 
> that anyone start with XP these days since it is 12 years old, patched beyond 
> all repair, and quickly becoming defunct.

Apart from the number of years you quoted, isn't that true of every version of 
Windows? I think I might go with XP despite your advice though, as I notice 
that one of the stickers glued to my Dell Mini is an XP license number, 
although curiously I didn't get any reinstall media with the netbook - not that 
it contains a CD drive to reinstall from. I can probably find an XP disc at one 
of the street vendor stalls in the center of town for a couple of dollars 
though.

I will try to install it directly in Parallels, rather than in Virtual Box on 
GNU/Linux in Parallels on Mac OS, and then type in the number from the sticker 
on my netbook... and then I'll have to learn how to install mingw and MSYS.

> It is good that you are willing to suffer for the cause.  The cmake build 
> system is quickly becoming popular since it works well for Windows and it is 
> a threat to the GNU build system (as we know it).


We might have better staying power if the Autotools shipped together as a 
single project, and the integration was tight enough not to need a bootstrap 
script just to get things going...

Cheers,
-- 
Gary V. Vaughan (gary AT gnu DOT org)