Re: [Sheflug] swaying win users over to linux

[Craig Andrews <nospam [at] xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 2003-01-08 at 18:54, Peter Collier wrote:
> program accepts input from the screen re items being purchased,
> automatically alter the stock records, accept credit card information
> via a swipe, and all transactions relayed to various head offices via
> modem.Also needs to facility for his firm to alter the software at the
> shops via the internet. It will also have to be able to recover from
> erroneous shutdowns from dumb blond shop assistants. 

Just needs to make sure that the drivers or whatever are available for
Linux for the swipe card reader.

> 	Red hat tends to have predefined install setups and will install far
> more than is necessary  (I think). There is a custom install option but
> I'm not sure what components should be or not be installed. Would it be
> better to go for a debian install perhaps, or another distribution?

Mandrake does (or did) have a 50Mb minimal install, which could then be
added to using the amazingly amazing urpmi tool (which makes RPMs behave
a little more like .debs than normal :)

> 	The afct he can write c in dos/win, is there any thing he needs to
> know/learn to write in linux.   Any advice would be much appreciated.
> 	5000 machines currently and expanding would be great boost for the
> linux community.

Probably that he needs to unlearn alot of the icky, bloaty, squishy
world of Win32. Although C is a portable language (*whistles* I'm not
listening ;-) the win32 API kills this notion dead in the water.

Also, learning about the basics of what makes unix programming different
to win32, such as properly working pipes, decent file IO, signals,
terminals, etc. would be good. I would recommend Wrox' Beginning Linux
Programming for this task. It does assume some existing C knowledge, and
introduces topics pretty fast. Might be a bit sparse. Any other, more in
depth books out there anyone?

Oh, and make is a good thing to look up. The daft excuse for a build
system that comes with Visual Studio is not a good jumping off point for
building makefiles.

-- 
Craig Andrews <craig [at] fishbot.org.uk>

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