Pandora or laptop?



hehe - almost :)


My attitude is that there is no point in others understanding my code - it's none of their business! I opened PandaBAS (or rather, SpecBAS) so that others could port it should they wish (and they have! It's now on quite a few platforms) but it's not commented very much at all - if anyone wants new features they can ask me. There's nothing stopping them from adding their own, but it's not guaranteed to work without a detailed knowledge of my code and if they submit their changes back to the main branch they'll get deleted - it may be open source under the GPL but I'm the only one who makes changes.


D.
 
Someone mentioned Windows 7 laptops going away in favor of Windows 8. Is there not a way you could specifically ORDER the laptop with Windows 7?


I'm kinda in the market for a new or refurbished laptop - and I want it to be running Windows 7.


I have my thing about Windows...I always get the latest update version EVERY OTHER RELEASE.


The reason for this is because it seems that when they get a good stable system going, like XP...the next release (Vista) is dogshit...and then windows 7 comes out...which is what Vista should have been.


So I'm pretty sure Windows 8 is gonna be dogshit, and I'd just as soon run windows 7 until Windows 9 or whatever is after 8 comes out.


anyone have any ideas on where I can find a reasonably priced refurbished windows 7 laptop?


It's getting time to replace the one I am currently using...which runs XP and is about six years old...and was gotten refurbished.


I keep getting close to running out of disk space.


msizap doesn't even help anymore....and most folks do not even know about msizap or how to use it. That is one big bastard of a tool that can REALLY screw you if you do not know exactly what you are doing!
 
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I'm sure that the very best way to welcome a teenage newcomer to the community is to start a freaking OS/Freedom-free-for-all in his very first thread :D


xJuicyPhresh, if you're still out there: We're not always like this. Its just, like, y'know - Suddenly, the moon is full and people start turning into wereRMSes and weretrolls everyw(h)ere...
 
I'm sure that the very best way to welcome a teenage newcomer to the community is to start a freaking OS/Freedom-free-for-all in his very first thread :D

There isn't any argument about freedom here, it's purely a GNU/Linux vs. Windows argument, at least at this point. I even gave Windows proprietary games as an advantage when I actually think proprietary software being available is inconsequential (since it's unethical to use anyway, and I don't use it), and I said nothing about how using Wine to run proprietary software is unethical, even suggesting it as a method to alleviate the "problem" of not being able to run Windows programs. I even made a point to talk about "GNU/Linux software", not "free software", and made no mention of the fact that I was searching the Free Software Directory to find replacements for Photoshop and Illustrator.


_wb_ didn't talk much about freedom either; he just brought it up as a practical advantage of GNU/Linux over Windows.
 
Windows a good OS for coding? WTF? Maybe if you have plenty of cash floating around to be spent on fancy IDE's and if you're only interested in producing binaries, not something others can easily compile for themselves.


But seriously, for serious coding you need GNU/Linux. Try to do any of these in Windows:


- apt-get install (or similar) state-of-the-art compilers for nearly any programming language


- apt-get install (or similar) *-dev


- get all the sources for the entire OS you're working on, and have the option to add functionality or fix bugs in the OS itself


- automake, autoconf, intltool etc etc make it so much easier to develop cross-platform and localized software


- lots of cutting edge stuff (e.g. academic prototypes) will typically not even be released on Windows in the first few months/years

The big apt repositories are great when the work, but can be an unholy nightmare when they don't. Take the following example on Ubuntu (latest version): a while ago I needed a function that had been in octave for years, but wasn't in the latest repo version since Ubuntu had been dragging their feet for a long time. So I installed a PPA to get it. Unfortunately this caused all my other octave packages to be removed even though there shouldn't have been a conflict. I ended up only able to have one or the other when I needed both.


So I switched to my main Windows desktop (this was at work) and used Octave's Windows installer which had no problem giving me the latest of both. It's not that Octave is more Windows friendly, far from it (they're a GNU project afterall), but that Ubuntu just doesn't care enough. And they (and other repo maintainers) end up not caring about a lot of things. The big distros have to spread themselves pretty thin on caring. So you get a lot of problems like this and dependency hell where it shouldn't exist.


This doesn't mean I'd trade away apt, since 99% of the time it really does work great.


Years ago when I was still developing on Windows I used mingw32 and occasionally cygwin (didn't like chaining myself to cygwin1.dll). These days the same sort of options exist but they're a little friendlier to install and upgrade and they're more up to date with their Linux counterparts. Getting libraries can be painful, since it often means compiling them myself, but once I do I know there aren't problems (like when I needed 32-bit SDL on my 64-bit Mint desktop I had to go through hoops and issues that shouldn't have been a problem.. if I built it myself I'd at least have better assurance that it worked)


The automake et al stuff should at least be easily available these days. Personally I absolutely hate those tools and the abominable scripts they generate. I don't know about state of the art compilers since it'd only apply to experimental and niche languages I'm not particularly interested in.. the big languages like C, C++, Java, C#, Python, Perl, Javascript, etc are all about as well supported in Windows.


These days coding on Linux does have an additional advantage for me - it's generally closer to the handhelds I want to develop for. Normally this isn't that big of a deal but occasionally there are OS specific features that you want to use and I always develop and test as much as I can on the desktop first.
 
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I'm not sure about controller pak management. I think i was able to load my Perfect Dark profiles, so i'd say yes.


Also thought about RGB mod, but i asked a specialist and he said it does not work all the time, and you can permanently damage the console.


Also, you may have to kill a SNES to get the right components.
 
No, there ARE some ROMS it IS legal to download. they can be found. Many of them are homebrew games and apps, some of them are actually quite good.


For example you can check here:


http://pdroms.de/files


NOTE TO ALL ADMINS, THE ROM SITE I HAVE REFERENCED ABOVE IS ALL LEGAL HOMEBREW ROMS!!

Right, there are some legal homebrew ROMS, in general though, I recommend dumping them yourself from carts you own. Obviously, that doesn't apply to homebrew ROMS, but with devices like the Retrode, it's quite easy to dump them yourself. I've started my own collection of carts, and those are probably what I'll be playing on my Pandora when I get it. Hopefully, my upgraded order will ship in the next couple days, then it'll probably only be a month or so for it to ship to my parents and ultimately out to me.


ED's a tad too busy to be reshipping things to the PRC if things don't get where they need to go.
 
I'm not sure about controller pak management. I think i was able to load my Perfect Dark profiles, so i'd say yes.


Also thought about RGB mod, but i asked a specialist and he said it does not work all the time, and you can permanently damage the console.


Also, you may have to kill a SNES to get the right components.
No , no killing of super NESs ! Find one that has bad pins ! Or better buy a super NES clone console and kill that .


Ok , sorry it just seems like a waste when those clones meant to play official carts and - don't work half the time and only on 40 percent of carts survive and the real joeys are axed .
 
I think the troll "linux not a viable desktop OS" has continued long enough. :) A lot of folks here prefer linux on the desktop, so obviously the statement (as a global rule) is false.
 
I think the troll "linux not a viable desktop OS" has continued long enough. :) A lot of folks here prefer linux on the desktop, so obviously the statement (as a global rule) is false.

the problem is not about preference when you consider work, it's not even related to the OS qualities... as much as linux is great, most company targets the 70% of windows computer rather than the 2% of linux computer, thus most professional developer programs for windows and have enough money to use fancy IDE. for that purpose developing directly on windows using whatever visual studio is one of the better option...


edit: that or they develop phone and tablet application for iOS/Android...
 
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I'm not sure about controller pak management. I think i was able to load my Perfect Dark profiles, so i'd say yes.


Also thought about RGB mod, but i asked a specialist and he said it does not work all the time, and you can permanently damage the console.


Also, you may have to kill a SNES to get the right components.

I was about to try one of this RGB mods. Seems simple. I already have the scaler.
 
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the problem is not about preference when you consider work, it's not even related to the OS qualities... as much as linux is great, most company targets the 70% of windows computer rather than the 2% of linux computer, thus most professional developer programs for windows and have enough money to use fancy IDE. for that purpose developing directly on windows using whatever visual studio is one of the better option...
Luckily, this isn't always the case.

I personally have the blessing of working for a company that develops Linux based server software. After 3x years, now I feel as awkward when in front of a Windows machine as I once felt when on a Linux machine.


A fancy IDE can easily be replaced by a powerful editor (ie. Vim, EMACS), a debugger (ie. GDB) and a build system (ie. Autotools, CMake, etc). All of which work wonderfully from the text console. Who needs fancy graphical UIs? ;)


In fact, using the text console so extensively means that I can SSH from home into my Work PC, reattach to the GNU Screen session and continue working remotely (with little/no lag). I guess I could also transfer things over, but it's kinda cool to work remotely like that. :p And when I finally get it, I'll be able to do the same from the Pandora. :D
 
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I, on the other hand, would recommend you get yourself a laptop with Windows 7 installed on it before they go out of fashion now that Win8 has been released.
Too late. I went out this week to get my son a laptop for Christmas - they are ALL Win8 machines now. I asked if they had any Win7 lappies - the answer was no. I'm sure that smaller vendors offer them, but the big boys don't. :(
 
I, on the other hand, would recommend you get yourself a laptop with Windows 7 installed on it before they go out of fashion now that Win8 has been released.
Too late. I went out this week to get my son a laptop for Christmas - they are ALL Win8 machines now. I asked if they had any Win7 lappies - the answer was no. I'm sure that smaller vendors offer them, but the big boys don't. :(

That's a shame. I, having used Win8 recently, cannot possibly recommend it. It's just awful.


With that in mind, then the best route would be:

Get a Chromebook, install Slackware ARM and you're all right.

This. Of all my linux machines I love Slackware the most. There's something special about it - I've learnt more in the years I've spent configuring my slackware box than in any of the other distros :)


D.
 
^^ Better yet help the kid install it . Never to start . I just now am . Shoulda done it 2 years ago when still highly impressnable .


I mean about myself
 
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