The #1 reason I keep having to run back to Windows... - Page 3

Aww, come on. People rarely have to touch the Windows registry. It's value lies in maintaining information on how applications should behave, where they should be installed, etc. Programs generally install to the "Program Files" directory, for instance. This is both by convention and by instruction from a setting in the registry. Now, don't get me wrong. I can certainly see where config files in /etc is both more accessible and easier to work with (I don't typically relish the thought of digging through the Windows registry). It's the concept of having all such system-governing/defining settings gathered in one place. I find that an appealing concept.

You're probably right there. Had the tutorial I was following started by suggesting the package manager approach, I may well be coding right now. As it stands its first recommendation was to download and extract the files manually, so that's what I did.

That's all well and good until some documentation you're reading instructs you to execute php [plus arguments] and, due to the way php was installed (like, exactly how the documentation instructed) it doesn't happen to be included in the path environment variable. Then you have to go looking for it, and the waters can get pretty murky. Honestly, I'm not some idiot who just started using computers. I'm a .Net/MSSQL applications developer. Systems concepts are by no means foreign to me. Linux has simply frustrated me with this sort of thing time and again. I'm sure a large part of this is the fact that I'm trying to do more than just log in and browse the internet. Setting up a C++ or PHP web developer environment is naturally going to invite various such complications.

You're right. I stopped where the problem occurred and tried to work it out. Not exactly an unreasonable reaction.

If there were dozens of different Windows distros, you bet I might. When I said it was acceptable, I was referring more to the way Linux users tend to distro hop. In my case, I played the odds that the time it took to install a barebones version of another distro that may not exhibit the same behavior may be less than the time it would take me to figure out this particular problem. This wasn't necessarily a knee-jerk reaction. This was a response influenced by running into this sort of problem many, many times in the past - something that could very likely easily be solved by a more seasoned Linux user. Trouble is, I'm not a seasoned Linux user.

By "usability" I'm not referring to the number of included packages. I'm talking about what is involved in carrying out core tasks, like installing software or simply locating it after it's installed. Package managers do, admittedly, take care of much of this for you. *That* is usability. What happens when a particular app isn't available in your package manager, or the version available is an older version?

As I mentioned, I'm an applications developer. A server environment that can't be administered by anyone other than experienced Linux administrators would be useless from a development standpoint. I'm sure that is not the expectation.

I have been using VirtualBox, which does make it pretty quick and relatively painless to wipe it all out and start over, but I hadn't considered using snapshots. I'll certainly look into that. I'm also sure you're right about that eventual "click" where things will start to make more sense. I consider myself a rather capable programmer in Windows, but I must say, up to this point, trying my hand at the Linux alternative has been a pretty humbling experience.

Thanks for your advice.

You stated that if you had to edit the registry every time you needed to make a system change, you'd go nuts. My point is you don't typically have to do anything that would drive you nuts in order to edit the registry under normal circumstances.

Um, yeah, it did.

I've learned this. I'm taking another stab at it now.

I've been visiting/revisiting Linux for some 10 years or so - admittedly never being able to stay with it for long. I understand that Linux is a different paradigm and I always go into it with an open mind. I don't have any expectations of things being done like Windows. The usability concerns of application installation have been addressed somewhat in Linux with the various package managers. They just don't go far enough. I don't care if it's done just like Windows does it or MacOS, Solaris or DOS or any other OS. The point is that the process is still overly complicated in many cases (where package managers aren't involved) with inconsistencies that can create a lot of confusion. The gurus don't have much trouble with it, but other user segments need to be able to function as well.

Again, you're acting like I bashed my keyboard, threw things across the room and went into some sort of rage. I didn't. I explained my reasoning for trying it with another distro, where I encountered other points of user dissatisfaction and came here to vent and perhaps get some experienced insight that could improve my lot. It's much appreciated, but please don't use a temper tantrum that didn't happen as support for an argument that the problem is completely with me.

People do it all the time. Sure, at work, I have an enterprise team to handle server admin, but, like most developers, when I'm tinkering with something at home in the evening - especially something fun and interesting - we pretty much go it alone. Web or local client application development doesn't really matter. Most developers I know do various R&D or side projects at home. Most of them aren't qualified to be server admins. This is Windows development, though, so the expectation that the same is possible with Linux is reasonable. And before you go there, yeah, I now, I've been using Windows for going on 20 years, so of course, I'm more familiar with it. I'm not exactly brand new to Linux though.

98 times out of 100 the options dialog in any Windows application will allow you to cleanly modify any registry setting pertinent to the application. As a matter of fact, I can think of only one application I use at work that utilizes a registry setting not modifiable through an options dialog, and I consider it a blatant oversight by the vendor in that LOB application. Rarely do I need to touch the registry manually. It really is a moot point. Single point of failure? I get that, but an inconvenience? Not at all.

It didn't mention it *at all*.

It's home turf in that I see and understand what's going on. To extend your analogy, it's like putting every touchdown a team scores through a random number generator to determine how many points they get.

"Give up", "rage quit" (I believe those were your words from earlier in the thread, whatever. I wasn't tied to any particular distro, so knowing that some distros do thing a little differently than others, it was faster to try that approach than dig through the internet trying to figure out what was wrong with what I had...but I've already explained this more than once.

Those distros you mention are just a Linux server with an IDE. It's not the IDE I'm missing, it's some form of consistency. I don't instinctively know what's going on under the hood yet, so I try to follow the documentation. My problems have always arisen when at some point what the document portrays just isn't the case. Something that the application with which I'm working expects to be in /var/bin just isn't there or something similar. At that point I have no explanation for the discrepancy

Of course I know the difference between web and local client programming. C'mon. Let's not allow this to devolve into cheap rhetoric. Those differences don't really matter for the purposes of this discussion.

Well, at the risk of being too blunt or ungateful (I do appreciate your advice), you *are* being rude and condescending. You seem to be taking my complaints about Linux personally, yet if I were to come in here with a similar reaction to Windows, you'd probably cheer me on. Linux isn't perfect. I'm not ignorant. I should clarify that I've been merely touching on Linux off and on over the past 10 years. Any extended period of use was simply as a desktop GUI for menial tasks, though I did get adventurous and run a game server for a while at one point. I am completely aware of package managers - enough so that I understand they don't cover everything.