{ dubovsky.com rantings }

After Windows annoyed me one day too many, I’ve switched over both my daily computers to Linux. Oreo (our file server) has been on Fedora Core 4 for quite some time, and I’ve run FC 4 and 5 on a second partition off and on. I’ve never really been sold on Linux as a desktop OS, but after trying the Ubuntu live CD, I switched both my work laptop and, later, my home desktop. I chose the Kubuntu distribution of Linux, which is Ubuntu with the KDE desktop manager instead of Gnome.

For my work laptop, Linux is an obvious choice since I develop mostly for embedded Linux and I spend most of my day in Cygwin. That was an easy transition. Having run Kubuntu on both machines for over two weeks now, I’m declaring this experiment a tentative success and posting the results here in case it helps anyone else.

The short summary of my experiences: Ubuntu is an excellent distribution and by far the most user-friendly and supportive of all the distros I’ve tried. Most computer-literate users could install instead of (or side-by-side with) Windows, use, and enjoy, but the few hurdles required to enable some key features make it still unsuitable for those afraid to tinker or hack.

(more…)

• If you’re following a bad guy (problem) through a dimly-lit building, don’t get tunnel vision. There’s probably another bad guy hiding right next to you, waiting to bite your neck or otherwise ruin your week.
• If you see a dusty treasure sitting on a dusty temple shelf, look around and think before you pick it up. It probably wasn’t left there because it was useful.
• Spend some time every game looking for a better weapon (skill), but don’t spend all your time looking for it.
• If your teammate dies out in the open, sometimes it’s worth getting shot in order to rez them. Doing this when your teammate is only going to be immediately killed again is neither helpful nor popular.
• If no one else is around, you’re the best tank driver. If a better driver shows up, it may be wise to hand over the keys.

An interesting quote from (the very quotable) The Design and Evolution of C++ by Bjarne Stroustrup (emphasis added):

My impression was and is that many programming languages and tools represent solutions looking for problems, and I was determined that my work should not fall into that category. Thus, I follow the literature on programming languages and the debates about programming languages primarily looking for ideas for solutions to problems my colleagues and I have encountered in real applications. Other programming languages constitute a mountain of ideas and inspiration — but it has to be mined carefully to avoid featurism and inconsistencies. The main sources for ideas for C++ were Simula, Algol68, and later Clu, Ada, and ML. The key to good design is insight into problems, not the provision of the most advanced features.

Also, a C bug-hunt trivia question. Can you spot the logic error in this C code I recently saw?

int i;
int bool = 1;    /* assume success unless function returns 0 */
for (i=0; i < numdevices; ++i)
    bool &= function_returning_number_of_records_processed(i);
if (!bool)
    error("blah blah");

Hint: in the simplest case, the number of records processed can be either 0 (an error), 1, or 2.

Stab, stab, stab to the programmer. The answer appears in the comments.