Re: New User

On Tue, 19 Feb 2008 08:51:02 -0600
Ron Johnson <ron.l.johnson@xxxxxxx> wrote:

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On 02/19/08 01:12, Byron Watkins wrote:
Hi,

I am trying to ween myself from Windows. A couple of months ago
I
installed Debian on my new amd64 box and I am generally quite impressed
by the amalgam. There are a few items that I have been unable to
address satisfactorily, however.

Congrats and good luck!

(You seem to be running Etch. If this is your home box, I urge you
to move up to Lenny/Testing, or even Sid. Current (or relatively
currently) versions of software, kernels, etc.

First, I am a programmer in one of my hobby lives. I love C and
C++
and I have installed the gcc and g++ packages on my new box. I have not
yet found a good integrated developer environment, however. About the
only thing good about Windows, in my opinion, is their Visual C++.

Second, I am an electrical engineer, so I would like to get
closer to
the hardware. In order to do so, it would be nice to find a tutorial
explaining the standard ways Linux implements plug and play, hardware
access permissions, and communication between hardware and applications.

You'll need to become a kernel geek. There are plenty of books and
web pages on the subject. Try to find stuff written during or after
year 2005.

Here's a place to start:
http://lwn.net/Kernel/LDD3/

Third, I would like to find a good book to teach me how to
accept and
to process mouse, keyboard, graphics tablet, etc. input and how to
generate and to operate the graphical windows used in Debian. I
understand that the Gnome and/or KDE interfaces are available and it
would be nice to know what the differences, similarities, and
compatibility issues are from the programmer's perspective. I think I
am using Gnome, so my first priority is programming for Gnome, but if I
can program for both, even better.


There are several levels here. both kde and gnome are split into two levels.
There is the interface library (for displaying windows, abstraction of things
such as threads, networks and file systems) and the overhead libraries.

For kde that would be kde for the apps aimed at the kde desktop and qt
(currently at version 4 although 3 is still alive and kicking) for apps that
just want the "kde" interface but don't need full blown kde desktop
integration.

with gnome it is the gnome desktop interface and gtk (currently version 2)
interface library.

Personally I avoid apps that use full gnome and kde (I feel that kde is much
worse than gnome in that respect) since they fire up a bunch of background
services that don't die after you close the apps.

for development environments, there is kdevelop for kde, anjuta for gnome and
eclipse which is primarily java based. For more hard core people there is emacs
or vim (watch out, holly war which is better) and several programing editors.

All are better and worse than visual studio, depending on what features you are
looking for.

There are also a lot of extra tools such as stand alone debuggers (with gdb, a
text interface debugger, the engine behind most if not all), profilers, memory
debuggers, code tagging and search, project management, etc.

have a look at the following for a start with gtk2
http://library.gnome.org/devel/gtk-tutorial/stable/

Another option is wxwidgets (www.wxwidgets.org) which is a cross platform
interface library. If you are a little careful things will compile and run with
a native interface on linux, windows and mac (plus in a more limited version
also on palm). Linux version uses gtk. qt4 has a gpl library for windows (costs
money for commercial license, I think also for mac. gtk2 has a windows version,
but not as stable, not sure about the mac again.


Any recommended literature and relevant references and/or urls
are
quite welcome and will be appreciated.

You need to go over to gnome.org and join their devel list and ask
them these same questions. Probably also the gtk-devel (that might
not be the exact name) list. Hope you've got a thick skin, though,
since I've heard that some of them can be a bit "impatient" with
newbies.

- --
Ron Johnson, Jr.
Jefferson LA USA

PETA - People Eating Tasty Animals
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