Hi Bob,
On 6 ต.ค. 2012, at 1:28, Bob Friesenhahn <bfrie...@simple.dallas.tx.us> wrote:
> On Sat, 6 Oct 2012, Gary V. Vaughan wrote:
>>
>> I actually run a lot of virtual machines on my Mac, including a couple
>> of versions of Mac OS and Linux, and I certainly wouldn't want to
>> squander perfectly good hardware on an OS that I don't use, and wasn't
>> aware of the 180 days trials, so I'll take a look into that next time I
>> have half a day spare.
>
> I just forked out $350 for Windows 7 to support free software development.
> There just did not seem any way around it. The pain is severe.
Ouch! I can't think of anything I'd like to waste $350 on less
than a piece of paper from Microsoft authorizing me to
depress myself by using their software! My Dell Mini came with Windows
preinstalled, and cost only $255 from the Dell refurbished online store... of
course the very first thing I did after taking delivery was reformat the disk
and install a nicer OS. :-(
>> Do they also have similar trials for MSVC?
>
> There is "free" MSVC ("Visual Studio Express" in Google) available. It is
> really intended for .net/C# developers, but by following instructions on the
> net and adding downloadable "free" SDKs (requires manually editing some
> configuration files), one can create a Visual Studio capable of building C
> and C++ code without spending any money.
Thanks for the tip, I'll look into that :-)
>> Any idea what the least painful version of Windows for a VM is these days
>> (I'm guessing XP is still the best)?
>
> Windows 7 runs very well in VirtualBox. My wife has been running Windows 7
> in VirtualBox running on Ubuntu for almost a year now. I wouldn't recommend
> that anyone start with XP these days since it is 12 years old, patched beyond
> all repair, and quickly becoming defunct.
Apart from the number of years you quoted, isn't that true of every version of
Windows? I think I might go with XP despite your advice though, as I notice
that one of the stickers glued to my Dell Mini is an XP license number,
although curiously I didn't get any reinstall media with the netbook - not that
it contains a CD drive to reinstall from. I can probably find an XP disc at one
of the street vendor stalls in the center of town for a couple of dollars
though.
I will try to install it directly in Parallels, rather than in Virtual Box on
GNU/Linux in Parallels on Mac OS, and then type in the number from the sticker
on my netbook... and then I'll have to learn how to install mingw and MSYS.
> It is good that you are willing to suffer for the cause. The cmake build
> system is quickly becoming popular since it works well for Windows and it is
> a threat to the GNU build system (as we know it).
We might have better staying power if the Autotools shipped together as a
single project, and the integration was tight enough not to need a bootstrap
script just to get things going...
Cheers,
--
Gary V. Vaughan (gary AT gnu DOT org)
