Viable Linux Destop?

[mbpark]

My background before I got into Oracle development and administration was in embedded. I learned how to program on XT's using a Serial Port debugger to PLCs. That's why I've never been too big on debuggers, because I'm always using judicious print statements. Plus, I'm used to things being small. Which doesn't explain why most of my hard drive here is Oracle 9i (all 2GB of the base install plus 2GB of databases. Yikes!). I like vt100, small command lines, and shells.

However, I got used to the Visual Studio IDE after being exposed to it, Codewarrior, Forte for Java, and a few other graphical editors. It just feels a bit more intuitive for my needs than anything else I used. It's not the only IDE I use, either. The other one is SQL-Programmer 2001, and that resembles it.

Notice I didn't mention that everyone should use it . We have more than enough people who swear by anything in a set of Pico, vi, vim, emacs, elvis, notepad, ultra-edit 32, and the rest. I respect them and let them make their choices. Personally, I use what's available, and my favorite editor is cat.

I actually use the command line quite a lot. spool on and spool off in SQLPLUS (which actually does qualify as a shell IMHO, albeit a small one without the cool features of csh, ksh, or bash) are good when I run scripts, because I don't use GUIs for running my scripts at all. Cygwin is also another favorite tool of mine.

However, I've had a lot of issues with Linux apps copying and pasting objects, not text. Other than Konquerer finally getting most of it right in KDE2.x.x, it's just not there for me to do a lot of my text work, or to drag and drop data (which I do a lot of as prelim analysis work). Interoperability for apps to do cool things like that isn't there yet, and it is mostly an app issue.

And the Oracle client...the only time I've really seen an Oracle component crap itself really bad has been with their ODBC drivers, which get clobbered the most on any Win32 system because they use MFC. 8i on Solaris needs about three hours of serious OS setup before you even TRY to install it, and let's not even get into how broken Advanced Security is during the linking phase. genclntsh and relink all are not your friends when you've got Oracle on Solaris . JDBC can be really fun too to set up. However, their ODBC drivers are crazy. If you install anything else, chances are they'll crap themselves. The solution is to put a copy of MFC42.DLL in your ORACLE_HOME\bin directory. Worked for me after it blew out on a test machine after we installed Visual Studio 6 Service Pack 5.

Oracle got on that Java kick too. They turned Enterprise Manager into something I will never run again unless I have to. That's why I'm running DBArtisan, which lets me have all my servers at one nice console and doesn't eat all my RAM like OEM does.

However, settling on one standard (KDE ) for apps would make Linux more viable. It would allow all the happy things I like to do, and a shell interface for what I want. It would also allow others to have a good happy GUI that plays well.

That's Windows' main strength. I can copy and paste darn near anything and have it work. Well, too .