I do have to admit that I have tried to play with linux only 3 times in
my life and the last one of those over 3 years ago, so I'll take your
word for it when you say it is not like that anymore.

The last time I tried to get a free parallel port driver working on my
PC, it wreaked havoc on the system.  It replaced a bunch of dlls and god
knows whatever else.  And since the crashes only started happening after
the installation of the driver, I'm 99% sure that was it.

-Mario

-----Original Message-----
From: piclist-bounces@MIT.EDU [mailto:piclist-bounces@MIT.EDU] On Behalf
Of Herbert Graf
Sent: Sunday, September 04, 2005 12:11 AM
To: Microcontroller discussion list - Public.
Subject: RE: [EE] Technology Adoption Lag


On Fri, 2005-09-02 at 17:00 -0400, Mario Mendes Jr. wrote:
> You've got many valid points.  But here are some of my own.
> 
> Here's one example of when Windows 95/98 comes in handy.  You build 
> parallel port PIC programmer, and you know how to program C, well, 
> then it is easy for you to write a program to use the parallel port to

> interface your programmer whith some simple functions.  You can't do 
> that in Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 unless you have device driver for it, 
> most of which either needs to be purchased or you need to code it 
> yourself.

Absolutely false. There are MANY free ones out there, available for
pretty much any program development tool you use. Most are just plug and
play, you add then to your project and then you call their "inp" and
"outp" functions. I'd say it's sometimes EASIER then win95/98 since you
don't need to figure out the inline assembler tricks that some languages
need.

> Have you tried to code ANY device drivers for Windows lately?!!!  I 
> even bought a book on it and then decided I was better off just 
> purchasing an ICD2 from Microchip.  Sure you can do it in linux too, 
> but, now speaking about me, I don't want to have to spend a few days 
> installing it and maybe even having to compile the kernel to get it 
> working my way.

Few people compile kernels anymore, that's something that needed to be
done 10 years ago. These days kernel mode driver modules replace the
need to recompile kernels. I've been using Linux for many years, and
it's been many years since I last compiled a kernel. Some still do it,
especially when trying to optimize an install for a very specific piece
of resource limited hardware, but mainstream doesn't do it.

> I just want to pop a CD in the drive and by the time
> I'm done installing it, it better work right off the bet.

The latest distros need less user interaction to do a fresh install then
windows.

> While I am a
> big "do-it-yourself" guy and enjoy building small PIC projects (mostly

> for learning) and write my own programs, I would rather not have to 
> tinker with the OS, much the say way I would rather not have to build 
> my own pc and prefer to buy it.

Well, on that Linux does have a ways to go. Tinkering, while much less
common, is still necessary if you're doing something out of the
mainstream. Some think that's a bad thing, me, I think it's a good
thing, keeps me on my toes and I've learned a hell of a lot because of
it.

TTYL


-----------------------------
Herbert's PIC Stuff:
http://repatch.dyndns.org:8383/pic_stuff/

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