Does not seem good enough (this particular one is harming me a lot).
Not sure, xmgrace is a legacy plotting program from the 90s that receives minor updates (last one in 2015 as far as I could see), and it still can be installed and run on every linux computer. It just installs the necessary libraries, no sure how different is that from your example.
I think is a quite different situation. In my case I build up-to-date versions of GDAL (and many of its dependencies (netCDF, HDF, PROJ, etc)), GMT, even old OpenCV libs, etc and link everything with CMEX Matlab libs. And these later are the ones with 15 years.
This is very different from installing a completely self contained old package.
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Hopefully that one gets merged (into 1.8.3). Anyway I see there:
I have no idea what’s wrong with Windows
so it’s not obvious to me Windows is better than Linux (for Julia at least).
Yes, hopefully but it seems a hard case as it already skipped 1.8.0, 1.8.1, 1.8.2
Notice that what is failing is the Unix technology to produce a GCC library (libstdc++) that runs on Windows. But ofc it’s always easier to blame Windows.
What would be a much fair blame to Windows is why it’s so difficult to build Julia natively on Windows. There were past attempts that were drop, if I remember well, because some needed assembler code was not compatible with the Microsoft compilers. But meanwhile LLVM and the Intel compilers on Windows have came out and maybe it would be possible to build Julia natively on Windows. Python for Windows is built with VS.
(I did try to build it with the Intel compiler but got errors that I could not understand)
My general experience: little diff now, I had to install windows for my wife recently, at the end it is the same.
Pluses for linux:
- easier to install
- more personalisable
- I know it better
Pluses for windows:
- very small list of specialised software with no alternatives
I wasn’t blaming Windows, I mean I was quoting @giordano and at best (worst?) he was blaming Windows. I admit I didn’t look at that PR carefully, and it’s not marked a Windows issue, it seems common to all platforms. I at least think this is solvable for all platforms.
For me, the question would be why do we need libstdc++ at all (bundled)? I know LLVM is written in C++, and it’s a dependency of Julia (actually can be optional, in some cases), so that’s why we bundle it (C++ code dependencies of Julia packages I guess).
I haven’t got much help from someone actually using Windows (which I don’t), I guess complaining is easier than helping out 
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I feel as cosy with Windows as with Linux/Unix (many flavours).
But I have multiple ways to open a linux/unix shell/workspace under Windows as a host and on the other side, not so much possibilities to run a Windows workspace under Linux as Host (only way is a VM).
So I prefer a main Windows host (always Pro version at least, Home is too restricted, Enterprise a bit expensive).
Everything else is for me only more or less time to get used to it and find the workflows/key-bindings/… I need to feel productive. I don’t have any pros or cons regarding Julia under Windows or Linux, it’s just same-same for me, and I hope this will be so in all future!
I do try to help in a lot of places, but I tend to invest where I feel knowledge enough to help. Building with makefiles is not one of those fields.
I agree the file explorer in Windows is ok, but not more, under Windows I prefere the CubicExplorer.
In principle Linux is better for people who like to tune and configure there system.
From the julia point of view I prefere MS Windows.
In general do I spend much more time on Linux to figure out how to fix issues, two examples:
- My Kubuntu Windows apperance is gone and I do not know how to fix it (I spent already more then 4 h)
- In Julia the plot window / plotting visualisation under PlotlyJS does not work
I use Julia both on Windows and Linux regularly. I slightly prefer Linux for a few reasons:
- When doing setup with VSCode or PyCall.jl, I often have to enter paths to executables. I can just copy-paste Linux paths because they’re forward slashes. Windows paths are backslashes so I have to duplicate them in order to not have character escapes.
- I just find that Python breaks less on Linux and I have to use PyCall.jl quite a bit (in order to use Azure SDKs, I do a lot of Azure).
- I do a lot of Docker deployments (mainly Heroku and Azure) and they all run on Linux. In fact most of Azure runs on Linux. It’s just nice to be able to develop in an environment that’s slightly closer to what my code is going to be run on.
For 1., you could use raw string literals. If you copy a path by right-clicking a file or folder while holding the shift key and then choosing copy as path, it is already surrounded by quotation marks and you just prefix raw. If you copy a path from the Explorer address bar, you add raw"..." around it. For example:
julia> read("C:\Test Folder\New Text Document.txt", String)
ERROR: syntax: invalid escape sequence
Stacktrace:
[1] top-level scope
@ none:1
julia> read(raw"C:\Test Folder\New Text Document.txt", String)
"This is a test."
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I’m aware of that, but that doesn’t work when you need to enter the Julia path in VSCode whenever you need to update. It’s a really minor issue but somewhat annoying nonetheless.
3 Likes
By the way, performance wise it seems the gap is pretty small these day:
Though I find Phoronix tests to be a bit starnge (For instance Michael is using Python 3.7.xxx on Windows while using 3.10.x on Linux, using MSVC compiler vs. GCC / Clang [CLang is available easily on Windows as well]).
Still a valuable data point.
I think it’s a matter of taste. You prefer the one you are used to.
Linux manages memory and the cpu a little bit better.
Windows it’s easier to use and configure and offers better compatibility with new hardware.
Kinda of true, but I have to say that if you play most Steam games, then Steam have gonna great lengths to make it easy to run “windows-only” games in Linux. This is because their new console runs Linux and therefore, they can only offer there what they know it will work on Linux well. See https://www.protondb.com/ for a database that indicates how well every Steam game runs on Linux.
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Kinda of true, but I have to say that if you play most Steam games, then Steam have gonna great lengths to make it easy to run “windows-only” games in Linux. This is because their new console runs Linux and therefore, they can only offer there what they know it will work on Linux well. See https://www.protondb.com/ for a database that indicates how well every Steam game runs on Linux.
hah, interesting! Looked at the link, but it’s not easy, inferring anything from it, for me (I don’t really play any “real” computer-games and wouldn’t even know, which titles to look for) - what I wrote was 99% my understanding, from conversations with other people. But out of curiosity: What would you think, is the current percentage of newly released mainstream-titles, that runs on linux, without great headaches (very roughly)?
Edit: I remember playing some asteroids-clone on my Suse-linux, as a student (some ~25 yrs ago or so), with a friend. One doing the navigation and one hitting some button to fire, for hours, which was awesome fun! When we crashed, there was some sampled sound saying “you idiot”. 
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If you go on this tab ( https://www.protondb.com/explore ), it seems like it lists some games by order of highest following in steam and indicates its quality of emulation ranking (from native, that is, native support of Linux, to borked, that means it is basically impossible to emulate at all). It is hard for me to give a percentage, also because I mostly play indie titles, and not always cutting-edge, but I must say that most of the games that are not very GPU-heavy (and that probably do a lot of questionable GPU optimizations) play well with basically no effort. I mostly play turn-based strategy games (of many types) and some hack-and-slash (like Hades, absurdly good game, really recommend) and it plays all very well. Ah, sometimes you can have a little problem with multiplayer games, but is kinda rare (play lots of multiplayer with my friends), the most common problem is with AAA titles that push the limits of the GPU.
thx for the insight. 