Newbie/Wannabe

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

>>>>> "Rod" == Rod Holmes <rod@example.com> writes:

    Rod> 1. Do you think it wise of me to set up a Linux box to work
    Rod> on building this system? I know next to nothing about
    Rod> Linux/Unix.  I can do everything I need to on a Mac (BBEdit
    Rod> to write HTML and PHP code on the server). But, I'd like to
    Rod> start using Linux if it won't be too long before I can be
    Rod> productive on

Shouldn't take long, modulo the editor question.  I live in XEmacs,
warps my opinion; I don't think it's so hard, never did, but I know
some people disagree strongly.  But most tools, including editors, are
available in reasonably easy to use GUI form under KDE or GNOME.

One thing I will say for the Emacsen is that there are packages called
PSGML and hm--html-menus.  I think you'll find this a reasonably
comfortable transition from BBEdit (if that's the WYSIWYG menu-based
HTML editor I've seen on Macs a couple years back), especially in
XEmacs which has much better support for menus and buttons than GNU
Emacs.

PSGML has a big advantage that it knows about DTDs.  This means that
you can get appropriate menus and context-dependent "smart" editing
functions that correspond to _any_ SGML DTD, including XML (such as
XHTML).  This is a big help when you want to port to a DTD you don't
know as well as whatever BBEdit provides.

There are rumors of CSS and XSLT editing packages, but I haven't seen,
let alone heavily used, any.  PSGML is pretty cool, for sure.

Of course there's always Nutscrape Decomposer, and Amaya, and other
WYSINLWTWCOTOSOTWS (What You See Is Nothing Like What The Web Client
On The Other Side Of The World Sees) HTML editors.

    Rod>     it. I don't need to install Apache/PostgreSQL/PHP on this
    Rod> machine, but it might not be a bad idea if I try it.

    Rod> 2. If I do go with Linux, where in Tokyo can I get a cheap
    Rod> box to put it on? Would it be okay to just buy a used PC off

Yes.  Far more important than processor speed for text work is
memory.  Get as much memory as possible.  I do most of my work on a
120 MHz Pentium (admittedly, I'm not running the X server there) with
80MB.

    Rod> of someone in Tokyo Classified? I'm getting an ADSL line
    Rod> installed soon (there IS an Easter bunny!) that I'll connect
    Rod> to--which might have some impact on this question.

I don't see why; you need at least a 100MHz connection to saturate any
CPU manufactured since 1997.

If you want to play games or do video, then you need more memory and
more processor.  But if you're just doing HTML development and
text/image/audio browsing, cheap/used is good enough for starters.

    Rod> 3. What flavor of Linux should I (as a newest of newbies
    Rod> having never compiled anything in my life). I read on this
    Rod> list some time ago someone dissing Mandrake because it took
    Rod> shortcuts

Probably me.

    Rod> in order to make loading easy. Easy sounds great to me!

Well, that's not exactly the issue.  The great thing about Linux is
that when it breaks, you can post to TLUG and someone will tell you
how to fix it.

Mandrake is like Microsoft: only the Mandrake people know what's in
there for sure.  If we had a Mandrake developer on the list, that
would be one thing.  But Mandrake-built apps regularly behave in way
that confuses people familiar with the originals.  You want help on
Mandrake apps, often you're going to have to ask Mandrake.  People
here are not going to download and review source for you.

Do you want to bet _any_ Linux distro out of the box is going to be as
reliable as your Mac?  I'll take 100,000 yen of that at even odds,
thank you.  ;-)

But you'd have to give me 10:1 odds before I'd take MacOS + Apple + 3d
party vendors against Linux + the 'net.  Now, Mandrake means giving up
a lot of 'net support, and not getting near as much vendor support in
return.

SuSE has a pretty good reputation.  Later Red Hat 6.x is good.  Can't
really recommend Debian for you if "easy sounds great"; any Linux can
be easy and usually is, but Debian can be harder than most when the
going does get rocky.  Turbolinux is probably OK, especilly if you
wnat Japanese localization.

    Rod> 4. Any other advice? Easy text editors? Easy FTP clients?

ncftp is pretty good as a pure FTP client, text oriented, of course.
Any web browser will handle FTP as well as HTTP.  wget is a neat
command-line tool if you have a full URL and don't want to go into the
browser.  It will mirror a whole site if you want it to.  For
browsers, Mozilla (the open source version of Netscape) is not ready
for prime time.  Netscape 6 is getting pretty good reviews (can't
speak from experience; I _do_ use Mozilla, since I only use it when I
want to look at pix; mostly I use lynx and wget).

Main advice:  buy some beer and pizza and invite Chris or Austin or
somebody like that over for an install party.  ;-)  Or get a notebook
that you can bring to the next technical meeting.

And budget time.  Even if everything goes perfectly, work is going to
take longer than you're used to for a while.  And work smart -- there
are many things that Linux is not going to do as well as the Mac, at
least not if you try to do them the same way.  With some practice
you'll find there are other ways that make no sense on a Mac, but are
much more efficient on Linux.

-- 
University of Tsukuba                Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences       Tel/fax: +81 (298) 53-5091
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What are those straight lines for?  "XEmacs rules."