So I've been having a wee play with my new Unix computer
It has not always been straight forward, but I think I finally have a stable configuration
And some success...
.... a 3d visualisation of one of my surveys overlaid onto a 1m lidar dataset
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NICE!!!!
New & Unix in the same sentence.?ÿ Am I back in the late 80's.
I miss Unix & C.
Unix computer
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is that actually some flavor of Linux, or BSD? more info please!
Unix is always there with you....esp because your smart phone is using a flavor of it no matter what platform you pick.
@jimcox Cool. Ubuntu is good.
I was testing a beta release this morning.
for my systems I much prefer Debian (the foundation of Ubuntu) with the Mate desktop.
it's a bit more work to install and setup. Kinda professional grade software.
Much faster, more secure, and noncommercial.
Give me a shout if you want some assistance. It's kinda what I do these days.
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I went the Ubuntu way as
a: its is widely used in the scientific and research community here
and
b: it was supposed to be easier.
Given the issues I have had getting it work reliably, I think it is probably a good thing I didn't go Debian. OS install is not the sort of thing for novices...
I read an interesting story about Unix security.?ÿ In the early days, the developers of the operating system often needed to help others with their setup, so built in a back door that they could use to run things remotely with root privileges.?ÿ Since people compiled different variations of the original OS code, they built the compiler to always insert that backdoor code in a re-build of the operating system.?ÿ Since the compiler could compile new versions to replace itself, they built the compiler to recognize that it was compiling itself and put in the code to put in backdoor code in the operating system.
After a few years, they got worried about security and told everybody how to take it out.
@bill93 That is close to what happened, but Ken Thompson??s C compiler hack predated the notion of remote tech support. It was simply a way for Thompson, one of the creators of UNIX, to sit at a local terminal of any instance of his creation and gain access to it ?? basically an ego thing. And there have been backdoors in other software over the following decades: most less well-known than Thompson??s, and I??m sure others that are still essentially unknown. For some of Thompson??s own reflections about this, see: https://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/linux/hh/thompson/trust.html
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Peter,
One of the big things missing on my new toy is Google Earth.
Do you have any recommendation for a windows emulator or similar for running it on Ubuntu?
Thankx
for several years downloads of the .deb file direct from Google has worked as expected on all Debian versions,
I have never tried it on Ubuntu.
Ubuntu is "different"... let me know if you have trouble
https://www.google.com/earth/versions/
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@jimcox Darn! this website is morphing links I post. If you have trouble getting the correct link send me a pm or email
[email protected] *
* My spam catcher is tough, but I do check my spam frequently
Brilliant 🙂
I did not realise there is a debian version of Earth.
Installed, and works perfectly (so far)
@jimcox I played around with Ubuntu a little bit a few years ago. I remember a software package called WINE (WIndows Not Emulator) that allowed you to run Windows based software within Ubuntu. It had trouble with highly complex software, like AutoCAD, but ran a lot of other software fairly well.
@jimcox I'll give a strong recommendation for VMware. I mostly use VMware Fusion for running multiple Windows virtual machines on my MacBook Pro, and I also use VMware Workstation for running some Windows virtual machines on Red Hat Linux. VMware Fusion on the Mac has been rock-solid for me for most of a decade. VMware Workstation on Red Hat has been too, other than for one very deep and obscure crash-producing bug I encountered a few months ago that appears to be an interaction of the Linux kernel, VMware, and a particular Windows application. Red Hat has acknowledged it and will be including a fix in a future release.
I've never found Wine or similar emulators to be of much use. If you need to run Windows apps on a Linux box for money-making work, or just want to avoid frustration, spring for the low cost of buying VMware Workstation and also buy a Windows license. I've been consistently pleasantly surprised how well it all works, including having Windows apps successfully use obscure USB devices hooked to the host computer, such as old data collectors and low-level hardware debugging probes.