PC or Mac for at- home engineering?

Thanks for the advice. Even though I use Linux every day, I'm not much of a sys admin and the last time I tried to install Linux on a PC I got pretty frustrated. But that was about 10 years ago and I suspect things are better now.

I'm kind of liking the 3-way Mac idea. I could invest in a pretty high- end desktop Mac.

Bob

Get a PV and get it set up for dual boot Windows and Linux - not every windows program runs under wine and you will want to do some things in windows

Yes, i still need mspaint to do simple drawings and Microsoft will find ways to stop skype on Linux. Older version of skype no longer work. We are forced to upgrade on Window.

SSD had a sharp price decrease earlier this year. About a month ago I bought a 512GB SSD from Crucial for $225. A 1TB SDD is about $500.

I don't like multi-boot machines, VMs, etc. I'd rather just have another desktop, laptop, etc. squirreled away for applications it may need. It also minimizes the amount of stuff on any particular spindle (e.g., a disk crash doesn't cost you *all* your "environments")

We've got a mac at work with ubuntu installed, it's x68 so all the PC linux binaries will run on it.

When it just stopped working we installed Ubuntu.

Why bother with the expensive Mac hardware, Mac OS, and virtualisation program (Parallels or VMWare)?

Spend the money on decent hardware that suits your needs, and install Linux. There are free Linux programs for a large proportion of needs, and commercial/closed-source Linux versions of lots of other software. For Windows-only software, Wine may do a good enough job.

If you need to run other Windows-only software, use /free/ VirtualBox to make a virtual machine for Windows XP or Win7 (you must have a license for Windows, of course).

There are virtually /no/ Mac-only programs that anyone would choose to run, so Mac OS is pretty useless unless you are completely addicted to Apple.

Some people think Mac /hardware/ is a good choice - it is usually solidly built and some think that the design and appearance is nice. You can then simply wipe the Mac OS and install Linux.

I just carry a Macbook and a Dell PC laptop. Takes care of almost anything. The Mac has XP on bootcamp if windows 7 isn't enough compatibility. Mac OSX is Unix so that pretty much takes care of anything related but the next partition on the Dell would probably be Ubuntu or similar.

I find that one OS just does't work for everything. For example, IAR IDE/compiler doesn't run on Lin/Un--ix... There are certainly more and more applications that run under OSX though and that's good.

I find that most hardcore Max-oids don't know anything about computers and Apple has to wipe their butts for them... Love their hardware (the macbook pro) but do not like Apple as a company.

boB

Linux has a matlab clone called Octave.

You can run a lot of those free windows programs on linux under wine. Nec for instance.

LT Spice kicks ass on Linux. No trouble at all getting it to work under wine.

Unless you need USB, wine is pretty good. Some USB works, though perhaps not intentionally. You can run mapsource on the older so called serial GPSs that use USB. That GPS60 being the end of the line as far as I know. I'm not so sure what is different with the later model GPSs since I have no reason to upgrade.

For those that don't run linux, you need to investigate the "repository". That is the app store except you don't pay for anything. Also the source code is vetted (hopefully).

Some programs can be difficult to install, such as google earth. I've also run very old 16 bit code on dosbox.

Ask those Hollywood starlets that have their naked photos on the internet if "Apple just works."

Apple can market, but they can't code. They suck just as bad at security as microsoft.

Sometimes you need to flash a peripheral. They write the code for windows nowadays. In the dark ages, they would give you a boot program to flash a peripheral.

About the only thing that runs better on a mac is photshop elements, only because Adobe is to lazy to write a 64 bit version. But there is good linux photo software these days. Gimp is still 8 bits per pixel, and the 16 bit version never seems to get released.

Does anyone have experience with FPGA programming tools on non- PC platforms?

Bob

When you say "FPGA programming tools", do you mean tools for putting the image into the FPGA or flash, or do you mean tools for developing FPGA code? And when you say "non-PC platforms", do you mean "non-Windows platforms" or do you mean things like Sparc workstations, ARM embedded boards, android tablets, etc.?

Certainly Linux on x86 is supported by most FPGA design and programming tools, and is a common choice of platform. Support for non-x86 host processors is going far more limited - you could probably burn the image into the FPGA or flash using tools like OpenOCD or pyftdi, but you will not be able to generate the image files.

Do you mean VHDL compilers et ilk?

My solution is just to have individual machines (One CPU, One OS) for each particular need. I.e., replace contents of sock drawer with a stack of laptops...

Dunno. I've not run anything "Apple" since the 68040 days (MacOS 7?).

However, the folks I know who run Macs tend to run Apple *throughout*. I.e., Desktop, laptop, iPad, iPod, iPhone, etc. I suspect it is a far more seamless experience than the MS approach -- to ANYTHING!

Apple is not without their warts too. My roommate has an iPhone which he usually loves but when it comes time for updates he often goes into fits. Once he couldn't update because he kept getting errors he couldn't resolve when he tried to backup. Later he had to trade his phone in to upgrade the OS. I think now he can't get the backups to his computer to work at all and they are offering backups to the "cloud". But that doesn't get you access of any kind, just the ability to restore if your phone gets crapped on.

Yes, he loves his iPhone.... he loves to cuss it.

I've never heard anyone say anything OTHER than pejoratives re: MS!

"Windows Phone"?

"Gee, let's design an entire desktop OS completely different from everything we've designed previously -- because we failed to anticipate the embedded device market! So, let's make the desktop experience as bad as the handheld one!"

:>

Generally if they target RedHat it works easily on opensuse since they use rpm. It is a bit harder to get them going on Debian distribution like Ubuntu, but as you say, not impossible.