My page about computing
My page about computing
La version en FRANCAIS de cette page peut être obtenue
en cliquant ICI.
Useful Links:
Viruses and VIRUS
HOAXES: you definitely NEED to have a look at this site if
you have not done it yet.
HTML: If you want to have a stronger knowledge of how to program
yourself your web pages (without unnecessary softwares like
dreamweaver),
here are the HTML specifications
HTML, CGI, SSI, Javascript
and so on .... (good simple lectures for programming).
All the tools for
the developer are here...
Tools for developing Java softwares:
LINUX: here are some distributions of the Linux Operating System, which
definitely becomes a challenger of Windowzzz. Some computer manufacturers
now propose some computers with Linux already installed. (IBM, Gateway, HP, ...)
To get some softwares for Linux, most of them for free,
follow these links:
Softwares for maths or physics:
SymbolicNet (lots of
information for the readers of the newsgroup sci.math.symbolic about
computer algebra systems (C.A.S.)
Symbolic calculation programs:
For High energy physics: FORM or
M
Graphical presentation of huge complicated data and data analysis:
The ROOT software
| the PAW software (Physics Analysis Workstation)
Linux versus Windows
- The cost: Linux is far cheaper than Windows.
- The distribution: if you have only windows installed on your
computer, you can't do anything. You must then buy all the basic softwares
you need even to do very simple things (Word, Excel,....). In a Linux
distribution, you have many texts editors, spreadsheets, network programms
already installed at the very beginning.
- Documentation: almost non-existent on Windows, where you can only get
very few help pages on very few topics. On linux, almost every program or resource
present on the computer is highly documented. Challenge: find on Windows
the documentations about the very basic DOS commands available on the system
(like the options of DIR, TYPE, ATTRIB, ...)
- Doc Translation: still one of the main problems for Linux, its huge
documentation is mainly in english, but one can notice in some Linux
distributions that the documentation is available for a part in different
languages, and these translations are constantly increasing.
- Installation / configuration: in general, the installation of a new software
and its configuration is rather easy on Windows, more complicated on Linux, but
the recent Linux commercial distributions give more and more tools for an easy
configuration/installation.
- The windows environnement: Windows on a computer looks exactly the same as
Windows on another computer (the different windows and tools on your screen are
organized in the same way). Using Linux, you have the choice between dozens of
"window managers" (fvwm, KDE, Gnome, ....). You can choose the one that is the
best for your purposes/tastes, and they are all highly configurable.
- Virtual screens. On Windows 98, if you have many open windows, all
must be present on your screen. On Linux, you can broadcast some of them
on several "virtual screens" that you can access just by a click on a specific
small window called the "Pager".
- Crashes. If one program crashes on Windows, you will have to reboot your
computer most of the time. In general, it is not necessary on Linux and you
can kill the problematic program and go on working.
- Internet and File systems: the internet protocol automatically recognizes
files names of the kind "archive.tar.gz.old-version" because internet has
been developed on UNIX-like machines and therefore is compatible with the EXT2FS
(EXTended Second FileSystem) norm for files. Thus Windows needs to use some
tricks to recognize them because it is based on the DOS file system which
recognizes only one extension with only 3 characters. Thus if you download
some files from a UNIX system to a Windows system, the files are sometimes renamed,
thus raising some huge problems for migrations of large numbers of files of different
kinds.
- If you have a simple operation to make onto some files, it will take much
more time on Windows than on Linux.
Now, if you really want to have Windows on your computer just because
almost everyone (so far...) use Windows, you can also install both
Windows and Linux on your hard drive, and use the one you want when
you want.... (note: this procedure can be done without having to
re-format your disk, but it is often more efficient to repartion it
and in this case, be sure to have a backup of all your personal and config
files available ...).
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Last update: 07/03/2004