(for the nerds and the geeks) Editor Wars !

[Zelhar]

I like Gvim the most. I have pretty extensively customized it to my liking. The one major problem is Gvim doesn't support bi-directional writing. So, If I need to use Hebrew I turn to Gedit. On Windows, I use notepad++ which is actually an excellent editor. It's major flaw is it doesn't support RTL/LTR on the same line. And it's bidi support doesn't work when I run it on Linux under wine.

Anyway, if I neglected to place your favorite on the poll do tell and I shall add it to the list.

[muman613]

I also am partial to the VIM class of editors. Today, as I write this, I have about 10 gvim windows open...

VIM is good to know because it is virtually everywhere there is a Unix/Linux system. You can walk up to a Linux system and know that some version of VI is installed...

I also like Gedit and Jedit and use them from time to time. Jedit is good because it has some IDE features like function browsing for C/C++ and Java....

BTW, isn't WINE awesome... I am able to run MS Word 2007 without even running a virtual machine. I also use VirtualBox from Oracle for my VM needs and have a wide variety of client OS's installed including Win Xp, Win 7, various versions of Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS, Fedora Cora, and others...

[Zelhar]

wine is sort of good but I prefer not to use I don't want to bloat my system with programs that may or may not work properly on wine. As for MS Office, I don't need it. Libre Office and Google Docs pretty much cover everything I need. Sometimes I need to view a .docx etc. which isn't displayed properly on Libre or GooDocs, but it's not a major issue for me.

[muman613]

wine is sort of good but I prefer not to use I don't want to bloat my system with programs that may or may not work properly on wine. As for MS Office, I don't need it. Libre Office and Google Docs pretty much cover everything I need. Sometimes I need to view a .docx etc. which isn't displayed properly on Libre or GooDocs, but it's not a major issue for me.

Yes I too use OO for most of my document needs... But in my organization we use Word for most things and as you point out often the document doesn't display or print properly. In those cases I require to use Word. In general I find Wine to support most windows applications and Wine doesn't bloat the system {as you suggest}.

I work on several cross-platform systems in my profession. For building Windows executables on Linux I use the Mingw32 compiler which allows me to develop some of my apps without compiling them on windows. When I have Linux code which needs to run on Windows I will use Cygwin which is a compatability layer ontop of Windows... I use the GUI library WxWidgets which allows me to write windowing applications which can compile on both Windows and Linux {from one sourcecode}... And as I said before I also make ample use of Virtual systems when I need to test my apps on different distributions.

http://cygwin.org/
http://www.mingw.org/
http://www.virtualbox.org/
http://wxwidgets.org/
http://www.winehq.org/

[Zelhar]

Muman, it's not the wine, but the cheese that comes with it. Installing office on your linux system- that's bloating (unless you really need it). Installing Starcraft II and then finding out it doesn't work properly- even more bloating. Then if I un-install a windows app, it might leave behind it leftovers in the registry and some files on various directories too. I don't know if wine has a registery file like windows (does it ?) but anyway that's what I mean by bloating through wine.

[muman613]

Muman, it's not the wine, but the cheese that comes with it. Installing office on your linux system- that's bloating (unless you really need it). Installing Starcraft II and then finding out it doesn't work properly- even more bloating. Then if I un-install a windows app, it might leave behind it leftovers in the registry and some files on various directories too. I don't know if wine has a registery file like windows (does it ?) but anyway that's what I mean by bloating through wine.

Yes of course there is a registry in Wine.... You can use 'regedit' to view the registry and remove any keys which are stale... Of course in order to do this one must know which keys are required and which can be removed. It is not advisable to remove registry keys without knowing what you are doing.

But a registry key doesn't take up too much space. Bloat occurs when installing DLLs and other components... But most software which use the Microsoft Installer {MSI} will remove all components when uninstalled. It is true that many leave behind registry keys but as I said they usually don't take up much space...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Installer

The Windows Installer (previously known as Microsoft Installer[1]) is a software component used for the installation, maintenance, and removal of software on modern Microsoft Windows systems. The installation information, and often the files themselves, are packaged in installation packages, loosely relational databases structured as OLE COM Structured Storages and commonly known as "MSI files", from their default file extension. Windows Installer contains significant changes from its predecessor, Setup API. New features include a GUI framework and automatic generation of the uninstallation sequence. Windows Installer is positioned as an alternative to stand-alone executable installer frameworks such as older versions of InstallShield and Wise (later versions of both products are based on Windows Installer) and NSIS.

Microsoft encourages third parties to use Windows Installer as the basis for installation frameworks, so that they synchronize correctly with other installers and keep the internal database of installed products consistent. Important features such as rollback and versioning depend on a consistent internal database for reliable operation. Furthermore, Windows Installer facilitates the principle of least privilege by performing software installations by proxy for unprivileged users.