OS advocacy

Jay Maynard

Jul 10, 2001

Please, folks, let's keep the OS advocacy on-topic, okkay?

When asked, I recommend running Hercules on Linux *if there is no other
reason to use Windows*. This is simply because there are some Hercules
facilities that are not supported on Windows, and because there appear to be
some problems with the Cygwin libraries that need ironing out.

With that said, however, there are a lot of folks who run Windows for what
they see as good and sufficient reasons, and I'm not going to try to
convince them otherwise if they don't want to be convinced. I'm typing this
on a laptop running Windows 2000, which I use for lots of other things. I do
use Linux for Hercules, mainly because I've never succeeded in building the
Windows version, though I may well try it later this week to get a better
feel for Fish's WinGUI. On the whole, I believe that Linux is technically
superior - but that's simply not relevant to large numbers of folks.

I'd like to see the limitations on Hercules functionality under Windows
removed, but I don't know enough about Windows programming to make it
happen. One goal of Hercules has always been portability, all the way back
to the early days, and a truly portable program runs equally well on any
supported platform limited only by the platform's capabilities.

Many folks have put much effort into making the Windows version run well,
and I am happy they've done so.

There are other places for OS advocacy on the net. Let's keep it somewhat
close to Hercules here, please.

12:44 pm