Technologies

Development Desktop

Windows or Linux? UNIX? The choice of development platform is an important one and warrants some time considering the alternatives. From our perspective, both Linux and Windows deserve consideration.

Linux

The popularity of Linux continues to increase. There are a number of stable, full-featured distributions to chose from. This includes distributions that are available at no cost as well as enterprise solutions available with support. Installation is generally straight forward and there is a vast array of software packages available to customize your desktop at little or no cost.

Windows

Windows remains the most popular desktop environment. A vast array of software packages are available for purchase. Some commercial software packages are only available for Windows.

Our Choice

We have standardized on the Linux desktop for developers. Linux allows us to create a full-featured office environment and development environment at minimal cost. We also maintain a common Windows PC for access to software packages that are not available on the Linux platform.

We use the following software packages for the majority of our office needs:

• Open Office - word processing, spreadsheet, drawing package, presentations
• Thunderbird - email client
• Firefox - Internet explorer

We use the following software packages for our development needs:

• The Eclipse framework with the C/C++ plug-in,
• The GNU cross-platform development tool chain appropriate for the processor,
• The GNU C Library glibc or its reduced functionality, reduced footprint alternatives newlib and uClibc,
• The Eclipse graphical debugger overlay on GDB,
• Source code version control with Subversion,
• Code quality tools such as Splint and
• numerous tools such as make, tftp server, NFS, ethereal and the multitude of UNIX commands.

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