Re: New User

["Michael D. Norwick" <mnorwick@centurytel.net>]

Byron Watkins wrote:
> Hi,
>
>         I am trying to ween myself from Windows.  A couple of months ago
> I
> installed Debian on my new amd64 box and I am generally quite impressed
> by the amalgam.  There are a few items that I have been unable to
> address satisfactorily, however.
>
>         First, I am a programmer in one of my hobby lives.  I love C and
> C++
> and I have installed the gcc and g++ packages on my new box.  I have not
> yet found a good integrated developer environment, however.  About the
> only thing good about Windows, in my opinion, is their Visual C++.
>   
For Gnome;
http://anjuta.sourceforge.net/downloads
For KDE;
http://trolltech.com/products/qt

I am assuming that you are on Debian so the Gnome or KDE development 
packages are available to you and quite feature full.

I believe that the Eclipse suite;
http://www.eclipse.org/
with 'language IDE's' allows you to develop in C and C++ as well as 
Java.  In fact if you can get Java, the tools, and the Eclipse suite 
installed and setup properly from either distribution specific packages 
or generic binaries ( Sun tar.gz files), you'll learn a lot about Linux 
along the way.
>         Second, I am an electrical engineer, so I would like to get
> closer to
> the hardware.  In order to do so, it would be nice to find a tutorial
> explaining the standard ways Linux implements plug and play, hardware
> access permissions, and communication between hardware and applications.
>
>         Third, I would like to find a good book to teach me how to
> accept and
> to process mouse, keyboard, graphics tablet, etc. input and how to
> generate and to operate the graphical windows used in Debian.  I
> understand that the Gnome and/or KDE interfaces are available and it
> would be nice to know what the differences, similarities, and
> compatibility issues are from the programmer's perspective.  I think I
> am using Gnome, so my first priority is programming for Gnome, but if I
> can program for both, even better.
>
>         Any recommended literature and relevant references and/or urls
> are
> quite welcome and will be appreciated.
>
> Byron Watkins
>   
Books;
http://www.oreilly.com/

Debian provides copious amounts of documentation in .txt, .info, .html, 
.pdf, .ps forms among others.  Scan /usr/share/doc or do something like
$>man gcc
$>man info
$>info flex

A lot of docs are available as .html and thus viewable by your browser.

Hope this gets you started.

Michael