For example I use a lot of FFmpeg for my video conversion scripts, on Ubuntu its as easy as Synaptic.  On Windows the easiest way is Cygwin Ports.  On a mac, erm …

Rather than compiling from source I found the ffmpeg binary in the package files of Miro Video Converter.  It does not include support for libfaac but the built in aac codec actually performs quite well compared to the Ubuntu and Cygwin versions so It can produce reasonable acc audio.  There was also the binary for ffmpeg2theora so I thought I would share this as well.

Download ffmpeg for OSX Snow Leopard

Download ffmpeg2theora for OSX Snow Leopoard

As a web developer I need to test websites on multiple web browsers and since Safari was made available for Windows, this meant that I could run every web browser within Windows.  My current practice is to fire up Windows in a virtual machine to test IE and Safari but there was a chance this inconvenience could be over, I just needed to see if I could work with Windows as my main platform.

My current laptop came with an OEM disc of Windows 7 and 6 months ago I decided to install it.  I thought that I could force myself to be happy with Windows, after all most of the software I use is cross platform so all I require Windows to do is be an operating system.  I was wrong as I have found Windows to be a pain and very primitive in some cases.  I could have forced myself to continue using it but I have decided to move back to using Linux (Ubuntu), not because I am a Linux geek/fan boy or a MS hater, just because generally I feel that its a better system, especially when using Gnome window manager.

There are many good and bad points about all systems, even though you will not hear OSX users admit to this.  My writing here is not to be completely negative against Windows 7, just to point out the reasons why I decided to stop using it.  This is not intended to be a Windows/Ubuntu comparison as that would be unfair. It’s just the issued I am raising with Windows are problems solved with Ubuntu.  For the record, I was impressed by many aspects of Windows 7, and for use as a pleasure machine then this is the OS I would choose, but for business and productivity Ubuntu with Gnome wins in my opinion.

To start with installing the Operating System, installing Windows 7 was very easy, that was until it was installed and you wanted to use it.  Not much hardware seemed to work out of the box and I had a CD from Dell with tons of drivers to install.  This was not very easy as I couldn’t see an easy way to tell which drivers I needed to install as there many options depending on what hardware was actually in the machine.  Windows did try to find drivers by Windows Update but that did not work.  This point is not a major one as you could argue that this only has to be done once but it does lead me on to one of the most annoying aspects of Windows, which is consistency and uniformity.

For example on the uniformity point, I install the bluetooth driver which comes with the bluetooth management software.  This software looks crap next to the polished look and feel of Aero and the Windows 7 theme.  Not only does it look out of place but the whole interface to managing bluetooth devices is absolutely horrible and difficult to work and understand. Why is there no built in software that manages bluetooth devices, so regardless what bluetooth device I have, Windows will use the same integrated interface for it?
My latop has built in mobile broadband, so I have to install the Sony Ericcsson driver and software.  This looks different again to the windows interface and has a big connect button, which once pressed connects and minimises to the notification area.  Now in the notification area I have the Windows Network software and the Sony Ericcsson software running, and in principle they are doing the same job, connecting me to the Internet.  Surely the mobile broadband connections could be managed by the Windows Network tools.
Gnome desktop is great at providing software for a task and then using the Linux Kernel to talk to the devices.  For example the Gnome Network Manger controls Ethernet, Wireless, Mobile Broadband, Bluetooth Internet and VPN’s all from the same place and it doesn’t care what brand of Bluetooth or Broadband Dongle you have got.
I had to install Dell Quickset to enable all the multimedia keys to work.  When you press one of the volume keys I get an ugly notification in the centre of the screen.  When I receive a new email, I get a notification pop up in the notification area.  In fact all software that use notifications, seem to do it in their own way.  Surely something as important as notifications should be presented by the Operating System in a uniform manor so not to confuse the user?  DBus or NotifyOSD from the Linux world solves this problem.

There appears to be no unified software update for Windows.  We have Windows update which updates Windows itself and possibly some drivers as well as some Microsoft software such as Internet Explorer, but wouldn’t it be nice if other software vendors could plug into this instead of having their own update mechanisms.  I notice every time Windows 7 is started, Java will run an update check and if an update is found it will launch Java’s own update tool.  Mozilla Firefox checks for its own updates and so does countless other software.  It seems I cannot escape software always performing update checks and throwing the results in my face if action is needed.  This is really annoying, prime example if the Apple Software Updater that tries to convince me I need Quicktime whenever there is a Safari update.  Even more annoying is the Adobe Flash updater that launches the Adobe Download manager and then completely fails to install the update, instead takes me to manual instructions.
I do not expect Microsoft to release a tool like the Fantastic Synaptic found on Debian systems, but surely they could let plugins to Windows Update that will allow non Microsoft software to be updated from this tool from the vendors repository.

Windows also only seems to like to work with FAT or NTFS file systems.  I believe the whole world does not run Windows so wouldn’t it be nice to include out of the box support for HFS, Ext2+ and some other file systems.  It can be done but only with add on software which isn’t transparent and does not work completely natively within Windows.
How about remote file systems? Windows explorer can mount an FTP drive but its pretty lame.  How about something like GVFS which will enable Windows Explorer to mount all sorts of remote file systems so that you can browse as if you were on your local hard drive.  There are tools like SFTP Drive, but that still requires assigning drive letters manually and its not quite native.
Even for SMB networking, Windows seems to make this far harder than it has to be.  I actually gave up trying to create a share with virtual users.  Its made worse by different rules for Home, Public and Work networks.  I assume this is to help with security but if you have half a brain this is actually a hindrance.

The desktop interface misses some much needed functionality.  We have some good ideas such as side-by-side view but Microsoft has also wasted effort by putting in useless ideas such as shake to minimize and Aero Peek (seriously what good is this?).  How about adding multiple workspaces and an easy way to make any window stay on top, things Gnome does well.  There is software to enable Windows to perform these actions but its not where near the experience you get on Gnome.

And finally, something that really annoys me is that applications do not seem to be added to the system path.  I can install PHP for example and if I want to evoke it to run a simple CLI script I will need to type the full path to PHP, which becomes a complete waste of time. I tried to be clever and put a link to it in the System32 folder but running that link makes Windows try to run the link not the binary the link is to.  Really not helpful!

For now Roadsend can be used to compile CLI apps or webapps where you want to protect the source code.  The Roadsend Compiler is completely independent from the Zend Engine and actually compiles to a binary file for your operating system / architecture so very different from other source code protection systems such as Zend Guard, Ioncube or Bcompiler.  Roadsend also can use its PHP engine to interpret and run scripts just like the Zend Engine.

You will need to install the Bigloo package first then the Roadsend package.

Tested on Karmic (9.10)

• bigloo_3.2a-1_amd64.deb
• roadsend-php_2.9.8-1_amd64.deb

You will also have to change the LD_LIBRARY_PATH before it will work.  For some unknown reason putting this in .profile wont work so we are going to export this new path in our .bashrc file

$ echo 'export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/usr/local/lib"' | tee -a ~/.bashrc

Tested on Jaunty (9.04), Karmic (9.10)

php-gtk_2.0.1-1_amd64.deb

Installation Instructions

Download the deb file for your version of Ubuntu above and double click this file when downloaded.

Once installed you will need to edit your php.ini file to get it to work.

$ sudo gedit /etc/php5/cli/php.ini

In the Dynamic Extensions part of the file add the line extension=php_gtk2.so

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
; Dynamic Extensions ;
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
;
; If you wish to have an extension loaded automatically, use the following
; syntax:
;
;   extension=modulename.extension
;
; For example, on Windows:
;
;   extension=msql.dll
;
; ... or under UNIX:
;
;   extension=msql.so
;
; Note that it should be the name of the module only; no directory information
; needs to go here.  Specify the location of the extension with the
; extension_dir directive above.

extension=php_gtk2.so

You may wish to do a simple test to make sure all is working (taken from http://gtk.php.net/manual/en/tutorials.helloworld.php).

<?php
if (!class_exists('gtk')) {
 die("Please load the php-gtk2 module in your php.ini\r\n");
}

$wnd = new GtkWindow();
$wnd->set_title('Hello world');
$wnd->connect_simple('destroy', array('gtk', 'main_quit'));

$lblHello = new GtkLabel("Just wanted to say\r\n'Hello world!'");
$wnd->add($lblHello);

$wnd->show_all();
Gtk::main();
?>