Thanks for the offer but I'll decline politely. I have two specific jobs for SuSE 7.3, (i) running under QEMU on my Ubuntu 6.06 laptop, as it is a "supported" distribution for the defunct(?) Kylix IDE, and (ii) installing on an old Pentium laptop for use as a spare web browsing machine.

After years of trying to program for fun, but being in a sort of programming language limbo, I've finally settled on Pascal, including the Lazarus IDE and I want to have a play with Kylix as I've never really been able to get it to install successfully. I know I'll never be employed as a programmer (or even make a penny), but pascal/lazarus lets me do what I want in a way I can understand, and more importantly enjoy. I've tried C, C++/QT and JAVA but I've never really progressed very far. I've also read a lot of flame wars on why Pascal is cool or crap depending on what side of the fence you are on. But I don't care, I'm still struggling with OOP concepts but I'm sure I'll get there in the end.

I'm away at work until Wednesday but I'll be posting a list of unwanted JAVA, C, C++ & QT books on the list on my return as I need to clear some space!

Regards,

Martin

On Sun, 2006-10-22 at 19:31 +0100, Wayne Stallwood wrote:

On Sun, 2006-10-22 at 13:47 +0100, Martin Collins wrote:

...

Hi Chris I am definately interested in the SuSE 7.3 box set. Please let me know what you would like for it, pick-up etc. Regards Martin

Cool, while you are at it do you want to pop round mine and pick up this 9.1 Professional Box set and manuals before it goes in the bin ?

Yes Lazarus runs fine on every distro I've tried (unlike Kylix) and is easy to install. There's rpms and debs available here http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=89339 for quick and easy installation. Post installation there are lots of extra lazarus/delphi packages available for installation via the ide itself. Note the lazarus ide needs an installation of free pascal first (fpc).

The fpc-crosswin package means you can compile windows binaries on Linux, and the documentation wiki gives a walkthrough on how to do this. With the right compiler directive placed in your old Delphi source code and by converting your dfm files to lfm files (see wiki), you can even recompile your old Delphi projects under Lazarus. Note though that Lazarus isn't complete and doesn't cover the complete feature set of Delphi 5 so you may encounter a crash if you do this ;-)

Lately my preferred method of installation is to install the debs for fpc and then obtain and compile the lazarus source via SVN, instructions here http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php/Getting_Lazarus , downloading and compiling to a folder in my home directory. The reason I do this is because if you add any extra packages via the ide, then lazarus needs to recompile itself and restart. Installing in your home directory means you don't have to worry about file permissions during the compilation process and plus you get the latest, bleeding-edge version of Lazarus. You can also view, edit and compile the supplied examples without file permission woes.

The free-pascal/lazarus wiki is the best place for information as well as any books for Delphi version 5, which it's syntax is on par with.

The ide compiles projects using the gtk1 interface which I don't mind but some say is looking a little dated. There are free-pascal bindings for gtk2 and QT, although both aren't as complete as the gtk1 interface and you will have to know your onions to compile to these interfaces (it's a bit beyond me yet). It compiles Windows binaries to use the native windows interface.

Hope this is of help and will get you coding!

Regards,

Martin

On Mon, 2006-10-23 at 10:42 +0100, Mark Rogers wrote:

I've been wanting to get Lazarus up and running for ages, but never got one of those round tuit things people always talk about.

I have done a lot with Delphi on Windows and I'd like to migrate a lot of stuff across to multi-platform or even single non-Win platform stuff. I've done a bit of C++ here and there but for quick development I much prefer Pascal (although I also don't want to get into language flames over the subject!)

Have you got Lazarus running, and if so how easy is it to install on Linux?

Can Lazarus on Linux generate Windows binaries?