[Techtalk] Leaving Win$ for linux.

[Rudy Zijlstra]

Anne,

Not an easy one...

Ian Balchin wrote:
> hi, all,
>
> Over the years I have played with linux a lot. It is on my laptop, I 
> write perl scripts in it to massage text databases, and use it for 
> quite a bit of personal email, browsing, etc. nothing too serious I 
> guess.
>
> The news that win2000 will not be supported after the end of this 
> year is another reminder of the treadmill that we are on. If I have a 
> crash and have to reinstall win2000 in 2008 clearly this will be full 
> of all the loopholes and security breaches that have been fixed by 
> patch after patch for the past years. Even the patches on the patches 
> must be patched by now. Clearly M$ is looking to relieve me of more 
> of my precious third-world resources to stay with it.
>   
had missed this one. Good to know though.
> I have long thought of a total move to linux, which of course is not 
> likely to be painless in itself. With some experience behind me I now 
> have two major hurdles that prevent me from moving.
>
> First is that I love Pegasus Mail, having used it since the old DOS 
> days. I don't see any alternative to the power and features of 
> Pegasus in the linux world, and if you haven't used it then don't 
> knock it please.  Am I missing something out, and I am not keen to go 
> to an OE lookalike, Pegaus has this beat in looks, performance, and 
> features. I'm not going to use mutt and Ximian doesn't look very 
> exciting although I haven't really looked at the latest offering. For 
> all of linux's heritage, the email situation looks thin. So any 
> comments there.
>   

As you state further down, this is likely going to be a compromise. 
There are many options, and likely after a while you will be able to 
find a compromise that suits you. Not knowing pegasus, i am not going to 
comment on the options.
> The second hurdle is that I have a lot of database stuff developed 
> over the years in Paradox, hours of my coding is sitting there. I 
> know that there are solid databases available, but what about the 
> front end, I rarely see mention of those, and Paradox provides a 
> complete development environment with its own language ObjectPal. I 
> don't want to have to start from ground zero all over again coding 
> access in perl. I have staff who need something similar to what they 
> are used to. Again, comments from those who have had experience with 
> Paradox development would be welcomed. Making forms, reports, 
> queries, Pdox made this as easy as it could be for a computer 
> literate user who did not  necessarily need to be a computer fundi 
> with $ prompts shining out of his eyes..
>
> These two hurdles prevent a complete move to linux. the first may be 
> a matter of compromise, but the second is a matter of pure business. 
> No Paradox, no business.
>
>   

Now this is indeed the real hurdle, as even on MS Paradox is not really 
supported anymore. Unless as part of Corel Office. From what i have been 
able to trace, it became part of that. Have not been able to trace it 
back in the office suit though (can be my stupidity :) )

You might want to investigate a combination solution though. Interbase 
from Borland - which also runs on linux - should support Paradox 
databases, and combined with Lazarus 
(http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/) that might be a solution.

There are likely other options, but not knowing how you are using 
paradox, not the complexity of the applications you have build, its 
difficult to come up with alternatives.

For example there exist many frontends to mySQL, which could be a 
solution, although it would mean a porting effort. The latest version of 
openoffice also integrates a database frontend, with a simple embedded 
database. I have not played with it, so do not know powerfull it is.

Are you using Paradox in multiuser environment? That is certainly a 
factor to take into account.

Cheers,

Rudy

Skype: grumpydevil(-h)
grumpydevil_h is my home skype account, grumpydevil the one on my work 
laptop that travels with me :)
> Regards
> Anne--
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