[Poll] Trouble FLOSSing in NUS?
All right, I’ll cut right to the chase with this one, and won’t pull any punches. Let me be the first to say, It can be a pain trying to use only Free and open source software.
There. I’ve said it. Now I await the pitchforks.
Before you toss me into the vat of boiling oil for heresy, however, hear me out. We’ve all been in this fix before. We really, really, want to use only open source software, but there are just so many things that stand in our way. That YouTube video your friends are laughing over? That’s proprietary Flash all right. That cool new game everyone’s been playing? Chances are (but not quite), that it runs only on Windows.
Things get worse when you’re put into situations that are completely out of your control. In NUS, we most often run into such situations in the courses that we take. Perhaps the lecturer wants the class to use some software that only available on a closed platform. Or he wants you to develop code in a proprietary language. Or perhaps he just insists on sending out .pptx files. Every. Single. Time.
What’s an open source geek to do? Good question, we’re stumped too!
So here’s the deal, if you’d ever faced a dilemma like that in NUS, we want to know! What situation were you put in, by whom, and how (if at all) you managed to get around that. Drop us a note in the comments, and we’ll collate the results for a nice fancy table in a follow-up.
Oh, and general comments welcome too, of course.
It’s gets better when you’re out of school.
CS3215 – Software Engineering Prof. Stan
Requires everyone to use MSVC 6 so that he can execute the final program on his testbed software. GNU C++ is not accepted.
What to do, the whole group of us used MSVC 6 lor. LOLz…
My biggest problem while using only Ubuntu (and not Windows) on my laptop is presentations. I need to decide between using Latex or using PPT. For writing scientific articles, latex is the unequivocal choice, but I previously thought it is not so fit for presentations — particularly for creating animations. Then a friend told me about tikz, which supports animations too. I’m yet to try out this stuff, but it seems I may like it.
I can’t remember anything which irked me in particular (this was back in 2002-2006, mind), except that connecting to the wireless was surprisingly painful. So I’d leave my laptop at home (hall/PGP), plugged in to the ethernet, and treat it as a desktop replacement – once I’d replaced Windows with WindowMaker, things got a whole lot faster
. It was also handy to be able to ssh back into my laptop from other computers on campus.
Indeed. In fact, I found connecting to the wireless network (NUS, not NUSOPEN) painful even up till 2006 thereabouts, especially on Linux. There were guides from Comcen for Windows and Mac users, but none for us. SoCVPN was a pain for us Computing folk too (or those working within SoC-owned buildings).
Once we managed to suss those out it was fine (the results of which you’ll find on the Opensource@NUS wiki)
yeah, as of now I am still figuring out how to get the driver working for a LEGO mindstorm robot (AI module) – anyone knows how i can get the driver working btw? Actually otherwise everything is pretty neat – so far. Things install so much faster and easier with apt-get. Quick coding is also easy, just launch terminal, use preinstall compilers/interpreters. Perhaps the other grouse is that I am too used to MS Visual Studio. have not figured out how to get similar debugging functionalities with other IDEs. Would be great to master another IDE, but alas learning takes time and there is a lack of it during term time.
Ah yes, and outgoing IMAP mail is somehow so slow with Evolution. not too sure if it is my set up.
For engineering, a lot of the software tools being used are closed-source. This is often a pain to run on Linux.
In the ECE dept, there’s this EE2001 module that all ECE students have to take. We’re issued this piece of hardware to program a microcontroller (the PIC, by Microchip Inc). Unfortunately it works only on windows XP (not even Vista!).
I’ve been able to replace this programmer (GTP USB Lite) with a clone of another one (specifically, a clone of Microchip In-Circuit Debugger hardware produced by chip manufacturers). Unfortunately, I haven’t had much luck using Piklab, which is an IDE for the PIC microcontrollers.
So I’m stuck with Vista for now…=(
For the C compiler, we’re required to use this thing called IAR EW-PIC. Thankfully it runs under Linux with the help of Wine.
The other usual issues are: -IVLE webcasts (the streaming video ones, not those by Apresso) seem to only want to playback from the start. try to skip ahead, and it reloads from the front again. AND playback speed doesn’t work!
-NUS Mail runs on microsoft exchange, which loads a crappy interface version for Firefox. I think IE4Linux with Firefox’s IEtab plugin will work, but…too lazy to do that for now.
-Turnitin flashes a warning to say that my OS (it thinks its “unix”) is not supported. No issues so far.
On a more positive note, my UROP prof is very keen that I use opensource software for the project.
Regarding the use of PDF for presentation slides, I recall quite clearly that Martin Henz and Hugh Anderson use LaTeX with some other templates to create their lecture slides. Looks very professional and impressive especially when they include equations into their slides.
For more classic modules such as CS1101 and CS1102, a lot of the programming can be done on open source platforms such as NetBeans and Eclipse. Really a great tool to use for Java coding.
And for other types of coding, should you need an Open Source IDE HTML editing or seperate editors from compilers, I also use Notepad++.
BTW, SoC also supports open source CVS platforms, such as TortoiseCVS. They also support SVN, but you need to apply for a special account with them to get access to it.
OpenOffice 3.* generally works well with any office documents that are not ending with the dreaded .docx, .xlsx, .pptx extensions.
Regarding FYPs, most lecturers support LaTeX formating. For the benefit of those who wants to write their FYP papers in LaTeX format, you can get the template from Prof Ooi Wei Tsang’s homepage. He’s quite a strong supporter of LaTeX for papers. Prof Chang Ee Chien also supports LaTeX. Unfortunately, it seems that SoC still sticks to .doc format when you need to submit your final SoC FYP report to their archive system.
@jasonong: It really depends where you are working isn’t it? Some work environments are such a pain with many restrictions. Fortunately I’m lucky enough to have total freedom in what software to use over here.
@Nixxy: Oh yeah that requirement is a bit of a pity, but somewhat understandable from the lack of resources. I tried to maintain a separate make file for compiling my CS3215 project in GNU C++ (so that my team mates can continue to use VS6), but that took too much effort and I eventually gave up.
@Amit Kumar: Have you tried using OpenOffice Impress? It works pretty nicely for me.
@Gaurav: Yeah wireless has always been a pain. I have problems connecting to some hotel Wifi networks on Linux even today.
@Ruiwen: Those guides were a great help! I would never have been able to setup wireless on Linux in SoC without them!
@juliana: Wow you guys have playing with LEGO mindstorm now? That sounds like a lot of fun, too bad I didn’t take that module back in my time. I’m using Evolution with IMAP, and it works fine for me so perhaps you have something not configured correctly? Or perhaps try using Thunderbird?
I don’t have any problems with wireless or wired connection. I use wicd manager on Ubuntu.
@Nixxy, @jamestyj Some cross-platform build tool like scons or cmake would make the task a lot easier. Sad that a prof should insist on using a particular compiler for a software engineering course. Btw if it was just a matter of working on windows (with the Prof’s testbed), you could also compile with gcc on mingw.
@jamestyj Also try code::blocks and kdevelop, which are IDEs just like Visual Studio. Eclipse too, if you have a large RAM.
In my opinion, open source is emerging as a powerful tool, and many Profs are unaware of it — in the same manner that they are unaware of Twitter.
Does NUS webvpn actually work on Linux? https://webvpn.nus.edu.sg/ I still couldn’t get it to work…
At least NUS webmail can be accessed using Firefox now. But accessing NUS emails using Thunderbird (through IMAP) is still the best way.
I am not sure how popular are NUS Online Communities nowadays http://u.nus.edu.sg/. It uses Microsoft Sharepoint as the backend, so does Firefox work properly?
@Nixxy: SVN was also available in the SoC Zones that they provide to students I think, only that you need to run the setup script first before using it. I remember using SVN for one of my projects there. In fact, I think the Solaris Zones are a great way for students to get more familiar with other platforms.
@Amit Kumar: Indeed. I wish more Profs would consider the use of more FLOSS in their courses.
@Nixxy: Beamer is the way to go for presentation with latex.
@Hang Jian: I find Thunderbird somewhat cumbersome: I can’t see my NUS address book and search takes long (well it takes look in Outlook too).
In ECE, the department does not seem to have any “open source policy”. I raised the issue of usage of open source OS in a student-staff liaison meeting a few semesters back. Their response was: they are unbiased about the OS and use an OS as per the need of the project. Somebody during the meeting also said about 95% of students use Windows exclusively.
The issue is not whether students use a particular OS, but whether they are aware of the alternatives. I have an impression that most undergrad students (at least in ECE) do not even get to try any other OS, even till they graduate. Is this right?
Following up on my earlier note about the USB driver for Lego NXT: it does work with libusb-dev. Discovered that one needs to be root to work with the NXT via USB.
It’s my first sem starting out with FOSS (and intend to do so for the remaining sems)- I observed that courses which require set ups mostly provide for the Windows platform (docs, installation files, etc). Familiar FOSS users may not find too much trouble setting up equivalent environments on their own platforms, but I can see how a beginner could be turned off by this lack of support.
@juliana Good point about experienced users vs. new users. Would you say a workshop on the common tools needed to survive in NUS with FLOSS is in order?
1) People in NUS don’t use open source because there are channels for them to use closed-source software. Like the SoC website which offers MSDN software downloads or torrent.
2) is not available in . Okay, that isn’t a problem with Wine, but the average student can’t care less about installing a new OS and using an emulator to run a software with sub-par performance. Its like doing things in a convoluted way.
3) is too hard to learn. For example, Latex. Why would somebody learn markup language when they can just do the all-too-familiar highlight-and-bold-that-text routine. Yes it gives superior typographically pleasing documents but its too much of a hassle to find that damn package which lets you do non-intuitive stuff like wrapping text around the contour of a rounded image.
Generally, I think open-source software is more suitable for people who are more self-motivated to learn and troubleshoot. Most people just wanted something that you can press that power switch and let it run without any snags. Unfortunately that might not be the case for open-source, like that elusive wireless driver which I have to scour for after installing Fedora, or that bloody player to play your animes in matroska format. There are extensive documentation and self-help groups, but it is the user who has to be motivated to find these resources so that he can solve these problems in the first place. Sadly speaking from what I have observed, this is not the case for the general populace in NUS.
If you need Windows, no problem – just run a virtual machine.
Recent Linux kernels have kvm built-in, you could also try Sun VirtualBox, which has a nice GUI.
If your processor supports virtualization, you should experience near-native performance.
With support on the guest (virtual machine) for networking, USB devices, disk/partition access, VGA – you should be able to do most (if not all) Windows tasks comfortably.
Regarding networking connectivity: try wicd, instead of Novell’s NetworkManager.
Good to see so many responses. Now how about that plan for world domination we shelved so long ago? Or would it actually be a problem if more PEBKAC cases started using Linux on a daily basis and demanded that it be adapted to suit their level?
Oh right, Ubuntu’s already doing that. Well … can’t complain, it’s what I use.
We could always do with another FLOSS workshop. Only – how many people actually use it after the workshop? Perhaps some sort of participant tracking is in order, though it hasn’t had all the best response in the past… dilemma dilemma.
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