[Haskell-beginners] is there a best os to easily install external libraries ?

[Joe Fredette]

Excellent answer, but let me add, instead of Cygwin, andLinux gives  
you an actual linux system which runs _on top of_ your windows system  
-- as in a full kernel, etc (actually a distro of ubuntu). It's based  
on coLinux, but is very nice. You get the full weight of linux, but  
without having to dual-boot or otherwise do anything drastic with your  
OS.

/Joe
On Oct 16, 2009, at 9:35 PM, Kyle Murphy wrote:

> Short answer is yes, it is easier on Linux. The long answer is that  
> most of the libraries are cross platform, and there are some fairly  
> nice libraries/utilities that can make getting an install in Windows  
> working fairly pain-free, but they're hard to track down and they  
> tend to be... touchy... about version numbers and such, in  
> particular they're often a few versions behind what most people are  
> using. From the standpoint of doing development, Linux is definitely  
> much easier to work with, but it has its own quirks to deal with.  
> Getting the system up and running the way you want tends to be a  
> little intimidating for a newcomer, but once you've got it all taken  
> care of it tends to chug along fairly well on its own. Ubuntu Linux  
> is the most newbie friendly in general (they tend to try to do  
> everything for you if possible) and you'll find the answers to most  
> common questions/issues with it using a simple google search, but  
> from the standpoint of Haskell development it tends to be a little  
> tougher to work with (most of the packaged libraries for it are a  
> bit out of date and/or have been modified from the standard ones).  
> In contrast something like Gentoo or Arch Linux are very newbie un- 
> friendly (you're expected to know and understand what kind of  
> hardware you're installing it on to start with), but because they're  
> built from source (more or less) they tend to have the very latest  
> versions of everything. Using Arch or Gentoo you'll probably learn  
> more, and once you've got it all straightened out it will be very  
> easy to work with, but it's going to be an uphill battle just  
> getting it installed and working right. Ubuntu is about as close as  
> you can get to a point and click install with Linux, but is likely  
> to cause you some stress when working with Haskell (although not as  
> much as Windows).
>
> Really it comes down to what you want to get out of the process. If  
> you've got a spare computer you don't mind taking out of commission  
> for a while (possibly as long as a month or two) and you've got some  
> time to play around with things and maybe learn a bit about your  
> hardware, I'd recommend Arch Linux. If you want something you can  
> have up and running within a day and don't want to worry about any  
> of the details of, I'd go with Ubuntu.
>
> For a nice compromise that doesn't involve replacing you're OS you  
> might want to take a look at Cygwin if you haven't yet. It's more or  
> less a port of the standard Linux shells and utilities to Windows  
> and can go a long way towards bringing the Linux experience into the  
> Windows world.
>
> On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 8:46 AM, david hodgetts <david.demainlalune at gmail.com 
> > wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
> to give some context: I am not a real developer. I am a motion  
> designer who enjoys doing procedural animations and installations  
> with tools such as processing, flash, openframeworks. This might  
> explain some of the difficulties I describe below.
>
> Wanting to broaden my thinking skills and CS knowledge, I have  
> started to learn Haskell, and I must say I am having a great time.
>
> I am at a point now where I would like to play around with some of  
> the popular UI and graphical libraries (gtk+, freeGlut, sdl etc).  
> But my experience up to now has been a bit painfull in the sense  
> that most of these packages don't install nicely with caball ( on  
> windows XP). I managed to get gtk, freeglut, and curl to install  
> after long hours googling around and doing voodoo in msys and  
> cygwin. Last night I tried to install the SDL bindings to follow a  
> blog post about automata, but completely failed. This got me to  
> wondering if the haskell experience with regards to installing  
> external libraries might be any easier on Linux?
>
> in advance many thanks
>
> best regards
>
>
> david hodgetts
>
>
>
>
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