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Post From: Future planned OS platforms for SC

[2016-01-24 21:00:56] Link To Thread - Link To Post [Go To First Post]
bjohnson777 (Brett Johnson) - Posts: 284
I really like how y'all are consolidating and cleaning up code for all this. I also like how SC is contained in a single directory making backup and copying very easy. In the mean time, please keep SC as WINE friendly as possible. Y'all already know I'm pro linux. I'd like to offer a few ideas for linux that might bump up the cross platform project's priority a little. Here's a marketing consideration if there's ever going to be a "Mac xor Linux" platform decision: Mac hardware is closed and very expensive for what it is. Over the next few months I hope to have a handful of new programs written and posted... hopefully completing my market research and forming a reliable trading plan out of it. Once I prove profitability I plan on building a custom 16 core xeon/opteron server with a lot of RAM and moving SC to that. I doubt I'll need that much for SC, but I will need it for my scratch pad market C++ linux program I've written over the past few years. I'd like for the 2 programs to have simple interaction, so running both on the same server would be a major plus. I could probably get my program to compile on a Mac, but the Mac version of that hardware (if it even exists) would be prohibitively expensive. Expanding my point, using linux, a power trader can build whatever hardware s/he wants for a reasonable price. Linux will not impose any artificial limitations and will not slow down with scale. The sales page needs to mention that... and that data centers often offer generic linux installs on their hardware with a few clicks of a mouse when setting up a new server (no license fees required). That could be a major plus for some foreign users (like the support ticket a few days back where the guy moved to Asia and has a mediocre Internet connection). Many common users find linux a bit daunting at first. SC could come preinstalled on a live CD. Rebuilding a live CD is tedious but not really that difficult. It would also make for a hard disk install CD. Whatever programming libraries y'all decide on can be included. Choosing libraries that are already included in the main distro will make end user upgrades trivial... or they could just be statically compiled into SC. Easy either way. Some people like the buzz words "enterprise kernel/OS". While that really doesn't mean a lot in linux since most everything is compiled for reasonable to maximum efficiency already, a custom kernel could still be included that's more optimized than the distro kernel. If using a custom live CD installer, all the junk programs could be removed to streamline the OS part (including removing unnecessary services). Streamlining would help keep an "over curious" user out of trouble. It would also help get maximum efficiency out of the hardware since unnecessaries won't be running on it. Eventually all this would pave the way to an SC server farm. It could be run directly by y'all or a partner(s). Periodically when digging through support boards I see people who try a demo install but keep having problem after problem when they shouldn't. I know I've seen one support post here... maybe 2. That's usually a sign of some kind of hardware failure. A nice thing about the linux option is that the grub boot loader can be used to load hardware diagnostics programs. I use this on my own remastered live CD and hard disk installs. Anything the UBCD can boot can be applied. I normally recommend memtest, mprime (oddly it also found a buss config error on my quad), and the various hard disk tests. Sell it as: "Hardware doesn't last forever. Make sure your hardware won't trash your trades.". On a related personal note, I've lost 2 RAM sticks and a hard disk in my older systems in the past 12 months. As someone who used to do network admin, I firmly believe in regular testing (even new hardware). As User188247 mentioned a couple posts back, security is a key issue not really addressed by M$. It's one of the main reasons I stay away from M$ products. One screw up (probably a 0-day) and a virus captures your user/pass information and then drains all your accounts before you know what happened. Linux firewalling isn't hard to add if someone wants a further hardened system (including the streamlining mentioned above). Probably the most hardened system a person could get would be on OpenBSD. If y'all's cross platform library choice includes BSD, there are some corporate customers who might really want that. After getting the linux version working, adding BSD shouldn't be too hard. That's my 200pips for the day. Please continue the cross platform project. Linux offers a lot of flexibility for the future.