LIS-3353 - Beyond Linux - Languages and Platforms

Created Tuesday 08 October 2024

Installing Stuff Notes

The power of scripting frequently lies in using other programs.

The value of coding from scratch

Has diminished RAPIDLY, moreso because of AI

Why write anything twice?

Why I harp on Bash

It's the most versatile/powerful way
to use OTHER PEOPLES code

(probably)

So you want to grab some code and use it?

After all, what's the difference between

PROGRAMMING and USING?

OLD REALITY

APPS/PROGRAMS (what you made from below )
LANGUAGES (C, JAVA, JAVASCRIPT, PYTHON)
OS - LINUX (use COMMANDLINE/BASH)
COMPUTER (REAL/DISTRO/VIRTUAL)

NEXT REALITY

WEB BROWSER
APPS/PROGRAMS (what you made from below )
LANGUAGES (C, JAVA, JAVASCRIPT, PYTHON)
OS - LINUX (use COMMANDLINE/BASH)
COMPUTER (REAL/DISTRO/VIRTUAL)

TODAY, ANOTHER POSSIBILITY

WEB BROWSER IS THE "OS"
APPS/PROGRAMS (what you made from below )
LANGUAGES (C, JAVA, JAVASCRIPT, PYTHON)
OS - LINUX (use COMMANDLINE/BASH)
COMPUTER (REAL/DISTRO/VIRTUAL)

Virtualizations

You know this quite a bit already...

Distributions

Usually ISOs
We've been dealing with general, but

Specialized Distributions

Very common and useful these days
Especially with Raspberry Pis
(We'll come back later, but Docker, and LXC can do these in "Containers"

BITS OF SOFTWARE

- Text editors
- Games
- Web Servers
- anything, really.

IN THE BEGINNING

When the USERS were also the ADMINS/DEVELOPERS

(Windows/Mac users, I'm guessing it felt like
"Buy the physical disc in a store"
or
"Download and hope for the best, as it litters your drive"

wand then just jumped to APP STORES?

Again, the problem:

(this is a completely made up example)

E.g. you install Libreoffice Calc (like Excel)
and also
A TI-graphing calculator app

Which both use a "lib-math.."

Again the problem

And now you delete one of them.

Or they use different versions.

How do you deal with this?

App Stores

Nice right? Curated, rated, clean set of apps

That get rid of themselves when you remove them

..theoretically

Us Linux snobs...

We saw app stores, and were like

Oh, you mean like "package managers using repositories"

wait...y'all gotta PAY for the apps lol

A related problem: Configurations

Windows: e.g. .ini files, or dropdown menus with "preferences"

Linux: Dotfiles, which can litter your home drive

Linux

Was *terrible* at first:

COMPILE THE PROGRAM YOURSELF.

OLDER Package Managers (classic)

(the precursor to app stores)
Try to track and manage libraries et al

OLDER Package Managers - Debian Family

This is Ubuntu, Mint, Pop, MX LINUX

apt/ apt-get
(synaptic, which is a gui version)
(aptitude, which is similar)

Also, the less preferred "dpkg", used to install "debs"

Fedora, Red Hat - RPM

Arch, Manjaro - pacman

MODERN ERA- DESKTOP

Linux is beginning to adopt the bifurcation
for better or for worse
of END USERS v. ADMIN/DEVELOPER

- Snap
- Flatpak
- AppImage

But all of this is mostly "apps"

WHAT ABOUT BACKEND?

BACKEND

On Direct Downloads

Theoretically very dangerous
Practically? In Linux? Probably not so much.
Especially if:

Direct Download precautions

So yes, maybe
curl http:XXX | bash
isn't so evil.

Speaking of homework, Git

Git, like Linux, is exactly what you get when a genius does his own thing;

It's great, people use it, and other parties can build on top and centralize it.

(also, it might be a *tad* depressing when you realize that there are 1000x programmers)

Github

Presently still a great resource.
Reasonably safe place to download and run code from "raw"
See also, Gitlab and other competitors.

Git

(there is a LOT more to say about git.
we spend an entire class period on it in 5367)

LANGUAGES

Examples of classic languages

C
Rust
Go

- Low level, Compiled, Native

Examples

Java
Python

(Midrange, Python's honestly probably the best all around, let the fights begin)

Examples

Bash and other SCRIPTING LANGUAGES

Very powerful, and weirdly often not considered
"languages"

Examples

What about MySQL, et al?
Declarative, and not specialized
(why do I hate workbench? :))

ADMIN

A lot of the times, the above will work.
But, you're tinkering, so you may need to dig deeper.

THE WEB as platform

Frontend - HTML/CSS for visuals, Javascript for interactivity
Backend - PHP or Node or Python or Java
(Data - SQL)

the holy mess that is the web.

Here goes: This ONLY makes sense if you remember that the
web grew and accreted on itself, and encouraged to do so
primarily by "market forces"...
as opposed to "designed."

Text

Plain ol' text. BBS and the like

HTML

"Lets make this look better than the Matrix, SEMANTICALLY"

CSS

"Still kind of ugly, now let's go VISUAL"

JAVASCRIPT

The 800lb gorilla.

Once again, why this mediocre language?

Because

(in an infinite bandwidth world, I imagine this would look different)

But why THIS language?

First to market. That's pretty much it.

But why THIS language?

"Because we need interactivity on the web right now, and anything’s better than Flash."

Brendan Eich, Creator of Javascript...

“I was writing something that could be used by people who didn’t know what a compiler was.
They were just going to load it.

“It was like Basic. That was really the pitch….”

“I was under marketing orders to make it look like Java but not make it too big for its britches.
It’s just this sort of silly little brother language, right? The sidekick to Java.”

Umm we spend a lot of time here on (my)SQL

yeah, I know. it's a little weird.
deal with it

TODAY WHATS THE DEAL:

Making Standalone Apps?

C, the C's, Java's and sometimes Pythons

TODAY WHATS THE DEAL:

Backend Web

Java, Python, PHP, Server-side Javascript

TODAY WHATS THE DEAL:

Frontend Web

HTML / CSS / Javascript

TODAY WHATS THE DEAL:

Cutting Edge AI stuff?

Web + lots of Python

CONTAINERS

Enter Docker.
Amazingly good idea that mostly works.

CONTAINERS CAN SORT OF DO ALL OF THE BELOW

WEB BROWSER
APPS/PROGRAMS (what you made from below )
LANGUAGES (C, JAVA, JAVASCRIPT, PYTHON)
OS - LINUX (use COMMANDLINE/BASH)
COMPUTER (REAL/DISTRO/VIRTUAL)

Docker

Put things in "Containers."
Not as heavy as entire VMs
But walled off from everything.

Why not just apps like the end users?

END USERS usually don't need "special configs"
or "opening things to the internet"

Docker

Very cool thing about docker is PORTABILITY.
Their metaphor is "everything in shipping containers"

Docker

Also, it's own ecosystem. Frequently you can be like "install directly"
or "use a docker container"

The latter usually makes complicated above stuff into

"docker run hello-world"

(with some more flags to point to folders and ports for the net.

Too good to be true?

Kind of.

The Good: "Docker" uses a completely open standard.

Meaning, other programs can step in and replace it (e.g. podman)

Kind of like eg. Word and Libreoffice or Google Docs

Kind of Like Linux itself

The presence of these others probably keeps Docker pretty good.

The great: Docker Compose

What if you have not a simple "hello-world"

but

docker run -p 80:80 -v /var/run/docker.sock:/tmp/docker.sock:ro 
--restart always --log-opt max-size=1g nginx

Just put it in a file

name: <your project name>
services:
	nginx:
		ports:
			- 80:80
		volumes:
			- /var/run/docker.sock:/tmp/docker.sock:ro
		restart: always
		logging:
			options:
				max-size: 1g
		image: nginx

The ugly - Docker Desktop

Probably useful for some, but big bloated thing
that Docker's trying to use to make things "too easy"

I'm reminded EXACTLY of

The difference between
Command Line MySQL
and
Mysql-Workbench

(might work for y'all but meh)

And here, I still haven't figured it out.