Microsoft's Distribution Sucks.

[S_Grimm]

Title says it all. I just re-installed Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate on my computer, to find out that it does not install the packages for AJAX, even when you use the nice setup feature to install everything available... So here's to Microsoft and another 2 hours wasted, downloading the updates and packages needed for AJAX.

Anyone else had this problem before?

On the plus side, I *am* currently getting paid to wait around for Microsoft to install the software needed. It's just annoying. I'd quite like to be coding right now....

[mirhagk]

Lol well that's good for you, and they could not possibly include everything you might use. If the AJAX packages weren't made by them (likely) then they can't include them (for legal reasons).

Even if they did include it, it would bloat the packages with things that people don't use too much.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, AJAX isn't really a language or anything, it's just passing data from javascript to the server, you wouldn't need any packages to do that.

BTW if it takes 2 hours to download and install those tools, there is something wrong. And even if it does, you could still be coding, since having visual studio open doesn't interfere with downloading stuff lol.

[DemonWasp]

My favourite experience from installing Visual Studio is when I installed Visual Studio 6 several years ago. Took 6 hours to install 2GB.

Same computer installed a 2GB game in 30 minutes.

[Tony]

Sometimes there's more to installation than simply copying files.

[mirhagk]

DemonWasp @ Thu Feb 16, 2012 8:03 pm wrote:

My favourite experience from installing Visual Studio is when I installed Visual Studio 6 several years ago. Took 6 hours to install 2GB.

Same computer installed a 2GB game in 30 minutes.

I assumed you didn't download the ISO's (which are harder to find and kinda pointless anyways)? If you download the default installer, it's a tiny file that downloads the file first, then installs it. So 6 hours to download and install a 2GB file. Also the 2 GB file was actually 2 GB worth of thousands upon thousands of tiny files, and little amendments to registries. And if the computer restarted halfway through (which it often has to because the installer will have way more conflicts with things than a game) then that just adds to the time, and is completely necessary.

If you think about it, 6 hours isn't too bad, so long as you know that up front, and it doesn't wait for you to do things, just leave it on overnight.

Also Tony, I was thinking that lol. If you think using an incomplete installer is bad, try download tar balls and compiling the code yourself as you sometimes have to do for open source projects (usually not for windows though). I don't care if I have to download and install like 3 separate programs, as long as I don't have to understand the code I'm installing (sucks SO much when the code your given doesn't have proper instructions on how to compile it, or worse yet, has incompatibilities with your system).

[DemonWasp]

This was in 2002. I was installing off of CDs (5 of them), which meant that I had to sit around waiting for it to prompt for the next CD each time. I did, and I was prompt about feeding it the next one each time, but it still took a metric forever to install.

It would be excusable if it had to download off of the internet connection (and if it resumed itself automatically, and saturated the connection, and...). It was inexcusable off of CDs.

Understandably, installing software involves more than a file copy. In general, though, it should just be download-and-decompress, perhaps with some system-level setup. This is how you install Eclipse and most other software I've ever used. Why an IDE would have anything particularly complex to do on install, I can hardly imagine. The most complicated IDE install I've ever heard of is the one I work on, and it installs a few dozen device drivers in addition to about 3GB of data (total setup time: ~40 minutes).

If you were just copying files, you should be able to read 2GB off of 5 CDs about 10 minutes (~6 minutes read time, 4 minutes for a human to swap disks 5 times).

The open-source install systems are usually better: sudo apt-get install foo bar baz and wait for it to finish. Even when I've had to compile code manually, it's usually just ./config; make; make install. The last time I did that was years ago, and it was to unpack and install a library built for developers (log4cxx) on a system that didn't have a sufficiently-recent system in its repositories (RHEL).

[mirhagk]

Well Visual studio is slightly more complex since it needs to install the .NET framework which is probably already being used by applications that you're running. The download and decompress only really works when programs aren't all linked together and integrated (or at least aren't so while the program is installing). Eclipse and related does not need to update software that is currently running (and if they do, they make you close them)

But yes I have found that installing the visual studio applications to be slow, although there probably is a reason for it, it's not like they just put the thread to sleep randomly for no reason all of a sudden.

And demonwasp, that's assuming that you have the correct compilers already, which is true when you have used the system for a while, or are a developer (or the compilers are mainstream and included in the distro). I've had a few nightmares where I had to try to figure out what compiler the code was using, and install that and required libraries first.

The problem basically comes down to a simple case of me wanting to give linux a shot, having extreme difficulties getting it to work (reading through man pages to find out how to do the simplest things) so I don't stick with it for very long since I don't have the time to waste getting used to it. That means that the next time I try to give it a shot the exact same thing happens, because I forget the little I learned from the last time.

[DemonWasp]

To be fair, downloading and installing the JDK takes about 20-30 minutes, so I should include that in the time to "set up Eclipse". That still only gets us up to about 45 minutes.

I have no idea what VS does during its install. It frequently left the CD drive idle and let it spin down for no obvious reason, requiring it to spin back up. There was nothing else running on the system. The system was quite fast for the era. The worst part, as I recall, is that it refused to let me interact with the system while it was installing (maximized installer window, alt-tab disabled, etc). Not uncommon at the time, but very sucky.

Most of the autoconf scripts I've seen detect the common compilers. If you're compiling stuff, you should already know that you need a compiler (usually gcc/g++) and build-essential packages (often called "build-essential", which makes them pretty easy to download and install). I'll happily grant that autoconf sucks and make is firmly a developer tool -- end users shouldn't even know either exists.

Getting Linux to work (assuming you choose a straightforward distro, such as perennial favourite Ubuntu) should take about 15 minutes (download ISO, burn to CD, plop in CD drive, reboot, it loads the OS off the CD and all is well). Actually installing it is usually about 15-20 minutes more, depending on machine. If you're trying a more complicated distribution (such as Arch or Gentoo) first, well...you chose to make life much harder than it needs to be. That's your choice, and it's cool that you have it, but you can't then complain that you had to read man pages.

In my (admittedly limited) experience, I've found it much easier to avoid problems on Linux systems; when they do--inevitably--occur, I've found them much easier to fix, despite working in Windows most of the time, having been introduced to Windows in 1995, and to Linux in 2006. There are problems with my primary Windows machine that I shrug off and work around because I can't figure out how to fix them*, but my Linux systems all chug along merrily, doing exactly what I tell them to do.

* Video card driver craps itself every few days. Hard enough that Windows can't resurrect it. Not related to any particular activity, but fixed immediately by power-cycling. No idea what's going on, but I bet if I could attach a debugger to the driver and drop back to a recovery shell I could find out.

[ProgrammingFun]

I installed VS Developer Preview and it took me about 20 minutes, which includes downloading and installing components. Installing JDK and Eclipse takes about 5 minutes. Installing pirated games, which need to be uncompressed first by a lot of scripts takes about 20 minutes. Installing a real game takes about 5 minutes.
Why does everyone else here take so long? O_O

[mirhagk]

Depends on network connection and stuff PF. My internet is usually lagged by several connections to Netflix and stuff.

And Demonwasp, sure Linux provides you with the ability to figure out the errors more often, however even the GUI distros (Ubuntu) don't use GUI for everything/most things. Figuring out how to do something from the command line requires reading man pages. Figuring out how to do something in a GUI requires looking at various buttons and guessing the right one.

[S_Grimm]

mirhagk @ Thu Feb 16, 2012 6:53 pm wrote:

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, AJAX isn't really a language or anything, it's just passing data from javascript to the server, you wouldn't need any packages to do that.

BTW if it takes 2 hours to download and install those tools, there is something wrong. And even if it does, you could still be coding, since having visual studio open doesn't interfere with downloading stuff lol.

This is the package I needed in order to have the libraries required for Visual Studio to know what the hell I'm talking about: http://www.microsoft.com/web/downloads/platform.aspx
It needed to install pretty much everything, seeing as the computer had pretty much nothing installed.

Also, I couldn't do anything, I needed the web developer tools in order to finish what i had started. I did however write the stored procedures that go into the database. Then I rewrote them. A half dozen times.

ProgrammingFun wrote:

I installed VS Developer Preview and it took me about 20 minutes, which includes downloading and installing components. Installing JDK and Eclipse takes about 5 minutes. Installing pirated games, which need to be uncompressed first by a lot of scripts takes about 20 minutes. Installing a real game takes about 5 minutes.
Why does everyone else here take so long? O_O

It took me little under 20 minutes on my rig at home. However this *is* a work computer and it *isn't* the newest technology available.

Incase anyone was overly curious:

code:

Error  2 The type or namespace name 'ScriptManager' does not exist in the namespace 'System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts' (are you missing an assembly reference?)

Thats why I need the web developer kit. I am unable to create web sites that are AJAX enabled. A google search last night said that the web developer package fixed this issue.

EDIT2: To be precise I needed the MVC stuff. Annoying eh?

[DemonWasp]

mirhagk @ Fri Feb 17, 2012 7:54 am wrote:

...even the GUI distros (Ubuntu) don't use GUI for everything/most things. Figuring out how to do something from the command line requires reading man pages. Figuring out how to do something in a GUI requires looking at various buttons and guessing the right one.

The same could be said of Windows, except that you cannot drop to the command-line. I'd love to see a GUI where you don't have to figure out which button you mean to press on your own. Plus, you can accomplish almost anything in Ubuntu without dropping to the command-line now (and that's been true for years). I use the CLI frequently because I like it, not because it's a necessity.

The only reason you find Windows more intuitive than Linux is because you grew up working with Windows, same as (almost) everyone else.

[mirhagk]

DemonWasp @ Fri Feb 17, 2012 10:53 am wrote:

I'd love to see a GUI where you don't have to figure out which button you mean to press on your own.
The only reason you find Windows more intuitive than Linux is because you grew up working with Windows, same as (almost) everyone else.

Um most GUI programs (that aren't programs written by high-school/hobbyists) come with help pages telling you how to do everything. But it's nice being able to figure things out on your own without having to load up the help pages is the reason I like GUIs.

And *most* things can be accomplished through the GUI in ubuntu, but even if they can be accomplished, finding out guides for setting things up in GUI are much harder than the command line (presumably because the command line is in every distro whereas GUIs don't work across all distros). Compiling programs usually require creating a make file, or compiling it from the command line, and same goes for setting up a lot of different software (background services that don't have GUIs often don't have wizards, which are pretty common in windows background services)