Linux distro for Lazarus + FireBird lazarus / 1-Linux ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sin_dragan · 2014-10-20 07:41 Hi, I need advice from more experienced users. I'm planing to write small IS that would run on Linux. I need advice what Linux distribution is good for using Lazarus (latest stable) and Firebird? I have limited knowledge about Linux, in the company I work we use Erp written in Java on Gentoo Linux with Postgress, I would like to use the same combination with Lazarus/Firebird. I tried Ubuntu 13.04 and Linux Mint with Cinamon desktop and with Mint encountered problems, when I press Shift + F10, Cinamon crashes, when I try to open project file I get AV, then read that I should change gtk and it helped and similar things. Which linux distribution good for production and which you would recommend to use in mass locations (100+ clients) for ordinary users. Thx. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- exdatis · 2014-10-20 07:54 I have an excellent experience with openSuSe ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sin_dragan · 2014-10-20 07:59 Thx, is that for production? Do you also use Firebird? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- BigChimp · 2014-10-20 08:19 From an outsider's point of view I'd choose Debian or RedHat Enterprise Linux/CentOS for the stability and especially management support (puppet/chef/openldap/virtualization support), and enterprise application support. Perhaps/probably the latter due to larger use in companies. (Yes, OpenSUSE is also an option but IIUC not as common in the business world). Indeed avoid Ubuntu as it uses Unity which doesn't work well with Lazarus, and avoid lesser know distros (though they may be technically quite good or better than the major ones) due to lack of general knowledge/support. However, I only have personal experience with Debian on a hobby scale so YMMV - and apart from Firebird on Debian, no experience with Firebird on the other distros. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Leledumbo · 2014-10-20 08:36 Anything with proper KDE support. This is one of the best DE that never gives problem to Lazarus. LXDE and XFCE might fall into the category as well. Personally I use Manjaro Linux with self installed KDE, previously I used Kubuntu but I have update problems because it's not a rolling release and fixes are available only in the next major release. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- exdatis · 2014-10-20 09:13 Quote from: sin_dragan on October 20, 2014, 09:59:53 amThx, is that for production? Do you also use Firebird? Firebird and PostgreSQL, more then 10 years without any problem(+ VSFTPD ftp server) p.s. More then 200 PC on local network ---------------------------------------------------------------------- d.ioannidis · 2014-10-20 09:19 HI, IMO one very good candidate is Debian with Xfce and no systemd ( for obvious reasons) . Xfce still uses the UI paradigm that the majority of the users are comfortable with and Debian as a distro is very stable with high quality packages. I'm finding myself to be a little frustrated with the direction of the Linux community reg. the use of systemd so I'm trying to be on the safe side choosing the above setup for any future installation . As for Free Pascal / Lazarus and FirebirdSQL versions you can go to https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/fpc, https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/lazarus and https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/firebird2.5 to see if the defaults are ok with you . regards, ---------------------------------------------------------------------- BigChimp · 2014-10-20 09:56 Quote from: Dimitrios Chr. Ioannidis on October 20, 2014, 11:19:52 amIMO one very good candidate is Debian with Xfce and no systemd ( for obvious reasons) . Xfce still uses the UI paradigm that the majority of the users are comfortable with and Debian as a distro is very stable with high quality packages. I'm finding myself to be a little frustrated with the direction of the Linux community reg. the use of systemd so I'm trying to be on the safe side choosing the above setup for any future installation . Agreed with you but isn't Debian moving to systemd anyway (at least as default - but that has implications for package support possibly not including other init systems) in new development versions? IIUC that leaves no major/enterprise distro without systemd... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- d.ioannidis · 2014-10-20 10:10 Quote from: BigChimp on October 20, 2014, 11:56:17 amQuote from: Dimitrios Chr. Ioannidis on October 20, 2014, 11:19:52 amI'm finding myself to be a little frustrated with the direction of the Linux community reg. the use of systemd so I'm trying to be on the safe side choosing the above setup for any future installation . Agreed with you but isn't Debian moving to systemd anyway (at least as default - but that has implications for package support possibly not including other init systems) in new development versions? IIUC that leaves no major/enterprise distro without systemd... I'm hopping that the LTS for squeeze ( https://wiki.debian.org/LTS ) will be a success so my wheezy system's can run systemd free for 4 more years. In that time I can only hope that a viable alternative will be emerge. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- d.ioannidis · 2014-10-20 11:28 Quote from: BigChimp on October 20, 2014, 11:56:17 amQuote from: Dimitrios Chr. Ioannidis on October 20, 2014, 11:19:52 amIMO one very good candidate is Debian with Xfce and no systemd ( for obvious reasons) . Xfce still uses the UI paradigm that the majority of the users are comfortable with and Debian as a distro is very stable with high quality packages. I'm finding myself to be a little frustrated with the direction of the Linux community reg. the use of systemd so I'm trying to be on the safe side choosing the above setup for any future installation . Agreed with you but isn't Debian moving to systemd anyway (at least as default - but that has implications for package support possibly not including other init systems) in new development versions? IIUC that leaves no major/enterprise distro without systemd... FYI,  Just in time ....  QuoteDebian Is Back To Discussing Init Systems, Freedom of Choice Postby mmix » 2014-10-18 00:29 www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTgxNjM     Ian Jackson called for a general resolution yesterday similar to what was proposed in March about preserving the freedom of choice of init systems. This isn't about trying to fight again over Upstart vs. systemd as the default init system but is about making sure Debian packages don't depend on a single init system. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Fred vS · 2014-10-20 13:16 Hello. Do you have considered to use freeBSD ? There is a good PC distro => http://www.pcbsd.org/ It works very well with Lazarus and seams to be more-secure for servers  Fre;D ---------------------------------------------------------------------- BigChimp · 2014-10-20 14:15 Quote from: Dimitrios Chr. Ioannidis on October 20, 2014, 01:28:34 pm FYI,  Just in time ....  QuoteDebian Is Back To Discussing Init Systems, Freedom of Choice [...] Yes, heard about that, but I don't think it has much chance to actually change anything. Just my opinion/crystal ball/guess. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- cdbc · 2014-10-20 20:59 Hi PcLinuxOs, very stable, lazarus and firebird runs like a charm  ...And it's a rolling release  Regards Benny ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sin_dragan · 2014-10-21 05:25 Hi, thank you all for your suggestions, yesterday I downloaded and installed Fireserver (CentOS modification for FireBird) dedicated Firebird server on Oracle VM virtual box. In our company we use WMS system on Oracle Linux, so this is similar. I also tried Fedora (based on CentOS). Seeing the distro chart here http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/Gldt1009.svg I'll try PcLinuxOS and OpenSuse. Should I avoid Gentoo as a begginer. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- BigChimp · 2014-10-21 05:32 I would strongly suggest you use something that is close to CentOS/Oracle Linux as that is already used in your company. 3 reasons: 1. Others in the company can support you and you can learn to support the WMS server 2. Performing management tasks for servers/clients is easier with a common platform 3. CentOS is one of the most widely used distros in enterprises anyway, so chances of getting cheap/plentiful external support are much higher. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sin_dragan · 2014-10-21 05:44 Quote from: BigChimp on October 21, 2014, 07:32:31 amI would strongly suggest you use something that is close to CentOS/Oracle Linux as that is already used in your company. 3 reasons: 1. Others in the company can support you and you can learn to support the WMS server 2. Performing management tasks for servers/clients is easier with a common platform 3. CentOS is one of the most widely used distros in enterprises anyway, so chances of getting cheap/plentiful external support are much higher. It's an external company that develops our WMS, and the Oracle Linux is new to them as well, but I learn other things from them. For #2 and #3: +1 I see that currently CentOS 7 is available, Im downloading right now. Should I use the same OS for production and clients? I ask this because I developed some application on Linux Mint and when I deployed it on Gentoo controls/components were overlapping, so I had to redesign UI. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- BigChimp · 2014-10-21 06:39 Quote from: sin_dragan on October 21, 2014, 07:44:51 amI see that currently CentOS 7 is available, Im downloading right now. Should I use the same OS for production and clients? I ask this because I developed some application on Linux Mint and when I deployed it on Gentoo controls/components were overlapping, so I had to redesign UI. You mean server and clients? Well, I haven't got any experience with CentOS really but it seems like a good idea to standardize. These releases are rock solid so putting clients on 7 isn't a bigger risk than putting your server on 7... Later on you can evaluate and decide on upgrade cycles etc but AFAIU CentOS have long support cycles so that's a bonus. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sin_dragan · 2014-10-21 06:53 Quote from: BigChimp on October 21, 2014, 08:39:56 amQuote from: sin_dragan on October 21, 2014, 07:44:51 amI see that currently CentOS 7 is available, Im downloading right now. Should I use the same OS for production and clients? I ask this because I developed some application on Linux Mint and when I deployed it on Gentoo controls/components were overlapping, so I had to redesign UI. You mean server and clients? Well, I haven't got any experience with CentOS really but it seems like a good idea to standardize. These releases are rock solid so putting clients on 7 isn't a bigger risk than putting your server on 7... Later on you can evaluate and decide on upgrade cycles etc but AFAIU CentOS have long support cycles so that's a bonus. Yes, for example, one central server and client workstation for employees (with LibreOffice, Thunderbird, Firefox, etc) working in our offices and remote clients working with (only) POS systems. (one server per location with Firebird server and rest just as thin clients with nothing installed) I ll try to discover some "lighter versions" for thin clients, but for now, I m headed for RedHat foundation and CentOS, and stay away from Ubuntu (Unity). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- snorkel · 2014-11-07 17:29 Why would you switch from PostgreSQL to firebird? Just write the Lazarus app and use the existing database. IMHO PostgreSQL is a much better database than Firebird or MySQL. Seems like a lot of extra work to convert the postgres db to firebird, especially if it uses triggers and stored procs. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- snorkel · 2014-11-07 17:32 For desktop use with Lazarus Netrunner rolling release is really nice, it's a Arch based distro (uses Manjaro repositories) For server just keep it on centos and just reuse the postgresql database if you can. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Never · 2014-11-07 18:24 i think will be very useful for this post to set up a poll to be clear some kind of suggestion from the users having the experience ---------------------------------------------------------------------- exdatis · 2014-11-10 17:16 Quote from: BigChimp on October 20, 2014, 10:19:11 amFrom an outsider's point of view I'd choose Debian ... ... However, I only have personal experience with Debian on a hobby scale so YMMV - and apart from Firebird on Debian, no experience with Firebird on the other distros. BigChimp, you're right! I tried Debian 7.7 (after the comment) and I'm impressed. Definitely, changed my distro to Debian... test on poor lap-top (Fujitsu Siemens 32bit. 8 years old) Lazarus 1.2.6 32bit(standard) PostgreSQL 9.1, pure-ftpd etc. Excellent! Thanks, best regards ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sin_dragan · 2014-11-17 09:52 Hi, I tried several distros (Fedora 20, CentOS7, PcLinuxOS, Gentoo) and I had problems with all of them. Simply, I get error message stating that desktop has crashed or AccessViolation while opening files. Could you include exact version of linux that you use? I first try with VirtualBox and Fedora 20 and Lazarus seemed the most stable on this distro. But when I installed on desktop HP dx2400 it crashed. I'm gonna try OpenSuse and Debian 7.7. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Leledumbo · 2014-11-17 10:03 Quote from: sin_dragan on November 17, 2014, 10:52:53 amHi, I tried several distros (Fedora 20, CentOS7, PcLinuxOS, Gentoo)All but Gentoo is RPM based. Why? Anyway, if you install Lazarus from distro's repo, there's a high chance that it's (very) outdated. Use our packaged installer or build from source instead. Consider using rolling release distros like Arch, Manjaro or Netrunner. The packages are up to date and even AUR has packages that can build trunk version and cross compilers. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sin_dragan · 2014-11-17 10:11 Quote from: Leledumbo on November 17, 2014, 11:03:39 amQuote from: sin_dragan on November 17, 2014, 10:52:53 amHi, I tried several distros (Fedora 20, CentOS7, PcLinuxOS, Gentoo)All but Gentoo is RPM based. Why? Anyway, if you install Lazarus from distro's repo, there's a high chance that it's (very) outdated. Use our packaged installer or build from source instead. Consider using rolling release distros like Arch, Manjaro or Netrunner. The packages are up to date and even AUR has packages that can build trunk version and cross compilers. I install the latest stable release, it usualy requires gtk2-devel libc-devel, fpc and fpc source. I'm gonna try distros from your list. The last distro I tried was from blazen signature chakra2013.05 but it says that my system (emulator) is i686 and the one I have is x86_64. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Leledumbo · 2014-11-17 11:11 Quote from: sin_dragan on November 17, 2014, 11:11:00 amThe last distro I tried was from blazen signature chakra2013.05 but it says that my system (emulator) is i686 and the one I have is x86_64. Well, that's a misconfigured use of emulator... chakra never release a 32-bit version AFAIK, so yes you'll need a 64-bit machine to install it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sin_dragan · 2014-11-17 12:24 Quote from: Leledumbo on November 17, 2014, 12:11:57 pmQuote from: sin_dragan on November 17, 2014, 11:11:00 amThe last distro I tried was from blazen signature chakra2013.05 but it says that my system (emulator) is i686 and the one I have is x86_64. Well, that's a misconfigured use of emulator... chakra never release a 32-bit version AFAIK, so yes you'll need a 64-bit machine to install it. Hm, you're right, I just searched options with VirtualBox but I can't set that, I'll try to install on my hp station. Can anybody tell me why so many desktop distros crashes when I press Shift+F10 or when I try to open files from Lazarus, does anybody have similar problems? Maybe I should install something more? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- nomorelogic · 2014-11-17 14:18 I use sabayon, mint and gentoo since 2012, never had problems using lazarus and fpc. I don't think troubles comes from distro. Just a question: is virtualization enabled in your bios? If not, enable it and retry. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sin_dragan · 2014-11-19 04:55 I used Linux Mint 15 with Cinammon desktop. First, when I installed Lazarus and try to open file AV comes to screen, every time. Then I saw here that zeljko recommended to change gtk theme, so I did and the was problem solved. Next, when I press Shift + F10 a dialog shows me that the Cinamon desktop is crashed and restarting. Maybe it's my machine, this is a test computer on my work place (HP 2400 workstation) Intel C2D (E5400) and 4 gb of ddr2 memory. I'll check in bios today. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Leledumbo · 2014-11-19 06:43 Some DE seems to have problems. I never have any problem with KDE so you might want to try it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mdalacu · 2014-11-19 10:31 I use Xubuntu 14.10 x64 to develop dmMediaConverter. I have no issues. http://wiki.freepascal.org/Lazarus_Application_Gallery#dmMediaConverte r ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sin_dragan · 2014-11-19 12:08 Thx for recomendations, uh.. still problems. Now I installed chakra 2013.05., I first run the live cd and successfully updated the repos (which had lazarus 1.2.6), when I installed on HDD I get this messages when I try to update: Synchronizing databases... error: failed retrieving file 'lib32.db' from mirror.rit.edu : Could not resolve host: mirror.rit.edu; Unknown error error: failed to update lib32 (download library error) error: failed retrieving file 'core.db' from mirror.rit.edu : Could not resolve host: mirror.rit.edu; Unknown error error: failed to update core (download library error) error: failed retrieving file 'platform.db' from mirror.rit.edu : Could not resolve host: mirror.rit.edu; Unknown error error: failed to update platform (download library error) error: failed retrieving file 'desktop.db' from mirror.rit.edu : Could not resolve host: mirror.rit.edu; Unknown error error: failed to update desktop (download library error) error: failed retrieving file 'apps.db' from mirror.rit.edu : Could not resolve host: mirror.rit.edu; Unknown error error: failed to update apps (download library error) error: failed retrieving file 'games.db' from mirror.rit.edu : Could not resolve host: mirror.rit.edu; Unknown error error: failed to update games (download library error) error: failed to synchronize any databases error: failed to init transaction (download library error) Command finished with errors! EDIT: Solved this, it seems I need to edit mirror list with vim /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist and enable Australia server (disable US server) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sin_dragan · 2014-12-08 13:25 Just to notify everybody that I settled with Linux Mint 17 with KDE desktop, it works nice and Lazarus does not crash. Like Leledumbo said, anything with good KDE support. I'll try others distros as well, but for now, Mint with Laz 1.2.6 is my entry point to Linux development. Thx for your answers, if I can help someone with Mint I would be happy to that.