EZNEC and Linux
 

On Tue, 20 Feb 2007 18:14:35 -1000, Cebu_Charlie
wrote:

Roy Lewallen wrote:

EZNEC is now able to run under Linux using the wine emulator. EZNEC
version 4.0.34 (the current version) or later is required.

Roy Lewallen, W7EL

great Roy, but do us all a favor and port it out to linux so we dont have to
play with wine to use it.

What I need is an operating system that will run all the software that
XP does without my spending much time tinkering with it.

I revisit Linux every few years with a fresh release and an identical
machine to my Windows system. SUSE 10 has come close but some of the
simplest things elude me. Since retirement 15 years ago I have become
isolated from other users except on the Internet. When I seek answers
to simple questions I an usually overwhelmed with a flood of answers
of varying usefulness.

I would like to run my windows and dos software on my Linux machine
with NTFS support, attached to my LAN. I want to be able to install &
delete hardware and software with processes that behave in a
consistent manner. I should be able to use my PIC programmers and my
ham radio software with out tinkering.

Until that happens with Linux I am locked into an XP machine and a
Win 98 machine in the configuration. I don't want to discourage the
Linux community but at this time it is best suited to the business
user where a few applications on a number of systems will get the job
done.

John Ferrell W8CCW

EZNEC and Linux
 

What is the cost to upgrade from 3.0.45?

Jim


Roy Lewallen wrote:

EZNEC is now able to run under Linux using the wine emulator. EZNEC
version 4.0.34 (the current version) or later is required.

EZNEC and Linux
 

Recompiling Fortran code which has no interaction with the user other
than getting text input from one file and writing text output to another
is a vastly different problem than re-writing a 60,000 line Visual Basic
interactive graphical user interface in another language then
recompiling for Linux while retaining full functionality of all
features. The difference between the two problems seems to escape a lot
of people, but problems do always look easier to solve when it's someone
else's job to solve them.

Roy Lewallen, W7EL

J. B. Wood wrote:
In article , Roy Lewallen
wrote:

Cebu_Charlie wrote:
great Roy, but do us all a favor and port it out to linux so we dont have to
play with wine to use it.
I'm sure you're a cool guy and all, but I'm not about to spend a couple
of years of full time to do you a favor so you won't have to fool with
wine. Sometimes it's just a tough world.

Roy Lewallen, W7EL

Hello, Roy, and all. I have used a g77-compiled version of NEC-4 on a
Linux platform and it worked fine. The GNU compiler works with FORTRAN-77
source code as well as C. I assume a g77 compilation of the NEC-2 source
code would also work. Of course this is just number-crunching NEC that
does not provide the other bells and whistles of EZNEC. Sincerely, and
73s from N4GGO,

John Wood (Code 5550) e-mail:
Naval Research Laboratory
4555 Overlook Avenue, SW
Washington, DC 20375-5337

EZNEC and Linux
 

Amen.

Jim



"Roy Lewallen" wrote in message
...

but problems do always look easier to solve when it's someone
else's job to solve them.


Roy Lewallen, W7EL

EZNEC and Linux
 

On Wed, 21 Feb 2007 15:58:38 +0000, John Ferrell wrote:

I would like to run my windows and dos software on my Linux machine
with NTFS support, attached to my LAN. I want to be able to install &
delete hardware and software with processes that behave in a
consistent manner. I should be able to use my PIC programmers and my
ham radio software with out tinkering.

I'm sure you understand this, but others may not realize that Linux is not,
nor was ever intended to be a drop-in replacement for Windows of any
vintage. It is intended as a freely available Unix work-alike although many
efforts have resulted in some good ability to run Windows software through
emulation.

Until that happens with Linux I am locked into an XP machine and a
Win 98 machine in the configuration. I don't want to discourage the
Linux community but at this time it is best suited to the business
user where a few applications on a number of systems will get the job
done.

It's not ever going to happen in that manner. Linux is its own entity and
does that very well, just like the Mac is its own entity. There are
similarities between all systems, but again, Linux is not nor was ever
intended as a bug-for-bug replacement of Windows capable of running Windows
software unmodified. A lot of people, including myself, use Linux as our
desktop and are quite satisfied with no Windows in sight.

I'm sorry if you were led to believe that Linux is a software compatible
replacement for Windows. It's not.

73, de Nate

--

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds,
the pessimist fears this is true."

EZNEC and Linux
 

On Tue, 20 Feb 2007 22:30:29 -0800, Roy Lewallen wrote:

Cebu_Charlie wrote:

great Roy, but do us all a favor and port it out to linux so we dont have
to
play with wine to use it.

I'm sure you're a cool guy and all, but I'm not about to spend a couple
of years of full time to do you a favor so you won't have to fool with
wine. Sometimes it's just a tough world.

Understood, Roy.

Besides being an emulator/program loader, Wine also has winelib which is
intended as a way to recompile Windows applications for Linux (and other Free
Unix systems like BSD, etc.) so they can run natively. This would avoid a
complete porting effort.

73, de Nate

--

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds,
the pessimist fears this is true."

EZNEC and Linux
 

On Wed, 21 Feb 2007 19:34:28 -0600, Nate Bargmann
wrote:

On Wed, 21 Feb 2007 15:58:38 +0000, John Ferrell wrote:

I would like to run my windows and dos software on my Linux machine
with NTFS support, attached to my LAN. I want to be able to install &
delete hardware and software with processes that behave in a
consistent manner. I should be able to use my PIC programmers and my
ham radio software with out tinkering.

I'm sure you understand this, but others may not realize that Linux is not,
nor was ever intended to be a drop-in replacement for Windows of any
vintage. It is intended as a freely available Unix work-alike although many
efforts have resulted in some good ability to run Windows software through
emulation.

Until that happens with Linux I am locked into an XP machine and a
Win 98 machine in the configuration. I don't want to discourage the
Linux community but at this time it is best suited to the business
user where a few applications on a number of systems will get the job
done.

It's not ever going to happen in that manner. Linux is its own entity and
does that very well, just like the Mac is its own entity. There are
similarities between all systems, but again, Linux is not nor was ever
intended as a bug-for-bug replacement of Windows capable of running Windows
software unmodified. A lot of people, including myself, use Linux as our
desktop and are quite satisfied with no Windows in sight.

I'm sorry if you were led to believe that Linux is a software compatible
replacement for Windows. It's not.

73, de Nate
I did not mean to be critical of Linux, I just could not restrain the
urge to expose my wish list!

John Ferrell W8CCW

EZNEC and Linux
 

Nate Bargmann wrote:

Understood, Roy.

Besides being an emulator/program loader, Wine also has winelib which is
intended as a way to recompile Windows applications for Linux (and other Free
Unix systems like BSD, etc.) so they can run natively. This would avoid a
complete porting effort.

Wow, I didn't know anything could compile Visual Basic 6 code for any
operating system environment except Windows. How well does it handle
Windows API calls? EZNEC uses many, many of them. What does it do about
functions in COM and ActiveX files? Does it recompile those too? What
about third party software in the form of COM or ActiveX files, which
can't be recompiled due to lack of source code? Does it successfully
substitute for Windows Registry operations?

Roy Lewallen, W7EL

EZNEC and Linux
 

Roy Lewallen writes:

David Ryeburn wrote:
That's great news. Now does anyone know whether it will run under
CrossOver (the CodeWeavers implementation of WINE for Intel Macs)?
That would give me an excuse for upgrading from a year 2001 G4
PowerPC Macintosh to a year 2007 Intel Macintosh. Mac OS X is to a
large extent based on the BSD variety of UNIX.

The demo program is free, at http://eznec.com. While there's a small
possibility that the full program would fail on a system that can run
the demo, it's not likely. So anybody wanting to know about a
particular system should just download the demo and try it.

I know that all EZNEC program types have been run successfully on Macs
for many years using the SoftWindows emulator.

Ironically, the change to EZNEC which made it able to run on Linux was
made in order to make it work under Microsoft Vista.

OK. So the demo at http://www.eznec.com/DemoEXE/EZWDemo40Inst.exe
which I downloaded at 2007-02-22 12:43 UTC includes those latest
changes? If so, I have to report that it would not run on either of
Ubuntu Dapper (April 2006 release) or Ubuntu Edgy (October 2006).

In both cases, I removed wine and its config files from my system,
removed my .wine directory and did a fresh install of wine before
installing the EZNEC demo.

With Dapper, I got "EZNEC can't be run on a network from a
workstation". I wasn't, but the home directory is network mounted
using NFS. The wine pacakge was wine_0.9.9-0ubuntu2_i386.deb.

With Edgy, I got "Run-time error '13': Type mismatch. The wine pacakge
was wine_0.9.22-0ubuntu3_i386.deb.

I'll try Debian Sid later. They have wine 0.9.30.

Please don't interpret this as a complaint. Rather, take it as the
beginning of a compatibility list. And I'm still hoping that the demo
I tested was out of date :-)

73
LA4RT Jon, Trondheim, Norway

EZNEC and Linux
 

Roy Lewallen writes:

Nate Bargmann wrote:
Understood, Roy.
Besides being an emulator/program loader, Wine also has winelib
which is
intended as a way to recompile Windows applications for Linux (and other Free
Unix systems like BSD, etc.) so they can run natively. This would avoid a
complete porting effort.

Wow, I didn't know anything could compile Visual Basic 6 code for any
operating system environment except Windows.

I believe winelib is for C. Which certainly looks like a showstopper
in your case.

How well does it handle Windows API calls? EZNEC uses many, many of
them.

About as well as the corresponding version of wine, presumably.

What does it do
about functions in COM and ActiveX files? Does it recompile those
too?

I can't see how it could do that.

What about third party software in the form of COM or ActiveX files,
which can't be recompiled due to lack of source code?

Rhetorical question?

Does it successfully substitute for Windows Registry operations?

I'm sure it tries to, but I've never tested.

The Mono guys (.NET for Linux & friends) just announced support for
Visual Basic.NET. But I this is probably too different from old
fashioned Visual Basic to be of much help.

73
LA4RT Jon