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Author Topic: A thought or two about the new Linux wallet  (Read 3743 times)

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Offline allZuckedUp

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A thought or two about the new Linux wallet
« on: July 31, 2013, 07:10:54 PM »
Firstly... Nice work folks, the new wallet looks/works great! (thus far)

Annnnd, on to my nitpicking...
I think the way the new wallet is packaged (Linux version) is confusing unless you have certain skill-set.  While I have these skills, it's really not about technical people, is it?  I think it's in our collective best interest to woo new users, thus in our collective best interest to make it as easy as reasonably possible to install/run goldcoin...

I would suggest we make it one of the platform goals to: "Enable a new, novice user to install/run the wallet on any "reasonable" system with a minimum of effort/understanding in under 10 min."

Here are some suggestions toward that goal... (This is Linux/UNIX centric, sorry, I don't really run Windows.)
  • Unless there's a legal reason why not, MacOS binaries need to be offered along with the Windows and Linux ones.  There's a MASSIVE amount of Macs out there, and most computer users of any system will click somewhere else before they dive into compiling their own software...
  • I would think it's prudent to either label the current Linux wallet (6.9.3) as 64bit only, or better yet, to also include a 32bit binary in the tar file.  Either solution is trivial, and I can't be the only person who runs my wallets on an old box, so while offering source code is great (REALLY); nothing gives the warm and fuzzy to a new user like an easy install, and it's new users we need to attract...
  • For even a better/complete Linux solution (although there's more effort involved here, and getting code approved by others), how would folks feel about spinning up some deb and rpm files, and seeing if we can get ourselves added to the debian/ubuntu/mint and rhel/fedora/suse/centos repositories directly?  The complete install instructions (for Linux) would become something like "sudo apt-get install goldcoin-wallet" or "sudo yum install goldcoin-wallet" (also really easy upgrades along those same lines).  Install instructions/simplicity like that would really set GoldCoin's Linux offering apart from any other altcoin...

The Linux/FOSS user community is big, and generally very helpful in a technical sense, if there's even a chance we can gain visibility and a good number of users from that world, it would be a GREAT benefit to our community/economy here.  AND, the benefits of inclusion of the Mac users seems obvious...

Anyway, just some thoughts..
Zuck
« Last Edit: July 31, 2013, 07:13:11 PM by allZuckedUp »
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Offline AZIZ1977

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Re: A thought or two about the new Linux wallet
« Reply #1 on: July 31, 2013, 07:27:24 PM »
Yes we need a MAC client. People are asking about a MAC client.
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Offline allZuckedUp

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Re: A thought or two about the new Linux wallet
« Reply #2 on: August 01, 2013, 01:05:56 AM »
Yes we need a MAC client. People are asking about a MAC client.

Unfortunately I have no Mac, so I'm not sure how much I can help there, I don't think I can cross-compile Mac software from a Linux box.. (even though MacOS is really BSD under the hood).
So, unless someone wants to give me ssh access to a Mac, it's not really something I can help with.. I'd be really happy to help with the Linux stuff though...
 
I said this somewhere else on this forum... but at the risk of being repetitive.. I'm running a 32bit version of the wallet that I had to compile myself...
Now that's really not a problem for me, but, i thought the user-experience could be improved, and if I had no real IT skills, I may not have understood why the app wouldn't run (it's not labled 64bit), and likely would have given up and just started looking at a different coin.
Now pair that with the download page for Ubuntu, which offers 32bit as the default download. http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop (Ubuntu by FAR the largest installed desktop Linux distro userbase)

Understand, I really like the software, and I love the potential of the coin, and I'm happy to offer any help I can provide... I'm not much of a C guy, but I've been engineering UNIX and Linux solutions, and writing lots of interpreted code for the last 15 years, I can certainly be very useful for this or other things.  (I should compile cpuminer for Solaris, and see how many hashes/sec I can pull from a M9000, I know it's CPU mining, but it's 256 SPARC64v7 cores! Oh, wait, I like my career, nevermind)
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Offline akumaburn

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Re: A thought or two about the new Linux wallet
« Reply #3 on: August 03, 2013, 04:19:26 PM »
Thanks for the suggestions...

I was not aware the current linux build didn't run under 32 bit.. I was under the impression that compiling for X86-64 meant the program was both 32 bit and 64 bit compatible. I will test this later when I am not exhausted.

As far as the mac build goes, we've added one to the site, however it is not a static build as of yet. I will also be working on this later in the week.

Keep in mind that we can't support all possible configurations/distros and operating systems but we will try to keep

Debian 32/64 bit, Win 32/64 bit, and Mac 32/64 bit binaries.

If you have binaries you'd like to share we will add them to the official thread as "unofficial builds".
Want to donate to the Development Team?

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Offline allZuckedUp

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Re: A thought or two about the new Linux wallet
« Reply #4 on: August 04, 2013, 12:18:37 AM »
Yep, software compiled 32bit will run on a 64bit OS, but not the other way around...
BUT, obviously better to run 64bit whenever available.

here's my build..
Code: [Select]
$file gldcoind
gldcoind: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (GNU/Linux), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.6.24, BuildID[sha1]=0x1d025c3cc2006857c592fe8ea043b2f934c48b06, not stripped

here's the official build...
Code: [Select]
$file gldcoind-693
gldcoind-693: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.6.26, BuildID[sha1]=0x076587e8572ee9cae39b0171eb85a3f5a831f0bd, stripped

Also, as the distribution is in a tarball format rather than a package (i.e. - .deb or .rpm), debian/ubuntu/mint/etc. vs. RHEL/centos/fedora/etc. doesn't matter, all the binaries will run on either, so I would leave debian out of it, just say Linux32 vs Linux64...

So, I'm not sure where to put this.. but, for now, here's a link my 32bit build in case someone else needs it...
http://www.netspecto.com/goldcoin/gldcoind_6.9.3_x86.tar.gz
« Last Edit: August 04, 2013, 03:29:19 AM by allZuckedUp »
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