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Sender: "Team Ada: Ada Programming Language Advocacy (83 & 95)" <[log in to unmask]>
From: Michael Feldman <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sun, 12 Nov 2006 22:10:53 -0500
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Reply-To: Michael Feldman <[log in to unmask]>
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Hi everyone,

I got a number of useful contacts from my query yesterday about
GNAT under SUSE Linux. I did get my problem solved when a teamer
pointed out that GNAT is now packaged as a part of Linux, so there
was no need to acquire and install it separately. All the details
are a bit off-topic for this advocacy group.

On the other hand, Team Ada might be interested in the larger picture
of what I'm doing, since it does show Ada off well. About 10 days ago I
bought this nice new MacBook Pro, with a 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 
processor and 1 GB RAM. I installed the Parallels Desktop software,
which can create virtual machines to run "guest" operating systems.
Unlike Virtual PC -- which emulates a Pentium on a PPC machine --
the Parallels guests don't suffer in performance, because they are
running native on the Intel processor.

The press has emphasized that Parallels gives us a way to run
Win XP on a Mac. That's an important fact, but it's only part of the
story, because Parallels supports a large number of OS guests,
including several Linux flavors. We know that GNAT is available
for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.

In preparation for the annual ACM SIGAda conference, which meets this
week in Albuquerque, NM, I determined to be able to demonstrate GNAT
applications for 4 platforms, all running concurrently on the same 
physical computer. Getting SUSE running was the last step.

Now I can show console windows concurrently running different programs, 
each with multiple tasks, under Mac OS X, SUSE Linux, and Windows XP.
These all use Ada.Text_IO, not graphical output. Further, I can run
a nice little 2-task Mac GUI application that Jim Hopper provided,
alongside the others.

Total cost -

Computer $1999. - I got it for $1799. as an educator
Parallels Desktop $79.99
Windows XP - got it through the univ. site deal with Microsoft
SUSE Linux - $49.95

And I was able to set this all up in just a week of elapsed time.

Cheers and thanks to those who advised!
Mike Feldman

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