Support Board
Date/Time: Sat, 23 Nov 2024 19:12:31 +0000
Future planned OS platforms for SC
View Count: 25329
| [2016-01-12 00:08:31] |
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OK thank you for the information.
Sierra Chart Support - Engineering Level Your definitive source for support. Other responses are from users. Try to keep your questions brief and to the point. Be aware of support policy: https://www.sierrachart.com/index.php?l=PostingInformation.php#GeneralInformation For the most reliable, advanced, and zero cost futures order routing, *change* to the Teton service: Sierra Chart Teton Futures Order Routing |
| [2016-01-24 21:00:56] |
| bjohnson777 (Brett Johnson) - Posts: 284 |
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I really like how y'all are consolidating and cleaning up code for all this. I also like how SC is contained in a single directory making backup and copying very easy. In the mean time, please keep SC as WINE friendly as possible. Y'all already know I'm pro linux. I'd like to offer a few ideas for linux that might bump up the cross platform project's priority a little. Here's a marketing consideration if there's ever going to be a "Mac xor Linux" platform decision: Mac hardware is closed and very expensive for what it is. Over the next few months I hope to have a handful of new programs written and posted... hopefully completing my market research and forming a reliable trading plan out of it. Once I prove profitability I plan on building a custom 16 core xeon/opteron server with a lot of RAM and moving SC to that. I doubt I'll need that much for SC, but I will need it for my scratch pad market C++ linux program I've written over the past few years. I'd like for the 2 programs to have simple interaction, so running both on the same server would be a major plus. I could probably get my program to compile on a Mac, but the Mac version of that hardware (if it even exists) would be prohibitively expensive. Expanding my point, using linux, a power trader can build whatever hardware s/he wants for a reasonable price. Linux will not impose any artificial limitations and will not slow down with scale. The sales page needs to mention that... and that data centers often offer generic linux installs on their hardware with a few clicks of a mouse when setting up a new server (no license fees required). That could be a major plus for some foreign users (like the support ticket a few days back where the guy moved to Asia and has a mediocre Internet connection). Many common users find linux a bit daunting at first. SC could come preinstalled on a live CD. Rebuilding a live CD is tedious but not really that difficult. It would also make for a hard disk install CD. Whatever programming libraries y'all decide on can be included. Choosing libraries that are already included in the main distro will make end user upgrades trivial... or they could just be statically compiled into SC. Easy either way. Some people like the buzz words "enterprise kernel/OS". While that really doesn't mean a lot in linux since most everything is compiled for reasonable to maximum efficiency already, a custom kernel could still be included that's more optimized than the distro kernel. If using a custom live CD installer, all the junk programs could be removed to streamline the OS part (including removing unnecessary services). Streamlining would help keep an "over curious" user out of trouble. It would also help get maximum efficiency out of the hardware since unnecessaries won't be running on it. Eventually all this would pave the way to an SC server farm. It could be run directly by y'all or a partner(s). Periodically when digging through support boards I see people who try a demo install but keep having problem after problem when they shouldn't. I know I've seen one support post here... maybe 2. That's usually a sign of some kind of hardware failure. A nice thing about the linux option is that the grub boot loader can be used to load hardware diagnostics programs. I use this on my own remastered live CD and hard disk installs. Anything the UBCD can boot can be applied. I normally recommend memtest, mprime (oddly it also found a buss config error on my quad), and the various hard disk tests. Sell it as: "Hardware doesn't last forever. Make sure your hardware won't trash your trades.". On a related personal note, I've lost 2 RAM sticks and a hard disk in my older systems in the past 12 months. As someone who used to do network admin, I firmly believe in regular testing (even new hardware). As User188247 mentioned a couple posts back, security is a key issue not really addressed by M$. It's one of the main reasons I stay away from M$ products. One screw up (probably a 0-day) and a virus captures your user/pass information and then drains all your accounts before you know what happened. Linux firewalling isn't hard to add if someone wants a further hardened system (including the streamlining mentioned above). Probably the most hardened system a person could get would be on OpenBSD. If y'all's cross platform library choice includes BSD, there are some corporate customers who might really want that. After getting the linux version working, adding BSD shouldn't be too hard. That's my 200pips for the day. Please continue the cross platform project. Linux offers a lot of flexibility for the future. |
| [2016-01-29 02:19:12] |
| ganz - Posts: 1048 |
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fyi: http://itvision.altervista.org/why.linux.is.not.ready.for.the.desktop.current.html in case an anyone is a "linux pro" here so why just not to use C++ API / FIX-FAST /smthngBin on Linux not to waste the speed for "bells and whistles"? :) |
| [2016-01-29 17:17:29] |
| bjohnson777 (Brett Johnson) - Posts: 284 |
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I'm having trouble understanding your "linux pro" sentence. Picking the notable bits and pieces out of the article... "I want to make one thing crystal clear - Windows, in some regards, is even worse than Linux and it's definitely not ready for the desktop either." ...And then it gives a long list of serious win problems, including "Windows rot" (double underlined). Rot is one of the big reasons (the other being extremely poor security models, still) why I stopped supporting windoze back in 2000 when I went independent. I was burned by it several times. There are people above my peer level who can't keep ANY win system that is regularly/heavily used running properly for more than a year (desktop or server, they've been burned, too). Barring stupid user mistakes (which I have also done myself), all of my linux systems will run until the hardware fails without effort. Most of those problems listed in the article are just whining by a gamer. He complains a lot about things that aren't even finished. Keep in mind that the programmers for most open source software are unpaid and do it on the side. Some things have priority, some others don't. The comments about choosing special hardware for linux if you want it to run is just as true about windoze. Try upgrading a laptop from win7 to win10. You'll be lucky to find all the drivers. Even if you do, many won't work right. Between each major win revision, M$ seems to break an absurdly large number of drivers. Complain to the manufacturers and they won't care. They will tell you to buy their new hardware "built for win10" (and doubtful to run on the future win11). Don't even get me started about win "compatability mode". Large companies not porting their expensive software to linux is a continuing problem with Mac's, too. My accountant wants to drop windoze because of the rot and security problems. Most of his accounting packages still have no Mac version or alternative. The security block is whining quite a bit. M$ sales&marketing decided years ago that anouncing an emergency patch for an admin level exploit was bad for their image. Now they're all labeled along the lines that "this patch fixes an exploit that would allow unauthorized users to run code on the local machine." They won't even list what it's about unless you manually open up a web browser for each link. If M$ ever went "open source", M$ as a company would be over in a week. I've personally met and worked with people who have worked with "the holy source code", and they have nothing nice to say about it. Contrary to the article, the various linux package managers will auto update the system (logs in /var/log) just like M$ and Mac. Many people disable/break win update just because it breaks their system in return if they leave it on automatic. The comment about IIS server being more secure was just moronic. Nearly everything in that list can be applied to M$ OS's in general... which he sorta does in the win10 series (but I got tired of reading it after the first 3 paragraphs): http://itvision.altervista.org/why-windows-10-sucks.html There's a big philosophy difference between unix in general and M$. Win tells you what you're going to do and if you don't like it, sucks to be you. Linux asks you want you want to do. If you don't like some of the offerings, there are often many viable alternatives. If you want to program your own, OS level source code is available free of charge. And yes, each have their own set of problems. Neither is perfect, but from the professional admin and support point of view, unix in general is far easier to deal with. All in all, this is just another whiny (I keep having to use that word) and clueless (mixing half truths... saying you don't do it doesn't mean you're not doing it) article by Altervista trying to look more important than they really are. Admins with real training and real world experience will rarely ever reference Altervista. I haven't seen anyone use it (even for fun) among my peer group in several years. |
| [2016-01-31 03:11:01] |
| ganz - Posts: 1048 |
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bjohnson777 ... yes. linugz and windoze are the same toys for amateurs in terms of GUI. so no need to bother SC Team to jump into another bad dirty hole. but linugz is the very cool as a CLI based workbench. |
| [2016-02-04 17:39:32] |
| bjohnson777 (Brett Johnson) - Posts: 284 |
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There are multiple linux desktops. I've tried/used many of them. I'm using a few right now. They are hardly amateur. Some offer a very minimal footprint to not load the system down with useless bloatware. I bought my hardware to run applications... not a fat OS. |
| [2016-03-16 14:15:40] |
| ganz - Posts: 1048 |
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ejtrader Today is the very first starting point to consider QT5 as something that will be stable in 3-6 months, imho :) http://blog.qt.io/blog/2016/03/16/qt-5-6-released/ |
| [2016-03-16 14:33:47] |
| ejtrader - Posts: 688 |
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Thanks ganz. I have already started using RC version of it. Time to switch to release version :)
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| [2016-03-25 21:12:26] |
| ganz - Posts: 1048 |
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User35525 and wxWidgets (dialogs and widgets) could be great
wxWidgets 3.0.2 Released - October 06, 2014 There were some unresolved bugs these days. wxWidgets 3.1.0 Released - February 29, 2016 It looks like a sleeping turtle :) |
| [2016-03-26 00:09:39] |
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For the record, our tentative decision at this point is we will not be using any framework like QT or WX Widgets. It simply is too difficult and introduces too many problems which we have no ability or interest to contend with and which users will not tolerate. Will be writing to one other operating system initially. We will take a vote whether that will be the Mac OS or Linux. It will be purely based upon user demand and nothing else. We expect this will start sometime next year and we will be continuing to change the Sierra Chart code base throughout the rest of this year to make it easy to adopt another operating system. This has been an ongoing task that has been worked on over the years. Gradually the changes allow us to connect Sierra Chart to another operating system much more easily. Sierra Chart Support - Engineering Level Your definitive source for support. Other responses are from users. Try to keep your questions brief and to the point. Be aware of support policy: https://www.sierrachart.com/index.php?l=PostingInformation.php#GeneralInformation For the most reliable, advanced, and zero cost futures order routing, *change* to the Teton service: Sierra Chart Teton Futures Order Routing Date Time Of Last Edit: 2016-03-26 00:12:15
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| [2016-03-26 09:09:32] |
| ganz - Posts: 1048 |
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as an experienced Linux user last 25 years I would ask for someone who is asking for Linux version to stop it In case you are not an amateur any more feel free to use C/Java API on Linux In other case the only desktop ready commercial system will be Red Hat / Fedora and it is 2-3 years away from the proper state for that Another chance might be as MS Linux :) Date Time Of Last Edit: 2016-03-26 09:34:24
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| [2016-03-26 09:36:08] |
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In other case the only desktop ready commercial system will be Red Hat / Fedora and it is 2-3 years from the proper state for that Sierra Chart Support - Engineering Level Your definitive source for support. Other responses are from users. Try to keep your questions brief and to the point. Be aware of support policy: https://www.sierrachart.com/index.php?l=PostingInformation.php#GeneralInformation For the most reliable, advanced, and zero cost futures order routing, *change* to the Teton service: Sierra Chart Teton Futures Order Routing Date Time Of Last Edit: 2016-03-26 10:22:06
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| [2016-03-26 10:05:00] |
| ganz - Posts: 1048 |
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SC Support Yes it is. But it is the reality. And it is no more than a hope as always. Speaking of Ubuntu it is Debian based but uses a lot of unstable libs and solutions. It's just the weak attempt to be but it is not. I told you a year ago or so there are no stable and ready to use GUI\LIBS on Linux in terms of stability and performance. There is nothing better then Windows on Linux at this moment for desktop users. If you need a complex solution try to follow Fedora and wait for Rad Hat branch. Also Rad Hat is marked as a main MS CoreCLR production platform on Linux so I think it will be the main linux system for trading engines in case it will come on Linux. |
| [2016-03-26 10:22:55] |
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Thank you for this good information. It is also our sense that there is more demand for support for Mac OS rather than Linux. We do seem to hear about that more. Sierra Chart Support - Engineering Level Your definitive source for support. Other responses are from users. Try to keep your questions brief and to the point. Be aware of support policy: https://www.sierrachart.com/index.php?l=PostingInformation.php#GeneralInformation For the most reliable, advanced, and zero cost futures order routing, *change* to the Teton service: Sierra Chart Teton Futures Order Routing Date Time Of Last Edit: 2016-03-26 10:24:04
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| [2016-03-26 11:03:34] |
| ganz - Posts: 1048 |
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SC Support There is a simple logic to prove that : It is also our sense that there is more demand for support for Mac OS rather than Linux. 99.9% of Linux distros and soft provide no any kind of warranty ... THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT.
So simple logic says when you use this you will be never able to ask SC Team to provide any warranties as well.Is it OK for trading? I'm sure it is not. Should trading systems have warranty and proven quality? - Definitely yes. Does any non-commercial Linux system meet these needs? - Definitely Not. So the only solution might be to wait for a proper commercial solution and use it. Rad Hat might be the one of them but not at this moment. And it is because of Linux. Date Time Of Last Edit: 2016-03-26 11:04:01
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| [2016-03-26 11:06:47] |
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Thank you for the information. This makes sense.
Sierra Chart Support - Engineering Level Your definitive source for support. Other responses are from users. Try to keep your questions brief and to the point. Be aware of support policy: https://www.sierrachart.com/index.php?l=PostingInformation.php#GeneralInformation For the most reliable, advanced, and zero cost futures order routing, *change* to the Teton service: Sierra Chart Teton Futures Order Routing |
| [2016-03-26 13:31:17] |
| Yoda - Posts: 106 |
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As a Linux user (I use both Fedora and Debian), I do not share ganz opinion on the state of Linux. In my opinion, Linux is a stable, vastly superior product to Windows that is used in a significant number of commercial applications, not to mention running the majority of servers in the world. The comment about warranty is also a red hearing as all software (including Windows) have disclaimers (they have to for legal reasons) and it doesn't mean that one shouldn't use Linux or build applications for Linux. However, the purpose of this post is not to start a debate with ganz. Rather it is to say that as a Linux user I look forward to a Linux version of SC and being able to stop using Windows altogether. By the way, I currently have both TOS (thinkorswim) and TWS (Trader Workstation from IB) installed on Linux and they work very well on Linux. |
| [2016-03-26 13:51:24] |
| ganz - Posts: 1048 |
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Yoda we are here to find a cross-platform stable and fast gui toolkit. so you've said nothing but another newbie priceless opinion. |
| [2016-03-26 14:52:25] |
| Yoda - Posts: 106 |
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ganz, as I stated previously, I'm not about to get into a debate with you since SC Support has clearly stated that the decision on the next platform "... will be purely based upon user demand and nothing else". I'm sure that Mac OS and Linux users will vote accordingly. I was simply sharing my opinion and findings (I have been using Linux since the early 90s and have extensive experience with it and Windows). I think it's best that we agree to disagree, and there is nothing wrong with that. But it is most unfortunate that you feel the need to attack me just because I don't agree with your opinion. |
| [2016-03-26 18:55:47] |
| ganz - Posts: 1048 |
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Yoda that you feel the need to attack me just because I don't agree with your opinion.
lol what ...? Nope :)it is because of your unqualified examples and /dev/null-based sentences. if you are really so experienced engineer so give us the way to solve the problem. or just accept the info from the topic, pls. :) |
| [2016-03-26 22:03:30] |
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This is an important consideration for us: I told you a year ago or so there are no stable and ready to use GUI\LIBS on Linux in terms of stability and performance. There is nothing better then Windows on Linux at this moment for desktop users. Our understanding is QT uses X Windows but we have read many times this is a mess and we certainly would not use that and we would wait until there is a proper GUI API. Sierra Chart Support - Engineering Level Your definitive source for support. Other responses are from users. Try to keep your questions brief and to the point. Be aware of support policy: https://www.sierrachart.com/index.php?l=PostingInformation.php#GeneralInformation For the most reliable, advanced, and zero cost futures order routing, *change* to the Teton service: Sierra Chart Teton Futures Order Routing |
| [2016-03-27 08:05:30] |
| ganz - Posts: 1048 |
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SC Support this is a mess and we certainly would not use that and we would wait until there is a proper GUI API.
Absolutely ... but a lot of newbie Linux users are not aware of another side of this coin: video drivers (screen - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Window_System ) subsystem issues AMD was totally crap these years and it's just started to support Linux as it should be Nvidia driver was/is/will be developing by volunteers and was always far behind from Windows version and even commercial blob is not so bad just now but it might be considered as not fully supported: I mean Nvidia has dropped to support some chipsets since v.340 and added experimental EGL support for Wayland/Mir since v.364 only so it might cut a lot of hardware to use commercial blob on Wayland/Mir So developing top notch charting software SC Team just waste the time to deep into this multilayer buggy environment, imo In terms of still being best it realy worth it to find the way to add a market share using new (EGL based?) solutions in order to be best on Linux and will be Android compatible in some fashion ( 4ex: http://www.jide.com/en/remixos ), imho - in this case - my vote for Linux version |
| [2016-03-27 08:41:35] |
| ganz - Posts: 1048 |
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SC Support there is more demand for support for Mac OS rather than Linux
It is not the criticism but I'm just puzzled a bit what do you want exactly Mac is much better as a desktop environment just now but it might be the same in 3-5 years but Linux will be cheaper and democratic and students and enthusiasts prefer Linux as you know You spent a lot of time to develop DTC and want some third party support by volunteers I believe - it is definitely the linux-way or you want to be strong and best housekeepers tool - in this case Mac is the only choice :) Date Time Of Last Edit: 2016-03-27 08:43:01
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| [2016-04-04 20:30:36] |
| bjohnson777 (Brett Johnson) - Posts: 284 |
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Ganz is not the end all authority on linux. I, too, have quite a bit of time under my belt. I've been using linux since 1997. I started learning unix in late elementary school back in the mid 1980's. If someone wants to wait until a graphical programming package and related OS is 100% stable and bug free, that person will NEVER, EVER start a project ... on ANY platform. Mac is a NetBSD bastardization. The hardware is closed source and absurdly expensive (Apple typically makes a ~40% profit). While Mac is far more stable than any windoze (because of the BSD core), many people do not like to be at the mercy of Apple marketing executives making hardware and other decisions for them. For the power traders, good luck on building a high performance custom workstation... Oh wait, you can't unless it is 100% Apple because that's a license violation. Good luck on finding the hardware you really want. Where M$ is going with win10 and beyond has flat out pissed off a lot of professionals. Install win10 and M$ pretty much violates all your privacy and owns you. (...not forgetting the excess bloat that's way out of hand with each new version) A lot of that isn't too hard to turn off, but how many people have enough admin experience to do that? And what else is "hiding" that can't be disabled? When I install an operating system, I do it to run applications, not to see how pretty it is eating up all my resources with uselessness to the point where it interferes with those desired applications. Red Hat Enterprise Edition may be an answer for commercial support, but it is not geared towards end users. When choosing a linux, pick the biggest and most popular to start with. That's currently Ubuntu. Canonical has commercial support packages. There are plenty of things I don't like about Ubuntu, but fixing them isn't impossible. (There're also KDE, Xfce, and LXDE flavors available for those who hate the Unity desktop.) Since linux is open source, releasing your own flavor variation isn't very hard. I've been remastering the live CD for years now. That doubles as an installer. That would also get a non-admin level trader running relatively quick on linux. Backups (disaster planning). Years ago I used to recommend Ghost to my win based clients... but M$ has broken it and others due to their licensing paranoia. Reading reviews, sometimes those programs work, sometimes not. I gave up for my end user clients. I'm not sure about mac backups, but linux and BSD are trivial with Clonezilla (free and open source). Thankfully SC is pretty much self contained for everything, so that may not be a huge issue... just zip it out to a network share or thumb drive. As far as getting bugs fixed, if it isn't a major security threat, ALL maintainers of ALL platforms will push it off to "whenever we feel like it". It doesn't matter if you have a paid support contract or not. They have things they're working on just like the SC dev's have things they're working on. It's nothing personal, it's just scheduling and the time available. If the SC dev's choose their programming language GUI platform carefully, they can knock off win, mac, linux, and BSD at the same time with one language. Will it be sunshine and lollipops? No, of course not. Will it be more work that just the win platform? Yes. Will it expand the potential user base and offer something that NO OTHER charting package currently offers? Definitely. Will it bring in heavy power traders looking for performance (and privacy) that cannot be offered by win and mac? Very likely. Will it make the other charting packages nervous? Very likely. >:-] As far as graphics drivers, that's a bit of a red herring. SC isn't a video game and won't even come close to using all the features of an over priced graphics card. (That's also true for M$ and Mac.) Commercial Nvidia and AMD/Radeon drivers will work just fine for most people. Default open source drivers will probably work just fine for most people. If someone wants to use a different card (or multiple cards in a non-standard configuration), SO WHAT? If they can get it working, good for them. The SC dev's will have their usual preferred hardware listing on the web site. Nothing will change in that matter. If someone has a really convoluted setup, the SC devs will push that person to a support package with the proper entity. Once again, nothing will change in that matter. I personally have been using the commerical Nvidia GeForce drivers on my main workstation for several years without problems. I've also been using the open source Radeon drivers on my laptop for around 5 years without problems. As far as calling something a “multilayer buggy environment”, start with M$. ALL of my linux installs have easily outperformed ANYTHING M$ has thrown out to the public in terms of long term stability. I started calling Microsoft “M$” because they charged a lot for a platform they claimed worked just fine... but reality was something quite different. If M$ put half as much time and money into their engineering departments as they do with sales&marketing, maybe win wouldn't be so bad... But blame M$ for pushing me to a linux server and desktop environment early on just because I got way to frustrated having to fix the same damn thing over and over and over and over and over... |
| [2016-04-04 21:07:30] |
| User35525 - Posts: 181 |
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Awesome post bjohnson777. I also started with Linux around year 2000 and prefer it. Before then it was AIX and IRIX. The reasons you listed (bugginess, security, privacy) are THE reasons I also don't use Windows, and won't use Apple OS X. I'm a system administrator, and cannot tell you how much time our users have wasted on problems due to M$; likewise, whenever I've been forced to manage M$ servers, time has been wasted there too. Linux is a great all-around OS, with adequate performance on the desktop, and a niche on servers; I sure don't see many Windows and OS X servers. People use Linux period (server and desktop) because it offers more freedom and choice, and can be customized easily when necessary. It might not look pretty by default (like SC), but it "just-works". Windows and OS X are black boxes, and as traders, we should appreciate that black boxes take choices away from end-users and obfuscate issues. There are plenty of Win/Mac/Linux software available, and I'd love to see that option for Sierra Chart. Not Java-based, but native apps. If the time comes that SC ever stops working in Wine, that will be the end of the line for SC and me. Date Time Of Last Edit: 2016-04-04 21:09:04
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