Um, no. You buy a computer, Windows is already installed. Install the ASCOM platform (no terminal command-line voodoo needed), install your hardware drivers and astrophotography apps (no terminal command-line voodoo needed) connect your hardware, and go.

Folks, patience, all OSes are created equal

If somebody is willing to port INDI to Windows, why not?

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Quote: Fitchie
Great instruction set!
I'm going to share them with the astro club members.

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Thank you I think that it could be written a lot better, tho!

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Quote: Phil
Um, no. You buy a computer, Windows is already installed. Install the ASCOM platform (no terminal command-line voodoo needed), install your hardware drivers and astrophotography apps (no terminal command-line voodoo needed) connect your hardware, and go.

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If you follow that logic, you can also buy PCs with Ubuntu (or other distro) pre-installed and use the graphic interface to install (no terminal needed, as I stated in my previous post); you could also buy a mac, comes with an OS pre-installed and can run INDI
Also, what happens if you need to re-install windows for any reason? You buy a new pc every time?

That said, if you know how and what to search to use your equipment in windows, you're more than equipped to write 2-3 command lines.
You need to write a lot more than those lines in the search of your ASCOM platform, drivers and whatnot. It's just a different place: the search engine vs the terminal.

It all boils down to preferences, to each his own

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Quote: Wolfgang Reissenberger
Folks, patience, all OSes are created equal

If somebody is willing to port INDI to Windows, why not?

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I totally agree! The more platform indi support, the better, But I don't see official support on windows platform coming anytime soon, tho... If only WSL2 on windows supported USB devices directly it would have been perfect (but more tech savvy than installing Ubuntu from scratch).

I have both worlds, Linux and Win, but I use mostly the former for DSO and sometimes the latter for moon and planets. When I first used Windows for astrophotography I got frustrated, seeing how easy was installing indi/kstars on Linux.

I don't know where you live, but here in the US computers are either Windows or Macs. This is not to say there may be some other place in the world where you can get a laptop to desktop with Linux preinstalled, but not here. You can order one like that from China, but you won't find them here otherwise.

Windows and Macs have terminals too, but nobody needs to use them to get anything done. That's the point. Linux is a great operating system, but it's still stuck in 1991 with it's insistence of using the terminal.

What I like about Astroberry and Stellarmate is that I can install the ISO and just go. Their Achilles Heel is that they run on Linux. When you need to add or change anything, you need to go to the terminal. I just leave them alone because I don't care to be spending my time typing cryptic and obtuse commands to simply try to get from point A to point B.

The reason I'd like to see INDI on Windows is because I prefer to use KStars over something like NINA. Not that NINA is bad, I just prefer KStars. Actually, if KStars would simply recognize the ASCOM platform, then I would just use that. The only real advantage INDI has, and really the reason I use it other than KStars needs it, is that the libgphoto2 database it uses has camera drivers that don't exist in ASCOM.

Many PC with Linux pre-installed are sold in the US, a lot more than where I live.

You're still talking about the terminal, but any desktop Linux distribution needs as much of it as windows or Mac, no more no less. But looks like I'm falling on deaf ears.

You can continue bashing the terminal, but looks like you don't know much about the IT industry (as you said), since most of the people that works with computers in a mildly serious manner use the terminal a lot. Even Windows applications are built using the terminal and through terminal "voodoos". Maybe you don't see it, but most servers in the world run a server distribution of Linux, where there is only the terminal. The terminal is anything but "surpassed", not by a long shot; there will be never a time where you will be ditching the command line altogether.

You can continue using Windows without the terminal, I will continue to use both Linux and Windows with it, doing less work to do what I need to do and having the best from both worlds.

Cheers,
Edoardo

Exactly. You need the equivalent of a computer science degree to use Linux. That's what IT people are. But that's the problem. Regular people aren't IT people. The average person doesn't give a crap about the terminal and the cryptic and obtuse commands of Linux. Even DOS is simpler and more straightforward than Linux command-line processes, and nobody cares to deal with that either. They have things to do. They just want to use a program for their needs, whatever that may be. They don't care about SUDO and GREP, only people in computer science do.

Phil: "You need the equivalent of a computer science degree to use Linux."

That might be your excuse for not getting into it. For all other purposes it's just not true.

Ok folks I think that's enough for Linux vs Windows wars. As far as INDI goes, if someone has time to port it to Windows go ahead, it's an open source project and we'll support that. There has been some efforts in the past and today it can technically run under Windows but most of the drivers would have to be ported as well.