Survey: "What operating system do you use (most often)?" and other related questions

[Iacobus]

► What operating system do you use (most often)?

If you are using OS X or a UNIX / Linux distro, please comment on how you run the available ROM editing tools.
► Do you use Parallels, VMware, VirtualBox, Wine or something else?
► How compatible are the current tools with your system and/or the way you run them?

(When GUI errors occur, please provide a screenshot if possible.)


(Extra: Do you own and/or use an Android, iOS or Windows tablet?)

 

[Iacobus]

I know I'm double posting, but it's been three days and not a single person has replied although there are more than 50 views.

If you guys want me to publish new tools, I would highly recommend you to answer my question(s).

 

[dkp]

I use arch. First I run it through wine, but if that crashes or produces errors I use VirtualBox with XP. If that fails (it doesn't) I have a dusty windows 7 on a different partition. But generally they only times I'd ever have to use it is if directX is used, and there's no support for opengl. A lot of the most basic tools will work, but a lot of the more complex programs built using windows proprietary things (eg if it's built using visual studio 6.0 or whatever it is) like A-Map need VirtualBox.

Generally the only graphics errors I've had are due to the window being drawn too large or qt not seeing options, both of which are issues on wine's end. 3-D issues (which I've never run into hacking, only, say, playing games completely unrelated to all of this) happen because of the difficulty of wrapping DirectX or VB not yet figuring out how to move it between windows, the host machine, and the kernel.

As far as actually running roms go, I usually use mednafen, the gba part of which is based off vba. However, I do have vbam installed for... I don't know why exactly... and vba itself runs fine in VirtualBox.

If you intend on making something open source or at least readily usable on Linux and OSX you're probably going to have to rely on your users getting comfy with the command line, unless you really want to put the effort in to make 3 separate guis.

 

[Iacobus]

Finally a reply I can work with! To my surprise from someone using a Linux distro. Thank you dkp.

The main reason I ask all this is because I want to get an idea what's the most used OS in this ROM editing community so I can decide on which language I should use.
My guess is most of you work on Windows (7) (but maybe I am wrong since the first one to reply is using Arch, hehe), let's say around 80% of the community. An other 18% is probably running OS X and only a small 2% runs Linux.

If these numbers are correct and people working on anything other than Windows don't really have troubles with the current tools, I can just keep my current project (C#, Visual Studio) and switch to Mono.
I myself can test on any OS, so upon release there shouldn't be any problems.

Man, I am too drunk for this.

 

[miksy91]

Well, most "rom hackers" around are kids under the age of 16 or so. Their parents are most likely used to Windows OS, so it's very likely the kids using the tools have a computer using Windows as its operating system as well.

I also grew up using Windows 98 and XP, and had never any intentions to switch to using products of any other companies later on. So the guess about Windows 7 being the most used operating system is most likely accurate.

 

[guitargodd97]

Haha, I guess I fall into the category that miksy91 described. I'm more of beginning rom hacker and I am using Windows 7 and I'm almost 16. I've tried using quite a lot of tools and from what I've found, quite a few of them no longer work or malfunction since I'm not using older versions of Windows. I get a whole bunch of errors from the programs and messages from my computer about incompatibility issues. It's really infuriating.

Some of the tools that even work, don't necessarily "work" to their full potential that they used to. I almost gave up on the hack I'm working on because of it. If you want me to screenshot some of my specific errors, I could do that.

If you made new tools that would be amazing! If you made tutorials on how to make new tools, that would be that much cooler. Aside from hacking, I'm learning to program and have developed some basic skills in C++, C#, Java and I've started to learn Ruby. I would love to learn more, especially in a way that would benefit other projects I'm working on!

 

[Iacobus]

If you want me to screenshot some of my specific errors, I could do that.

Yes please. It would be nice if you could do that.
Make sure to try to describe how I could reproduce the error.

If you made new tools that would be amazing! If you made tutorials on how to make new tools, that would be that much cooler.

Once I release the tools and they are stable enough and I think my code is clean enough, I'll release the source. People can then use the source as a reference.
I probably won't have time to write a good tutorial since I have to do a lot of programming/studying for uni. Maybe during the summer holidays, who knows.