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Just to argue with a few points made on the last page:
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Current Ubuntu versions are reliable but you pay a price for being up to date (vs Debian 7). More up to date Linuxes always seem less stable. However I've been using the latest Linux Mint for my working machine (based on Ubuntu 14.04) and its stunningly solid. I can't think of an instability even though I mess around with the software something awful.
I will probably try Jessie again when its fully frozen although the latest Fedora might be worth playing with just to be slightly more bleeding edge with the system software.
So latest Mint is rock solid. Ubuntu 14.04 should be too (.10 less so obviously) although I personally never use Ubuntu. I do like Debian too but I still like Cinnamon more than Gnome 3 for day to day work.
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On the suggest that Wine isn't good - come on slickiam - its very good. I've been trading with TWS, Sierra and various xbindkey based hotkey combos since MS released Windows 8 and I saw the light. Wine is really solid. Not that I'm not really looking forward to Anthony releasing a Linux/OSX native Sierra ... but wine is just fine.
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I use vnc over ssh from my Samsung 10.5 (bVNC pro) and its very good. Currently under Mint but I've used it with Debian, Crunchbang and others. I just use it to check markets when I'm away from my main machine and doubt I'll need to do anything. But I wouldn't use it for trading simply because selecting things from the tablet feels a little too random.
Platform: "I trade, therefore, I AM!"; Theme Song: "Atomic Dog!"
Trading: EMD, 6J, ZB
Posts: 796 since Oct 2009
this is all great to know, but if the idea is finding an cheaper than Microsoft alternative, and a platform that actually trades reliably over these Linux platforms, then the simple question is why?
why waste so much time, money and effort trying to be cost effective (iow - cheap), when the cost of use over Microsoft, with some tweaks, remains very low, albeit frustrating?
who do you blame, when an order leaves a partial as orphan with the broker (server side) and you were over your tablet, over public wireless, at the bus station / airport / hotel lobby, and the net order were 10 CL contracts (using minimum $1,000 margin)?
It has a lot of bugs and issues in terms of M$ C++ libs, DDE, graphics performance, fonts rendering, memory leaking and so on.
It's not simply the bad. It's ugly and awful.
But ... it might be not so bad for someone who uses Linux as a main platform and sometimes one starts up a windouze app in a slowly and carefully manner.
Using Mint you are using Ubuntu.
14.04 is too fresh and Cinnamon is unstable as well as Python 3.
So Debian 7, Python 2, XFCE and win2008r2 are the answers until SC Team will make SC version for Linux as the reality.
The objective isn't simply to find a cheaper alterative to Microsoft (or its worse sibling Apple). It's to be free of both of them. I'm technically competent so I don't need Steve's ghost telling me what I can and can't do. Similarly the shade of Bill. So I abandonned windows 8 for the freedom of Linux or BSD.
I would never blame anyone but myself if an issue occurred that I had potential to control. If it was someone else's fault and there was potential to reclaim the loss I'd make the effort otherwise I'd suck it up and move on. At least with Linux I could examine any local issue in detail.
Linux in 2014 with Wine offers a nice alternative to Windows for traders. Not perfect (that comes with nix native Sierra Chart) but not noticibly more painful than Windows or OSX. Definitely more satisfying.
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Hi slickiam,
I totally enjoyed your post although I cheerfully disagree with most of it. How do you feel about systemd?
The buntu bits I don't like are the UI and ppas so Mint lets me skip them if I want. Without Unity its not Ubuntu to me. I'd be happier with Mint built directly on Debian development but that version seems to be a poor sibling currently. I should try it out with 17.1 and see if I can be happy with it.
Cinnamon in Mint 17 isn't unstable.
You should try Python3 (I recommend just adding the Anaconda package, why mess with your distro). I love print statements without brackets but was surprised to find that Py3 was faster than Py2 in heavy numeric work - it seems that all the development is in the Py3 space. Also Pandas and Numba with Py3 are both superb.
On Linux support for Sierra Chart, I hope to see it mid 2015 too but won't be surprised if it takes longer. It could require more effort than Anthony estimates. But, whenever it comes, it'll be great.
I will give a CrossOver trial a go. I am curious to see if its significantly different to Wine.
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For Newbies
For anyone new to or just considering Linux, one of the great things is that there are so many different choices that you can make. For newbies this is also a bad thing. Slickiam seems to me to be making ultra-conservative choices, some a little old fashioned (xfce, python2, etc) but then I tend to enjoy the benefits of the most recent versions of applications. The possible Wine issues mentioned haven't impacted my trading in the last two years so I consider them effectively unimportant. My choice does require more willingness to address issues in new software if they arise (backing off a version say).
I'd recommend Linux Mint 17, Wine, and your packages. Or Debian Jessie (8 in development) with Gnome 3, Wine and your packages.
I believe Slickiam would recommend Debian 7 with XFCE (I tried to love it but would have to settle on Mate if I couldn't stomach a Gnome 3 derivative) or CrunchBang (harder for a newbie) with CrossOver instead of Wine.
Heck, you could use crossover instead of wine on my base's (or vice versa, I did happily run Wine & SC on Crunchbang for a couple of months).
- incomplete support for ms c++ libs is just the fact. (attach/detach trading window)
- dde atom subsystem has a wrong functionality manner. this is just the fact. (confirms by my project very clear)
- graphics performance and fonts rendering regression since 1.5. this is just the fact. (test 1.4 vs 1.6)
- incomplete support for GDI/GDI+ is just the fact. (try to choose type Dot for a line and size 2 or higher)
- network subsystem issues since 1.6 is just the fact. (and you described it as well)
- memory leaking from ver to ver is just the fact from wine developers
...
obviously this list is much more longer I just could to know personally.
so what? You disagree? Well ...
I do like your posts but these facts are on the table last 10 years.
Looks this list like something good? Definitely it is not.
I do use Anaconda and really like the Kevin Sheppard's book(from University of Oxford )
And I did a lot of test with np.array, list, pd.dataframe and so on.
Python 3 just crashes during my backtests from time to time but Python 2 does the same job a bit slowly but with no issues.
There are some differences with fonts subsystem, d3d support and it is mainly free from annoying
issues (network issue with 1.6 for exmpl). It is more polished. But it is still that crappy wine.
Peacefully.
Hm ....m
Looks like you are not a tick by tick backtester. This might be the reason you didn't see any sufficient issues.
Edit: I realized that the words "I disagree with most of it" in my prior post were incorrect. Its not that I disagree with the factual bits, it simply that they don't really affect me and thus might not affect a typical user.
I'm on Wine 1.7.31 which has been free of the little glitches I noticed a year or so back. I think that the issue is that those things just don't impact on my trading or testing. I trade either directly from the Chart or with TWS, however I also tend to just workaround any issues I find.
On testing I don't use SC's backtesting at any level. I set up charts at whatever timeframes I require and then run my own test harness on it. I had to build it back before SC could do it so I never went back. In that mode Linux, Wine and SC are copacetic.
Interesting about Python 3. I wasn't so happy with 3.1 and 3.2 but I've found 3.4 good - however I don't do your tests.
OK. Thanks. I won't bother with CrossOver. Wines fine for me so it doesn't sound like I'd get a benefit.
I throw in with kiwi on most things. Choosing linux has nothing to do with finding a cheaper alternative to Microsoft. The idea is to find a more robust platform that is easier to develop, test, and run on. I admit that I am biased toward Unix from the many years that it had 64-bits, multi-core/processor machines, working C++ compilers, uptimes that ran into years, while MS machines were practically unusable. Certainly, MS has come a long way, and is probably now a reasonable platform, but there are a number of reasons why I still prefer Unix for research and trading.
First is that it is easier to control a remote Unix machine than a remote Windows machines, which is partly why the majority of web servers, database servers, and institutional trading platforms, use Unix of some sort or another. Second, it seems to be a lot easier to use a number of the really high-quality open source software packages on Linux, where they tend to be developed, than on windows where they are either not available or are supplied by a third-party. Third, I find that I have to work pretty hard to automatically build and test software on Windows, especially if I am are not sitting in front of the machine; you have to install a real command line interface and all sorts of other unix-like tools to even have a chance. Then, there are all the usual reasons to prefer linux, like no viruses, no malware, lower cost, no endless dealing with drivers, freely available technical support that does not end in the recommendation to reinstall the operating system, ... and so on.
In fact, the only reason for us to use Windows at all is that the affordable, available trading software is written for what most people have on their desks. Fortunately, some of it, including the Nxcore datafeed and SierraChart run well under wine. While it is a struggle to get a nice cross-compiler and test framework going, it is possible. In fact it is also not too difficult to communicate from SierraChart in Wine with native linux programs running in other processes, so a lot of the R, Python, web-scraping, data gathering and storing, that one might want to do is reasonably easy. One can only hope that eventually SierraChart will actually make the leap. If not, eventually a great open source project will come along and complete.
I use Oracle Linux 7 with gnome-shell, and am currently using Crossover to run SierraChart (wine had an issue many months ago that crossover solved and I took the easy way out -- wine is probably just as good and gets upgrades faster, being what Crossover comes from). I have had very few issues developing on Linux, cross-compiling, and running SC under wine; the only outstanding problem is that I run out of TLS (thread local storage) under wine...well that and making money of course.
Im running Linux Mint 17.1 and am having a problem getting Sierra to work. I am just using it with the free Google datafeed within Sierra. It runs correctly, logs in, and connects to the google datafeed. However when I try to open a chart to download historical data I get the attached error. It speaks of an http error.
My only guess is there is something that needs to be installed with wine that I haven't done correctly. Is there an http something that needs to be installed in wine?
I have copied some charts and datafiles (*.dly and *.scid and *.cht) from my existing windows installation just to see if everything opens correctly on Linux,...which it does. The only problem comes when I try to actually download any data.
Just to make sure, I've also tried the Sierra historical datafeed (not their paid datafeed). That doesn't work either. So I think it must be something to do with wine+linux
Please could someone point me in the right direction.