Computing Only: 2007

Thursday, November 29, 2007

Custom vs Standard installers

I have seen products which use standard installer toolkits from OS and custom installers. Based on my experience on installers, I tried to summarize the differences between using standard installer and custom installer.
Standard installers can be RPM package mangers (in linux), SD-UX (in HP) and MSI (for Windows) etc., Custom installers can be in-house installers or any 3rd party installers or simple tar/zip package of the product.
The choice of using either a standard installer or a custom installer solely depends on following factors.
1. Multi-platform support. In case the software has to be installed seamlessly on multiple platforms customer installers can help to achieve that. This is the reason most of the open source software delivered in a tar/zip package. If the standard installer has been used one has to re-package the software on the new Operating system or use the package converters.
2. Multiple installations on the same host: If a standard installer has been used to package the product, it is not possible create multiple installations of the same software component as the product uses the same component name. In case of products packaged with custom installers, it is possible to create multiple installations on the same host as they are not registered to OS in its software registry.
While choosing a custom installer, one has to also evaluate whether it is worthwhile building a completely new custom installer or use the 3rd party installer. On the other hand while using a standard installer it is important to check whether a installer framework should be developed which can be used to help package products under multiple platforms.

References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Installation_(computer_programs)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Package_management_system
http://www.advancedinstaller.com/
http://www.thefreecountry.com/programming/setup.shtml

Wednesday, May 9, 2007

Favorite Firefox plugins

Here are my favorite firefox plugins. This list comes handy when you do not want to search the entire thunderbird plugin list. Please post or e-mail me if you have any other interesting plugins.

ChatZilla

ConnSets

Ctrl Tab Preview

Daily Dilbert

Dictionary Lookup Extension

Dictionary Tool Tip

GMail Space

GTD Inbox

GUtil

IE Tab

Last Tab

Remainder Fox
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1191

StartAid Online BookMarks

Stealther

Tab Counter

Tabbrowser Preferences

Torrent Bar
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/864

Undo Closed Tabs Button

Wizz RSS News Reader
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/424

iMacros for Firefox
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3863

Wordpress.com Sidebar
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2996

Yahoo Toolbar
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2032

Rest of the firefox plugins can be found under https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/

Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Favortie thunderbird plugins