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in reply to Re: New-to-Perl: recommendations for windows setup? (updated)
in thread New-to-Perl: recommendations for windows setup?

Strawberry Perl works well

For a long time I used Active State. When I has changed laptop I thought I'd give Strawberry Perl a go and I know that I prefer it although I'm not sure I can articulate why.

file associations can be set up automagically by the installation process (I'll accept corrections on this), meaning that double clicking on a .pl in the explorer will Just Work.

Totally correct. Except that the process opens in a command window which closes when the script ends. So, it is necessary to add a delay to the end of the script if you want to see any output. But it is not onerous to type perl script.pl at the command prompt.

If you want a cheap Linux box & are prepared to settle for 4Gb of RAM, consider a Raspberry Pi.

That was exactly what I first thought!

There is an 8Gb version. However, standard Raspberian is a 32 bit OS so cannot access more than 4Gb. There is a 64 bit version of the OS in beta form and it seems likely that a stable release will be along before too long.

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Re^3: New-to-Perl: recommendations for windows setup? (updated)
by davies (Prior) on Feb 17, 2021 at 22:50 UTC
[reply]
Re^3: New-to-Perl: recommendations for windows setup? (updated)
by roboticus (Chancellor) on Feb 18, 2021 at 15:32 UTC

    Bod:

    I'm not a Raspberry Pi guy (yet), but I'd expect it to work like a typical 32-bit x86 installation; meaning that while a single process is limited to 4GB, the OS can have multiple processes running to use the entire 8GB address space of the CPU. So you won't be wasting the capabilities of your 8GB RPi unless you're running just a couple of processes.

    ...roboticus

    When your only tool is a hammer, all problems look like your thumb.

[reply]
      ...but I'd expect it to work like a typical 32-bit x86 installation; meaning that while a single process is limited to 4GB, the OS can have multiple processes running to use the entire 8GB address space of the CPU

      You are correct...

      I skim read this article a few weeks back and it was only then that I realised the limitation of 4Gb RAM on a 32 bit. What I didn't properly read was:

      "The 32-bit kernel is joined by a 32-bit userspace, however: While the kernel can see and use all 8GB, any given process on the system is limited to 4GB. In other words: If you’re running a single application which doesn’t fork into multiple processes, it’ll only ever be able to grow to half the 8GB available"

      We 'attend' several virtual conferences and training session which are full day or multiple day events. So we take part using the big television in the sitting room. I plan to get a Raspberry Pi as streaming device for these events and it will largely just run one instance of one browser with one tab open so, for this application, I might hit the limitation. But for general usage, like the OP is looking for, it is probably the ideal solution.

[reply]

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