You Can Now Install Microsoft Windows Calculator on Linux (betanews.com) 102
An anonymous reader shares a report: Earlier, Microsoft released the source for Windows Calculator. And now, that calculator app has been ported to Linux by Uno Platform. Best of all, it's insanely easy to install as it is packaged in Snap format. "The good folks in the Uno Platform community have ported the open-source Windows Calculator to Linux. And they've done it quicker than Microsoft could bring their browser to Linux. The calculator is published in the snapstore and can be downloaded right away," explains Rhys Davies, Product Manager, Canonical.
Hallelujah! (Score:5, Funny)
Other calculators just don't equate at the same accuracy as the MS Calculator. My life is now complete.
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I always have used bc on unix. xcalc IS very bad.
(Waiting for someone to chime in about dc and RPN now).
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I prefer SpeedCrunch [speedcrunch.org]
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I glanced over Frink a while ago, but never used it. ... :P
Pro: it has units. And fractions
Cons: no idea
https://frinklang.org/ [frinklang.org]
Re: Hallelujah! (Score:3)
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Let's face it--nobody is going anywhere until they port Solitaire.
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Re:Hallelujah! (Score:4, Funny)
Opinions may be divided, but I see it as a big plus.
Re: Hallelujah! (Score:5, Insightful)
I try to subtract snaps from my Linux experience...
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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It equals a sign of the times.
Re:Hallelujah! (Score:5, Funny)
And there was great rejoicing and fanfare among both users!!
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re: Hallelujah! (Score:1)
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Amen, brother (Score:3)
This was the only thing holding me back from switching to Linux for many years.
Other calculators just don't equate at the same accuracy as the MS Calculator. My life is now complete.
Amen to that, brother!
I installed the MS calc app awhile ago - just copied over the .exe file and ran it. Wine chewed on the exec for a couple of seconds and installed it, now I have a link on the taskbar. Yes, this works.
(Hint: as bad as it is, it's waaaay better than xcalc.)
I've been looking for a good calculator program for awhile now - one that enters like a calculator and has all the standard scientific functions - and so far no program measures up to the simplicity of my *actual* scientific calculator
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If you're willng to run Emacs, calc is unusually full-featured [gnu.org] and is, of course, customizable and extensible.
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I sort of like kcalc. Like kde, it has lots of options for layout, and constants buttons if you want them (and a simple mode if you don't). I end up needing 0.005454 all the damn time, so that's one of mine.
It's nothing amazing, but I find it very nice to use.
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Kcalc is what I normally use. I also wrote my own command-line expression evaluator in Perl that I sometimes use because it does handy things like display integer answers in binary, decimal and hex and can do complex arithmetic. Also, having bitwise operators is convenient for programmers.
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Re:Amen, brother (Score:5, Informative)
The MS Calc app is genuinely decent. Maybe the best app that Microsoft ever made. Programmer mode is very handy. Handles very large and very small numbers without issue.
Could do with an engineering mode but I haven't found anything better so far. Closest is probably the Casio FX-CG20 (or the new CG50) but with a standalone calculator you don't get the benefit of copy/paste. They should really add Bluetooth to those things.
Re:Hallelujah! (Score:5, Insightful)
Snap is garbage
What is so hard about deb packaging? Don't say dependency hell. If you did, you're relying on libraries written by morons.
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Could very well be dependency hell because it looks like the reason it got ported was not someone actually compiling it, but because it was linked against a huge Windows-like runtime with probably dozens of libraries all over the place.
I mean, the thing IS open source, so if you can do a better job at packaging it, go right ahead.
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Don't say dependency hell. If you did, you're relying on libraries written by morons.
Yes.
Calculators? (Score:5, Insightful)
bc, dc, ipython, octave?
And I could always install them on Windows...
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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They made it worse in Windows 10, where you have to select between standard and programmer mode, and programmer mode apparently does only int math.
I assume they ported this newer, shittier version.
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The next one will be the original Notepad.
The editor that can only handle CR-LF line endings....
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octave
Yes, we need to design a ball point pen that can work at zero gravity for millions of dollars* instead of just using a pencil.
*Note that isn't actually a true story, but the suggestion to use Octave instead of the windows calculator certainly reminded me of this common tale.
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Makes sense, (Score:5, Insightful)
that a Canonical rep is waxing all orgasmic about another Snap-only package for Ubuntu's increasingly Android-like ecosystem. I wonder if it will eventually be force-installed and made difficult to remove the way Chromium has been.
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The first thing I did was look for the Debian instructions and stopped when I got as far as
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install snapd
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Canonical does seem quite religious about their snaps. We had a partner ship with them on a device, and now all the people working on the device are gaga about snaps. They have power point presentations about how their project will be awesome because of snaps! When suggesting other distributions might be more suitable, they reject it becuase they don't have snaps. And yet they are not able to articulate why snaps are a good thing, they just accept that they're good as dogma. People who used to be decen
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I honestly can't believe how bad the performance of the Snaps are.
I have three boxes, all identical, running NixOS, Arch, and Ubuntu. The Ubuntu box is perpetually out of memory, MS Teams crashes continuously, and at 16GB RAM, it is perpetually at 95%.
Same workstation, build, serial=($ubuntu_serial + 3), running NixOS and nary a problem. Same for the Arch box.
The reason that I installed Ubuntu in the first place was to support PA GlobalProtect, which doesn't work properly with Azure AD authentication (at le
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I love that they insist on installing to /snap, which isn't even configurable.
Canonical is filled with complete incompetents these days
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Canonical does seem quite religious about their snaps.
I kinda wonder if they're pushing snaps so hard because package maintenance has become so labour intensive and is so often a shit-show. It was for that reason that I was initially in favour of snaps and flatpaks - package management has become so complex that Linux now has its own version of DLL hell. I was willing to live with the wasted disk space until I started hearing about performance hits. Canonical forcing the issue was the last straw - it's far too much like the Windows experience that caused me to
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Snap is trash.
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Only once you have to buy your Ubuntu from your phone carrier.
Pointless (Score:4, Insightful)
I have calculators, loads of them.
I'm not messing with the train wreck that is SNAP.
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It runs on a Windows 10 instance inside a qemu emulated machine. That's no so bar.
But qemu is packaged with snap. So you'll need at least 32GB to run it.
Clippy? (Score:2)
But when can be get Clippy?
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It's been around for years, ever since some sicko implemented a bad joke from User Friendly:
http:vigor.sourceforge.net [sourceforge.net]
joke starts at
http://ars.userfriendly.org/ca... [userfriendly.org]
Porting a calculator is faster than a browser. (Score:4, Insightful)
Hearts (Score:2)
Re:Hearts (Score:4)
Space Cadet Pinball from Win XP
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I killed a lot of time on that when I had an XP laptop. A whole city was just outside my door and... there were still times when I just couldn't find anything else to do, LOL.
If only we could also bring back the music service I had on that machine, before Yahoo bought it and killed it. I was even willing to accept that I might sometimes have to re-download a track because of the DRM glitches; but then tracks started becoming unavailable for download--there's a version of Istanbul/Constantinople by TMBG th
RPN calculator recommendations? (Score:2)
Anyone have multiplatform reverse Polish notation calculators that they recommend? Something with a long visible/scrollable stack and paper trail would be great.
Re:RPN calculator recommendations? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:RPN calculator recommendations? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Yup Free42 is the best, I have it everywhere I would need a calculator. I still have my original HP42s that I bought for a small fortune in the early 90s, but Free42 is just more convenient.
I think there is an extended stack version floating around, but I have never really had much call for more than a four deep stack anyway.
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Re: RPN calculator recommendations? (Score:2)
I use V41, running in WINE. Works for me. On Win10 as well.
I use i41c on iPhone and Android.
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Saves me from having to put batteries in my actual HP-48 all the time.
Seriously? Using my hp-48gx almost daily but I cannot remember the last time batteries had to be changed (hint: a long time ago)
And? (Score:2, Funny)
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But now you don't HAVE to. You can let the idiots at Uno Platform, Microsoft and the Snap system developers stick a needle up your urethra FOR you and at no extra cost, you get to run Microsoft code, Snap and systemd to follow the needle!
Windows Caculator, seriously??? (Score:1, Informative)
3 + 3 * 3
Windows Calculator: 18 (Wrong!)
Linux Calculator: 12 (Correct!)
What else is new? They can't release any Windows updates without creating new bugs! Do you really want to trust Excel???
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Linux calculator programmers have no problem understanding this simple concept.
Re: Windows Caculator, seriously??? (Score:3, Informative)
Standard means "same as a standard calculator".
For that sequence of inputs, a standard calculator would give you the same result because a standard calculator processes equations as a series of single discrete steps, not as a single ordered operation.
The latter is what scientific mode is for.
Stop being daft.
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Use scientific mode. (Score:3)
Easy to install (Score:3)
easy to install as it is packaged in Snap format
No, easy to install is make ; make install
How many alternate universal package formats do we have now? Probably enough for a xkcd 927.
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Snap is pure garbage.
Re: Easy to install (Score:1)
Why would I care? (Score:2)
I'm assuming they added more bits for precision but, for me doing taxes and stuff, my 30 year old calculater does just fine.
Then again, I went to college before TI infiltrated the market so all c
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My 30-40 y.o HP12C is still working fine; battery has never been replaced, work great for adding up all the bills.
Sooo cool (Score:2)
I have Emacs (Score:3)
The calculator in that can do basically everything I need - and a lot more. And I don't need Canonical's garbageware Snap for it.
Re: I have Emacs (Score:2)
You might not need snaps, but you do need Emacs.
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True, but I was using it anyway.
Reboots, updates, whatever (Score:3)
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BSOD's been portable forever, I run it on my work Mac: https://www.jwz.org/xscreensav... [jwz.org]
I wish it worked on Linux Mint without needing to perform brain surgery.
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No, but you will have to defrag the disk and reboot every day or so to keep the system from crashing.
I prefer Microsoft Calculator Plus (Score:2)
I prefer Microsoft Calculator Plus from the old days, but it's a native Windows application, not a Windows Metro, or "UWP," app.
Man Bites Dog (Score:1)
Faster than porting a browser? (Score:2)
And they've done it quicker than Microsoft could bring their browser to Linux
I guess that's a joke?
comeing soon to linux system near you!! (Score:2)
Minesweeper!
I like the one that came with Ubuntu just fine (Score:2)
Does anyone ELSE avoid Snap? (Score:3)
I avoid Snap because I want tidier, smaller packages instead of 400 copies of the same libraries on my system. I understand the appeal of Snap, but in concept it's the opposite of efficient and every bit the equivalent of "just copy it to every directory until you hit the right one".
I use KDE Neon, so I pretty much have to remove Snap support as soon as I install the OS to keep from getting flat-packs.
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I knew as soon as I snap was hardcoded to use /snap that snap was designed by morons for morons.
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I avoid Snap because I want tidier, smaller packages instead of 400 copies of the same libraries on my system.
I praise container formats and support them for avoiding the DLL hell equivalent of wanting to run current and up to date software without waiting for the blessing of the distribution maintainer to correctly sort out their dependency, and if having additional copies of the same libraries on my system is the cost of up to date software, then sign me up twice.
I avoid Snap because it's slow as molasses.
Re: Does anyone ELSE avoid Snap? (Score:1)
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It's not hard. It's time consuming. And when you consider the sheer amount of software in a distro repository there's often quite a delay between software being released, and ending up in the repo, especially if that software isn't popular.
Containers are great for that.
It's usless (Score:2)
You have to switch modes if you want both decimals and hex numbers. So dumb.
Microsoft Calculator on Windows 10 (Score:2)
4+3/8=0.875 ???
Switch to scientific mode:
4+3/8=4.375 (correct)
Now I know one reason why kids have trouble with fractions ...
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That's deliberate. The calculator on Windows in its default mode acts like a simple calculator that doesn't perform multiple operations at once. If you RTFM you'll see that it says that scientific and programmer mode both honor PEMDAS while this note is absent on default mode. Here's the excerpt from the help file in W7 [imgur.com].
Simple mode doesn't actually accept multiple operations at once, but rather just displays the order you input them in as a quality of life feature.
Replacing kcalc today (Score:2)