[Lazarus] Installing lazarus on Windows, horror story goes on

[Marcos Douglas]

Hi Juha,

2010/7/29 Juha Manninen <juha.manninen62 at gmail.com>:
> [snip]
> Before that we were fighting with zip packages. The Windows machine didn't
> have a zip program installed. I made a mistake first and recommended Peazip
> "because it is made with Lazarus". My friend installed it but the UI is so
> weird that he couldn't use it. Finally he installed a decent archiver, jzip,
> and could extract my source package.

AFAIK, WinXP has a zip program, look: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306531

> Now I have read many comments that Lazarus Windows installer is a really
> easy one-click system. I admit that the installation is easy but the result
> was a broken system so it doesn't help much.
> How do you people explain this episode with the "idiot proof" Windows
> installer? Do you think I made up the story. No, it really happened to a
> real person, on a real Windows XP laptop and I really tried to help him
> through a Skype session.
> And yes, he has been able to install other SW when he wanted.

Always I installed Lazarus on Windows (just for tests or showing
somebody) I used the installer and never I found any error (always in
Win XP).

> His feeling is of course "why do you give me this crappy SW. Is it some kind
> of joke?". I would have the same feeling if someone handed me a program I
> can't even install. I can myself be very irritated sometimes when a system
> doesn't work while it should.

Not a joke. We believe in you, but we need more (tech) informations
about this errors.

> I think I must learn GUI programming with Java and port the code. Java is
> already installed on those machines and runs for sure.
> The other choise is to boot Windows XP on my mini-laptop, install Lazarus
> there and build the program, then send the binary to my friend. He lives 250
> km away and I don't drive there now.

If you don't have Java installed then broke. If you use another
version of Java then broke. If you change anything.. broke!
Java works, this is true. But he has the same (even worst) problems.

> Write once, compile everywhere. Right yeah...
>

This is more true (and more realistic) than Java: write and run everywhere.


Regards,
Marcos Douglas