I think a lot of people new to Allegro might be turned off by the difficulty of compiling and setting up Allegro in Windows. In Windows you have to install DirectX, setup paths for librarys, include a .dll, in Linux all that goes away, the wiki page for installing Allegro on Linux shows just how easy:
http://wiki.allegro.cc/index.php?title=Build/Linux

I think the link for Linux Allegro install should be on the front page of the Wiki and noobs should be made aware of how easy it is. As of now its very hard to find hidden in the unix section of the "building Allegro" link which is within the "Getting Started" link.

Also compiling and running an Allegro app in the console can be automated in the Scite text editor. This is much easier and faster than using an IDE. To do that just install Scite and then go into Options>Edit Properties>Open cpp.properties and find where the path is to this file (its write protected, trying to save a changed file will bring up error message with path) then when you know the location open it with:
sudo gedit /usr/share/scite/cpp.properties
turn on line numbers and go to lines #262 and #263 and change them from this:
cc=g++ $(ccopts) -c $(FileNameExt) -o $(FileName).o
ccc=gcc $(ccopts) -c $(FileNameExt) -o $(FileName).o

to this:
cc=g++ $(FileNameExt) -o $(FileName)
ccc=gcc $(FileNameExt) -o $(FileName)

and then you will be able to do an automatic compile and run of a regular C program in Tools>compile and Tools>go.

And then to do an automated Allegro app compile/run you just add
cc=g++ $(FileNameExt) -o $(FileName) `allegro-config --libs`
ccc=gcc $(FileNameExt) -o $(FileName) `allegro-config --libs`

Im asking permission to put this in the wiki or if someone else would like to volunteer to put this in, that would be better as Im a noob myself.

The only thing I had to install in Ubuntu were the Allegro libraries/dependencies. You dont have to install OpenGL in either Windows or Linux, its part of the system. In Windows there is plenty of difficulty (for a noob) in installing Allegro with either msvc or mingw. All that is automated with a package manager install in a distro like Ubuntu.

You still have to set the library paths for each project and include the .dll with the prebuilt binarys. Yes it is a lot easier than a full Allegro compile/install and people should be made aware of that also. But still I think a Linux install in a distro like Ubuntu is by far the best option for a noob.

I've compiled Linux literally hundreds of times, for a pile of different operating systems, and on the common ones (Windows, OS X, Linux) it's easy. Difficulty of compiling Allegro should not be a reason to use one OS over another... If you're going to be a programmer, then you darn well better be able to do something as simple as compiling a library.

By static install do you mean putting the .dll in the Win32 folder? That is not very good for distributing your game, and we all know noobs love to distribute their games. But as to your question:

Im just saying I was about to bag Allegro after seeing the Windows msvc express install instructions and use something else like SDL. When I gave it one last shot on my Ubuntu partition I was really blown away by how everything was already set in my path and ready to roll. I think a big majority of people now a days have Ubuntu running on a partition or spare computer and so I think its something worth mentioning.

Derp, yeah.

That's funny because Ubuntu in my experience doesn't come with libasound-dev or any X11 development libs/headers and possibly some other things that a noob would have to install, albeit through their package manager.

nvm, dependancies are exactly what we were talking about.

That's a MSVC problem, not a Windows problem. You don't have to use MSVC on Windows.

I think you are extremely delusional. Linux as a whole is still only making it to about 1% of the Desktop market share.

Ubuntu is all set for Allegro 4.2 and it is very easy to use. However, setting up AllegroGL is not as straight-forward as I had hoped. See my post on this.

I've been testing out two IDEs. Eclipse and Geany. I'm sure many of you are familiar with Eclipse + CDT. It's nice though Geany is very lightweight. To have it build your Allegro source, it's very simply : Build->Set Includes and Arguments, and then just add `allegro-config --libs` and you're set.

Now if I could only establish all the dependencies required for Allegrogl.

I recently read somewhere that close to one third of netbooks sold were Linux based.

Check out google trends for Ubuntu versus Microsoft. You might be surprised.

I understand that MSVC is a great environment, but how about Eclipse CDT + GDB?

Even if that's accurate, close to a third is not a big majority. And that figure was for all linux distros, not just for Ubuntu.

I've used Eclipse for Java on Windows, and it is a painfully slow IDE. Other than that, it seemed nice.

CodeBlocks works very nicely as a gcc/mingw IDE in both Windows and Linux. When you start a project in CodeBlocks there is a default template for SDL. It would be nice if someone could make an Allegro template for CodeBlocks, or at least a custom template that could be downloaded here.

I don't understand. Historical search volume and news reference volume from Google doesn't mean anything? I figured it would be better than my personal opinion.

You're right. I only wanted to point out an example where Linux is starting to gain support. Of course we're talking about low powered systems primarily with Intel integrated graphics.

I've read that 50 million netbooks are predicted to be sold in 2010. If that's true, more than 16 million additional Linux machines will be ready for your Allegro creations. Check out the trends for netbooks in the last two years.

I know what you mean. I wish it was snappier.

I'll have to give that a try.

Yes that's true but it works both ways. People dual boot or remove Windows from their sold-with-windows netbooks in preference for Linux as well.

I see your point about one company versus a product as a comparison. However, I didn't want to use just "Windows" because there are windows in nearly all operating systems and on many houses and building, etc. Very few folks are familiar with Canonical in comparison to their product; Ubuntu. I figured everything "Microsoft" (which can include their products such as Windows as well) versus the single Canonical product "Ubuntu" would be interesting no?