Since the question in the title comes up with some regularity, I'll write out the answer here for everyone to see and for myself to have it at hand when next needed:

It's most likely for your own sake that you'll need to run some sort of Linux, especially if you never ran it before, but otherwise sure, Eulora2 can serve as a good motivator for it, too.

To elaborate on the above, note that *all* you need to run Eulora2 is an environment where you can compile C, C++ and Ada code from scratch¹. Arguably, any and all operating systems are capable of such a basic feat as this, since it is, quite literally, what "operating"² a computer system is supposed to be about - making it process ("compile") written instructions ("code") into a form ("binary") that the machine can then follow ("run") to do exactly what you told it to do. And if you don't like what it does or you change your mind or you simply want to play around and tell it to do something else, all you need to do is to tweak the code and have the machine process it all happily again, as many times as you please. Hence the importance of *all* the steps in that process, not just the last one, not just "run this", but absolutely all of them, from first to last.

Does your current operating system allow you to do all and any of the steps above, routinely and easily? Then you don't need anything else and you are set to go, nobody will mind you running Eulora2 there or anywhere else and you'll find running it just as easy as running anything else. Moreover, I'd be very glad to hear from you how it goes, what you are running it on and what changes you are making to it, too - after all, it's meant to be *your* client to play Eulora2, not in any way someone else's.

If your current operating system doesn't really make it easy to even know all that much, let alone perform and control one or several of these basic steps, then you'll probably need to try out something more useful. What exactly might that be is entirely your choice but it is indeed more likely to be some version of a unix-based system. And if you truly want to have an easier time compiling and running everything as well as perhaps changing it to better fit your needs at some point, I suggest you pick an older version and never 'upgrade' it with all the bells and whistles that might or might not do anything useful for you but will likely break the toolchain and leave you stranded while also eroding to various degrees those hardly ever mentioned attributes of access, control and consistent return on your own learning efforts³.

There is no reason at all and no intention even for there to ever be just *one* client for Eulora2 or otherwise put "the" client. Currently there is indeed only one, for the very simple reason that I made it and nobody else made theirs. As a result, my client is and will remain the reference client but it's still not meant to remain the only one. Quite the opposite, I'm open to any number of developers and/or maintainers of clients coming forward to make and promote their own versions, getting paid for it, too. The way I intend to set it all up, developers and maintainers of clients will get paid for their work based on how many users choose to run each developer or maintainer's client and for how long, as all this information is directly visible from the serverside. While this is still some way into the future currently, count this as the heads up on it - you won't be able to say later you didn't know it or didn't have time to get ahead of others with it.

As for the reference client that I made and maintain, I would recommend currently that you run it on one of Debian 8 (Jessie), Ubuntu 10, CentOS 6 or Gentoo⁴. This is not because the client "requires" these or it can't otherwise run in a different environment but simply because it is already known to run smoothly directly out of the box with as little effort as downloading and starting *one* single script that does it all. Of the four versions mentioned, I don't have any particular favorites, as they all have their own specific pluses and minuses, but I'd say they are all fairly easy to try out, too. Depending on your machine though, you might want to pick one that plays more nicely along something else and possibly out of the list above, it's Ubuntu that is more likely to do so.

As mentioned previously, currently the entry point for Eulora2 remains through interaction with those involved, on this blog or on others. And there is help available as well, just read around, follow the links and you'll find both the people involved and ways to interact - it's the meta-game, if you wish, happening in plain sight, even if it seems invisible to some. If it's not invisible to you though, just make and pick your quest(s), explore it all leisurely and when you're ready, start commenting and interacting with people, too, it helps.

In short, ask and you'll get an answer. Better yet though, ask a good question and you might just get more of an answer than you even hoped for!

1. More precisely, this means specifically that gcc 4.9 runs fine and the whole toolchain is not broken, either. ↩

2. For all the quotes, operating computers is not even all that far removed from other types of operating that may be more familiar, since they all come, of course, from the more direct physical operation aka use of tools of all sorts - after all, computers are merely more complex tools, basically tractors for plowing the information bitfields, nothing else. For this same reason, operating computers has in common with operating any other tool further requirements that don't get mentioned explicitly nowadays all that often, most notably the ones related to requiring some amount of study that actually pays off and offering full access and control over all its parts. ↩

3. Convenience that caters to your lack of knowledge *always* costs more than is directly made visible and its hidden costs are quite often the ones that you'll regret paying in the long term. Yes, it gives you a boost in the short term - quite often "now"- and it robs you of ~everything in the long term. At the very least it gives dependency, too. Just like any other drug of choice, you know? ↩

4. For Gentoo, there is no versioning possible even, since it's always and by design a sort of mix-and-match, so you'll need to pick your versions of everything in there. There is however a neatly written summary of a successful install of Eulora on Gentoo, so you might find some help with it, if you ask there. ↩

Category: Coding, Eulora

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