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Comment by pbhjpbhj | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious if you considered providing the course using one of the online courseware providers (Coursera, Udemy, etc.)?

Second, no love for Linux? DBeaver and pgsql are obviously available, is there any particular reason that Linux isn't included; or anything in the course that's specific to MacOS/MS Windows?

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I think the assumption is that the average Linux user will easily figure out installing DBeaver and PostgreSQL by themselves, plus installation methods will vary depending on distribution. I'm a Linux user and I'd certainly skip that video.

That's a pretty lazy assumption if you're providing a how-to video. Especially since:

1. There are new Linux users every day

2. The Mac/Windows users will most likely have to install PostgreSQL on a Linux server eventually for production anyway

It would be very beneficial to at least add instructions for installing on a Debian based distribution like Ubuntu, since that would cover the vast majority of Linux users, especially newer users.

Yes, but exclusion suggests that there might be use of software later that doesn't allow it, or that there's some difference -- like they do some DB thing and it doesn't work if you're using ext/zfs/whatever. Remember it's for non-experts, people may not even know(?) that pgsql and such are freely available to them.

At least having the add-apt-repository line in the course manual saves you looking for it on the DBeaver page.

Aside: I've been doing a the Standford machine learning course and it includes installing in the required work, so I did the install on Windows as instructed (what a pallaver) and only then realised it was entirely optional just not presented as such and so then did `sudo apt install octave`, messed around with a few test queries, and was done with the entire second lesson.

I agree, especially some info on production installation on Linux would be really nice. For example, is it better to install the "postgres" ubuntu distro package, or is it better to install the Ubuntu package provided by postgres themselves at https://www.postgresql.org/download/linux/ubuntu/? Which one of these offer the best security / stability?

Yes, you'll be able to work through the course using Linux without any problems. The only software that's in use is DBeaver and Postgres - both of which run on Linux, Mac, and Windows.

I'll make a note to record a setup video for Linux as well (though in truth, the Mac and Windows setup videos are practically identical anyway owing to the cross-platform software in-use)

I sent a message from the course site, but would probably want to consider installing postgresql via docker, which can be a one-liner in any platform with docker installed (including docker desktop for mac/windows).

The problem with coursera and udemy is that they lock you into their platform and limit you in terms of what you can do. When you build the product with its own website, you can basically do whatever you want in terms of innovation.

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