Re: A comment on GNU/Linux
Quoting Oleg Goldshmidt, from the post of Sat, 11 Jan: Shlomi Fish [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Oleg, I sort of scanned your E-mail. Why don't you read it, then? You'll see that I mention original authors other than RMS, and my real point is that Linux should *not* be called GNU/Linux, even though to me it sure looks like GNU is a big part of it. Oh, and RMS does not argue for RMS/Linux, does he? No. As I said, it's not an issue of ego, it's an issue of his ideology that you claim you respect (tough you don't agree with). Linus has no respect towards it either, and RMS was annoyed to discover many associate Linux with Open Source and forget about freedom. Apart from that, I don't agree with many of you conclusions. I know that every time I had to admin a SunOS box (older versions or Solaris) I'd first download a few useful packages to make it GNU/SunOS. so I can work in a shell I like and all the environment responds to the syntax I'm familiar with. What I use IS afterall GNU, as you agree and not the kernel itself, unless I'm fighting it to recognize a new sound card. As for windows being called simply windows, it's not tue either. The kernel has a lot to say about the way drivers are installed. Every support center you call will ask which windows very politely, because the support for windows 98, 2000 and XP is quite different (and not only because of GUI issues, also the way it handles PPTP, L2TP and the tools is has to debug, if any, etc). Now you can SAY I have XP installed, but a microsoft person will rush to correct you you have Microsft Windows XP installed (this is clearly hypothetical :) and the point is that he who wrote the software can insist on its full name. XP means nothing by itself, windows is a generic word that cannot by trademakred and so you need to mention the full string to be specific AND keep it legally binding, so in official papers, MS will always say MS Word and not Word, because there is also Lotus Word in the market. So following my idea that he who wrote the software can insist on the name, GNU/Linux in official amuta papers should be the right thing to use, whereas discussing it here among professionals, Linux is quite enough. Why? If for no other reason, it's because RMS asked and you agree his project deserves the credit, technically, even if you ignore ideology. One can run a linux machine without an X server and lots of other parts, but the basic shells and scripting tools are still born out of the GNU project mostly. I say should be but I won't stress it. I know I'm in the minority opinion. it bother me, but not enough to make it into a spectacle. I do however suggest you rethink your membership if Freedom issues bother you that much. -- Kodak moment Ira Abramov http://ira.abramov.org/email/ This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal. msg24794/pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: A comment on GNU/Linux
On Sat, 11 Jan 2003, Ira Abramov wrote: Quoting Oleg Goldshmidt, from the post of Sat, 11 Jan: Shlomi Fish [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Oleg, I sort of scanned your E-mail. Why don't you read it, then? You'll see that I mention original authors other than RMS, and my real point is that Linux should *not* be called GNU/Linux, even though to me it sure looks like GNU is a big part of it. Oh, and RMS does not argue for RMS/Linux, does he? No. As I said, it's not an issue of ego, it's an issue of his ideology that you claim you respect (tough you don't agree with). I agree with some parts of this ideology. Namely, that it is beneficial to work on free software, that it is generally creates better software, and that everybody become happier because of that (re: ESR's CatB series) As far as I'm concerned economical advantages that are stressed by ESR are the same think as moral advantages. Whatever saves or earns you money is good and moral. (for that matter anything that helps feel human biological needs is good and moral). Now, freedom of expression, actions, etc. is good and moral because it helps feel human biological needs. (I won't start to prove it now - read http://www.neo-tech.com/advantages/ if you are interested). Now if you ask me it is a basic freedom to take a software and commercialize it. Yet, I'm not going to start using a custom definition of free software and claim the GPL is not free. I'll use such terms as a Public Domain license or a free-for-linkage license instead. RMS coined the term free software and it was his right to decide what constitutes of free or not. If I coin the term foo software I'll decide what's foo and not. Linus has no respect towards it either, and RMS was annoyed to discover many associate Linux with Open Source and forget about freedom. Linus, IMO, has a lot of respect towards software freedom. However, he acknowledges the fact that being stubborn and not using proprietary software at all (even if it is very good and its vendor is happy to help you, fix bugs, add features you want, etc) is useless. He has a nice Do and let do attitude. I'll do what I want with the Linux kernel and use the tools as I see fit. You do what you want (you can fork if you want). Just don't start preaching me about ideals. I have used some proprietary software in my time. I am writing this E-mail with pine which is not perfectly free on a Solaris box (sshed through on a Linux though). I use what is good and convenient. I used Microsoft products and still do if I need to. I think Linus acknowledges the fact that free software generally creates better software in the long run. But he does not mind using proprietary software if that is what gets his job done. Idealism is about objective universal ideals: honesty, objectivity, integrity, freedom, passion, pride. It's not about Israel, or GNU, or Communism, or even Objectivism. It's about being a rational moral person anywhere, anytime. So far Linus has been fully moral and extremely productive, and has never denied the freedom of anyone else. I call him an idealist. Apart from that, I don't agree with many of you conclusions. I know that every time I had to admin a SunOS box (older versions or Solaris) I'd first download a few useful packages to make it GNU/SunOS. so I can work in a shell I like and all the environment responds to the syntax I'm familiar with. What I use IS afterall GNU, as you agree and not the kernel itself, unless I'm fighting it to recognize a new sound card. True. I often use the term a GNU system to refer to something that has bash, gcc and everything GNUish around. I once GNUified a SunOS 4.1.3 system. Usually, it means only a GNU/Linux system, but if you wish to GNUify your Darwin or BSD machine - be my guest. Otherwise, what I'm writing may not work. If you wish the term GNU system to stick around you have to call it Gnu. People dislike initials, and prefer words and Gnu is a nice word. I used my GnuOS/Gnu to play Frozen Bubble. My problem is that the term Linux is already in wide spread use. If I say Gnu Linux people will say: What kind of Linux is that? If I say Debian Gnu Linux people will be more confused. I usually only use Mandrake or RedHat or Debian to designate distributions. Am I doing injustice to Linus Torvlads, Alan Cox and the rest of the kernel hackers? I'm afraid I cannot name the name of one person who hacked on Microsoft Windows 2000. You can find all their names in the about box. I know a few Microsoft employess or former ones. But they call their operating system Windows because it's snappy, it's sexy and everybody knows what it is. Likewise for Linux: the name is sexy is short and sounds cool. Behind hides tons of individuals, many projects and a lot of effort, and a whole culture. But it's just a name. It does not has to convey everything that is free software and idealistic in this world. As for windows being called simply windows, it's not tue either.
Re: RMS over Humous - meeting summery
Oleg Goldshmidt wrote: Shachar Shemesh [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: As a side note, stressing only the technical issues means that issues such as DRM, Trusted Computing and the DMCA are left out altogether. These are technical issues. One should not restrict generic technologies because they can be used for wrong purposes. I certainly didn't mean that. After hitting the send button, I realized that this paragraph was not very well phrased. I'll try and explain what I tried to say. All of the above technologies and laws are bad on technical reasons. That much is true. However, if your view of them is purely technical, you will notice that they are only bad for you IF YOU ARE USING OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE. If you are not (such as most law makers), they don't seem to be so bad. On the other hand, the principles and freedoms that are taken away from you if these laws and technologies are put in effect affect everyone. Everyone knows why monopolies are bad, what anti-competitive behaviour means and why it's illegal, what free market means and the word choice. Not everyone accepts that if a given technology kills you ability to run Linux, that's a bad thing. What I meant to say is that the idealistic approach has to be taken to combat these things, as we don't have automatic supporters where the decisions are being made. Shachar = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: RMS over Humous - meeting summery
Ira Abramov [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Quoting Nadav Har'El, from the post of Sat, 11 Jan: I don't know what your basic disagreements are (I guess I'll have to buy you a beer to find out :)) I think Oleg has put it very clearly in a post here, he's against the basic ideals of freedom, and therefore the fact that they are objectively important and global. This sounds suspiciously like I am against freedom and want to send everybody to Gulag, which is just a tiny bit unfair, Ira. What I am against is taking one's ideas of freedom, or any other social or individual value for that matter, and try to present it as universal. Given this, I am in trouble of presenting a comprehensive, concise written formulation of what I think of freedom, because, contrary to Stallman, I don't start from a premise that some particular interpretation of freedom is universal, so I'll get boggled in qualifications trying to be intellectually honest with myself (please don't interpret this as sayign RMS is not intellectually honest - he is, I believe, with himself). Maybe it will suffice for now if I give a couple of examples that I was thinking of while listening to Stallman's talk on Thursday. He made a big deal of arguing that the current state of affairs somehow goes against the basic value of sharing (pardon the quotes, Ira, this is the only word here that is directly lifted from his speech), that society should teach its members, especially children, to share, etc. I disagree. I think that a much more basic value (and virtue) that my future kids should learn is the ability to distinguish whom to share with and whom not to share with. And I am not willing to discuss in advance any criterion that may be applied. Under particular circumstances, I can imagine asking myself, is this person an Israeli?, or is she Jewish?, or does he work at IBM?, or has she paid his membership dues to Hamakor?. I think this is more basic than the general idea of sharing as an ideal, and does explicitly involve the notion of not sharing. Were I to adopt the idea of sharing as basic, essential, and universal, I would not have the freedom to consider not sharing, let alone the freedom not to share. I reserve that freedom to myself. In another example, I think DMCA and DRM and treacherous computing are evil. Why? For instance, I happen to own the latest Diana Krall CD. If you ask me to burn a copy for you, I will refuse, and I hope we can remain friends after that. I will, without any reservation, rip tracks out of the six or seven Diana Krall CDs that I own and burn a CD of favourites to listen to in my car, as a matter of fair use. The reason for my refusal to do the same for you is that I recognize the freedom of Diana Krall and the recording studio to impose restrictions on distribution of the CD and to earn profit from such distribution. What I object to in the legislation in question is what is tantamount to outlawing CD burners because they will let me to make a copy for you. That *is* evil. However, I suspect that Stallman ideologically goes futher than me in his objections. Maybe he doesn't. I suspect he does though, because he comes from the culture or totally unrestricted sharing of information (I am reading Hackers now, and Levy describes that well), and he applies that ethics as widely as he can. Levy describes the Incompatible Time-Sharing System developed and deployed at MIT's AI Lab, that had no passwords. During his previous visit to Israel RMS said that even when there had been passwords everybody at MIT had known his username was rms and his password was rms. He had since been forced to use a real password, and he was still bitter about it. At Stanford's SAIL the time-sharing system provided the users with the ability to have private files (at John McCarthy's insistence), and the hackers around tended to think that whoever uses private files must be doing something, eh, interesting, and one should have a peek. I value my privacy enough to consider this notion of sharing unacceptable. I insist on my freedom to keep some of the stuff I do private. I also insist on my freedom to keep some of the stuff that I produce restricted, without being branded a traitor to the basic ideals of freedom. Besides, the context of computer usage has changed since then, and however strictly you may adhere to the hackers' ethics, I suspect you will have a mostly closed firewall and insist on your users to have good passwords nowadays. On the technology versus ideology level, I have always thought that by simply doing my job as well as I can I am making the society I live in better in some intangible way. What I would like to avoid is doing my job differently because of some preconception I might have regarding what is good for society. For me, it is a matter of intellectual honesty in a technical field. I am used to the idea that the society, or some of its members, might disagree with me. I grew up with this idea. I was fortunate
Re: RMS over Humous - meeting summery
Shachar Shemesh [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: All of the above technologies and laws are bad on technical reasons. That much is true. However, if your view of them is purely technical, you will notice that they are only bad for you IF YOU ARE USING OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE. If you are not (such as most law makers), they don't seem to be so bad. Why? they are bad if I use anything that is deems illegal or unauthorized, depending on the context. It has nothing at all to do with Open Software (except that maybe part of the motivation of the initiators of these legistations was to make OSS less usable). -- Oleg Goldshmidt | [EMAIL PROTECTED] There is nothing more practical than idealism. [Richard M. Stallman, quoted with permission] = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: A comment on GNU/Linux
Ira Abramov [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: No. As I said, it's not an issue of ego, it's an issue of his ideology I was hoping I was clear that I did not regard this an issue of his personal ego. And I clearly think he has a point about credit. So following my idea that he who wrote the software can insist on the name, GNU/Linux in official amuta papers should be the right thing to use, And I am *not sure* I agree. RMS has a point, and this point cannot be clearer to me because it so happens that most of the software I use most often originates from GNU. [This is the case for me on Windows as well, since the first thing I do is install cygnus there]. And I hope that I have made it quite clear that I am interested in and respectful to the origins and history of the software I use. But I recognize again that it may no longer be the case for your average Linux user, who may be using Linux without encountering GNU ever, or very little indeed. I can easily imagine that the typical modern Linux user never uses any of the 10 things I listed, apart from the kernel itself. For such a user, there is no sense to call Linux GNU/Linux. The reason why there still may be a point in calling Linux GNU/Linux is to emphasize that the GNU tools are hidden there. Whatever software you use, including Linux itself, was likely created with GNU tools, compiled with gcc, linked to glibc, etc. -- Oleg Goldshmidt | [EMAIL PROTECTED] There is nothing more practical than idealism. [Richard M. Stallman, quoted with permission] = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: RMS over Humous - meeting summery
Oleg Goldshmidt wrote: Shachar Shemesh [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: All of the above technologies and laws are bad on technical reasons. That much is true. However, if your view of them is purely technical, you will notice that they are only bad for you IF YOU ARE USING OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE. If you are not (such as most law makers), they don't seem to be so bad. Why? they are bad if I use anything that is deems illegal or unauthorized, depending on the context. It has nothing at all to do with Open Software (except that maybe part of the motivation of the initiators of these legistations was to make OSS less usable). It seems to me that you are bringing ideoligy into the discussion, even as you are claiming to reject the notion. Why is it bad that you cannot rip your bought CD and pick and choose tracks for your car? You are not, as you claim, working without an ideoligy. You are just drawing the line somewhere else. Hamakor was founded to give all of these opinions a voice. I can see myself assiging money from the society's resources to sponsoring a talk by Ira about why the four freedoms Stallman defined are important and everyone should be getting them, just as I can see myself assiging those same funds to a talk by you as to why Linux is a great and inviting platform for commercial companies to base their proprietary products on. I don't see any contradition here, as I am only doing what I was elected to do as a board member of Hamakor - giving a stage for the opinions and forces that pushed and are pushing free/open source software forward. Now, if you, as you claimed, do not want to be a part of any organization that pushes forward ideoligy, even if I agree with it, then I am very sorry to say that you will probably not want to be a member of Hamakor. As saddening as it is to me, on a personal level, I cannot change the society's goals because of that. That last statement gets more emphesis by the fact that there is no organization, and defenitely no society, that are not powered by ideoligy. Even when you say you want Hamakor to promote open source software based on technical merits - that's ideoligy. The thing that makes it so is the fact that you don't stop believing it just because people prove you wrong. Linux does not have SMP support as good as SCO, hspell is no competition to Word's Hebrew speller. The problem is even more acute when products such as OpenOffice are discussed. These products are developed purely according to the commercial development model. OpenOffice can offer just two advantages over StarOffice: 1. 1. It is cheaper. 2. If Sun goes down, change license, want to charge more or discontinue the product altogether, you are not left out in the rain. I think we all agree 1 is a technicality, and noone is honestly trying to use that as the major selling point. 2 is a 100% Stallmanistic argument. There is nothing technological about it. I can claim practical reasons for going for 2 as a choosing factors (cheaper support, no threat of extortion, etc.), these are all just the reasons ANY free software is preferable over non-free software. Shachar = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
X Getting Stuck on Mandrake - Solution (?)
As you may well know for a long time X got stuck occasionally for me on my Mandrake system (starting at about 8.1 and progressing through 8.2 and 9.0). A couple of weeks ago, I cancelled the OpenGL hardware Accelaration (I used the proprietary nVidia drivers) and since then things have been working flawlessly. Not a single time it got stuck. With KDE 3.0.x or 3.1 RC 5, IceWM, GNOME or whatever. I encountered a similar situation in my Technion station which has an ATI Mach 128 card. I think it has a kernel driver accelartor that is not proprietary. The machines itself are still alive. I can still here the last mp3 I played and at the Technion was able to login into the machine using ssh. Maybe the kernel frame buffer accelaration code is buggy. Of course now TuxRacer and other 3-D intensetive games are much slower. Unusable even. But at least Frozen Bubble works nicely. Regards, Shlomi Fish -- Shlomi Fish[EMAIL PROTECTED] Home Page: http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/ Home E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Let's suppose you have a table with 2^n cups... Wait a second - is n a natural number? = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: RMS over Humous - meeting summery
On Sat, 11 Jan 2003, Nadav Har'El wrote: And excuse me for being pessimistic, but I have a hunch that if the current trends continues, book libraries will also be a thing of the past in 20 years. How long do you think the book publishers will agree to stay out of the pay- per-use or pay-per-eyeball party? Why should they agree to have their books lent out, when the CD and DVD publishers don't let you do that (unless the rental place pays them percentages?). See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html for a story about this. But charging money has nothing to do with freedom. The fact that Stallman repeats this over and over, doesn't necessarily make that true. Charging money does have something to do with freedom, at least the specific sense we're discussing now (being free from corporate control). If a person has a billion dollars, he doesn't care that he's not free to move his DVD collection from the US to Israel - he just leaves them in the US and has his servants get the same ones for him in Israel. Or he pays a million dollars to the studio to have a special all-zone DVD made just for him. A person without money is obviously not free to use that option. A FREE movie, software, book, whatever will allow you to produce a copy at zero cost. So, the billionare could go and buy additional copies, but the average Joe will be able to copy from his/her friends. This is similar to the law in Canada that allows you to copy CDs you took from a library. Alon -- This message was sent by Alon Altman ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) ICQ:1366540 The RIGHT way to contact me is by e-mail. I am otherwise nonexistent :) -- -=[ Random Fortune ]=- Only a brain-damaged operating system would support task switching and not make the simple next step of supporting multitasking. -- George McFry = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: RMS over Humous - meeting summery
Shachar Shemesh [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: It seems to me that you are bringing ideoligy into the discussion, even as you are claiming to reject the notion. I don't see how. Why is it bad that you cannot rip your bought CD and pick and choose tracks for your car? You are not, as you claim, working without an ideoligy. You are just drawing the line somewhere else. I wholeheartedly agree with that - it's a line-drawing game, and it only emphasizes the idea that right and wrong are not universal. I choose to draw the line beyond fair use because fair use is an established legal principle that would be a real pity to abolish. Abolishing the technology that allows me to do that because it may be used (by someone else) to copy CDs illegally is evil. This is a far cry however from saying CDs should be freely shared, which is something I would object to as well. Hamakor was founded to give all of these opinions a voice. I can see myself assiging money from the society's resources to sponsoring a talk by Ira about why the four freedoms Stallman defined are important and everyone should be getting them, just as I can see myself assiging those same funds to a talk by you as to why Linux is a great and inviting platform for commercial companies to base their proprietary products on. I don't see any contradition here, as I am only doing what I was elected to do as a board member of Hamakor - giving a stage for the opinions and forces that pushed and are pushing free/open source software forward. Please don't distort what I said. I said I would be glad if Hamakor would provide an opportunity for everybody to express their views. I would object, and I wouldn't want to be a part of organization that would adopt a particular viewpoint as its official one. This is tantamount to taking freedom away, which is exactly what Stallman does. Let me repeat it again: Stallman is against freedom. Stallman says, this is what I think the world should look like. This is called freedom. Whoever disagrees with that point of view is against freedom. Well, I think that the world should look differently. I insist on my freedom to disagree, and I consider it gross verbal abuse to appeal to a generic, noble, universal notion of freedom, after defining it as the same as one's particular point of view, to brand me (or Linus, or whoever) this or that. Yes, there are different points of view, even on freedom. If you (not you, Shachar, and not you, Ira, an abstract you) need a mathematical proof of that, here it goes: I have a different point of view from Stallman's, therefore his ideas on freedom are not universal. If you don't accept that, you are working against freedom. This may not be your intention, in fact I have no doubts that you have the best intentions, but a well-paved hell is the result of it. By not accepting that, by stating or implying that I am somehow inherently evil or morally inferior because I disagree with Stallman on what freedom is, you are taking my freedom away. According to my definition of freedom, that is. This is what bothers me so much in Stallman's view of the world. I am sorry, this should have gone into my response to Ira, but I hope that whoever bothers to read one of the postings will read both. Now, if you, as you claimed, do not want to be a part of any organization that pushes forward ideoligy, even if I agree with it, then I am very sorry to say that you will probably not want to be a member of Hamakor. As saddening as it is to me, on a personal level, I cannot change the society's goals because of that. It would be sad to me too, and if it comes to that I pledge here and now to be as supportive of Hamakor as I can from the outside. I don't need to be a member to do that. That last statement gets more emphesis by the fact that there is no organization, and defenitely no society, that are not powered by ideoligy. I am a member of at least one organization that, to my knowledge, has no ideological creed except that people should do their work as well as they can, ethically, and professionally. If one chooses to call this ideology, it is. It's a line-drawing game. Even when you say you want Hamakor to promote open source software based on technical merits - that's ideoligy. Maybe. It's an ideology of trying to make things work better. It is, IMHO, a very broad and inclusive ideology, as opposed to Stallman's. The thing that makes it so is the fact that you don't stop believing it just because people prove you wrong. Linux does not have SMP support as good as SCO, hspell is no competition to Word's Hebrew speller. And promoting free and open source software, in my mind, is working towards making Linux better, not arguing that one should use it even though it's worse because it will liberate you in some way, while taking away your freedom to use a 16-way SMP machine that you may really need to do the job. The problem is even more acute when products such as
Re: RMS over Humous - meeting summery
On Sat, 11 Jan 2003, Oleg Goldshmidt wrote: In another example, I think DMCA and DRM and treacherous computing are evil. Why? For instance, I happen to own the latest Diana Krall CD. If you ask me to burn a copy for you, I will refuse, and I hope we can remain friends after that. I will, without any reservation, rip tracks out of the six or seven Diana Krall CDs that I own and burn a CD of favourites to listen to in my car, as a matter of fair use. The reason for my refusal to do the same for you is that I recognize the freedom of Diana Krall and the recording studio to impose restrictions on distribution of the CD and to earn profit from such distribution. What I object to in the legislation in question is what is tantamount to outlawing CD burners because they will let me to make a copy for you. That *is* evil. However, I suspect that Stallman ideologically goes futher than me in his objections. Maybe he doesn't. I suspect he does though, because he comes from the culture or totally unrestricted sharing of information (I am reading Hackers now, and Levy describes that well), and he applies that ethics as widely as he can. Well, according to RMS, Diana Krall has no basic right to impose restrictions on you. Copyright law was designed to create more original works by giving the author a limited right to restrict copying. http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/misinterpreting-copyright.html Alon -- This message was sent by Alon Altman ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) ICQ:1366540 The RIGHT way to contact me is by e-mail. I am otherwise nonexistent :) -- -=[ Random Fortune ]=- QOTD: The only easy way to tell a hamster from a gerbil is that the gerbil has more dark meat. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: A comment on GNU/Linux
On Sat, 11 Jan 2003, Oleg Goldshmidt wrote: But I recognize again that it may no longer be the case for your average Linux user, who may be using Linux without encountering GNU ever, or very little indeed. I can easily imagine that the typical modern Linux user never uses any of the 10 things I listed, apart from the kernel itself. For such a user, there is no sense to call Linux GNU/Linux. gnome? debian (used by lindows and xanadros)? (Debian is definetly a gnu projet in spirit: the DFSG, the debian social contract. As for gnome: this is less clear) Both not well-hidden BTW: Have a look at any mailman info page: http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-developers (This is the one from the main mailman site, but it is the default template) This is the only place I can think of that says powered by GNU -- Tzafrir Cohen mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.technion.ac.il/~tzafrir = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
kazza lite and wine
$ dpkg -l |grep wine ii libwine0.0.20021219-1 Windows Emulator (Library) ii wine 0.0.20021219-1 Windows Emulator (Binary Emulator) ii winesetuptk0.6.0b-1.1 Windows Emulator (Configuration and Setup To $ uname -a Linux tal 2.4.18-bf2.4 #1 Son Apr 14 09:53:28 CEST 2002 i686 unknown unknown GNU/Linux when trying to install kazza, i get an ugly win98 popup message that says kazza requires windows ver. 4.1 or higher. same thing happends with running wine from terminal or from CrossOver Office. error from terminal : $ wine kazaa_lite_202_english_kpp_v202_edition.exe Invoking /usr/bin/wine.bin kazaa_lite_202_english_kpp_v202_edition.exe ... X Error of failed request: BadWindow (invalid Window parameter) Major opcode of failed request: 15 (X_QueryTree) Resource id in failed request: 0x3a00072 Serial number of failed request: 223 Current serial number in output stream: 223 Wine exited with a successful status help...? -- == Tal Amir, Founder, Owner Whatsup, Hebrew Linux Portal. [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.whatsup.org.il ICQ : 15748705 MSN : [EMAIL PROTECTED] == = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: A comment on GNU/Linux
On Sat, Jan 11, 2003, Ira Abramov wrote about Re: A comment on GNU/Linux: ideology. One can run a linux machine without an X server and lots of other parts, but the basic shells and scripting tools are still born out of the GNU project mostly. But this *cannot* be the main reason why Stallman wants the GNU name in GNU/Linux. Why? Because it's very easy to object to your statement. Many Linux users do not use any shell or scripting tool - so is it ok for them to call it simply Linux? And what about me, a person who is using zsh (a shell having nothing to do with the GNU project) and vim (an editor having nothing to with the GNU project)? And what if Redhat decided one day to switch the gnu fileutils (the GNU utilities people most often used) with the freebsd alternatives, like (I think) Mac OSX did? And if the Linux C library will be replaced (for the 3rd time) by one not from GNU, *then* we could stop calling it GNU/Linux? I think I told this story once - I switched to Linux only because of its X server (which ATT System V did not have at that time). Not because of its wonderful kernel, and not because of the GNU utilities. So maybe I should urge people to call it X11/Linux? As you can understand, this kind of argument cannot scale, as so-called Linux distributions include software from more and more projects, some of them pretty big. -- Nadav Har'El| Saturday, Jan 11 2003, 8 Shevat 5763 [EMAIL PROTECTED] |- Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |Bigamy: Having one wife too many. http://nadav.harel.org.il |Monogamy: The same thing! = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: kazza lite and wine
On Sat, Jan 11, 2003, Amir Tal wrote about kazza lite and wine: $ uname -a Linux tal 2.4.18-bf2.4 #1 Son Apr 14 09:53:28 CEST 2002 i686 unknown unknown GNU/Linux Sorry for completely ignoring your question, but has anybody noticed the appearance of the string GNU/Linux in the output of the latest releases of GNU's uname? (I'm trying the following on my Redhat 8.0 machine) Uname -s returns just Linux, as it always did, $ uname -s Linux By the phrase system name that was used to describe the -s option, has been replaced in the uname(1) manual by kernel name. Then then went ahead and invented a new -o option (operating system name): $ uname -o GNU/Linux This -o option did not exist in any other version of uname, as far as I know (I think it was added in GNU sh-utils 2.0.12). In fact, I've been, for many years, using Solaris in which everything had been replaced by the GNU alternatives (in fact, for the one exception of glibc, it has exactly the same GNU stuff that most Linux distributions use). On this machine, uname -s (using GNU's uname, of course) always returned SunOS. And they never thought about complaining why do you call it SunOS, you should call it GNU/SunOS... -- Nadav Har'El| Saturday, Jan 11 2003, 8 Shevat 5763 [EMAIL PROTECTED] |- Phone: +972-53-245868, ICQ 13349191 |ech`echo xiun|tr nu oc|sed http://nadav.harel.org.il |'sx\([sx]\)\([xoi]\)xo un\2\1 is xg'`ol = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: kazza lite and wine
On Sat, Jan 11, 2003 at 03:46:56PM +0200, Amir Tal wrote: when trying to install kazza, i get an ugly win98 popup message that says kazza requires windows ver. 4.1 or higher. same thing happends with running wine from terminal or from CrossOver Office. You might try to change the WineLook option in WINE's configuration file, but I doubt it'll help. I tried to run Kazaa Lite on WINE once, unsucessfully. I also read a report of someone succesfully running Kazaa Lite on WINE, with a lot of original Windows DLLs instead of WINE ones -- but that's cheating :) You may want to look at http://appdb.codeweavers.com -- it lists applications' compatibility with WINE, and in some cases, special instructions required to run those applications. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
mailq.postfix hangs on Mandrake 9.0
Just solved another one of those irritating little problems, and thought it might help some others. I was setting up a Mandrake 9.0 system for someone. The command mailq seems to have been missing, but there was mailq.postfix. mailq.postfix simply didn't work: it hanged after a while (though it could be killed by Ctrl-C). Stracing (even with -f) got me nowhere: I got an error message about failed writing to [/var/spool/postfix/]maildrop , the following in the warnings log: Jan 11 17:58:50 yarden postfix/postdrop[1688]: warning: mail_queue_enter: create file maildrop/173803.1688: Permission denied And then I noticed that /usr/bin/mailq did exist, and was a dandling link to /etc/alternatives/mta-mailq . mta-mailq seems to be a slave alternative of mta (update-alternatives --display mta-mailq), so: update-alternatives --auto mta Fixed everything -- Tzafrir Cohen mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.technion.ac.il/~tzafrir = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
the problem with LINUX
I'm afraid this is going to start a **war** and that's not my intention, but I really feel I've got to get this off my chest. Firstly, let me say that I've been using LINUX on and off for 6 years and that it's been my only OS since deleting OS/2 (zl) 3 years ago. So I'm a committed LINUX user. And I have no intention of using anything else - although my wife and kids all use Windows - and of course that makes me the primary sysop for their machines :-(. My problem is that LINUX (as much as it's progressed over the years) is still much too hard to install, set up, and use. As things stand now, it's not really a viable alternative for John Q. User. As opposed to other OSs (that will remain nameless), there's still too much tweaking required. And for a non-technical user, it's just impossible. If I just consider my own setup since upgrading to Mandrake 9.0 (I've used Mandrake since 7.0), the solutions to most of the problems I had, were beyond what the average user could have handled. Sure, IGLU was very helpful, which is again proof that if you GOOGLE around and RTFM before asking questions, the list members are usually very good about helping. But, why should this help be needed? I won't go into the details here, but those who have read my posts over the past couple of months know that I had problems with USB printer support, iptables, file permissions, etc. And most recently, I haven't been able to use my FlyVideo2000 card. Although all the problems (except the FlyVideo2000 card) are solved, it all required too much effort. As someone wrote to the list recently (sorry, don't remember who - and this is not an exact quote): I want the computer to do useful work - tweaking is only a means to that end and not the purpose of having the computer. So how can we expect the non-technical user to even consider LINUX? I consider myself a technical user - but I've given up on the TV problem, so what does that say? I know it's **sexy** to talk about self compiled kernels, etc. And, in fact, on MDK 8.1 (and previously) I did compile my own for various reasons. But, should I really have to compile a kernel just to watch TV? And, more importantly, what about my next door neighbour, who doesn't even know what the word compile means? How does he get to watch TV? Basically, all this keeps LINUX as an OS for **experts**. As I said, I don't intend to start a war - I am a committed LINUX user - but it really shouldn't be so hard. -- Shlomo Solomon http://come.to/shlomo.solomon Sent by KMail (KDE 3.0.3) on LINUX Mandrake 9.0 To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: mandrake and kernel
On Friday 10 January 2003 15:56, Ely Levy wrote: To whomever wanted the 2.4.20 version of mandrake's kernel you might want to try the rpms for the new 9.1beta1. thankls, but nfortunately, thie following is from the Mandrake web-site Mandrake 9.1 Beta is now being mirrored and will soon be available for testing. This first beta includes Linux 2.4.21pre2 BTW - they also say the beta is only 1 CD and that to decide what will be in the final release, they'll tally votes by **All MandrakeClub members**. Obviously I don't know what will removed in the end, but I personally like the idea of having the 3 CDs with thousands of packages so that anyone can choose to install whatever they want. -- Shlomo Solomon http://come.to/shlomo.solomon Sent by KMail (KDE 3.0.3) on LINUX Mandrake 9.0 To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: the problem with LINUX
On Sat, 11 Jan 2003, shlomo solomon wrote: My problem is that LINUX (as much as it's progressed over the years) is still much too hard to install, set up, and use. As things stand now, it's not really a viable alternative for John Q. User. As opposed to other OSs (that will remain nameless), there's still too much tweaking required. And for a non-technical user, it's just impossible. The real problem was seriously mis-identified. It is now actually easier to install Linux than MS-Windows. When I was forced to upgrade my PC's motherboard from one hosting a 300MHz processor to one hosting a 1.7GHz processor, Windows 95 died (there is some obscure driver in the Hebrew version of Windows 95, which fails when the processor's clock frequency goes beyond 1GHz; and a fix is available only for OSR2 - unavailable for the Hebrew edition) and Windows 2000 was in serious trouble. Linux 2.0.36 (very old by today's standards) booted on the new motherboard without problems. When was the last time anyone bought PC and MS-Windows and installed and configured by himself all the stuff? The computer shops sell you computers with your taste of MS-Windows preinstalled, configured and tested. If you run into problems, they support you under warranty. And they fight all the problems so that your experience is as seamless as possible. On the other hand, with Linux, you have to install it yourself - almost no one sells a PC with preinstalled Linux. You have to turn to friends and IGLU for support, rather than rely upon warranty. You have to fight your own battles rather than have the shop personnel fight for you. And... you know what? Your Linux battles are easier than the shop's MS-Windows wars. But since you don't see the shop's backroom, you are comparing your Linux battles with the experience of an MS-Windows user. --- Omer WARNING TO SPAMMERS: see at http://www.zak.co.il/spamwarning.html = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Photos of RMS dinner
Hello all! Anyone have digital photos of the event and if so where ? If you can email some to me I would appreciate it...:). Any free source advocating website that is willing to carry them ? (I'm willing to put them on my site but 3 visitors per year is not a good idea...:) Cheers, Mark -- Name: Mark Veltzer Title: Research and Development, Meta Ltd. Address: Habikaa 17/3, Kiriat-Sharet, Holon, Gush-Dan, Israel 58495 Phone: +972-03-5508163 Fax: +972-03-5508163 Email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Homepage: http://www.veltzer.org OpenSource: CPAN, user: VELTZER, mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED], url: http://search.cpan.org/author/VELTZER/ Public key: http://www.veltzer.org/ascx/public_key.asc, wwwkeys.pgp.net, 0xC71E5D38 To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: the problem with LINUX
Quoting shlomo solomon, from the post of Sat, 11 Jan: My problem is that LINUX (as much as it's progressed over the years) is still much too hard to install, set up, and use. As things stand now, it's not really a viable alternative for John Q. User. As opposed to other OSs (that will remain nameless), there's still too much tweaking required. And for a non-technical user, it's just impossible. Barging through an open door. what's your point? We all know it's the current state, we all kvetch about it, some of us have time to do something about it but lack the knowledge or interest. It's your free choice to run it, it's you right to document procedures to fix the problems you encountered, and it's your right to send fixes and suggestions to the appropriate vendors, authors and packagers. -- My own worse critic Ira Abramov http://ira.abramov.org/email/ This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal. msg24815/pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: the problem with LINUX
Two remarks: On Sat, 11 Jan 2003, shlomo solomon wrote: [snip ] I won't go into the details here, but those who have read my posts over the past couple of months know that I had problems with USB printer support, iptables, file permissions, etc. And most recently, I haven't been able to use my FlyVideo2000 card. Although all the problems (except the FlyVideo2000 card) are solved, it all required too much effort. Just one note: I don't remember what were your other problems, but the iptables problem was caused by the fact that you weren't satisfied with the built-in firewall of the distro, and wanted to use your own (and the ipchains service got in the way). This is not a problem I expect the mythical Joe User to have. As someone wrote to the list recently (sorry, don't remember who - and this is not an exact quote): I want the computer to do useful work - tweaking is only a means to that end and not the purpose of having the computer. So how can we expect the non-technical user to even consider LINUX? I consider myself a technical user - but I've given up on the TV problem, so what does that say? I know it's **sexy** to talk about self compiled kernels, etc. And, in fact, on MDK 8.1 (and previously) I did compile my own for various reasons. But, should I really have to compile a kernel just to watch TV? Maybe. If that what it takes. But in that case rebuilding the kernel should not be difficult. It should involve less magic. I see nothing wrong with aunt tilly being forced to compile a kernel. Heck: don't you find it weird that you have to download a 4MB or 8MB so-called driver that installs a bunch of programs that are totally unnecessary for the function of the real driver? Maybe there could be a half-compiled tree that fits the binary distro and kernel image, and you'll only need to build the kernel module itself? And, more importantly, what about my next door neighbour, who doesn't even know what the word compile means? How does he get to watch TV? Basically, all this keeps LINUX as an OS for **experts**. If rebuilding a kernel is to become a necessaty for configuration, then it should be wrapped with a simple interface. Debian already has something close to that. As I said, I don't intend to start a war - I am a committed LINUX user - but it really shouldn't be so hard. -- Tzafrir Cohen mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.technion.ac.il/~tzafrir = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
CLAN - The Comprehensive Linux Archive Network
Check: http://fc-solve.berlios.de/clan/clan.html http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0301.1/1206.html Note that I talked about this idea with Rik-van-Riel on the IRC and he liked it. I also posted it to the LKML, but since it is a goy mailing list I may not get meaningful answers until Monday Midday. Meanwhile, it is supposed to be to the Linux kernel and its kernel modules what CPAN or Debian apt are for Perl and Debian. (and then some). I.e: download, configure and install kernel modules from the Net (core ones or third party); as well as re-compile the kernel from scratch if necessary. Your suggestions, feedback and ideas are more than welcome. I'd like to know what I'm facing before I start writing a kernel-related piece of code that is entirely in user-land (probably even in Perl... ;-)). Regards, Shlomi Fish -- Shlomi Fish[EMAIL PROTECTED] Home Page: http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/ Home E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Let's suppose you have a table with 2^n cups... Wait a second - is n a natural number? = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: the problem with LINUX
On Sat, 11 Jan 2003 19:32:21 +0200 shlomo solomon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: although my wife and kids all use Windows - and of course that makes me the primary sysop for their machines :-(. Why? Isn't Windows so easy that anyone can handle it You see, as someone else already pointed out, no John Doe is actually installing and configuring their own Windows machine -- someone else do it for them either for a fee (the computer store, the technician, their ISP over the phone) or for other reasons (a family member, a neighbour, a coworker who is a computer expert). What is changing in the Linux world is: - Distributions are getting better at install/configure - More and more people are available to help others with Linux issues (I'm sure you can now help your friends or neighbours with *some* of their common problems). - Hardware vendors are (really slowly) beginning to pay attention as Linux becomes more widespread (e.g: you start to see advertisements [even in Israel] that refers to Linux compatibility). Cheer up, Oron Peled Voice/Fax: +972-4-8228492 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.actcom.co.il/~oron Linux: If you're not careful, you might actually learn something. -- Allen Wong = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Photos of RMS dinner
Quoting Katriel Traum, from the post of Sat, 11 Jan: http://www.tracking-hackers.com/solutions/kit.tgz I think you pasted the wrong URL. a small note - this site refers to crackers as hackers. very dissapointing :-/ -- The best thing since the invention of the cat Ira Abramov http://ira.abramov.org/email/ This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal. msg24819/pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Photos of RMS dinner
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 bloody kde. What I wanted to say, was that I don't have any pictures, but would be glad to host them if anyone have them, on the penguin. Katriel On Saturday 11 January 2003 20:34, Katriel Traum wrote: http://www.tracking-hackers.com/solutions/kit.tgz Katriel. On Saturday 11 January 2003 16:31, Mark Veltzer wrote: Hello all! Anyone have digital photos of the event and if so where ? If you can email some to me I would appreciate it...:). Any free source advocating website that is willing to carry them ? (I'm willing to put them on my site but 3 visitors per year is not a good idea...:) Cheers, Mark - -- +katrielëúøéàì+ pgp key: traum.org.il/gpg.asc -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE+IIHnDWy+Hv/461sRAt/+AKDDdpA+e5qTvE26593D+rZ4FMXwIwCeOqSk CY7ZH3cdwuRw3ZPJVR3vzxs= =rdK3 -END PGP SIGNATURE- To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Binary configuration files as panacea to whatever ails Linux (was: Re: the problem with LINUX)
On Sat, 11 Jan 2003, Eli Marmor wrote: * Migration from the current ASCII CONF format to binary format or database-based format. There are zillion GUI's for Apache (just as an example), and none is good, because it's impossible to develop a GOOD GUI for an ASCII-based configuration file. I guess that everybody is going to laugh at the REGISTRY and other MS stuff, but handling ASCII CONFfiles, with VI/emacs, when you are a dummy, is impossible. (I know that many people don't agree with this point, but I don't want to start a new argument, although I have a lot of experience and knowledge in this field; The last line remains thesame: COMPATIBILITY). Why, yes of course, if you move to binary configuration files for your applications and make their format a trade secret and release obfuscated source files for the modules, which deal with the configuration files, then you in effect erect a tollgate and make it difficult for developers to develop competing configuration tools for your applications, and then you can make some money from configuration tools, time spent at installation, consulting fees, ad nauseaum... --- Omer I am sick of binary configuration files! WARNING TO SPAMMERS: see at http://www.zak.co.il/spamwarning.html = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: the problem with LINUX
Quoth shlomo solomon: I'm afraid this is going to start a **war** and that's not my intention, but I really feel I've got to get this off my chest. War is good - drives the economy ;-). See if we shan't have one soon. My problem is that LINUX (as much as it's progressed over the years) is still much too hard to install, set up, and use. As things stand now, it's not really a viable alternative for John Q. User. As opposed to other OSs (that will remain nameless), there's still too much tweaking required. And for a non-technical user, it's just impossible. Good. That is the idea. Fuck JQU, (s)he is not worth the effort, anyway. The sooner we get back to the old priesthood computing model, the better. all required too much effort. As someone wrote to the list recently (sorry, don't remember who - and this is not an exact quote): I want the computer to do useful work - tweaking is only a means to that end and not the purpose of having the computer. You want to _USE_ the computer. You are not part of the priesthood - get out of my terminal room post-haste. Computers are not the means - they are the ends. Serve the computer, friend citizen, the computer is your friend. get to watch TV? Basically, all this keeps LINUX as an OS for **experts**. Yes. Experts. Us. All seventeen of us, give or take. As I said, I don't intend to start a war - I am a committed LINUX user - but it really shouldn't be so hard. It should not be so hard. It should be MILES harder. Go away - you're a troll. M -- ---OFCNL This is MY list. This list belongs to ME! I will flame anyone I want. Official Flamer/Cabal NON-Leader [EMAIL PROTECTED] = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: the problem with LINUX
Warning: the following text is long. Request: ease don't reply without reading till the end. There may be mistakes or things that you may want to argue with, but the whole picture is the important thing, and not the (example:) exact number of Linux/Windows users. I agree with Shlomo, but also with one of its responders (was it Omer?). There is a severe friendliness problem with Linux, but it is not RECOGNIZED correctly. Friendliness is rhymed with marketting, so everybody went to marketting experts, and asked them what whould be done. And those experts, Nebechs, who have never heard about kernel drivers, answered automatically: Don't you have a desktop environment management? Bad!. So now we have too many KDE/GNOME/etc., and no problem has been resolved. Then they said: Your graphics looks ugly! And you need better icons!. So now the graphics of Linux is better than Windows, but no problem has been resolved. Then they said: Your best word processor is a text editor 20-years old ? VERY BAD!. So now we have SEVERAL word processors, but no problem has been resolved. And I can continue and pass a mistake after mistake, but I think the point was understood. IF the real experts (i.e. technical experts) were asked, I believe their answers would be different (well, Linus had the same answers, but only because everybody told him: Listen to the marketting experts, they know what they say!). Now let's go to the real problem that makes Linux non-friendly (well, it's actually friendly, but a little selective with who its friends are...): Shlomo mentioned FlyVideo 2000 problems, and USB printer support. In addition, almost any Linux installation faces hardware devices that are not supported, or devices that are not detected. Linux users are forced to use very specific and expensive devices (e.g. modems) because many of the devices are not supported by Linux. Some people are not so dummy, and can google for solutions/workarounds. But how can you google in the middle of an installation, when you reach a problem, you don't have a second (working) PC, and you don't want to lose all the installation? (i.e. to cancel it just to google in your second partition and then reboot again and start the installation from the beginning). Some users receive DOC attachments, and can't view them. Or can import them to one of the Linux word processors, but don't see them correctly (usually they even don't know that the document was not viewed correctly, because they don't have a clue about how it was seen by its original author). Some users can't use their Linux mailer/scheduler, because it doesn't inter-operate perfectly with the organizations Exchange server (unless they pay money and purchase the commercial add-on of Evolution). Linux should not be blamed for these problems. For example, the hardware compatibility problems are caused just because there are 100 Windows users per any Linux user (or 50 per 1. The exact number is not important). Now imagine you are a hardware vendor. During the RD, you reach the testing phase. The chance that your new hardware will work in the first time you put it into a computer with Windows, is 0%. So you find the problem, fix it, and try again. After 10 or 20 itterrations, everything works correctly. Sometimes you also need to supply a device driver, so you develop a Windows driver. Usually, that loop of itterrations, or that device drivers, are not done with Linux. Because there are so many Windows users and so little Linux users, and that doesn't pay. It's like the bank site that was discussed here recently. Who is to blame? The vendor should not be blamed, because it is not economical for him to develop everything for Linux too. The Linux developers should not be blamed, because the better support of Windows is not thanks to the efforts of Microsoft, but an automatic result of its wide distribution. Only those marketting experts that claimed that better icons will solve the problem, should be blamed. They should not express any opinion without knowing kernel internals etc. So what can be done now? Focus ALL the efforts to improve the compatibility issues: * kernel, device drivers, etc. I think that the most important events for the friendliness of Linux in the recent years, were the launch of Linux 2.2, and the launch of Linux 2.4. And hardware is not the only compatibility issue related to the kernel: I think that the fact that NTFS is still only read-supported and not write-supported is severe. And there are many other examples. * Better filters, from and *TO* Windows applications (for example, PERFECT filters for WORD, Excel, PPT, etc.). And support for MS protocols and formats (e.g. better emulation of Outlook in mail apps, so an organizational Exchange server can be used better by Linux users). * Migration from the current ASCII CONF format to binary format or database-based format. There are zillion GUI's for Apache (just as an
Re: CLAN - The Comprehensive Linux Archive Network
On Sat, 11 Jan 2003, Shlomi Fish wrote: Meanwhile, it is supposed to be to the Linux kernel and its kernel modules what CPAN or Debian apt are for Perl and Debian. (and then some). I.e: download, configure and install kernel modules from the Net (core ones or third party); as well as re-compile the kernel from scratch if necessary. What exactly of the kernel tree do you need in order to successfully build a module foor your current kernel image (without building the whole tree)? -- Tzafrir Cohen mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.technion.ac.il/~tzafrir = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: the problem with LINUX
On Sat, 11 Jan 2003, Eli Marmor wrote:
* Migration from the current ASCII CONF format to binary format or
database-based format. There are zillion GUI's for Apache (just as an
example), and none is good, because it's impossible to develop a GOOD
GUI for an ASCII-based configuration file. I guess that everybody is
going to laugh at the REGISTRY and other MS stuff, but handling
ASCII CONF files, with VI/emacs, when you are a dummy, is impossible.
(I know that many people don't agree with this point, but I don't
want to start a new argument, although I have a lot of experience and
knowledge in this field; The last line remains the same:
COMPATIBILITY).
Some XML-based format may be a resonable comppormise between
machine-parsable and human-edible. Maybe. One big config file is
always a source of troubles.
Actually, we already have some examples of programs with relatively
complex configs (mozilla, KDE), and a very common debugging procedure is
'please {delete|rename} the ~/.{kde|mozilla} directory.
I have a feeling that one big registry will make things even worse.
What happens when those configs are lost?
(dont tell me anything about automatic backups. We all know that this is
something that is bound to fail sooner or later, as in windows 98)
--
Tzafrir Cohen
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.technion.ac.il/~tzafrir
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Re: Binary configuration files as panacea to whatever ails Linux (was: Re: the problem with LINUX)
Following Omer's response: Just to clarify, I've NEVER mentioned Proprietary format; XML is great (though you may inherit the problems of ASCII by writing a cheating schema). PostgreSQL/MySQL is good too (although it depends on a specific implementation of a database). And I was serious when I asked not to argue on this specific point; the last line of my entire message was clear, and if you don't agree with the specific point of binary/XML configuration format, just ignore it, and refer to the other points. I really don't want to start a new argument about this issue, and it is a minor point and a small part of my message. -- Eli Marmor [EMAIL PROTECTED] CTO, Founder Netmask (El-Mar) Internet Technologies Ltd. __ Tel.: +972-9-766-1020 8 Yad-Harutzim St. Fax.: +972-9-766-1314 P.O.B. 7004 Mobile: +972-50-23-7338 Kfar-Saba 44641, Israel = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: the problem with LINUX
Title: the problem with LINUX Yeah, linux is a crappy piece of software. What isn't? But at least, it was all written by kind sirs who awed nothing to you. Anyway, Windows is no better. Even Windows needs the touch of a techman for it to run smoothly and not crappily. Things, all things, should be made idiot-proof. Technicals oughta be as simple as possible, without compromising on workness. One thing that should not be compromised is lazyness. We ought not encourage people to needlessly and inefficiently work. Entries in mailing-lists should also be simple. Constructedof simple and short sentences, structured simply, carrying a simple message. -äåãòä î÷åøéú- îàú: shlomo solomon [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] ðùìç: ù 1/11/2003 19:32 àì: IGLU IGLU òåú÷ ìéãéòä: ðåùà: the problem with LINUX I'm afraid this is going to start a **war** and that's not my intention, but Ireally feel I've got to get this off my chest.Firstly, let me say that I've been using LINUX on and off for 6 years and thatit's been my only OS since deleting OS/2 (z"l) 3 years ago. So I'm acommitted LINUX user. And I have no intention of using anything else -although my wife and kids all use Windows - and of course that makes me theprimary sysop for their machines :-(.My problem is that LINUX (as much as it's progressed over the years) is stillmuch too hard to install, set up, and use. As things stand now, it's notreally a viable alternative for John Q. User. As opposed to other OSs (thatwill remain nameless), there's still too much tweaking required. And for anon-technical user, it's just impossible.If I just consider my own setup since upgrading to Mandrake 9.0 (I've usedMandrake since 7.0), the solutions to most of the problems I had, were beyondwhat the average user could have handled. Sure, IGLU was very helpful, whichis again proof that if you GOOGLE around and RTFM before asking questions,the list members are usually very good about helping. But, why should thishelp be needed? I won't go into the details here, but those who have read myposts over the past couple of months know that I had problems with USBprinter support, iptables, file permissions, etc. And most recently, Ihaven't been able to use my FlyVideo2000 card. Although all the problems(except the FlyVideo2000 card) are solved, it all required too much effort.As someone wrote to the list recently (sorry, don't remember who - and thisis not an exact quote): I want the computer to do useful work - tweaking isonly a means to that end and not the purpose of having the computer.So how can we expect the non-technical user to even consider LINUX? I considermyself a technical user - but I've given up on the TV problem, so what doesthat say? I know it's **sexy** to talk about self compiled kernels, etc. And,in fact, on MDK 8.1 (and previously) I did compile my own for variousreasons. But, should I really have to compile a kernel just to watch TV? And,more importantly, what about my next door neighbour, who doesn't even knowwhat the word compile means? How does he get to watch TV? Basically, all thiskeeps LINUX as an OS for **experts**.As I said, I don't intend to start a war - I am a committed LINUX user - butit really shouldn't be so hard.--Shlomo Solomonhttp://come.to/shlomo.solomonSent by KMail (KDE 3.0.3) on LINUX Mandrake 9.0==To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] withthe word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the commandecho unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] Hotmail.co.il - Powered by IBM eServer
Re: the problem with LINUX
On Saturday 11 January 2003 21:28, Tzafrir Cohen wrote: And re-install all of your programs. And hopefully you have your config saved. Talking about re-installation of Windows here, not Linux. What you mention is mystrious behaviours, not hardware installations. Proper usage of packages mean that you have less problems with packages. In this particular case, I suspect hardware problems. A journaling file system reduces the chance of file corruption and thus gives you a more stable system. But anyway, if you get in a habit of re-installations (bad!) make sure to create a kick-start configuration o shorten its time (Mandrake, and probably other distros as well, offer to do this in the end of the installation) Once more, this particular problem was with Windows. - [snip] Basically, all this keeps LINUX as an OS for **experts**. IMHO, what is required to bring Linux out of the expert OS niche, is : - Vendor-supplied hardware drivers , no matter if binary or not, or at the very least open specifications. And please stop telling me all this nonsense about And what if vendor decides to stop supporting those drivers? And what if the hardware is rare and those who have it, can't write code? And why should we the users wait several years till the drivers are there? I personally prefer working hardware and then all these freedom principles, but YMMV. Anybody here with ADSL modems that are not supported under win98? At least if you happen to have recent Windows, you haven't to wait several years for Linux community to reverse-engineer the driver. What about the (pctel?) binary-only winmodem drivers that required you to move back to a sepecific, obsolete, and insecure kernel just to be connected to the internet? (I usually want to make sure I have a fixed kernel when I connect to the internet) Vote with your purse - don't purchase such modem, if the vendor doesn't have a driver for your particular distribution ( or for your particular version of Windows). Or purchase it and wait several years for the driver to be reverse-engineered ( this may never happen ). Do you know how many people had to compile their kernel just because of those binary-only drivers? Blame kernel developers for that - the kernel has NO INTERFACE to accept binary third-party drivers. In my book, it's a serious obstacle. IMHO, hardware vendor support for Linux is necessary for Linux to become mainstream desktop system. There are three ways for a hardware vendor to provide such support- either the vendor publishes the specs or it writes a binary driver or it writes an open-source driver. In the first case, the hardware would be supported in any Linux kernel, but you as a user have to face a good bit of delay till the driver be actually written. But - a lot of hardware vendors just wouldn't accept this way due to trade secret / legal /etc issues. And but - if the hardware is rare, there may be as well that noone in the Linux community have any interest in writing the driver, even with the specs there in the open. The second way would me much more acceptable to hardware vendors, but it is not so acceptable for the users. There may be a midway - part of the driver is binary, and part is provided in source and may be easily recompiled to match any kernel. NVidia comes to mind as an example. The third way may face the same obstacle as the first way - trade secrets / legal issues. - Sensible defaults. You shouldn't dig around a ton of configuration files just to get something simple to work. You may tweak it later, but it should work out of the box. This is getting better, but it isn't there yet. IMHO it's quite there. Care to give an example? XFree86 configuration. Change a monitor from 17 to some old 14 ( say your monitor is broken) and risk just damaging the 14 one or X failing to start. Or change a mouse from PS\2 one to USB one. The values are hardcoded into the configuration file leaving no way for autodetection. Stupidity at its best, pure and simple. - There should be BOTH GUI configuration tools AND CLI configuration tools. Right. There should be a way to automate everything. This is very important, and something many people forget. If the only proper way for me to add a user is through the vendor's users management interface (because this interface does some bookeeping and other things besides adduser) then the vendor should provide a command-line tool with equivalent power to the GUI tool. Or a GUI tool with equivalent power to the CLI tool. I've tried to stress GUI. I use Mandrake too. While overall it is a very good distro, part of their Drak* tools are actually exactly what I've described - half-baked underdeveloped POS, Example, please? DrakConnect. sorry for being brutal. It's actually a lot easier to comprehend and tune configuration files by hand then to use these tools. Let's formulate it like the following : for anything
Re: the problem with LINUX
On Sat, 11 Jan 2003, Shoshannah Forbes wrote: * Dependency hell. Nothing like running a RPM (when you are not connected to any network) to get dependency errors about missing files. Or when you are using another machine (with a fast internet connection) to download RPM's and burn them on a CD- many times you have no way to know what dependent RPM's you need to download, so you can actually install the application on the other machine. apt I know tools like apt that help, but they are no good for computers with no internet connection, and are horrible over dial up. apt-get --recon --download-only install package Will print what you need to download the files required to install package. This gives you a nice list of URLs to go and fetch. I hope they improve. (ROX desktop http://rox.sourceforge.net/ addresses this issue with application packages similar to what can be found in mac OSX) Nice, but totally misses the point. Dependencies are here to solve a problem (I've just installed the program foo and it dosn't work can you run it from the terminal? terminal? yuck. well, OK. double-click on terminal icon, p-r-o-g-r-a-m-enter. I see something about failing to load a library). But RPM does not attempt to resolve dependencies. This is a GoodThing: rpm should not be aware of the extra complexity in the existance of a repository (more than one? an up2date server?) of packages and how exactly to decide which of them to install. That is what apt, urpmi and up2date are for. * Unless you work with the CLI (and even then sometimes) the file system is really cryptic. The file system is always very cryptic. On every system. Where did that RPM install the application? rpmq ? kpackage? rpmdrake? Any information that is available in a command line program can be made avilable to some GUI. In this case such GUIs exist. Where are my drivers? Where is the application I see an alias to in the kicker/ launcher/ whatever? The answer is not obvious and takes a lot of digging to find out. drivers are not programs, and need not have menu items. Debian has had a good menuing system for quite a while. This system was later adopted by Mandrake. If a package wants to add itself to the menus, it only needs to create one file and run the menu-updating procedures. This will add it to any programs menu in the system. However it seems that this system is not going to take over: gnome and kde folks decided to have a standard of their own, and it has currently been adopted by (at least) RedHat: http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/menu/draft/menu-spec/menu-spec.html Those files are in an XML format. So you can't easily rem-out lines there with your favorite text editor. * Not good enough defaults in many applications, combined with too many configuration options. I have seen how this happens: the developers can't agree about some design issue, so they end up saying let's just make this a pref. * In general, too many things *have* to be configured, and configuring takes a lot of time. Yes, it is fun to tweak here and there, but I use my machine to get other things done, not to tweak all day. Then configure debconf not to ask you that many questions. * Too much of the UI is legacy UI, which was originally used in another system to overcome a system limitation, and copied as is into linux, although linux does not have the original limitation at all, and could have used much better UI. This also leads to cluttered, confusing and unusable UI's. (see http://mpt.phrasewise.com/stories/storyReader$374 Just a comment: I read the article, and don't consider those examples good ones. The worst one is the suggestion to have recently-used lists contain inodes instead of files-names (inode numbers wil be invalidated after the next save ;-) ). -- Tzafrir Cohen mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.technion.ac.il/~tzafrir = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Binary configuration files as panacea to whatever ails Linux(was: Re: the problem with LINUX)
Hi, On Sat, 11 Jan 2003, Omer Zak wrote: Why, yes of course, if you move to binary configuration files for your applications and make their format a trade secret and release obfuscated source files for the modules, which deal with the configuration files, then you in effect erect a tollgate and make it difficult for developers to develop competing configuration tools for your applications, and then you can make some money from configuration tools, time spent at installation, consulting fees, ad nauseaum... So true, but we also have to beware of some types of text files... For example, I am a big proponent of XML files as a very small scale replacement for a database. It has all you need for a small scale DB. But the problem with XML files is that they exhibit the same parsing problems that text files have, along with shoddy readability, like binary files. That said, I probably should state that I personally prefer text files. And the author of the software should work a little on making the text file ordered reasonably. Amit -- Amit Margalit = Gee, Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: the problem with LINUX
On Sunday, Jan 12, 2003, at 01:03 Asia/Jerusalem, Alex Chudnovsky wrote: And but - if the hardware is rare, there may be as well that noone in the Linux community have any interest in writing the driver, even with the specs there in the open. Tell me about it :-( That is exactly the case with the DVD Decoder card on my 4 tear old laptop. The best I got was a post by a developer back in 1991 saying that since there aren't enough people with this card for them to write the driver: http://www.au.linuxvideo.org/lists/livid-dev/2001-February/ msg00222.html Sigh. Mandrake 9 actually identified what it is (LuxSonor LS242), but I don't have anything who knows how to run or use it. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: the problem with LINUX
On Sun, 12 Jan 2003, Alex Chudnovsky wrote: On Saturday 11 January 2003 21:28, Tzafrir Cohen wrote: And re-install all of your programs. And hopefully you have your config saved. Talking about re-installation of Windows here, not Linux. Me too. What about all of your configuration there? Or do you give it up in advance? If so: an equivalent (and faster) linux solution would be a kick-start installation... Basically, all this keeps LINUX as an OS for **experts**. IMHO, what is required to bring Linux out of the expert OS niche, is : - Vendor-supplied hardware drivers , no matter if binary or not, or at the very least open specifications. And please stop telling me all this nonsense about And what if vendor decides to stop supporting those drivers? And what if the hardware is rare and those who have it, can't write code? And why should we the users wait several years till the drivers are there? I personally prefer working hardware and then all these freedom principles, but YMMV. Anybody here with ADSL modems that are not supported under win98? At least if you happen to have recent Windows, you haven't to wait several years for Linux community to reverse-engineer the driver. What is the market share of those unsupported OSs? FYI, linux 2.0 is still maintained. What about the (pctel?) binary-only winmodem drivers that required you to move back to a sepecific, obsolete, and insecure kernel just to be connected to the internet? (I usually want to make sure I have a fixed kernel when I connect to the internet) Vote with your purse - don't purchase such modem, if the vendor doesn't have a driver for your particular distribution ( or for your particular version of Windows). Or purchase it and wait several years for the driver to be reverse-engineered ( this may never happen ). The particilar cas I'm talking about is one in which the original vendor no longer existed. Do you know how many people had to compile their kernel just because of those binary-only drivers? Blame kernel developers for that - the kernel has NO INTERFACE to accept binary third-party drivers. I don't want to blame them for producing a better kernel. I don't want to blame them for breaking unnecessary legacy cruft to remove some of the existing bloat. In my book, it's a serious obstacle. IMHO, hardware vendor support for Linux is necessary for Linux to become mainstream desktop system. There are three ways for a hardware vendor to provide such support- either the vendor publishes the specs or it writes a binary driver or it writes an open-source driver. In the first case, the hardware would be supported in any Linux kernel, but you as a user have to face a good bit of delay till the driver be actually written. Unless the venor actually writes the driver. Recall that it is the vendor interested in selling hardware, just as much (or even more than) you interested in buying it. This mean also that this vendor is the only one wit the full source to your kernel (and thus the only one in a good position to give you support) - Sensible defaults. You shouldn't dig around a ton of configuration files just to get something simple to work. You may tweak it later, but it should work out of the box. This is getting better, but it isn't there yet. IMHO it's quite there. Care to give an example? XFree86 configuration. Change a monitor from 17 to some old 14 ( say your monitor is broken) and risk just damaging the 14 one or X failing to start. Or change a mouse from PS\2 one to USB one. The values are hardcoded into the configuration file leaving no way for autodetection. Stupidity at its best, pure and simple. What about your distro's X config tools? Last time I tried, Mandrake's DrakeX was useful enough. It is also run at install time. I use Mandrake too. While overall it is a very good distro, part of their Drak* tools are actually exactly what I've described - half-baked underdeveloped POS, Example, please? DrakConnect. sorry for being brutal. It's actually a lot easier to comprehend and tune configuration files by hand then to use these tools. Let's formulate it like the following : for anything that goes inside a distro, if it includes a configuration file, there must be some GUI tool to configure it. And this GUI tool should be INTEGRATED with another configuration tools. Mandrake's tools (almost all) run both in X and in full-screen terminal mode. All of them are availble from the main control panel and from the menus. And you still have KDE control center, GNOME control center and Mandrake control center, with overlapping functions. OK, there are tools in the Cooker enabling embedding drak* tools into the KDE control center. The lapping functionalities are (IMHO) because the kde and gnome control-centers should have nothing to do with system-administration. A GUI tool should not be
Re: the problem with LINUX
Hi On Sun, 12 Jan 2003, Shoshannah Forbes wrote: On Sunday, Jan 12, 2003, at 01:19 Asia/Jerusalem, Tzafrir Cohen wrote: I know tools like apt that help, but they are no good for computers with no internet connection, and are horrible over dial up. apt-get --recon --download-only install package Will print what you need to download the files required to install package. This gives you a nice list of URLs to go and fetch. Ah, but the other computer is not running linux (it is not my machine). On the computer that needs to download I hope they improve. (ROX desktop http://rox.sourceforge.net/ addresses this issue with application packages similar to what can be found in mac OSX) Nice, but totally misses the point. Dependencies are here to solve a problem (I've just installed the program foo and it dosn't work can you run it from the terminal? terminal? yuck. well, OK. double-click on terminal icon, p-r-o-g-r-a-m-enter. I see something about failing to load a library). How do they solve that problem? Application bundles have are the needed resources with them- in what looks like the user like a single file. You won't have that problem in the first place. I know- I have used this system myself (on osx). And it makes install and uninstall a snap- to install: just copy the file to wherever you want it to be. Want to run the application? Double click that single file . Want to uninstall? delete it, and if you want you can also delete it's preferences file from ~/Library/Prefrences This way, things are easy to understand: you always manipulate one object, what is going on stays clear, even for the humblest user. This is one of the things that makes Mac OS so friendly. Why not copy? Easy to understand, but messy. The whole point of the linux FSH (File System Hirarchy) standard is that the packaging system is good enough to keep track of files. Therefore there is no problem with cluttering /usr/bin and /usr/lib : you can easily tell to which package a file from there belongs. This is very useful what you think of backups: On a proper system you need not backup /usr . You only need to backup /var and /etc . With packages you'll also need to backup $packs_root/pack1/var, $packs_root/pack2/data and $packs_root/pack3/user\ config But RPM does not attempt to resolve dependencies. This is a GoodThing: rpm should not be aware of the extra complexity in the existance of a repository (more than one? an up2date server?) of packages and how exactly to decide which of them to install. In theory- you are correct. in practice, this doesn't work, especially for the novice user- RPMs just fail due to dependency problems way to often. Think again about my Grandmother- she does download applications from the internet. Do you really thing she would be able to download and install a program on linux? Without someone holding her hand? Again: this problem is caused because people use rpm directly. Where did that RPM install the application? rpmq ? kpackage? rpmdrake? Any information that is available in a command line program can be made avilable to some GUI. In this case such GUIs exist. And how is my Grandmother (who uses a computer) supposed to know this? And why do I need yet _another_ tool to find this out, and not from the WM/OS itself? The above was information about RPM packages. Your grandmother naturally need not bother about rpms, so the question should be how do I run this program why ir 'rpm -ql package | grep bin/' important here? answered in the next item. Debian has had a good menuing system for quite a while. This system was later adopted by Mandrake. If a package wants to add itself to the menus, it only needs to create one file and run the menu-updating procedures. This will add it to any programs menu in the system. But how I, as a user, can tell from the menu where the application really is on my hard disk? a. Why is that important? b. look at the KDE shortcut? /usr/lib/menu/whatever ? KDE has a menu editor, IIRC -- Tzafrir Cohen mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.technion.ac.il/~tzafrir = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: the problem with LINUX
Hi :-) On Sunday, Jan 12, 2003, at 02:10 Asia/Jerusalem, Tzafrir Cohen wrote: On Sun, 12 Jan 2003, Shoshannah Forbes wrote: On Sunday, Jan 12, 2003, at 01:19 Asia/Jerusalem, Tzafrir Cohen wrote: I know tools like apt that help, but they are no good for computers with no internet connection, and are horrible over dial up. apt-get --recon --download-only install package Will print what you need to download the files required to install package. This gives you a nice list of URLs to go and fetch. Ah, but the other computer is not running linux (it is not my machine). On the computer that needs to download You lost me here. The linux machine has no internet connection. The non-linux machine will do all the downloading and burn a CD to be used on the linux. How can one know which files to download? Easy to understand, but messy. Isn't scattering files all over the place messy? Dunno. Sounds like trouble to me. The whole point of the linux FSH (File System Hirarchy) standard is that the packaging system is good enough to keep track of files. Notice- the file system. Not the end user. Therefore there is no problem with cluttering /usr/bin and /usr/lib : you can easily tell to which package a file from there belongs How? (for the middle ground user, not the super power user). In theory- you are correct. in practice, this doesn't work, especially for the novice user- RPMs just fail due to dependency problems way to often. snip Again: this problem is caused because people use rpm directly. * I guess I missed some basic stuff. Then what are RPMs for? * I don't think that my Grandmother would be able to use graphical wrappers for APT- they are still too complex. No to mention that many applications do not appear in a repository. The above was information about RPM packages. Your grandmother naturally need not bother about rpms, so the question should be how do I run this program I know my mother wants to know where the application she installed is. She has asked me to show her how to find out (in Windows). But how I, as a user, can tell from the menu where the application really is on my hard disk? a. Why is that important? Why not? Maybe it makes me feel better? b. look at the KDE shortcut? /usr/lib/menu/whatever ? * I am not using KDE (and who says she will?) * Why the user needs to go to a completely different place to find information about the object? BTW, I admit that I still don't understand the logic that decides what to put in the user home directory and what to put in /usr/lib * Again, linux has no middle ground between know nothing, don't care and super power user. -- The News, Uncensored http://www.tellinglies.org/news/ = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
unsubscribe
I have unsubscribed from this list several times according to the instructions below, and received confirmation that I am unsubscribed, but the messages keep coming. Would someone please delete my name from the list. thanks brian = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: CLAN - The Comprehensive Linux Archive Network
On Sat, 11 Jan 2003, Tzafrir Cohen wrote: On Sat, 11 Jan 2003, Shlomi Fish wrote: Meanwhile, it is supposed to be to the Linux kernel and its kernel modules what CPAN or Debian apt are for Perl and Debian. (and then some). I.e: download, configure and install kernel modules from the Net (core ones or third party); as well as re-compile the kernel from scratch if necessary. What exactly of the kernel tree do you need in order to successfully build a module foor your current kernel image (without building the whole tree)? First of all CLAN will check if the currently installed kernel is capable enough of supporting such module. For instance, if it has Ethernet support compiled in and this is an Ethernet driver. If not, it will re-compile the kernel with the Ethernet support added. Regards, Shlomi Fish -- Tzafrir Cohen mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.technion.ac.il/~tzafrir -- Shlomi Fish[EMAIL PROTECTED] Home Page: http://t2.technion.ac.il/~shlomif/ Home E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Let's suppose you have a table with 2^n cups... Wait a second - is n a natural number? = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: the problem with LINUX
On Sat, 11 Jan 2003, Eli Marmor wrote: Focus ALL the efforts to improve the compatibility issues: * kernel, device drivers, etc. I thinkthat the most important events for the friendliness of Linux in the recent years, were the launch of Linux 2.2, and the launch of Linux 2.4. And hardware is not the only compatibility issue related to the kernel: I think that the fact that NTFS is still only read-supported and not write-supported is severe. And there are many other examples. I think Mandrake - latest versions is much better than what I previously encounters. It detects and configures correctly all the hardware available on the machine on several installation I head or experienced. Furthermore, this is the i386 we are talking about. Like Moshe Zadka said it is a collection of incompatible hardware components from different vendors. Expecting it to work 100% of the time. * Better filters, from and *TO* Windows applications (for example, PERFECT filters for WORD, Excel, PPT, etc.). And support for MS protocols and formats (e.g. better emulation of Outlook in mail apps, so an organizational Exchange server can be used better by Linux users). Agreed. Let me switch back. This is always a good idea. * Migration from the current ASCII CONF format to binary format or database-based format. There are zillion GUI's for Apache (just as an example), and none is good, because it's impossible to develop a GOOD GUI for an ASCII-based configuration file. I guess that everybody is going to laugh at the REGISTRY and other MS stuff, but handling ASCII CONF files, with VI/emacs, when you are a dummy, is impossible. (I know that many people don't agree with this point, but I don't want to start a new argument, although I have a lot of experience and knowledge in this field; The last line remains the same: COMPATIBILITY). Over my dead body! Config files stay ASCII, so they can be edited by hand. If you want to write an abstraction layer above Apache's configuration that will be less capabale than what Apache provides - fine - do that. Most users who'll use it won't edit the Apache configuration by hand anyways. Those who do will soon be told that it will be hard for them to switch back. I want to keep the configuration files as ASCII because that way the terminal is the computer and I can ssh into it and do everything I can do with the most sophisticated X/KDE environment. This is the UNIX way of doing things and regardless of how much new power users (Aunt Tillie will never play with the configuration or install anything) are frustrated by it, we must keep it this way. Zillions of development hours were wasted on wrong issues, such as KDE/GNOME (although we all enjoy them); Now is the time to start working on the real problems, before it's too late! Relax, Eli - it's never going to be too late. Linus has so many bigot users who use it because it is a superior system technically and won't trade it for anything else. I encountered someone who used Linux to test Infiniband (network devices of 2-3 GBits) cards and used g++/gcc, Emacs, CVS and other tools and did not know a thing about ./configure;make;make install or RPMs. Whether we conquer the home computer market now, later or never makes little difference, as Linux is already widely used and NT sucks in comparison to it in much more ways that Linux does relative to it. Children will have little problem using Linux instead of Windows. And they will find editing obscure ascii files fascinating. Microsoft spreads a lot of FUD regarding the supposed superiority of Windows. But this FUD is becoming less effective on the general public who see even not-too-intelligent users use Linux for quite some time. It all depends what are you doing with Linux. I once upgraded half of my Mandrake system by compiling the SRPMs. I'll doubt someone else who is not a hard-core developer like me will need a newer package. And I believe Microsoft wishes to switch to Linux where they have a well defined POSIX, LSB, X and KDE or GNOME standard that has been around for users, and they can build nice user-land applications over it, and get rid of the over-engineered, over-complicated, under-understood, 50 million LOCs and growing and pretty much dysfunctional operating system known as NT. They can translate everything (consultants, certification programs, services) to Linux, contribute about 5 developers in each one of its layers for good measure (who'll develop open-source GPL/LGPL/BSD code) and then have a nice stable interface that they can use for years, and compile on every other UNIX or Linux version as well. I'm not saying Windows is not superior to Linux in some respects. But as a general rule programming for Linux is much less frustrating that with the Win32 API, MFC, VB, COM or all the other Microsoft APIs, some of which Microsoft can distribute for Linux as well. Once the Linux market is large enough, we are going to see MS products for Linux, and
Re: Binary configuration files as panacea to whatever ails Linux (was: Re: the problem with LINUX)
I didn't want to detail too much in the point of CONF files, because it was not my main point. But it caused some balagan, so please let me give an example of a format that is not proprietary, and on the other hand is not XML, and still is great for developing GUI's for: X Resources. Does it threat anybody? No? OK; Let's go on: There are several requirements that are critical for creating a good GUI. One of them is the ability to work against a working program, and not just a file. Because you can't just open the file, guess all the values of ifdefs, the default path (for includes), the directory that the opedning program is in during the open, etc. When you are working against a working program, you know its current run-time values of these resources. In addition, it allows you to affect its CURRENT behavior immediately, resulting in a WYSIWYG that is so important for GUI (think editres; don't think UIM/X). Of course, you need a bidirectional mapping (i.e. not only from the disk representation to the in-memory representation, but also vice- versa); Otherwise, the changes can't be translated to rules of configuration files. You need clear definitions; Not definitions that may start anywhere in the line, with any number of leading/trailing spaces/tabs/etc. that you never know which are part of the value and which are not, with leveling that is based on semi-XML directives (/directory /), with ambiguous comments, with ifdefs that you never know if the leveling that is hidden by them is really hidden - or only the rules inside those levels, with too many ways to say yes (e.g. tRuE, oN, falling back to the default, etc.) and so on. There are many other formatting issues that ease or harden the ability to develop a good GUI. X Resources, contrary to ASCII CONF files (like Apache's or NAMED), meets all these demands. Of course, it is not so friendly, but when you have a great GUI - who cares? It is still friendly enough for hackers like us. Will this migration happen? No way; People develop Open Source for their own fun. Or for their own use (for example, most of the core developers of Apache need it for their own sites). When there is a company (please don't force me to spell the name of Redmond's companies) behind the product, they have balls (sorry for the word...) and don't give a sh*t (sorry again) on their users, so they can replace formats whenever it is important for the evolution of their product. Of course, there are also negative cases, so please don't give examples that Microsoft (sorry) abused this process and replaced a good format by a bad format or broke the compatibility of a program that was used by 100 million users. But when the users develop the program, there are some things that they would never do. Some of these things are bad, but improving the format is sometimes good and needed. P.S. Many years ago, I developed a great GUI for X. You could take even a binary program, and change its screens, widgets, add more dialogs/forms/screens, etc. Fully WYSIWYG, of course. I used it (among other uses) for localizing Netscape 3/4 (although there were no sources), which involved not only translation, but also new screens and forms (for example - to choose the default direction, the default user interface language, help of the Hebrew support, etc.). I used it also for developing callbacks (without writing one C line!) and applying BiDi values to specific widgets (e.g. Visual/Logical). I tried to do it for other CONF formats (e.g. Apache), but there was no chance. I don't care if the format is X Resources, or database-based, or (sorry!) registry, or even XML (though XML doesn't meet all the demands); I just want a format that its designers/definers thought about a front-end when they designed it, and not only on the flexibility of users who use VI to edit it by-hand or on backward compatibility issues. -- Eli Marmor [EMAIL PROTECTED] CTO, Founder Netmask (El-Mar) Internet Technologies Ltd. __ Tel.: +972-9-766-1020 8 Yad-Harutzim St. Fax.: +972-9-766-1314 P.O.B. 7004 Mobile: +972-50-23-7338 Kfar-Saba 44641, Israel = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
