----- Original Message ----- From: "Erik Reuter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Brin-L" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, February 18, 2002 8:02 PM Subject: Re: Win 98 Registry (Shortened down response to a long thread)
> > Well, from my experience with people running field systems, that's > > not really the case. I'm restrained because I'm talking, in part, > > about other people's work, but lets see what I can do within the > > constraints. > > Okay, first of all, my original statement concerned using Linux for > home productivity use. That means email, web browsing, word processing, > spreadsheets, databases, mp3s, etc. So you are getting pretty far afield > from my original statement. That is true. And I admit that I use the Linux box I have as a secondary box. I do what I need to on that box, which is maninly compiling and testing code within the field system. But, part of that is the practicality. Most of the people I work with/have as customers use Windows based software. That means that they can easily read M$ office stuff. Plus, the software that my family likes to run is easily available at the local store for M$, but not for Linux. Things like digital camera download programs, geneology software, etc. Realistically, it needs to be a matter of principal for me to use UNIX. > It sounds like you are saying that when you are using specialized > hardware, it is hard to get or keep hardware drivers working with Linux. The hardware is a laptop PC. As far as I know, its from one of the top 5 manufacturers of laptops. The problem is that the software that is being run is fairly complex. > > How many hours of downtime did you have? This one time, about 4 hours. Another time, it was about a day over a very simple thing. > So, in my case I have the "costs" spent learning Linux, which are > not inconsiderable, but I only had to do it once and now I am more > productive than I would be in Windows, which "pays" for itself > continuously. (Think of it as funding for basic research to improve > your future :-) Now, you would no doubt claim that for you, the costs > of learning Linux outweigh any productivity gains that might accrue. I > would accept such an argument, but not the oversimplified one you give > above. > And, you have to look at the overhead of teaching my family to run in Linux, translating from Linux programs to Windows, etc. > About the only time you need to reboot Linux is when you change hardware > or kernels. So I'm not sure why you kept rebooting (my computer has > been up since Jan 9, and only was down then so I could add some new > hardware). Its a laptop that I put on a shelf when I don't use it. I had an error that occured during shutdown, and I couldn't bring the system up. > > I tried man and got very little that was helpful. If I already knew > > the command (IIRC it was e2fsck, but I was just told it by someone was > > able to access professionally for field system work I was doing) then > > man would have helped. But, I don't think I could have typed man boot > > problem. > > Also, you didn't have to call e2fsck directly. fsck is a front end to > the file system specific programs, and will figure out that e2fsck needs > to be run. fsck is pretty commong across *NICES, so now you know that > when you need to check your file system on almost any UNIX system, use > fsck. I ran fsck and absoultely nothing but the prompt came back. > Ughh, don't use the StarOffice browser. Mozilla or Galeon are excellent, > however. With Mozilla you can turn off pop-up windows so the evil > websites can't pop up ads on your screen. By the way, Mozilla is also > available for Windows. I highly recommend it. http://www.mozilla.org/ > > Also, I wouldn't recommend StarOffice either, unless it is just to > maintain file compatibility with Windows users. There are, IMO, better > programs available. > > I'd say that the original design was like that, but now there is a > great diversity of software designed for programmers, but also for > productivity users. Have you spent much time in KDE? Almost as easy to > start usinga as Windows, and getting better all the time. IIRC, the head of the software group for the company I worked for indicated that it wasn't very much use for the project. > If you are talking about home productivity use, from what you've said > I don't think you've given Linux a fair chance. I recommend you get a > hold of the most recent Mandrake distribution, install it and set it to > start KDE, and then use it for a while. You can even install it onto > your Windows file system. > That may be. But, realistically, I've always run the rule of thumb that changing systems needs a factor of 2 improvement in speed to justify it. (A number of engineers/scientists/programmers developed this rull of thumb during a few bull sessions about 15 years ago). Obviously productivity is a bit different from this, but there are some parallels. Given the fact that I will always be swapping files back and forth with Windows users, have a family that runs Windows programs, I feel need a big plus to justify the overhead of running Linux. Looking at the home productivity market share of Linux, I'm guessing that's not uncommon. Indeed, I'd argue that someone like me is likely to be a trendsetter that way, more than someone like my wife or kids or mother or mother-in-law. This is why I used myself as an example. Dan M.
