Linux-Advocacy Digest #580, Volume #25 Fri, 10 Mar 00 03:13:07 EST
Contents:
Re: 11 Days Wasted ON Linux (Ron House)
Re: Top 10 reasons why Linux sux (Marada C. Shradrakaii)
Re: Windows Network Configuratin? (Cliff Wagner)
Re: Top 10 reasons why Linux sux (Donn Miller)
Re: Salary? (Martin Redmond)
Re: Disproving the lies. ("Erik Funkenbusch")
Re: Windows Network Configuratin? ("Erik Funkenbusch")
Re: Top 10 reasons why Linux sux ("Mike")
Re: Winvocates 10...Linvocates 0 ("Mike")
XFree86 v. 4.0 hits the street. ("Bobby D. Bryant")
Re: Salary? (Vilmos Soti)
Re: Windows Network Configuratin? (Bob Hauck)
Re: Drestin: time for you to buy UNIX for DumbAsses (Darren Winsper)
Re: Giving up on NT (mark)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Ron House <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: 11 Days Wasted ON Linux
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 04:38:47 +0000
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> On Thu, 09 Mar 2000 07:26:56 +0000, Ron House <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >
> >Well, there is one point here: RH distributions contain unproven
> >experimental rubbish that hasn't had its raw edges knocked off.
>
> For example?
Oh, forgot to mention: RH6.0: takes 5 minutes to mount an NFS partition
from a Unix server.
--
Ron House [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Never fear the truth.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Marada C. Shradrakaii)
Subject: Re: Top 10 reasons why Linux sux
Date: 10 Mar 2000 04:52:11 GMT
>10. X-Windows fonts look like shit. Go "borrow" true-type fonts and
>they still suck. Mac looks great. Windows looks good. Linux looks like
>shit. Not to mention X-Windows is slow as shit.
>
Tried XF86 4.0 yet? It's supposed to improve performance, and it's out NOW.
>9. Sound Blaster Live is supported in an abortive manner, if you can
>even make it work at all.
Not everyone owns one, so not everyone cares.
>
>8. Postscript printers are really the only ones that fully function
>easily under Linux.
My HP 612C works just fine, cost 100USD, and was fairly easily set up. My
Panasonic 2135 dot-matrix was also easily configured. (on Slack 4.0/7.0 and RH
5.1 respectively)
>7. Scanners. SCSI scanners still rule in the Linux world although they
>offer no advantage over parallel port scanners
I own a parallel port scanner, unsupported. I'd love to have it on another
interface, as I have to remember to turn it on every time I print.
>6.Dial up's and Free ISP's as well as AOL.
They should follow standards. That's why they're standards.
If you write your messages in backwards Kilrathi, would you be surprised if
nobody can read them? Similarly, AOL/<insert free isp> breaks the standards of
dialup connection handling; it's not our business to futz with that when there
are better uses of resources.
>5.Netscape. If you hate Netscape, you'll hate Linux cause you have no
>choice except KDE, a poor substitute or a text based browser, and
>believe it or not there are folks running these.
I like KFM. Konqueror is supposed to be better yet and out soon, and I can
always use Chimera when I need instant loading.
>Opera will be
>out....anyday....anyday......anyday.......
>Mozilla.....anyday.....anyday.....anyday........
Fetch a beta.
>How about begging a software or hardware
>manufacturer to support Linux.
Buy with compatibility in mind. I've had to complain about exactly one
hardware item-- a parallel scanner.
>It also looks crude an boxy, like most Linux applications.
So? You're not buying the looks. You're buying the functionality. If you
bought the looks, we'd all be using AbiWord under X11 with an elaborate GTK
theme.
Love the username choice. }:-)
--
Marada Coeurfuege Shra'drakaii
members.xoom.com/marada Colony name not needed in address.
"New Windows feature: distributed.microsoft.com-- Fifty million machines
generating random C code in an attempt to produce the next version of Windows."
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Cliff Wagner)
Subject: Re: Windows Network Configuratin?
Date: 10 Mar 2000 04:56:54 GMT
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Mon, 28 Feb 2000 14:05:18 -0500, Drestin Black typed something like:
>you could use hardware profiles and just pick the appropriate one when you
>boot up.
>Also, since you'll be using Windows 2000 Professional (of course) you can
>just make the changes on the fly - without rebooting to doing anything other
>than changing the values in the properties dialog and clicking on OK. W2K
>requires no rebooting to change networking, easier than linux IMHO.
Out of curiosity, is there an easy way to automate this?
I have a 3 line shell script to set up the IP addresses
for eth0, eth0:0, eth0:1
as well as for shutting off eth0:0 and eth0:1 (in case
I want to work with the virtual hosting on my NT Server
to test some things).
In other words, is there a WSH command as simple as
ifconfig eth0:0 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx netmask 255.255.255.xxx ?
If not, then there is a slight advantage to linux IMHO.
Otherwise, it's a push (and the command will definitely
come in handy once I get my copy of W2K Server if it's
available).
-c-
--
Cliff Wagner ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Visit The Edge Zone: http://www.edge-zone.net
"Man will Occasionally stumble over the truth, but most
of the time he will pick himself up and continue on."
-- Winston Churchill
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 00:12:07 -0500
From: Donn Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Top 10 reasons why Linux sux
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> 8. Postscript printers are really the only ones that fully function
> easily under Linux. What you save in dollars on the OS, you will pay
> for on the printer.
There's a cool app called ``appsfilter'' which will set up your
/etc/printcap and print filters automagically. You have to have
ghostscript installed for it to work. I've installed this appsfilter
thing on my machine (which is running FreeBSD), and it is beautiful.
All you have to do is answer a few questions, and it then configures
your printer automatically. All I do if I want to print a postscript
file is:
lpr application.ps
for example. And voila, the damn thing prints out, and I have a
non-postscript laser printer. Ghostscript takes care of the
conversion for you. Of course, you have to have a printer GS
supports, such as a laserjet compatible. As long as your printer is
supported by ghostscript, you can print postscript documents.
This is a damned good app, this appsfilter. There's no way I would
want to mess with /etc/printcap myself. You should try appsfilter.
You have to have gs installed. But, GS is really shitty at converting
PDF files. I'd recommend converting your PDF file to PS format first
(or just print right from Acrobat Reader).
With appsfilter, you can do all kinds of neat shit with a non-PS
printer. You can do lpr *.gif on a gif file or lpr *.jpg on jpeg
files. Also, you can even give an URL, and it will print out the web
page (I think). But, you have to have the right prerequisite
dependecies installed.
I don't know how Linux would handle this, because I use the FreeBSD
ports system.
> 7. Scanners. SCSI scanners still rule in the Linux world although they
> offer no advantage over parallel port scanners, except being supported
> using a crude but appropriately named program called inSANE. This does
> not even touch on the fact that all of that great software included
> with your new scanner (Adobe Photoshop, Cannon Greeting card and so
> forth) won't run under Linux. You pay one way or the other....Just
> make sure to send all of those "useless under Linux" programs to me :)
Well, I think the performance of a SCSI scanner over parallel IS
better. But, look how cheap and plentiful PPT scanners are.
Everywhere you go, you see a nice, affordable PPT scanner. SCSI
scanners cost at least twice as much, and the technology is outdated
in 6 mo. to 2 years. I'd like to get my PPT scanner working under
unix. It looks like I'll have to use Wine. (I get an invalid address
in Wine, and I end up at the debugger prompt when I try to run my
Windows scanning software under Wine.)
- Donn
------------------------------
From: Martin Redmond <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.networking,comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: Salary?
Date: 09 Mar 2000 22:12:51 -0500
Paul Jakma <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> scary. i couldn't live in a place like that. Of course Dublin City has a
> crime problem, but mainly burglary/theft, ie non-violent.
>
> Outside of dublin things are a lot better.
>
[snip]
>
> scary country....
>
You shouldn't be so timid. The US is a great country to live in. I'm from
Dublin and I can tell you, Ireland is pretty dull after living in NY for
a few years.
Martin
>
> -paul.
------------------------------
From: "Erik Funkenbusch" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Disproving the lies.
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 00:04:46 -0600
Matt Gaia <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> : Because you can't get a different, better OS for free :).
>
> *looks at his linux box* Hasn't crashed in four months, free OS, very few
> bugs, easy to configure.
The term "better" is subjective and a value judgement. If you judge an OS
to be better because it has more commercial software available for it, how
does the above prove that the OS is better?
Other ways an OS might be better: Has more features, Is easier to use for
novices (have a novice read just about any man page and they'll only come
away going "Huh?"), Supports more hardware, Utilizes hardware better (3D
acceleration, 3D audio, full graphical acceleration (AGP...), etc..)
Also, I would argue with the "very few bugs" statement. It probably has
about the same number of bugs per line of code, it's just that it has many
fewer lines of code.
> *looks at his Win box* Crashes about once a day, expensive OS, bugs in
> some programs, especially Microsoft ones, would have to pay an arm and a
> leg to get source code for.
Assuming that any of those things are important to you.
> <sarcasm>
> *thinks* wow, I guess I really can't get a good OS for free, huh?
> </sarcasm>
For your needs, it probably is a better OS. But don't be so arrogant as to
assume your needs meet everyone elses.
------------------------------
From: "Erik Funkenbusch" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Windows Network Configuratin?
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 00:12:14 -0600
Cliff Wagner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> Out of curiosity, is there an easy way to automate this?
> I have a 3 line shell script to set up the IP addresses
> for eth0, eth0:0, eth0:1
> as well as for shutting off eth0:0 and eth0:1 (in case
> I want to work with the virtual hosting on my NT Server
> to test some things).
>
> In other words, is there a WSH command as simple as
> ifconfig eth0:0 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx netmask 255.255.255.xxx ?
Sure.. just use ARP.exe. arp -s xxxx.xxxx.xxxx.xxxx <mac address of device>
and then the route command to set the routings, netmask, etc..
> If not, then there is a slight advantage to linux IMHO.
> Otherwise, it's a push (and the command will definitely
> come in handy once I get my copy of W2K Server if it's
> available).
You always assume that what you want to do cannot be done.
------------------------------
From: "Mike" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Top 10 reasons why Linux sux
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 06:33:52 GMT
"The Ghost In The Machine" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in
message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> In comp.os.linux.advocacy, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote on Thu, 09 Mar 2000 22:01:51 GMT
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> >10. X-Windows fonts look like shit. Go "borrow" true-type fonts and
> >they still suck. Mac looks great. Windows looks good. Linux looks like
> >shit. Not to mention X-Windows is slow as shit.
>
> This has nothing to do with Linux, proper. This is an X problem.
> As for being "slow as shit", that's a bit too vague to be
> troubleshootable.
Hang on here, Ghost. Without supporting S, or Z, or whatever her name is
this week, it seems to me that X is the underlying windowing interface on
Linux, and that you're pretty much stuck with it if you use Linux. So, you
can't really disown X, can you? Is there any GUI on Linux that doesn't run
on top of X?
As for the speed issue, around here a few years ago people used to use their
Sun workstations as X servers (notation being reversed in the X world, the X
server is, naturally, the client machine in server-client), and log into our
HP workstations to run X applications. Turned out that Sun's were reasonably
good X servers (that is, clients), and really lousy X clients (in actuality,
servers).
So, I suspect that the X speed issue isn't even an X problem - it's a
problem in the vendor implementation of the X protocol. Of course, that
brings it back to Sun in the case of my story, or Linux in the case of this
newsgroup.
-- Mike
------------------------------
From: "Mike" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Winvocates 10...Linvocates 0
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 06:51:52 GMT
"Donal K. Fellows" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:8a5mnh$otn$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> The Ghost In The Machine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Bear in mind that the user <-> group relationship is many-many.
> > This means that a user can belong to many groups, and of course a
> > group has many users in it, usually, although it can have as few as
> > one, and possibly even zero, although it wouldn't be all that
> > useful, perhaps.
Ugh. We've tried all kinds of variations on this, with limited success at
best. In our design environment, we would love to have a way to restrict
access to critical files to a list of specific, named users. Groups don't
work very well for this - it seems like you should be able to make it work,
but it gets really cumbersome, really fast, and in the end there are more
problems than it's worth. It would be much nicer to just be able to specify
that only users Jack and Jill can access a directory. In NT's model, that's
what you do: just list the users that should have access, and you're done.
> > In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Chad Myers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >> How 'bout if you wanted to give one group Read/Add and another
> >> group Modify? How would you do that in Linux?
>
> Typically, wherever you need that sort of distinction, it is better to
> synchronise access via a service[*] rather than giving direct access
> to the data files, since not only does that permit a richer and more
> subtle set of actions, but also you avoid a lot of troublesome issues
> relating to locking. Most of the time, the usual Unix perms give
> enough power for the majority of normal user operations (writing
> documents, accessing the web, playing games, writing and compiling
> software, etc.)
>
> Donal.
> [* Don't you just *love* sockets and identd? ]
Can you explain how this works? Sounds like you're talking about access to
data files through something like a web server or ftp server - is that
right?
-- Mike --
------------------------------
From: "Bobby D. Bryant" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: XFree86 v. 4.0 hits the street.
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 00:47:19 -0600
XFree86 v. 4.0 just hit the streets a few hours ago.
You can try ftp.xf86.org, but it's probably bogged down. Slashdot has
lots of mirrors listed in the talkbacks to the article posted late
Thursday, and the other Linux portal sites will undoubtedly be handing
out links as well.
Use caution before jumping in; they've done some substantial
restructuring of the internals, which means new drivers are required and
your current card might not be supported yet.
I did the hours-long X benchmarks for XF86 3.3.3 vs the 3.9.15
pre-release a few months back, and found a whopping 40% speedup with the
new version. That and some of the new features in this version add up to
make this a very important release.
Bobby Bryant
Austin, Texas
------------------------------
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.networking,comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: Salary?
From: Vilmos Soti <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 06:58:07 GMT
Martin Redmond <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> You shouldn't be so timid. The US is a great country to live in. I'm from
> Dublin and I can tell you, Ireland is pretty dull after living in NY for
> a few years.
Please don't compare Dublin to NYC. I fell into the same mistake when I
compared my homecity, 2M people, to the city in the US where I lived,
100K people.
Compare NYC to Paris or London. They are in the same league.
Vilmos
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Bob Hauck)
Subject: Re: Windows Network Configuratin?
Date: 10 Mar 2000 07:03:29 GMT
Reply-To: bobh{at}haucks{dot}org
On Fri, 10 Mar 2000 00:12:14 -0600, Erik Funkenbusch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Cliff Wagner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
>news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>> In other words, is there a WSH command as simple as
>> ifconfig eth0:0 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx netmask 255.255.255.xxx ?
>
>Sure.. just use ARP.exe. arp -s xxxx.xxxx.xxxx.xxxx <mac address of device>
>and then the route command to set the routings, netmask, etc..
Hmmm. I don't think that would really be exactly the same thing. That
ifconfig command creates a subinterface, as opposed to just responding to
another ip address. This makes a difference sometimes (one example would
be if the box is a router). A subtle distiction, usually, but sometimes
important.
OTOH, I know MS likes to do things their own way, so maybe arp.exe doesn't
do what unix arp does and I'm off base here.
>You always assume that what you want to do cannot be done.
You have to admit that MS hasn't exactly gone out of their way to tell
everyone what their command line tools do. Maybe they're starting to see
the light?
--
-| Bob Hauck
-| To Whom You Are Speaking
-| http://www.bobh.org/
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Darren Winsper)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Drestin: time for you to buy UNIX for DumbAsses
Date: 10 Mar 2000 15:14:19 GMT
On Tue, 7 Mar 2000 14:32:17 -0500, Nik Simpson
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I think the issue is one of features rather than robustness, MS would have
> to develop COM etc for LINUX just to have the infrastructure upon which to
> port Word.
Well, they could use XPCOM, but it would be rather embarrasing...
--
Darren Winsper (El Capitano) - ICQ #8899775
Stellar Legacy project member - http://www.stellarlegacy.tsx.org
DVD boycotts. Are you doing your part?
"Microsoft is estimating that 28,000 of these [bugs] are likely to be 'real'
problems [in Windows2000]."
-http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2436920,00.html?chkpt=zdhpnews01
------------------------------
From: mark <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: Giving up on NT
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 07:20:56 +0000
Dave wrote:
>
> On 07 Mar 2000 19:32:05 +0100, Michael Wand <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> >> Why? An OS with lots of features will require more RAM. If you want to be
> >> stuck in the 1990's, run a IBM PC with 640K of RAM... DOS didn't take much
> >> memory at all and booted quite fast... of course, with very limited
> >> capabilities.
> >
> >Linux proves that this is wrong. For the core OS features (multitasking,
> >hardware drivers, TCP/IP), you need ~8 MB, for the GUI, 16 MB.
>
> Hey I used to run OS/2 2.1 on a 386-25 with 8 megs of ram! Of course
> this was 1993 or thereabouts, so the apps weren't too big. It ran 1
> or 2 apps OK, anymore than that it started swapping heavily.
>
> I sure as hell wouldn't want to run Linux in 16 megs these days. Just
> because it *can* run in limited memory doesn't mean you *should* run
> it that way. Here's a cut & paste from a telnet session from this
> laptop into my Linux box in the main "computer room" that has 64 megs
> ram on a Pentium 233:
>
> [root@system2 /]# free
> total used free shared buffers cached
> 63064 57668 5396 34740 5356 30564
> -/+ buffers/cache: 21748 41316
> Swap: 113864 0 113864
>
> This is right after boot, just sitting at the Gnome desktop. Granted,
> half of the used memory is cache. But if that memory wasn't there
> things would run that much slower. Running "top" shows there are 41
> processes running, 40 sleeping and 1 active.
>
> Then we have this Win2000 laptop. It is currently showing 60 meg of
> ram usage (same as Linux). It has 210 threads running, 21 processes,
> between 1 and 3 percent CPU usage (PII 366), 66 megs available ram
> (it has 128 megs total) and 81 megs of "System Cache". So, like
> Linux, a good chunk of the "used memory" is cache.
>
> Seems pretty reasonable to me. In fact it's pretty much identical to
> Linux. So much for Win2000 "bloat" and "lean and mean" Linux!
>
> Then we have my Win2000 Advanced Server box. Connecting to it via
> Terminal Services from this laptop (I'm in the living room in my chair
> - ethernet in the house is nice!) it shows 402 threads running, 34
> processes, 1 - 3 percent CPU usage (PII 400), 115 meg ram used (192
> meg total) and 93 meg of "system cache". Keep in mind that each
> Terminal Service user adds around 8 - 10 meg to the ram usage. After
> a fresh boot it usually hovers around 90 meg ram usage, most of it
> cache. It's currently running ICS for the cable modem, an FTP server,
> DHCP for the other Windows machines in the house, network monitoring
> and other miscellaneous server type stuff.
>
> The bottom line is: modern OSes want as much ram as possible for best
> performance. Memory is cheap enough these days that this shouldn't
> be an issue for the vast majority of people. Of course you will
> always have the scenario where someone is trying to run a server or
> whatever on minimum hardware, but this is the exception. Other things
> being equal, more memory gives a better performance boost than faster
> CPU.
>
> Jeez. I just re-read this before sending. I'm not normally so
> long-winded. I guess OS talk just gets me going! :-)
>
> Dave
I spot a new approach by microsoft - this is to 'accept' that linux
really is an up to date, modern operating system, and _so_is_ w2k,
so in fact, they look about the same.
This new approach is a major change of stance for the Gates empire,
effectively giving up considerable 'debate-space' ground to accepting
the efficacy of Linux (not surprising considering the Halloween docs
I suppose), but now using Linux as a benchmark to prove the quality
of w2k.
How times change,
Mark
------------------------------
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