Linux-Advocacy Digest #583, Volume #25 Fri, 10 Mar 00 14:13:09 EST
Contents:
Re: What might really help Linux (a developer's perspective) ("The Unbeliever")
Re: Linux is a lamer (John Sanders)
Re: 11 Days Wasted ON Linux ("ax")
Re: 11 Days Wasted ON Linux (John Sanders)
Re: 11 Days wasted on Linux (John Sanders)
Re: What might really help Linux (a developer's perspective) (Mark Hamstra)
Re: What might really help Linux (a developer's perspective) ("Mark Weaver")
Re: RHCE ("S. Christopher Cunningham")
Re: XFree86 v. 4.0 hits the street. (Bastian)
Re: Reverse thinking (Darren Winsper)
Re: The Windows GUI vs. X (Re: Windows 2000 is pretty reliable) (Roberto Alsina)
Re: The Windows GUI vs. X (Re: Windows 2000 is pretty reliable) (Donn Miller)
Re: Salary? (Donal K. Fellows)
Re: Salary? (Donal K. Fellows)
Re: Salary? (Donal K. Fellows)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "The Unbeliever" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: What might really help Linux (a developer's perspective)
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 16:05:59 GMT
> this will never happen, because the linux community already perceives
> that linux is the best development platform. this is off course far
> from the truth, but truth is not important. what is important is what
> people think, not what actually is. so, there would be no push to
> improve something which is already 'best'.
Interesting point of view. I feel part of the Linux community and KNOW
that Builder is the best C++ development tool, and I know several persons
that feel like me.
------------------------------
From: John Sanders <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Linux is a lamer
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 10:02:08 -0600
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> After a week of playing around with this Corel Linux shit I have gotten my money
>back at
> the local computer shop. I can't believe that they are trying to sell shit like this.
>
> i agree with others in this club that Linux is really a total waste of time.
>
> My suggestion is save your money, buy Windows and live your life instead of
>dedicating it
> to trying to make a system run.
>
> What a piece of junk this Linux is.
>
> BOOOOOOBBAAAAAAAAA
It's a test. You failed. Stay with Windows.
--
John W. Sanders
===============
"there" in or at a place.
"their" of or relating to them.
"they're" contraction of 'they are'.
------------------------------
From: "ax" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: 11 Days Wasted ON Linux
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 16:26:13 GMT
"Mike Kenzie" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:8ab0nl$ajq$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> "ax" ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) writes:
> > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:8a9mb8$hra$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> >> In article <7oXx4.7656$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> >> "ax" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >> > If someone tells a business owner that he has to learn a lot
> >> > in order to use Linux, the business owner will lose interest
> >> > on Linux right away. Business owners are only interested
> >> > in getting their daily jobs done taking computers as tools.
> >>
> >> Nonsense. Technical expertise is required to use any server operating
> >> system effectively, be it W2K, NT, or Linux. A business owner could
> >> care less whether you're an MCSE or an RHCE. They are, by your own
> >> argument, only interested in getting the job done.
> >
> > Believe it or not, owners of non-computer businesses
> > really don't want to spend time learning an OS except
> > a few simple software applications for accounting, planning
> > and word processing. If they cannot get Linux installed
> > with a few attempts, they will give up.
>
> Then why don't they give up on the microsoft stuff as well? I sork with
> alot of small business people and they're always complaining about being
> taken by the computer salespeople, or how poorly their software is or how
> badly the network runs. The reason I haven't tried to sell them on linux
> yet is that they are using custom software that is not available under
> linux. I have talked them out of blindly following the upgrade path. And
> am showing them some alternatives.
You remind me of another reason why the business owner I met
refused to upgrade to Linux. He was not happy with Microsoft
solutions due to the frequent crashing. But he was sort of pushed
by the situation his upline suppliers were upgrading to newer
Microsoft products and the e-transaction software from his
suppliers were not backward compatible.
> >> > If someone tells a business owner that he has to buy
> >> > new computers in order to get Linux up and running,
> >> > the business owner will give up on Linux since preserving
> >> > current technology investment is business owners' high priority.
> >>
> >> Tripe. Business owners are accustomed to the upgrade treadmill. They
> >> do it every couple of years to support the next behemoth from Redmond.
> >> It's already in the budget. It is more likely that you will be able to
> >> tell a business owner that he does NOT have to throw his current
> >> investment down the drain in order to run Linux. He can take his
> >> upgrade money and give his employees bonuses.
> >
> > Small business owners are very sensitive about the cost
> > since every dollar wasted is one dollar lost from his own
> > pocket. One small business owner I met lately told me
> > that he had invested heavily on the latest Microsoft platforms
> > for his entire offices and he wanted to preserve his latest
> > technology investment for at least a few years ahead.
> > He said it's always a painful feeling to upgrade his computer
> > systems. He implied that his situation is non uncommon.
> >
> > I guess it will take a couple of years for small business owners
> > like him to even think about Linux.
>
> If cost is a prime concern then they should be looking at linux. With
> linux he can preserve his old hardware investment for years. What he
> needs is a good consultant who can show them the upgrade path to the OSS
> linux world.
Yes, show them the upgrade path and also the possibility of
integrating and interoperating among different platforms. They don't
want second OS unless the OS can work together with their existing
systems. I've heard some good progress on this front from some Linux
companies.
>
> >> If you're a consultant, you're not qualified. If you're only a troll,
> >> you're pathetic.
>
>
------------------------------
From: John Sanders <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: 11 Days Wasted ON Linux
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 10:29:06 -0600
Itchy wrote:
>
> As a small business owner I am always interested in ways to save money. We
> switched from Apple to
> IBM when Apple's pricing became too much to handle. I recently tried Redhat
> Linux in the hopes
> that I could save some money.
>
> Well I spent 11 days messing around with this so called operating system and
> for the life
> of me can't figure out why in the world anyone in business would want to
> waste
> time on this obviously hacked together, half finished program.
>
> Maybe some day when it is completed I will try it again but for now, it has
> been thrown in the garbage can where it belongs. I have a business to run
> and can't waste time searching the internet looking for ways to accomplish
> simple tasks.
> Mr. Gates provides me easy ways of running my programs and as a result
> running my
> business. Linux had better wake up, fast.
>
> Aimee
It's a test. You failed. Stay with Windows.
--
John W. Sanders
===============
"there" in or at a place.
"their" of or relating to them.
"they're" contraction of 'they are'.
------------------------------
From: John Sanders <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: 11 Days wasted on Linux
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 10:31:52 -0600
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> [deletia]
> Well I spent 11 days messing around with this so called operating
> system and
> for the life
> of me can't figure out why in the world anyone in business would want
> to
> waste
> time on this obviously hacked together, half finished program.
>
[deletia]
>
> What a complete piece of garbage Linux is!
>
> Aimee
It's a test. You failed. Stay with Windows.
--
John W. Sanders
===============
"there" in or at a place.
"their" of or relating to them.
"they're" contraction of 'they are'.
------------------------------
From: Mark Hamstra <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: What might really help Linux (a developer's perspective)
Date: 10 Mar 2000 11:29:53 -0500
"Mark Weaver" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> I'm partner in a contract software development company. We do virtually all
> of our work for Win32, but we've done a bit of Linux and Solaris work as
> well. The most recent *nix work was a port of the server half of a client
> server package from NT to Linux and Solaris. But on the client side (except
> for one Java-based app) we've done no Linux at all. This is not by our
> choice (we're kind of agnostic) but because that's what our customers pay us
> to develop. For them, Linux client apps aren't even on the radar screen
> yet.
>
> That may change, of course, as the popularity of Linux grows, but I think
> that's going to be a slow process. One thing that could accelerate it
> greatly, I think, is this. What if the best-of-breed tools available for
> building client GUI apps were:
>
> 1. Free.
> 2. Open-source.
> 3. Generated both Linux and Windows apps from the same source code.
>
> Yes, there's Qt, but it ain't free or open source for generating Win32 apps
> (or commercial Linux apps either). And there's WxWindows which I guess is
> supposed to be pretty decent, but AFAIK not exactly the best-in-breed of GUI
> libraries/development tools.
It's not completely there yet, but take a close look at Gtk--
(http://gtkmm.sourceforge.net/). It works very well for
Linux GTK+ (and Gnome) development in C++, and there's work
ongoing with a Win32 version of at least the GTK+ stuff.
Team that up with glade/libglade, and you've got a very nice
development environment.
> Wouldn't it make sense for the open source community to focus on producing a
> better VisualBasic-than-VisualBasic and a better VisualC-than-VisualC that
> produced both Win and Linux apps, so that as developers chose to use these
> tools, the Linux versions would fall out for free?
Helix Code is busily working on a VisualBasic killer....
--
Mark Hamstra
Bentley Systems, Inc.
------------------------------
From: "Mark Weaver" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: What might really help Linux (a developer's perspective)
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 17:11:24 GMT
The Unbeliever <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:H39y4.764$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> > this will never happen, because the linux community already perceives
> > that linux is the best development platform. this is off course far
> > from the truth, but truth is not important. what is important is what
> > people think, not what actually is. so, there would be no push to
> > improve something which is already 'best'.
>
> Interesting point of view. I feel part of the Linux community and KNOW
> that Builder is the best C++ development tool, and I know several persons
> that feel like me.
>
>
The point isn't whether or not there is a better Linux-ONLY dev envt. For
the vast majority of companies producing shrink-wrap client software, Win32
is an absolute requirement and a Linux version is, at best, a "might be nice
if it didn't cost too much" proposition. But suppose it were the case that
the best, cheapest way to develop Windows client apps was with an
open-source tool that also generated Linux apps from the same source.
Wouldn't that have the potential to make a big difference in the
availability of Linux apps?
Mark
------------------------------
From: "S. Christopher Cunningham" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: linux.redhat.misc
Subject: Re: RHCE
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 11:33:52 -0600
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Ed wrote:
> Has anyone encountered employers requesting RHCE certification? What is
> the general opinion about the value of the RHCE? Have you seen many
> jobs for linux sys admins?
I have not seen or heard of anyone requesting RHCE so far. I have
personally cheked out a few of the books though, just to be safe and was
dissapointed in them. Save your money for now and just keep learning on
your own.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Bastian)
Subject: Re: XFree86 v. 4.0 hits the street.
Date: 10 Mar 2000 17:52:16 GMT
On Fri, 10 Mar 2000 12:03:40 GMT, The Unbeliever wrote:
>
>> X11 is not the GUI, it is a server on which the GUIs are based. So, there
>are
>> dozens of window-managers, desktops etc. available. You have the choice
>you
>> don't have at windows. Among 20 wm's there will be one you like and that's
>> usable, believe me.
>
> Yeah yeah, I've used Afterstep, WindowMaker, KDE, icewm, amiwm, mlwm,
>, twm, fvwm, fvwm2, fvwm95, CDE, blackbox and some other a can't remember
>now ... but, don't like them believe me (besides, there's a lack of
>compatibility
>between configuration files), no t to say that installing more than one is a
>space
>waste really, KDE and GNOME in particular are as bloated as Windows.
Gnome is big, okay. But no one forces you to turn on the graphical gimmicks
and use the mem-eating themes. I've got a dual-celly system (2x350Mhz) with
128 megs. I can run Gnome (with a great-looking theme and lots of blinking
and cpu-intensive stuff), staroffice, burn two cds (and dump one to disk)
while surfing the web when mp3's play in the background. And, oh, the system
completes its cron-jobs without me taking notice of it. Of course this all
happens at the same time :-) My windoze fucked up when I tried to burn *one*
cd (with 2x speed!) while I edited a 30meg file with wordpad.
So, even if Gnome (or any X GUI) is bloaded up, it's still faster than windows.
>> You can run a linux
>> system as a server or anything without a GUI. In fact you need X only for
>> office programs, webbrowsers or something like this.
>
> Sorry, but that's exactly my home use, not to say that browsers are the
>final interface, and are present everywhere. Even under X, Netscape (the
>only
>full-featured browser existent) is by far worse than Explorer (this one
>almost
>never freeze under NT/2K), and desktop applications are worse (my opinion)
>nowadays. Running a server, on the other side, is better on OpenBSD or
>Solaris (again my opinion).
My point was that M$ says that w2k is intended for use in business environment.
I don't need no w2k to run an office suite (my old win95 does the same job
with half of CPU and mem). So, if an older version can run the office stuff,
there are not too many tasks for w2k remaining: running a server. And for this,
I don't need a GUI.
Bastian
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Darren Winsper)
Subject: Re: Reverse thinking
Date: 11 Mar 2000 02:03:27 GMT
On Thu, 09 Mar 2000 14:55:39 GMT, Me <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Why has had VMware such a boom ? Just because each of the workstation
> GNU/Linux user NEED Windows applications (I should dare to say that Windows
> OS too).
This is relatively true.
> People think that Linux is a good base OS to run Windows (even when
> in fact, games run slow), but have you ever thought that Windows 2000 is
> perfectly suited to run "Linux in a box" ?
Yes. However, if you spend 95% of your time in Linux, it would be more
appropriate to run VMWare on Linux with W2K as the guest OS. The
reverse is also true.
> This is another approach of
> having the two platforms, but using as base the better one and having the
> toys inside the VMware virtual machines;
And you were doing so well. Linux is hardly a toy.
> besides, are there so many X11 end
> user good applications ?
Depends on who the end user is.
> Then, why not to run console tools (Linux have
> little more to offer) under VMware ?
Now you're just showing your ignorance.
> Sure the run faster than Windows
> applications under Linux or under X11 (not to talk about X11 tech).
Maybe, maybe not.
--
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: Roberto Alsina <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: The Windows GUI vs. X (Re: Windows 2000 is pretty reliable)
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 18:41:48 GMT
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Centuries ago, Nostradamus foresaw a time when Roberto Alsina would
say:
> >#include <qapp.h>
> >#include <qpushbutton.h>
> >
> >int main (int argc, char **argv)
> >{
> > QApplication a(argc,argv);
> > QPushButton *b=new QPushButton("Hello World!",0);
> > b->show();
> > connect(b,SIGNAL(clicked()),app,SLOT(quit()));
> > a.exec();
> >}
>
> Hey! This is an advocacy group! No source code allowed!
>
> Only mindless flames!
>
> >11 lines, and it even exits when you click the button.
> >
> >It can be done shorter, of course.
>
> Perhaps, but that would only show the pointlessness of this.
Indeed. And still I found a lot of ugly stuff in those 23 lines of
Motif code :-)
> Comp.lang.lisp has similarly been suffering flame wars over benchmarks
> of null programs in various languages.
>
> It's *stupid* to fight over who's best at doing *nothing.*
>
> Consider it stipulated that it's rather nicer if one can avoid the
> need to manually manage:
> - fonts
Yes.
> - memory allocation
Yes.
> - window location
I don't get it. Window location is never manually managed. Or you mean
window layout?
> - colour scheme
Yes.
> ...
> but the merits should *not* be based on "How easy is it to write
> Hello, World!"
>
> The merits of languages and toolkits need to be based on how well
> their abstractions fit with applications of at least some moderate
> degree of complexity.
And that's where most Xt based toolkits (specially Motif) suck, IMHO.
I've seen people use Motif for 3 years and be sooo proud of creating
a custom widget. On Qt you start doing that, easily, 2 hours after
first use.
--
Roberto Alsina (KDE developer, MFCH)
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 14:02:58 -0500
From: Donn Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: The Windows GUI vs. X (Re: Windows 2000 is pretty reliable)
Roberto Alsina wrote:
> And that's where most Xt based toolkits (specially Motif) suck, IMHO.
> I've seen people use Motif for 3 years and be sooo proud of creating
> a custom widget. On Qt you start doing that, easily, 2 hours after
> first use.
That's where a lot of the Motif "ugliness" is at; it's not a Motif
problem per se, but rather an ugliness with Xt. It looks like most of
the toolkits that are being created today aren't Xt-based, but rather
sit directly on top of Xlib. Even XView, which is an old tookit,
doesn't use Xt.
But, I think there's still advantages with Xt-based toolkits. For
one, the API is predictable.
- Donn
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Donal K. Fellows)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.networking,comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: Salary?
Date: 10 Mar 2000 10:15:17 GMT
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> That's all well and good, but what's public transportation like in
> the UK? In the suburban areas of the US you're lucky if it exists.
> In most places, it doesn't.
For all people's complains, public transport in the UK is not too bad
in urban and suburban areas. 'Course it is spotty in rural areas, but
that is hardly surprising. The UK, and particularly England, is far
more densely populated than the US, so it is far easier to make buses
and trains profitable...
Donal.
--
Donal K. Fellows http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~fellowsd/ [EMAIL PROTECTED]
-- The small advantage of not having California being part of my country would
be overweighed by having California as a heavily-armed rabid weasel on our
borders. -- David Parsons <o r c @ p e l l . p o r t l a n d . o r . u s>
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Donal K. Fellows)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.networking,comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: Salary?
Date: 10 Mar 2000 13:10:39 GMT
In article <RYdx4.21$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Matt O'Toole <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> "Matthias Warkus" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> Seriously: The standard of living here in Germany is rather higher
>> than in the United States. As for salaries, they aren't necessarily
>> lower, if they're lower, that's usually compensated by a much lower
>> number of workhours per week and per lifetime.
>
> My roommate is German, and this is what he thinks. He's appalled by
> the cost of living here, and by how hard people work. (Notice my
> choice of words.)
The range and availability of other work-related benefits also seems
to be greater on average in Europe than in the US. Plus, the shorter
hours worked makes a really big difference to your *current* quality
of life. "You expect me to put in over 80 hours a week? In that
case, I expect you to take a long walk off a short pier..."
Donal.
--
Donal K. Fellows http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~fellowsd/ [EMAIL PROTECTED]
-- The small advantage of not having California being part of my country would
be overweighed by having California as a heavily-armed rabid weasel on our
borders. -- David Parsons <o r c @ p e l l . p o r t l a n d . o r . u s>
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Donal K. Fellows)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.networking,comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: Salary?
Date: 10 Mar 2000 13:23:34 GMT
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Greg Yantz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> The US (again, from what I hear) seems to have a vastly superior
> communications infrastructure, overall. Though some parts of Europe
> are pretty well wired, or linux and cryptography software might not
> be so widespread today. :)
The infrastructure is rather patchy on both sides of the Pond. For
different reasons of course (low average density vs. monopolies) The
real key difference is the availability of capital for tech startups.
Donal.
--
Donal K. Fellows http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~fellowsd/ [EMAIL PROTECTED]
-- The small advantage of not having California being part of my country would
be overweighed by having California as a heavily-armed rabid weasel on our
borders. -- David Parsons <o r c @ p e l l . p o r t l a n d . o r . u s>
------------------------------
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