Linux-Advocacy Digest #347, Volume #26 Wed, 3 May 00 01:13:08 EDT
Contents:
Re: The Dream World of Linux Zealots ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: The Dream World of Linux Zealots ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: Dvorak calls Microsoft on 'innovation' (mlw)
Re: X Windows must DIE!!! (Loren Petrich)
Re: My question has still not been answered.Dance..Dance...Dance... (Grega Bremec)
Re: The Dream World of Linux Zealots (C. Kolin Bakslas)
Re: Dvorak calls Microsoft on 'innovation' ("D'Arcy Smith")
Re: Help ... ... P l e a s e ? (Jim Richardson)
Re: Dvorak calls Microsoft on 'innovation' ("Bobby D. Bryant")
Re: Dvorak calls Microsoft on 'innovation' (The Ghost In The Machine)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: The Dream World of Linux Zealots
Date: Tue, 02 May 2000 23:05:22 -0600
[snip-blech]
> BUZZ, wrong again!
>
>
> I get plenty of calls from "GrandMa windows user" for me to fix
> her computer! I know quite well that if she was running Linux she would
> not be having the trouble she was having. I wish I could get her to
> convert to Linux. If she EVER needed help, it would be quite simple for
> me the login to here system and FIX the problem in MINUTES (no
> frustration) and not spend hours trying to talk "GrandMa windows user"
> though dozens of windows getting both of us frustrated...
>
>
> Most of my family is quite jealous of what I can do with my system. They
> do not realize that it has more to do with the OS I chose than my
> abilities.
>
>
I'm hip...
I had to help a friend install RH61 on his whiz-bang Win98
box (_still_ using bill_dos drivers for his SB16 and hdds!!).
Poor dude _still_ (c)would not read read the help section
provided by the expert installation mode and see the automatic
partitioning would not destroy his existing Win98 partation
but create a second partition appox evenly sized for the RH installation.
He went postal!! (...I say microsofal...) and hung up on me! (whimper)
He had to take an old Win95 emergency boot disk and boot his box
off it to see for himself his Win98 partition was not destroyed.
I asked him where his Win98 emergengy rescue disk was and
got about 30 seconds of dead air. (...yes...typical Windows user)
Once he learned the magic of lilo: [tab] he was all kewl...
A dual-boot, cable-modem'd Win98/RH61 box!!! YO!!!
Now he's using linux to telnet to his school's SGI-based
network. Don't know what they're using SGI/IRIX for though, probably
heavy graphics apps. But he doesn't know how to run a remote X session. ;)
Linux: Think, Experiment, Learn...
BillDos: (_all_ versions) yawn.
Peach, ah, Peace!
-- Linux on a Packard Bell?
You betcha! Three of 'em!!
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: The Dream World of Linux Zealots
Date: Tue, 02 May 2000 23:09:09 -0600
In article <8elhka$p71$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>> First off, Linux is a great operating system and given the proper
>> venue it is a good choice.
>>
>> However, to believe for a moment that Linux could replace, or even
>> co-exist with Windows in the home environment is a pipe dream fantasy
>> of the Linux zealots.
Wanna bet MSCE-wanna-be?
>>
>
>
> Buzz, wrong answer. Windows has been replaced at my home. You, Like most
> WinTrolls(tm) seem to think that one size fits all. Well MS products DO
> NOT FIT MY NEEDS. Linux does. Please do NOT tell me what will work best
> on *MY* home computer.
>
>
> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> Before you buy.
------------------------------
From: mlw <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.lang.java.advocacy
Subject: Re: Dvorak calls Microsoft on 'innovation'
Date: Wed, 03 May 2000 00:09:31 -0400
Jen wrote:
>
> I'm growing weary of this "where is the Microsoft innovation" crap.
>
> Where is the "innovation" is an operating system that has it's roots
> in the 1960s (Linux). But, OH!, it has new GUIs that can actually
> present a common look and feel among applications and do such wondrous
> things as drag-n-drop! And to top it off, it only has a tiny fraction
> of the applications and hardware support that that "non-innovative" OS
> has! Wow.
>
> Innovation, schminovation.
Nobody has claimed Linux to be Innovative, we have just claimed it is
better.
Microsoft makes claims that it "must be free to innovate." Given that
statement, one is left to think that, presumably, they have been free
the last decade or so, right? They have, however, produced nothing of an
original nature, i.e. innovative. Should we continue to let them
dominate and destroy viable markets, through the use of illegal anti
competitive tactics, on the off chance that "this decade" they may,
possibly, do something innovative?
No, I think we should brake them up, inhibit Microsoft's ability to
bundle MS-Office with Windows, legally force MS-Office to be de-coupled
from the Microsoft Windows undocumented API set, and let truly
innovative packages be sold. If Microsoft can actually do something that
people would want to buy, then they will go out and buy it. As it is
now, it is still practically impossible to buy a name brand P.C. without
Windows.
--
Mohawk Software
Windows 9x, Windows NT, UNIX, Linux. Applications, drivers, support.
Visit http://www.mohawksoft.com
"We've got a blind date with destiny, and it looks like she ordered the
lobster"
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Loren Petrich)
Subject: Re: X Windows must DIE!!!
Date: 3 May 2000 04:10:57 GMT
In article <8ektbe$h25$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Mig Mig <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Just today i had to rescue a customers PC. The problem: She had not
>reformatted the machine for 3 years.. so IE 5 could not be unistalled ,
>protocols could not be added...etc. etc. Solution reformat the crap and
>reinstall!!
I've never had to worry about that with VM/CMS or VMS or
SunOS/Solaris or the MacOS (the first three as essentially an end user,
the fourth as the main user and administrator).
It would seem that Windows (Windoze?) has some serious design flaws.
--
Loren Petrich Happiness is a fast Macintosh
[EMAIL PROTECTED] And a fast train
My home page: http://www.petrich.com/home.html
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Grega Bremec)
Subject: Re: My question has still not been answered.Dance..Dance...Dance...
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed, 03 May 2000 04:13:14 GMT
On Wed, 03 May 2000 00:54:26 GMT, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
had somehow managed to commit the following:
>So again for the 3rd time, prove me wrong and show me specifically how
>much easier it is to set up:
>
>1. Internet connection sharing.
>2. Printer/scanner sharing with Linux/Windows mixed system.
>3. Firewall (software based).
Ehm, I should suppose that nobody answered your questions for one
simple, yet almost obscurely absurd reason: most probably because
they are meaningless questions.
To paraphrase the meaninglessness of your questions, let me use a
rhetorical question that will clearly illustrate what points you had
missed in composing a post like the one I managed to force myself to
write a reply to:
How difficult is it to drive on the left side of the road outside
the U.K. (and their former collonies) ?
I will unfortunately have to draw a supposal again, to conclude the
paraphrase in a manner oh so common to you:
Hmm, the entire rest of the world must suck horridly, because one
would most instantly crash as soon as they attempted to do such a
nonsense.
Do you now manage to perceive the answer?
<hint>
The answer is deliberately non-specific, because the whole issue
you exposed is, well, what one could call, non-portable.
</hint>
--
Grega Bremec
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://gbsoftware.webjump.com/
Why do I suspect nobody will ever read this reply of mine? <hint>
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (C. Kolin Bakslas)
Subject: Re: The Dream World of Linux Zealots
Date: Tue, 02 May 2000 23:22:22 GMT
On Tue, 02 May 2000 23:09:09 -0600, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>In article <8elhka$p71$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>> In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>>> First off, Linux is a great operating system and given the proper
>>> venue it is a good choice.
>>>
>>> However, to believe for a moment that Linux could replace, or even
>>> co-exist with Windows in the home environment is a pipe dream fantasy
>>> of the Linux zealots.
>
>Wanna bet MSCE-wanna-be?
Yeah...do ya?
>>>
>>
>>
>> Buzz, wrong answer. Windows has been replaced at my home. You, Like most
>> WinTrolls(tm) seem to think that one size fits all. Well MS products DO
>> NOT FIT MY NEEDS. Linux does. Please do NOT tell me what will work best
>> on *MY* home computer.
>>
>>
>> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
>> Before you buy.
>
>
------------------------------
From: "D'Arcy Smith" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.lang.java.advocacy
Subject: Re: Dvorak calls Microsoft on 'innovation'
Date: Wed, 03 May 2000 04:35:20 GMT
"Jen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> I'm growing weary of this "where is the Microsoft innovation" crap.
Funny didn't you jump on the band wagon when he was being
negative towards Java?
If you thought he was right then why didn't you think he
is right now?
I thought he was wrong then AND now.
..darcy
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Jim Richardson)
Subject: Re: Help ... ... P l e a s e ?
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed, 03 May 2000 04:39:41 GMT
On Wed, 03 May 2000 03:09:44 GMT,
tom, in the persona of <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
brought forth the following words...:
>(also posted to alt.linux)
>
>There seem to be a lot of people who post here to defend Linux. Maybe
>one or two of you will be willing & able to give me a hand at
>installing it. Everyone ignored me in the comp.os.linux.setup group
>(or didn't know the answer), so I'll try this here.
>
>I've tried to install two versions of Linux that I got from CheapBytes
>(the download version Corel and Caldera OpenLinux 2.3) on a P266
>w/128ram, but I haven't had any luck at all. I'm hoping someone here
>can help.
<snipped most of the tale of woe>
Personally, I'd avoid the whole linux-on-a-windows-partition thing and install
to a native linux partition, for several reasons.
Speed, stability and security. That's my 2c on that part.
Second, for your first install, do yourself a favour and get a boxed set, I'd
recommend SuSE or Mandrake, they have good H/W detection and the default
setups are very windows-like in apperance. If you don't want to spring for
a boxed set, (and $40 does buy pizzas and beer for an evening or two.) I'd
still go for a CB disk of SuSE, Redhat or Mandrake. I have nothing against
Corel or Caldera, I just have no experience with them.
--
Jim Richardson
Anarchist, pagan and proud of it
WWW.eskimo.com/~warlock
Linux, because life's too short for a buggy OS.
------------------------------
From: "Bobby D. Bryant" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.lang.java.advocacy
Subject: Re: Dvorak calls Microsoft on 'innovation'
Date: Tue, 02 May 2000 22:42:04 -0500
Jen wrote:
> >Dvorak also charges that Microsoft hires PR agencies to make
> >pro-Microsoft postings on on-line forums (which presumably includes
> >c.l.j.a)
>
> Funny how he didn't name names. How convenient.
D'ya suppose anyone would have taken him seriously if he had said
"[EMAIL PROTECTED]" ?
Bobby Bryant
Austin, Texas
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (The Ghost In The Machine)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.lang.java.advocacy
Subject: Re: Dvorak calls Microsoft on 'innovation'
Date: Wed, 03 May 2000 05:06:41 GMT
In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Jen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote on 2 May 2000 21:26:03 -0500
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>I'm growing weary of this "where is the Microsoft innovation" crap.
Microsoft actually did innovate some interesting stuff...some of it
in the legal department. :-) However, I'm not sure if anyone else has
been able to integrate an operating system, a spreadsheet, an E-mailer,
a word processor, a slide show generator and shower, and a bitmap
picture editor in quite the way Microsoft did. (And that can be
taken in a number of ways! :-) )
The Amiga may have come close, though, with its IFF (Interchange File
Format; it's usually thought to be only for pictures; little did
everyone know, but it could also do movies, music, and text "out of
the box", and presumably could have done spreadsheets and E-mails
with some work). However, it wasn't realized to the extent of
Microsoft Office (Deluxe Paint IV, Deluxe Music, and Deluxe Video
were probably the height of the "IFF genre") -- and it's not clear,
at least to me, whether anyone else provided an integrated solution
for the OS, the spreadhseet, the E-mailer, documents, and pictures.
Of course, I could be wrong. (Note that there was at least one
"integrated" package (Harvard's the one I remember, IIRC) that could
do graphs, documentations, and presentations in good old DOS, in the
late 80's or early 90's.)
Macintosh had a very similar format, and might have been better
realized; I don't know for sure since I'm not as familiar with it.
(The Amiga IFF chunking was lifted straight out of the MAC's clipboard
format, as far as I can tell, although some enhancements may have been
added to it as well.)
It's also not clear how much value added this is, since the Linux
solution works reasonably well, too, with proper instruction.
In fact, it works better because the areas for each tool
are better defined. :-)
>Where is the "innovation" is an operating system that has it's roots
>in the 1960s (Linux).
There is none, there. However, innovations abound elsewhere.
X (The X Window System, that is, but I'll just call it X
for the sake of brevity :-) ), for instance, was "innovated"
in the mid-80's; TCP/IP was created in the early to mid-80's
by the Woolongong group, IIRC.
(I still remember the advertisements for the VS100 on the VAX,
back in the mid-80's. In terms of modern equipment, it's now a
piece of junk. :-) )
Now X in itself isn't much of a GUI -- in fact, it's not a GUI
at all. However, GUIs abounded, for a time, on X; Gnome and KDE
are merely the two latest. Others include Interviews (a C++
variant that may still be around), Motif (naturally), Athena
(if anyone can stand its 2-d look anymore; a 3-d variant is
also available), and [one of Perl, Tcl, or Python]/Tk.
And Mosaic was created on Unix, AFAIK, starting it all. (Internet
Explorer was created from Spyglass code; I think Netscape might
have been, too; both are now heavily mutated, of course.)
There's also the issue of loadable modules and dynamically loadable
libraries, neither of which were present on Unix in its early days.
Old-style Unix also had rather poor memory management, compared
to today's hardware; if an process wanted more memory, it had to
tack it onto the end of the physical image of the process. If
another process got in the way, well, that other process had to
be physically moved to somewhere else in physical memory. If it
didn't fit, it got shoved to a swapfile somewhere ("swapped out").
(One of the more interesting displays was the ability to show the
physical location of each process on a cursor-addressable screen.)
I think a variant of Unix running on the VAX -- I don't know if it
was Ultrix, or BSD -- finally figured out that each individual page
could be sitting anywhere in physical memory, or swapped out
to disk. (VMS might have been there first, though; I don't remember
now.)
>But, OH!, it has new GUIs that can actually
>present a common look and feel among applications and do such wondrous
>things as drag-n-drop! And to top it off, it only has a tiny fraction
>of the applications and hardware support that that "non-innovative" OS
>has! Wow.
>
>Innovation, schminovation.
Drag and drop was always one of X's weak points, mostly because
nobody ever documented a standard for it, until now. The X
cut and paste mechanism is extremely powerful, but nobody really
bothered with it except for text. (One could, in principle,
cut and paste Postscript diagrams with a POSTSCRIPT atom,
pixmaps with a PIXMAP atom, a 2-d vector plot with some sort of
VECTOR atom, a 3-d vector plot with a VECTOR3 atom. However,
nobody really bothered, AFAIK, although some standard were defined
and are documented in the O'reilly's book series.)
Hardware for Unix has always been a problem. One issue with Unix
is that it bangs on hardware very hard (Windows 9x merely taps it
more lightly), because of the inherent multitasking/multiuser nature
of Unix, and Linux as well. Also, a lot of hardware vendors
aren't going to consider a less-popular operating system if they're
after the low-cost consumer market (e.g., sound cards); they'll
go with the dominant player -- Windows 98 -- since that's what
most consumers will have preinstalled on their computers.
(This also explains Winmodems -- these are little more than
specialized audio cards connected to the phone line; the processor
has to encode and decode the tones going over the wire. $10
off the cost of the card, perhaps, especially when purchased in bulk,
but the user ultimately pays in other ways, one of them being in
processor load, the other in general reliability since Windows
doesn't have all that great latency AFAIK. Linmodems are similar,
but because the encoding/decoding is generally open-source, one can do
some very interesting things -- consider a combination answering machine/
modem/FAX combo, for example, implemented almost entirely in software!
However, one still has to pay the "CPU tax".)
It is clear that Microsoft OS provides sufficient value added for
the public to purchase it outright. It is *not* clear that the Linux
OS provides sufficient value for an *uneducated* public to acquire
it for free [*]. (I happen to be educated, in a sense; I cut my teeth
on Unix when I went to college, in 1980. Among my turbulent years
there was included a knowledge of C, Pascal, and tar; I still
have large 1/2" magnetic tape reels containing my school data -- tape
reels that are ridiculously anachronistic now, and possibly unreadable.
I don't know anymore if one can find PC readers for 1/2" 9 track tape
for a reasonable price.)
One solution, of course, is to educate the public; another is to
simplify Linux (although, being an engineer, I think Linux is
beautifully simple already :-) ) so that an uneducated public can
use it without instruction. Still another is to continue using
Windows (since it already is the dominant operating system, this isn't
really all that bad an option unless Windows becomes so fragile it
can no longer do the job -- whatever the job is).
All three are possible, depending on the public.
ObJava: Java in this case is a bit of a wild card, sitting on top
of the operating system (or, in the case of JavaOS, sitting beside it).
Should Java become so popular that it becomes the dominant environment
for development, publication, and execution of programs, well, the
underlying OS becomes fairly meaningless... :-)
* * *
[*] There are some issues with the word "free" that may escape the
casual user. For example, the GPL license is "free", but places
some restrictions such that it continues to be "free"; this has
been the cause of some arguments in the past. Also, Linux is
free, but may cost a small amount to download and store on one's
hard drive (assuming a 10 GB harddrive costs $400, that's 4 cents
a megabyte; assuming a 56kb modem (56kb/s = 56k * 86400 * 30/8
= 18.144 GBytes/month, max) and $30/month, that equates to
$1.65 a GByte, for transmission -- assuming one's phone
line stays up that long).
There's also the learning curve of Linux; the costs may be steep.
If one assumes that it takes 3 months (very pessimistic!) to learn
Linux sufficiently, that's 3 months * 20 days/month * 8 hours/day
* $80/hr (more or less the going rate, IINM) = $38,400.
This is expensive!
However, to be fair, Windows has its own expenses; it may depend
very much on the skill set of the employees, since those
familiar with Unix may very well fit right in to Linux, finding
Microsoft Windows the "strange new environment". It's happened
to me, although I didn't take 3 months to learn the basics
of Windows; however, I'm still learning some of the more puzzling
idiosyncracies, which means I'm "paying as I go". (I just found
out my NT terminal emulation package (Tera Term), for instance,
has the wrong font -- this makes things look a tad peculiar when
I'm using SLRN to read news. It's probably easily fixable, and I've
got higher priority issues anyway, but it's Yet Another
Low-Grade Worry.)
There are also issues with quality (TeX versus FrameMaker versus
Wordperfect versus Microsoft Word, for example; also, the
reliability of the underlying operating system); these issues
aren't all that cost-worthy directly (if a system needs to be
rebooted once a day, and takes 5 minutes to shutdown and reboot,
that's 5 minutes * $80/hr * 1/60 min/hr * 5 days/week * 52 weeks
= $1733.33 a year). However, if a system decides to go down in an
unplanned manner, work could be lost -- and that work's value could
be much higher. Also, how does one compute the value of
a lost sale because the presentation of one's math looked a little
off? Answer: it depends.
I don't buy Microsoft's "total cost of ownership" argument, but
that doesn't mean TCO isn't a factor -- it may simply mean
that the computations may be far more subjective than they think.
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- insert random misquote here
------------------------------
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End of Linux-Advocacy Digest
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