Linux-Advocacy Digest #679, Volume #26 Thu, 25 May 00 06:13:07 EDT
Contents:
Re: how to enter a bug report against linux? (Richard Steiner)
Re: Linux will never progress beyond geekdome (2:1)
Re: Linux good choice for home desktop. (2:1)
Re: Installing Linux Mandrake 7.0 (2:1)
Re: Fun with Brain Dead Printers. (2:1)
Re: how to configure corel linux boot to GUI? (2:1)
Re: Linux vs. Solaris Intel (Martin)
Re: Why my company will NOT use Linux (2:1)
Re: Linux good choice for home desktop. (Thomas Phipps)
Re: how to configure corel linux boot to GUI? (2:1)
Re: how to configure corel linux boot to GUI? (2:1)
Re: Need ideas for university funded project for linux (Donal K. Fellows)
Re: QB 4.5 in Win 2000 ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: Here is the solution ("Daniel Johnson")
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Richard Steiner)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: how to enter a bug report against linux?
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu, 25 May 2000 04:06:35 -0500
Here in comp.os.linux.misc, s@- spake unto us, saying:
>What I find the most amazing thing in this, is that we are aactually
>arguing if a bug-tracking system is usefull or not.
A lot depends on whether the overhead of the system justifies its use.
Not all systems are worth the effort in all cases, and I know some folks
who are quite unhappy about the overhead involved in some of the more
complex commercial change-control systems (as an example).
>This by itself just shows how far behind the linux developers
>are compared to main stream software engineers when it comes
>to modern software processes.
Actually, I think you may be jumping to conclusions.
How can you toss out meaningful criticisms without knowing the actual
process(es) currently being used by the core developers, if any?
--
-Rich Steiner >>>---> [EMAIL PROTECTED] >>>---> Bloomington, MN
OS/2 + BeOS + Linux + Solaris + Win95 + WinNT4 + FreeBSD + DOS
+ VMWare + Fusion + vMac + Executor = PC Hobbyist Heaven! :-)
"She's dead, Jim, but still warm. Let's flip a coin."
------------------------------
From: 2:1 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Linux will never progress beyond geekdome
Date: Thu, 25 May 2000 09:54:10 +0100
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> Linux has the "suck-factor" to overcome.
>
> Like the commercial says "Just one look, that's all it took"
Just one look, and I never looked back.
> The more folks that try it the more pissed off users there are, who
> tell other users, who tell other users and so forth.
In my personal experience, the pissedoffness of the users stems from
using a crash happy, buggy os. When they get to use a proper OS (linux,
Solaris, Irix, etc) they are *much* happier.
>
> Linux will be dead in 2 years unless it does something dramatic, and
> that is highly unlikely.
By what mechanism will it be dead. It started off in a much less usable
state and has growm rapidly from a single user (Linus) to millions of
users. How can this trend reverse itself that quickly. Besides, I (and
many other advocated on this group) will continue to use it for > 2
years. As long as there are users, it's not `dead', unlike commercial
software.
-Ed
> I mean they can't even give the garbage away...
>
>
--
The day of judgement cometh. Join us O sinful one...
http://fuji.stcatz.ox.ac.uk/cult/index.html
------------------------------
From: 2:1 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Linux good choice for home desktop.
Date: Thu, 25 May 2000 10:11:21 +0100
Thomas Phipps wrote:
>
> In article <hJVW4.38357$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Frank Rizzo wrote:
>
> [sniped empty space between Frank Rizzo's ears]
>
> >Psych!
>
> linux isn't a good os for the desktop *yet*
> but it will be ... it just needs the people that
> program decent software to set standards
> for a desktop ...
Depends on your point of view. I think it makes a really good desktop
os. For my use, it beats the hell out of windows. Hell, amos/dfs1.2 beat
the hell out of windows :-)
-Ed
--
The day of judgement cometh. Join us O sinful one...
http://fuji.stcatz.ox.ac.uk/cult/index.html
------------------------------
From: 2:1 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Installing Linux Mandrake 7.0
Date: Thu, 25 May 2000 10:08:01 +0100
Pete Goodwin wrote:
>
> Fonts look terrible (but they always did on X - where's font anti
> aliasing?)
>
> Pete.
I have good font anti-aliasing: a crappy 14' moniter that blurs
everything coming in its direction
:-)
Sorry, that wasn't very helpful.
try xfstt, the true type version of the xfs font server
-Ed
--
The day of judgement cometh. Join us O sinful one...
http://fuji.stcatz.ox.ac.uk/cult/index.html
------------------------------
From: 2:1 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.hardware
Subject: Re: Fun with Brain Dead Printers.
Date: Thu, 25 May 2000 10:27:56 +0100
Bloody Viking wrote:
>
> In comp.os.linux.advocacy [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> : You have a brain dead operating system, not a brain dead printer.
>
> : Linux is braindead.
>
> : Your printer works fine under Windows...
>
> Nope, the printer is brain-dead... just like you. You remind me of a
> Winmodem. That is, anyone talking to you has to think for you too, just as
> the Windows computer must waste CPU cycles to use the Winmodem. In other
> words, you have a Winbrain. Which is to say you are as brain-dead as a
> Windevice.
>
> --
> CAUTION: Email Spam Killer in use. Leave this line in your reply! 152680
> First Law of Economics: You can't sell product to people without money.
>
> 4968238 bytes of spam mail deleted. http://www.wwa.com/~nospam/
That's one of the best flames I've heard in a while! LOL!!!
-Ed
--
The day of judgement cometh. Join us O sinful one...
http://fuji.stcatz.ox.ac.uk/cult/index.html
------------------------------
From: 2:1 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: how to configure corel linux boot to GUI?
Date: Thu, 25 May 2000 10:34:36 +0100
Rich C wrote:
>
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> > And if it's not documented you are screwed...Typical Linoshit..Read
> > this read that read everything to accomplish which would normally be
> > an easy task.
> >
> > Linux is a waste of time.
> >
> Oh, and your presence in this ng isn't a waste of time? (yours AND ours.)
>
> If YOU spent half as much time learning Linux as you spend trashing it in
> this ng, you would have a smooth running, highly tweaked system that would
> be the envy of most Linux users; you would be praising Linux for the stable,
> efficient, technically superior operating system that it is; and, best of
> all, people would actually RESPECT your opinions.
>
> The init level for booting to X by default is 5. Change the 3 to a 5 in your
> /etc/inittab file, but ONLY after you have made sure you have a stable X
> configuration. Otherwise, you won't be able to do anything if you boot to X
> automatically, and X doesn't work for some reason. (Most distros, however,
> have a utility enabled (I forget what the name is) that will stop a process
> that restarts too fast or too often for a period of time (usually 5 minutes)
> so it doesn't tie up the system dying and restarting.)
If its not installed, it is possible to recover.
1 CTRL+ALT+DEL. Wait for reboot, type linux 3 at the lilo boot
2 log in as root and type init 3 though you have to do this blindly
-Ed
> [snip]
>
> --
> Rich C.
> "Great minds discuss ideas.
> Average minds discuss events.
> Small minds discuss people."
--
The day of judgement cometh. Join us O sinful one...
http://fuji.stcatz.ox.ac.uk/cult/index.html
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Martin )
Subject: Re: Linux vs. Solaris Intel
Date: Thu, 25 May 00 09:35:33 GMT
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, 2:1 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Can anyone comment on linux vs. solaris intel?
>
>I've only used it from a users point of view (such as now), and have
>noticed a few things (like the X server seem a bit slow) but they don't
>really say much.
>
>Can anyone do a better comparison?
>
>-Ed
>
>
Pros for Linux :
Supports a wide range of hardware.
Will run acceptably on quite low-end hardware.
Available at very low cost.
Includes full source code as standard.
Most distributions include a large number of utilities and
applications.
Cons for Linux :
Coordination of development and support is pretty much adhoc. This
can mean that the look and feel of the various components lacks
consistency.
Pros for Solaris :
It is pretty much the "industry standard" for Unix.
"Single source" development results in a high degree of consistency.
Support is coordinated.
Demonstrably scales well to very large servers running 24/7.
Cons for Solaris :
Quite picky about hardware support - does not include drivers
for many more obscure or older devices.
Requires relatively high spec hardware in order to offer decent
performance.
More expensive than Linux (though the price of around $80 for
an unlimited commercial licence should be acceptable to most users).
Source is available, but costs extra and there may be some restrictions
on what you can do with it.
Claims that Solaris is "bare-bones" or expensive really don't
stand up any more - the Solaris 8 distribution now includes a
disk containing a wide range of freeware, shareware and GNU
software ready built and virtually everything which runs on
Linux can be compiled to run on Solaris. You certainly can
get a copy of a Linux distribution for a couple of dollars and
load it up on an ancient 386 that is sitting unused in your garage,
but a copy of Solaris will cost less than a hundred dollars and
you can put together a machine capable of running it quite well
for just a few hundred more, so the price should be acceptable to
the vast majority of serious users.
You will see Solaris fans argue that it is more reliable than Linux,
to which the Linux advocates will retort that their boxes have run
for the last twelve months without a crash or reboot. I have to say
that I have never seen either fail, but to put that in context, I
have seen Solaris run under enormous loads on massive servers without
blinking. There are hundreds (if not thousands) of large Sun servers
round the world, demonstrably turning in high levels of reliability
under extreme load - there are very few Linux systems running under
the same conditions, so it is very difficult to compare reliability.
When all is said and done, they are both excellent pieces of
software. Unless you really need to get a Unix system up and running
for virtually nothing, the choice depends on personal taste and
the type of application.
If you are a dedicated FSF advocate who willnot use anything that
does not come under the GNU licence for philosophical reasons, then
the choice is clear.
If you are a home user looking for something other than Windows to
run on your PC, either is suitable (though argueably Solaris will
do more for your employment prospects).
If you are doing commercial development for a client, then I would
definitely go for Solaris. That is not to say that Linux would be
unsuitable in this context - there used to be a saying that "Noone
ever got fired for choosing IBM" and I think that the same applies
here. The price difference has become so low now that it really
should not enter into any commercial decision. While Linux may well
meet the customer's needs and stand up 24/7, I would hate to get
into a situation where a system which I have spec'ed and built is
failing and I have to stand up in front of the customer and explain
why we built it on an operating system that is built by a bunch
of computer nerds rather than the industry standard OS in use all
round the world.
Martin
------------------------------
From: 2:1 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Why my company will NOT use Linux
Date: Thu, 25 May 2000 10:20:31 +0100
David Fisher wrote:
> I agree with Matt's characterizations that end-users need
> to have an easier-to-use interface. I think there's a lesson here.
> Charlie, you may think Linux is just the most intuitive thing ever.
> I've heard Mac users claim the same thing. You are not yet in the
> majority. In my evaluation, I had to work too hard to accomplish easy
> tasks. Could that be corrected through proper training and
> acclimitization ... probably. However, I don't have the luxury of
> either training or time. Then there's still the problem of providing
> all of the services ....
In my experience, no systems are intuitive to lusers, but windows seems
like it is because they usually have some windows experience. If you
install a good desktop, it can look very much like windows. More
complicated tasks (ie, the sort you might need command line tools for)
are less easy for lusers, but, if you asked them to do a similar thing
(GUI or not) in any OS (windows included) then they will look at as if
you have just flown in from mars. So, esentailly a good WM that looks
95ish should cause few problems in the user dept.
If you are/have competent sysadmins, the more complicated stuff is not
hard to figure out (especially if you RTM), and often turns out to be
easier in the long run.
That aside, give itr a serious go and see how it works. Afterall, the
choice is yours.
-Ed
--
The day of judgement cometh. Join us O sinful one...
http://fuji.stcatz.ox.ac.uk/cult/index.html
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Thomas Phipps)
Subject: Re: Linux good choice for home desktop.
Date: Thu, 25 May 2000 09:41:42 GMT
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>Thomas Phipps wrote:
>>
>> In article <hJVW4.38357$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Frank Rizzo wrote:
>>
>> [sniped empty space between Frank Rizzo's ears]
>>
>> >Psych!
>>
>> linux isn't a good os for the desktop *yet*
>> but it will be ... it just needs the people that
>> program decent software to set standards
>> for a desktop ...
>
>Depends on your point of view. I think it makes a really good desktop
>os. For my use, it beats the hell out of windows. Hell, amos/dfs1.2 beat
>the hell out of windows :-)
>-Ed
lol true ... I guess it does depend on the users POV ... and
after taking a quick peek into some of the ms-windows ng's
I think it's safe to say humans should need a lisence to use
computers ...
>
>
>--
>The day of judgement cometh. Join us O sinful one...
>
>http://fuji.stcatz.ox.ac.uk/cult/index.html
------------------------------
From: 2:1 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: how to configure corel linux boot to GUI?
Date: Thu, 25 May 2000 10:31:09 +0100
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> On Thu, 25 May 2000 03:33:34 GMT, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (JEDIDIAH)
> wrote:
>
> >On Thu, 25 May 2000 02:32:15 GMT, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>wrote:
> >>And if it's not documented you are screwed...Typical Linoshit..Read
> >
> > That's true of things in general. My peeve for the week
> > is the ICL file format.
>
> I don't know what ICl is so I can't comment.
>
> >>this read that read everything to accomplish which would normally be
> >>an easy task.
> >
> > This is rather Odd considering that you would have to go
> > through the same sort of process to do the same sort of
> > thing under WinDOS.
>
> Nope.. Plugin the card and fire up the diskette that came with it.
> Chances are 99.9999 percent it will work under WIndows/Dos. Linux?
> Good luck....
>
> Don't see Linux mentioned on the outside of the box do you?
Yes you do. I (a few months ago) purchased a cheap NE2K PCI (clone?)
network card. On the outside of the box was mentioned:
Windows 95
Windows NT
DOS
Linux
OS/2
FreeBSD
SCO (?)
So I did see Linux on the side of the box. Ha. You are about as correct
as you are intelligent.
-Ed#
--
The day of judgement cometh. Join us O sinful one...
http://fuji.stcatz.ox.ac.uk/cult/index.html
------------------------------
From: 2:1 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: how to configure corel linux boot to GUI?
Date: Thu, 25 May 2000 10:32:04 +0100
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> On Thu, 25 May 2000 03:33:34 GMT, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (JEDIDIAH)
> wrote:
>
> >On Thu, 25 May 2000 02:32:15 GMT, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>wrote:
> >>And if it's not documented you are screwed...Typical Linoshit..Read
> >
> > That's true of things in general. My peeve for the week
> > is the ICL file format.
>
> I don't know what ICl is so I can't comment.
You don't know anything about anything, but that doesn't stop you
commenting. Still, thoughj, it makes the newsgroup more interesting.
-Ed
--
The day of judgement cometh. Join us O sinful one...
http://fuji.stcatz.ox.ac.uk/cult/index.html
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Donal K. Fellows)
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.linux.development.apps,comp.os.linux.development.system,comp.os.linux.misc,comp.os.linux.setup
Subject: Re: Need ideas for university funded project for linux
Date: 25 May 2000 09:59:18 GMT
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
David Steuber <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On my machines, I have code with quite a variety of licenses. Those
> include GPL, BSD, QPL, Perl's Artistic License, the TCL license, and a
> bunch of others. The base system is GNU/Linux. A bunch of libraries
> in use are either GPL or LGPL, including libc.
>
> Have I violated someone's license?
It depends. If you've statically linked a GPL library against a
non-GPL program, quite possibly. I believe (but can't quite be
entirely sure) that there have been problems with readline in this
respect, at least in the past. There were problems with Bison
(particularly the parser skeleton code) at one stage too, but I know
that these are resolved now and have been for years.
The GPL only plays nicely if all the world is GPL. Opinion is divided
on whether this is a serious license bug or an excellent feature.
Donal.
--
Donal K. Fellows http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~fellowsd/ [EMAIL PROTECTED]
-- I may seem more arrogant, but I think that's just because you didn't
realize how arrogant I was before. :^)
-- Jeffrey Hobbs <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 25 May 2000 06:06:36 -0400
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Crossposted-To: alt.lang.basic,alt.destroy.microsoft
Subject: Re: QB 4.5 in Win 2000
Bob May wrote:
>
> Roger,
> >>Crashing daily.
> >Not a bug, since it does not generically do so. Must have been
> >something in the environment.
> Let me tell you about bugs in Win95 code! How does going through a
> computer and replacing parts until the problem stops sound to you?
> The computer that I am typing this on has had every part changed with
> different parts (including types) except for the monitor (running in
> standard 640x480 VGA mode) and Win95 code! I still get the computer
> to just hang so solidly that the only thing that cures the problem is
> a cold boot with either of the big red controls. I have found over
> time that sometimes the computer gives a slight warning in that it
> suddenly decides that some program (not anything in the foreground but
> something in the systray) will decide to access someplace that it's
> not supposed to be at and I will have to close the program (which
> oftentimes doesn't happen properly). At that time, I have an unknown
> amount of time before the computer crashes totally. I don't always
> get the warning so there are probably different mechanisms for the
> crashing (what else is new) which act differently. Sometimes the
> mouse moves and sometimes it doesn't and what is more interesting is
> that when the mouse moves, I can move to an area where it stops moving
> for a while. If you have a computer that never crashes then treasure
> it as a lot of the computers with win9x die reliably in time, some
> more than others. I feel lucky that I haven't had a crash in the last
> week and a half. For reference, at one point in time I could turn the
> computer on and see a crash about 5 minutes later.
>
> --
> Bob May
>
> Don't subscribe to ACCESS1 for your webserver for the low prices. The
> service has
> been lousy and has been poor for the last year. Bob May
You are not going to like this but...
My downstairs computer (Win95) has not crashed in 4 years.
Upstairs (this one) is also solid. Win95b
The secret. As little as possible is running at once. Removed the
"system wizard" crap for error recover, never loaded Norton error
recovery. Scan disk about every 30-60 days and defrag also.
This machine is on 24X7 (but I do "suspend" it).
Last time I had mysterious hardware related problems (1984 or so) it was
due to grounding problems in the motherboard.
LB
------------------------------
From: "Daniel Johnson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: Re: Here is the solution
Date: Thu, 25 May 2000 10:07:05 GMT
"Illya Vaes" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> Daniel Johnson wrote:
> >"Joseph" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> >>>Actually, MS quite frequently makes its APIs available
> >>>separately from the OS.
> >>No they don't and they are arguing they should integrate more APIs into
> >>the OS.
> >Sure they do. ODBC, DirectX, OLE. Wheredyathink "DLL Hell"
> >comes from?
>
> According to MS advocates on cooa, this alledged "DLL Hell" doesn't exist.
> Funny how y'all flip-flop on such matters...
Welcome to .advocacy... Here's your accordion.. :D
------------------------------
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