Linux-Advocacy Digest #202, Volume #27 Tue, 20 Jun 00 06:13:07 EDT
Contents:
Re: Dealing with filesystem volumes (JEDIDIAH)
Re: Boring (david parsons)
Re: Dealing with filesystem volumes (Donal K. Fellows)
Re: Claims of Windows supporting old applications are reflecting reality or fantasy?
(John Wiltshire)
What Tim is good for (was Re: What UNIX is good for.) (Ian Pulsford)
Re: Claims of Windows supporting old applications are reflecting reality or
fantasy? (John Wiltshire)
Re: Claims of Windows supporting old applications are reflecting reality or
fantasy? (John Wiltshire)
Re: Claims of Windows supporting old applications are reflecting reality or fantasy?
(John Wiltshire)
Re: Claims of Windows supporting old applications are reflecting reality or fantasy?
(John Wiltshire)
Re: Claims of Windows supporting old applications are reflecting reality or fantasy?
(John Wiltshire)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (JEDIDIAH)
Crossposted-To: comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.unix.advocacy
Subject: Re: Dealing with filesystem volumes
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 08:17:25 GMT
On Tue, 20 Jun 2000 18:43:11 +1200, Lawrence D�Oliveiro
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] (JEDIDIAH) wrote:
>
>> You've still yet to demonstrate what's really "so modern" about
>> the way MacOS does things...
>
>Robust filesystem object references, that don't depend on which drive
...which are also fail if you should be unlucky enough to
decide to name your volume something someone else has.
>you put a volume into, or the precise idiosyncrasies of how your system
>is configured.
That's less a feature of the filesystem and more a feature
of how abstracted from the filesystem the rest of the OS
is.
>
>Of course, if I interpreted your query more widely, I could mention
>other things, like the low-overhead, fast QuickDraw graphics engine,
>closely integrated into the kernel (something that UNIX folks are still
>incapable of grasping...).
Close integration are precisely the sorts of things you want
to try to avoid in these situations. That's what makes the
various bits of X modular and interchangable and MacOS something
that even Apple is going to abandon.
--
If you know what you want done, it is quite often more useful to
tell the machine what you want it to do rather than merely having
the machine tell you what you are allowed to do.
|||
/ | \
Need sane PPP docs? Try penguin.lvcm.com.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (david parsons)
Subject: Re: Boring
Date: 20 Jun 2000 01:20:01 -0700
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Tim Palmer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>You cant make a easy-to-use OS on top of UNIX.
Why not?
Other vendors have taken operating systems that are far more
eccentric than Unix and put good user interfaces on top of them --
Microsoft Windows springs immediately to mind, and, if I'm in a
really charitable mood, Digital Research's GEM.
You may not get a good integrated user interface put on top of
_UNIX(tm)_ because part of the Unix userbase wants to drive those
pesky end-users away (and has mainly succeeded, to Microsoft's
delight), but there are enough people who don't care about the
enshrined Tradition!s working on the free Unices to make up for
it. KDE and its copycat Gnome are good prototype efforts; it's
possible that the run-away commercial success will come from a
newly broken up company that's in the Pacific Northwest.
>No surround sound.
Nonsense.
>No coppy-protected DVD.
There is already a MPAA-approved commercial DVD reader for Linux,
and, of course, there's DeCSS (which due to the MPAA is probably
sitting on about 150 million computers waiting for the DMCA to be
swatted down as unconstitutional.)
____
david parsons \bi/ Nice try.
\/
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Donal K. Fellows)
Crossposted-To: comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.unix.advocacy
Subject: Re: Dealing with filesystem volumes
Date: 20 Jun 2000 09:00:34 GMT
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
[ changing zip disks ]
> And an application that was expecting to access files on the previous
> Zip volume would not notice that it had changed, and blithely try to
> access the new volume.
>
> Not necessarily what you want...
If any application had files on the old zip disk open, then you would
not be able to umount it. I'm trying to think of an application which
would have hard-coded filenames referring to somewhere beneath /mnt/zip
but which wouldn't be keeping the files themselves open, but I keep
coming up blank; you wouldn't want to run a serious app of a zip disk
(the medium is much slower than a normal hard disk) and it is
considered tremendously bad form to keep fixed references to random
places in your code - the only place an app usually refers to outside
its own install-tree is to its files in a user's home directory. In
fact, the only use I can see for keeping references to somewhere on a
zip disk is for maintaining recently-opened-file-lists, and those had
better be able to handle files vanishing in the first place!
Your problem situation simply doesn't occur often in practise. While
it may well be a good solution for the situation where you've got a
single floppy drive and no hard disk, the world has moved on. :^)
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]>
------------------------------
From: John Wiltshire <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Claims of Windows supporting old applications are reflecting reality or
fantasy?
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 09:23:35 GMT
On Mon, 19 Jun 2000 21:15:54 -0700, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>I knew some one would point out the lincenses of the copies of the Windows
>that came preinstalled on a computer when it is first purchased. None of my
>computer came with any Windows or other software, since my computers were
>built by me. Therefore, I have no unused licenses, I didn't have any extra
>copies forced on through computer purchases.
>
>The information you provide may be valid for the current upgrades but the
>license agreements on the older upgrades, were worded so that this is not
>applicable.
Fair comment.
I've not tried, but you could write to MS to get clarification on
whether a Win9x license would cover you running Win1.x or DOS 3.x.
I'm pretty sure they wouldn't be too upset.
John Wiltshire
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 19:26:34 +1000
From: Ian Pulsford <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.unix.advocacy
Subject: What Tim is good for (was Re: What UNIX is good for.)
------------------------------
From: John Wiltshire <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Claims of Windows supporting old applications are reflecting reality
or fantasy?
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 09:40:54 GMT
On Mon, 19 Jun 2000 10:26:52 -0500, Nathaniel Jay Lee
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>While I agree with some of what you are saying, I don't agree fully.
>The hardware vendor gets paid by the number of people that buy the
>actual hardware. There are few hardware companies that make you
>purchase a driver seperate, those that come up often disappear quickly,
>because people are not going to continue to pay for something they
>already own. Therefore, they are not giving away something if they
>allow someone to use something they already purchased. The algorithms
>of the driver will not help the competition unless the competition knows
>exactly how those algorithms interact with the hardware. While it would
>be possible with the source code to reverse engineer any given piece of
>hardware, the invested time and effort would almost garauntee that the
>second company would be far behind the curve in product development.
>The second company would release a clone of the product when the first
>company was releasing the next generation of the product. Would this
>really hurt the first company? I seriously doubt it. Also, I would
>think a company would like the idea of selling more of its products as
>people are able to create drivers for other operating systems (using the
>source code). While other hardware companies could work on the drivers,
>what good would it do them? They would be improving the driver of thier
>competitor, which would actually hurt them. Open sourcing a driver is
>completely different from open sourcing a commercial software package.
>You cannot "open source" a piece of hardware. It would still cost money
>to purchase the hardware. But by having open source drivers, the
>company would give themselves an almost limitless market. The drivers
>could be ported to any operating system that had an interest in the
>hardware, and both parties would be better off.
>
>Don't fear open source just because it is different. I don't think open
>sourcing drivers is a bad idea for a hardware company. They would
>create a huge new market for themselves if they did so. Why not do it?
>The worst that would happen is that many other people would end up
>helping out with the development of the driver. Again, giving the
>company something for nothing is not something that should be feared (by
>the company or the individuals that are working on said driver). This
>would actually be a win-win situation. Where is the problem with that?
>You assume that just by seeing the driver, another company would create
>a clone of that hardware. So what? They would create the clone by the
>time the market had moved on and would therefore be at the bottom of the
>consumer chain. This is not the most profitable area to be in.
>
>Open source could help out hardware companies looking to make better and
>more portable drivers for thier products. If only people would stop
>trying to convince the world that open source is a disease. But it's
>scary to see the changes that are happening. I know, every day I get a
>lecture from my wife that things are changing too fast, we shouldn't be
>discovering anything more, we should just be happy with where we are. I
>don't agree, humanity will move forward, software will move forward,
>hardware will move forward, science will move forward, __________ will
>move forward, because that is human nature. Not every advance is
>considered good when it first comes along, and sometimes that is
>warranted. But this fear of open source is just silly for a hardware
>company. The profits they make are from the hardware. They are not
>making profits from the software (i.e. drivers) that they produce, and
>if they try to "sell" the driver, they will quickly lose favor with the
>consumer market. Since the driver is already free, why not make it open
>source? This would continue driver development outside of the company,
>and give the company a very solid basis for thier "official" drivers.
>
>Sorry, I got a little long winded. But I hate to see people saying
>"CHANGE IS BAD, STAY AWAY FROM THE SCARY OPEN SOURCE." without actually
>having a valid reason. I don't think this is a bad situtation for a
>hardware company to investigate. Why close your mind to something new?
>You never know, it could create a huge new market for them.
While your argument has merit, I think it makes the assumption that
there is no value in the driver in isolation from the hardware. This
assumption is correct for simplistic hardware, but for more complex
devices it is most definitely not the case. A few examples spring to
mind:
i) 3d video cards. These cards share work between hardware and
software. Until recently transform and lighting was done completely
in the driver. Other functions are still performed in the driver and
techniques to perform these functions smoothly and efficiently may
give significant boosts in performance. As a prime example, the Viper
II card recently released from Diamond/S3 had significantly lower
frame rates than nVidia's GeForce despite having comparable hardware.
This driver alone has probably been worth tens of millions of dollars
in sales over S3 for nVidia. Releasing it would be bad for nVidia.
ii) SCSI/HDD controllers. Elevator algorithms and tuning parameters
can give significant performance boosts here. Why give that lead to
competitors.
iii) I/O bus drivers. Driving an I/O bus will give away the hardware
specifications of that bus, which opens it up significantly for
reverse engineering. As an I/O bus is a relatively simple interface
(usually), and the developing company may want royalties for
development (or possibly to keep a competitor out of their market) the
release of the specs for the bus in the form of a working driver would
cost large amounts of money in lost revenue.
There are plenty more examples, but they are all of a similar vein.
Where the driver has significant value, or may disclose something of
significant value to a companies competitors then it is not a good
thing to open source drivers (or other software for that matter).
I do not fear open source. I fear the zealots who insist that
something which does not match their definition of open source is
somehow evil or worthy of contempt. If you read my original post I
acknowledge that open source software has a very valid place in the
industry, but closed source software also has its place. To deny
either is unreasonable closed mindedness.
Beware of zealots who call your mind closed. They are often too
binded by their own beliefs to see the truth.
John Wiltshire
------------------------------
From: John Wiltshire <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Claims of Windows supporting old applications are reflecting reality or
fantasy?
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 09:42:19 GMT
On Mon, 19 Jun 2000 22:16:08 -0400, "Colin R. Day"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>John Wiltshire wrote:
>
>> On Sun, 18 Jun 2000 00:33:41 -0400, "Colin R. Day"
>> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>
>> >John Wiltshire wrote:
>> >
>> >> I think you've blinded yourself to the possibilities. There's a
>> >> kernel httpd at the moment which is frighteningly fast. Why not X?
>> >>
>> >
>> >Perhaps the fragility of GUI code?
>>
>> I accept that GUI code is more complex than daemon code for the most
>> part (naturally it depends on the GUI and the daemon). Still, the
>> possibility exists and I think it is probably a good option for some.
>
>Gamers, perhaps.
Exactly. The fact that games sell systems is very important,
especially as Linux is pushing forward into gamer space and even the
console gaming market.
John Wiltshire
------------------------------
From: John Wiltshire <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Claims of Windows supporting old applications are reflecting reality or
fantasy?
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 09:50:14 GMT
On Mon, 19 Jun 2000 17:06:21 GMT, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (JEDIDIAH)
wrote:
>On Mon, 19 Jun 2000 11:13:55 GMT, John Wiltshire <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>On Sun, 18 Jun 2000 16:20:31 GMT, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (JEDIDIAH)
>>wrote:
>>
>>>On Sat, 17 Jun 2000 04:36:23 GMT, John Wiltshire <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>
>>[snip]
>>
>>>>The NT 3.x is quite similar in design to Linux/XF4 if you look at it.
>>>>Wonder how long it takes them to move X into the kernel to improve
>>>>speed? ;-)
>>>
>>> Even if that happened, our kernel is modular. The wise sysadmin
>>> would still be able to rip it back out if necessary. So, the
>>> whole point is moot.
>>
>>Not necessarily. Just as you practically need perl, python and half a
>>dozen other scripting packages to run a full featured Linux
>>installation, so you will probably end up needing the GUI.
>
> This is simply false.
Have you ever installed a minimal Red Hat configuration (ie less than
100M install) and then figured how much junk you need to get XFree86
4.0 with Gnome or KDE to run? I know it's not false because I've done
exactly that a few times and been left each time wondering how Linux
zealots can call Windows bloated.
>>>[deletia]
>>>>>>That's because real-mode never made its way into Windows v3.x.
>>>>>>In order for Microsoft to move forward, they had to leave some
>>>>>
>>>>> It doesn't matter what the excuse is. The 386 was out by then,
>>>>> they had more than enough information to plan ahead with. They
>>>>> just chose not to.
>>>>
>>>>The 386 was out, but the target platform was the 286. Windows 3.x
>>>
>>> So, they could have designed it with both the future and the
>>> present in mind.
>>
>>How? You obviously have some idea, don't you?
>
> Are you implying that I am some sort of CIS genius and that
> if I can't come up with the solution than somehow Microsoft
> is magically absolved of any responsibility for not coming
> up with a solution of their own?
No, but if you don't know if a solution is possible then how can you
criticize Microsoft? By your very criticism you are implying that you
believe a solution is possible. If you can't detail that solution,
then from what does your criticism stem?
It's like saying Henry Ford should have built a better car, but having
absolutely nothing to show that it was possible at the time.
>[deletia]
>>>>> No, they should design for the future more than the have
>>>>> been (in the case of Microsoft). Software doesn't wear
>>>>> out and OS vendors shouldn't be essentially sabotaging the
>>>>> capital investments of both companies and home users.
>>>>
>>>>So Linux should have a standard binary driver API, or do different
>>>>rules apply to different systems?
>>>
>>> You're trying to change the subject.
>>
>>No, I'm just saying that what's good for the goose is good for the
>>gander. If you want old binaries and DOS apps (which required
>
>You are trying to support the fallacy that Application == Device Driver.
>
> This would be a good example of the "false strawman argument".
Tell that to the Debian/HURD team, or the Mach guys.
Ok, so tell my why I can't run a minix binary on Linux 2.4? I copied
it over and it just wouldn't work. Surely they would have made that
work properly?
How about the fact that 'ps' from my Linux 1.0.0 build doesn't run
properly on Linux 2.4?
You really want me to continue?
>>drivers) to run on the latest versions of Windows then Linux 1.x
>>kernel modules and binaries should all run seamlessly on Linux 2.4.
>>
>>If you have a different rule for Linux to Windows then you are a
>>hypocrite (by definition).
>
> The only hypocrite here is you. I made no claim about device
> drivers, only applications. They are entirely different beasts
> as Merge, SoftWindows, WABI, Linux on OS/390, and VMWARE clearly
> demonstrate.
No they aren't, as Mach, HURD and other microkernel systems
demonstrate. :-P
Ok - you've defined terms for the argument and you still lose.
Commands from minix and Linux 1.0 do not run on Linux 2.4. Criticize
it.
John Wiltshire
------------------------------
From: John Wiltshire <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Claims of Windows supporting old applications are reflecting reality or
fantasy?
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 09:56:22 GMT
On Mon, 19 Jun 2000 20:32:51 GMT, Mathias Grimmberger
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>John Wiltshire <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>> On Sun, 18 Jun 2000 16:20:31 GMT, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (JEDIDIAH)
>> wrote:
>> >On Sat, 17 Jun 2000 04:36:23 GMT, John Wiltshire <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>
>> [snip]
>>
>> >>The NT 3.x is quite similar in design to Linux/XF4 if you look at it.
>> >>Wonder how long it takes them to move X into the kernel to improve
>> >>speed? ;-)
>> >
>> > Even if that happened, our kernel is modular. The wise sysadmin
>> > would still be able to rip it back out if necessary. So, the
>> > whole point is moot.
>>
>> Not necessarily. Just as you practically need perl, python and half a
>> dozen other scripting packages to run a full featured Linux
>> installation, so you will probably end up needing the GUI.
>
>God help us all if this day ever comes. A server *needing* a GUI to run
>is just too revolting as a concept.
You make your own choices. I prefer a windowing environment with
command line options on my servers.
>Ohh, I'm talking Real Servers here, able to be operated headless (a
>feature MS seems to have discovered recently :-), remotely and stuff.
>Animated menues/windows, webpages as desktop background, an annoying
>startup sound, dialog boxes that fade out and so on are not features of
>a server OS.
No, but making your server OS work exactly the same as your
Workstation OS helps the learning curve, or do you prefer scaling
cliffs to strolling up a hill?
>A workstation is something else, though I still wonder why anyone would
>want to actively *slow down* the GUI. At least one can disable most of
>that crap in Windows.
It has to do with Human-Computer Interaction. Something X completely
forgot about when it was designed. Look at the Aqua interface on
MacOS X. Apple has always been at the front of the pack in UI and
they are now slowing down the GUI even more to make machines easier to
use.
John Wiltshire
------------------------------
From: John Wiltshire <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Claims of Windows supporting old applications are reflecting reality or
fantasy?
Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2000 09:59:58 GMT
On Mon, 19 Jun 2000 22:04:28 GMT, Kirill Kounik <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>Hello,
>
>I see you are smart guys here!
>So, pplease help me! I am looking for information about how to write new
>WinNT subsystem. In particulat I am looking for documentation of native
>NT API, by which I mean for example functions starting with Nt* (like
>NyCreateFile() that is native for win32 CreateFile()) - if you know
>what I mean. I knwo that there is no offisial documentation on
>this.but still...
Go to a good bookshop and look for books like 'Undocumented NT' and
others. They do a partial job of documenting these.
Other than that, get a source code license from Microsoft. I've heard
they aren't cheap though.
John Wiltshire
------------------------------
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