Linux-Advocacy Digest #697, Volume #27 Sat, 15 Jul 00 13:13:04 EDT
Contents:
Re: Aaron R. Kulkis' signature (Paul E. Larson)
Re: Linux is blamed for users trolling-wish. (Nathaniel Jay Lee)
Re: Linsux as a desktop platform (The Ghost In The Machine)
Microsoft PalmPcs/Transmeta (bigbinc)
Re: Linsux as a desktop platform (Ray Chason)
Re: Linux is blamed for users trolling-wish. ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: one step forward, two steps back.. ("James")
Re: I tried to install both W2K and Linux last night... ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: I tried to install both W2K and Linux last night... ("James")
Re: Some Windows weirdnesses... (The Ghost In The Machine)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Paul E. Larson)
Subject: Re: Aaron R. Kulkis' signature
Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2000 16:08:53 GMT
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Ray Chason
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
>>What does it take to get this guy to stop attaching his rediculous
>>signature to his posts? Most times the content of his replies are 1 or
>>2 lines and yet, after many people pointing out that his signature is
>>far too long, he does nothing!
>>
>>It's a shame as his comments are normally reasonable and well put.
>
>I'd plonk him, but Microsoft hasn't innovated the killfile yet.
>
OE5, Message - Block Sender.
Paul
--
"Mr. Rusk you not wearing your tie." -- Frenzy 1972
------------------------------
From: Nathaniel Jay Lee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: alt.sad-people.microsoft.lovers,alt.destroy.microsoft
Subject: Re: Linux is blamed for users trolling-wish.
Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2000 11:34:44 -0500
"T. Max Devlin" wrote:
> If you'll forgive me, Nathaniel, if that's the best I'm going to get,
> then I'm giving up. Thanks for your time, I've learned a lot. I'm done
> now.
Very good T. Max. And to think, I almost took that email you sent me
seriously. I should have known better than to think that you would ever
admit anyone but you has any sense at all. Appreciate your time and
insults. See you around.
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Nathaniel Jay Lee
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (The Ghost In The Machine)
Crossposted-To: comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.unix.advocacy
Subject: Re: Linsux as a desktop platform
Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2000 16:48:53 GMT
In comp.os.linux.advocacy, T. Max Devlin
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote
on Sat, 15 Jul 2000 01:36:01 -0400
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>Said Gary Hallock in comp.os.linux.advocacy;
>>"T. Max Devlin" wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> You seem to have made my point, and lived up to your namesake, both
>>> admirably.
>>>
>>
>>I have been quietly following this thread with mild amusement. You really
>>seem to have no understanding of CMT or PMT. As far as I can tell your only
>>objection to PMT is that it is less responsive than CMT for the user
>>interface.
>
>Less than that. The only thing I have against PMT is that I've noticed
>engineers call CMT "stupid", even thought it seems to work well enough
>for some users.
CMT is not "stupid". CMT merely is; same with PMT. Both have
inherent characteristics that may or may not be suitable for
certain uses (e.g., CMT would be perfectly adequate for, say,
a single-tasking microwave oven-type application, or a
multi-tasking control panel where all of the tasks play by the
rules; PMT is good for servers and development machines, but has
more inherent overhead -- a good tradeoff for most, since
Murphy's Law isn't that far away :-) ).
I prefer PMT, but the way microprocessors are going (how many regs
does a Pentium III have?), it's going to get a high overhead
to save everything on a context switch. [+]
As for user interface responsiveness -- I'd look elsewhere. One
primary characteristic of many operating systems is "swap space".
A memory fetch takes less than a microsecond. A disk fetch takes
4 milliseconds or so. Therefore, anytime swap is accessed, total
system responsiveness is going to suffer; one hopes it degrades
"on the curve" as opposed to hitting the disk hard.
>
>>But, as has been explained to you many times, that is simply not
>>true. PMT, by its very nature, can respond faster than CMT. This is
>>because, when the user clicks on the mouse, a PMT system can grab control
>>away from the currently running process and give it to the user interface
>>process.
Not quite; PMT can do this, but it would require quite a bit
of engineering and a (mostly) idle system. Assume that the mouse is
serial, which means serial interrupts every time it moves. (Presumably
a bus mouse is similar.) When the mouse moves, the kernel is interrupted,
causing a context save; the kernel then looks around for any process
waiting on the mouse. If there is one, it puts it on the ready queue
on a PMT system (and possibly on a CMT system, as well). The kernel
also reads the characters from the mouse at some point, as well
(it doesn't bother to translate them into coordinates, however;
that's someone else's job).
If there's nothing else running, the first process is fetched from
the ready queue, a context *switch* is done [*], and the new process
is now running. If there is something else running, the kernel
gets to play "who gets the CPU", and there are various schedulers
available, of which I don't know a lot about beyond the fact that
the Amiga didn't have dynamic reprioritization and a lot of other
systems do (i.e., the longer a process waits, the higher its
dynamic priority gets, and the more likely it will get at least a
small piece of the system). There are also issues with swapping; if
the process wanting the mouse is swapped out (because other processes
needed the RAM), and the mouse is moved, things will get slightly
slow as the kernel shuffles pages around.
Also, the kernel can forcibly context switch on a busy system,
every quantum (10 ms? 100 ms? I'm not sure; it may depend on
the system), shoving the running process back onto the tail end
of the ready queue and picking up another process therefrom.
So -- just because the mouse moves, doesn't mean the right part of
the system will notice. It depends on a lot of factors.
Note that on Linux systems, the X server reads /dev/mouse (a symlink
to a character special file which throws out raw bytes -- could
be ttySn, could be psaux) and interprets them as mouse actions;
therefore, if X is paged out, bye bye performance.
Unix systems are similar, although the names will be quite
different depending on HP-UX, Solaris, AIX, OSF/1, Ultrix,
Tru64, SCO Unix, and even Xenix.
(X being paged out wouldn't be that often, though, because
everybody has to go through X to make marks on the screen.)
However, at least the kernel has the option of forcibly moving
things around; on a pure CMT system, this isn't really possible.
[rest snipped]
[+] What little I've seen of old VMS driver code was that the
author had to be very very careful which registers were used
with what; presumably, this improved performance as the context
save/switch would not require as many memory accesses.
[*] on at least one system (VAX/VMS, I think), there were (at least)
3 levels: user, system, kernel. User level is for the boring
instructions; system is for the privileged stuff that runs in
the context of the user's process; kernel is for the stuff that
runs in its own context, such as interrupts. Therefore, a
context save might change the context to kernel, but a context
switch would change from kernel to system or user, or perhaps
from system or user to system or user, of another process.
The distinction may or may not be useful; it depends whether
a context save is a lot faster than a switch.
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- "that's Mister Pedant to you, son." :-)
------------------------------
From: bigbinc <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Microsoft PalmPcs/Transmeta
Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2000 16:35:20 GMT
I was seaching the net, just browsing like any normal man and I found
saw all these new handheld pcs and a most of them are sporty
microsoft's new os. Has microsoft tapped another consumer element. Do
you think these little pcs will take off anywhere and if they do, will
this send Microsoft up again? And dont forget the Xbox. I dont really
know if I like that they have a corner on the computer industry, but I
must say the people in that organization are good! I use Linux
everyday for hobby coding and stuff, windows for surfing, and I just
have to say that linux and microsoft are used with different goals in
mind by the user. With that in mind, I dont think linux will ever
compete with Microsoft in the consumer Market, but in the professional
world it is wide open for linux. And do you think transmeta will have
any effect on the linux user base. I hear good things.
Berlin Brown
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
--
"...yes darling, computers are people too..."
http://www.geocities.com/southbeach/lights/5679
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
------------------------------
From: Ray Chason <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.unix.advocacy
Subject: Re: Linsux as a desktop platform
Date: 15 Jul 2000 15:56:08 GMT
T. Max Devlin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>No. Can you find a way to make PMT as user-responsive as CMT? Then all
>you're doing is implementing CMT. The result is the value, not the
>process. I don't care *how* you do the scheduling. As long as whatever
>program I'm working in has, as far as I am concerned 100% of the
>available time to keep up with me, even if it spends a lot of that time
>waiting. Of course, background processes shouldn't be ignored, but they
>only rarely have true priority.
You seem to assume that your current app needs, say, 90% of the CPU to
respond quickly to user input. That just isn't so; a process that is
waiting for a mouse click doesn't need the CPU at all. What it needs,
rather, is priority. It needs the privilege of telling some other process
to get off the CPU.
In a PMT system, that can happen at any time. In a CMT system, that can
happen only when the other process is good and ready. CMT effectively
assigns top priority to whatever process happens to be running, whether
it's your current app or not.
Assignment of priority is by a simple rule: Processes that mostly wait
(I/O bound) get higher priority than processes that mostly do (CPU bound).
This is contrary to intuition, yes, but to do it the other way starves the
I/O bound process -- leading to the very complaints of unresponsiveness
that you raise here, since interactive applications are I/O bound almost
by definition.
--
--------------===============<[ Ray Chason ]>===============--------------
PGP public key at http://www.smart.net/~rchason/pubkey.asc
Delenda est Windoze
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Crossposted-To: alt.sad-people.microsoft.lovers,alt.destroy.microsoft
Subject: Re: Linux is blamed for users trolling-wish.
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2000 16:53:28 GMT
On Fri, 14 Jul 2000 21:30:03 -0700, Bob Lyday
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Nathaniel Jay Lee wrote:
>>
>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>> >
>> > Yes it is and that was the original topic of my "Bit-Twiddler" post. I
>> > was not talking about programmers or techno-geeks, I was speaking
>> > about the average user who grew up and suffered with DOS, OS/2
>
>Suffered with OS/2, one of the best OS's ever made? I think you need a
>brain transplant.
Bzzzzt wrong again.
Guess you don't remember when OS/2 worked on PS/2's and very few if
any clones.
Used OS/2 since 1.0. Suffered through 30 somewhat diskettes of 1.2 EE
hoping that none of them had a bad sector. Used 1.3 which was ok
except for the DOS penalty box and the fact that OS/2 applications
were rare. Went through all the versions of Warp to the current
version.
Went through all of the hardware comparability problems with OS/2 2.0
when as a Team OS/2 member I was begging manufacturers to write
drivers for their hardware. And so forth...........
I didn't say OS/2 was a poor OS I said I suffered THROUGH it. I happen
to believe, and have stated many times, OS/2 was one of the best OSen
ever written.
My point was that now days a person doesn't have to go through all of
that crap to install and run an OS. Any OS that is, including Linux.
As for the brain transplant comment, It appears you have already been
through the process, so I will pass until the bugs can be worked out
of it.
DP
------------------------------
From: "James" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: one step forward, two steps back..
Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2000 18:50:24 +0200
Check in again a year or two from now ...
"MH" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:8kprc3$38k$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> Just checking in. (= Haven't been here in a LONG time. I used Linux for a
> couple of years back in the RH 4.2 to 5.1 days. Ditched it because I just
> didn't have the time, was learning windows development, going to school,
and
> the 'linux allure' just didn't grab & wipe off on me as easily as it does
> some. Not to mention the email threats from COLA I got one day. Nice
bunch.
> (-:
>
> So, I decided what the heck, I've got a little time this summer - I'll try
> it again.
> Quick update from the front:
>
> The distros are doing exactly as I knew they would three years ago. Trying
> to emulate windows installation programs. It isn't working. They're better
> in some regards, worse in others. I've installed W2K, and on this PC,
winME.
> The installation was flawless.
>
> RH still insists that my external modem is missing on each boot, (when
it's
> there), sometimes the sound works, sometimes it doesn't. Half of what I
> installed is buried somewhere - not on the menus. The default installs I
> think are a good idea. Trouble is, some of them leave you hanging with a
> useless setup or bomb out trying to deliver the latter, or won't let you
> setup things they didn't install very easily.
> Having said that, however, it has improved for a novice.
>
> The window managers are trying to emulate windows. It isn't working.
> Neither Gnome or KDE comes close. I can see the point of trying, but if
> you're going to do it, do it right or don't do it at all. It's not right.
> The menu systems are a complete mess. Why does gnome have to automagically
> plaster that useless bar across the bottom by default no matter what WM
you
> use? I know these things can be configured by hand in the config files, ..
> but I thought we were doing GUIs here, remember? Drag and drop support?
> Nope. Half baked at best. We're doing GUIs here, remember? We're better
than
> windows, remember? Not at gui's your not. Not even in the same ballpark in
> the same league, in the same decade.
>
> Memory useage. When I ran Linux last, it was RH 5.1 on a P100 with 64MBs
of
> ram. This box would NEVER swap. I was running Afterstep for the WM. Even
> that terrible excuse for a browser NN, when running with three or four
other
> apps...no swap. none.. nada. I loved it. Now? HA. KDE, NN only, on a PPRO
> 200 with 96MBs of ram- I'm generating 50+ MB swap files. Not only that,
the
> system does not seem much faster than the P100. The MS bloat syndrome has
> come home to roost. As I have said before, Linux was agile, and stable
> because it was lean and well tuned. The apps (small & lean) most people
ran
> were tried and true. Now the $$ has taken over and wants the desktop.
> They're trying to emulate windows. It isn't going to work. You run big GUI
> based apps on top of big GUI'd window managers and you have created the
same
> problems you have in windows. Only worse because windows has had years
> 'tuning' this slop to the point that it's getting practically stable
> now. --well, in windows terms any way!
>
> If it wasn't for bedroom hackers wanting their PC's desktop to look
> different because they have the newest theme of the month, with skins
> flapping off the walls I don't think many home users would be coming to
> linux at all. The distro's are just turning out bloated slop that doesn't
> have HALF the features of windows. Thank god for building your own Linux
> setup. Otherwise, I'd ditch it for good. This 'takeover the desktop' thing
> is just as I predicted. A mess. The iceWM is all I need with as many
> terminals as my screen will hold, running gcc or simple editors, writing
> scripts so on and so on. Internet? Big apps? Forget it. NN is just plain
> sub standard compared to IE. Have you ever really used IE? It's another
> world. Talk about features and ease of use. Star office? I've seen it. I
> wouldn't install that bug fest if Larry blew my dog. You think office is
> bad? Whew. Star office is chilling.
> Desktop domination?-- it's a LONG way off, if at all. And I think that's a
> good thing for Linux. And computer users in general.
>
>
>
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: I tried to install both W2K and Linux last night...
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2000 17:01:43 GMT
I did a distribution install comparison a few months ago and twenty
minutes for the average Linux distribution is about correct. The
longest was SuSE, which also had the most files and even that came in
far less than either Windows 98se or Windows 2k.
However, there is something radically wrong with your Win 2k install.
Big time !
Win 2k takes about an hour on my system (the same one used for the
Linux installs) and it is an annoying 1 hour in that numerous reboots
are necessary and it seems to sit there doing nothing for extended
periods during the installation.
Conclusion:
I agree with you that Linux installs very quickly, but
disagree with a 12 hour install of Win2k because something is wrong
there.
DP
On Sat, 15 Jul 2000 01:46:19 GMT, "Jeff Hummer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>Here's some irony for you. A knowledgeable friend and I installed both
>Windows 2000 and Gentus Linux 6.2 on an HDD last night. Windows took 5.5
>hours to install and it still crashes during boot, despite much tweaking at
>the command line level. This is supposed to be easy?
>On the other hand, at 12:30 A.M., we inserted the Linux CD and began
>installing. Twenty minutes later I was seeing GNOME for the first time, and
>it works beautifully. I still don't know what to do with it, but I can't
>wait to learn!
>I'm converted.
>
------------------------------
From: "James" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: I tried to install both W2K and Linux last night...
Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2000 19:00:41 +0200
Strange? Struggled installing W2k for ~6 hours (whilst assisted by
"knowledgable friend"). Got Gnome running & tried nothing else in Linux,
but converted. From what we may ask?
Geez, are you still at school ?
James
"Jeff Hummer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:LnPb5.80691$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> Here's some irony for you. A knowledgeable friend and I installed both
> Windows 2000 and Gentus Linux 6.2 on an HDD last night. Windows took 5.5
> hours to install and it still crashes during boot, despite much tweaking
at
> the command line level. This is supposed to be easy?
> On the other hand, at 12:30 A.M., we inserted the Linux CD and began
> installing. Twenty minutes later I was seeing GNOME for the first time,
and
> it works beautifully. I still don't know what to do with it, but I can't
> wait to learn!
> I'm converted.
>
>
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (The Ghost In The Machine)
Subject: Re: Some Windows weirdnesses...
Date: Sat, 15 Jul 2000 17:07:15 GMT
In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Arthur Sowers
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote
on 15 Jul 2000 07:37:07 GMT
<8kp4b3$isg$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>
>I lurk & post from time to time myself. I am supremely annoyed at BG/MS
>not just for the business crap they do, but the buggy OS they sucked me
>into buying. I actually bought 95 on disks, then another 95 on CDROM, then
>98 on CDROM, then 98 on disks, and I had a ton of problems. Fatal errors
>on install, crashes on install, crashes on boot, and crashes after
>boot. Then, I had that "thrashing floppy drive" problem. Finally it
>destroyed a drive because I could not get it to stop thrashing, even after
>20 minutes. I've had errors like "drive d: not available, try again
>later" and I'd try again later and its still not there. Could get it only
>by rebooting. Lots of other problems. One day, the OS suddenly put up a
>message all by itsefl "Win has detected that you installed new hardware
>and is installing a driver" but I didn't install new hardware.
Hmmm...clairvoyance? :-)
"Windows has detected that you are about to go out and buy new
hardware from your local computer shop and is installing a
driver for you..." :-)
>
>I know there are people out there claiming their W is OK. Maybe there are
>some weird hardware combinations that lead to OK in some cases and lots of
>problems in others (this happens in Linux, too, and I have Linux on three
>boxes). Maybe there are a lot of maybes. I actually use Win3.1 and, yes,
>DOS, for a lot of my routine stuff (email, and bookkeeping!!) and its
>faster and doesn't crash!!! I've been playing with Linux (red hat 5.2
>and now 6.2) for a year, have StarOffice and WP8 running and printers
>conifigured on the three boxes. You can have big problems with Linux,
>too. But if you get a good install, you are OK. You do need to do graceful
>shutdowns, have a UPS to prevent power failures from causeing an
>ungraceful shutdown. If you get into nitty gritty stuff (on the command
>line), you really need to know what you are doing. But, it certainly is
>reliable, stable, and you can do lots of things that Windows can't.
Even the ungraceful shutdowns aren't too bad, if one uses something
like reiserfs -- a full-fledged data-journaling file system.
(Disclaimer: I don't have it on my system, so can't say from personal
experience.)
ext2fs isn't bad, either, although it's not quite as trustworthy.
However, the main point is that most Linux systems now are bundled
with something like 'update', which basically flushes out
pages to disk every so often. This means that, if one's system
is mostly idle, and a power failure occurs, little is lost,
and ext2fs is recoverable, in the sense that an fsck will go
in there and put the meta-data right. (The data? Can't say.)
By contrast, FAT is flat. :-) (FAT16 was also *fat*; on modern
drives, the cluster sizes were ridiculously huge. Thank goodness
that FAT32 eventually came about -- but ext2 was there first.)
[rest snipped]
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- insert random misquote here
------------------------------
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