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* LUG meet on 12 Jan. 2003 @ VJTI
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On Thu, 9 Jan 2003, Nikhil Joshi wrote:
[snip]
> >     Ans: Use two ISP blocks in wvdial, one for you, another for your
> >          brother. You start *your* ISP with the right command-line
> >          argument to wvdial. There are also gui-apps that let you do the
> 
> Can you please elucidate on this one.
> AFAIK wvdial requires wvdial.conf
> Now lets suppose I (the root) prepare wvdial.conf
> Obviously I must know my brother's pass to configure my brother's ISP

It is possible to make wvdial ask for passwd of the ppp account in use.
See man page for wvdial.conf, look for an option called "Ask Password"
As root you can setup wvdial.conf with two Dialer blocks, one for you, 
another for your brother with both set with this option. Then when either 
of you wish to connect, it will ask for your respective passwords.

I don't know whether rp3 from RedHat handles this password prompting. (rp3 
uses wvdial as backend). KPPP seems to be nicely integrated gui option to 
do various of these things.

> > Forgetting about older windows release, if we consider Windows
> > NT/2K/XP they all require administrative access to install/update
> > softwares. As mentioned before, to the user, this is not visible. The
> 
> I guess theres a sort of pseudo administrative acc. in 2K whose user can
> install software w/o administrative previleges. pls correct me if I'm
> wrong

It is sort of like that, but much more sophisticated.

> >      than common ext2/3 on Linux. But did anyone care for FAT32 on Win9x,
> >      without journaling support or anything. It still works.
>
> I have to agree on this one.
> I had a nightmarish experience with ext2. But FAT32 is quite resistant to
> power losses and stuff.
 
I would rate ext2/3 better than FAT32, but I may be wrong. What I ment by 
above was that you don't really need High performance, High availability 
file systems on desktops.
 
> > Windows GUI runs faster because much of its functioning is within the
> > kernel, note that windows GUI is a "shell" to the underlying kernel. That
> 
> Correct me: I've read somewhere ---> IE is the shell of Windows 98
 
No, it is a component of the windows GUI, but inseparable. By "shell" I 
meant a layer / a set of tools through which you interact with system 
kernel. Under *nix system you have a command shell with a prompt. Under 
Windows you have menus, icons, buttons, and other gui elements. This 
"graphical shell" or the gui subsystem interacts with the base OS kernel 
and other devices. IE was integrated to provide seamless access to 
internet and file sharing. These 'features' are also the prime reason for 
presence of malicious softwares like viruses etc. since parts of these gui 
subsystems run with more privileges than the user.

[snip]
> > consumption. If MS hinders that by making it unrecognizable by
> > common utilities like a browser, whose fault is it, the Linux loving users
> 
> but Microsoft is not the sole maker of Encylopedia (Encarta) , Britannica
> e.g.

What I would like is for these same companies to also come up with Linux 
versions of these softwares. This is more a chicken and egg kind of 
situation, there must be a beginning somewhere.

> > student will require. Windows not only sucks but it is pathetic in its
> > default install to support any kind of coding.
> 
> VBscript ?

What kind of languages a typical course work in Engineering/Sciences 
require ? C, C++, FORTRAN, ? ODE solvers, Linear Algebra systems ? Where 
is support for all this? Note we are talking about a very large class of 
common people, who need a system that provides all a given family needs.

> > yours. In summary I will say use a system that gives you the best of all
> > worlds, for me it happens to be Linux, it may not be the same for you. 
> 
> I'm for Linux because I know I can handle it
> But I had common people and my own probs in mind while starting this
> thread

We right now have just too bad a statistic, too many windows users than 
Linux users. It is no wonder that most will not want to change, since 
their prime objective is to get the work done. Hence changes must occurs 
in schools, colleges and in homes. As far as problems are considered, I 
don't know another OS that has these many overwhelming number of support 
personel online 24x7x365. ;) It is right now a matter of awareness.

-Rajesh

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