On Jan 25, 2008 1:44 PM, Lincoln Rutledge <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hi Simon,
>
>
> Lincoln Rutledge
> Network Engineer
> OSC Networking
> 800-627-6420
>
> >>> Simon Roberts <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 01/25/08 10:33 AM >>>
> OK, I've been wanting to answer this question for ages, but there's just so
> much to say. In the end, I've given up trying to say everything completely
> cohesively, and I'm just going to allow myself to ramble and hope it helps
> some. First, a little background. I have a pretty good computer background. I
> wrote 6502, Z80, 8088, 68000 and other machine languages starting 25 years
> ago. I was a programmer for 15 years, writing network protocol software
> before the TCP stack was generally available, Unix device drivers, and a
> bunch of distributed control systems. Eventually I moved to corporate
> teaching, which I still do. I was using Linux to
>
> Sounds like you've worked on some cool stuff :) I wrote some Z80 assembler
> myself. I miss it.
>
> teach TCP and Unix system administration in 1994, and other than Linux, I'm
> mostly a Solaris body. I have 3 Linux systems at home, two of which dual-boot
> with windows so I can run Photoshop in a color managed environment. I use
> VMWare for some other windows stuff that's less crucial to me. I also have a
> dual processor
> SPARC/Solaris 10 system. I loath and detest bill gates and everything he
> stands for. I regularly point out to
>
> I'm old school too. But Suns and SPARCs are yesterday dude :) Linux and
> x86-64 are NOW!
>
lawl. Dude Sun and Sarc are going no where any time soon... just the
opposite... Sparc IV+ & Solaris 10 dance circles around Linux on any
hardware.. You need to spend some time in a true top-tier enterprise
class data center. Linux still has scores or limitations holding it
back in the enterprise realm. There is a reason the stuff is expensive
-- its damn good.
> my students that his company is a marketing company (very effective one,
> sadly) not a technology company. I believe they've never invented anything
> good, and have damaged many, if not most, of the ideas they've
> "appropriated". Until about 6 months ago, I was on a one man crusade to try
> to get my friends all using Linux. Around about then (after one success,yay!
> :) I finally gave up :( I can't begin to tell you the heartache, sadness, and
> sense of failure I felt when I reached that decision. Anway, what follows are
> some of the key/memorable personal experiences that wore me down and made me
> give up. Please remember that I love Linux, I love the people who put their
> effort into creating and maintaining it, and I think it has improved
> tremendously in recent years. I blame nobody for the "weaknesses" outlined
> below, other than what I see as bill
> gates' unreasonable and amoral (but sadly, probably entirely legal)
> practices.
>
> It's hard to support computers for friends and family. I had to define a
> boundary in my life: no PC support off the clock. It miffed some people but
> I needed to do it. And I like life better :) Now, if they were running
> Linux, I would spend lots of time fixing things :)
>
> 1) Hardware issues.
> If you just walk into a store and ask for a machine that will be good to go
> with Linux, they'll look at you blankly. It's a major effort to check the
> details yourself. Most off the shelf machines don't tell you exactly what
> cards they contain, and then it's often hard to find the devices in the HCLs.
> New hardware--inevitably--is most likely to be unsupported or buggy.
> Finding the HCLs used to be hard. I just checked, and this seems to have
> been fixed (thanks someone! :)
> HCL is online, and I don't usually have access to the internet when I'm in
> a store browsing!
> Whichever way you slice it, having to care about the exact hardware is a
> pain. I don't see any way (other than having the leverage of micky$loth) to
> get round this, and I certainly laud the efforts that have been made to
> improve life
>
> This is true.
>
> 2) Photography related. I use Windows to run Photoshop CS2 in a color managed
> workflow. In this, Linux doesn't cut it for two reasons:
>
> Color management. I tried to work out how to do the LCMS stuff, and a bunch
> of related color management options I though I was looking at, and just gave
> up, too much like hard work. Also, I seem to have the wrong colorimeter
> hardware already and am not willing to pay all over again for something else.
>
> GIMP is only 8 bit. That's fire in theory, but when you mess with stuff
> much, you quickly run into posterization (I see this even in some
> professional's work and while those in question don't seem to care, I
> personally hate it).
>
> I don't know.
>
> 3) Irritations with web plugins. Idiots out there keep writing stuff that's
> windows only, and there always seems to be trouble trying to get the latest
> Flash player. When it's available, it's tricky to install.
>
> This is true.
>
> 4) Palm pilot-:
> Several versions of palm device just don't sync, needless to say, this
> includes some that matter to me.
> I don't know how to sync my palm and evolution-etc. with web calendars like
> google or yahoo. That's important to me. I gave up using my palm pilot
> because of this. Consequently, I'm appallingly badly organized and regularly
> double book myself and miss meetings.
>
> This is true.
>
> 5) Video; I have failed repeatedly to build a system that plays all
> reasonable kinds of video. Mostly this seems to be a deliberate policy on
> bill gates' part (and the lawyers and the evil patent system, of course).
> I've reached the point where I can do most file types with the exception of
> AVI with the type 9 codec.
>
> This is true.
>
> 6) Strange inconsistencies ("That can't happen"):
>
> These are really hard, time-consuming, and often fruitless to debug. My
> laptop (dual core 64bit Intel) won't shut down without crashing the kernel.
> It will hibernate, and the file system journaling means that I've been able
> to kill it when I have to shut it down completely, but it's still irritating,
> and I long-ago gave up trying to fix it.
>
> This is true.
>
> Updates that break things, the various methods that I've found my systems
> using to auto-patch seem prone to failure. Usually complaining about
> something incompatible. I have one machine (admittedly running 9.3) which has
> been trying to upgrade Mozilla for the last two years. I can't seem to stop
> it trying, the warning blob thingy always says updates are ready. I don't
> really care, but it's not reassuring.
>
> Biggest pain for me is that it seems like every time I decide I want to
> use/install/build a new piece of software, I have trouble with dependencies.
> I fetch a package, but then it won't install because something is missing, or
> the wrong version. I try to find the required stuff, but that won't install
> because something else is missing, or it's incompatible with something I
> already have. It might well be that I'm doing it all wrong, but I only have
> so much time to give to this stuff. Mostly I want a machine to just work.
> Usually, I give up and accept that I'm going to live without whatever new
> function it was that seemed exciting.
>
> All of which sounds like I'm really unimpressed with Linux. That's not the
> case. I know what work goes into this stuff, and I use it as much as possible
> anyway (the only things I do with Windows are run Photoshop, for the reasons
> given, and one check-writing program that I run under VMWare, because I
> always did, and GNUCash was too complicated to bother finding out about, and
> too much like hard work to migrate to). My problem, which is a huge personal
> disappointment, is that I realized about 6 months ago that I can't ask my
> friends to move to Linux. They just don't have what it takes still to cope.
> Me, sure, I can muddle through, but then again, I don't like to make this
> effort and I tend to accept restricted functionality as the price I pay to
> take my moral high ground and reject gates as much as possible. I also prefer
> the relative security that I get from avoiding "the Internet's petri dish"
>
> Generally, I would prefer to see less effort on "improvement" and more on
> stabilization. Pin down the compatibility issues (remember the Unix wars?--I
> do.) between versions of libblahdyblah or whatever, so I can just fetch a
> package and use it. Meanwhile, Linux seems to me to be a good choice for
> companies where one install effort can be rolled out to hundreds of users,
> but less viable for intermediate home users who want to do interesting and
> different things, but aren't able to help themselves. The really basic users,
> who browse, send email, write the odd document, and look at jpeg images from
> their cameras have no problem. I have one such friend that is completely
> computer illiterate and quite happy using OpenSUSE 10.1 with ICE window
> manager (old, weak hardware, couldn't run Gnome or KDE adequately). All other
> attempts to migrate my friends were met with legitimate objections that I
> couldn't counter.
>
> With thanks to all who've made this what it is, and with continuing faith
> that one day it'll be what it deserves to be, and have the acceptance and
> mainstream support it deserves. Hope this ramble helps,
> $0.02
> Simon
>
> I'll repeat what I read in "The UNIX Hater's Handbook":
> "WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF THE FUTURE"
> GPL is the borg, and all will be assimilated. It's happening now.
> I recently bought a VIC 20, which was my first computer. Then I looked at my
> junky Toshiba laptop. Remember those computers from the 1980's? It's not so
> bad on your OpenSUSE box now, is it? :)
> There is no resistance. I recently listened to an interview with Jeremy
> Allison from SAMBA, who explained why BSD is dead, and Microsoft is dying,
> and Linux is taking over the world. And you know what? It's true :) It's a
> wild ride, but it's okay. Sometimes it's even fun!
>
> All of the brokenness you mentioned is real. Have you ever read the LKML for
> a week or so? Or Alan Cox's web diary? Believe it, it's a wonder anything
> ever works at all. But you know what? It does. And a lot of things work
> REALLY WELL :)
>
> So put on your helmet and goggles, and hold on brother!
>
> Linc
>
>
>
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--
Chuck Carson - Sr. Software Engineer
Galileo Educational Solutions
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