"Steven C. Darnold" wrote: > > Day Brown wrote: > > > > From what I can tell, if I have one distro on a drive, > > and want to try another, it will also install a new copy > > of netscape, > > Not necessarily. Slackware and Debian don't work this way. > You have to specify which packages to install. If you don't > want a new copy of netscape, don't select it. It is the 'not necessarily' that's bugging me Steve, now thatcha mention it. I guess it is inevitable in an evolving os, but all the distros each have their own ideas in different areas, and I cant keep up with all of it.
I noted that Netscape ran on Linux better than windoz, which as well, lacked some functionality, as in the 'search' mode of the USENET database. In windoz, it would only search from the left end of a ng title, whereas in Nix, it would search within the ng name for any string I liked. But then, I see Netscape in a couple of NIX cases reversed the 'reply' and 'reply all' functions... which has me wonder what other glitches there might be that I havnt noticed yet. > Despite the warning at the top of bookmarks.html, you could > probably edit it with a wordprocessor. I've never tried it, > but I often edit the cookies file (which has a similar warning). Yeah, I did find it, and that looks feasible. but for one, if it was bookmark.txt it'd be easier to deal with, you wouldnt havta worry about screwing up the htm tags, and I dunno why Arachne dont do it that way, ie, shell out to the text mode screen for these menus. Prolly be faster for those folks with limited ram anyway. I usta run dos in 50X80 text modes, and what I find is that the screens have, as they now say, MORE CONTENT! The first time I saw a GUI, win 3.1, I thought it was stupid. why would I want to be limited to a file list of only a dozen in a small window, when I could have the entire directory and havta scroll with the mouse? With Nix I see that alt F1 flips into text mode just as fast as Arachne ever did in shelling out. While I can see the need for the bitmapped gui when surfing webpages full of graphics, what I dont understand is why text mode tasks like composing this post are limited to a window of 25 lines when I could have 50 in two columns with nearly four times the content in 50X132 text mode. >> with a text editor is easy to cut and paste or regroup the websites. > > I haven't used Arachne in a while, but I do remember messing things > up when I carelessly edited hotlist.html with a text editor. It's > not foolproof. With care you could probably edit bookmarks.html > the same way (although it would be safer to use netscape's built-in > bookmark editor). Yeah, I messed up an Arachne hotlist. once. It wasnt hard to learn to make a backup copy. AFAIK, the advantage with the text editor is that you can cut and paste to alphabatize the entries in any given 'folder'. If there's a way to do that with Netscape's internal tool, they didnt make it clear to me. > > If I wanted to replace DR-DOS with ROM-DOS, FREEDOS, or even some > > MS-DOS, no problem, duck soup. sys.com will getcha there. > > sys.com transfers how many files? Three? Less than 500kb. > This is comparable to changing the kernel in Linux (which > is just as easy). Actually, command.com runs 28k with romdos, 63k with dr-dos and the whole set is less than 100k incl ibmdos ibmsys. but these days it is not the size, it is the complexity... SD>Because they go way beyond the kernel. They include libraries, > editors, a zillion utilities, megabytes of documentation, a choice > of window managers, a complete compiler (or two), a wide range of > applications, and on and on. The curse of Linux (and its greatest > blessing) is the enormous pile of free software. It's just too > easy for the mainstream distributions to fill CDs with this stuff. > And, why not? One user prefers vi, another emacs, another joe, > another pico. Once prefers kde, another gnome, another icewm, > another blackbox. Why not give them all what they want? What Redhat, the first distro I tried, did not give me, was enough info in their 'installation manual' to tell me what those choices were. The chronic problem with Nix is that either the info you want does not exist, or it is buried in a haystack of info you would just as soon not bother with reading just them. It is one of the advantages of a single distro like DR-DOS, that they've been doing it long enough to have a pretty good idea of what the problems are that folks run into, and cover them, without burying the reader in tons of geekie trivia. That is not really a problem with the functionality of Nix per se, but in trying to understand the psychology of users who are not the avid geekie types that invented Nix in the first place. In a large way, nix is the antithesis of winbloz, which they attempted to dumb down so that even an idiot could use it. Why anyone would hire anyone so stupid to run a computer is also a social issue. > If you want to install a complete distribution, this is probably > a sensible way to go. But it's also possible to install individual > packages, either as binary (.rpm or .deb) or source (which you > compile yourself). Editing makefiles bothers me because of my crummy typing. here, if I mispell, it's NBD, but there... > > > And while theoretically, I should be able to copy WINE and > > Corel's PHOTOPAINT & WORDPERFECT to one of my other distros, > > dependancies seem so complex > > Not so complex. ldd [filename] Why is there no man entry for ldd? I keep running into this; in dos, every single cli command is explained in easily found docs. Again, the experience of the old dos faq files... >will tell you whether you have > the necessary libraries for that executable. If you are missing > one, you install it. You only have to do this once. Next time > an executable needs that library, it will be there. I think the question is how large that library should be. I''ve seen dr-dos load from a cold boot to the file manager in 22 seconds. >From what I can tell, there's lotsa stuff loaded in nix that I dont ever use, but I have no way of really knowing what is critical to the way I use the system. I like the BasicLinux idea, and if they offer a distro slimmed down to just what a single user at his own pc needs, it'll be a considerable improvement in functionality. Why for instance, do I havta wait an extra ten seconds during boot for the distro to check for new hardware? With dos, when I added new hardware, I knew about it, and the hardware came with the install software, so that never again did I havta bother with it. Although, if truth be told, I put the scsi and cdrom drivers on a boot option cause Arachne needs all the low ram it can get. But I see that more a problem with arachne, a failure to employ some kind of Phar lap extended mode functionality. Although, OTOH, it was designed to run on 'thin clients' which didnt have much in the way of extra ram room anyway. DB>> It is like needing a different edition of Arachne or Neopaint >> for every dos distribution > > I seem to remember a version of Arachne that didn't work with > one DOS or another. I think it needed the 'move' command > (or something like that). Anyway, the problem was easily > solved by adding that command. Same in Linux. If you are > missing a necessary component in your installation, you can > add it. Well, I never run Microsoft software, but I have tried it with DR-DOS and ROM-DOS without problems. With FREEDOS, I dunno either, that lacks some in other ways as well. But since you can download DR-DOS that works perfectly with Arachne and every other dos app I ever tried, I saw no problem. Of course, Arachne itself has lotsa problems with M$ webpages. To unsubscribe from SURVPC send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe SURVPC in the body of the message. Also, trim this footer from any quoted replies. More info can be found at; http://www.softcon.com/archives/SURVPC.html
