Re: Ubuntu on a Mac

On Thu, 03 Aug 2006 23:49:08 +0000, Jim wrote:

Snit wrote:

"TheLetterK" <non@xxxxxxxx> stated in post
pan.2006.08.03.20.08.29.116175@xxxxxxxx on 8/3/06 1:08 PM:

On Wed, 02 Aug 2006 18:35:13 -0700, Snit wrote:

"TheLetterK" <non@xxxxxxxx> stated in post
pan.2006.08.02.21.26.20.284442@xxxxxxxx on 8/2/06 2:26 PM:

On Wed, 02 Aug 2006 11:57:18 -0700, Snit wrote:

"TheLetterK" <non@xxxxxxxx> stated in post
pan.2006.08.02.18.29.48.972638@xxxxxxxx on 8/2/06 11:29 AM:

Make Ubuntu use a wide aspect resolution.


hmmm... manually inputting the screen dimensions, perhaps?

Yes, that what I was suggesting.

Worked for me
today, managed to get my Apple Cinema 20" widescreen working as a left head
off my NVidia card at 1680x1050. SHARP isn't the word I'd use to describe
it. Fucking beautiful is what it is.

Perhaps - but not by going to the Monitor Preferences. That is
sorta silly. A user should not have to jump through all sorts of
hoops to fix their OS just to have it work with a relatively common
monitor (a ViewSonic widescreen LCD).


Try it on a Taxan 20" CRT sometime. SuSE 9.2 didn't detect that correctly*
either. Had to manually input the dimensions for that as well. Just for
testing, I don't use CRTs anymore. Heck, I even dumped a 21" CRT at my
offsite lab for a 17" Dell TFT with a crack in the top of the panel.
*neither did Windows XP when I had that on there. All that could do was
1400x1050 and it looked fscking horrible.

It's not intentional--it's a problem with how monitors are detected.

Of course. I was not suggesting the Ubuntu folks went out of their
way to make it not work as well as it should... but the fact is it
does not work as well as it should.

'Fixing' it would not be easy. The best workarounds so far basically
resort to having the user pick their monitor from a list. Ubuntu tries
to make it easier to install by not asking during the installation.

OS X and XP handle this relatively well.


I kind of like the idea of inputting the expected optimum resolution, dot
pitch, and diagonal of the screen. OK, so it takes referring to Google for
the frequencies and refresh rates, but so what?

They have different problems to work around during instalaltion.

Perhaps, but irrelevant.

Ever tried to install Windows on a RAID array, using a hardware RAID
controller?

No.

I have. Never again.
Hardware was a Compaq Proliant 4500 (upgraded with a pair of Pentium 233MMX
chips) with 6x9.1GB SCSI drives. Horrible doesn't begin to describe /that/
experience. Nor did my experience with an HP Kayak dual 733 with 8x36GB
SCSI drives.

They both ended up with Debian 3.0r0 on them. One (the Compaq) is my
failover webserver on RAID6, the other is my document stash and tape backup
stack (3xHP Colorado 8's) (also RAID6).


Not of the version in question.

Which probably doesn't even make up 10% of their userbase.

You are grouping the PPC product with the x86. I am not. Ok.

No, it isn't. SuSE or Fedora both provide exactly what you were looking
for. A Debian-based distribution is a bad choice for someone who wants
everything out of the box.

And a novice would know this how?

A novice probably isn't going to care. Most people would be willing to
make the effort to install what they want.

A novice cares about having an easy to use system. To get that, with
Linux,
they need to know about distros - or find someone who does. This is not
the case with OS X and XP... well, with all the versions of XP it may be
somewhat true there as well. Not as much, though.


example:
XP Pro: improved networking;
XP Home: for those who aren't running domain services but still want to get
on the net and do a little more than surf;
XP MCE: not for those who want to do any serious work (as serious as Windows
gets, anyway).
2003 DCE: for those with serious amounts of money who want tech support on
the end of a phone line without the four hour queue.

A few of the many flavours of Windows to confuse the *** outta ya.

No, they need to pick a distro and learn to use it.

But above you talk about how Ubuntu is a bad choice. So if they pick a
bad choice is it there fault?

I said it was a bad choice for people who want everything out of the box.
Most people don't.

I was not discussing people who wanted everything out of the box.


How would other keyboards work better by allowing it?

Other than the ones specifically mentioned in the images? Well,
general Windows keyboards... but the ones specifically mentioned, too!

Uhh, 'general windows keyboards' are supported just fine. So are Apple
keyboards, for that matter.

Not as well as they are on OS OS X. Ubuntu offered no setting comparable
to
what OS X does. Not a big deal... but it is a fact.


Allowing anything more than a specific set of commands is dangerous.

I don't like that sort of thinking. I should be able to do as I please
with my own machine. If that means I want to schedule nothing to occur at
set times, then so be it.

What
happens if for some reason someone decides to craft a cronjob to do some
seriously weird/illegal *** on a remote box or even to the local box?

That's a more general security issue--if I'm getting illegitimate access
to a remote box, then there's a bigger problem than my ability to schedule
scripts to run against it.

Something that ordinarily, cron wouldn't allow? That then appears as a
seriously exploitable hole.

Better than what? The OS 9 version? If so, in what way?

but only tell you *after* you have selected it and
want to leave the window. I do not understand your reasoning.
Perhaps you
are not understanding the situation. From the original description:
-----
* KCron seemed relatively easy to use... let me pick the mp3 file with
no
problem. When I tried to finalize it (using buttons different from
other programs!) it told me it was not an executable so I could not
select it. -----


How about starting the player app with the mp3 added as a playlist item?
Can't be that hard, better yet it'd be an allowable cronjob.

<snip the bits I'm not interested in/know ***-all about>

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