Re: My Continuing Adventures With Linux



On Wed, 18 Jul 2007, BMJ wrote:

Straydog wrote:

<snip>

I would not use the word "improved". I would say "changed". For most of the newer SW you need high spec boxes and I'm just not going to go out and spend $1K or more getting more/new boxes and HW just so I can use the latest SW when all of my old boxes work fine, and I can do wp & spreadsheets & internet jazz to my heart's content.

On the other hand, there's a better chance that the installation goes smoothly.

Maybe.....maybe not. My recollection is that newer sw was always more bloated than old, and as the code got larger, that led to more bugs (and vulnerabilities), and the updates that corrected old bugs ended up introducing new vulnerabilities (and this _is_ in the books).

Considering that many versions of Linux aren't commercial, and that there are a number of volunteers working on it, the chances of serious bugs arising is likely reduced as there are no deadlines to meet and no advertising propaganda to live up to.

I think it should be time to acknowledge what is and is not linux. Linux is the _kernel_ of the OS. All the shells are NOT Linux. All the aplets are not Linux (they are aplets FOR linux). All the aps are NOT Linux. They are aps. I don't know but I would ask you to look at the aps, under "help" and "about" and look at the version numbers. When I did this, I got versions anywhere from 0.1xx to 0.95 and bugs or disfunctionality inversely proportional to the "size" of the version. Probably all of those aps, aplets, craplets, etc., also have versions for BSD and unix, and all the sub versions in those two clones.

Strickly speaking there are no _version_ of Linux, but distributions (kernel, plus filesystem [at least half a dozen], package of aps/craps, etc), and logo/trademark dependent material. The "version" of the kernels (Torvald's thing) all have the "version" number at the end.

<snip>

I don't remember, exactly. But, they were the first to come out with a graphical install that took a lot of the techie difficulty out of the installations and their "OpenLinux" got a big writeup in one of the computer trade rags and that is when I decided to get on the bandwagon. I was thrilled to see my first attempt be successful (beginners luck). After that, then that is when I actually started learning what linux is and where the boobytraps are located (by trial and error), and the books don't talk about that stuff.

Often, the authors aren't aware of them.

Usually, the authors are writing their own books by reading other people's books and re-hashing what was already written RATHER THAN getting their hands on the actual code, talking with the actual geeks, etc.

Or working with it themselves.

Right.

<snip>

The Linux distros I looked at appear to have many of those capabilities. I haven't found any, except for FreeBSD, that allow for floppies.

Surely there is a file manager there that can look at fd0? (fdn?).

I suspect there is, but I haven't looked for it yet.

Do you have Nautilus? It looks like a web browser.


And, I'd be surprised if you did not have "mtools" which allows you to access "a:" and "c:" and the file you need to edit out the "#" is "mtools.conf"

Again, I haven't looked for it.



They
generally require that one downloads the ISO file and burns an image onto a CD.

That's the news stuff, and if you don't want to buy a CDROM/DVD disk with everything on it already. And, I'm not going to go out and buy a DVD drive just to be able to do this, either.

The files for the distributions I've looked at so far can be burned onto CD-Rs, though several may be required for all the files.

OK.



I did get BSD onto one of my boxes, but could not get the x-server to run. All the command line stuff worked, but no GUI. So I decided to abandon BSD.

I have a choice with FreeBSD. It, by default, launches into the command-line interface and one can start X windows from there. Once that's running, one can start the default desktop KDE. By adding a line to a configuration file, the OS can automatically launch into Gnome which, in my opinion, is a nicer desktop.

Depends on what you're looking for. I rarely had any problem with the Gnome access to the printer setup, but I never got the KDE printersetup to work. I don't know, maybe that has been corrected since I left linux.

I haven't tried setting up any peripheral devices yet. I just don't like how KDE is set up and that I often creating a new window each time I click on an icon, though that may be because I'm not used to it. I find navigating through Gnome so much easier.

Visually, KDE is more appealing to me, but Gnome actually worked more often.

The partitioning utility that I used to set up my HD can make allowances for that. Ubuntu needed to set up the partition for the installation. FreeBSD, however, did things differently.

Linux's fdisk is far superior to DOS (= windows fdisk), and DR-DOS fdisk is quite good, too. FreeDOS has a better fdisk, too.

I've used FreeDOS. I agree that it has nice utilities. For partitioning my hard drive, I used Gparted. Nice and easy to use.

There was one before that, can't think of it now.

<snip>

Out of pure curiosity, I did consider getting a Mac-mini ($500 ?) just to see what all the Macaholics are crowing about, but I kept coming back to the notion that "what I have works fine, so why mess with something new."

The Mac Mini never really caught on and was soon discontinued.

Maybe for the best.

I think one reason was that few people really knew what to do with it, plus the fact that one got only the computer itself. The monitor and keyboard had to be added separately and that detracted from the image of the Mini being a low-cost machine.

But, it was supposed to fit any, if not most, monitors & KBs.

I also heard rumours that it was never lived up to the advertising.

It also had an objectionably noisy CDROM drive.


Of course, now, Apple is no longer a computer company but an entertainmeten appliance company and a Mac is not "just a Mac" but a PC (now that it can run Windows/vista, etc).

It needs some additional software to allow that.

Yeah, but any PC needs "additional" software! At least an OS! ;-)

Apple has long utilized PC/Windoze emulators, though those were produced by independent manufacturers. I used SoftPC and SoftWindows and found them slow. As I rarely had any need to use MS programs, I soon removed them from my machines.

<snip>

Then, I could tell you about my experience with IBM's OS/2 mostly warp 3. A total PoC. Well, maybe only 95%. I played with it for about 2-3 years, and decided....PoC....into the ashcan. Yes. Period. End of story.

Actually, I thought that OS/2 was far better than Windoze but not quite as good as Apple's System xxx/MacOS.

You haven't played with OS/2 like I have. You're focusing on the hype details instead of the nitty-gritty crap.

True. I never had a chance to really work with it.

And, it crashed, too. And, no warnings like with Windows when you run out of RAM if you keep opening windows. Just, all of a sudden, the keyboard locks up. Mouse locks up. OS/2 = pew, stinks.

One department at my
alma mater had a few machines running it but I never spent much time on them. In the department where I used to teach, two new IBM machines arrived one day and they had OS/2 on them. I spent some time tinkering with them, but my colleague who ordered them quickly deleted it. (Maybe I was having too much fun with it.)

There were some neat ideas. But, then there were some realy dumb ideas, too. Like extended attributes. EAs are files. They can be very large. They are made without warning. They are sometimes impossible to get rid of without reformating. I think they never made a defragger for OS/2, or if they did, they didn't recommend using it. If you ran DOS CHKDSK on an OS/2 partition, it would corrupt the files; you had to run OS/2s CHKDSK.


Reformated the disks from xdf to FAT-16, for data storage. Big waste of my time (but there are OS/2 diehards out there, too [everyone is free to be his own favorite kind of fool]).

That's my story. Nutshell.


Oh, yes, I forgot to mention the ultimate superiority of DOS: fast bootup, and you don't need a graceful shutdown like everyone else; just turn off the power switch.

Whenever Linux isn't shut down properly, it hacks and wheezes for a while during the next start-up as it has to rearrange things, repair and update files, and the like.

Technically, you can lose anything in the cache and I dont' know about yours, but in the earlier distros that could crash the OS on next bootup (it would lock up on bootup; means you either figure it out or reinstall the OS).

I can make a DOS boot disk with a DOS
terminal program on it, get on the net and read an email/post faster than anything else out there from a cold start, and can be out the door before anything else is booted up, and then you have to wait some number of seconds after a shutdown before turning off the power switch. Ultimate simplicity and speed.

On the other hand, Linux has better diagnostics.

Like, for example, what? All you need in DOS is scandisk. It does more than fsck in Linux. And, if you want to run fsck, you have to unmount your filesystems or you corrupt files. Same as OS/2, also.

Have you noticed that if you have your CDROM drive mounted that you can't eject the tray (unless you have automount)? Same as in OS/2: if your file manager is looking at any removable media, you can't eject the media until you point your file manager to someplace else! If not, then you have an ap that mounts, reads, then umounts afterwards. Not all of them do that.






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