Re: OT - I ran....

Whiskers <catwheezel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Rowland McDonnell <real-address-in-sig@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Whiskers <catwheezel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

[...]

But most Linux users (like me) are quite happy to use
non-free and non-open-source stuff if it does what we want or need.

Sensible. But there are problems; I recall reading of a bloke who used
to maintain a Linux driver for a particular firm's Webcams.
Unfortunately, the `Linux community' decided that because it included
proprietary software in object code only form (which the Linux driver
maintainer had persuaded the commercial firm to let him use for this
free driver, with reasonable restrictions such as not letting the source
code out), it couldn't be included in Linux distros. Since that meant
you'd have to re-compile your kernel to get it fitted (so I read), it
was too much bother for most people and so lost most of its usefulness.

Some distros are maintained by people who insist on 'purity' (as defined
by them); you won't find 'proprietary' or 'commercial' or 'closed-source'
stuff in their installation files - No Sir!! But other distros are more
flexible and happily use 'what works', or give the installer the choice.
(Mandriva Free is a 'pure' distro which can easily have non-FOSS stuff
added if you want it; the 'boxed sets' and other variations of Mandriva
have such things as "MP3" support and proprietary hardware support built
in from the start).

Normally, a kernel can be compiled with 'modules' for particular tasks
built in, or you can have them as seperate entities which are run as and
when required. Compiling a kernel isn't all that big a deal, particularly
if you're developing a distro anyway - many distros have 'customised
kernels'.

Hmm. Well, maybe I should have read more so that I could have
understood the subtlties. But I really couldn't be bothered wading
through it all...

The maintainer decided that since he was getting so much opposition from
the rabid fundamentalists, he was going to drop the whole lot.

Perhaps he wanted to remain part of a 'purist team' for other things?

I don't know what the exact details were. I don't get the idea that he
particularly wanted to remain purist, so much as widely distributed so
people could use the Webcams easily.

For
example, Debian is a 'purist' distro with a large number of highly
accomplished developers involved; splitting from such a community over
something relatively unimportant would be a big step for someone also
involved (or wanting to be involved) in lots of other projects in that
community.

He wasn't interested in anything like that as far as I know. I gather
he was just maintaining that Webcam driver software.

'If you want to be in our team, you have to play by our
rules', which seems reasonable.

But they keep changing the rules, which is not. And since this is an
anarchy we're talking about, well, the way things are being run is
turning out bad. They're not doing it the reasonable way at all.
They're doing it the `We've got the power so get with the programme' way
- which is `bully-boy' anarchy.

The purist approach would be to develop a wholly independent driver for the
hardware,

Effectively impossible.

or get the manufacturer to release the source code or at least
the detailed specifications of the kit,

Ditto.

or to simply not buy or use
anything made by that firm.

Stupid.

[snip]

My
preferred web browser is Opera, which is 'free as in beer' although not
necessarily 'free as in speech', and certainly isn't open source.

I'm not enough of a programmer for the open source aspect to be
particularly significant for me, although I do like the idea that anyone
who knows how and cares to bother can find and fix defects in a program or
come up with useful variations or additions to it.

I like that too. But it strikes me that the way in which typical modern
FOSS projects are handled does not usually result in high quality at the
moment.

I don't know what a 'typical modern FOSS project' is. Mozilla (Firefox,
Seamonkey, Thunderbird, ...) is vastly different from Jedsoft (one
person).

Good point. I was thinking about how the big ones that I've known about
are run. Or some of the smaller ones. And all sorts. Oh, I don't
know. Maybe I'm just talking utter bollocks?

There does need to be a central controller to keep the thing on track
and up to quality - not necessarily a single person, but on the other
hand you can't have too many people trying to do things differently or
you get `committee type' problems. I think the best method is to copy
the military `general staff' idea, where you get agreement on `how to do
it' amongst a group of people, and they all do their bit but singing
from the same song ***, so to speak. Smallish groups of *good*
technical people seem to do this fairly naturally, so it seems.

I think most Linux-related, Gnu, etc, projects, are either one person or a
well-regulated community with a controlling committee or person to keep
the 'official version' on track. Of course, anyone who wants to take
development in a direction that the official version isn't going, is free
to start their own 'fork'; that happens fairly often.

I've been very disappointed with the quality of all `modern' FOSS
software I've met. None of it has proper documentation. In almost all
cases I've looked at (for things I actually want), you're expected to be
happy with the absence of documentation, because you can join the
developer community and read the source to find out what you need to
know.

Well, how can I put it? *** off I'm doing that.

[...]

But an awful lot of Windoze users do indeed get
very cross at the suggestion that they might not have made the best
choice.

Or defensive about not having made a choice at all but not wanting to
admit such ignorance.

I think that's more likely.

(That can produce some of the most rabid nonsense
on the 'net)/

Indeed - like Harley riders. Apparently, according to this magazine
article, H-Ds get there almost as quickly as sports bikes because sports
bike riding involves `an accordion of mad acceleration, heavy braking
for corners, slowing up to analyze the traffic, planning your overtake
and wazzing off into the distance. Harley riding lets you see the
traffic, plan your overtake as you approach, glide past and carry on
cruising at a steady 75mph, maybe just losing 10mph or so for the
turns.'

That's more about riding (or driving) style than 'hardware', surely? I've
seen some pretty daft riding done on a Harley.

Quite.

[snip]

The free Unixes are clearly moving in the more user-friendly direction,
mind. I just wish they'd get there *NOW*! ;-)

It's a lot harder to get a new start-up going in a relatively mature
market, which personal computing now is, than it was when Commodore,
Apple, et al, were starting out. The 'One Laptop per Child' project is
one approach; Dell now offer pre-installed 'Ubuntu' as an alternative to
Windows; HP have had a quiet line in Linux support for 'Large Enterprise'
customers for a fair while (and I bought this HP laptop a few years ago
'reconditioned' by HP with no OS installed - and an HP-branded Mandrake
(now Mandriva) installation CD tucked into the packaging); Linspire hasn't
folded yet (although I think that particular project is on the wrong track
by trying to be too much like Windows in ways that harm security and
encourage 'bad practice').

Intel and nVidia are pretty good at supporting Gnu/Linux.

Righto - coo.

Even without that, it is certainly possible to have a Linux-based system
that is just as integrated as any Mac

Umm... *nearly*. You'd be amazed, you really would.

I'll admit that it takes work; but Apple did it, so anyone can if they put
the work in!

Umm. Erm. Ahhh... Um.

Apple managed it eventually, after many interations over many years and
many big mistakes and going down the wrong paths. The only reason they
got it good was that they set up MacOS X development to really pay
careful attention to what software developers and users really *needed*.
Now, they got it wrong from the point of the users, but the software
developers stepped in and filled in the gaps for us.

So yes, Apple did it - with the help of Mac using community.

You need that joint effort approach for it to work. MS can't do it. I
can imagine ways in which a free Unix might get there in a similar way.

Few users bother, but an OEM could (and really should).
But the current target to beat is Windows rather than OS X, in practical
terms, and that's a much lower hurdle. Even OEM Windows systems are not
all that well integrated with the hardware, in my experience - and adding
or removing hardware or software on a Windows system can be a nightmare.

It's not on Macs. How to set up a Mac internet connection with
broadband: plug it in, wait, broadband connection magically appears.

It's a bit like that with most things.

- once it has been installed and
configured on hardware that is chosen for its operability with Linux.
That's the part that is often missing with current Linux systems, of
course - we have to make do with computers built for operability with
Windows or Mac and do all the installation and configuration for
ourselves, or hope that we can find a distro that will do it for us and
which we can live with.

Apple's always used standard stuff to make Macs (just not the so-called
`industry standards' (i.e., `one firm's products that happen to dominate
the marketplace) prevalent on the dark side) so if it's built to work
with Macs, it's generally quite easy to get it to work with other
things. Now Macs have gone all Unixy, interoperability is dead
straightforward a lot of the time. And the switch to x86 as increased
the ease of interoperability still more.

So, for example, there are plenty of bits of software for Unix -
including Linux - which have been ported to MacOS X 'cos it's so dead
easy. You can get a Linux distro for a Mac and install it dead easily
if you like.

Yes, you could have KDE or Ratpoison instead of, or alongside, your OS X
interface, if you really wanted to (although it would be a rather eccentric
thing to do <G>).

Oh, not that eccentric - not when in standard trim I get to see X11 and
`Classic' MacOS. I bet there are plenty of loons with MacOS X, Win XP,
and at least one free Unix all set up to run alongside each other.

There are flashy things they do, too. How about software that uses the
internal vibration monitor to detect when you give the laptop a bit of a
nudge thataway, switching you over to the `desktop to the left' - which
is the Windoze one, and you can switch back by giving the laptop a nudge
the other way, so you've got your MacOS X desktop back. Or something
similar using the built-in camera to detect the wave of the hand...

That's so stupidly flash I want one now. No use at all, it's just so
posey.

It's not just a one-way thing - and from where I'm sat, the `straight'
Unix world does seem to be better provided for generally than the Mac
world, honest. There is very little that's designed to work with Macs -
not properly, anyway. For example, my recently bought printer (HP1320N
for `Network' i.e,. Ethernet) come with software that, on installation,
broke the OS. I contacted HP and they instructed me to not install the
software as the supplied instructions tell you to because they know it
breaks the OS. This information was not supplied either with the
printer or on HP's Website - it's like they didn't give a damn about Mac
users. The manual is wrong is several important respects - instructions
for clearing one fault result in an automatic paper jam, for example.
And lots of things simply don't work right due to obvious sloppy bugs.

That's a black mark against HP, and they should fix it quickly.

Last time I checked, it was as it was when I bought the thing. I got an
email at one point from HP in which they promised me that the various
errors in the documentation /had been/ fixed on-line, and they /had/ put
a note on about the dodgy software that must not be installed.

They informed me that this /had been done/.

I checked: they were lying. They'd made no changes to the printer's
support information on the Web at all. Nothing - it was exactly as it
had been.

Incorrect
documentation and drivers are worse than not having any at all. (I wonder
how much of the problem is really Apple not giving HP enough accurate
information?)

Absolutely none whatsoever. At the time, Apple was still fully
supporting the Darwin effort, Darwin being `MacOS X without the fancy UI
bits', in essence - all the source code for the underlying layers of the
OS were available. That's one point: any and all information about the
guts of the OS was available. Another point is that the faults are to
do with the printer and it's software - there's no need for anything Mac
specific when you're doing PostScript over Ethernet, for heavens' sake,
is there?

It can't be anything to do with Apple's if you follow the instructions
to sort out an internal printer hiccup by following the printer's manual
which tells you to push and hold *that* button, which always results in
nothing but a paper jam. It's clever, mind, and seems able to clear
paper jams itself (the stuff comes out nicely concertina'd, which is
quite entertaining).

HP was supposed to be providing proper support for Rendezvous/Bonjour
(being the automated `find it on the local network' software so you
don't have to look up IP addresses), but explains in the documentation
that they've not got it properly sorted so it might not work all the
time. Everyone else seems to have had no trouble.

Nor is there any excuse for failing to note, on the support Web page for
the printer, that the supplied software will cause your computer to
crash if you install it. This is something that HP knew very well - the
person I spoke to on the phone mentioned it in a `Oh, that old problem'
tone of voice. They shipped it to me with known-buggy software and
hadn't even seen fit to mention the problem in `late breaking news' on
the support site's section for that printer.

No, the real reason is that HP is only providing Mac support `under
protest' - the staff (like so many in computing) want to give Mac users
second-class treatment and do. It's deliberately shoddy service, I
promise you - punishment for using a Mac, I reckon.

HP didn't used to be like that with Macs - the change in attitude
happened just before they got that woman in to run things (she was a
sacrificial lamb, blamed for the problems, but the strategy she followed
was decided before they hired her, and they hired her because she wanted
to do things the way the board had decided, and they just got her in as
a suitable `fall guy/lass' in case it went wrong. Which it did, and so
they blamed her, explained that the problem was they had a woman in
charge, etc., etc., but it was all set up by the old board who were all
men).

Rowland.

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