Re: Improvement in Freeview tuning functionality

On Tue, 07 Sep 2010 10:40:29 +0100, Jim Lesurf <noise@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

FWIW I've installed a number of different Linux distros here on three
different machines. They all connected out-of-the-box.

At various times over the last decade or so, I've tried:
1) Suse (much earlier version) - most things except USB backup
drive seemed to work out of the box, but desperately bloated.
2) Both Debian and Slackware - IIRC, basic things such as
soundcard, USB mouse, and USB backup drive were not configured, and at
least one landed me at a lower run-level with no GUI.
3) Mandriva - good enough to last for about five years, but then
landed me in dependency hell when I tried to upgrade FF2 to 3.
4) Suse 11 - found my DNS wasn't working, then that this problem on
is widely reported on the net; some users were lucky enough to find a
fix, I wasn't. Now even more and hopelessly bloated, with all the
worst manifestations of Windows envy.
5) Fedora - doesn't understand Reiser.
6) Today I'm trying PCLinuxOS - won't let me skip the bootloader
section of setup and do it myself later. When I tried aborting at
that point, and rebooting, I ended up at a lower non-graphical
run-level. As I can't for the life of me remember what I did
previously at that point, am just trying reinstalling, I shall have to
let it install the boot-loader, even though I'm convinced it'll f*k it
up.

My current Win2k build can be put on a PC via the network or from
another drive or partition within about 20 - 40 mins depending on the
method and its speed, and after a further 5-10mins of fully automated
self-configuring is ready to go on the internet. At the time it was
built it was fully updated, but inevitably since there have been a few
patches that would now have to be installed on first connecting. Say
1-2 hours for a complete rebuild, with all relevant OS and software
updates, with, most importantly, existing data remaining intact.

This level of automation just doesn't seem to be possible with a Linux
build.

When was the last time you tried, say, Unbuntu?

Only i386 instruction set = slower than it need be. See below.

The order of an hour seems
about right IIRC for installing something like Ubuntu here. So comparable
with what you say above. Although small distros like Crunchbang are far
quicker.

But is that a fully automated installation, with no user interaction
except to start it, tailored to your (or your organisation's)
individual needs?

For one thing there are at least 3 different disk formats in
use, many or most of which are only partially supported even by the
different Linux distros,

Maybe it is being acclimatised to Windows that leads you to react in that
way. :-)

AFAIAA all versions of Windows can read all previously-used
disk-formats right back to DOS. There might be one arguable
exception, CP/M, but then I don't think even MS-DOS, let alone
Windows, was ever able to read CP/M natively anyway. Effectively it
was a different OS.

Yes various Linux disros can be asked to use a very wide range of disk
formats. And with many distros almost any other disk formats and filing
systems can be run and recognised if you wish. The point is that you have a
*choice* in the matter. Not that the people who sold you the OS are
controlling/restricting what you may do.

Fedora doesn't understand Reiser, and, worse still, doesn't say up
front that it doesn't.

But the chances are that by default you'd let the automated installer use a
common one like ext3 if you use a popular distro. And although many are now
suggesting ext4 or some other format, my understanding is that you can
generally say you want ext3 (or whatever you prefer) if wary of other
formats. But it is *your choice* of distro, etc.

My original reason for using Reiser was that it was the only one that
you could, albeit with some difficulty, undelete an accidentally
deleted file. Certainly this was not possible with Ext2/3, but I have
no knowledge of Ext4. I dare say that if I was installing from
scratch, I'd maybe give it a try, but as all the data which I'll want
to restore is on Reiser, I think I'd probably best stick with it, even
though its creator is now reputed to be a jail bird in Germany, so
futrue development seems unlikely!

Most hypocritically of all, the various criticisms that Linux fans often
ascribe to Microsoft are often copied by Linux installations ...

Have to pass on that as I haven't said anything about it and you are just
making a sweeping assertion. So I guess you are arguing with someone else!
:-)

No you didn't, but almost everyone who weighs into the Linux vs
Windows debate does so, and, as I demonstrated, it's entirely
hypocritical.

Without examining the details of how you "tried to upgrade" I can't comment
on that. Nor am I an expert on such matters. But standard methods like
apt-get, etc, should resolve such problems.

I can't remember the details now, but at least one problem was that
needed libraries weren't available anywhere on the web.

Which text editors have you tried?

JEdit (I think that's the name) is quite good; it's at least usable,
but rather limited, about equivalent to the DOS editor QEdit (as it
used to be called, until a name clash was discovered, IIRC it's now
called TSsomethingJnr). Vi and variants are like returning to the
earliest dark ages of non-WYSIWYG editors, and Emacs only slightly
better. GEdit, KWrite, etc are at least WYSIWYG, but don't appear to
have anything like the features of Textpad.

And just as Microsoft's GUI now substitutes 'style' for 'substance' as
defined by ergonomic usability, so we see the most prominent of such
stylistic features of Windows, such as menu animations and
two-dimensional Start Menus, being aped in Linux, often even more
tastelessly, if that's possible. For example, at least, AFAIAA, Windows
has never gone in for that ultimate in unnecessary absurdity, that f*ing
irritating bouncing mouse pointer!

Ah, the paper clip effect, eh? ;->

It's true that the paper-clip was equally irritating, but that at
least wasn't part of the OS.

Maybe you should try CrunchBang. I agree with you that the latest fads in
Gnome, KDE, etc for flashy effects are daft. So I don't use them. Have you
not noticed that the choice Linux provides means you don't need to install
or use such effects? When I install a distro, if it has fancy effects I
just switch them off, choose furniture I like, and use ROX, etc.

Yes, I know that you can do this, but it can be so involved. Instead
of just being able to choose: "Only install a basic OS, absolutely
nothing else", or even "Don't install anything to do with Graphics
editing" and/or "Don't install anything to do with Multimedia", you
find that the two most commonly used desktops have most such features
hard-wired into them. If you really try and take control by going
down the package list (of hundreds of choices, many described only as
"xxxlib - This package supplies the xxxlib" ) and trying to
uninstall everything that doesn't look strictly relevant to the OS and
Desktop, you are often informed that they are needed to run either the
OS or the Desktop. If you become impatient and insistant, things
break, perhaps disastrously - I proved this yesterday, but as DNS
wasn't working anyway, I wasn't too fussed, except by the egregious
waste of time.

FWIW My recent experience with Ubuntu and other debian based distros has
been much easier than what you report. [1] No problems installing
'automatically' and quickly. No problems with connecting. And a range of
software that is quite impressive. Similar for other distros I tried. In
general they all worked, but didn't all have the features, etc, I
preferred. Hence I chose on the basis of what seemed to suit me best.

Like Ubuntu, many, perhaps even most, of the popular distros are still
using the i386 instruction set. I wonder how many people in the world
are using 386s? Last time I investigated, even the charities that
refurbish machines for use in undeveloped countries wouldn't accept
anyting less than a PII, which is i586. Therefore, it seems daft for
so many Linux distros still to be using a less powerful instruction
set.

So far as I can see, my main problems have been looking though the options
for distro and programs to find the best from the rest as there are so many
options.

Yes, and most of them have little or nothing to do with an OS, or even
the desktop, as such. It's very good that you can download software
over the net by clicking a few buttons, but a greater effort needs to
be put into divorcing what is really only necessary for the OS/Desktop
from what is merely bloatware, and making this distinction clear at
installation time; also distinguishing between the items that supply
the functionality that concerns the end user from those packages such
as libraries that merely support such functionality.

Example. I didn't think I'd be able to find a desktop scientific graph
plotting package I'd like as much as !Tau (RISC OS). But then found Veusz
which I think is excellent. However it did mean I had to keep an eye out
and try various possibilities until I discovered the one I liked. So far as
I can see, this is simply that different people prefer different things.
Hence choice is good - but the users do have to look if they aren't simply
going to accept the Lowest Common Denominator of software.

There are some very good programs available free, both for Windows and
for Linux - the problem with both is the hours spent trying out all
the choices, only to find most of them aren't really up to much.
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