Linux-Advocacy Digest #592, Volume #25 Sat, 11 Mar 00 10:13:07 EST
Contents:
Re: Top 10 reasons why Linux sux (JEDIDIAH)
Re: Top 10 reasons why Linux sux
Re: Why post? (mlw)
Re: Top 10 reasons why Linux sux (Gary Hallock)
Re: What might really help Linux (a developer's perspective) (mlw)
Re: Linux smp kernel UNSTABLE? (mlw)
Re: Mandrake=Poison? (Mark S. Bilk)
Re: Top 10 reasons why Linux sux (Donovan Rebbechi)
Re: X toolkit wars -- what's the point? (Donovan Rebbechi)
Re: I need Linux for Morons... (Donovan Rebbechi)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (JEDIDIAH)
Subject: Re: Top 10 reasons why Linux sux
Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2000 07:49:43 GMT
On Sat, 11 Mar 2000 02:23:41 -0500, Jim Ross <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>JoeX1029 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
>news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>> You're just a stupidass thats all. It's really quite simple to use Linux.
>> Have you ever read any books on it?? Not everything is as simple as Win
>(or as
>> shitty). The next project you try keep in mind you might need to use a
>little
>> more mental elbow grease.
>
>If something were "easy to use" you wouldn't HAVE to buy a book on it.
No, if something were functionally trivial you would neither
need any references (bought or installed in the form of man
or hlp files) and you wouldn't ever need to expend mental
effort on using it.
This kind of laziness and acceptance of one's own inadequacies
is why we have game consoles. They function like toasters.
General purpose computers are a bit different, really meant for
people who need tools more complex than a hammer.
>
>I can jump right in and starting using a telephone, a tv, microwave, coffee
>maker, etc
>Buy a book, please.
All of those are relatively simple single function devices.
Microcomputers aren't.
>
>Here's easy to use.
>
>Install MS Office 98 in MacOS.
>Insert CD. Wait. You are done.
That sounds like a StarOffice install.
>
>Under Linux.
>Since MS Office 98 doesn't exist for Linux or Windows, I'll use Wordperfect
>for an example.
>
>Download this big file.
Or buy a CDROM.
>Rename the file because Netscape screwed up the filename. Underscores, etc.
I didn't have to do that. What are you on?
>
>Or put in your cd with Wordperfect on it.
>Figure out how to mount the cd and how to access the file. Better copy it
>to your harddisk because of the next point.
>Rename the file again. Corel screwed up the filename. (It's not a gz, but
>actually a tar file).
>Untar it somehow.
>Know enough to run ./setup instead of setup.
>Wait.
>Now unmount your Wordperfect cd.
Except for the cultural issue of 'mounting' media, I had
none of these problems installing my commercial copy of
Word Perfect 8 on Redhat 6.1.
>
>I estimate under MacOS you had to know 1-2 pieces of imformation.
>Under Linux, you likely had to know 10-15 pieces of information.
>Unscientifically you like had to know up to 7 times more about the process
>and ran into several "show-stoppers" along the way.
>
>Even for the experienced, these extra steps are still unnecessary.
>
>Mounting, come on.
>
>dos didn't require mounting of removable media for what 15 years now.
DOS isn't sophisticated enough for media mounting to be relevant.
Neither is WinDOS in this respect either.
[deletia]
--
|||
Resistance is not futile. / | \
Need sane PPP docs? Try penguin.lvcm.com.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ()
Subject: Re: Top 10 reasons why Linux sux
Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2000 09:01:14 GMT
On Fri, 10 Mar 2000 04:06:46 GMT,
The Ghost In The Machine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
(snip)
>I'll admit, the browser situation on Linux is somewhat less than
>satisfactory
No it isn't. Lynx is a perfectly satsifying browser. Many of us
couldn't give two shits if Navigator, IE, Mozilla, Mnemonic, HotJava,
etc, vanished tomorrow.
(snip)
--
GUIs make you stupid.
------------------------------
From: mlw <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Why post?
Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2000 07:49:12 -0500
Mike wrote:
>
> "mlw" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>
> > Anti-Linux:
> >
> > As for the anti-linux camp, I am not sure. What motivates anti-anything?
> > Usually hate of some kind. Hate is usually irrational, and when it comes
> > to inanimate objects like an OS, it must be irrational. The only other
> > alternative, and this is falls into the conspiracy theory, is that it is
> > an effort which is funded by a corporation, like an astroturf movement.
>
> ...
>
> > I have never met a windows user, except for these people, that isn't
> > frustrated with Windows' instability and forced upgrade strategy of
> > Office. Many windows' users would drop Windows the first opportunity
> > they get.
>
> Well, Mark, we've never met, but if we did, I'd tell you that I'm not
> frustrated by Windows instability, or by Office. In fact, I run an NT box at
> work and an NT box at home, and the one at work has crashed once in the past
> year (putting it on par with both my HPUX and Sun boxes). The machine at
> home has never crashed. I run Office on both. It _never_ crashes. Not only
> would I not trade my NT machine for a Mac, I wouldn't trade it for _any_
> Unix machine.
I used NT for a long time. I was a beta tester for the first 3.1
release. It was pretty good, I would call it great in comparison with
Widows, but an unstable mess when compared to the likes of UNIX. In some
ways, over time, NT has improved in a usability sense, but has actually
degraded with regards to stability.
I think 3.51 was a high water mark for stability, but I'm not sure about
that, statistically speaking.
The fact that stability is not the *most* important attribute of the OS
indicates we are looking at this topic from two very different points of
view.
[snipped]
> You've argued before that there's no reason that Linux can't do these
> things. I would argue that the only thing stopping Linux from being great is
> the Linux community. You need different users: those who complain when
> things aren't easy to use. And, you need different developers: those who fix
> things when users complain. Maybe someday, but I'm not holding my breath.
>
> Despite opinions to the contrary by many of those here, I still maintain
> that Linux needs a better printer model, a more consistent user interface, a
> help system, and all that OLE and COM stuff. Stability is only the first
> step.
OLE and COM are piss poor mechanisms for doing the sorts of things they
are intended. I don't think these should be ported at all, however,
object sharing is, of course, important, and a good common access
methodology needs to be defined, yes.
As for the printer model, I'm not sure why you say it needs a different
one. Yes it would be nice to use GUI calls to print, but, not really
necessary. In fact, using a postscript interpreter, it is easier to pop
up a "print preview" window in UNIX than it is under Windows. The
Windows GDI interface is more difficult to use because it also defines
printers as well as displays, while the X interface focuses on displays,
and one renders postscript for printing. Just think of ghostscript as
the printer driver API.
As for apps, I agree on some level it would be nice to get some apps
with the fit and finish of some of the best Windows applications, but
most Windows applications are much worse than their Linux equivalents.
I no longer use Word. I was a word user since the DOS versions, I still
have the hardcover users manual that came with the first version of Word
for Windows. I really think the DoJ should look in to how Microsoft
changes the Word and Office file formats for each version, because it is
a horrible mess to keep upgrading. I am fortunate to be in a position
where I can demand that people send me public formats if they wish to
communicate with me. My mail server strips out word documents.
>
> > Are they threatened by Linux for some reason?
> > What could be threatening about a PC OS?
>
> Indeed. Aside from the number of people I work with who regularly threaten
> to put Linux on my PC, I can't think of a thing that's threatening about it.
--
Mohawk Software
Windows 95, Windows NT, UNIX, Linux. Applications, drivers, support.
Visit http://www.mohawksoft.com
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2000 08:35:09 -0500
From: Gary Hallock <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Top 10 reasons why Linux sux
>
Jim Ross wrote:
>
>
> Either way Linux doesn't provide a way for those AOL users to use AOL in
> Linux.
> Score: Subtract many possible users. Extra bonus if you own a winmodem.
>
I thought there was a way to use AOL with Linux. Can someone confirm this?
>
>
> First example, I would like to be able to copy a URL in KEDIT and paste that
> URL in
> the Netscape Location Bar. Doesn't work. Well that says it.
It works for me. I'm using using KDE 1.1.2
>
> Second example, I would like every GUI app to install a program entry and
> icon into my default desktop environment.
> As of now, it's a 50-50. Way too low.
Here we get into personal preferences. I would prefer all GUI apps to install
a program entry but leave my desktop alone.
>
>
> Jim
Gary
------------------------------
From: mlw <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: What might really help Linux (a developer's perspective)
Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2000 08:48:58 -0500
Robert Morelli wrote:
>
> Davorin Mestric wrote:
> >
> > this will never happen, because the linux community already perceives
> > that linux is the best development platform. this is off course far
> > from the truth, but truth is not important. what is important is what
> > people think, not what actually is. so, there would be no push to
> > improve something which is already 'best'.
> >
>
> Sadly, I must agree with this assessment, at least as regards old
> timers.
> I see two big contributing factors.
> 1. Emacs. Emacs is an immensely powerful and well supported
> editor and its design is quintessentially intelligent ... for the time
> it was
> developed. Unfortunately, it was first developed in the 1970's, using
> 1970's
> UI concepts. Stallman can't be blamed for that, because computer
> science hadn't
> yet discovered the more advanced GUI concepts that appeared in the
> 1980's, and
> 1970's hardware couldn't have handled them anyway. Stallman also can't
> be blamed
> for doing such a good job that nobody ever came close to displacing
> Emacs with a
> more modern editor. The unfortunate effect however has been to lock
> many UNIX
> users into an outmoded UI model. (By the way, the editor I use is ...
> Emacs.)
I don't use Emacs, I actually use vi. Not because vi is great, but
because it isn't.
>
> 2. A distorted sense of what powerful software is. At the time UNIX
> came into
> being, in the 1970's, people had just understood compiler principles
> and finite
> state machines, etc., and that seemed hot. In retrospect, to most
> people on
> non-UNIX platforms, that stuff now seems simple minded compared to
> things like
> GUI design, which requires art, creativity, and also more advanced
> software
> concepts. But as ridiculous as it may seem, I think that to the
> average UNIX
> afficionado parsing still seems hot, and piping together programs with
> many
> command line switches seems fancy and powerful, and the expertise of
> the kernel
> hacker is exalted far above the level of the goofball who invents
> something like
> a toolbar, a hypertext help system, or an IDE. Unfortunately, a
> contributing
> factor was the fact that the modern GUI was first popularized on the
> Mac, a
> platform with brain dead multitasking and networking support. This
> invited
> people without insight to also dismiss the GUI as brain dead by
> association.
You know, this is a huge philosophical argument, that is largely wasted
on end users, but important for software development. Under Windows the
command:
"something | sort > file.txt" is a very expensive procedure. Under UNIX,
"something | sort > file.txt" is very efficient. UNIX was designed with
the notion that multiple programs can and should as one. Windows (and
DOS) were designed thinking that a program stands alone, while this was
because DOS was a monotasking environment, the metaphor stuck.
Under UNIX there is no real reason to put everything into one program,
in fact, it is a bad idea. Does that mean that one does not have nice
GUI applications? No. It means that, with the exception of WYSIWYG
editing, applications that consist largely of dialog boxes and text
entry fields, it makes sense to have a text program do the actual
processing of the data, while some GUI toolkit acquires the data and
issues the command to process. This is actually no different than using
VB for dialogs with a .DLL under Windows, except that you can test the
components on the command line. (Which, the end use may never do, but as
a developer, I can test the hell out of it!)
This sort of metaphor is hard to do well in Windows because the child
process management tools are not in place. Just because one can't do it
under Windows does not mean it is bad, and I reiterate, the reason one
can't do it under Windows is because Windows is based on a programming
model that is very very primitive. NT is a bit better, but if one writes
an application for "Windows" it is very hard to justify targeting only
NT.
Under Windows the closest analogy is VisualC++. You have a nice WYSIWYG
text editor, but have a text based program actually do the compiling.
cl, nmake, etc. are command line utilities. This is, in fact, a very
UNIX model of doing things. It should be noted, doing this sort of thing
in Windows is difficult to do, under UNIX, one simply issues "popen" and
reads a file.
>
> The situation is certainly not hopeless though. There is a younger
> generation
> of people involved with Linux who have broader experience and
> perspective.
> Clearly, the developers of GNOME want to be part of the 21st century,
> as do
> a lot of other younger developers. Also, as more companies targeting
> the
> broader market enter the Linux field, things will change. Companies
> like
> Corel and Borland, that have struggled for years under cut throat
> competition,
> will bring a fresh mentality. You won't find these companies publishing
> documentation as man pages summarizing command line switches; they
> respect
> customers too much to do things like that.
I am all too frustrated by companies NOT creating man pages. The man
page metaphor is not bad. It could use a bit of hypertext updating, but
it is a very workable setup. As it stands today, one has to guess
whether people use info, help, man, or a roll your own solution. Change
is not always good. Sometimes, while not elegant, making existing things
work better is better than making something better.
>
> > "Mark Weaver" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > > I'm partner in a contract software development company. We do
> > virtually all
> > > of our work for Win32, but we've done a bit of Linux and Solaris work
> > as
> > > well. The most recent *nix work was a port of the server half of a
> > client
> > > server package from NT to Linux and Solaris. But on the client side
> > (except
> > > for one Java-based app) we've done no Linux at all. This is not by
> > our
> > > choice (we're kind of agnostic) but because that's what our customers
> > pay us
> > > to develop. For them, Linux client apps aren't even on the radar
> > screen
> > > yet.
> > >
> > > That may change, of course, as the popularity of Linux grows, but I
> > think
> > > that's going to be a slow process. One thing that could accelerate it
> > > greatly, I think, is this. What if the best-of-breed tools available
> > for
> > > building client GUI apps were:
> > >
> > > 1. Free.
> > > 2. Open-source.
> > > 3. Generated both Linux and Windows apps from the same source code.
> > >
> > > Yes, there's Qt, but it ain't free or open source for generating Win32
> > apps
> > > (or commercial Linux apps either). And there's WxWindows which I
> > guess is
> > > supposed to be pretty decent, but AFAIK not exactly the best-in-breed
> > of GUI
> > > libraries/development tools.
> > >
> > > Wouldn't it make sense for the open source community to focus on
> > producing a
> > > better VisualBasic-than-VisualBasic and a better VisualC-than-VisualC
> > that
> > > produced both Win and Linux apps, so that as developers chose to use
> > these
> > > tools, the Linux versions would fall out for free?
> > >
> > > Mark
--
Mohawk Software
Windows 95, Windows NT, UNIX, Linux. Applications, drivers, support.
Visit http://www.mohawksoft.com
------------------------------
From: mlw <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Linux smp kernel UNSTABLE?
Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2000 09:07:43 -0500
"Marada C. Shradrakaii" wrote:
>
> > Anyone that
> >would argue otherwise has no idea what they are talking about.
>
> It depends on how you test it, and how you use it. If I only use my machine
> for running a specific app with a given level of load for no more than X hours
> at a time, I can test that app/load for X hours and be fairly sure that if it
> passes that, my lighter use won't cause trouble.
Wrong, you can not be sure that you have tested 100% of the instructions
on the processor over the entire temperature range of the chip. You have
not tested all of the pipelining logic of the processor. You have not
verified that the chip is working. It may only crash once a week, or
once every couple of days. You have not even verified that the floating
point output will match the floating point output of a non overclocked
CPU.
>
> >Unless you have a billion dollars worth of equipment to strip away the
> >circuit case of your CPU chip,
>
> Actually, some CPU's are identifiable as different at different speed grades.
> As I recall, some PII/450s were sold as lower grades, and identifiable due to
> the stepping number or card arrangement or something, and I've seen many
> reports of K7/500's with CPUs marked 600 or 650 inside teamed with slower
> cache. And all that requires is the ability to open the cartridge to check.
If you can verify, through documentation, that a processor is "marked
down" then, go for it, that is not what I am posting about. My assertion
is that you, without access to a very expensive ATE setup, can not
verify this information independently. With a sealed chip and a
motherboard.
> --
> Marada Coeurfuege Shra'drakaii
> members.xoom.com/marada Colony name not needed in address.
> "New Windows feature: distributed.microsoft.com-- Fifty million machines
> generating random C code in an attempt to produce the next version of Windows."
--
Mohawk Software
Windows 95, Windows NT, UNIX, Linux. Applications, drivers, support.
Visit http://www.mohawksoft.com
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Mark S. Bilk)
Subject: Re: Mandrake=Poison?
Date: 11 Mar 2000 14:41:42 GMT
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Robert Morelli <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>I obtained both Linux-Mandrake 6.0 and 6.1 and tried installing them on
>several machines, two different laptops and 1 very standard desktop.
>I had difficulty getting Mandrake to load on the laptops, but with
>fiddling I did finally succeed. However, once installed, I found
>Linux-Mandrake to be the most unstable operating system I have ever used
>(and this includes MS-DOS 3.3). Freeze ups were common (about once every
>day or two) and total failure requiring a reinstall in every case within
>a week. Somebody told me that the problem was that Mandrake used a buggy
>compiler, but I'm not sure if that's supposed to restore my confidence
>or diminish it. Beyond the instability, the package was amateurish. For
>instance, in both the 6.0 and 6.1 documentation, there is reference to a
>recovery boot disk that does not exist (but which once existed in the
>RedHat distribution on which it was based). In some places the documentation
>is so poorly written that it is hardly understandable.
>
>By contrast, Caldera OpenLinux and RedHat have installed without
>a hitch and never had these problems.
>
>My experience with Mandrake was so singularly bad that I couldn't help hatch
>a conspiracy theory. Is Linux-Mandrake secretly run by Microsoft to
>draw sales away from other distributions and undermine Linux's reputation?
>After all, mandrake root is a poison (but not as well known as it once
>was). Why would a company name itself after a poison? If I were at MS
>and wanted to undermine Linux this way, I'd probably name the company
>something like Mandrake, as an inside joke. Then I'd just (legally) copy
>the most popular distribution out there (RedHat), add something small
>(not sure what Mandrake has added), compile it with a buggy compiler,
>and sell it for slightly less than RedHat.
>
>Maybe I'm being grossly unfair to Mandrake. All I'm going on is the
>experience I had with two versions on 3 of my machines. Has anyone had
>a different experience?
Reluctant as I am to hold Bill Gates innocent of *any* form
of evil, I'd say this connection still needs some work. For
one thing, lots of people have had good results with Mandrake
Linux. I believe it's compiled with the same compiler as
other distributions, but using the options that cause pentium
(586) instructions to be emitted. The 586 has some instruc-
tions that the 486 lacks, that allows it to execute faster.
Mandrake won't run on a 486 for this reason.
If many others have had the problems you describe with Man-
drake, I think we would have heard about it, so it may be
caused by something you're doing in the installation (which
may have different defaults than the parent Redhat). It seems
unlikely that all three of your machines have flaky memory, or
some other hardware problem.
It would be good if you'd submit a detailed description of the
crashes, including your machine configurations, error messages
in logs, etc., to alt.os.linux.mandrake. See if anyone else
has had the same experience, or if they can suggest a remedy
for yours, or at least further steps for diagnosis.
Regarding the boot diskette, isn't there an image file on the
CD from which it can be generated?
As to the "poison" theory, the name comes from "Mandrake the
Magician", a very long-running comic strip in the U.S., hence
the drawing of the magician on the box. *His* name is ex-
plained here:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~beerta/leefalk.htm
...
The name "Mandrake" was inspired by a poem written by the
famous 17th-century poet, John Donne: "Goe, and catche a
falling starre ... Get with child a mandrake root." [Lee]
Falk [the creator of the comic strip] learned that a
mandrake root was actually ginseng root and was commonly
used in ancient (and modern) naturapathy. He thought it was
an interesting yet simple word which admitted of just one
pronuncitation, the perfect name for his comic strip
magician.
However, Falk was apparently the victim of a misconception
that was current at the time (the 1930s). In fact, mandrake,
a toxic plant related to nightshade, Jimson weed, etc. (the
Solanaceae family) has nothing in common with ginseng (which
is widely used to promote health and vigor, and does not
contain belladonna alkaloids), except that both have roots
whose shape resembles that of a person, or a penis (clearly
it's a rather vague resemblance 8^). So the magician was
meant to be named after a plant that's (considered to be)
*beneficial* to health.
Of course, Gates could still be using double reverse psycho-
logy to destroy us; his evil truly knows no bounds! And,
all kidding aside, Microsoft has fixated on Red Hat as the
Linux distributor that's best known and most successful, and
therefore most dangerous to it; that can be seen by the many
lying, hateful attacks against it posted here by the pro-
Microsoft propaganda spammers last year.
I hope you'll investigate the problem with the help of the
folks in alt.os.linux.mandrake, and report back here to
c.o.l.a when you figure it out (or if you find that many
others are having the same difficulty). You've certainly
brought up an interesting question; I'm curious to see how
it's resolved.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Donovan Rebbechi)
Subject: Re: Top 10 reasons why Linux sux
Date: 11 Mar 2000 14:53:20 GMT
On Sat, 11 Mar 2000 01:55:07 -0500, Jim Ross wrote:
>All this is true and when I use Linux as a desktop OS it is very obvious.
>Plus there are other issues like copy, paste and drop and drop. One usually
>doesn't work, the other rarely works ever.
Perhaps because you don't know how to use it. You claim that you can't
paste from kedit to netscape ? SOunds like a user error to me.
(1) Select text with left button
(2) move to netscape window, and select that window
(3) use the middle button to paste text.
>I often can't use DEBS, I don't know why, but they won't work in Corel, and
>are hard to find.
This is not really accurate. THere are only two distributions that use this
format, and one is built upon the other.
>I see a source .tar.gz. I don't know what to do with it, and it only
>compiles on RedHat.
This is not accurate either. Source compatibility is preety good.
--
Donovan
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Donovan Rebbechi)
Subject: Re: X toolkit wars -- what's the point?
Date: 11 Mar 2000 15:02:01 GMT
On Fri, 10 Mar 2000 14:22:00 -0500, Donn Miller wrote:
>Who honestly gives a shit if anyone thinks Motif or Xt sucks? Maybe
>some people like it.
Possible. Still, I dont see why anyone would want to use it, though if
they really are masochistic enough to do so, it doesn't bother me.
As for Motif, it's not bad, but the problem is that it requires a costly
runtime license, which is why GTK did the work to replace it ( GIMP wass
originally a Motif app. )
BTW, most of the Athena stuff I've seen predates the non-beta releases of GTK.
AFAICT, noone seems to be using it to write new apps.
--
Donovan
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Donovan Rebbechi)
Subject: Re: I need Linux for Morons...
Date: 11 Mar 2000 15:03:33 GMT
On Fri, 10 Mar 2000 19:16:21 GMT, Sage Kim wrote:
>
>window. My question is, isn't there control panel utilities or anything
>of that nature that I can d/l and install to run on this manchine? So
There's a program called "control-panel" on RH, so it's probably
on Mandrake.
There's also a more comprehensive "control panel" type application
called "linuxconf".
Cheers,
--
Donovan
------------------------------
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