Linux-Advocacy Digest #508, Volume #26 Mon, 15 May 00 00:13:06 EDT
Contents:
Re: You people are full of shit.... (Gary Hallock)
Re: Dvorak calls Microsoft on 'innovation' (fungus)
Re: X Windows must DIE!!! (Johan Kullstam)
Re: Linux Advocacy - Linux vs Windows 2000 vs Be vs OS/2 (abraxas)
Re: Things Linux can't do! (Leslie Mikesell)
Re: Here is the solution ("Todd")
Re: Here is the solution (Leslie Mikesell)
Re: You people are full of shit.... (Donovan Rebbechi)
Re: You people are full of shit.... ("Ferdinand V. Mendoza")
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sun, 14 May 2000 23:19:38 -0400
From: Gary Hallock <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: You people are full of shit....
I don't know why I bother. Typical troll.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> I use Windows 98se everyday running a graphics workshop business and I
> never get BSOD's nor do I seem to have all of the troubles you Linux
> nuts seem to have.
> ^^^
There's a clue right there. Wow, what an unbiased opinion!
>
> I have friends in the jingle business that I work closely with and
> they also run Windows for their studios and they do not seem to have
> all of the troubles you speak of....
Ok, so Windows is ok for writing jingles. Wow! In the meantime I have
real work to do.
>
> I suspect that some of the Linux folks are soured on Windows because
> of the bad experiences they had with earlier versions, and rightfully
> so. We have all had to endure some pretty shitty Windows releases.
>
Yep. Including the latest and "greatest" Win98.
>
> However, the current crop is quite good and is used by millions every
> day to make money.
And what crop would that be?
>
>
> We are not anti-Linux at all, in fact we are looking forward to the
> day that we can stop paying ridiculous prices for software. However we
> have all tried various forms of Linux and quite frankly it is a
> complete joke. One guy spent nearly a week trying to get a Samba
> server going. This is completely idiotic since it is so simple to do
> under Windows. Don't even try to compare Gimp to Adobe or Rosegarden
> to SoundForge.
>
> Linux is a fucking joke. Really it is.
Strange. I spent a lot more time trying to get my PCMCIA token ring card
working on Windows that on Linux. It seems Windows is a joke.
>
>
> Networking? Simple under Windows. A nightmare under Linux.
> One person tried to set up a Linux server and gave up. Reading 3 weeks
> of How TOs was a complete waste of time.
>
> Call him stupid if you will but ya'll are listening to his latest
> creation every day on the radio.
>
Ok, I will. He is stupid.
>
> In closing I wish Linux good luck because God knows it will need it.
> Linux is a hostile, user unfriendly system that no one but a true geek
> could love. In my industry, Linux is the center of many a lunch time
> joke and it will be many years before this is changed.....
In my industry, it is Windows that is the center of many a lunch time
joke.
Gary
------------------------------
From: fungus <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.lang.java.advocacy
Subject: Re: Dvorak calls Microsoft on 'innovation'
Date: Mon, 15 May 2000 03:39:56 GMT
JEDIDIAH wrote:
>
> On 14 May 2000 20:30:02 -0500, Leslie Mikesell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> >Gary Connors <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >
> >>...how long it's shipped wihtout a security hole in the defalt install.
> >
> >But openbsd defaults to having everything turned off. What
> >good is being secure when you don't have any network services
> >running? If you actually want the box to do something you
> >have to turn them on. Didn't they ship the same named as
> >everyone else when it had security problems?
>
> Lies, Damned Lies and Marketing...
>
Hey, the "no networking" thing works for Windows NT...
--
<\___/>
/ O O \
\_____/ FTB.
------------------------------
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.x
Subject: Re: X Windows must DIE!!!
From: Johan Kullstam <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Mon, 15 May 2000 03:43:17 GMT
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (JEDIDIAH) writes:
> On 14 May 2000 22:30:18 GMT,
>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
><[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >In article <8fmnvs$oj1$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> > Todd Knarr <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> >> In comp.os.linux.x <8fm5jt$l4k$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> [deletia]
> >> To antialias right you need a greyscale pixmap. The
> >> problems are that a) most X apps can't handle pixmap font data and b) the
> >> data format for what the font server returns can't accomodate pixmap
> >> font data.
> >
> >This is only a problem if the app renders its fonts itself, shouldn't be a problem
>if X renders it for it... Most X apps is font neutral, AFAIK. Besides I really don't
>see the problem with "font-smoothing/anti-aliasing" or no
>"font-smoothing/anti-aliasing"... If i'm writing a report/paper I do it in LaTeX,
>which produces far better results than any wysiwyg app can come up with...
>
> More importantly, you're more interested in the jaggies that end
> up on paper than the one's you see on screen...
printer fonts have little to do with X. besides, the printer output i
get is just fine. my problem isn't with the printer at all.
i still have to stare at the screen all day. i want to have a
readable font for that too.
--
J o h a n K u l l s t a m
[[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Don't Fear the Penguin!
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (abraxas)
Subject: Re: Linux Advocacy - Linux vs Windows 2000 vs Be vs OS/2
Date: 15 May 2000 03:44:06 GMT
Brad Wardell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Pros:
> * Reasonable application support
> * Reasonable driver support
> * Ability to quickly and seamlessly switch between user sessions
> * Easy to do distributed computing - You're on a LAN on a 100mB ethernet
> connection you can really go to town.
> * Low resource requirements
> * Free
> * Mostly open source software available, OS itself is open source making it
> great to truly make it work like you want it to.
> * Far more options to control how it looks, feels, behaves, etc. than other
> OSes.
I think that these pros are a fair assesment of the workstation application
of linux. Further, I would add:
* SMP support (becoming more common in high end workstations)
* fine resolution of process management; a fairly knowledgable user will
have an entirely stable workstation as a result.
* wide variety of network interface support; everything from old 10base
ethernet and token ring through FIDDI and GigE.
* runs in a wide variety of hardware; linux is not limited to X86 systems
at all. Versions exist for Sun, SGI, PPC, Alpha...even IBM S/390
mainframes. Linux runs on more hardware platforms than any other OS.
> Cons:
> * Horrible consistency - No universal clipboard support.
> * Very little drag and drop or true OO stuff (Gnome is getting there but
> it's not there yet)
KDE is further along in this arena; KDE apps are entirely consistent in
this regard. I think its important to note that unlike other OSes, this
function is that of a windowing environment rather than of the operating
system itself. www.kde.org
> * Always behind the curve in hardware support.
I think this depends on the sort of hardware youre talking about. Sound
cards, for example, are admittedly stereotypically behind supportwise, but
Video support isnt terribly bad, and linux seems to be ahead of the game
in high end hardware, like RAID controllers and network interface cards.
> * No MS Office support (Staroffice and WP Office are both great but without
> MS Office, many corps won't switch)
Its important to note here that this is not entirely linux's fault;
microsoft has not ported Office to linux yet, and despite their stories,
theres no reason to believe they will anytime soon. I think Staroffice,
Applixware, Abiword, WP and Koffice have done some very impressive things
without the benefit of MS source code. :)
> * Netscape the only reasonably good web browers and many people (including
> me) think Netscape is inferior to IE at this point.
I agree completely. I despise netscape, and theres no sign of any
improvements at anytime in the future. I dont think that IE will ever
be successfully ported to linux--ive used the Solaris version for a couple
of years now, and its substantially inferior to its windows counterpart, and
certianly to netscape.
> * Too many rough edges requiring the user to go to a cryptic text base UI to
> do things (setting up VNC, a DNS, or a mail server tends to be a huge pain
> in the butt for "newbies" compared to a nice slick GUI implementation on
> OS/2, BeOS, Windows, etc.).
I highly recommend checking out different distributions. A nice
'workstation' distrib is Mandrake. It plops you into a KDE environment
right off the bat, and there are tons of handy GUI control panels,
including ones that handle what youve described above.
> * Overall lack of polish (WM's tend to have various graphic anamalies such
> as title bar text going over the buttons and other harmless but tell-tale
> signs of lack of attention to detail)
This depends directly on the windowmanager. I use Windowmaker
(www.windowmaker.org) and have none of the problems youve described, nor
any others.
> * No DDE or OLE (or OpenDOC or SOM) style framework which makes it hard to
> advocate Linux as a good platform to run your applications
> * Application selection is worse than Windows and in many cases OS/2.
> Opensource helps Linux a lot but also hurts it by creating an atmosphere
> that seems hostile to commercial software developers.
I'm not sure that this is entirely the case...I think that commercial
software developers are doubting the willingness of the linux market
to actually SPEND MONEY. And they may be right. I always and only use
free software for my personal and professional purposes. (under linux
at least).
I think it would be handy to remember that linux is generally developed
by people in their spare time; very few people actually get paid for
their troubles. Linux has been ported to a large number of hardware
platforms, and applications comparable to pretty much anything on any
other platform have been (and are always being) written. Its an
enormous amount of work, and its pretty amazing that its come as far
as it has in such a short period of time.
=====yttrx
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Leslie Mikesell)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Things Linux can't do!
Date: 14 May 2000 22:43:57 -0500
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Evan DiBiase <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> A machine that can be rebooted on a whim without having to apologize
>> to anyone else for losing their work doesn't count.
>
>Sure it does. Not for business use, maybe, but you're unfairly cutting out a
>section of things here by claiming that the only "real" work is business
>work.
To belabor the obvious, if it doesn't matter if you reboot, then
it doesn't matter and there is no reason to bring up the issue.
If you are doing something where it matters, you don't want to
have to reboot everytime you change a network setting, update IE,
install Netscape, update office, and all the other things where
NT insists on a reboot. Win2k does seem at least a little better
about this.
>Well, right. Obviously porting things is a pain. But I'm just learning... I
>agree that it's a good idea to get as much experience as possible, in any
>area.
My point is that among unix-like OS's, porting things isn't a pain,
at least among the recent versions if you were aware of a few
portability issues when writing it. Among windows-like OS's, well
there aren't any windows-like OS's.
>> Web servers are a special case because of the stateless nature of
>> http. All large sites are really 'farms' of servers behind some
>> kind of load-balancing and failover setup. If a machine dies
>> another one will pick up the next hit and nobody knows the
>> difference except the guy to pushes the button to reboot.
>
>Right, but some people in this forum would claim that it's basically
>impossible for a Windows NT/2000 server to stay up for three seconds without
>BSODing.
Some of them have extensive experience with NT. Mine has been that
it is possible to make it run for months if you have a very carefully
controlled software configuration with very stable applications and
don't change anything. If you install new software frequently or
run any buggy apps you can't count on it to keep working. Nobody
has lengthy experience with win2k yet. So far it has been much
better then NT for me, but it hasn't been long enough that I
trust it yet. My main complaint about win2k is the extent that
all the new network features require having an active directory
server in the picture.
Les Mikesell
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
From: "Todd" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: Re: Here is the solution
Date: Mon, 15 May 2000 12:01:30 +0800
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote in message <8ffc7n$3g4$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
>In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>>
>>
>> Todd wrote:
>> >
>> > Challenge:
>> >
>> > Give me just *one* MS undocumented API call, that could not be done
>with
>> > their *free* downloadable SDK?
>> >
>> > Just *one* API call is all I'm asking.
>> >
>> > MS provides WIn32 developers with *everything* they need and more.
>> >
>> > If you want to try this challenge, again, just give me *one*
>undocumented
>> > API call or secret API (whatever) that meets this challenge.
>> >
>> > I bet that I can write *any* piece of Win32 software with the normal
>SDK
>> > that is downloadable for *free* from MS's web site.
>> >
>> > All you conspiracy theorists are welcome to take this challenge.
>> >
>> > Just *one* API call is all I'm asking for here...
>>
>> A quick search of "undocumented API" reveals not one, but two.
>>
>> RegisterServiceProcess, in KERNEL32.DLL, appears to "Register a
>process
>> as a service, which means it doesn't show up in the Control+Alt+Delete
>> program list," and there is also WNetEnumCachedPasswords in MPR.DLL
>> which "Retrieves all of the current user's cached passwords, and calls
>> the specified callback procedure with a pointer to each one."
>>
>> The WINE project also seems to have a great deal of information on
>> undocumented Windows APIs.
>>
>> -Peter
>
>Todd are you there? I've searched everywhere for you're reply on this,
>can't find it, can you repost? Thanks.
Sorry, was off traveling for a couple days.
As you can see from the replies already here, these APIs are either
documented and being discontinued, or they are kernel level calls that are
only present in either 95 or NT (not both).
Either way, this is irrelevent.
My original point is this:
Can you show me an undocumented call that you couldn't otherwise do with
something in the Win32 SDK freely available?? -- such that MS could use to
their advantage in writing Office or something else.
Even if the above two APIs were undocumented (or secret), I don't see how
this prevents you from writing an *application* to market.
MS whiners try to make one think that these APIs allow MS to develop there
applications 'ahead of time' or before competitors... however, most of the
core Win32 API has been around for *years*.
There just isn't an excuse... one or two undocumented calls -- even if they
did exist -- isn't going to convince me that you couldn't bring software to
market ahead of MS - they have to use their own APIs as well. Otherwise,
the software breaks.
---
So, my original challenge is really this -- show me an undocumented API call
that would allow MS to bring an application (specify application type) ahead
of their competition.
I personally subscribe to MSDN... and that package gives a developer more
than they need to develop very high level applications.
Ok, another challenge:
Find me a developers package that has a more put together software
development kit than MSDN. (Better documentation, more samples, etc.)
Yes, you have to pay for MSDN, but most of the docs. for MSDN are freely
available as a download.
Anyway, if you've read this far, hopefully you see my point -- anybody
should be able to compete with MS head to head -- with or without these
alleged undocumented APIs.
-Todd
>
>
>Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
>Before you buy.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Leslie Mikesell)
Crossposted-To:
comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: Re: Here is the solution
Date: 14 May 2000 22:53:15 -0500
In article <03FT4.171$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Erik Funkenbusch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> They would contain helpful information about what needs to be called
>> when. As it stands, they must reverse-engineer the protocol from
>> listening to tcp dumps. Microsoft had no such problem in impelmenting
>> NFS, yp or Kerberos. They half-heartely endorsed CIFS, but the lack
>> of adoption has left it to decay (Windows 2000 is the first step away
>> from it).
>
>IIRC MS *INVENTED* CIFS and sent it through the RFC process (My memory could
>be faulty on this one though).
My memory of the timing is a bit fuzzy too, but I think it was well
after the samba team had reverse-engineered the bulk of the protocol
that MS decided to call it CIFS and pretend it was an open standard.
And then they changed it.
By the way, does anyone know where the SMB protocol really originated?
It seems identical to the original IBM PC-network protocol back
in the DOS days. Was that from IBM, MS, or did someone else invent
it?
Les Mikesell
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Donovan Rebbechi)
Subject: Re: You people are full of shit....
Date: 15 May 2000 00:03:45 -0400
On Mon, 15 May 2000 02:51:17 GMT, Thomas Phipps wrote:
>well I tried to help a friend of mine with samba on his system
>I couldn't get it even tho I had set it up before on the excet
>same system ... same Distro of linux even ... I think he just
>changed something in his windows client and wouldn't tell me tho
So maybe the client is misconfigured. Configuring a Windows client isn't
that much easier than configuring the server.
You can check where
the point of failure is by looking at the SAMBA logs, and also trying
to connect from the Linux box that smbd is running on ( using smbclient )
--
Donovan
------------------------------
From: "Ferdinand V. Mendoza" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: You people are full of shit....
Date: Mon, 15 May 2000 08:08:09 +0400
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> I use Windows 98se everyday running a graphics workshop business and I
> never get BSOD's nor do I seem to have all of the troubles you Linux
> nuts seem to have.
>
>
My experience has been very bad with winblows. Three to four times dailyof
reboot and it worsened because it would screw up some of the drivers.
I've ask my friends and they said it's just normal, to my amazement.
> I have friends in the jingle business that I work closely with and
> they also run Windows for their studios and they do not seem to have
> all of the troubles you speak of....
They are Winblows diehards so there should be no problem no matter what.
> I suspect that some of the Linux folks are soured on Windows because
> of the bad experiences they had with earlier versions, and rightfully
> so. We have all had to endure some pretty shitty Windows releases.
>
Ahh, the word endure! very typical for a Winblows freak.
> However, the current crop is quite good and is used by millions every
> day to make money.
>
> We are not anti-Linux at all,
Who is we?
> in fact we are looking forward to the
> day that we can stop paying ridiculous prices for software. However we
> have all tried various forms of Linux and quite frankly it is a
> complete joke. One guy spent nearly a week trying to get a Samba
> server going.
I've only spent a few minutes reading the docs and few more
minuteslistening to Santana's Samba pa Ti and I got it in less than an
hour.
> This is completely idiotic since it is so simple to do
> under Windows. Don't even try to compare Gimp to Adobe or Rosegarden
> to SoundForge.
>
> Linux is a fucking joke. Really it is.
How much is M$ paying you for that line?
>
>
> Networking? Simple under Windows. A nightmare under Linux.
> One person tried to set up a Linux server and gave up.
He ran out of brains for sure.
> Reading 3 weeks
> of How TOs was a complete waste of time.
>
> Call him stupid if you will but ya'll are listening to his latest
> creation every day on the radio.
>
> In closing I wish Linux good luck because God knows it will need it.
> Linux is a hostile,
Haven't any clue about the I LOVE YOU?
> user unfriendly system that no one but a true geek
> could love. In my industry, Linux is the center of many a lunch time
> joke and it will be many years before this is changed.....
Maybe. Maybe not.
------------------------------
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