Linux-Advocacy Digest #554, Volume #26 Wed, 17 May 00 06:13:05 EDT
Contents:
Re: Ten Reasons Why Linux Sucks (Tim Koklas)
Re: If you don't like Linux then just leave! (Tim Koklas)
Re: Need ideas for university funded project for linux ("Bobby D. Bryant")
Re: Yet another backdoor in MS software ("Bobby D. Bryant")
Re: Ten Reasons Why Syphon Sucks ("Bobby D. Bryant")
Re: How to properly process e-mail (=?iso-8859-1?Q?Paul_'Z'_Ewande=A9?=)
Re: progamming models, unix vs Windows (R.E.Ballard ( Rex Ballard ))
Re: Linux lacks ("Bobby D. Bryant")
Re: Linux lacks ("Bobby D. Bryant")
Re: Linux lacks ("Bobby D. Bryant")
Re: Linux lacks ("Bobby D. Bryant")
Re: Linux lacks ("Bobby D. Bryant")
Re: Linux lacks ("Bobby D. Bryant")
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Tim Koklas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Ten Reasons Why Linux Sucks
Date: Wed, 17 May 2000 09:11:06 GMT
Ian Bell wrote:
> Trial versions? Maybe they're good when the full version costs more
> thatn the scanner itself.
There is more software out there, quite complicated, having all sorts of
fancy filters etc, costing no more than £9.99, which is $20?
> No, it never will.... I have to give you that one, no-one will ever
> develop any applications for the fastest growing OS platform in the
> world...
lol
------------------------------
From: Tim Koklas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: If you don't like Linux then just leave!
Date: Wed, 17 May 2000 09:16:56 GMT
JoeX1029 wrote:
> I swear by Ferrari, my dad by BMW and a freind by Porsche.
I would like to meet you sometime, e-mail me for details
------------------------------
From: "Bobby D. Bryant" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.development,comp.os.linux.development.apps
Subject: Re: Need ideas for university funded project for linux
Date: Wed, 17 May 2000 03:16:15 -0500
[Headers trimmed.]
Nico Coetzee wrote:
> DEVELOP EDUCATIONAL SOFTWARE FOR PRIMARY AND SECONDARY LEVEL SCHOOL
FWIW, the software engineering classes at the University of Texas are
creating this kind of software and putting it under the GPL.
Unfortunately, most of it designed to run under Windows, but you still
might want to look at it and see what kind of thing they are doing. And of
course, it's all under copyleft if you want to build on what's there.
See the site at http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/almstrum/s2s/.
The professor has been improving the class's methodology each semester (a
CMM kind of thing), so some of the older products are not up to spec. She
has a grant to put some students to work on it this summer, and they will
be cleaning things up and publishing the cream on a CD. Portability is a
goal, but I do not know how far this will get by the end of summer.
Bobby Bryant
Austin, Texas
------------------------------
From: "Bobby D. Bryant" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Yet another backdoor in MS software
Date: Wed, 17 May 2000 03:22:06 -0500
Pete Goodwin wrote:
> If you think UNIX is safe from viruses and hacks, think again. Or has the
> sendmail virus been forgotten already?
So, that brings the score up to about n:1, with n=???.
Bobby Bryant
Austin, Texas
------------------------------
From: "Bobby D. Bryant" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Ten Reasons Why Syphon Sucks
Date: Wed, 17 May 2000 03:31:40 -0500
Julius Apweiler wrote:
> > > WANT TO RUN OUTDATED TEXT APPLICATIONS? TRY LINUX!!!!
> >
> > Who's outdated? Who else's operating system still boots a ten-year-old
> > text-based OS before loading a window manager? Doh!
>
> And what's bad about text applications?
Funny thing about GUI applications. Unless you're looking for something the
computer already knows, you have to click down through several layers of
widgets, and then... type in the info.
For that matter, I've never seen a GUI mail client that removed the need to
type in my messages. I suppose this clown would be happier if he had a menu
that let him pull down and select one word of his message at a time.
> > > Ever Wonder why there are very few 1.x version Linux applications?
> >
> > No. Ever wonder why all Microsoft software isn't labeled "beta" as it
> > should be?
>
> Mmhmm... considering most 0.x Linux software is a lot more stable than
> Microsoft stuff.
Yeah. I used to write research papers with LyX 0.12. It blew up on me a
number of times -- but saved my work up to the most recent keystroke in every
case.
Bobby Bryant
Austin, Texas
------------------------------
From: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Paul_'Z'_Ewande=A9?= <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: How to properly process e-mail
Date: Wed, 17 May 2000 11:38:10 +0200
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> a écrit dans le message news:
8ftarj$3hq$[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > I've since disabled activeX content, better safe than sorry. :)
>
> Funny how every one must disable all the "inovations" from MS to get a
> secure OS.
Isn't it ? What is even funnier is that you just admitted that an MS OS
could be secured. :)
If you want functionality, you may have to compromise security. May be
Linux/UNIX is a magic OS which doesn't abide by such principles ?
How is it different than disabling a potentially and unused dangerous daemon
or service on UNIX/Linux ? Could you elaborate ?
BTW, I can set it on enable, ask, or disable.
Paul 'Z' Ewande
------------------------------
From: R.E.Ballard ( Rex Ballard ) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: progamming models, unix vs Windows
Date: Wed, 17 May 2000 09:27:53 GMT
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Full Name) wrote:
> On Sun, 14 May 2000 17:47:07 -0400, mlw <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> >
> >There are so many more of these '70's
> > quick and dirty hacks, why do we
> >continue to use them? Think about it.
> > I'm sure you can come up with a
> > few yourself. If you ask me, UNIX is
> > a more logical "modern" way of
> > designing programs.
> >
>
> What nonsense.
>
> Unix has antiquated file permissions.
Unix security is a mulititiered approach, using combinations
of users, groups, and servers. The file permission provides
a top level interface. It's possible to extend permissions
such as directory permissions, hard links (something NT STILL
doesn't support) and Symbolic Links (similar to shortcuts but
normally invisable to programs).
NT allows users to be members of multiple groups and then allows
multiple groups to access the same content. UNIX allows a user
to change groups, and allows each file to be accessed by only
one group. Since groups can include other groups, it's pretty
easy to manage a variety of groups.
UNIX/Linux also provides the ability to log change group requests,
which helps identify a group. This strategy limits the ability
of hackers to damage multiple groups. The ability to use the
setuid on executables combined with group ids will enable permissioned
users to execute priveldeged commands. The degree of logging would
be a function of the application or service. One of the problems
with NT event logging is that it either provides too little detail,
or too much. You can damage the system undetected, but you can
flood the log with useless information that just fills up hard drives
without providing useful information.
> It uses text files for system configuration.
This is a very old argument. Perhaps the most dramatic example
of why text file configuration is a "Good Thing" was OS/2 2.0.
This used binary-only configuration files. The only problem was
that if you triggered a TRAP 0E or a TRAP 0D, you corrupted the
binary only configuration files, including the desktop. Normally,
the only method of "recovery" was complete replacement of the system.
Warp eventually solved some of these problems, but eventually began
implemented scripted configuration files.
As a travelling consultant who often travels from client site, to
hotel, to company site to different customer site, I'd love to have
the ability to script network configuration in windows. In Linux,
I can use directories, files, and scripts to change configurations
even though I created the initial files using the GUI interface.
UNIX does have a resource database as part of X11, which is similar
to the registry of Windows. The configuration can be defined using
a database on the X11 server, using xrdb and clients, or using GUI
configurations which allows saving the settings in the rdb.
In the APP_DEFAULTS directory, applications can set properties when
they are triggered. In the .Xinitrc or .XDefaults files, you can
set the configuration for numerous applications based on personal
look and feel preferences.
Many windows applications still prefer use .ini files to set
registry values because if the system does "catch fire", you
can often rescue a failing system that couldn't be accessed
via GUI due to the corrupted registry.
The "binary only registry" coupled with inability to save files
opened for write creates a problem for back-up and recovery of
large windows partitions. Trying to do a full back-up to CD-ROM
and restore can create a bigger mess than a fresh reinstall of
the entire system.
It currently takes me about 8 hours to restore a hard drive to
a functional system because I can't get a safe backup system.
I've used a ditto drive for 2 gig Windows 95 partitions, which
works very well, but there are no NT drivers for the 2gig drive
and other tape drives raise compatibility concerns (I still have
some QIC 150 tapes I can't read and some QIC 2120 tapes that don't
recover very nicely. Ironcally, it's cheaper to get a big 20 gig
hard drive (about $100 to $150) install it on a cheap Linux SAMBA
server, and back up the Windows partitions using drive image or
ghost. Backing up the linux partitions is very low-risk, and
archiving the /home and /etc partitions makes it possible to
restore settings after a fresh installation.
> Text files are not the native language of a computer.
You'd prefer toggle switches? Actually, if you consider the
overhead of a dedicated graphical interface compared to the
cost of a text parser, the text parser is much cheaper.
Linux does give you the best of both worlds. If you want to
use a GUI interface, you can use Linuxconf (similar to regedit),
the KDE system and network utilities (similar to control panel),
or you can use the shell script you put on the LAN and used
to install the previous 300 PCs you installed last week.
If you use install shield, you are using somebody's script,
and if you use auto-response files, you're even scripting
the inputs to the script.
Windows users use a different set of scripting languages
(VB, VBA, VBScript, .bat files) and users of the NT Resource
kit get some powerful scripting capabilities including a
stripped down version of PERL and a "batch only" version of
KSH.
> It understands only one network protocol (which was tacked on as an
> afterthought). It more or less defaults to an 80x25 character mode
> user interface.
Each vendor has their favorite network. IBM provides SNA and SMB
on AIX, DEC offered DecNet on Ultrix, and Novell provided Netware
on UnixWare. TCP/IP was one of the few heterogeneous protocols
that was supported by everybody. This wasn't because TCP/IP was
so superior to OSI, but because there were no royalties and no
proprietary extensions to the core protocols. The cost of
documentation for one OSI programmer exceeded $50,000 per developer.
> Things like KDE, Gnome, Samba and Apache are perfect examples of how
> difficult it is to bring this outdated system into the 21st century.
> They are all kludgy and full of seams due to an underlying operating
> system that was more or less designed to be time shared across a
> bunch of tty terminals.
Microsoft spend several billion dollars writing NT 3.5 and another
several billion writing Windows 95, and another several billion
developing NT 4.0. Windows 2000 was released almost 10 years
after the release of Windows 3.1, and is only now providing practical
multitasking, reliability, and modular design components (COM still
requires linkage directly to the executable).
> As far as 'logical' is concerned, try this:
>
> ls /etc | wc
> 96 288 3359
>
> Almost 100 files in the same directory,
Correct. With the exception of APP_DEFAULTS, everything you need
to configure or restore a configuration sits in a single directory.
The personal preferences and information are usually in the home
directory.
UNIX administrators had almost two decades of experience with
dead-of-night installs, reconfiguration, and recovery - and the
cost of a lost configuration or corrupted configuration could
be quite substantial. In the 1980s, you'd have 50 to 200 people
directly connected to the CPU via terminals. Having a system go
down or losing a configuration could render all 200 idle for as
much as 4 hours. If you were a UNIX administrator for a 100
terminal VAX system, and something went wrong, everybody from the
grunt programmers to the CEO noticed. At $200/hour (2000 dollars)
for two hundred programmers, you could easly cost $40,000/hour.
Worse, the system typically got flakey during the "crunch month"
just before a software release. If you were a UNIX administrator,
you made sure that you could fix the problem - regardless of the
cause, in 3-5 minutes - because you HAD TO.
Even today, Linux systems enjoy the benefits of UNIX experience.
With web site failures now costing as much as $100,000 a MINUTE,
the concern for rapid recovery and fail-over is higher, not lower.
> the majority of which are text based configuration files.
Yep. Notice that the entire batch will fit quite comfortably
on a 3.5 inch floppy. Compared to my 28 megabyte registry.
By the way, in most cases, the values are bound to system and
application variables in a language independent way.
> A clear example of how the system has
> suffered from poor foresight by developers.
> They simply dump the majority of system configuration
> files in the one directory.
This makes back-up and recovery of the system specific information
trivial. Windows like to put system configuration files
all over the place, and also user specific files. To back up
a configuration, I'd need to save the registry using regedit,
save some of the files in program files, some of the files in
WINNT, and some of the files in the root directory, in addition
to the netscape user directories and the default directories
for each applications.
> Even the name 'etc' indicates poor design.
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
UNIX morphology is often criticized as if the only
possible way to invoke something is to use the original
utility. Symbolic links, hard links, and rdist functions
can let you use your favorite names.
Actually, some of the names were fixed by a huge body of
legacy applications. While you might have some serious
problems getting a Windows 3.0 application to run under
Windows 2000, Linux and UNIX will run pretty much anything
written anytime from 1980 to 2000, if the original source
code is available.
> It suggests the directory contains
> all the things we couldn't find a better place to put.
It goes back to the original BITMELD project organization.
This was:
Binaries /bin
Includes /include
Temporary /tmp
Manuals /man
Config files /etc
Libraries /lib
Documentation /doc
Nearly every development project manages this hierarcy, and
the "release" installs the finished product in the equivalent
system directories, usually prefaced by something like /usr
or /opt.
This also made it possible to manage the release. If you wanted
a "Thin" system, you could deploy just the bin, tmp, etc, and lib
directories. If you wanted a "friendly" deployment, you'd deploy
all of the directories.
> How man symbolic links are there in a typical Unix system? I'd guess
> in the range of hundreds. A symbolic link represents a patch used to
> make the system function correctly due to poor design and a lack of
> integration.
Symbolic links are much like shortcuts in windows, but more useful
because applications generally can't tell the difference.
Often, you want to construct a directory which can conveniently
access both the private and personal files, and still have
convenient access to the common system files. This allows you
to leave the system files in one place, and reduces the need to
customize the search paths (especially for documentation and
include files).
The use of hard links make it possible to control access to files
on a user and directory basis. A file that is readable by a
small group can also be hard-linked to each user's private directory
such that would-be hackers won't be able to access either the directory
or the file.
> If Unix systems were well designed a clean install would
> not contain a single symbolic link.
Quite the opposite. A good install would allow an install to
"standard places" while providing the "shortcuts" to trivialise
user specific and applications specific search paths.
> You people are in desperate need of a reality check.
The reality I've dealt with is systems like:
911 systems where if the system crashed, somebody died.
Directory assistancesystems where if the system failed,
the phone company lost millions in long distance
service charges.
Package tracking systems where system failures resulted
in lost or misrouted packages (resulting in lost
contracts or lost business).
Investment news and information services where system failures
resulted in stock market drops of 4% or more.
Insurance companies were leaks of financial, life insurance,
or health records (even to other divisions within the same
company) could result in billions worth of liability.
Telephone systems where system failures resulted in lost
communications costing millions of dollars per minute.
Microsoft has shown it's grasp of reality - After Melissa, ExploreZip,
and BubbleBoy, the "Love Bug" cost nearly $10 billion in damages.
Microsoft loyalists encouraged the use of binary attachments
containing VBA and VBS objects and scripts that could call
ActiveX controls, or worse.
The average NT 3.51 system provided trivial services for about
10 to 20 people. The NT 4.0 system, with SMP and 4 500 MHZ
Xeon processors could nominally handle 4000 users, but in real
world applications, the hard drives and network become the
bottlenecks and CPU speed is wasted "waiting for something".
--
Rex Ballard - Open Source Advocate, Internet
I/T Architect, MIS Director
http://www.open4success.com
Linux - 60 million satisfied users worldwide
and growing at over 1%/week!
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
------------------------------
From: "Bobby D. Bryant" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Linux lacks
Date: Wed, 17 May 2000 03:41:23 -0500
ax wrote:
> Linux will be broken up by its own power fragmentation.
Pray tell, what is "power fragmentation".
> > Linux will never go bankrupt.
>
> But companies can.
> Some Linux companies already go close to broke.
And what does that have to do with the topic under discussion?
> > Linux will never cause the people to mistrust them.
>
> Never? The trust comes from users' own experience
> and expectations.
Which is why he made the claim.
> > How are we ever going to get ahead of that huge penguin over there!
> > Every step he takes is shaking the ground!
>
> Those lazy sitting penguins cannot move a "step" with fat belly.
I guess you've never seen them gliding across the ice at high speed.
Bobby Bryant
Austin, Texas
------------------------------
From: "Bobby D. Bryant" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Linux lacks
Date: Wed, 17 May 2000 03:42:33 -0500
ax wrote:
> It's funny to see most of Linux Penguins are in "sitting"
> which are not positioned to "move". BTW, I wonder why
> Linux chose such spiritless icon?
Because they're cuddly... and they bite.
Bobby Bryant
Austin, Texas
------------------------------
From: "Bobby D. Bryant" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Linux lacks
Date: Wed, 17 May 2000 03:49:09 -0500
JEDIDIAH wrote:
> There certainly seem to be some people successfully gaming
> with utah-glx.
I use it for my own OpenGL/Mesa programs, and it works like a charm on my G-200. And
I'm still
using a version that's about 5 months old.
I can't speak for games though. I like games, but not the 3D action types.
Bobby Bryant
Austin, Texas
------------------------------
From: "Bobby D. Bryant" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Linux lacks
Date: Wed, 17 May 2000 03:50:02 -0500
David Cueto wrote:
> The fact is that I like open source concept, and that I've
> been using GNU/Linux since Slackware 1.0, I've tested
> it, I know more than less it, and I think it lacks things to
> be wide used as a desktop. I even think a lot of GNU/Linux
> users should agree to me.
And a lot of us think we *shouldn't* agree with you.
Bobby Bryant
Austin, Texas
------------------------------
From: "Bobby D. Bryant" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Linux lacks
Date: Wed, 17 May 2000 03:46:41 -0500
Evan DiBiase wrote:
> > You're leaving out Utah-GLX.
>
> Uh, except I said "DRI," not GLX. I've tried GLX, and it was just OK. When I
> tried it, it had some major problems with Quake III Arena, for example.
Except the fact that GLX *is* a direct rendering interface. However, if you
want the new standard Direct Rendering Interface, capital letters, you will
find it in XFree4.0 instead. (Utah GLX will be phased out in favor of DRI
"TM".)
Bobby Bryant
Austin, Texas
------------------------------
From: "Bobby D. Bryant" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Linux lacks
Date: Wed, 17 May 2000 03:55:46 -0500
David Cueto wrote:
> > Linux lacks nothing. There isn't a thing you can do with Microsoft you
> > can't
> > do with Linux better.
> > And that's the facts.
> > Try and challenge that statement. You'll find you can't.
>
> The same can be said for Windows NT/2000, just try yourself.
So, did they finally fix it where you can run without a GUI, or even without
a graphics card? Or if you do have a GUI, can you run programs across the
world and have their GUIs show up on your NT/2K desktop?
Can you recompile your kernel to leave out bloated support for some feature
you don't want? Can you compile *in* support for Beowulf clustering?
Can you make 10,000 copies of your OS and give them away? Sell them?
If so, then they've been making remarkable progress at catching up to what
we have.
Bobby Bryant
Austin, Texas
------------------------------
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