Linux-Advocacy Digest #68, Volume #27 Wed, 14 Jun 00 04:13:06 EDT
Contents:
Re: Run Linux on your desktop? Why? I ask for proof, not advocacy lies.... (The
Ghost In The Machine)
Re: Why Linux should be #1 choice for students! (Terry Porter)
Re: An Example of the Superiority of Windows vs Linux (Pete Goodwin)
Re: An Example of the Superiority of Windows vs Linux (Pete Goodwin)
Re: Run Linux on your desktop? Why? I ask for proof, not advocacy (Martijn Bruns)
Re: An Example of the Superiority of Windows vs Linux (Pete Goodwin)
Re: Microsoft Stocks and your sanity... (Pete Goodwin)
Re: Microsoft Stocks and your sanity... (Pete Goodwin)
Re: Linux MUST be in TROUBLE (Pete Goodwin)
Re: Linux MUST be in TROUBLE ("kosh")
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (The Ghost In The Machine)
Subject: Re: Run Linux on your desktop? Why? I ask for proof, not advocacy lies....
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2000 07:03:45 GMT
In comp.os.linux.advocacy, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote on Tue, 13 Jun 2000 23:37:24 GMT
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>So exactly how is Linux going to unseat the already 90 or more percent
>of home/SOHO/desktop users from Windows and entice them into running
>Linux?
It's not. You think businesses are going to install Linux on sheer whim?
No, there has to be value-added, especially for those businesess
who have a substantial investiture in Microsoft software (and the
related Intel and/or Alpha hardware).
In some few cases, the value-added would be increased reliability and
perhaps a transition-point from Microsoft Windows to more
traditional Unixes, as the hardware slowly migrates out (there was
an interesting document -- sorry, I don't have a cite handy -- that
mentioned the notion of "hardware refreshing" and it wasn't talking
about RAM; it was talking about the obsolescence cycle).
Some other cases may include the ability to get oneself free
of the Mighty Microsoft Licensing Leech. Every time hardware
is refreshed, software tends to be, too, and that software
costs money to purchase. Real hard money.
And then there's the issue of Microsoft managing the licensing by
having Microsoft Word connect to some licensing server every so
often. While this is more or less standard practice in many Unix
installations (although the licensing server is usually under customer
control; the vendor merely supplies encrypted access keys),
this worries me somewhat.
(This is not to say Linux is entirely free. There is a learning
curve, that translates into lost profits and/or training costs.)
>
>How about Office suites?
>
>Sure StarOffice is free, it is free for Windows users also but
>virtually nobody uses it. Why is that? MSOffice carries a hefty price
>tag but is still the standard by which all office suites are gauged.
>Why is that?
>Figure it out for yourself.
Usability, of course. Drop in an icon and watch it go. It's
so easy to use, even viruses can use it. :-)
>
>How about hardware support.
>
>Still using that Daisywheel printer? Dot-Matrix job you bought at an
>IBM fleamarket? I doubt it. Today's PC's come with state of the art
>hardware built in to the system. Sure some of it (modem?) might be Win
>hardware, but who really cares? It works...
I'm using a Laserjet 5L with Ghostscript. Works great.
You were saying?
Also, laser printers don't do so hot on fanfold paper.
>
>Try that same combination under Linux and see what happens.
Winmodes are crap. Granted, they're a neat hack, and, if
non-proprietary enough, might be mutatable into a super-sophisticated
answering machine (after all, it's a [cheap] sound card hooked up to
the phone line!) and dialer combo. But there are some issues
regarding real-time interrupt servicing that I don't care for
myself. (I can just hear you saying "go get yourself DSL, then",
though -- and that's not unreasonable, but that's Yet Another
Modem Card, too...and a WinDSLModem card would be unreasonable,
given the required throughput, IMO.)
>
>How about all that fine software that was included with the price of
>your Walmart special PC. Guess what!! It won't work with Linux!!!!
And that software was paid for precisely how? It's an interesting
market, I'll admit, and I don't know a lot about it. But
presumably, Walmart was approached by a number of software vendors,
or they approached a number of software vendors, and both
struck an agreement that probably gives the vendors a kickback for
every bundled CPU+Software combo Walmart sells.
This kickback would not be as much as the retail price of the
software, I'm guessing, but it's enough to satisfy the vendors
supplying the software, and Walmart makes enough profit on the
CPU box to not worry overly much.
Side point: Windows installations are frequently "imaged".
Guess why! :-)
>
>So you have to try and acquire equivalent versions of everything near
>and dear to you.
Some of it of far better quality. TeX, for example, if one learns
how to use it, can generate beautiful text.
>
>Let's talk ISP's.
>
>Talk to Earthlink, Worldnet, FreeWeb, AOL, Compuserv and see what they
>think of Linux.
>
>Try it yourself and see. Hint,,,,they are not happy......
I know of at least one ISP -- Verio -- which doesn't seem to have
major problems with Linux (at least, they've never complained about
my using Linux with their POPs, and it works like a champ). Granted,
they're not quite as well known as AOL. (Of course, a slight scandal
is that AOL 5.0 apparently mucks up things in the DLL department....shhh,
don't tell anybody...)
>
>How about Napster, Digital Audio, Digital Video and so forth. Think
>the best programs and hardware are supported under Linux?
>
>Think again....
Dunno, since I for one don't use them. Perhaps at some point, I will.
>
>Windows has all the major players and Linux has nothing but a pile of
>promises.
And has it every occurred to you as to *why* Windows has the major
players?
It wouldn't have anything to do with being the "dominant platform"
(aka "we have to support this because all of our customers run
this piece of shit, but we'd rather run on Linux, FreeBSD, or our
own proprietary operating system"), would it?
(True story. DOOM ran in its own operating system! It's a stub
written by somebody or other -- I forget who, now -- that sets up
a flat 32-bit address space. Windows is finally outgrowing this
sort of silliness, but it's been a long time coming -- and VxDs
are merely TSRs, second generation.)
>
>Come to think about it Linux is all about promises and no
>deliveries....
Says the guy who promotes Microsoft solutions, the latest in
vaporware.
So....when were they going to merge the NT and WinDOS lines of
development, again?
Should I mention "BOB"? :-)
>
>Point is there is absolutely no reason to run Linux on your desktop
>unless you are too cheap to buy a real operating system.
>
>And again, isn't your time worth something?
>
>Run Windows and come home to the family......
And get stuck on ix86/PCI/AT hardware. What's this crap I have to
fuss with regarding 16 interrupts, 7 of which are eaten up by the
base system (timer, keyboard, 2 serials, parallel, fpu, and ide),
1 (cascade) which is non-usable because of some weird sort of
cascading which probably came into use in the 286 days? That's
half my interrupts! (At least the 4 serials shared
the 2 interrups. Nice of 'em, although one wonders if it was
intended that way originally.)
DMA's even worse. I get 7 DMA channels, but 1 is permanently eaten
up by memory refresh, and 1 (cascade) is again non-usable.
2 of 7. And if I want high speed data throughput, I need 1
DMA and 1 interrupt...and they go pretty quickly. Also, 3 of the
DMA are 8 bit, and 3 16 bit -- which is a pain in the you-know-where
when it comes to certain sound and network cards -- some (most?) of the
sound cards require 1 of each!
Partitioning on PC boxes sucks. Sure, one can use the extended
drive area -- but that's an awful weird hackish workaround; if one
doesn't use it, one is limited to 4 partitions. Some OSes
(Xenix, for one) worked around this by superimposing an intermediate
structure on their partition, making it look like subpartitions
or something, if memory serves. But Amiga did it better,
although it was a touch more complicated; the Amiga also could
store file system code along with the partition definitions
(nowadays, that might be an invitation to virus writers, though),
and it could boot from any partition.
And then there's conventional memory. Sure, Windows hides it real
well -- but it's still there, in some form. Not to mention the
stupid 1,024 cylinder limitation imposed by, you guessed it,
BIOS (10 bits for the cylinder is all the older ones had!), and
the egregrious workarounds to -- erm -- work around it. I've yet
to see a hard drive with 255 heads (I for one am reminded of a tall
stack of pancakes for breakfast), but my understanding is that
the computers think that's what they're working with. 63 sectors
might not be unreasonable -- on the outermost cylinder, perhaps.
But the disk drive connects to the interface, which lies to the
BIOS, and the BIOS may lie to the operating system. The OS is lucky
if it has a clue....
This is the 00's, and we're still putting up with issues like this?
At least the 33 Mhz PCI bus has more throughput than the 8 Mhz AT bus.
But we can do better than that. Sheesh, what a Rube Goldberg
contraption the modern low-end PC is! Amiga had all of this more
or less figured out with AutoConfig(tm)!
"No problem, we'll jump over to the Alpha! -- oh, wait, support
for it was discontinued..."
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- yeah, let's reinvent the wheel repeatedly
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Terry Porter)
Subject: Re: Why Linux should be #1 choice for students!
Reply-To: No-Spam
Date: 14 Jun 2000 15:04:27 +0800
On Wed, 14 Jun 2000 00:17:14 GMT,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
><snip>
>
>Actually, Linux should be the number 1 choice for students because you
>never stop learning. <shudder>
Hahaha, curious people never WANT to stop learning.
>
>In all seriousness, you're going to have a hard time convincing the
>average person who doesn't need to do any tricky formatting that it's
>better to write reports with LaTex than with Word.
Who would anyone do that ????????
I've just convinved a Word *hating* writer, that Lyx is the way to go.
She loves Lyx now, its fast, and bug free.
(Lyx is a GUI frontend for LaTex, no LaTex knowledge necessary)
Oh one other thing she likes, the Lyx docs are not full of passwords and irc
channel names, etc !!
> Bugginess with
>templates and macros notwithstanding, Word's a pretty decent program if
>all you need to do is write a double-spaced, Times 12, footnoted and
>endnoted, page-numbered report using two different styles (one for body
>text, one for quoted text),
Hahahahah
Lyx does this, on a 486/100 quickly, and for FREE!
> which I'm willing to bet is all the average
>non-science-oriented person would need to do for their thesis.
I'd agree too.
> Word
>does all these pretty well. You could do way worse than strive for
>Word's usability at this level.
No you couldn't. Word costs $$$, is bloated, 1k text often becomes 30k Word
bloat doc.
Kind Regards
Terry
--
**** To reach me, use [EMAIL PROTECTED] ****
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------------------------------
Subject: Re: An Example of the Superiority of Windows vs Linux
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Pete Goodwin)
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2000 07:11:31 GMT
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Charlie Ebert) wrote in
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>Pete is one classic example of a Windows user who's actually afraid of
>Linux. He continually posts negative Linux comments, you'll never hear a
>good one from Pete.
I'm not afraid of Linux. Where on earth do you get that idea from? If I'm
afraid of it, why am I running it?
>Pete believes like I've said that Linux is going to wipe out Microsoft
>soon. And it worries him.
I don't believe that for one minute. Is this another ploy of Linux
advocates - putting words into peoples mouths?
>Of course sane supports scanners. Of course Linux supports USB.
>Has for some time Pete.
But does it support a USB scanner?
>Pete is the best linux advocate I've ever seen.
>He just doesn't believe he is.
Ah yes, so I am. I post topics reporting Linux is slower than Windows, that
makes me a Linux advocate?
Pete
------------------------------
Subject: Re: An Example of the Superiority of Windows vs Linux
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Pete Goodwin)
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2000 07:12:26 GMT
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (JEDIDIAH) wrote in
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> SCSI only costs $30 these days.
Maybe in the USA, but here in the UK SCSI costs a bit more.
Pete
------------------------------
From: Martijn Bruns <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Run Linux on your desktop? Why? I ask for proof, not advocacy
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2000 09:19:31 +0200
[EMAIL PROTECTED] schreef:
>
> So exactly how is Linux going to unseat the already 90 or more percent
> of home/SOHO/desktop users from Windows and entice them into running
> Linux?
>
> How about Office suites?
>
> Sure StarOffice is free, it is free for Windows users also but
> virtually nobody uses it. Why is that? MSOffice carries a hefty price
> tag but is still the standard by which all office suites are gauged.
> Why is that?
> Figure it out for yourself.
>
> How about hardware support.
>
> Still using that Daisywheel printer? Dot-Matrix job you bought at an
> IBM fleamarket? I doubt it. Today's PC's come with state of the art
> hardware built in to the system. Sure some of it (modem?) might be Win
> hardware, but who really cares? It works...
>
> Try that same combination under Linux and see what happens.
>
> How about all that fine software that was included with the price of
> your Walmart special PC. Guess what!! It won't work with Linux!!!!
>
> So you have to try and acquire equivalent versions of everything near
> and dear to you.
>
> Let's talk ISP's.
>
> Talk to Earthlink, Worldnet, FreeWeb, AOL, Compuserv and see what they
> think of Linux.
>
> Try it yourself and see. Hint,,,,they are not happy......
>
> How about Napster, Digital Audio, Digital Video and so forth. Think
> the best programs and hardware are supported under Linux?
>
> Think again....
>
> Windows has all the major players and Linux has nothing but a pile of
> promises.
>
> Come to think about it Linux is all about promises and no
> deliveries....
>
> Point is there is absolutely no reason to run Linux on your desktop
> unless you are too cheap to buy a real operating system.
>
> And again, isn't your time worth something?
>
> Run Windows and come home to the family......
Talk about ISP's.
I just made a homepage, and it had a false link in it. (I use a
plain-text editor :-) )
It looks like my ISP is using Apache/1.3.12! I wonder which OS
they use it with.
------------------------------
Subject: Re: An Example of the Superiority of Windows vs Linux
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Pete Goodwin)
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2000 07:19:38 GMT
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Bobby D. Bryant) wrote in
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>It's exactly like benchmarketing: You look at the zillions of things a
>computer can be used for, pick the one where yours can beat the others,
>run the tests, publish the results, and brag about being best -- as if
>that one task was the only thing anyone would ever want to use a computer
>for.
I picked POVray as a benchmark because 3D Photo Realistic pictures
interests me. It's a Real World application. I was curious, which OS would
it run faster on. I was expecting to see both Windows and Linux to run at
roughly the same speed - but what do I descover - Linux is _slower_ than
Windows.
Now if Linux is slower than Windows for this, would that not imply that
Linux is probably slower for other things as well?
>For my money, I'm more than happy to pick my hardware to support the
>better OS rather than picking the worse OS simply because it supports this
>or that hardware. If someone comes out with a great new printer that
>Linux doesn't support, I can do without that printer easily. There are
>scores of other that Linux *does* support. I interact with my OS a lot
>more intensely than I interact with my printer, and I'm not in any
>circumstance going to let a decision about printers push me off a good OS
>onto a crappy one.
And if someone comes out with some hardware that Linux does not have
support for yet, but Windows does, and you realise you need that hardware,
what then? Do you wait for someone to develop drivers for it, write them
yourself... or heaven forbid, go and use Windows as it supports it _now_
not "within a year" as I've heard others say.
Pete
------------------------------
Subject: Re: Microsoft Stocks and your sanity...
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Pete Goodwin)
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2000 07:20:33 GMT
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Grant Fischer) wrote in
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>Does this machine exhibit the same problems as the other?
>(Thrashing on printing the large PNG.)
This machine is the one that exhibited the thrashing when I tried to print
a 2MByte PNG file. On Windows there was no problem at all, it just printed.
Pete
------------------------------
Subject: Re: Microsoft Stocks and your sanity...
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Pete Goodwin)
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2000 07:21:38 GMT
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Robert L.) wrote in <VFD15.76561$uw6.1478266
@news20.bellglobal.com>:
>You probably have not set dma and irq corectly.
So, on Linux I have to set DMA and IRQ on a PnP card! Doesn't that defeat
the whole idea of PnP?
Pete
------------------------------
Subject: Re: Linux MUST be in TROUBLE
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Pete Goodwin)
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2000 07:25:21 GMT
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Cihl) wrote in <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>Note that these developments are mainly details. The main operation of
>Linux is already far superior to anything Microsoft can offer. (not
>that it's very hard to do that, but ok)
That's a matter of opinion, and one I disagree with.
>Linux development is proceeding MUCH, MUCH faster than Windows
>development. Linux will overtake Windows sooner or later. There's no
>way of stopping it.
When?
That is the big question. When is this miracle going to happen? Any time
soon?
Pete
------------------------------
From: "kosh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Linux MUST be in TROUBLE
Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2000 01:30:40 -0700
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
(Ketil Nordstad) wrote:
>
>>
>>Linux has very nice sblive drivers. They play in surround just fine they
>>just don support 3d sound. However their sound is cleaner then what they
>>product under windows. I use by sblive under both linux and windows with
>>a DTT 2500 speakers.
>>
>
> These claims you make. Where do you get them from? Surround is normaly
> not defined as having the same stereo sound coming from two sets of
> speakers, with mono sound from a center. Which is what linux currently
> give you. And how can you say that sblives sound is cleaner in linux?
> What kind of glitches are present in windows that linux doesnt have. How
> did you acctually test this? What kernel modules are you using?
>
> There is no secret that soundblaster live was made with windows in mind.
> So it should probably sound better there. How many developers do
> creative devote to linux? And how many developers are working on their
> windows drivers? I dont know, but i do know where the money is.
>
> When you make claims like these, that are obviously untrue. Not only
> will you look like a biased fool. You make linux look bad as well.
The DTT 2500s have a DSP in them for surround expansion from a stero or
front rear source. My issues with windows are when sometimes you drag a
window and the sound suffers a very slight pause. I have been listening to
music for a long time, so I notice it. It is caused usually by a video
card using automatic bus retries. I have contacted nvidia about this
issues but they won't tell me how to disable that under windows. Under
linux I do not have that problem so the sound is a little cleaner due to
that.
The other problem under windows is a driver issue between my motherboard
IDE controller and the soundblaster live dma features. Under heavy disk io
the sound will start to crackle. I have found no fix for this under
windows except to disable dma. Under linux I don't have that problem. I
have UDMA enabled across all my drives and no sound distortation takes
place under high disk io. That is my other source for having cleaner
sound. The driver I am currently using is the one that came with mandrake
7.1 but, I will probably grab a new version from cvs soon and recompile it
myself.
I don't appreciate you saying my claims are untrue. Look on some boards
for issues between the MVP3 chipset and the sblive under windows. Those
issues lead to degraded sound that does not happen in linux. I have also
tried it under W2K using the latest liveware drivers however that doesn't
really work. W2K has some problems with the task schedular where under
heavy load it pretty much breaks down. This did not happen in beta and is
reported to be fixed in the service pack that is soon to be released. I
mostly notice it when I am compiling code and listening to music at the
same time.
As you can see I have well reasoned opinions for why the sblive sounds
better under linux then under windows under the load that I put it.
Different people stress systems in different ways and on OS is not always
the best OS in all conditions. Under the exact conditions I put my
machine under linux performs better then Win
9x or Win NT 4.0 or Win NT 5.0.
------------------------------
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