Linux-Advocacy Digest #361, Volume #28 Sat, 12 Aug 00 04:13:06 EDT
Contents:
Re: Hey Aaron ("Aaron R. Kulkis")
Re: Windows stability: Alternate shells? (R.E.Ballard ( Rex Ballard ))
Re: Linux = Yet Another Unix
Re: Anonymous Wintrolls and Authentic Linvocates ("Boris")
Re: Gutenberg (Arthur Frain)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Aaron R. Kulkis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: Hey Aaron
Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2000 02:56:53 -0400
Cyor wrote:
>
> On Thu, 10 Aug 2000 07:52:20 -0400, "Aaron R. Kulkis"
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> >JS/PL wrote:
> >>
> >> "Aaron R. Kulkis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
>
> >
> >It's only taken them 3 YEARS to start what should be a 6-month project
> >(180 days from initial concept meeting to completion of debugging).
> >
> >
> >> http://www.netcraft.com/survey/
>
> >Aaron R. Kulkis
> >Unix Systems Engineer
> >ICQ # 3056642
> >
> >I: "Having found not one single carbon monoxide leak on the entire
> > premises, it is my belief, and Willard concurs, that the reason
> > you folks feel listless and disoriented is simply because
> > you are lazy, stupid people"
> >
> >J: Loren Petrich's 2-week stubborn refusal to respond to the
> > challenge to describe even one philosophical difference
> > between himself and the communists demonstrates that, in fact,
> > Loren Petrich is a COMMUNIST ***hole
> >
> >A: The wise man is mocked by fools.
> >
> >B: "Jeem" Dutton is a fool of the pathological liar sort.
> >
> >C: Jet plays the fool and spews out nonsense as a method of
> > sidetracking discussions which are headed in a direction
> > that she doesn't like.
> >
> >D: Jet claims to have killfiled me.
> >
> >E: Jet now follows me from newgroup to newsgroup
> > ...despite (D) above.
> >
> >F: Neither Jeem nor Jet are worthy of the time to compose a
> > response until their behavior improves.
> >
> >G: Unit_4's "Kook hunt" reminds me of "Jimmy Baker's" harangues >against
> > adultery while concurrently committing adultery with Tammy Hahn.
> >
> >H: Knackos...you're a retard.
>
> Dude... I've been on usenet for over 7 years, that is unquestionably
> the most annoying signature I've ever encountered.
Yes, and it's especially annoying to those who USED to be fond of
conducting hit and run attacks on me.
Tiring of fending off all kinds of bullshit, I decided that the
best defense is a good offense, and to include spoiling-attacks
as a counter-measure in every post.
If you don't like it, tough shit. I have no desire to fend off
100 flames/day from these assholes.
> _Thirty Four Lines_ !!?. You call yourself a Unix Systems
> Engineer, damn, I can do hello world in fewer lines of code. I
> thought one of the tennants of UNIX was the elegance of simplicity and
> understatement ?
>
> Ahh... Its' good to be back, I used to hang out nt.advocacy a few
> years ago.
>
> Later
> Cyor (Create Your Own Reality)
> NT/2K 2&3D Display Drivers
> Remove Remove 2 Reply
> Spam Will be Reported 4 Accounts Closed and counting.
--
Aaron R. Kulkis
Unix Systems Engineer
ICQ # 305664
------------------------------
From: R.E.Ballard ( Rex Ballard ) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Windows stability: Alternate shells?
Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2000 07:32:54 GMT
In article <8n296j$i0k$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
tom <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> One of the reasons you folks seem to prefer Linux is its "stability",
> as opposed to Windows apparent lack thereof, whatever this may mean
> specifically.
Stability is actually a combination of things. Ultimately, it boils
down to the overall availability of services on a single system.
Put very simply,
Will all services be available at all times?
AND
If a service fails, how long does it take to recover?
There's another nice explanation of why elsewhere in this thread.
In Windows, the "PC mentality" assumes that if the system
fails, you can just "<CTL-ALT-DELETE>", also known
as the "Three Finger Salute to Bill".
Back when MS-DOS occupied 64K and took 3 minutes to reboot (and we
thought that was a very long time), it wasn't a big deal. The fact
that you lost the document changes you had been working on for the
last two hours was a bit more of a problem. But it was considered
your fault that you didn't back-up.
In the world of multitasking multiuser operating systems in which
a single user may spend an hour or two managing multiple complex
applications to produce a report, a failure can be a bit more
"interesting". Furthermore, with operating systems consuming 100
megabytes and taking nearly 10 minutes to reboot and an hour to
recover the context you had created before the crash (all browsers
open to same web sites, all applications back to same locations, all
lost data recovered, and dealing with interruptions as you try to
explain what's taking so long when you said the result would be
ready an hour ago, - to put it mildly, "reboot the box" isn't an
option. Unless of course, you're a Microsoft sales rep, in which case
the official stance is "it's only down 3 minutes". Thats from final
shutdown screen (It is now safe to reboot your computer), to first
login screen.
Until Windows 2000, Microsoft's solution was to deny the problem.
They simply said "we're reliable enough for the average user". Which
mean't not good enough for about half of them. And definitely not
good enough for applications where down-time costs money.
Microsoft finally got the hint when, after spending $billions to
get corporations to implement mission critical projects on Windows
NT 4.0, customers had to literally "pull the plug" on NT as an
application server. It was marginally acceptable as a Web server,
file server, or print server (many considered it better than Novell).
But for running complex applications with complex business rules in
a production environment, NT couldn't compete with UNIX, or even Linux.
Linux is derived from UNIX. Unix evolved from an environment that
included students who liked to play "core wars" on the computer while
it was being used by 100 other students who had homework due at the
end of the hour.
It moved on to business environments where a single processor
machine, often without even RAID, was used concurrently by
100 to 200 employees earning an average of $20 an hour with
productivity of 8/1 ($160/hour). You just figured that if
you were an administrator, and you lost UNIX for an hour,
you could cost the company $16,000 to $32,000 an HOUR, or
nearly $500 a MINUTE. Can you see why down-time was not
an option?
AT&T decided to use UNIX to control it's switching systems. Since
they made this decision prior to divestiture, all of the Baby Bells
were dependent on UNIX too. What would happen if your company's
telephone system stopped working for an hour or two? How about
if an entire city came "unplugged"?
The culture of UNIX was "It will fail, what will you do?".
As a result, code was much more carefully tested, reliable code
was packaged into self-contained units that could be linked together
without risk of breaking the components. UNIX developers also
came up with things like RAID, Clustering, and hot-standby or
active-redundant systems that could cutover in a matter of
milliseconds.
Eventually, UNIX even found it's way into things like Air Traffic
Control, Military tactical systems, and even strategic systems like
Norad and SAC.
After nearly 20 years of hardening, Linus introduced his simple little
Linux kernel of 10,000 lines of code. The UNIX community went nuts.
Many had worked on the Berkeley kernel and were frustrated by the
restrictions AT&T had placed on UNIX. When they saw Linux, they
actually tried to make Linux a "Better UNIX than UNIX". Almost 20,000
developers have contributed since that time.
Linux did have certain advantages over traditional UNIX. It was
modular, but not a "microkernel". This made it much easier to add
and debug driver software. Many hardware vendors even test their
Microsoft Windows drivers on Linux before switching from the Linux
wrapper to the Microsoft wrappers.
Linux also had certain advantages in that it was cheap. This made
it much easier for application developers, many of whom were frustrated
with Microsoft, to create applications for Linux. The Linux
applications could easily be ported to other versions of UNIX,
and pretty soon, Linux became the platform of choice for developing
UNIX applications. They could use the same languages, tools, and
utilities that would be on Solaris, HP_UX, AIX, or any other version
of UNIX, but they could use them on a laptop running an 80486/33.
This was also nice because you could load your website onto the
loptop, and give live demos without being attached to a real
internet connection.
> I've seen a number of websites where people claim that various
> alternative shells (e.g. LiteStep & GeoShell) are more stable than
> Windows' Explorer. No doubt there's more to the issue of stability
> than the shell which, as I understand it, is simply a way to issue
> commands and run programs. How much can Windows be improved along
> these lines -- anyone have any experiences?
Very often, a machine has to be restarted through a "hard reboot"
because the console has "locked up". Often this is the result of
a race condition (two applications or threads trying to modify the
same block of memory at the same time) or deadlocks (two applications
locking resources in opposite sequence). The kernel is still running,
you can ping the machine, but you can't get control of the box. It's
a bit like driving down the street at 55 mph, reaching a curvy steep
hill, and realizing about 1/2 way down that you have no brakes and no
steering because the hydrolics just failed.
It is possible to leave a "back door" such as a telnetd, and it is
also possible to use SMS or some other remote server manager to try
to reboot the system. Sometimes it works, other times it only makes
the situation worse.
Unfortunately, the very nature of the Windows APIs and OLE/COM
environment dictates that processes pass blocks of memory around
and to the event queues of thet main interpreter. If there is a
1 microsecond window between when a process checks a variable and
when it attempts to modify that variable, and you do this 1 million
times a day, you will corrupt the system about once a day.
UNIX systems were designed to limit the interaction between "building
blocks" to a data stream. An application would put bytes into the
stream, when the buffer was full, the application gave control to
the kernel, which then managed passing the messaged to the receiver
who would then unpack the message. The advantage of this was that
you didn't have to allocate large amounts of memory (stream buffers
are often 1-4 kbytes) and you never locked a resource directly.
A process would ask the kernel for service which would pass control
immediately back to the kernel. The result was that you never had
more than one system tinkering with shared memory at a time.
Ironically, this makes the system faster, because you don't have
to arbitrate for resources as often. The cost is a few more context
switches, but Linux and UNIX have optimised the scheduler to reduce
the number of cache misses. The net result is that Linux can run
thousands of independent processes that simply pass messages back and
forth via data-streams, more efficiently and more quickly than NT
can schedule it's apartment threads.
By the way, none of this was lost to Windows 2000. Microsoft's
"fabrics" very similar to the interaction between linux "fork"
processes (which clone the process but alter/remap only the buffer
space, which is minimal because streams are used). Unfortunately,
Microsoft still didn't understand the benefits of streams, pipelines,
and processes that can be connected independently. As a result, the
Windows API still requires that applications be linked together into
huge monolithic applications that can't be reconfigured on-the-fly.
Linux and UNIX provide tools that make dynamic configuration trivial.
The shell, which seems like a primitive command line interface, also
provides a very simple way to interconnect a series of processes
that can be very quickly be reconfigured for different needs.
Finally, Microsoft depends on proprietary file formats that can't
be parsed by either stream parsers or by human beings. This is
because Microsoft wants it's content to be managed as objects
created exclusively for and by Microsoft Applets rather than as
information created by and used by the end-user.
Linux and UNIX decided to document the formats used to pass
information between processes. Furthermore, they decided to
pass ever GUI object messages as datastreams known as X-wire.
The result is that all messages can be passed between processes
in the same machine, or between processes in different countries,
with about the same level of ease.
Going back to UNIX history, you knew that systems would eventually
fail, but you wanted to have different ways to recover. UNIX
often has a GUI interface, as does Linux. But if things go terribly
wrong, you can connect via a remote machine and get things back to
normal without rebooting the machine. In some corporate environments,
machines are only rebooted once a year. Even then, redundant systems,
created by UNIX administrators, shift the load so that the rebooting
machine has no impact on the remaining users. I have worked with,
and designed, systems that could go for multiple years without
significant (statistical) failures. By this I mean the response time
exceeding 3 times average.
> And on a slightly different topic, if I go to Best Buy this weekend to
> pick up a version of Linux to try, any suggestions as to which one for
> a Linux newbie? I'll never give up my Free Agent, but I'm kind of
> nostalgic for the Stone Age when I had my first internet account, a
> Unix shell on Primenet running tin, pine, and pico;
All that stuff is still there, but you really want to let yourself
experience a high-quality GUI like KDE or Enlightenment. The "Luxury
Edition" which has more bells and whistles that you probably really
want - is SuSE Linux. The full installation takes 6 CD-ROMS which
expand to roughly 6 gigabytes of system and application code. But
you can install less if you need it. In many cases, you have to
purchase licenses after a trial period, but you can purchase them
over the internet for very reasonable prices.
If you really miss Pine and PICO, you can bring up a shell window
and connect to your ISP's nntp and pop server and enjoy the good old
days.
The intertesting thing is that you were limited to the text interface
because you were connecting using a cheap VT-100/ANSI terminal
interface, connected to the ISP via a 1200 or 9600 baud modem. Your
admin was watching your activity (statistically) via a GUI interface
such as OpenLook, or Motif, or even CDE, while you were still trying
to figure out how to "double-click" on Windows 3.0".
> thought I might try
> to get something like that going on my computer. (Actually my first
> internet experience involved AO-hell, but let's not get into that. :)
Was that back in the days when it took 20 minutes to get almost
connected only to recieve the "connection timed out"? I always
got a kick out of watching AOL users trying to get that big fat
TCL browser up and running on that tiny little 2 megabyte Windows 3.1
486/33 PC. I'd be sitting there with my 80386/16 Linux box, connected,
and browsing with Mosaic an an open-look virtual window manager (OLVWM).
People would walk by my office and yell "How did YOU get a SUN?".
I'd then point out the HP/9000 application, and the AIX application,
and then I'd point to my little 80386, which had been rescued from
the salvage room, and they'd just gawk in disbelief.
Even more interesting was that I would connect to my ISP using the
X11 interface (they don't let you do that anymore) which meant that
I could even run sun-mail directly on the sun machine.
Of course, while I was using it as a "UNIX system console", I also
ran a web server, mail server, and news server (using NFS mounted
UNIX drives for extra storage). For me, the clincher was when I
was able to mount a couple of NetWare file systems, a couple of
NFS file systems, and a couple of Windows file systems, and share
the entire hierarchy as a single drive.
> Tom
>
> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> Before you buy.
>
--
Rex Ballard - I/T Architect, MIS Director
Linux Advocate, Internet Pioneer
http://www.open4success.com
Linux - 42 million satisfied users worldwide
and growing at over 5%/month! (recalibrated 8/2/00)
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
------------------------------
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.alpha
Subject: Re: Linux = Yet Another Unix
Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2000 00:53:23 -0700
Reply-To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
mark <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> In article <8mc6r0$kja$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, bgeer wrote:
> ><[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> >
> > >bgeer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> > >news:8m9rhr$6iq$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> >
> >
> > >> Windows people tought us the "three-finger salute" & what "BSD"
means.
> >
> > >The "three-finger salute" Ctrl-Alt-Del was on the PC from the beginning
long
> > >before Windows.
> >
> >Ok, if we're picking nits, the same collective brought us both.
> >
> > > To avoid confusion with BSD unix, it would be better to use
> > >BSoD for the infamous blue screen.
> >
> >I agree. Yet I find it compelling that mentioning "BSD" in a
> >Microsoft context is never misunderstood! On the other hand,
> >pronouncing BSoD as "bee sod" sort of appeals to my warped sense of
> >humor.
>
> That's certainly how I pronounce it - at the the first couple of
> times it happens during the day. I've been 'upgraded' at work from
> win95 to win98SE - it seems to be less stable. Happily, in my own
> time, I get to play linux. And some of our work servers are linux.
A little aside "bee sod" when pronounce without really hiting the d at the
end almost sounds like the word for snake in some european languages.
------------------------------
From: "Boris" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Anonymous Wintrolls and Authentic Linvocates
Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2000 01:05:23 -0700
> OR he actually hates MS but is suppressing it and thinks that people
> who don't properly love MS are ungrateful bastards.
lol
It's interesting, paranoia that MS-made software is always broken effected me. When
smthg
doesn't work my first reaction is: "Shit, another MS bug". But in 99% cases it's not
the
case: it's bug in my code or I didn't configure smthg properly. That's how propaganda
leaves dents on people's minds. Hear smthg long enough and you'll believe it.
My self-diagnosis is: I spend too much time reading posts by MS-haters on COMNA. Time
to
take a break.
Boris
------------------------------
From: Arthur Frain <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Gutenberg
Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2000 00:25:30 -0700
Richard wrote:
> Then maybe you would care to explain why Gutenberg didn't print any books?
> (Big huge *COSTLY* illuminated bibles that can't even be carried easily do
> *not* qualify as books!) Or why pagination took so long to be invented?
But for someone arguing that Gutenberg was not
an innovator, it would be more interesting to
explain why no books were printed *before*
Gutenberg.
You're effectively asking why Shockley, Brattain
and Bardeen never built cellular phones - after
all, they even worked for AT&T.
Arthur
------------------------------
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