Linux-Advocacy Digest #465, Volume #29 Thu, 5 Oct 00 09:13:06 EDT
Contents:
Re: 2.4! (Bartek Kostrzewa)
Re: 2.4! (Bartek Kostrzewa)
Re: Hotmail still runs BSD. ("MH")
Re: programming languages and design (Donal K. Fellows)
Re: [OT] Bush v. Gore on taxes ("Chad Myers")
Re: 2.4! (Bartek Kostrzewa)
Re: Migration --> NT costing please :-) ("Chad Myers")
Re: Migration --> NT costing please :-) ("Chad Myers")
Re: Consistency (Bartek Kostrzewa)
Re: Corel bailed out by MS? Let the games begin! ("MH")
Re: Because programmers hate users (Re: Why are Linux UIs so crappy?) (Donal K.
Fellows)
Re: Because programmers hate users (Re: Why are Linux UIs so crappy?) (Donal K.
Fellows)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 05 Oct 2000 14:37:04 +0200
From: Bartek Kostrzewa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: 2.4!
Todd wrote:
>
> "Bartek Kostrzewa" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> > Well, I just moved to 2.4 test 9... I must say, I'm impressed! All my
> > USB devices working... great... great... great *jaw lying on the ground
> > after compilation* ... WOW! I love it!
>
> yawn... Windows 2000 has had USB support since its inception. Also, Windows
> 2000 has *drivers* for the USB devices so that you can actually *use* them.
>
> What good is USB support with the drivers for the devices?
Hmm.. my mouse, my keyboard, my camera, my printer and my speakers
work... what's the matter?
>
> > Hmm.. with this kernel, and some more work by the GNOME foundation and
> > Helixcode Linux can finally kick some real butt on the Desktop (together
> > with NVidia hardware, we just need a damn open-source GL driver *g*).
>
> Linux is going to need a hell of a lot more work before it is suited for the
> desktop. But then again, don't take it from me, just look at the market
> today.
Exactly, 5% growth per month. That's a lot! 2004 and Windows and Linux
will be equal at share. (at the current rate, which at my opinion will
decrease a little because dumbasses like you don't know how to deal with
Linux)
>
> > I'm so proud.
>
> Only a Linux user would be proud of a hacked OS that just got a feature that
> has been around on other OSes for quite some time.
Hmm.. MacOS is the only platform that has really decent support for USB,
in Windows it's still kind of flaky...
>
> BTW, according to recent tests on www.tomshardware.com, NVidia hardware runs
> OpenGL faster on Windows 2000 than under Linux.
Those were made with 0.92, if you take a look at the current benches
(0.95) with kernel 2.4 you will see a slight increase that brings Linux
to a slowdown of as low as 3%.
>
> Why even use Linux??
Because it's great, stable, fast, and free.
--
Best regards,
Bartek Kostrzewa - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
<<< http://technoage.web.lu >>>
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 05 Oct 2000 14:39:36 +0200
From: Bartek Kostrzewa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: 2.4!
Darren Winsper wrote:
>
> On Wed, 04 Oct 2000 23:00:19 +0200, Bartek Kostrzewa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Well, I just moved to 2.4 test 9... I must say, I'm impressed! All my
> > USB devices working... great... great... great *jaw lying on the ground
> > after compilation* ... WOW! I love it!
>
> There's one major regression in test9 from test8 that I've found; if I
> switch from X to the console and back to X my mouse dies. Ho hum, at least
> test8 has been amazingly stable for me.
>
Are you using DGAMouse on XF 3.3.6? If so, upgrade to 4.0.1, it doesn't
have these problems.
--
Best regards,
Bartek Kostrzewa - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
<<< http://technoage.web.lu >>>
------------------------------
From: "MH" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Hotmail still runs BSD.
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 2000 08:44:10 -0400
Oh god, another one of these. Yes, and Bill Gates reads Slashdot,.. and
Ballmer runs his home network on Open Linux. Who gives a sh*t?
Why are these assertions pertinent?
To validate you? Over your use of a computer OS?
Pathetic.
"Bobby D. Bryant" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> http://www.netcraft.com/survey/
>
> "We were premature with last month's comment to the effect that Windows
> 2000 had replaced FreeBSD at HotMail. Markus Senoner was first to point
> out that although www.hotmail.com is indeed running Windows 2000,
> several of the other HotMail front end servers are still running
> FreeBSD."
>
> They give a link so you can see for yourself which ones are and which
> ones aren't.
>
> Bobby Bryant
> Austin, Texas
>
>
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Donal K. Fellows)
Subject: Re: programming languages and design
Date: 5 Oct 2000 12:43:57 GMT
In article <8r3652$fms$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Joseph T. Adams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Donal K. Fellows <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> Roberto Selbach Teixeira <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>> Why is it? C++ is a very well designed language.
>> C++ is a hack to add OO to C.
> In my view, *both* of those things are true.
C is basically a way to add structured programming and simple types to
assembly programming. It doesn't pretend to be high-level, and is a
successful language because of this; whatever functionality you want
to implement[*], you can find a way to do it in C (though it may well
be ugly.) This makes C a very powerful and useful language indeed.
But if you've got a higher level abstraction, you use that for as much
as you can and then just use C to make the components on which you are
building. This technique is very successful in practise, and has been
used to put together some extremely large and sophisticated software
systems in impressively short amounts of time while still preserving
good features like maintainability.
C++ adds loads of features (call-by-reference, OO, overloading,
templates, etc.) but doesn't really take away any of the capabilities
of C (as part of an effort to woo over as many C programmers as
possible, no matter how broken their code.) This makes the language a
great Omnium Gatherum of features, of which the implementation you're
using only correctly supports a (difficult-to-discover) subset. Many
of the features have "interesting" interactions between them, or are
essentially misused even in the standard library. The result is a
horrid mess. It is far better to use a multi-lingual solution (e.g.
an OO language with C components where needed) as then you can better
leverage the strengths of each language.
Trying to have a language which does everything is a mistake.
Donal.
[* With a few minor exceptions, most of which are processor specific. ]
--
Donal K. Fellows http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~fellowsd/ [EMAIL PROTECTED]
-- I could even declare myself a religion, if that'd help.
-- Mark Loy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
------------------------------
From: "Chad Myers" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy
Subject: Re: [OT] Bush v. Gore on taxes
Date: Thu, 05 Oct 2000 12:47:01 GMT
"Donovan Rebbechi" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> My point is that a lot of the things you're complaining about are wrong,
> should be criminalised, and most importantly, are criminalised.
But are not enforced, so they're being taken advantage of quite
frequently. Speeding is against the law too, but yet everyone seems to
do it.
> >Several children had health problems that were not being taken
> >care of because the parents couldn't afford health care because
>
> IMO, the current health care system is badly broken. The problem is
> that it's employer based, and health insurance for individuals is too
> expensive to be practical. Still, I don't think better health care will
> cure negligent parents.
I agree. They'd find a way to scam the government health care (if their
was one) to get more money for their dogs, cars, etc.
-Chad
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 05 Oct 2000 14:48:10 +0200
From: Bartek Kostrzewa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: 2.4!
Raul Iglesias wrote:
>
> > Well, I just moved to 2.4 test 9... I must say, I'm impressed! All my
> > USB devices working... great... great... great *jaw lying on the ground
> > after compilation* ... WOW! I love it!
>
> I think really 2.4 serie is still unstable by far; used it since test1 to
> test8 and run
> well on some hardware, bad on another and at all on a few of configurations.
Hmm.. I can't comment on many configs, but here are mine:
ZEUS:
AMD T-Bird Socket A 800 oc'ed to 1060Mhz
256 SDRAM (PC133 running at 143Mhz CAS2)
Adaptec 29160N SCSI card, Plextor CDrom, IBM Ultrastar HD
NVidia TNT 2 Ultra
SB PCI 128
GEMINI:
PII 400 oc'ed to 448
128 MB PC100 SDRAM running at 112 CAS3
Matrox Millenium II 4 MB PCI
Old Seagate Medallist HD
Old Noname ATAPI CDrm
>
> > Hmm.. with this kernel, and some more work by the GNOME foundation and
> > Helixcode Linux can finally kick some real butt on the Desktop (together
> > with NVidia hardware, we just need a damn open-source GL driver *g*).
>
> I dislike a lot GNOME and hope it not to become neither the dominant nor
> the only desktop around, in fact, I do not need a desktop at all.
I like GNOME a lot better than KDE, especially with Helixcode's update
function. This makes keeping your desktop safe (free from bugs) easy.
But I don't want it to become dominant, that's the great thing about
Linux, choice.
--
Best regards,
Bartek Kostrzewa - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
<<< http://technoage.web.lu >>>
------------------------------
From: "Chad Myers" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Migration --> NT costing please :-)
Date: Thu, 05 Oct 2000 12:51:04 GMT
"Todd" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:8rh2kb$eo0$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> > It's obvious you're exaggerating here. All my boxes were Compaq and they
> were
> > far better than any other vendor (namely Dell) in every respect.
>
> We use HP boxes... very nice and compatible with Windows 2000 and also
> Linux. We've never had a hardware problem when running NT or 2000 on HP
> NetServer boxes.
You're right, HP makes good servers. I prefer Compaq because they seem
to have more features, but HP is certainly a very good alternative.
> > Ironically, I've never had one bluescreen on any of my servers, all of
> which
> > have relatively heavy load (e.g. the smaller boxes have smaller loads than
> > the larger boxes, but they have proprotinately equal loads).
>
> When running NT, the boxes have been very stable. However, NT seems to
> sometimes 'leak' memory. This sometimes forces a monthly or weekly reboot
> for some applications.
This usually depends on which application(s) you're running. It seems
Exchange gobbles up more and more RAM to handle the load. Stopping and starting
services usually fixes this.
Also, poorly designed ASP applications running on IIS will leak memory as well.
Stopping and starting the IISADMIN service usually fixes this.
IIS5 for Win2K has much better garbage collection and is much more strict
about memory allocation, so it's not as big of a problem.
> However, our boxes running 2000 do not require this anymore. MS seems to
> have fixed the NT memory leak problems.
Win2K does seem to be much more robust in this regards, yes.
> Consequently, our IT guys are trying to get everybody upgraded to 2000
> immediately. 2000 has a lot of other benefits over NT as well.
I know! It's really great!
> > Never had to reboot any of them except for physical relocation. Most of my
> > boxes have >300 day uptimes. They would've had around ~480 day uptimes
> > be we moved our offices about 480 days ago. Some of the other servers
> > which have less uptime were only brought on recently, and haven't been
> taken
> > down since.
>
> Depending on what the NT boxes were running, some never needed reboots.
> However, our Lotus Domino servers with lots of data processing 'agents'
> required a monthly reboot because of memory leaks, not because of stability
> problems.
Like I said before, it's usually the application that seems to gobble up more
and more RAM.
-Chad
------------------------------
From: "Chad Myers" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Migration --> NT costing please :-)
Date: Thu, 05 Oct 2000 12:54:17 GMT
"Gardiner Family" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> adam, gid-day from a fellow kiwi. Here are some sites that use linux/UNIX for
> their website:
>
> WINZ (Work and Income New Zealand)
> New Zealand Government Website
> Telecom
> ihug
> zfree
> majority of proxy servers in New Zealand
> RNBNZ (IBM AIX)
Wow, what a list. The combined total number of hits/day of all those sites
is what? 1 million? 2 million?
What about:
Barnesandnoble.com
Dell.com } The top eCommerce sites in the world
Gigabuys.com }
microsoft.com
ebay.com
hotmail.com
and on and on and on...
All of which run NT 4.0 or Windows 2000 and all of which get millions of hits
per day.
> the list goes on and on, Windows NT is a product that never lived up to its
> supposed "UNIX Smashing" reputation that was originally declared by bill gates
> back in 1993-1994.
See above...
-Chad
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 05 Oct 2000 14:54:49 +0200
From: Bartek Kostrzewa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Consistency
Raul Iglesias wrote:
>
> XF86Config is sometimes at /etc and others at /etc/X11; sometimes
> there is /opt/kde, /opt/gnome and /opt/netscape, others there are all
> of them at /usr/bin; sometimes lynx.cfg is at /etc/, others it is at
> /usr/lib;
> sometimes there is /etc/rc.d/rc.local, others /sbin/init.d/boot.local;
> kernel
> is at /boot, while kernel modules are at /lib/modules; shared libraries are
> at /lib, /usr/lib, /usr/local/lib, /usr/X11R6/lib, and sometimes at
> /opt/gnome/lib and /opt/kde/lib (in fact, wherever /etc/ld.so.conf says);
> sometimes network configuration is at /etc/sysconfig/ and others it is not
> there, sometimes FTP and web homes are at /home while others these
> are at /usr/local; and I think I could write several inconsistencies more.
> What I mean is, flexibility is good, but the LSB is a thing we already
> need. I feel confortable with all of that, but just because I know where
> the things are, but I understand that people that start feel a little lost.
> What do you think about this ? This is not a "Windows v.s. Linux" post,
> just a "how to improve Linux" one; I'd like to read your answers, how is
> it LSB progressing ? I think Redhat, Debian, SuSE, Mandrake, and all
> of them should cooperate to make GNU/Linux a little more uniform
> in the areas where it is needed.
On one hand, you're right, on the other you aren't, just install where
you want, freedom of choice par exellance.
RedHat is very near to GNU/Linux 'standards', Madrake too, Slakware too,
SuSE jumps out of line heavily.
I'm currently using my own little setup that once was an Rh 6.2
installation, now I moved quite a lot of things to /usr/local to keep my
/usr dir free, my kernel is not in /usr/src (I only left the symlink).
What I miss with most boxed distros is a directory tree, just a sheet of
paper or two that read(s) where common files are, like libraries etc..
Good way to get new users informed. I personnaly don't need that kind of
stuff because, as I said, my system is very customised, but newbies are
certainly confused how to install things in the dirs they want them to
have. For example on SuSE /usr/local is not a standard path at all, but
most software installs there normally, so if a SuSE newbie compiles a
prog, he won't find it, and the prog won't find its libraries.
--
Best regards,
Bartek Kostrzewa - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
<<< http://technoage.web.lu >>>
------------------------------
From: "MH" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Corel bailed out by MS? Let the games begin!
Date: Thu, 5 Oct 2000 08:54:34 -0400
Why would you care? Linux users despise anything MS. Why would you *want* to
run MS applications? Oh, I get it...if the Linux OS can run MS applications
in any way, shape, or form, it would validate Linux as an OS somehow? I
thought it already was valid?
I've come to the inescapable conclusion that linux advocates are similar to
irrational, disturbed people in love with someone they want one minute,
don't want the next...but the obsession lives on day after day after day
after day.. face it...you LOVE MS. If they disappeared tomorrow what you
have to bray about in here? day after day after day after day......linux
advocacy == MS bashing. Face it. You really have nothing else to say or do.
For if you did, you wouldn't be wasting time in here pissing and wringing
your hands over what MS did 25 years ago, or what it is going to (paranoid)
do tomorrow.
Sad, actually.
"Nigel Feltham" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:8rg2nn$hk61g$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote in message ...
>
>http://netscape.zdnet.com/framer/hud0022420/www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news
> /0,4586,2635894,00.html
> >
> >claire
>
> I don't suppose this would be an attempt to kill off corel's support of
the
> wine project would it?
>
> I wouldn't be surprised if VMWARE get buyout offers from microsoft next,
> anything to prevent
> linux users from being able to run windows applications under other
> operating systems.
>
>
>
>
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Donal K. Fellows)
Subject: Re: Because programmers hate users (Re: Why are Linux UIs so crappy?)
Date: 5 Oct 2000 12:46:16 GMT
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Nathaniel Jay Lee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> You ain't lived till you've perfected laziness.
I was going to perfect laziness, but I couldn't be bothered.
Donal.
--
Donal K. Fellows http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~fellowsd/ [EMAIL PROTECTED]
-- I could even declare myself a religion, if that'd help.
-- Mark Loy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Donal K. Fellows)
Subject: Re: Because programmers hate users (Re: Why are Linux UIs so crappy?)
Date: 5 Oct 2000 12:53:03 GMT
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Richard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Joe Blow the employee is not a person at all! And in the rare
> cases where employees have rights in the USA, the fact that
> they're not the same rights acrued from being a human being
> means that they're *not* the same person.
And this affects me how?
Donal. (Note the email address...)
--
Donal K. Fellows http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~fellowsd/ [EMAIL PROTECTED]
-- I could even declare myself a religion, if that'd help.
-- Mark Loy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
------------------------------
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