Linux-Advocacy Digest #840, Volume #31 Tue, 30 Jan 01 05:13:03 EST
Contents:
Re: And after all that, it worked! (Pete Goodwin)
Re: And after all that, it worked! (Pete Goodwin)
Re: So much for Linux being more Difficult than Windows ("Christopher L. Estep")
Re: Linux headache ("Adam Warner")
Re: Who was saying Crays don't run Linux? ("Erik Funkenbusch")
Re: Kernel upgrade - not bad at all (John Travis)
Re: Linux headache (Nick Condon)
Re: Whistler predictions... ("Aaron R. Kulkis")
Re: Kernel upgrade - not bad at all (John Travis)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Pete Goodwin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: And after all that, it worked!
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 08:59:10 GMT
In article <954c72$ah2$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
"Edward Rosten" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> TROLL ALERT!!!!
>
> Calssic signs: posting a problem with NO datails.
Blame Deja for this one. It was in reply to "Run for the hills".
--
---
Pete
Sent via Deja.com
http://www.deja.com/
------------------------------
From: Pete Goodwin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: And after all that, it worked!
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 09:01:46 GMT
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
bobh{at}haucks{dot}org wrote:
> Note...Pete doesn't want help, he's just keeping us up to date. He
> explained in another post that he knows that an advocacy group is the
> wrong place to ask technical questions.
Precisely. Well spotted that man.
> So don't bother.
It is however, a sad reflection on Linux...
...actually that's not true. There's something affecting FTP here at our
site. Everything else works just fine, so FTP isn't needed.
--
---
Pete
Sent via Deja.com
http://www.deja.com/
------------------------------
From: "Christopher L. Estep" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: So much for Linux being more Difficult than Windows
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 09:10:09 GMT
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> On Wed, 24 Jan 2001 05:34:50 +0200, Ayende Rahien <Please@don't.spam>
wrote:
>
> Win2K pretty much wizards you to death.
>
I used the ICW, but that simply made it *duck soup* to configure my @Home
connection (based on Windows 2000 LAN settings).
Christopher L. Estep
------------------------------
From: "Adam Warner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Linux headache
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 22:39:03 +1200
Hi Andy,
<snip>
> By the way, has anyone who isn't a beardy geek (no insult intended)
> actually successfully re-compiled their kernel and got exactly the result
> they were looking for ???
My best tip Andy is to use the X graphical menu to select kernel options.
And then you save your options to a file. Then it's really easy to load the
options back in and select something else if you have missed anything.
Here's my kernel in a nutshell:
1. Download a new kernel from www.kernel.org (scroll down to the bottom
to find the latest stable release)--wow, I just noticed 2.4.1 is stable!
That must mean journaling is now officially in the Linux kernel.
2. Log in as root.
3. Change directory to /usr/src (i.e. cd /usr/src).
4. Just to be safe rename the present kernel source code (e.g. mv linux
linux-original).
5. Extract the kernel you downloaded to the present location (i.e. tar -zxvf
linux....tar.gz). A subdirectory "linux" will be created with the new source
contained within it.
6. cd /usr/src/linux.
7. Run "make mrproper" to clean everything up ready to compile the kernel.
8. "startx" (you will then be able to select your kernel options
graphically).
9. Open a command prompt and "cd /usr/src/linux".
10. Type "make xconfig". Select pertinent options by reading through all of
the help boxes.
11. Before you go to save and exit, save a copy of your configuration to a
directory on your disk. It will be much faster if you find you want to
change an option later on.
12. When you have saved and exited from xconfig you will want to type "make
dep", followed by "make bzImage"; followed by "make modules"; and finally
"make modules_install". Compiling the actual kernel (the "make bzImage"
step) can be time-consuming depending on the speed of your computer and the
amount of available RAM (it should only take a few minutes on a fast modern
computer with at least 64MB of RAM).
At this stage you've built your kernel. However it's not installed. The
kernel is compressed as bzImage and it's sitting in
/usr/src/linux/arch/i386/boot/. You want to copy this kernel to your boot
directory (cp /usr/src/linux/arch/i386/boot/bzImage /boot). It's then a good
idea to rename it to something that will be meaningful later on (e.g. "cd
/boot"; "cp bzImage kernel2.x.xx.andy01).
You will also want to copy over the system map for the new kernel (cp
/usr/src/linux/System.map /boot). It may be advisable to rename the old
System.map file first.
You lastly have to edit /etc/lilo.conf (using an editor such as emacs, pico
or a GUI editor) by adding a link to the new kernel.
It's absolutely critical to re-run "lilo" for it to re-read the new
configuration file. If it finds an error it won't update the boot
configuration information until that error is fixed.
It is daunting at first, but then it becomes easy.
Regards,
Adam
------------------------------
From: "Erik Funkenbusch" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Who was saying Crays don't run Linux?
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 03:47:20 -0600
"Bobby D. Bryant" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> Erik Funkenbusch wrote:
>
> > Those aren't Cray supercomputers. They're clusters of above average,
but
> > basically normal systems.
>
> I ran your post through babelfish, and the result was -
>
> "If it doesn't run on Windows, it ain't worth squat."
>
>
> FYI, Linux has all but taken over a market where Microsoft doesn't even
have a
> toehold.
Why are you people so incapable of sticking to a topic?
The topic, is someone stating that Linux is running on Cray supercomputers
based on a link. The real fact is that it's not a Cray supercomputer, it's
a Cray cluster of average computers. Yet in your hurry to slam everything,
you don't bother to understand what you're commenting on.
------------------------------
From: John Travis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: alt.linux.sux
Subject: Re: Kernel upgrade - not bad at all
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 09:38:39 GMT
And on Tue, 30 Jan 2001 01:07:48 GMT, "Kyle Jacobs"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> spoke unto us:
>Could Linux do all that, YES. Does it, NO.
>
>Why? Lazy programmers, who will swear it's a bad idea till the day someone
>who doesn't think it's a bad idea does it, then they will praise the
>programmer who DID make it possible.
Erm...this isn't really correct at all. I still don't know where you get
this great "insight" into the community which you aren't a part of but all
well. Lazy is hardly the issue, quite the opposite actually. Most of the
people working on the various projects have other jobs that pay the bills.
They do what they do for GNU/Linux out of a love for the work. The lazy
programmers are the ones who work on a three thousand dollar program, and
mildly tweak some 15 year old protection scheme that anyone with half a
brain can crack. Then all of the little oddities that should never exist
in such expensive software, are worked out over a year or two in updates.
Untill they can ship the next version out the door and bank up on the
upgrades, and the cycle begins again...
jt
________________________________________
Alternative Computing Solutions...
Debian GNU/Linux http://www.debian.org
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Nick Condon)
Subject: Re: Linux headache
Date: 30 Jan 2001 09:56:58 GMT
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Robert Morelli) wrote in
<954nt1$4hi$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "Andy Walker"
><[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>> I don't want to start a flame war over this but there is one thing I
>> want to get off my chest. Linux is an absolute nightmare to learn. Now
><snip>
>> I'm just an average user who is sick of Micro$oft and I desparately
>> want Linux to succeed in the market place. However if the companies
>> such as RedHat, Mandrake etc don't address problems like these, a lot
>> of the momentum will be lost. All these companies seem to be spending
>> all their
>
>
>Listen, we all want to see Linux succeed in the wider market place,
>but you have to be realistic. Linux is already gaining a lot of success
>in certain special server markets, but in a recent interview, Linus
>Torvalds predicted it would be 5 or 10 years before Linux challenges
>Microsoft on the desktop. I think it may have an impact earlier on
>corporate desktops that are administered by a dedicated staff. For the
>general public, I think you should just resign yourself to the fact
>that 5 years is an optimistic estimate for the general public, and 10
>years is probably more realistic.
>
>Why?
>1. Because your experience is absolutely typical.
>2. Because Linux/Unix is based on very old fashioned principles.
>It has a certain elegance of its own; it was an elegant solution for the
>world it was born in, but that world is now a part of history. It's
>not a good fit for the modern world.
Yawn, this again. Been reading the Microsoft website have you? *All*
technology is based on older principles, even Windows. Linux/Unix has a
time tested and proven design. In (software) engineering, mature and proven
designs are A Good Thing.
>A system like Windows was
>built with poor foresight, and horrendous design flaws. But in the
>ways that matter to end users, it is much more modern than Linux.
Like what? A better GUI, very weak command line? When I was learning about
these things at University 10 years ago I was taught that the GUI/CLI
choice was a trade off. A GUI is quicker to learn, but a CLI is more
powerful. The advice then was provide a GUI for casual users and a CLI for
the more experienced. It's a trade-off, not "more modern".
>3. Because the Linux/Unix paradigm is designed for multiuser
>client/server environments, and this paradigm is totally useless for
>the typical home user.
Really? Lots of home users have heard of this worldwide client/server
environment called the Internet. Personally I regard it as essential, but
this paradigm is *highly desirable* for the home user.
>For instance, the root user under Linux can do
>things you should never do,
Like what? Besides, I don't like tools that tell me I'm not supposed to do
something. I can impose that discipline on myself, if I say do it, the
machine should just do it.
>while the non-root users can't do ordinary things you need to do.
Not if your machine is configured correctly, you never need root access for
ordinary tasks.
>The root/non-root distinction in Linux is a
>nuissance which has no purpose for the home user.
All modern OSes have an admin user, including all current and future
offerings from Redmond.
>4. Because it's the last 1% of the work that makes the difference
>between a smoothly working system and one that frustrates. But that
>last 1% is the most difficult and tedious to do and it rarely gets done
>in the sort of communal model Linux uses.
Very good. "Communal" makes it sound like they are all reds without
actually saying it outright. The competitive open-source culture is much
closer to a free market than Microsoft's concept of a centrally planned,
state granted, exclusive monopoly.
Secondly, what you are complaining about here is mainly the job of the
distribution, and Debian's free distro is a much higher quality
distribution than Redhat's commercial one.
>5. Because companies like Red Hat and Mandrake are largely just
>hackers who get a salary. What I mean by that is that these people
>typically have limited training and don't really understand the more
>subtle aspects of software development,
That's not what I, and many people on this group understand as a "hacker".
I read the word as something like "expert" or "wizard"; perhaps "vandal" if
I see it in the mainstream press. The usage is hotly debated and I would
suggest if you want to express yourself clearly that you don't try to
introduce a third meaning.
>and don't adhere to
>commercial quality standards and testing procedures.
Ahh, cathedral building. Much of the code produced by software houses is
rubbish - I've worked for several. A quick code review where everybody
waves their ego around and then it gets closed and nobody ever looks at it
again.
Constrast that with open-source which is constantly peer reviewed and re-
reviewed by thousands of interested experts and learners on something
similar to the academic model. The result is much higher quality software
("the bazaar").
>Until those
>companies start hiring a different breed of developer, the big Linux
>companies are going to just keep producing the same quality of
>software that you get from hackers on the internet.
You're clearly confused. A Linux distribution is largely (perhaps entirely)
a compilation of software "off the internet". This software is generally a
much higher quality than equivalent commercial offerings. (e.g. Apache,
BIND, Perl, PHP, Linux, GNU) and most OS manufacturers incorporate these
packages into their distributions. Even Sun bundles things like Perl and
GNOME with Solaris. Only Microsoft is resisting.
>6. Because user interface design is the most subtle and demanding
>aspect of programming. You can expect the Linux community to do simple
>things like write compilers (though gcc is at the moment in a pretty
>sorry state),
I'm astonished. Speechless, even. You think compilers are easy, but UIs are
hard. On the contrary compilers are without a doubt the most demanding
programming projects, and Richard Stallman and his team have demonstrated a
rare genius with gcc. It is arguably the hackers most used tool and it hard
to imagine it being anything other than extremely high quality and I would
for one would never consider using anything else. I'd certainly never go
back to Sun's compiler.
What I think you're trying to say is open-source projects are better at
infrastructure projects than Joe Public point-and-click applications, and
you may have point. The open-source community is more than aware of this
imbalance and easy-to-use desktops like GNOME and KDE are extremely high
profile right now.
>but the open source model neither attracts the sort of
>talent necessary for user interface design, nor the level of direct
>interaction between users and programmers that is necessary to make it
>succeed.
As for "difficult" GUIs, (you don't mean "user interfaces", because a CLI
is a user interface) GUI design hasn't historically attracted much talent
because geeks wrote their code for other geeks, after all no-one else was
using it. Now Linux has a much higher profile among non-geeks and that area
is attracting lots of talent and acheiving Great Things. Sun for example
are now distributing GNOME with their workstations.
>You're right about this. Linux/Unix is a mess in this respect. What
>you may not realize is that Linux has already made big advances over the
>traditional Unix-think way of doing things.
For some reason you've combined the Unix approach with the Microsoft
practise. e.g:
>distribute
>software as tarballs of source code which a knowlegeable administrator
>unpacks, configures, compiles, and installs
That is the Unix method.
This is the historical Microsoft approach:
>spreading the
>binaries, libraries, and documentation into totally disorganized large
>system directories whose locations vary from vendor to vendor. The
>problem is that the tradition Unix-think way of doing things was about
>as stupid as if you'd set out deliberately to make it stupid.
The Unix method is brilliant. You have *clearly defined* system directories
that everybody sticks to and the the administrator can override (even if he
only sticks it all in /usr/local). You don't get much better than that
>It takes
>a lot of planning, cooperation, and intelligence to make something
>like this work, and those things are all in short supply in the Linux
>community.
Ooh, you bitch.
>Things will probably gradually improve over time, but
>you probably won't have anything comparable to Windows for
>several years.
I hope Linux is never comparable to Windows. Bill Gates has set back the
development of the personal computer by 10 years. I saw him do it. I had a
multithreaded 16 bit home computer in *1985*, but Bill extinguished the
competition and didn't have a superior offering until Windows95. I hope
there is special corner of hell reserved for him.
>By the way, all kidding aside, asking the end user to do bizarre
>things like recompile the kernel, is one of many, many reasons why
>Linux is not appropriate for the end user.
No one has to recompile their kernel. Linux offers you a choice. You can if
you want to. Windows offers you no choice. Would you buy a car that didn't
allow you to pop the hood? Nor me.
> more technically advanced systems like Windows.
All kidding aside, right?
------------------------------
From: "Aaron R. Kulkis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: Whistler predictions...
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 05:01:08 -0500
"Christopher L. Estep" lied:
>
>
> The ONLY operating systems that are relatively easy to configure, support my
> hardware either out of the box, or via easily-obtainable drivers, are from a
> single company based in Redmond, Washington.
>
> Their name is Microsoft.
Then why is it so goddamned difficult compared to Linux?
--
Aaron R. Kulkis
Unix Systems Engineer
DNRC Minister of all I survey
ICQ # 3056642
H: "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"
I: 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
J: Other knee_jerk reactionaries: billh, david casey, redc1c4,
The retarded sisters: Raunchy (rauni) and Anencephielle (Enielle),
also known as old hags who've hit the wall....
A: The wise man is mocked by fools.
B: Jet Silverman plays the fool and spews out nonsense as a
method of sidetracking discussions which are headed in a
direction that she doesn't like.
C: Jet Silverman claims to have killfiled me.
D: Jet Silverman now follows me from newgroup to newsgroup
...despite (C) above.
E: Jet is not worthy of the time to compose a response until
her behavior improves.
F: Unit_4's "Kook hunt" reminds me of "Jimmy Baker's" harangues against
adultery while concurrently committing adultery with Tammy Hahn.
G: Knackos...you're a retard.
------------------------------
From: John Travis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Kernel upgrade - not bad at all
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 09:51:06 GMT
And on Tue, 30 Jan 2001 09:07:57 GMT, Martin Eden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> spoke unto
us:
>Debian is only running afterstep on x11. (For whatever reason, the extra
>discs with the packages don't show up as Debian discs...so I can't install
>anything I don't want to compile). Caldera is loaded with everything. Both
>have NT4 installed on VMware. The 2.4 kernel runs great on Potato. Caldera
>hangs about 60% of the time randomly.
Remind me never to buy cds from cheapbytes :-). They aren't even
recognized after an "apt-cdrom add?" How do you like vmware? I have been
pondering slapping 2k on under Sid. I'm just not sure *how* much
functionality would be maintained windows wise. I figure if they can
charge 300 dollars, it must work pretty well.
>Anyhow: to the point, the SMP support is 150% better than with 2.2. And I
>mean on both distros. That is when COL 2.4 decides to boot. It's spinning
>my hardware like a top. I am pretty impressed.
2.4.1 was just released. So there is now a final version complete with
Reiserfs support. Time for another make-kpkg. One little hurdle cleared
8^). <begin Kyle's scathing reply here>
>I was planning to keep Caldera on here to see if I couldn't figure out what
>is wrong with it, but f#cking Caldera. Who needs it?
Duh, it's linsux ;-).
jt
________________________________________
Alternative Computing Solutions...
Debian GNU/Linux http://www.debian.org
------------------------------
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