Linux-Advocacy Digest #894, Volume #31 Thu, 1 Feb 01 16:13:05 EST
Contents:
Re: Lookout! The winvocates have a new FUD strategy! (Pete Goodwin)
Re: The 130MByte text file (.)
Re: Who was saying Crays don't run Linux? ("Erik Funkenbusch")
Re: Lookout! The winvocates have a new FUD strategy! (.)
Re: Global Configuration tool (WAS: Re: linux does NOT suck (oh yes it does) )
(The Ghost In The Machine)
Re: Microsoft opening Windows source code ("Adam Warner")
Re: Linux headache ("Robert Morelli")
Re: NTFS Limitations (Was: RE: Red hat becoming illegal?)
Re: The 130MByte text file
Re: The 130MByte text file (Mig)
Re: The 130MByte text file (Mig)
Re: Microsoft is FUN and Linux is BORING ("MH")
Re: How long does your box run for? (The Ghost In The Machine)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Pete Goodwin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Lookout! The winvocates have a new FUD strategy!
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Thu, 1 Feb 2001 20:28:03 +0000
Nick Condon wrote:
> You and I both know you made that up, but for the benefit of the non-Brits
> out there, most ISPs offer some sort of unmetered access in the UK for
> about 10 pounds per month. You can get 24 x 7 unmetered, but these
> accounts are more expensive.
>
> Yet another -10 credibility points.
Actually you're wrong.
I'm with a cable company on my phone. All the deals you're referring to
apply to BT only customers, not me.
--
Pete, running KDE2 on Linux Mandrake 7.2
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (.)
Subject: Re: The 130MByte text file
Date: 1 Feb 2001 20:28:56 GMT
Pete Goodwin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Mig wrote:
>> To edit a 130 MB file?? Never heard of a text file that size that needs
>> the work of an editor or any other file that size that could/should be
>> edited that way. If the file is binary then forget it...or does ti work in
>> Word after you edited and saved it again? If its binary then use the
>> software that produced the file - no problem on any platform.
>> If its plain text... and 130 MB???? I would like to see that one.. but a
>> solution is to split the file in chunks that could be handled by your
>> favorite editor.
> It's actually my registry repeated 13 times. Someone claimed PFE would barf
> long before 100MBytes. I decided to find out if it would. Imagine my
> surprise when it worked fine, then similar GUI tools on Linux had problems.
You realize of course that your registry is a BINARY FILE, not an ASCII FILE,
you damnable moron.
=====.
------------------------------
From: "Erik Funkenbusch" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Who was saying Crays don't run Linux?
Date: Thu, 1 Feb 2001 14:36:39 -0600
"Bobby D. Bryant" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> Erik Funkenbusch wrote:
>
> > 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.
>
> Cray's "supercomputers" have been big piles of Alpha processors for years.
> The only significant difference is that they are now pushing them with
Linux
> on them.
No. Cray supercomputers such as the SV1 and the (in development) SV2 don't
use Alpha's. Nor does the T90.
Cray has two types of supercomputer, the Vector Processor based computer,
and the MPP based systems. The MPP based computers are Alpha based, while
the others (the vast majority of their systems) are not.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (.)
Subject: Re: Lookout! The winvocates have a new FUD strategy!
Date: 1 Feb 2001 20:29:46 GMT
Pete Goodwin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> . wrote:
>> Xemacs works just fine.
> That's not surprising.
> I've yet to try any GNOME text editors 8).
If youre editing your registry, you arent editing TEXT. You need a
conversion utility or a registry editor (which does it in-line) for
that.
=====.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (The Ghost In The Machine)
Crossposted-To: alt.linux.sux,alt.microsoft.sucks
Subject: Re: Global Configuration tool (WAS: Re: linux does NOT suck (oh yes it
does) )
Date: Thu, 01 Feb 2001 20:31:15 GMT
In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Giuliano Colla
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote
on Mon, 29 Jan 2001 01:27:15 GMT
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>Kyle Jacobs wrote:
>>
>> "." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
>> news:952c93$hk7$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>>
>> > >>> Key word here is "good"
>> > >>>
>> > >>
>> > >>When that's the keyword, MS crap falls out of the picture.
>> >
>> > > Tell that to the 95 percent of the world that is using MS.
>> >
>> > Oh. Its the best because everyone uses it.
>> >
>> > Thats some argument youve got there.
>>
>> The road less traveled is less traveled for a reason genius.
>
>The reason is called "monopolization". And its illegal.
Not sure about monopolization being illegal per se. It's abuse
of monopoly power that is illegal, as I understand it; Microsoft
is damned good at abuse. :-)
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- insert random misquote here
EAC code #191 4d:04h:53m actually running Linux.
The EAC doesn't exist, but they're still watching you.
------------------------------
From: "Adam Warner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Microsoft opening Windows source code
Date: Thu, 01 Feb 2001 20:33:16 GMT
Al,
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-201-4678406-0.html?tag=mn_hd
Thanks for sharing the link. It is good practice to post in plain text
instead of HTML. Could you please change the setting of your news client so
that newsgroup messages are sent in plain text?
Regards,
Adam
------------------------------
From: "Robert Morelli" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Linux headache
Date: Thu, 01 Feb 2001 11:11:49 -0600
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "Charlie Ebert"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
<snip ...>
>>What the Linux community needs to do is stop making excuses for things
>>like this. Maybe you've been numbed to it, but the rest of the world
>>would consider it mind blowingly bizarre that an end user would ever,
>>for any reason, need to contemplate setting hundreds of parameters and
>>rebuilding the kernel. And this is only the beginning of the technical
>>deficiencies of the Linux environment.
>
> Maybe you need to pull your fucking head out of your ass. If I need to
> build a specific high performance monolithic Linux Kernel for a specific
> task out in server land, then re-compiling is the ONLY way to get the
> job done. Otherwise you might as well run fat-ass bloated GD Microsoft.
> You will pay for the pleasure though in the performance hit. The more
> *SHIT* in the kernel the slower the kernel runs.
What you're saying is a lot of BS. The fact is that the stock kernels that ship
with the major distributions are full of all kinds of hardware specific crap most
users will never use. You need to put all that crap in because 1% or your
customers use this uncommon hardware, and 1% use that, etc. If you just
had a cd of drivers, like a normal OS, you wouldn't have this issue.
The bloat in Linux is even worse than that though, because it's
compounded by a lack of standardization in the libraries that are used
for development. You end up bloating your system with multiple redundant
libraries for everything. For instance, I had to install Linux on a
laptop with a 600 MB partition available. I went through every
package in Red Hat 6.2 during installation, trying to eliminate whatever
I could. Still, the installation was something like 450 MB,
leaving me very little room to grow. All I got out of that 450 MB was
the core of Gnome, the bare minimum I needed to get on the internet and
browse, edit text with XEmacs and TeX, and the standard command line
development utilities. You would get about the same functionality under
OS/2 for instance for a lot less disk space.
> If you needed to support a specific RAID card or NIC or sound card, you
> are going to have to compile a kernel to do it.
>
> Linux is about performance. It's not about bloatware.
Not in my experience. This is another one of those things that people
just claim on faith. Since I use Linux, I'd certainly be happy if it
were true, but it isn't. For instance, I have an old laptop with a P120
and 40MB of ram. Back in 1995 that was a state of the art machine and
it runs OS/2 and Win95 with ease. If I didn't want to use linux, the
machine would still suit me fine. Unfortunately, I can't reasonably run
linux on it with a desktop environment (KDE or Gnome). Linux with a gui
is just too slow and inefficient to run on that machine. That's pretty
pathetic, considering OS/2 Warp appeared in 1994 and Win95 in 1995
and Linux in 2001 is still struggling to match the features of those
systems 7 years later, and taking more system resources to due it.
Of course, I could run a stripped down linux without a decent gui. For
that matter, I've run OS/2 with a lightweight interface on a 386-25 with
4 megs of ram. To do that kind of thing in the year 2001 though, is about as
enticing as a crow casserole.
>>There are numerous other mind
>
> Let me break this pile of crap down.
>
>>blowing technical deficits in Linux, like the absense of serious
>>printing technology,
>
> Absence of serious printing technology? There isn't a GD printer made
> for which apsfilter doesn't work. What the hell are you talking about?
>
> You CAN print anything from Linux that you could for Windows only
> faster.
That's not all there is to printing. The very beginning would be a standard
printer driver model for Linux, so printing to anything other than a postscript
printer is other than a nightmare. Go ask the Gnome team why they're so
excited about the Gnome printing technology they're working on. Go ask
IBM why they donated their OMNI printer driver. Then, go ask that
journalist who wrote a story a few weeks ago about his 2 week experiment
to replace Windows with Linux for everyday work. At the end of 2 weeks, he
still didn't have printing. You have a choice: A) flame him and live in denial, or
B) fix the problem so that when a journalist 5 years from now tries the
same experiment, he can actually get printing within 2 weeks.
My position is that the Linux community needs to stop making the silly
claim that Linux is ready for the end user and has technologies like
printing already in place. There's only so many times you can cry wolf before
people stop taking you seriously.
>>inferior font technology,
>
> Inferior isn't a good word. The font's Linux has work just fine. What
> YOUR trying to say is Linux doesn't have as many font's as Windows does.
That's not at all what I'm trying to say. Linux has very inferior font
technology, quite apart from the quality of any specific fonts you load
on your system.
> YET, I can take a directory of Windows Font's and load them up on my
> Font Server in Linux and use them anyway.
>
> In fact, Suse and Mandrake do this automatically if your dual booting
> with Windows.
>
> So what's the problem?
Holy moly, you don't have the faintest idea, do you? I read an article a
few weeks ago in a Linux online magazine, where the author stated flat
out that Linux font technology is not only bad, it's been ``lapped several
times by everything else out there.'' You need to get out and find out how
fonts work on other operating systems. Rest assured, you will come back
amazed at how barbaric Linux is in this respect.
>>a total lack of standardization about initialization scripts,
>
> You are complaining about something which isn't a problem. Why would it
> be a problem?
To find out why it in fact is a serious problem, go visit the Linux
Standards Base web site and read.
> 95, 98, NT, W2k and Whistler then go back to
> Win 3.X and before that Dos, non of this shit has a standard script
> proceedure for either boot-up nor runtime.
>
> If your complaining about BSD VS sysV issues, the the LSB is taking care
> of that and appearently Debian will be the model for that.
``LSB is taking of that'' is future tense, i.e. vaporware.
>>an absense of detailed documentation,
>
> This is a total lie. There is 20 times the documentation for Linux that
> there is for all Windows products combined.
>
> There is documentation in the form of man and info. There is HTML
> documentation. There are several X documentation programs which search
> thru all this. Plus there are more help pages on websites and newgroups
> out there than any other OS in the recorded history of computers on the
> internet.
The truth is that Linux is probably the most poorly documented OS in wide
use today, not by a little, but by a huge margin. I'll just point out one of very
many
examples I've encountered. Go visit the site
www.rpm.org
You'll find the opening statement,
``This site aims to bring you the latest and most up to date information on the RPM
software packaging
tool which is taking the world by storm.''
You'll then find a link to rpm 4.0 as the ``current latest release.''
Unfortunately, many in the Linux community consider rpm 4.0 a
problematic or even experimental release. However, you won't find there,
or anywhere else, a single document describing the differences between
rpm 4.0 and rpm 3, -- not a word. You won't find a single statement to
the effect, ``In rpm 4 we have added ...'' or ``We fixed this and that
...'' etc. In fact, you won't find any documentation on rpm at all that is more
recent
than a couple of years old. The most useful docuement there is ``Maximum RPM,''
published in 1998.
Stop living in a fantasy world. Every commercial OS publisher,
including Microsoft, publishes reference manuals that cover a whole
bookshelf. But under Linux, you get a brochure in your distribution
box, some links to the paltry offerings at the Linux Documentation
Project, and not too much else.
>>lack of uniformity in user interface design, etc., etc.
>
> The user interfaces for KDE, GNOME, Window Maker and other desktops as
> well as console and terminal handling are distribution specific and will
> always be.
>
> Linux will NEVER be the mono-crap, make me vomit same mess of blue and
> gray I have to put up with every day.
>
> God, I hate NT. I hate that mono bitch of a desktop.
The problem goes deeper than just the KDE/Gnome/Window Maker/ ...
business. KDE and Gnome have essentially the same aims and are somewhat
interoperable. The real problem is that Unix programmers locked
themselves in a bomb shelter for about 15 years while the most important
development in the history computer programming took place -- the
development of the gui interface.
For one extremely glaring example, take emacs. I was using emacs in
the early 1980's, at which time it had unparalleled excellence. It has since
gone through 20 major revisions. However, the interface is almost the same
as it was then. I would certainly nominate this as one of the most extreme
examples of programmer incompetence in the history of computing. Are these
people really totally ignorant of everything that's happened in computer science in
the last 20 years? In the year 2001, neither emacs nor XEmacs implement
drag and drop under Gnome or KDE! The next major revision of XEmacs, slated
for several months from now, is the first that will use a modern ui library (gtk) for
its ui.
That puts emacs at least 10 years behind the rest of the world. How
stupid are these people, that they still haven't gotton around to implementing
1980's ui concepts?
>>At the same time, there's this weird propaganda that buried somewhere
>>down deep in Linux there is powerful technology that can be unlocked by
>>the sophisticated user.
>
> I have an FTP server, a WINS (SAMBA) server, a SSH and firewall, SSL
> telnet, CVS, SQL, print and NFS, mail and news servers and the WEB
> server.
>
> I can send and receive faxes, do thin client X, play real video, Play
> MP3's, use Java, compile in C or C++ or fortran or pascal or ada. I can
> write perl or python scripts. Do shell programming. Write X gui's.
None of this sounds remarkable. Which of these things do you think
can't be done under other OS's? Some of this stuff, like Java support,
isn't even due to the OSS community. Until Sun and IBM started
officially supporting Linux with their JDKs, Java support under Linux
was at best mediocre. Other stuff, like playing MP3's is certainly no
proud area for Linux.
<snip ...>
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ()
Crossposted-To:
alt.destroy.microsoft,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy
Subject: Re: NTFS Limitations (Was: RE: Red hat becoming illegal?)
Date: Thu, 01 Feb 2001 20:34:06 -0000
On Thu, 1 Feb 2001 14:27:50 -0600, Erik Funkenbusch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
><[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
>news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>> >And it was *bad*.
>>
>> Demonstrate it.
>>
>> [deletia]
>>
>> Bear in mind that C't contradicted the findings of Mindcraft.
>
>That's interesting, considering that Linus himself *ACKNOWLEDGED* the
>findings.
...as a problem regarding reentrancy of the TCP stack,
not SMP in general. Take away the strange configuration
that Mindcraft used and this 'problem' dissapears.
C't was a bit more detailed in their analysis. They didn't
merely choose a single configuration meant to generate the
results they were paid for.
--
Unless you've got the engineering process to match a DEC,
you won't produce a VMS.
You'll just end up with the likes of NT.
|||
/ | \
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ()
Subject: Re: The 130MByte text file
Date: Thu, 01 Feb 2001 20:35:28 -0000
On Thu, 1 Feb 2001 20:18:30 +0000, Pete Goodwin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
[deletia]
>> Most editors on both Windows and Linux are lame when confronted with
>> really big files. vi and EMACS are still being used for a good
>> reason: they work and they work well.
>
>EMACS is just to quirky for me. All those ghastly keystrokes - yes, I know
>it can be customised.
Then use the menus. Even 'normal' emacs has them.
[deletia]
--
Section 8. The Congress shall have power...
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for
limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their
respective writings and discoveries;
|||
/ | \
------------------------------
From: Mig <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: The 130MByte text file
Date: Thu, 1 Feb 2001 21:38:40 +0100
Pete Goodwin wrote:
> Mig wrote:
>
> > To edit a 130 MB file?? Never heard of a text file that size that needs
> > the work of an editor or any other file that size that could/should be
> > edited that way. If the file is binary then forget it...or does ti work
> > in Word after you edited and saved it again? If its binary then use the
> > software that produced the file - no problem on any platform.
> > If its plain text... and 130 MB???? I would like to see that one.. but a
> > solution is to split the file in chunks that could be handled by your
> > favorite editor.
>
> It's actually my registry repeated 13 times. Someone claimed PFE would
> barf long before 100MBytes. I decided to find out if it would. Imagine my
> surprise when it worked fine, then similar GUI tools on Linux had
> problems.
These are not similar tools... Kwrite and Kedit are light weight editors
for Linux... they are editors ala notpad + syntax highlithing + a bit
more... and nothing else.
[cut]
> > Yeah... but since Linux users where considere to be geeks before you
> > arrived here .. nobody even imagined that users could be so silly. But i
> > think you have a point if you agree on "swap-heaven" and i think this is
> > a Mandrake only issue.. Maybe someone on Redhat , Suse or DEbian would
> > try to load o very big file and tell us if Swap-heaven happens.
>
> It's interesting that whilst Windows struggled, it didn't hang up like
> Linux + X etc. did.
As i told you - i got a bluscreen on Wordpad and a 30 MB file.. so a 30 MB
file did hang Windows - no big deal since the file whas binaty and what the
heck should i load a binary file in a text editor ? I didnt even have the
patience to let Word read the whole file... after 15 minuttes i gave up.
> > In fact they are... The thing you try to do corresponds to deleting
> > entrys in the registry and then complaining it does not work. Or my
> > example above about loading a binary file in Word and edit (or not) and
> > save the file... that woldnt work off course.. but following your weird
> > path i could claim Windows and Windows editors sucked because i could no
> > longer run the program.
>
> Ah but deleting entries in the registry is deliberately damaging. Linux
> ought to have been able to handle a huge file. I mean, if Windows can do
> it, why not Linux? Isn't Linux supposed to be better?
Thats not completely true. It depends on what you delete.
That was not Linux - that was some KDE editors and maybe X that you hang.
These are just apps running on Linux.. One feature i like about Windows
(at least NT and W2K) is that the three finger salute allways produces a
screen where you can start task-manager and kill a process even if
ressources are very low.. X definitevely lacks a way to have something like
the 3 finger salute or maybe a control console with higher priority and
with top running where you could kill processes.
--
Cheers
------------------------------
From: Mig <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: The 130MByte text file
Date: Thu, 1 Feb 2001 21:44:07 +0100
Pete Goodwin wrote:
> I'll try EMACS, then to be perverse, I'll try XEMACS. I don't expect
> either will have much problem.
I think Emacs will refuse.. at leat it refused my 1200 MB file.. some
maximum buffer size exceeded same with Xemacs.
> EMACS is just to quirky for me. All those ghastly keystrokes - yes, I know
> it can be customised.
Well.. tell me you never used jove under dos? A gnome (or GTK+??) frontend
is underdevelopment
--
Cheers
------------------------------
From: "MH" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: alt.linux.sux
Subject: Re: Microsoft is FUN and Linux is BORING
Date: Thu, 1 Feb 2001 15:58:55 -0500
> As an example, take the latest Windows Media Player which is V7.x.
> After delaying my upgrade til MS got the bugs out, which have all been
> fixed, I finally got around to downloading and using it.
Whatever version that comes with WinME is about as stable as a WVA. blond on
ludes.
AAMOF, on this system, it froze the system solid 20 minutes ago after trying
to auto-run an audio cd.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (The Ghost In The Machine)
Subject: Re: How long does your box run for?
Date: Thu, 01 Feb 2001 21:02:38 GMT
In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Edward Rosten
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote
on Sat, 27 Jan 2001 12:52:05 +0000
<94ug9m$rc9$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>I'm curious, so I'd thought I'd fire off a question:
>
>How many of you leave your Linux boxen on 24/7 and how many of you switch
>them off every night?
24/7 here. It was up for almost 100 days before a disk drive
failed (my system drive -- arrgh) and I switched to Debian.
It's still in flux, and I will need to get a new drive when my
finances stabilize -- an 18 Gig SCSI drive would be my first choice.
>
>
>Cheers
>
>-Ed
>
>PS I switch mine off every night (mostly).
>
>--
>Did you know that the reason that windows steam up in cold|Edward Rosten
>weather is because of all the fish in the atmosphere? |u98ejr
> - The Hackenthorpe Book of lies |@
> |eng.ox.ac.uk
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- insert random misquote here
EAC code #191 4d:05h:23m actually running Linux.
>>> Make Signatures Fast! <<<
------------------------------
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