15 Jun
2016
15 Jun
'16
8:08 a.m.
On 14 June 2016 at 18:31, Swift Griggs <swiftgriggs at gmail.com> wrote:
In Ireland, "gear" means hard drugs, so maybe it's safer!
This is why I spent money on getting my ZX Spectrums restored. :-)
Indeed!
Agreed.
Yep!
I've been using Unix since 1989 or so. I would not call myself an
expert, but I'm competent at a basic level. I've installed quite a few
machines, including in production environments.
I have so far not learned enough to get a bare CLI FreeBSD install
online with a GUI. It seems to me to make things unnecessarily
obstructive.
Oh, yes, true. Although keep a virus scanner running: those downloads
are often infected IME.
I used to keep a few disks around with SilverLining, a D3 driver and a
few other things.
Still a PITA though.
So glad they eventually wised up and adopted standard connectors.
You do need quite a chain to span from SD/DD disks for a Mac+ or
something up to DVDs for late-era PowerPC machines. :-(
The new monicker is macOS [sic]. Fits with iOS, watchOS, tvOS, etc.
So, macOS Sierra.
Sounds daft to me. :-/
It's changing.
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven
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Cell/Mobiles: +44 7939-087884 (UK) ? +420 702 829 053 (?R)
On Tue, 14 Jun 2016, Liam Proven wrote:
:-)
Might have got it like that & never
noticed...?
He claimed to be the original owner, and he was a teacher. He probably got
it as part of some educational program, maybe it was used then. I dunno.
Maybe it was at a school that had a lot of macs and they robbed a case
cover from a dead one. It's weird, but I'm okay with weird. That's
very true. I've never used a live A/UX system and badly want a
play.
I still haven't either. I've got it, and I'm dorking around trying to get
my hardware straight (still waiting on AAUI 10BT dongles and a few other
bits of kit). Fortunately, it's easy to get a hold on from places like Mac
Garden, et al. They have ISOs for NextSTEP and OpenSTEP, too. I'd like to
try those on my Quadra 700. I just ordered an extra SCSI2SD for that guy.
PS: I like the word "kit" to describe "gear". I hope I'm using it
right. I
also prefer "grey" over "gray". I hope you British folks don't
mind an
American bootlegging those terms. Oh, and I'm drinking some Earl Grey. :-) Tempted to try
Shoebill... [...] but emulators aren't the same.
I like emulators for "helping" with real hardware. Ie.. making disks or
disk images, transferring files, etc.. However, I'm with you, emulators
aren't as fun. They are awesome tools, and they are *some* fun, just not
as much as the real thing for me. I guess so --
I don't know all the models that well. There are also
US-model Macs that always remained very scarce in Europe. The G3
All-in-One is an example -- I've never seen one in the flesh.
Well, you guys had Acorn and I never got to play with those, much. Shame
that there wasn't more import/export of such things, since more is better.
:-) It's a
nice OS, I like and appreciate the NeXTstep heritage, but it's
not a _proper_ Mac.
I can't really back up that position, but I totally agree. Not that I have
anything "against" OSX. It at least doesn't have an identity-complex that
Linux does. It's just it's own thing. They have SUS and UNIX 03 standards
conformance, but they don't pretend like they are focused on being a UNIX
variant. Apple just goes it's own way and everyone hopes for the best.
It's GUI is just it's own unique creation with some very loose visual (and
strong code-based) connections back to NeXTSTEP, and has a quality and
value all it's own. Linux+systemd desperately wants to be Windows nowadays
I think that's an overstatement, almost an actionable one.
TBH I'm happy to see _more_ differentiation between, for example,
Linux and the other FOSS Unices. There wasn't that much to choose
between them before.
but adherents still get offended when UNIX purists
frown at their
"unification" efforts (ala systemd and others) which de-emphasize KISS,
small-is-beautiful, make everything a filter, etc...
Kinda. But only kinda. The original goals of simplicity, consistency
etc. were lost -- no, thrown away -- *decades* ago. Unix is almost the
definitions of big, complex, arcane, and scary these days.
From what I've seen, systemd makes things like
enabling/disabling
services _simpler_ for your average Joe.
Linux wants to cop
that cool, without any binding respect towards the UNIX philosophy.
No, I disagree. It's moving on. It's abandoning some of the legacy
stuff, but there are loads of other OSes that are keeping it.
Linux seems the most engaged in the "re-invent it
poorly" activity that is
so emblematic of why a lot of folks are leaving.
I am seeing a lot of flouncing off in a huff. I'm /not/ seeing drops
in adoption, use, any of that.
Most technologists I know
who were long time Linux users are now fleeing to BSD or elsewhere.
People are _saying_ it. Are they _doing_ it?
I read
someone say recently of OSX, BSD, and Linux: "Where does Linux belong? OSX
makes a far superior workstation
... but is proprietary, closed-source, runs only on expensive (but
good) proprietary hardware...
and BSD is better on servers.
*Ridiculously* contentious. I'm seeing and hearing of little _real_
adoption. Some posturing, yes, but Linux's breadth of driver support,
apps, functionality, automation, pretty much everything, means it's
the dominant server platform of the WWW.
And Android is still selling a *billion devices a year!*
http://www.androidheadlines.com/2016/04/q1-2016-smartphone-sales-samsung-cr…
So it's pretty dominant on the client side, too.
BSD is _nowhere_ by comparison. A rounding error.
Why do I
need Linux again?" I very much agree with the spirit of those questions.
I am very happy if systemd /et al/ mean a boost in BSD adoption,
takeup, development, etc.
I'm not sure I'm seeing it though.
That's one thing I liked about IRIX. It's
still a true UNIX variant, not
"based on UNIX". The GUI is old-looking and primitive by today's
standards, but still I think they struck a nice balance or at least one
that appeals to me, personally.
It's dead, though, isn't it?
When it comes to GUI operating systems, I want them to
drink the whole
bottle of GUI kool-aid. Classic MacOS did that, IMHO. It was totally a
desktop OS and didn't try to bifurcate to also make a good server. Hence,
Apple turning to A/UX and AIX back in those days for servers.
Agreed. Although it's not alone. AIUI things like AROS and Haiku are
just as GUI-centric, it's just that they have shells _as well_.
But I spent
real money -- very very rare for me
Do you normally just find free stuff or grab folks cast-off items ? The
stuff I find cool is too rare and too many other geeks liked. I paid about
$150 for the Quadra 700 recently. Most were selling well above that level,
but mine didn't have a HDD included (no big deal with SCSI2SD, baby).
They were nice. I'm almost tempted but I think I'll stick with mainly
portables from now on.
-- on upgrading an old 7600 or 7700 I got for
free to run OS X 10.0, to
get to know the new OS. More RAM, G3 upgrade, EIDE controller, etc. Then
I got a free Blue'n'White and it was my main machine for a while.
I see B&W Macs on Craigslist a lot and for cheap. I want a machine of that
generation, too. However, I haven't decided which one, yet. The only PPC
box that ever caught my eye was the G4 cube. I see a lot of those on Ebay,
but I'm kind of waiting to catch one locally. Then I
switched to Linux full-time and never looked back.
I too used Linux from 1993 to about 1997. Then, the more I learned about
BSD, the more I liked it. Hordes were flooding in to use Linux by then, so
I bailed out. I haven't really run Linux as a workstation since then. I'm
a current RHCE and I still interact with Linux a ton at my job, but there
is little joy in it. I find myself pursing my lips and shaking my head a
lot while fixing systemd problems or working on some dirty PoS of a JBOSS
server. It was a nice well when it was first dug, but now it's fouled by
too many people and too much toxic admixture. Me too,
although I'd not call my s/w collection massive.
There is so much "free stuff" online these days for M68k Macs. You can get
just about _anything_ you ever remembered or wanted and it's all
considered "abandonware". For me, these "productivity" programs
don't
change much. A word processor from 1993 is just as good for my purposes as
one from 2016. Photoshop still has layers and channels in 5.5, etc.. But the snag
is that 68K means SCSI, and SCSI is a pain when it doesn't work.
It sure can be. It's made worse by the stupid stupid fact that Apple's
disk utilities don't recognize non-Apple devices without a patch. There
are a lot of chicken & egg problems to solve until you can get that FTP
client installed. Then it's smooth sailing. :-) It also means
AAUI, ADB, weird monitors, etc.
AAUI == Pita. Yet another ugly dongle, too, ugh. I got a Farallon Nubus
ethernet card for the Quadra because of this. Unless I'm dealing with
fiber, I hate AUIs, MAUs, etc... ADB == Not too big of a deal since KB & mice are
still plentiful. However,
it's disappointing that there aren't easily accessible converters for PS/2
and USB.
RGB == Another PITA, but at least VGA HD15 converters are cheap and work
well.
My experience is different re availability of both. :-(
The G3 era
meant more standard bits, but the beige machines are still a
classic Mac. They'll take a cheap PCI USB card, you can use vanilla USB
mice, with a graphics card a standard monitor, etc. -- but they're still
_Macs_. They boot to a happy (or sad) Mac, and they run Classic.
Those sound a lot easier to cope with. If it wasn't for my love for the
68k, I'd have probably gone that direction, too. Like I said before, I'll
probably still get one just to use as a "bridge" for the older gear. Maybe
I can get a cheap G4 laptop and avoid sucking up too much more space in my
retrolab. Nice boxes,
but they don't feel all that Mac-like to me.
Yep. I agree. Perhaps getting too used to the older interface and dynamics
pre-biased me.
Yes, true. An OS I still miss, for all its
instability and quirkiness.
I'd love to see a modern FOSS recreation, at least of the concept and
the style, even if it was binary-incompatible.
That would be great. Did you hear about Apple making the marketing change
from "OSX" to "MacOS" ? That makes me sad. Some completely irrational
part
of my brain still dreamed that Apple would license the classic MacOS to a
hobbyist shop to continue with new releases etc.. I wish the
Star Trek project had come to some kind of fruition.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_project
That would have made things a lot more interesting in the 1990s. Windows
seems pretty unassailable, but the public can be fickle. I've always
wondered why companies don't make operating systems for free, then sell
licensing rights, partner deals, driver development, etc... Either you
can't make enough $$$ that way, or the draw of charging for the OS is just
too lucrative. I'm not sure which it is.