31 Aug
2008
31 Aug
'08
3:02 p.m.
-----Original Message-----
From: Tony Duell ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk
Sent 8/31/2008 2:07:39 PM
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
Subject: Re: Free Linux and OpenOffice - even if your email address doesn't
We run HP, IBM, Sun, Cisco, and Dell hardware, and I
hardly see
ANY of them giving out schematics.
I doubt Tony has any DELLs, but I'm fairly sure he has some
HP kit ... an HP Laserjet iirc.
Actually, I have a _lot_ of HP computers, going right back to their first
desktop computer, the Model 30 calculator (HP9830). I have HP calculators
older than that, of course.
Heck I use an HP handheld calculator all the time. And yes, I have
schematics. Yes, I have the ROM sources. It doesn't bother me that the
latter are often stamped 'NOMAS -- Not Manufacturer Supported --
Recipient agrees not to contact the manufacturer' I am quite capable of
reading and understanding them on my own.
You'll note he said _he_ wouldn't use anything he couldn't
support himself. He's not saying that you should use the
same approach in the office ... that's not where the important
stuff lives!
_Escatly_..
Let's go back to the comment that started this debate. I make no secret
of the fact that I run linux. I considered what was important _to me_ in
an OS : availability of the source code -- not necessarily open-source, a
source license I could afford would be acceptable; the fact that I prefer
a good CLI to a GUI; that it would run the software I need (a C compiler,
TeX/LaTeX, etc) and so on. And I concluded that linux was the best choice
_for me_ so that's what I run.
Now, I don't think it's the best choice for everyone. Other people have
different requirements and desires, they end up with a different OS that
suits their needs. So? Waht's the problem?
IT's the same with many other things. I don;'t suppose many people,
buying a new car, would have the same requirement top-of-the-list as my
father did recently. Namely that the official workshop manual had to be
available. But it was important to us.
-tony
The whole debate started, when I simply notified the list, that anyone who ran Windows,
and was in school,
or knew someone in school, and had an .edu email address, could get an academic copy of
Office 2007 Ultimate
for $60.
After that, all the Linux/Open-Source bigots came out decrying it. OpenOffice was
menetioned as being the be-all end-all
and being free, and I promptly downloaded it, installed it, and it wouldn't even open
1/3 of the work my wife did last semester.
Now, does that mean it sucks? No. Did I say it sucked? No. But the Zealots took it as
such, and kept going from there.
I never said you couldn't use Linux+OO in school - I am sure MILLIONS already do. I
just made the point that it was NOT
the right solution for my wife. She is not exactly, um, computer saavy, and has no desire
to be, so for my situation, I saw it
best to give here Windows+Office, because working 10-12 hours at the office, and then 4
more VPN'd from home, I REALLY
didn't want to add to my load... But the bigots INSISTED...
I am in TOTAL agreement with what you say - we run many environments at work, and there
are MANY instances
where Linux is the ideal solution. We currently have about, oh, let's say 12-18 Linux
servers at work, (2) of which are hosting
semi-large Oracle databases, on the order of about 40GB, and running on HP Proliant DL380
G3's or G4's (depending on age)
and either (6) 72GB or 146GB drives in RAID5, again depending on age.
They run fine, work fine, kick the SNOT out of equivalent Windows boxes hosting Oracle,
and as you pointed out,I have NEVER
had a virus/malware/trojan issue to speak of.
And we all know that is NOT the case with Windows boxen!
As to TCO, well I don't know what you're getting at, as I just pay yearly fees for
the M$ True-Up, and the eTrust AV. Comes up to about
$785/year for both. Now, workstations are a bit more, and btw, all ours are NOT the same,
depending on age, and the property they are at.
I still have Compaq Deskpro EN (P3/800-1000) in the enterprise, HP Workstations, multiple
versions of Dell SX and GX-series machines,
And Dell/IBM Laptops (mostly Dell Latitudes now, D600/D610/D620/D630, as most TPads have
been retired). And most times, I don't get a
parts-swapping droid when we call HP/IBM/DELL - we usually get overnighted the bad part,
so it's back up and running the next day, assuming
next day service on that machine, and assuming not the weekend. The only exceptions are
the servers, which come with a 3YR warranty, and
we pick up the next day, 24x7 support on those.
As I said...my first introduction to free *nix was 386BSD in about '94 or so, followed
by Linux, although it was still 2 floppies, and then to FreeBSD, which
was the next progression of 386BSD - played a little with Minix, but it was a bit
closed-in for me - Linux was gathering steam, and developers
were getting strongly behind it, which is when I switched over from *BSD to Linux. Things
were happening REALLY fast in the Linux world, and
were slowing down in *BSD. And then they started the whole *BSD split-offs I figured it
was time to switch over for real.
Heck, I think I still have quite a few of the older media around, back when Linux was the
"In thing" and was being sold retail in
Best Buy / Circuit City / etc.. I CLEARLY remember, before affordable WiFi days, the copy
of Corel Linux I bought retail, was about the ONLY operating
system, that out-of-the-box, would properly run with those RayCom 2MBit wireless cards.
Not Windows, and not other Linux distros - I'm talking OOB, here.
And I remember loading that on an HP OmniBook of some sort, Pentium 200 or so, as I
recall...
ps - forgive the formatting, as this is through my Webmail because my work XP laptop is,
surprise, running malware / trojan cleaning apps.
Tony
31 Aug
31 Aug
4:44 p.m.
tonym wrote:
The whole debate started, when I simply notified the
list, that anyone who ran Windows, and was in school,
or knew someone in school, and had an .edu email address, could get an academic copy of
Office 2007 Ultimate
for $60.
After that, all the Linux/Open-Source bigots came out decrying it. OpenOffice was
menetioned as being the be-all end-all
and being free, and I promptly downloaded it, installed it, and it wouldn't even open
1/3 of the work my wife did last semester.
Actually, the fun began after someone took exception to being told that
there are free operating systems, and free office suites out there and
kept bringing up all sorts of unrelated stuff such as how his company is
a multi-billion dollar company and so forth, moving away from the topic
of educational use, then going forth into how he wouldn't provide it for
his wife and kids and how unless someone else was willing to provide him
support for free...
I would disagree with that - nothing is free. My time
is worth something,
and unless you are volunteering up your free
time to support, it ain't free.
...
There is NO WAY on this earth I am putting Linux on my wife's laptop,
and the kids machines.
To clarify a few things here, I'm far from being an OS bigot, back in
the day, I had my MCSE, and even went as far as getting an MCT - that's
right a trainer certificate. If you really want to, I can scan'em in
and post'em somewhere. And mind you, this was before the MCSE certs
were worth less than toilet paper.... The days that guys who were
flipping burgers started taking the classes and saying "So I hear this
windows stuff can make me $80K a year" but couldn't figure out how to
type is the day I dropped teaching those courses.
Don't get me wrong, in the beginning, I too was impressed and lured by
MSFT. I loved learning NT and w2k, as it was so much better than
Netware - (yeah, had a CNE too) there were enjoyable things about them,
hell, I even ran them on Alpha AXP hardware, which was the coolest thing
since sliced bread. But as enjoyable as eating a T-Bone steak is, when
the vendor insists on putting Ketchup on it when you'd rather have A1,
then later switches from Ketchup to shit, you give up on it quickly.
(The analogy is to bugs and limitations for those that don't get it.)
So I'm far more qualified to say "Windows sucks" than most since I've
done more than just use it, I've delved into its guts and had many years
of windows sysadmining under my belt, and saw firsthand all of the fun
of self-replicating programs spitting out "I Love you" emails to
everyone in their address book, had lots of fun with failing RAID drives
under windows, not due to hardware failure, but due to problems in the
operating system, had lots of fun rebuilding failed systems that
wouldn't boot by taking their registry files and moving them to another
machine and so forth.
At every step, as a sysadmin, I can testify that it is much easier to do
things in any Unix than it is in windows. At least for someone that
knows both OS's well. Yes, I can completely understand that a guy with
just an MCSE is gonna be lost in the woods on a Unix machine if they've
never seen it before, and the same is true of a Unix admin. However,
give the same guys the same years of experience in both environments on
equivalent areas, and they'll invariably gravitate to Unix every time.
As the line goes "Those who don't understand UNIX are condemned to
reinvent it, poorly."
That and when people figured out you could telnet to port 138 (or
whatever it happened to be) and send it a bunch of garbage it would
cause the NT domain controller to crash, well, made my windows
sysadmining go away very quickly.
Mind you, there are a lot of good things in windows. NTFS was a very
good file system, extfs3 still sucks in a lot of ways. But you know
what, ZFS is much, much better though, although it's far more than a
file system.
Domains are much easier to use than NIS+ or NIS. That is until the
domain database gets corrupted and gods all mighty, their corruption
gets replicated to the BDC's. You're SOL then. Sure, you can restore
from backup until the corruption happens again! So
yeah, we had to keep
a spare, powered off BDC which we turned on every so often so
it could
sync, but be kept off the network most of the time so it wouldn't get
corrupted.
Active Directory, perhaps even better than Domains, but it turns out to
be not much more than LDAP married to Kerberos (of course entirely in a
proprietary way.)
Printing, especially Printer Pools is very well done, but so what, CUPS
is very good these days.
Beyond that, the rest is crap, and it's been getting worse, not better.
Who the hell needs all that Activation BS? Who needs to reboot every
other month? Who the hell needs layers and layers and layers of DRM?
(see http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/ ) With almost every other
OS out there, I can take the hard drive out, stick it in a similar
machine and have it immediately just work when the hardware dies and not
have to wait for a replacement to come back from IBM or whomever.
With almost any other OS out there, I can boot off a live cd (no, not
just Linux, but FreeBSD and Solaris have live CD's) and fix my problem
and continue. You just can't do that with windows -- well, you could
but you have to build an unsanctioned, and therefore license breaking
Windows PE CD. Hell, even the Solaris install CD is bootable - I can do
boot -s cdrom and be at a shell, mount my hard drive, run fsck or
whatever I need to do and boot back up. Can't do that with windows.
Yeah, there's that "Recovery console" thing when it works. Good luck
when it doesn't though.
But you know what else is really really cool, I can boot off a Live
Linux CD, mount the windows disk and fix whatever is wrong with it. And
yes, it recognizes NTFS drives just fine. That's right, I can use Linux
to fix Windows. Can you use Windows to fix Linux? Never mind why would
you want to, but can you? But, can you?
Oh and gee, what if someone malicious locks out their Administrator
account, whatever will you do then? Or worse if it's on a Domain? You
could restore from backup - well if you had admin rights, darn, you'll
just have to reinstall... oh wait, you don't have to. Boot up this:
http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/ live Linux CD, mount the drive
and replace the administrator's password in C:\Windows\system32\SAM
Oh, and to change the topic for a moment, back when I worked on a trade
floor and the traders had their macro/VBA bloated Excel spreadsheets die
on them because they got too huge and Excel refused to open them, guess
how they were fixed when paid Microsoft support couldn't help (yes, this
was for a multi-billion dollar company, and yes we had full support!) -
why I opened the spreadsheet in OpenOffice, and resaved it, and that
fixed the problem. I did this repeatedly for many different
spreadsheets, and sometimes even "unrecoverable" Word documents.
Wanna know why Office 2007 documents aren't compatible with Office
2000? Not because it can't be done, not because of new features (who
the hell uses more than Office 95 had anyway?) but because MSFT wants
your upgrade bucks to stay in business, oh that and it's afraid that
since OpenOffice and AbiWord and KDE Office and the like can open the
old formats, it'll take business away from them.
Now, does that mean it sucks? No. Did I say it sucked?
No. But the Zealots took it as such, and kept going from there.
Not technically, but the following line of text sure comes close:
Put the Asus EEE PC with Linux next to version with XP
/ Vista, and
there is NO comparison - it even LOOKS like a cartoony toy.
You would have gotten a hell of a lot less flames had you not said that,
and provided all the high falutin whiny "multi-billion dollar company"
and "REAL business world" condescension. What, you think no one else
works for a multi-billion dollar company here, or that their companies
can't afford to pay for support or pay to train their own guys to
provide internal support? You think that people who run Linux and other
Unix OS's all do it for shits & grins? That's why you got flamed.
Heck, I think I still have quite a few of the older
media around, back when Linux was the "In thing" and was being sold retail in
Best Buy / Circuit City / etc.. I CLEARLY remember, before affordable WiFi days, the copy
of Corel Linux I bought retail, was about the ONLY operating
system, that out-of-the-box, would properly run with those RayCom 2MBit wireless cards.
Not Windows, and not other Linux distros - I'm talking OOB, here.
And I remember loading that on an HP OmniBook of some sort, Pentium 200 or so, as I
recall...
Many things have changed since then. Most current hardware in the range
of the last 5 years "just works" on Linux. Yes, if you dig hard enough,
you'll find the oddball unsupported piece of hardware - but if anything,
those will have poor support for Windows. Your bad experiences of the
past shouldn't cloud your judgment of it today.
The fallacy that Linux isn't ready for the desktop expired years ago.
The only thing that should prevent anyone from switching to Linux is
that they absolutely must run a very specific piece of software which
only runs on Windows. But we have fixes for that too. WINE, CrossOver
Office, VMWare, VirtualBox, and many others. Stop drinking Microsoft's
Kool-Aid and look around you.
Your words would be far more believable were you upto date on your
FreeBSD/Linux knowledge. Go give it another look. Calling us zealots
and bigots without knowing how much we actually happen to know about
windows is not going to win you any friends either. Hey, if you're
gonna be hanging out a forum where geeks hang out, learn the proper geek
social skills.
Linux wasn't just the "in thing" years ago, it's still the "in
thing"
today. In fact, Unix has been the "in thing" for the last 30 years and
runs on everything from small embedded tiny devices such as cell phones
all the way to large super computers.
If you look around, other than Windows, most large OS companies all sell
some form of Unix or other. Yes, there's eCommStation (aka OS/2), but
since it's no longer IBM's product, it's no longer provided by a large
company. Yes, I know, there are still OpenVMS strongholds and I do
respect it (I do have the hobbyist license for it for my Alpha Station
200.) But now that both Novell and Apple have gone to Unix, MSFT is the
only one left behind.
ps - forgive the formatting, as this is through my
Webmail because my work XP laptop is, surprise, running malware / trojan cleaning apps.
I'll resist the urge to add anything to the above line, no matter how
hard it is. :-)
5:40 p.m.
You know, you either have SERIOUS reading comprehension issues, or you're
trolling.
Either way, I am not interested, so THIS is my last reponse to you.
This is absolutely ridiculous...
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ray Arachelian" <ray at arachelian.com>
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Sunday, August 31, 2008 7:44 PM
Subject: Re: Free Linux and OpenOffice - even if your email address doesn't
That is absolutely shocking
In closing, let me give you some advice:
Unplug, and interact with humans a bit more...
You're not even able to properly read and comprehend the simple sentences
I'm typing.
Whether it's misunderstanding, or trolling, I don't know, but it's a serious
waste of the list's time.
If you want to clear up where our misunderstandings are, by all means, send
me an email, but stop wasting the
list's time with crazy responses, that aren't even coherent in regards to my
statements. I can just imagine people
scratching their heads reading your responses to my statements, like
"enlightening" me on the Linux version of
the EEE PC that *I* mentioned, or where on EARTH you gathered that I hadn't
touched Linux since 1998, and...
Oh, never mind.
Tony
tonym wrote:
Dang right - I have ENOUGH trying to support them on Windows.
Besides, As I've said, you CANNOT play current games on Linux.
<sigh>
The whole debate started, when I simply notified
the list, that anyone
who ran Windows, and was in school,
or knew someone in school, and had an .edu email address, could get an
academic copy of Office 2007 Ultimate
for $60.
After that, all the Linux/Open-Source bigots came out decrying it.
OpenOffice was menetioned as being the be-all end-all
and being free, and I promptly downloaded it, installed it, and it
wouldn't even open 1/3 of the work my wife did last semester.
Actually, the fun began after someone took exception to being told that
there are free operating systems, and free office suites out there and
kept bringing up all sorts of unrelated stuff such as how his company is
a multi-billion dollar company and so forth, moving away from the topic
of educational use, then going forth into how he wouldn't provide it for
his wife and kids and how unless someone else was willing to provide him
support for free...
To clarify a few things here, I'm far from being an OS bigot, back in
the day, I had my MCSE, and even went as far as getting an MCT - that's
right a trainer certificate. If you really want to, I can scan'em in
and post'em somewhere. And mind you, this was before the MCSE certs
were worth less than toilet paper.... The days that guys who were
flipping burgers started taking the classes and saying "So I hear this
windows stuff can make me $80K a year" but couldn't figure out how to
type is the day I dropped teaching those courses.
Don't get me wrong, in the beginning, I too was impressed and lured by
MSFT. I loved learning NT and w2k, as it was so much better than
Netware - (yeah, had a CNE too) there were enjoyable things about them,
hell, I even ran them on Alpha AXP hardware, which was the coolest thing
since sliced bread. But as enjoyable as eating a T-Bone steak is, when
the vendor insists on putting Ketchup on it when you'd rather have A1,
then later switches from Ketchup to shit, you give up on it quickly.
(The analogy is to bugs and limitations for those that don't get it.)
Why do you constantly feel the need to throw out a resume? Who cares?
I had my CNE back in 1990/91 - 1994 - worked on 2.x - 4.x - and WHO cares?
I worked on PC-MOS multiuser DOS - and WHO CARES?
Get real...I have no interest in you resume, or your experience.
At every step, as a sysadmin, I can testify that it is much easier to do
things in any Unix than it is in windows.
That's all fine, but going back to the ORIGINAL topic, my wife and kids are
not SYSADMINS.
You and I are, and we can use whatever we want. But I travel, I work late at
the office, sometimes
I just plain don't FEEL like working on systems at home.
Guess what? I haven't had to do nary a thing on her Vista laptop.
Fine.
That doesn't mean Linux is not usable for home users - it's just that *I*
don't need that extra headache.
Personal choice - grin and bear it.
At least for someone that
knows both OS's well. Yes, I can completely understand that a guy with
just an MCSE is gonna be lost in the woods on a Unix machine if they've
never seen it before, and the same is true of a Unix admin. However,
give the same guys the same years of experience in both environments on
equivalent areas, and they'll invariably gravitate to Unix every time.
As the line goes "Those who don't understand UNIX are condemned to
reinvent it, poorly."
Beyond that, the rest is crap, and it's been getting worse, not better.
Who the hell needs all that Activation BS?
You know, you've been gritting me on going back and forth, and you're doing
the same thing.
There is NO activation in corporate environments - Home, yes. Corporate, no.
Who needs to reboot every
other month? Who the hell needs layers and layers and layers of DRM?
(see http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/ ) With almost every other
OS out there, I can take the hard drive out, stick it in a similar
machine and have it immediately just work when the hardware dies and not
have to wait for a replacement to come back from IBM or whomever.
With almost any other OS out there, I can boot off a live cd (no, not
just Linux, but FreeBSD and Solaris have live CD's) and fix my problem
and continue. You just can't do that with windows -- well, you could
but you have to build an unsanctioned, and therefore license breaking
Windows PE CD.
Acronis Snap Deploy - but that's neither here nor there.
Hell, even the Solaris install CD is bootable - I can
do
boot -s cdrom and be at a shell, mount my hard drive, run fsck or
whatever I need to do and boot back up. Can't do that with windows.
Yeah, there's that "Recovery console" thing when it works. Good luck
when it doesn't though.
But you know what else is really really cool, I can boot off a Live
Linux CD, mount the windows disk and fix whatever is wrong with it. And
yes, it recognizes NTFS drives just fine. That's right, I can use Linux
to fix Windows. Can you use Windows to fix Linux? Never mind why would
you want to, but can you? But, can you?
Oh and gee, what if someone malicious locks out their Administrator
account, whatever will you do then? Or worse if it's on a Domain?
You're kidding, right? That's reaching a bit.
Anyone who is using only 1 admin account, or has only 1 admin, needs to be
taken out behind the woodshed.
You could restore from backup - well if you had admin
rights, darn,
you'll
just have to reinstall... oh wait, you don't have to. Boot up this:
http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/ live Linux CD, mount the drive
and replace the administrator's password in C:\Windows\system32\SAM
Um, seriously, have you put the Linux and XP versions of the EEE PC next to
each other, and seen them both?
I mean the REAL thing, not surfing - looks like you don;t get out much... I
mean the REAL hardware LIVE.
I will STAND by what I said - the Linux version looks like a toy.
Does that mean Linux sucks, as you seem to get from that.
Um, no.
Lemme write it in crayon for you...
The linux distribution, and gui, on the EEE PC which comes with linux, is
not a very graphically "nice" implementation.
That better? Apparently you like to twist all my words around, when really,
noone else has had any problem comprehending the
above sentence.
Just you.
Only you.
Now, does that mean it sucks? No. Did I say it
sucked? No. But the
Zealots took it as such, and kept going from there.
Not technically, but the following line of text sure comes close:
Put the Asus EEE PC with Linux next to version
with XP / Vista, and
there is NO comparison - it even LOOKS like a cartoony toy.
You would have gotten a hell of a lot less flames had you not said that,
and provided all the high falutin whiny "multi-billion dollar company"
and "REAL business world" condescension. What, you think no one else
works for a multi-billion dollar company here, or that their companies
can't afford to pay for support or pay to train their own guys to
provide internal support? You think that people who run Linux and other
Unix OS's all do it for shits & grins? That's why you got flamed.
Ray, you REALLY have no concept of reading, do you.
Where, pray tell, do you read in my above paragraph, that I had a bad
experience with Linux.
I even went as far as to say that linux:
"was about the ONLY operating system, that out-of-the-box, would properly
run with those RayCom 2MBit wireless cards."
I even SPECIFICALLY say that Windows did *NOT* support those cards properly
at the time.
Seriously - I strongly think, that half of our "discussion" has been either
your misunderstanding, or trolling.
Heck, I think I still have quite a few of the
older media around, back
when Linux was the "In thing" and was being sold retail in
Best Buy / Circuit City / etc.. I CLEARLY remember, before affordable
WiFi days, the copy of Corel Linux I bought retail, was about the ONLY
operating
system, that out-of-the-box, would properly run with those RayCom 2MBit
wireless cards. Not Windows, and not other Linux distros - I'm talking
OOB, here.
And I remember loading that on an HP OmniBook of some sort, Pentium 200
or so, as I recall...
Many things have changed since then. Most current hardware in the range
of the last 5 years "just works" on Linux. Yes, if you dig hard enough,
you'll find the oddball unsupported piece of hardware - but if anything,
those will have poor support for Windows. Your bad experiences of the
past shouldn't cloud your judgment of it today.
The fallacy that Linux isn't ready for the desktop expired years ago.
The only thing that should prevent anyone from switching to Linux is
that they absolutely must run a very specific piece of software which
only runs on Windows. But we have fixes for that too. WINE, CrossOver
Office, VMWare, VirtualBox, and many others. Stop drinking Microsoft's
Kool-Aid and look around you.
Your words would be far more believable were you upto date on your
FreeBSD/Linux knowledge. Go give it another look. Calling us zealots
and bigots without knowing how much we actually happen to know about
windows is not going to win you any friends either. Hey, if you're
gonna be hanging out a forum where geeks hang out, learn the proper geek
social skills.
Um, again, you're haveing reading comprehension issues.
When did I say I haven't touched it since then?
I PLAINLY said MULTIPLE times, that we run RHEL at the office. We're getting
support plans for it.
I mean, seriously, what is it that you are having trouble comprehending?
I started using Linux about 1995, and haven't stopped since.
Would I put it on my wife or kids machine?
HELL no - I know better.
First, my kids would be ticked, because they couldn't run steam, or GWAR, or
any number of other games.
Linux wasn't just the "in thing" years ago, it's still the "in
thing"
today. In fact, Unix has been the "in thing" for the last 30 years and
runs on everything from small embedded tiny devices such as cell phones
all the way to large super computers.
Again - you're having a little bit of trouble comprehending...
Take it IN context with what I said - Late 90's, retail computer/electronics
store had retail linux distros on the shelf.
They do not now.
Doesn't mean much, I was just pointing out that I bought quite a few
different distros back then.
CD's are useless, as distros change virtually overnight.
If you look around, other than Windows, most large OS companies all sell
some form of Unix or other. Yes, there's eCommStation (aka OS/2), but
since it's no longer IBM's product, it's no longer provided by a large
company. Yes, I know, there are still OpenVMS strongholds and I do
respect it (I do have the hobbyist license for it for my Alpha Station
200.) But now that both Novell and Apple have gone to Unix, MSFT is the
only one left behind.
Well, if they did that, they would be admitting Windows faults, which they
will never do.
ps - forgive
the formatting, as this is through my Webmail because my
work XP laptop is, surprise, running malware / trojan cleaning apps.
I'll resist the urge to add anything to the above line, no matter how
hard it is. :-)
9:43 p.m.
Tony Mori wrote:
Yet another example of ignoring several
paragraphs, picking on a small
detail - I did say someone malicious, you'd think someone malicious
would lock all the admin accounts, sorry perhaps that's too common
sense, I would have thought someone with your l33t comprehension would,
uh, comprehend.
So do tell us, what's your take about Linux being able to repair Windows
- or do you not have one? Have you any examples of being able to use
Windows to repair Linux installs? No, not installing windows over it,
that doesn't count.
" In war we're tough and able,
Quite indefatigable.
Between our quests we sequin vests and impersonate Clark Gable.
It's a busy life in Camelot."
Um, seriously, have you put the Linux and XP versions of the EEE PC
next to each other, and seen them both?
I mean the REAL thing, not surfing - looks like you don;t get out
much... I mean the REAL hardware LIVE. Oh, so you are gonna stick to your strawman
about how you saw Linux
running on a machine intended for kids and it looked like a toy? So
what if I misread your original typoed version. I've already apologized
for that. But it says tons about you.
Have you actually seen KDE 4.1 running on a Lenovo Thinkpad, recently?
You know, I mean, the real thing, live and in person. Or do you not get
out all that much?
" I have to push the pram a lot."
Ray, you REALLY have no concept of reading, do you.
Where, pray tell, do you read in my above paragraph, that I had a bad
experience with Linux. ..
You know, you either have SERIOUS reading
comprehension issues, or
you're trolling.
You might as well have said:
And that, my liege, is how we know the earth to be
banana-shaped.
So that I might reply "This new learning amazes me, Sir Bedevere.
Explain again how sheep's bladders may be employed to prevent earthquakes."
This is absolutely ridiculous...
"Eh. You
are indeed brave, Sir Knight, but the fight is mine."
Dang right - I have ENOUGH trying to support them on
Windows.
Dang? What, you can't say "Damn right" like man?
So, you're a sysadmin, and you can't support your wife and kids, and you
do windows by day, and are having lots of trouble doing the same at
home. Hmmmmm... And you fear saying "damn right."
"Quick, what... is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?"
Besides, As I've said, you CANNOT play current
games on Linux.
Really? I must be mistaken then, you're so right.
http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxgames/ just doesn't exist, I must
have dreamed it up.
So, World of Warcraft, EVE Online, Guild Wars, Prey, and Steam Games
such as Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2, Counterstrike, Civilization IV,
Peggle Extreme, Call of Duty 2, Max Payne 2, Grand Theft Auto 2 are all
retro games then? Oh, in that case, this diatribe is on topic... Ah
good, I was worried we had ventured into flame territory.
"Exactly. So, logically... If... she... weighs... the same as a
duck,... she's made of wood. And therefore? A witch!"
Why do you constantly feel the need to throw out a
resume? Who cares?
Uh, "constantly?" where? You mean, in this one
previous message?
That's your definition of "constantly" - what was that you were saying
about comprehension again?
I had my CNE back in 1990/91 - 1994 - worked on 2.x -
4.x - and WHO
cares?
Indeed. The point was, I came from Novell, saw NT, I thought it was
cool, got into it, got really deep into it, and saw that it actually
sucked, and moved away from it, and that the deeper one looks into the
bowels of Windows, the quicker one understands how bad it is. Comprehend?
"Eh. You are indeed brave, Sir Knight, but the fight is mine."
Get real...I have no interest in you resume, or your
experience.
Where's my resume? No, really, show me my resume, go on, where is it?
"Look, I'll have your leg. [chop] What are you going to do, bleed on
me?"
That's all fine, but going back to the ORIGINAL
topic, my wife and
kids are not SYSADMINS.
You and I are, and we can use whatever we want. But I travel, I work
late at the office, sometimes
I just plain don't FEEL like working on systems at home.
Right, and I am
willing to manage my wife and kids' machine, and despite
also working late at the office and traveling. Maybe that's because
they're not running Windows. And you know what, even when my wife was
running Windows 98, and then 2000, guess who admined it? Not her. And
I didn't have trouble admining that either. But somehow, you're having
trouble doing the same thing at home that you supposedly do at work.
And you fear letting her use Linux. What does that say about your
sysadmining skills?
"The Black Knight always triumphs! Have at you! Come on, then." [2nd leg
chopped] "Oh? All right, we'll call it a draw."
You know, you've been gritting me on going back
and forth, and you're
doing the same thing.
There is NO activation in corporate environments - Home, yes.
Corporate, no.
About time you noticed. Who said I was referring to corp in those
two
sentences?
Where in the text "Beyond that, the rest is crap, and it's been getting
worse, not better. Who the hell needs all that Activation BS?" do you
see the words Corporate Environment? Uh, reading compre-wha?
"Oh. Oh, I see. Running away, eh?"
Acronis Snap Deploy - but that's neither here nor
there.
Oh, and how much does that cost? Oh wait, it's not free? And if I have
more than one server, I have to pay more? And it needs a support
contract? Whats that total cost of ownership again? But that's neither
here nor there.
" We're Knights of the Round Table.
Our shows are formidable,
But many times we're given rhymes
That are quite unsingable.
We're opera mad in Camelot.
We sing from the diaphragm a lot."
But you know what else is really really cool, I
can boot off a Live
Linux CD, mount the windows disk and fix whatever is wrong with it. And
yes, it recognizes NTFS drives just fine. That's right, I can use Linux
to fix Windows. Can you use Windows to fix Linux? Never mind why would
you want to, but can you? But, can you?
Oh and gee, what if someone malicious locks out their Administrator
account, whatever will you do then? Or worse if it's on a Domain?
You're kidding, right? That's reaching a bit.
Anyone who is using only 1 admin account, or has only 1 admin, needs
to be taken out behind the woodshed. Put the Asus EEE PC with Linux next to version with XP
/ Vista, and
there is NO comparison - it even LOOKS like a cartoony toy.
Lemme write it in crayon for you...
By all means, whatever you're most comfortable with. I guess that's
what passes for what you do at your multi-billion dollar business.
Please, don't bother listing out the other skills you've placed on your
resume. We can guess, coloring, nap time, cutting and gluing...
" Well, on second thought, let's not go to Camelot. It is a silly place."
The linux distribution, and gui, on the EEE PC which comes with linux,
is not a very graphically "nice" implementation.
That better?
Yes, it is, actually.
"Oh, no. Oh, no! Bad, bad Zoot!"
Apparently you like to twist all my words around,
Why not, what's good for the goose and all that. You're not exactly a
mensch either.
"Oh, wicked, bad, naughty Zoot! She has been setting alight to our
beacon, which, I have just remembered, is grail-shaped. It's not the
first time we've had this problem."
( http://www.mwscomp.com/movies/grail/cut.au )
Heck, I think I still have quite a few of the
older media around,
back when Linux was the "In thing" and was being sold retail in
Best Buy / Circuit City / etc.. I CLEARLY remember, before
affordable WiFi days, the copy of Corel Linux I bought retail, was
about the ONLY operating
system, that out-of-the-box, would properly run with those RayCom
2MBit wireless cards. Not Windows, and not other Linux distros - I'm
talking OOB, here.
And I remember loading that on an HP OmniBook of some sort, Pentium
200 or so, as I recall...
Many things have changed since then. Most current hardware in the range
of the last 5 years "just works" on Linux. Yes, if you dig hard enough,
you'll find the oddball unsupported piece of hardware - but if anything,
those will have poor support for Windows. Your bad experiences of the
past shouldn't cloud your judgment of it today.
I even SPECIFICALLY say that Windows did *NOT* support
those cards
properly at the time.
Indeed "was about the ONLY operating system.. and not other Linux
distros" would count as a bad experience - as in you've tried several
Linux distros and had to settle for one that worked.
Tell me again how that doesn't count as a bad experience when you paid
for something and out of many OS's (including windows) that you've tried
only one happened to have worked. How is that a good experience? If I
bought a network card that worked with only one OS, and not a common one
at that, I'd feel ripped off.
"Oh. Um, l-- look, i-- i-- if we built this large wooden badger--"
Seriously - I strongly think, that half of our "discussion" has been
either your misunderstanding, or trolling.
Or maybe there's the third
possibility, that I'm not letting you get
away with BS, and you don't like getting called on it. But somehow, you
refuse to stop replying. It's like an addiction with you.
And the Lord spake, saying, 'First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin.
Then, shalt thou count to three. No more. No less. Three shalt be the
number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three.
Four shalt thou not count, nor either count thou two, excepting that
thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three,
being the third number, be reached, then, lobbest thou thy Holy Hand
Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who, being naughty in My sight,
shall snuff it.'
Um, again, you're haveing reading comprehension
issues.
So is this more of the ad hominem, or is this an example of the Big Lie
tactic, you know, where if you repeat something often enough, some
people will believe it?
"Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis
for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a
mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony."
When did I say I haven't touched it since then?
The moment you've offered up the EEPC's Linux vs XP as an example. Were
you current on Linux, you would have put up a fairer example. With a
distro, version number, and screenshot. That you weren't able to shows
that you're out of touch and therefore, neither use modern Linux
distros, nor admin them. Either that or you were, uh, trolling?
So which is it, were you lying about your lack of current Linux
experience, or were you trolling? It's ok, you can admit it. No one
will think any less of you.
"You've got two empty halves of coconut and you're bangin' 'em
together."
I PLAINLY said MULTIPLE times, that we run RHEL at the
office. We're
getting support plans for it.
I plainly notice you didn't say that you're
personally admining it. I
plainly notice that you've refused to admin it for your wife and kid.
"we run" isn't you. I also noticed that you did not mention any new
Linux distros, mentioned you used FreeBSD in 1992 or such, and that you
have some old Linux CDs around. I saw no mention of anything current,
except in the Windows side of things. Yes, I do read that deeply into
the nuances of your words.
"How you English say, 'I one more time, mac, unclog my nose in your
direction', sons of a window-dresser!"
I started using Linux about 1995, and haven't stopped since.
We're I you, I'd respond with "Why do you constantly feel the need to
throw out a resume? Who cares?". But I'll refrain.
Instead, "We shall say 'ni' again to you if you do not appease us... We
want... a shrubbery! One that looks nice. And not too expensive.
Now... go!"
...
"Oh, what sad times are these when passing ruffians can say 'ni' at will
to old ladies. There is a pestilence upon this land. Nothing is sacred.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable
economic stress at this period in history."
Oh, never mind.
"Fetchez la vache!
And now, remain gone, illegitimate-faced bugger-folk! And, if you think
you got a nasty taunting this time, you ain't heard nothing yet, dappy
English k-nnniggets! Thpppt!"
11:31 p.m.
At least this post was somewhat entertaining to read...
On Monday 01 September 2008, Ray Arachelian wrote:
You might as well have said:
--
Purdue University Research Computing --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/
The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org
And that, my liege, is how we know the earth to
be banana-shaped.
So that I might reply "This new learning amazes me, Sir Bedevere.
Explain again how sheep's bladders may be employed to prevent
earthquakes."
"Eh. You are indeed brave, Sir Knight, but the fight is mine."
"Quick, what... is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?"
"Exactly. So, logically... If... she... weighs... the same as a
duck,... she's made of wood. And therefore? A witch!"
"Eh. You are indeed brave, Sir Knight, but the fight is mine."
"Look, I'll have your leg. [chop] What are you going to do, bleed
on me?"
"The Black Knight always triumphs! Have at you! Come on, then." [2nd
leg chopped] "Oh? All right, we'll call it a draw."
"Oh. Oh, I see. Running away, eh?"
" We're Knights of the Round Table.
Our shows are formidable,
But many times we're given rhymes
That are quite unsingable.
We're opera mad in Camelot.
We sing from the diaphragm a lot."
" In war we're tough and able,
Quite indefatigable.
Between our quests we sequin vests and impersonate Clark Gable.
It's a busy life in Camelot."
" I have to push the pram a lot."
" Well, on second thought, let's not go to Camelot. It is a silly
place."
"Oh, no. Oh, no! Bad, bad Zoot!"
"Oh, wicked, bad, naughty Zoot! She has been setting alight to our
beacon, which, I have just remembered, is grail-shaped. It's not the
first time we've had this problem."
( http://www.mwscomp.com/movies/grail/cut.au )
"Oh. Um, l-- look, i-- i-- if we built this large wooden badger--"
And the Lord spake, saying, 'First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin.
Then, shalt thou count to three. No more. No less. Three shalt be the
number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be
three. Four shalt thou not count, nor either count thou two,
excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once
the number three, being the third number, be reached, then, lobbest
thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who, being
naughty in My sight, shall snuff it.'
"Listen. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis
for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a
mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony."
"You've got two empty halves of coconut and you're bangin' 'em
together."
"How you English say, 'I one more time, mac, unclog my nose in your
direction', sons of a window-dresser!"
Instead, "We shall say 'ni' again to you if you do not appease us...
We want... a shrubbery! One that looks nice. And not too
expensive. Now... go!"
...
"Oh, what sad times are these when passing ruffians can say 'ni' at
will to old ladies. There is a pestilence upon this land. Nothing is
sacred. Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under
considerable economic stress at this period in history."
"Fetchez la vache!
And now, remain gone, illegitimate-faced bugger-folk! And, if you
think you got a nasty taunting this time, you ain't heard nothing
yet, dappy English k-nnniggets! Thpppt!" 
1 Sep
1 Sep
3:41 a.m.
On Sun, 2008-08-31 at 20:40 -0400, Tony Mori wrote:
Dang right - I have ENOUGH trying to support them on
Windows.
Besides, As I've said, you CANNOT play current games on Linux.
<sigh>
Funny, I'm having a lot of fun with ET:Quake Wars with its native Linux
port.
That doesn't mean Linux is not usable for home
users - it's just that
*I*
don't need that extra headache.
Personal choice - grin and bear it.
That's why I could never in good conscience recommend Windows to an
inexperienced computer user, either. I get enough phone calls about
stupid stuff.
You know, you've been gritting me on going back and forth, and you're doing
the same thing.
There is NO activation in corporate environments - Home, yes. Corporate, no.
That's one of the reasons I would never recommend Windows.
Um, seriously, have you put the Linux and XP versions
of the EEE PC next to
each other, and seen them both?
I mean the REAL thing, not surfing - looks like you don;t get out much... I
mean the REAL hardware LIVE.
I will STAND by what I said - the Linux version looks like a toy.
Does that mean Linux sucks, as you seem to get from that.
Um, no.
Riiiiight. So XP's cartoon dogs and Teletubby background and garish
clown-suit colour scheme don't look toy-like to you?
I would be, quite frankly, *embarrassed* to be seen using XP in a
professional environment.
Lemme write it in crayon for you...
The linux distribution, and gui, on the EEE PC which comes with linux, is
not a very graphically "nice" implementation.
Uh-huh. And Windows, with its car crash of different widgets and bright
Fisher-Price colours is somehow better?
Um, again, you're haveing reading comprehension
issues.
When did I say I haven't touched it since then?
I PLAINLY said MULTIPLE times, that we run RHEL at the office. We're getting
support plans for it.
I mean, seriously, what is it that you are having trouble comprehending?
I started using Linux about 1995, and haven't stopped since.
Would I put it on my wife or kids machine?
HELL no - I know better.
First, my kids would be ticked, because they couldn't run steam, or GWAR, or
any number of other games.
I run Steam under Crossover. I haven't had any significant problems,
and certainly none that Windows-using friends haven't had. Steam *is*
pretty flaky.
Gordon
5956
days inactive
5957
days old
5 comments
4 participants
participants (4)
-
gordonjcp＠gjcp.net -
pat＠computer-refuge.org -
ray＠arachelian.com -
tonym＠compusource.net