Re:Family Tree Tech support: Wood for the fire....
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Family Tech Support
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· Score: 1
I don't actually charge anything, but most of the people I help out insist on giving me something, and I never refuse. My dad and my friends parents usually give money. My sister bought me the Monty Python's Flying Circus DVD set. My in-laws pay with cookies and babysitting. Maybe I'm just lucky.
Actually, the only member of my family that I never get a call from is my Mom. Not that she's some sort of tech-goddess or anything, far from it: she finally upgraded from her 1928 Underwood only a few years ago. There are 2 reasons for this, think: 1) I gave her Win2k, which I have to give grudging respect to, and 2) she realized that she knew nothing and took a class.
I switched my wife over to Linux in December, and she's been pretty happy with it. The transition was painless, I basically just had to show her how to log on, how to log me out if she needed to, and how to change her wallpaper. She's pretty happy about the stability, and even happier that I'm not reinstalling the OS every few months (and in the process losing all her old saved emails).
As an added bonus, since we're on a real multi-user OS, I can still experiment with stuff without affecting her in the slightest.
I also have a daughter, who will be 3 in 1.5 months, and Linux has been great for her, too. A common complaint I hear is that Linux doesn't support kids games very well. The common response is "use wine", which is probably reasonable since most kids games seem to run best on Win98, and have problems with Win2k and XP (if they run at all). I don't know how well that works, though, as I haven't tried it. There was no need after I discovered gcompris, which is a OSS collection of kids games. It blows almost every kids game I've seen away (the one exception is The Incredible Machine, but there's no reason the gcompris folks couldn't duplicate and improve on that as well).
Most "professional" kids game developers seem to concentrate on cute, barely animated graphics and insipid songs at the expense of the learning, the gcompris games are focused on learning and don't let the graphics get in the way (and no, the graphics don't suck, either).
For example, one of my daughter's Windows games was supposed to help teach basic computer skill, like moving the mouse pointer. The mouse pointer game was basically a picture covered up by a bunch of items (coins, candy, etc) which had to be removed, and gcompris has basically the same thing, just with a white on blue grid instead of items. Unfortunately, it would often simultaneously remove an item on a different part of the screen as well, and the items could be removed simply by hitting (or banging on) keys on the keyboard, which is exactly what my daughter did instead of using the mouse. When all of the items are removed it sings a stupid song about the animal in the picture and then repeats (with a different picture being covered up by different items). The gcompris version, OTOH, requires that you actually use the mouse, and that you acually move the pointer over every box. Once the picture, which is an actual photograph of an animal (all bears, but that could just be a SuSE thing), is uncovered, you get the gcompis smiley-face-flower-thing-with-audio-"WOOHOO!!" and it goes on to the next level, which is (gasp) actually harder (which means it has smaller boxes, requiring progressively greater precision).
My daughter got bored with both of them after about the same amount of time, but at least after the gcompis one she knew how to use a mouse!
And I'll admit that comptuer-common-sense (CCS, perhaps?) is quite a part of the problem/solution/issue. But it seems to me that CCS is more commonly available, so to speak, on Macs (and to a certain degree, Linux (and/or $YourFavouriteFreeOS)).
I think that most of the time a person who buys a Mac at least knows enough about computers that they know they want a Mac. They may not know more than that, but at least that's better than nothing. On the Windows side you have all the people who just want a computer and don't want to spend much money on it.
Now that I think about it, price is probably an advantage for Mac as well, at least in the clueful user sense. Macs cost more, and are therefore likely to be bought by someone who makes more money. Someone who makes more money likely has more education, and is therefore more likely to have previous computer experience.
That's just off the top of my head, though. I could be wrong.
QNX is an embedded OS, it does not require a fast computer. I use QNX (4.25, if anyone cares) everyday, with photon (QNX GUI), and it's pretty snappy on a Pentium 166 with 32MB RAM. My install takes up just under 140MB of drive space, and that includes our custom software.
No, neither QNX nor BeOS support pre-Pentium computers.
This may be true for BeOS, but QNX definately supports sub-pentium machines. The current version of Neutrino (6.2.0) supports 386, 486, ARM, MIPS32, and several other CPUs commonly used in embedded systems.
industry still uses all the "old" things you mention.
That's exactly what I was going to say.
I've yet to see USB, Firewire, etc, in use in the "real world" except for consumer-level personal computer peripherals. In industry, RS232 is The Shit, RS485 is a handy substitute for long distances, and people are experimenting with ethernet (some of them are even using Cat-5). Every once in a while you might run into something designed for a parallel connection, but not too often.
All these hot new interfaces are only really relevant at the consumer level, and that's only a small part of the real electronics industry. This lab sounds like a pretty close approximation of the real world as I've experienced it. Sorry if that disappoints you, but you might as well get used to it.
For $10 more you can get the Pro Upgrade version. I did that with 8.1 and it came with the admin manual, which IIRC you don't get with Personal, but without the "clueless newbie" manuals you get with either full version (which just gather dust on my shelf until I get around to throwing them away). It's something to look into if you care, otherwise, carry on.
Re:All this talk of "screenshots", "How it looks".
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SuSE 8.2 Announced
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· Score: 1
People, the look of the window manager is a product of the window manager, NOT the distro. The text looks good be cause they use truetype fonts. The colors are cool because someone created themes/images that look that way. All the Distro has done is slapped all this stuff together, added a few programs to make things easier to config and install for the newbs, and said, "Pay us 40 dollars for selling you something that is MOSTLY someone else's work!"
Except in this case the distro actually employs and pays a significant portion of the window manager's core development team. In fact, at one point SuSE employed more Linux developers than any other distro (over 500, IIRC), so I would hardly say that they are making money off of someone else's work. In fact, I might say that Linux wouldn't be anywhere near where it is today if SuSE didn't use a business model that actually makes money.
IIRC, 8.1, and maybe 8.0 also, had 7 CDs (I split the cost with a friend, I get the DVD and he gets the CDs, so I don't pay that close attention). Must of 5 and all of 6 and 7 are source, which is now on the second DVD.
One will still be able to do a full install off the CDs, and with the way YaST works it's extremely rare that anyone will want to access the source anyway, and in those cases (mplayer comes to mind) it's likely that they would prefer to grab it straight from CVS anyway. All the source will still be available from SuSE by ftp as well.
When you're pressing the disks in a production run, it makes a lot more sense to press one DVD than 2 or 3 CDs, especially for something that is hardly ever used. It could easily represent a significant savings for SuSE.
Besides, you can get a DVD-ROM for $28, including shipping. Even a starving college student could afford one by simply skipping pizza or beer for a week.
Re:Linux won't take off whilst Windows is free.
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SuSE 8.2 Announced
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· Score: 1
If it's as good as it sounds, then SuSE could become my new preferred desktop platform. My only fear is that it's slower than XP.
The speed of your user experience will depend greatly on what wm you use. My personal preference is WindowMaker. SuSE does a good job of supporting environments other than KDE, so all my apps are added to the menues just like they are under KDE, and I can still use the KDE stuff that I like without much issue.
The other thing is remember to activate DMA for your HDD, as that will make a huge difference (cut my boot time by about 70% when I finally remembered to do that in SuSE 8.1). This is really easy to do in YaST, but it isn't set that way by default.
Anyway, my SuSE 8.1/WinXP comparison should be taken with a big grain of salt because of the system differences, but here it is:
SuSE was on a slot Athlon 700 with 384M PC100, DMA not enabled. KDE felt a little sluggish, but not too bad, only a little slower than Win98SE on the same machine. With WindowMaker it is much faster than Win98SE.
XP was on a P-3 550 with 128M of unknown speed RAM, I don't know about DMA. It was painfully slow. SP1 helped a lot, but it was still much slower than I think the hardware difference would account for. For some unknown reason, floppy access was especially slow.
Anyway, like I said, it really isn't a fair comparison, but there it is. As long as you remember to enable DMA, SuSE should feel a lot faster than XP on the same hardware.
Re:Is there anywhere one can download SUSE?
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SuSE 8.2 Announced
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· Score: 1
Much more so since they killed of YAST and only give you YAST2 which for remote administration (especialy over a slow connection) doesn't really make me very happy.
YaST2 for remote administration sucked mightily in 7.x, but is much better in 8.x. However, it is not true that YaST is not available in 7.x, I used it on my 7.3 file server frequently, only subjecting myself to the pain of text-based YaST2 on the rare occasions when I needed to do something I couldn't do in YaST or with a quick text file editing.
Re:Is there anywhere one can download SUSE?
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SuSE 8.2 Announced
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· Score: 1
No need to download the entire Live Eval, there's a 16M boot ISO or 4 floppy images (1 boot, 3 modules) you can use to kick off the install.
I haven't tried an ftp install either, but I did switch my install source to ftp.suse.com, and it works fine. It's slower than the DVD, but then it can run in the background while my daughter watches her Powerpuff Girls, and I install/remove packages infrequently enough that I forget where I put the CD pouch I keep the DVD in...
I would wager that Mandrake has a considerable user base. Everyone I know uses it for desktops (and almost everyone I know uses RH for servers... with a few FreeBSD installs for good measure).
FWIW, everyone I know uses SuSE for desktops and servers.
Further, people around here generally start out with either SuSE or Mandrake. The ones that start with SuSE switch to Linux as their primary or even exclusive OS within 2 years, whereas the ones who start with Mandrake give up within a month and join the "Linux isn't ready for Prime Time" club. In the 3 years I've been using Linux I haven't yet seen an exception to this rule.
I'm not trying to belittle Mandrake, just providing a counter to your annecdote.
I agree it's a problem, but I think it's something they did in 8.1. I've been using SuSE since 6.3, and Online Update has never been anywhere near as slow as it is in 8.1. It's also a frequently reoccuring thread on the SuSE newsgroups. Personally, I think they should ditch the "new and improved" 8.1 YOU and go back to the version in 8.0, which was nearly perfect.
I'm sure there is, which is why I didn't say anything about how ludicrous it would be to buy a whole second computer, plus Windows, just to use the free Word viewer. However, that doesn't nullify my point. The assumption the parent made was that everyone was using Windows, which BTW already comes with a free Word "viewer" (WordPad) in the default install.
You could also just download the free MS Word viewer that Microsoft provides here [microsoft.com].
Strangely, there doesn't seem to be a Linux version. Or a Mac version, either. It's not so free when I'd have to buy a copy of Windows and spend 2 hours installing it, is it?
How do you figure this is anti-trust? This is simply a company who has the dominant product protecting their lead.
Replace "dominant" with "monopoly" and you basically have the definition of something actionable under anti-trust laws. This is exactly the same "embrace/extend/exterminate" action that MS has already been convicted of.
Maybe you don't see anything wrong with it, but that just demonstrates your ignorance of the real world and why anti-trust laws exist.
Have you ever played a game like Civilization or Alpha Centari? You would be amazed at how much those games make you understand politics.
And here we see the apparent source of that ignorance. If you think Civ reflects real life, trying beating it using only diplomacy. You can't, because Civ is a zero-sum game. The real world isn't.
But this isnt a game, this is business. And since businesses are SUPPOSED to make money, they need to make sure people continue to buy MS Office. And making an office suite that shares documents with all the various third-tier office suites just doesnt do that. Why should my company buy MS Office if the documents it produces are exactly the same as those of FreeBeerOffice? Now, if FBO cannot do things MSO can do, then there is an incentive...
While you are correct in the general sense, it's totally irrelevant in the case of a convicted monopoly. A monopoly has to play by different rules, and in some sense has a legal responsibility to maintain competition in the market. In the case of MSO, that means it needs to have a viable export format that is readable by other office suites.
As for why you would buy MSO over FBO, why do people buy StarOffice 6 instead of just downloading OpenOffice? Support contracts come to mind...
That's the romantic version of the story, of course.
That's Gary Thomas' version, and I think he would know.
According to Gary, he had a working port in 1995, before mklinux even got started, which was the beginning of Apple's involvement and what got Motorolla and the rest involved.
If you have evidence that contradicts his version of the story, feel free to present it here.
Uh, I don't think they brought up Linux on the Itanium by throwing a tarball or two out to 'the community' to test.
Linux got ported to Itanium because Intel paid SuSE to port it. I very much doubt they did that without providing any documentation, which makes your comment about hardware debugging equipment completely irrelevant.
Even if they weren't working directly with Intel there is no reason they would have needed any expensive hardware debugging equipment. An IA-64 compatible C compiler would be sufficient. If they really wanted to do it "right", meaning by using gcc, then they likely would have needed an Assembly Language Reference, and a User's Guide for porting developement platforms to IA-64 might have been helpful as well. Too bad Intel is so tight-fisted with that info!
Let's not pretend Linux, or any Modern Operating System, is so 'grass roots' that Joe Random and twelve of his buddies can throw it together using castoff hardware and lots of sweat.
Except that's pretty much exactly what Gary Thomas did when he ported Linux to PPC and had a working port before any of the PPC vendors got involved with the project.
Perhaps you should do a little research into the history of Linux ports before you make statements like these.
I don't think you've fully grasped the sheer amount of empty space that I-80 cuts through. I can't speak for your whole trip, but I've traveled as far east as Salt Lake City (from Grass Valley). Between Sacramento and Salt Lake City there's basically nothing. Sizable communities between those points include Reno/Sparks, Elko, Auburn, Colfax, and Truckee. Since you live in Placerville, I think you understand what I mean when I say that those last 3 would be considered "sizable communities". Of course, you'd skip those 3 since you'd probably take 50 to Placerville anyway, very few people are masochistic enough to take 80 to 49 to Placerville if they don't absolutely have to.
Anyway, I remember Elko being roughly comparable to Auburn with a bigger hotel, but the rest of those "towns" were basically mostly empty trailer parks with a gas station (with a slot machine if you're lucky!) and maybe a post office. Not exactly the kind of places one would expect to find many WAPs, and even if you did find one I very much doubt it would be hooked up to broadband of any sort.
When I made the drive from GV to SLC it took about 12 hours, with the only real stop (for more than gas) was at the Denny's in Elko. For some perspective on just how far it is, I had Hot Poontang waiting for me in SLC, so it would probably take longer under more "normal" circumstances.
Can he count change as well as I can? Does he have any experience? Will he try as hard as I will? Are you sure he's not going to spend too much time chatting with one customer and ignoring the next person in line?
You make an excellent point here, and I have an example of it in action:
My wife is a waitress, and a very good one. She's looking to get out of it, though, because she hates people. You would think that someone who hates people wouldn't be a good waitress, but the truth is quite the contrary. She keeps her mind on her job and makes sure all of her tables are taken care of. In fact, she's usually also picking up the slack for her more extroverted coworkers, who quite often will spend an inordinate amount of time chatting with people at one table who they might know, and ignore their other tables.
An exuberant, extroverted waitress is great if you happen to be the table she's chatting with. If you're at one of her other tables, though, you will get terrible service.
I think this whole personality test thing is a case of employers making assumptions about a position that they probably shouldn't be making. Just because someone is a "people person" doesn't mean they're going to be good at something "people oriented", like sales or waiting tables. Just because someone is an introvert, it doesn't mean they're a better programmer, and even if they are, are you absolutely sure that's what your team needs? Someone who's less introverted might boost productivity by improving communication and comaradery within the development team, even though they might not be a top-notch programmer.
The only reason these personality tests get any credence is because they're supposedly scientific. Really, you might as well be using astrology, because that would give you just as accurate a picture of how the person would really perform on the job. Either way, all you're getting is basic personality traits. What you aren't getting is the part that's actually important; how that individual leverages those traits, or labors under them, in other words, how those traits affect their actual performance.
Another example: I'm a Taurus, which supposedly means that I am stubborn (I can't disagree with that). But what exactly does that mean? It could mean that I'm obnoxiously opinionated, like Archie Bunker maybe, but it doesn't. It could mean that I'm the type of guy who never backs down from a fight, but it doesn't. What it does mean is that I'm considered to be good at math. Why? Certainly not because of any natural ability, in fact Taureans aren't supposed to be particularly intellectual, but simply because I didn't give up. I decided I wanted to learn Calculus and I did, even though I had to take Calc I 4 times before I passed it, and in the end I knew it better than most of the people who only took it once (heh, no big suprise there, eh?). When I later decided to be a math tutor, I was considered one of the best at my school.
If you pick up a book on astrology and read a description of Taurus, you won't find much that would indicate a good math tutor. Of course, I'm sure someone reading this is saying "Well, that's just astrology, it's not scientific". My response is, at least it's consistent. I've taken a few Meyers-Briggs tests, and I come up as INTJ, ISTJ, or INFJ depending on my mood at the time and the specific wording of the questions.
An example of a question from the last test I took: It is easy for you to communicate in social situations. I'm not a little bit introverted, I usually score 90-100% introverted. I don't like social or public situations, but I don't find them difficult. Again, that isn't a natural aptitude, it's something I learned how to do, through band performances, drama, and live action roleplaying. How did drama get in there if I'm such an introvert? My high school drafting teacher recommended it. I was already at the top of the class in drafting skill, and he said that communication skills would be much more useful in my life than another semester of Technical Illustration, so I took drama instead (he was right, BTW).
But, looking at my personality test, you would never guess that it's easy for me to do public presentations, or that I'm usually one of the first volunteers in a class that requires presentations, you would only see that I would rather do something else.
I would say that's because most of the Linux admins you know are actually Windows admins who have learned some things about Linux. They're using what they know, and if you're coming from Windows, Samba is how you share files on Linux.
Honestly, I would be doing that too if I hadn't taken the time to learn Unix. Samba performs a lot of translations that are necessary for communicating with Windows, but that's all extra baggage and potential headaches when you're sharing with any other OS. If you're not sharing with Windows, NFS is by far the superior choice.
When I was in the local music scene a lot of bands actually put something like "Please copy this for all your friends" on their album labels, in the hopes that it would get more people coming to their shows. I'd be very suprised if you couldn't find several local or semi-local bands who would be thrilled to have their music used for something like this. Just make sure they get proper mention in the credits!
Just go to a show and try to talk to the band after they play.
They have kits with small LCDs and driver cards. There's a 6.3" monochrome with an ISA driver for $199 and a 7.8" color with a PCI controller for $299. Their outlines are 8.11" X 5.74", which should fit fine as a 5.25" bay is actually 5.875" wide. If you've got a few more bucks in your budget, or maybe don't have a free ISA or PCI slot, there's also an analog color 6.5" for $695 that's 7.04" X 4.99".
You're going to have to rig up some sort of mounting bracket for it. I'd recomend looking up a small machine shop in the phone book to do the fab work. Usually small shops have pretty good machinists who will be able to give you some useful suggestions on the design of it, and I highly recomend taking advantage of their expertise if you want the bracket articulated in any way. Stay away from places that specialize in automotive machining, as they are generally considered to be the machining equivalent of an MCSE.
Re:Network Block Device
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RAMdisk RAID?
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· Score: 1
Wow I knew prices were dropping, but I had no idea they would drop $60 in only 3 hours!
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I don't actually charge anything, but most of the people I help out insist on giving me something, and I never refuse. My dad and my friends parents usually give money. My sister bought me the Monty Python's Flying Circus DVD set. My in-laws pay with cookies and babysitting. Maybe I'm just lucky.
Actually, the only member of my family that I never get a call from is my Mom. Not that she's some sort of tech-goddess or anything, far from it: she finally upgraded from her 1928 Underwood only a few years ago. There are 2 reasons for this, think: 1) I gave her Win2k, which I have to give grudging respect to, and 2) she realized that she knew nothing and took a class.
There are lessons to be learned here, I think...
I have to second that.
I switched my wife over to Linux in December, and she's been pretty happy with it. The transition was painless, I basically just had to show her how to log on, how to log me out if she needed to, and how to change her wallpaper. She's pretty happy about the stability, and even happier that I'm not reinstalling the OS every few months (and in the process losing all her old saved emails).
As an added bonus, since we're on a real multi-user OS, I can still experiment with stuff without affecting her in the slightest.
I also have a daughter, who will be 3 in 1.5 months, and Linux has been great for her, too. A common complaint I hear is that Linux doesn't support kids games very well. The common response is "use wine", which is probably reasonable since most kids games seem to run best on Win98, and have problems with Win2k and XP (if they run at all). I don't know how well that works, though, as I haven't tried it. There was no need after I discovered gcompris, which is a OSS collection of kids games. It blows almost every kids game I've seen away (the one exception is The Incredible Machine, but there's no reason the gcompris folks couldn't duplicate and improve on that as well).
Most "professional" kids game developers seem to concentrate on cute, barely animated graphics and insipid songs at the expense of the learning, the gcompris games are focused on learning and don't let the graphics get in the way (and no, the graphics don't suck, either).
For example, one of my daughter's Windows games was supposed to help teach basic computer skill, like moving the mouse pointer. The mouse pointer game was basically a picture covered up by a bunch of items (coins, candy, etc) which had to be removed, and gcompris has basically the same thing, just with a white on blue grid instead of items. Unfortunately, it would often simultaneously remove an item on a different part of the screen as well, and the items could be removed simply by hitting (or banging on) keys on the keyboard, which is exactly what my daughter did instead of using the mouse. When all of the items are removed it sings a stupid song about the animal in the picture and then repeats (with a different picture being covered up by different items). The gcompris version, OTOH, requires that you actually use the mouse, and that you acually move the pointer over every box. Once the picture, which is an actual photograph of an animal (all bears, but that could just be a SuSE thing), is uncovered, you get the gcompis smiley-face-flower-thing-with-audio-"WOOHOO!!" and it goes on to the next level, which is (gasp) actually harder (which means it has smaller boxes, requiring progressively greater precision).
My daughter got bored with both of them after about the same amount of time, but at least after the gcompis one she knew how to use a mouse!
And I'll admit that comptuer-common-sense (CCS, perhaps?) is quite a part of the problem/solution/issue. But it seems to me that CCS is more commonly available, so to speak, on Macs (and to a certain degree, Linux (and/or $YourFavouriteFreeOS)).
I think that most of the time a person who buys a Mac at least knows enough about computers that they know they want a Mac. They may not know more than that, but at least that's better than nothing. On the Windows side you have all the people who just want a computer and don't want to spend much money on it.
Now that I think about it, price is probably an advantage for Mac as well, at least in the clueful user sense. Macs cost more, and are therefore likely to be bought by someone who makes more money. Someone who makes more money likely has more education, and is therefore more likely to have previous computer experience.
That's just off the top of my head, though. I could be wrong.
I think QNX actually needs a quite fast computer.
QNX is an embedded OS, it does not require a fast computer. I use QNX (4.25, if anyone cares) everyday, with photon (QNX GUI), and it's pretty snappy on a Pentium 166 with 32MB RAM. My install takes up just under 140MB of drive space, and that includes our custom software.
No, neither QNX nor BeOS support pre-Pentium computers.
This may be true for BeOS, but QNX definately supports sub-pentium machines. The current version of Neutrino (6.2.0) supports 386, 486, ARM, MIPS32, and several other CPUs commonly used in embedded systems.
industry still uses all the "old" things you mention.
That's exactly what I was going to say.
I've yet to see USB, Firewire, etc, in use in the "real world" except for consumer-level personal computer peripherals. In industry, RS232 is The Shit, RS485 is a handy substitute for long distances, and people are experimenting with ethernet (some of them are even using Cat-5). Every once in a while you might run into something designed for a parallel connection, but not too often.
All these hot new interfaces are only really relevant at the consumer level, and that's only a small part of the real electronics industry. This lab sounds like a pretty close approximation of the real world as I've experienced it. Sorry if that disappoints you, but you might as well get used to it.
Last time I looked the boot iso was 16MB, or you could do it with 4 floppies (1 boot, 3 module)
For $10 more you can get the Pro Upgrade version. I did that with 8.1 and it came with the admin manual, which IIRC you don't get with Personal, but without the "clueless newbie" manuals you get with either full version (which just gather dust on my shelf until I get around to throwing them away). It's something to look into if you care, otherwise, carry on.
People, the look of the window manager is a product of the window manager, NOT the distro. The text looks good be cause they use truetype fonts. The colors are cool because someone created themes/images that look that way. All the Distro has done is slapped all this stuff together, added a few programs to make things easier to config and install for the newbs, and said, "Pay us 40 dollars for selling you something that is MOSTLY someone else's work!"
Except in this case the distro actually employs and pays a significant portion of the window manager's core development team. In fact, at one point SuSE employed more Linux developers than any other distro (over 500, IIRC), so I would hardly say that they are making money off of someone else's work. In fact, I might say that Linux wouldn't be anywhere near where it is today if SuSE didn't use a business model that actually makes money.
IIRC, 8.1, and maybe 8.0 also, had 7 CDs (I split the cost with a friend, I get the DVD and he gets the CDs, so I don't pay that close attention). Must of 5 and all of 6 and 7 are source, which is now on the second DVD.
One will still be able to do a full install off the CDs, and with the way YaST works it's extremely rare that anyone will want to access the source anyway, and in those cases (mplayer comes to mind) it's likely that they would prefer to grab it straight from CVS anyway. All the source will still be available from SuSE by ftp as well.
When you're pressing the disks in a production run, it makes a lot more sense to press one DVD than 2 or 3 CDs, especially for something that is hardly ever used. It could easily represent a significant savings for SuSE.
Besides, you can get a DVD-ROM for $28, including shipping. Even a starving college student could afford one by simply skipping pizza or beer for a week.
If it's as good as it sounds, then SuSE could become my new preferred desktop platform. My only fear is that it's slower than XP.
The speed of your user experience will depend greatly on what wm you use. My personal preference is WindowMaker. SuSE does a good job of supporting environments other than KDE, so all my apps are added to the menues just like they are under KDE, and I can still use the KDE stuff that I like without much issue.
The other thing is remember to activate DMA for your HDD, as that will make a huge difference (cut my boot time by about 70% when I finally remembered to do that in SuSE 8.1). This is really easy to do in YaST, but it isn't set that way by default.
Anyway, my SuSE 8.1/WinXP comparison should be taken with a big grain of salt because of the system differences, but here it is:
SuSE was on a slot Athlon 700 with 384M PC100, DMA not enabled. KDE felt a little sluggish, but not too bad, only a little slower than Win98SE on the same machine. With WindowMaker it is much faster than Win98SE.
XP was on a P-3 550 with 128M of unknown speed RAM, I don't know about DMA. It was painfully slow. SP1 helped a lot, but it was still much slower than I think the hardware difference would account for. For some unknown reason, floppy access was especially slow.
Anyway, like I said, it really isn't a fair comparison, but there it is. As long as you remember to enable DMA, SuSE should feel a lot faster than XP on the same hardware.
Much more so since they killed of YAST and only give you YAST2 which for remote administration (especialy over a slow connection) doesn't really make me very happy.
YaST2 for remote administration sucked mightily in 7.x, but is much better in 8.x. However, it is not true that YaST is not available in 7.x, I used it on my 7.3 file server frequently, only subjecting myself to the pain of text-based YaST2 on the rare occasions when I needed to do something I couldn't do in YaST or with a quick text file editing.
No need to download the entire Live Eval, there's a 16M boot ISO or 4 floppy images (1 boot, 3 modules) you can use to kick off the install.
I haven't tried an ftp install either, but I did switch my install source to ftp.suse.com, and it works fine. It's slower than the DVD, but then it can run in the background while my daughter watches her Powerpuff Girls, and I install/remove packages infrequently enough that I forget where I put the CD pouch I keep the DVD in...
I would wager that Mandrake has a considerable user base. Everyone I know uses it for desktops (and almost everyone I know uses RH for servers... with a few FreeBSD installs for good measure).
FWIW, everyone I know uses SuSE for desktops and servers.
Further, people around here generally start out with either SuSE or Mandrake. The ones that start with SuSE switch to Linux as their primary or even exclusive OS within 2 years, whereas the ones who start with Mandrake give up within a month and join the "Linux isn't ready for Prime Time" club. In the 3 years I've been using Linux I haven't yet seen an exception to this rule.
I'm not trying to belittle Mandrake, just providing a counter to your annecdote.
I agree it's a problem, but I think it's something they did in 8.1. I've been using SuSE since 6.3, and Online Update has never been anywhere near as slow as it is in 8.1. It's also a frequently reoccuring thread on the SuSE newsgroups. Personally, I think they should ditch the "new and improved" 8.1 YOU and go back to the version in 8.0, which was nearly perfect.
I'm sure there is, which is why I didn't say anything about how ludicrous it would be to buy a whole second computer, plus Windows, just to use the free Word viewer. However, that doesn't nullify my point. The assumption the parent made was that everyone was using Windows, which BTW already comes with a free Word "viewer" (WordPad) in the default install.
You could also just download the free MS Word viewer that Microsoft provides here [microsoft.com].
Strangely, there doesn't seem to be a Linux version. Or a Mac version, either. It's not so free when I'd have to buy a copy of Windows and spend 2 hours installing it, is it?
How do you figure this is anti-trust? This is simply a company who has the dominant product protecting their lead.
Replace "dominant" with "monopoly" and you basically have the definition of something actionable under anti-trust laws. This is exactly the same "embrace/extend/exterminate" action that MS has already been convicted of.
Maybe you don't see anything wrong with it, but that just demonstrates your ignorance of the real world and why anti-trust laws exist.
Have you ever played a game like Civilization or Alpha Centari? You would be amazed at how much those games make you understand politics.
And here we see the apparent source of that ignorance. If you think Civ reflects real life, trying beating it using only diplomacy. You can't, because Civ is a zero-sum game. The real world isn't.
But this isnt a game, this is business. And since businesses are SUPPOSED to make money, they need to make sure people continue to buy MS Office. And making an office suite that shares documents with all the various third-tier office suites just doesnt do that. Why should my company buy MS Office if the documents it produces are exactly the same as those of FreeBeerOffice? Now, if FBO cannot do things MSO can do, then there is an incentive...
While you are correct in the general sense, it's totally irrelevant in the case of a convicted monopoly. A monopoly has to play by different rules, and in some sense has a legal responsibility to maintain competition in the market. In the case of MSO, that means it needs to have a viable export format that is readable by other office suites.
As for why you would buy MSO over FBO, why do people buy StarOffice 6 instead of just downloading OpenOffice? Support contracts come to mind...
That's the romantic version of the story, of course.
That's Gary Thomas' version, and I think he would know.
According to Gary, he had a working port in 1995, before mklinux even got started, which was the beginning of Apple's involvement and what got Motorolla and the rest involved.
If you have evidence that contradicts his version of the story, feel free to present it here.
Uh, I don't think they brought up Linux on the Itanium by throwing a tarball or two out to 'the community' to test.
Linux got ported to Itanium because Intel paid SuSE to port it. I very much doubt they did that without providing any documentation, which makes your comment about hardware debugging equipment completely irrelevant.
Even if they weren't working directly with Intel there is no reason they would have needed any expensive hardware debugging equipment. An IA-64 compatible C compiler would be sufficient. If they really wanted to do it "right", meaning by using gcc, then they likely would have needed an Assembly Language Reference, and a User's Guide for porting developement platforms to IA-64 might have been helpful as well. Too bad Intel is so tight-fisted with that info!
Let's not pretend Linux, or any Modern Operating System, is so 'grass roots' that Joe Random and twelve of his buddies can throw it together using castoff hardware and lots of sweat.
Except that's pretty much exactly what Gary Thomas did when he ported Linux to PPC and had a working port before any of the PPC vendors got involved with the project.
Perhaps you should do a little research into the history of Linux ports before you make statements like these.
I don't think you've fully grasped the sheer amount of empty space that I-80 cuts through. I can't speak for your whole trip, but I've traveled as far east as Salt Lake City (from Grass Valley). Between Sacramento and Salt Lake City there's basically nothing. Sizable communities between those points include Reno/Sparks, Elko, Auburn, Colfax, and Truckee. Since you live in Placerville, I think you understand what I mean when I say that those last 3 would be considered "sizable communities". Of course, you'd skip those 3 since you'd probably take 50 to Placerville anyway, very few people are masochistic enough to take 80 to 49 to Placerville if they don't absolutely have to.
Anyway, I remember Elko being roughly comparable to Auburn with a bigger hotel, but the rest of those "towns" were basically mostly empty trailer parks with a gas station (with a slot machine if you're lucky!) and maybe a post office. Not exactly the kind of places one would expect to find many WAPs, and even if you did find one I very much doubt it would be hooked up to broadband of any sort.
When I made the drive from GV to SLC it took about 12 hours, with the only real stop (for more than gas) was at the Denny's in Elko. For some perspective on just how far it is, I had Hot Poontang waiting for me in SLC, so it would probably take longer under more "normal" circumstances.
Can he count change as well as I can? Does he have any experience? Will he try as hard as I will? Are you sure he's not going to spend too much time chatting with one customer and ignoring the next person in line?
You make an excellent point here, and I have an example of it in action:
My wife is a waitress, and a very good one. She's looking to get out of it, though, because she hates people. You would think that someone who hates people wouldn't be a good waitress, but the truth is quite the contrary. She keeps her mind on her job and makes sure all of her tables are taken care of. In fact, she's usually also picking up the slack for her more extroverted coworkers, who quite often will spend an inordinate amount of time chatting with people at one table who they might know, and ignore their other tables.
An exuberant, extroverted waitress is great if you happen to be the table she's chatting with. If you're at one of her other tables, though, you will get terrible service.
I think this whole personality test thing is a case of employers making assumptions about a position that they probably shouldn't be making. Just because someone is a "people person" doesn't mean they're going to be good at something "people oriented", like sales or waiting tables. Just because someone is an introvert, it doesn't mean they're a better programmer, and even if they are, are you absolutely sure that's what your team needs? Someone who's less introverted might boost productivity by improving communication and comaradery within the development team, even though they might not be a top-notch programmer.
The only reason these personality tests get any credence is because they're supposedly scientific. Really, you might as well be using astrology, because that would give you just as accurate a picture of how the person would really perform on the job. Either way, all you're getting is basic personality traits. What you aren't getting is the part that's actually important; how that individual leverages those traits, or labors under them, in other words, how those traits affect their actual performance.
Another example: I'm a Taurus, which supposedly means that I am stubborn (I can't disagree with that). But what exactly does that mean? It could mean that I'm obnoxiously opinionated, like Archie Bunker maybe, but it doesn't. It could mean that I'm the type of guy who never backs down from a fight, but it doesn't. What it does mean is that I'm considered to be good at math. Why? Certainly not because of any natural ability, in fact Taureans aren't supposed to be particularly intellectual, but simply because I didn't give up. I decided I wanted to learn Calculus and I did, even though I had to take Calc I 4 times before I passed it, and in the end I knew it better than most of the people who only took it once (heh, no big suprise there, eh?). When I later decided to be a math tutor, I was considered one of the best at my school.
If you pick up a book on astrology and read a description of Taurus, you won't find much that would indicate a good math tutor. Of course, I'm sure someone reading this is saying "Well, that's just astrology, it's not scientific". My response is, at least it's consistent. I've taken a few Meyers-Briggs tests, and I come up as INTJ, ISTJ, or INFJ depending on my mood at the time and the specific wording of the questions.
An example of a question from the last test I took: It is easy for you to communicate in social situations. I'm not a little bit introverted, I usually score 90-100% introverted. I don't like social or public situations, but I don't find them difficult. Again, that isn't a natural aptitude, it's something I learned how to do, through band performances, drama, and live action roleplaying. How did drama get in there if I'm such an introvert? My high school drafting teacher recommended it. I was already at the top of the class in drafting skill, and he said that communication skills would be much more useful in my life than another semester of Technical Illustration, so I took drama instead (he was right, BTW).
But, looking at my personality test, you would never guess that it's easy for me to do public presentations, or that I'm usually one of the first volunteers in a class that requires presentations, you would only see that I would rather do something else.
I would say that's because most of the Linux admins you know are actually Windows admins who have learned some things about Linux. They're using what they know, and if you're coming from Windows, Samba is how you share files on Linux.
Honestly, I would be doing that too if I hadn't taken the time to learn Unix. Samba performs a lot of translations that are necessary for communicating with Windows, but that's all extra baggage and potential headaches when you're sharing with any other OS. If you're not sharing with Windows, NFS is by far the superior choice.
My thoughts exactly.
When I was in the local music scene a lot of bands actually put something like "Please copy this for all your friends" on their album labels, in the hopes that it would get more people coming to their shows. I'd be very suprised if you couldn't find several local or semi-local bands who would be thrilled to have their music used for something like this. Just make sure they get proper mention in the credits!
Just go to a show and try to talk to the band after they play.
earthlcd.com
They have kits with small LCDs and driver cards. There's a 6.3" monochrome with an ISA driver for $199 and a 7.8" color with a PCI controller for $299. Their outlines are 8.11" X 5.74", which should fit fine as a 5.25" bay is actually 5.875" wide. If you've got a few more bucks in your budget, or maybe don't have a free ISA or PCI slot, there's also an analog color 6.5" for $695 that's 7.04" X 4.99".
You're going to have to rig up some sort of mounting bracket for it. I'd recomend looking up a small machine shop in the phone book to do the fab work. Usually small shops have pretty good machinists who will be able to give you some useful suggestions on the design of it, and I highly recomend taking advantage of their expertise if you want the bracket articulated in any way. Stay away from places that specialize in automotive machining, as they are generally considered to be the machining equivalent of an MCSE.
Wow I knew prices were dropping, but I had no idea they would drop $60 in only 3 hours!
They didn't, Tiger Direct just sucks.