I've used a Mac for a while and I was horribly confused about how swap works on a Unix machine. Then I installed Bernhard Baehrs Memory Monitor and actually *read* the helpfile. It will teach you about wired, active, inactive and free memory. What you describe is "inactive memory", and it will be used when the machine required more memory and no "free memory" is there. It's an interesting read, and using the above mentioned tool you can keep an eye on it.
Re:It's like nothing we've seen .. since Linux
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A New Kind of OS
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rather unlike the way Windows behaves, by loading 385 MB of junk you just might need during a session
I do not know the specifics of your system, but isn't that a bit on the high side? I'm running Windows XP Pro right now, with only my antivirus and firefox active. Additionally, I know about some "hidden" services that are iTunesHelper, Tablet.exe and TabUserW.exe which are for iTunes and my Wacom tablet. Task Manager reports 196MB used. While still not exactly "low" in my eyes (my OpenBSD server reports 30MB used), it is still a far cry from what you report. If I'd close AVG, Firefox and those three hidden services, an idle Windows XP Pro would be 105.5MB (196MB - 16MB [Antivirus] - 3.5MB [iTunesHelper] - 4.5MB [Tablet services] - 65MB [Firefox] - 1.5MB [Task Manager]) Of course, the tablet drivers and the iTunesHelper are useful, but it's not "Windows" that thinks it's required.
Let's be fair.... Windows isn't that memory hungry.
Unless you bought a iBook G3 with logic board failure that just happened not fall into the extended warranty period and Apple refused to repair? Okay, that's probably pretty rare, but I would still be using it if it didn't die.
You want old PC's? I'll give you some examples:
My primary laptop: P-III 600MHz mobile, 512Meg RAM. Sure I upgraded the harddisk and it got a wireless PCMCIA card. It still is my primary laptop and it runs WinXP fine. I even use Eclipse on it from time to time, OpenOffice is in daily use. How old is it? I don't know, because I bought it for 100€.
Up until last year, my parents used a P-III 800Mhz, 786Meg RAM for daily use. Ran Win2000 and later WinXP. My brother played GTA Vice City on it *daily*. It got relegated to server space now and happyily runs OpenBSD in the basement and does all kinds of stuff.
The server of my parents was a P166/128Meg for at least 5 years before the P-III 800Mhz replaced it. Ran OpenBSD just fine and the only thing it couldn't cope was IMAP, which the P-III does just fine.
Same with my own server, it was a P166/256Meg which ran for three years. It wasn't broke, but I replaced it with an AMD64 because it was cheap and wanted to toy with a 64-bit OS. It gathers dust now, but if somebody would need it, I'd revive it.
My sisters computer, which I built for her when she went to College is a AMD Athlon XP 2800+, 512Meg. Sure, not *that* old, but it runs well and it doesn't need replacing. She's happy with it...
I revived my wifes old computer, which she thought was worthless. Turned out to be a P-III 500Mhz with 64Meg RAM. I upgraded the RAM with some sticks I had lying around. It now is my mother in laws computer and runs perfectly well.
Sure, all these are pretty much P-III class computers, but the P-III was introduced in 1999! You won't find many P-I class computers. Old computers are used all over the place. I know one old pizzabox Mac that was used for ages. It still works, but gathers dust. Why? The user, a teacher, needs a printer and her old Apple printer died. Replacing it was pretty much impossible, so she went PC. (Not on my advice, though)
Of course, this is all anecdotical evidence because I manage these old PCs and Joe Sixpack doesn't always have a knowledgable geek handy. (I say "knowledgable" because many so called self declared computer geeks have close to no clue...)
Well, I agree with the fact that OEMs put so much crap on a machine that you have to be uninstalling stuff for a few hours before the computer is a "standard" Windows again. Even then, I'm not completely sure and prefer a fresh install in the first place.... if that is even possible. I have become pretty good at running "Windows only" and only the apps that I need. I know what processes run and my system tray on this system (a desktop) features exactly four icons: the speaker icon, the network icon (I enable it even when it's active), the "Safely remove hardware Icon" for my USB devices and AVG antivirus. No, I do not have systray hiding anything. You should see the trays of people that do not know how to keep a computer clean. Bleh!
Also, I run pretty much only open source software on my machines (exceptions: AVG Antivirus, iTunes and Acrobat Reader). All the rest is open source and I just live very well with it. OpenOffice does all for me, which brings me to my next point:
I think the only trial is of Office, and it's easy to remove if you don't want it.
I do not want Microsoft Office, yet I need an Office application and NeoOffice/J really doesn't cut it on Mac OS X. I had an iBook G3 for over 3 years and was a happy puppy and I used NeoOffice/J, yet I would not recommend it to anybody non-technical. I was watching these ads when my wife came over what "funny movies" I was looking at. I already told her about how happy I was with my iBook and she doesn't like her PC all that much. (Even though, I admin it now and it's runs smooth as silk) She said she'd want a Mac as a next computer and frankly, I don't think it's a good idea if I can't get a good alternative to Microsoft Office. I just don't want to shell out that much money for the few letters she has to write.
I know, this is not a rant against Macs, I loved mine until it dies of the dreaded logic board failure and Apple refused to replace it. I do, however, know how to run -even older PCs- cleanly and at a very low cost (hardware + Windows XP license, which is often included in the hardware), so for the moment I just am drooling over Mac OS X but won't buy one because of the Office issue.
Yes, that is quite true. In our time we wanted to make stuff like space invaders. Still, remember that even then only a small subset op kids wanted to do this. Of my siblings, none wanted to learn that, only I did. In my class, most kids didn't care about programming, if they even cared for computers.
Without a base interest, the kids won't want to learn it and modern games set the bar so high that I don't think many kids even try to make computer games these days anymore. After all, most of us programmers became what we are because we wanted to program games.;-)
I have experienced first hand what happens in public education. I was disgusted, and that's one reason why I don't have a job anymore. Getting back into IT after 1.5 years of being a teacher is very hard. I don't understand why, but everyone tells me I've been "out of it for too long". Damnn...
You, sir, were simply an exception. I was in your league too. Alas, I did the mistake of becoming a teacher 1.5 years ago (I quit, now I am unemployed). Yes, I did teach some programming. You see, I thought too that kids could do this and I was confronted with 16+ year olds that had no concept of a variable. Something I took granted at that age. So, perhaps I was a lousy teacher (I will not argue over that, I know I was a bad teacher), but they did not know what a variable was even tought they had algebra the last few years. Go figure.
Oh, I also tried to teach HTML to a bunch of 13 year olds. That was a bad idea... A really bad one.
No, the AC is right. Most kids have problems with abstract notions. That you'll find slashdotters that knew what a variable was at age 10 is no surprise. I'd bet that over 50% of us knew what a variable was at that age. I too did the mistake of projecting my own competencies on the chidren of today. Of course, the article says it's a computer club. The situation might be different with kids attending a computer club and thus already showing interest.
Now, not that I think that Microsoft will ever release Microsoft Office for Linux, but frankly the distribution differences don't need to be such a big obstacle. I'd assume that they'd write their own widgets for plain X and install the application it in/opt. It simply should not have any dependencies and everything gets put there. A bit like Mac OS X applications behave.... Not sure if it's possible.
Alternatively, they can just do like Oracle and select a few big distros (RedHat, SuSE, etc...) and support those. Microsoft Office for Linux would most likely be intended for businesses and those will select one of the "big distos".
My wife manages OpenOffice.org just fine. Of course, her knowledge of Word was so sub-par that she didn't have any preconceptions.
That being said: I have problems with OpenOffice.org when I try to do special stuff. Yesterday I wanted to print labels. Now that is a joke in OpenOffice.org (can't say about MS Office, I don't have it on my system anymore). I bought standard Herma A4 #5095 labels and I was happy to see it was in the predefined list. (File-New-Labels, Choose Brand and Type) Try it out if you have OpenOffice.org and see what you get. You'd expect an A4 sized page with 4 frames in it on the right spots. It's not what you get: you get a 77.74cm wide and 8.79cm high page with 4 frames next to each other. It was simply unusable.
I should have filed a bug report, which I'll do as soon as I can. Thing is, I'm still running 2.0.2 and 2.0.3 is out. Perhaps it has been fixed there.
In the end, I just took a standard empty document, added the 4 frames myself (which was easy) and then it worked fine. Still, this is a pretty major bug.
For the rest of OpenOffice.org: Base is absolutely unsuable (yeah, I know, use a real database...), Impress is okay for simple presentations (even though I filed bugs for that one too) but I always export to PDF because interopability with MS Office is very bad. Calc is just fine, I never had problems with that one. I rarely use Draw, but the times I did it worked fine and I have never used Math, so I have no opinion on it.
For the rest of my family, I also deployed OpenOffice.org. Both my sister and dad bitch about it, but I tell them they'll only get MS Office if they pay for it and the price tag seems to be enough to stay on OpenOffice.org.
There is one funny anecdote I remember with my sister regarding OpenOffice.org. She was bitching that the layout was fucked up on a document she collaborated on with a friend. She got.doc files from him, and she sent.doc files back. Everytime formatting got lost. In the end it turned out that the friend was also using OpenOffice.org. Once they knew that and saved to.odt, there wasn't any problem anymore....
Look, I understand you're their kid, but MY parents take my authority on computers by now. I've got a fucking computer science degree, why wouldn't they trust me on computer matters. 50% of all slashdotters are pretty much in the computer business. If their parents don't take advice from professionals, who will they take advice from?
You're doing something wrong: I've converted all of my family including my wife to firefox. They are used to it at that point that they ask me "Hey, Jts, that webpage doesn't show right/do anthing". Then I surf around for a while, remember there is another browser and load it up in IE. Then it works. Happens about 2x a year, for all my users....
Firefox has become their browser, IE isn't even in the picture anymore.
Ah, my poor kids have much less control than yours.
Just that we are clear here: the kid I talk about is not mine. I don't have kids and I most certainly wouldn't give any control (real) of computers to my future kids. Too bad for them that daddy is a admin.;-)
Indeed... Alas, I'd rather give not much more information on this family: a lot of ugly stuff happened. Stuff from which I know only stories and from different affected parties. I don't think I will ever have the complete picture. I can understand how the mother became what she is today. She surely wasn't like that when my wife was a kid (from her stories), but that was a long time ago.
I'm not disagreeing... (Okay, I disagree with the "retard" part. She has had very rough times, he is pretty much the only person that is left of her "family". That's quite hard.) I am, however, not in a position to do anything and you know that.
It's sad that you and his mother are being owned by a 14 year old and seem mentally incompetent to come up with a solution on how to deal with him. Sad. I mean give me a break. Parenting 101 for the mother and a set of balls for you.
Hold back your horses there! I told her what to do, and she failed. Sure... You cannot give me responsibility for not parenting him. He's not my kid and I have no legality of decision over him. So leave me out of this, okay? I warned, I gave a technical solution. As far as I am concerned, I did what I could do. The rest is up to them.
Agreed... Can't add much to what you said. I'd do what you describe (heck, no way any of my kids even get admin on a machine), but I have no kids. It's easy for me to say this. I'm not here to fix their family you know...
I also don't think that my mother in law will take a lecture about "education" from me...
So, I'm going to replace his gaming rig with a C64, or what? Pretty much all commercially available computers are capable enough to play games. I couldn't even afford a computer at his age...
I've discussed this topic a while ago in my journal and pretty much everything said here, was said there too. One guy said that kids shouldn't have a computer in their room. I agree, but isn't it a bit too late for that now? Parents (non-technical, that is) do not see dangers in computers. Back in the day, we only had one computer and it was in the living room. Everybody could see what you did and when you did it. Perfect solution. Times have changed.... I was a teacher for 1.5 years (I gave up, I want to go back in tech) and pretty much every kid had his own computer in his own room. I don't agree with it, but these are the facts of life these days.
Seems to me like he was looking for a way to get away from his family and life, and that WoW is a conduit, but not the cause.
That is clear to me. That family is pretty much messed up since the divorce of his mother and father (and the death of his bigger brother, but I'd rather not talk about that one on a public forum). You should hear my wife about those topics sometimes... I know that WoW is not the cause, but I am the brother-in-law. Do you really think that I am in a position to do anything? I can fix computers, I can't fix families.
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I've used a Mac for a while and I was horribly confused about how swap works on a Unix machine. Then I installed Bernhard Baehrs Memory Monitor and actually *read* the helpfile. It will teach you about wired, active, inactive and free memory. What you describe is "inactive memory", and it will be used when the machine required more memory and no "free memory" is there. It's an interesting read, and using the above mentioned tool you can keep an eye on it.
rather unlike the way Windows behaves, by loading 385 MB of junk you just might need during a session
I do not know the specifics of your system, but isn't that a bit on the high side? I'm running Windows XP Pro right now, with only my antivirus and firefox active. Additionally, I know about some "hidden" services that are iTunesHelper, Tablet.exe and TabUserW.exe which are for iTunes and my Wacom tablet. Task Manager reports 196MB used. While still not exactly "low" in my eyes (my OpenBSD server reports 30MB used), it is still a far cry from what you report. If I'd close AVG, Firefox and those three hidden services, an idle Windows XP Pro would be 105.5MB (196MB - 16MB [Antivirus] - 3.5MB [iTunesHelper] - 4.5MB [Tablet services] - 65MB [Firefox] - 1.5MB [Task Manager]) Of course, the tablet drivers and the iTunesHelper are useful, but it's not "Windows" that thinks it's required.
Let's be fair.... Windows isn't that memory hungry.
Forgot my dads Dell Inspirion. A P-III 733MHz/256Meg RAM. Works flawlessly.
Unless you bought a iBook G3 with logic board failure that just happened not fall into the extended warranty period and Apple refused to repair? Okay, that's probably pretty rare, but I would still be using it if it didn't die.
You want old PC's? I'll give you some examples:
Sure, all these are pretty much P-III class computers, but the P-III was introduced in 1999! You won't find many P-I class computers. Old computers are used all over the place. I know one old pizzabox Mac that was used for ages. It still works, but gathers dust. Why? The user, a teacher, needs a printer and her old Apple printer died. Replacing it was pretty much impossible, so she went PC. (Not on my advice, though)
Of course, this is all anecdotical evidence because I manage these old PCs and Joe Sixpack doesn't always have a knowledgable geek handy. (I say "knowledgable" because many so called self declared computer geeks have close to no clue...)
Well, I agree with the fact that OEMs put so much crap on a machine that you have to be uninstalling stuff for a few hours before the computer is a "standard" Windows again. Even then, I'm not completely sure and prefer a fresh install in the first place.... if that is even possible. I have become pretty good at running "Windows only" and only the apps that I need. I know what processes run and my system tray on this system (a desktop) features exactly four icons: the speaker icon, the network icon (I enable it even when it's active), the "Safely remove hardware Icon" for my USB devices and AVG antivirus. No, I do not have systray hiding anything. You should see the trays of people that do not know how to keep a computer clean. Bleh!
Also, I run pretty much only open source software on my machines (exceptions: AVG Antivirus, iTunes and Acrobat Reader). All the rest is open source and I just live very well with it. OpenOffice does all for me, which brings me to my next point:
I think the only trial is of Office, and it's easy to remove if you don't want it.
I do not want Microsoft Office, yet I need an Office application and NeoOffice/J really doesn't cut it on Mac OS X. I had an iBook G3 for over 3 years and was a happy puppy and I used NeoOffice/J, yet I would not recommend it to anybody non-technical. I was watching these ads when my wife came over what "funny movies" I was looking at. I already told her about how happy I was with my iBook and she doesn't like her PC all that much. (Even though, I admin it now and it's runs smooth as silk) She said she'd want a Mac as a next computer and frankly, I don't think it's a good idea if I can't get a good alternative to Microsoft Office. I just don't want to shell out that much money for the few letters she has to write.
I know, this is not a rant against Macs, I loved mine until it dies of the dreaded logic board failure and Apple refused to replace it. I do, however, know how to run -even older PCs- cleanly and at a very low cost (hardware + Windows XP license, which is often included in the hardware), so for the moment I just am drooling over Mac OS X but won't buy one because of the Office issue.
Yes, that is quite true. In our time we wanted to make stuff like space invaders. Still, remember that even then only a small subset op kids wanted to do this. Of my siblings, none wanted to learn that, only I did. In my class, most kids didn't care about programming, if they even cared for computers.
Without a base interest, the kids won't want to learn it and modern games set the bar so high that I don't think many kids even try to make computer games these days anymore. After all, most of us programmers became what we are because we wanted to program games. ;-)
I have experienced first hand what happens in public education. I was disgusted, and that's one reason why I don't have a job anymore. Getting back into IT after 1.5 years of being a teacher is very hard. I don't understand why, but everyone tells me I've been "out of it for too long". Damnn...
You, sir, were simply an exception. I was in your league too. Alas, I did the mistake of becoming a teacher 1.5 years ago (I quit, now I am unemployed). Yes, I did teach some programming. You see, I thought too that kids could do this and I was confronted with 16+ year olds that had no concept of a variable. Something I took granted at that age. So, perhaps I was a lousy teacher (I will not argue over that, I know I was a bad teacher), but they did not know what a variable was even tought they had algebra the last few years. Go figure.
Oh, I also tried to teach HTML to a bunch of 13 year olds. That was a bad idea... A really bad one.
No, the AC is right. Most kids have problems with abstract notions. That you'll find slashdotters that knew what a variable was at age 10 is no surprise. I'd bet that over 50% of us knew what a variable was at that age. I too did the mistake of projecting my own competencies on the chidren of today. Of course, the article says it's a computer club. The situation might be different with kids attending a computer club and thus already showing interest.
I that case, why not give Alice a try.
Well, a Diesel could technically run on coal dust. Check wikipedia if you don't believe me.
Now, not that I think that Microsoft will ever release Microsoft Office for Linux, but frankly the distribution differences don't need to be such a big obstacle. I'd assume that they'd write their own widgets for plain X and install the application it in /opt. It simply should not have any dependencies and everything gets put there. A bit like Mac OS X applications behave.... Not sure if it's possible.
Alternatively, they can just do like Oracle and select a few big distros (RedHat, SuSE, etc...) and support those. Microsoft Office for Linux would most likely be intended for businesses and those will select one of the "big distos".
My wife manages OpenOffice.org just fine. Of course, her knowledge of Word was so sub-par that she didn't have any preconceptions.
That being said: I have problems with OpenOffice.org when I try to do special stuff. Yesterday I wanted to print labels. Now that is a joke in OpenOffice.org (can't say about MS Office, I don't have it on my system anymore). I bought standard Herma A4 #5095 labels and I was happy to see it was in the predefined list. (File-New-Labels, Choose Brand and Type) Try it out if you have OpenOffice.org and see what you get. You'd expect an A4 sized page with 4 frames in it on the right spots. It's not what you get: you get a 77.74cm wide and 8.79cm high page with 4 frames next to each other. It was simply unusable.
I should have filed a bug report, which I'll do as soon as I can. Thing is, I'm still running 2.0.2 and 2.0.3 is out. Perhaps it has been fixed there.
In the end, I just took a standard empty document, added the 4 frames myself (which was easy) and then it worked fine. Still, this is a pretty major bug.
For the rest of OpenOffice.org: Base is absolutely unsuable (yeah, I know, use a real database...), Impress is okay for simple presentations (even though I filed bugs for that one too) but I always export to PDF because interopability with MS Office is very bad. Calc is just fine, I never had problems with that one. I rarely use Draw, but the times I did it worked fine and I have never used Math, so I have no opinion on it.
For the rest of my family, I also deployed OpenOffice.org. Both my sister and dad bitch about it, but I tell them they'll only get MS Office if they pay for it and the price tag seems to be enough to stay on OpenOffice.org.
There is one funny anecdote I remember with my sister regarding OpenOffice.org. She was bitching that the layout was fucked up on a document she collaborated on with a friend. She got .doc files from him, and she sent .doc files back. Everytime formatting got lost. In the end it turned out that the friend was also using OpenOffice.org. Once they knew that and saved to .odt, there wasn't any problem anymore....
Look, I understand you're their kid, but MY parents take my authority on computers by now. I've got a fucking computer science degree, why wouldn't they trust me on computer matters. 50% of all slashdotters are pretty much in the computer business. If their parents don't take advice from professionals, who will they take advice from?
You're doing something wrong: I've converted all of my family including my wife to firefox. They are used to it at that point that they ask me "Hey, Jts, that webpage doesn't show right/do anthing". Then I surf around for a while, remember there is another browser and load it up in IE. Then it works. Happens about 2x a year, for all my users....
Firefox has become their browser, IE isn't even in the picture anymore.
Not only that, but the spiffy restaurant wasn't all that spiffy either. In some spiffy restaurants 800USD is what the (cheap) wine costs.
Ah, my poor kids have much less control than yours.
Just that we are clear here: the kid I talk about is not mine. I don't have kids and I most certainly wouldn't give any control (real) of computers to my future kids. Too bad for them that daddy is a admin. ;-)
Indeed... Alas, I'd rather give not much more information on this family: a lot of ugly stuff happened. Stuff from which I know only stories and from different affected parties. I don't think I will ever have the complete picture. I can understand how the mother became what she is today. She surely wasn't like that when my wife was a kid (from her stories), but that was a long time ago.
That's going to have the same effect as taking away the router. It's up to his mother... Damn, I starting to feel pissed that I even brought this up.
I'm not disagreeing... (Okay, I disagree with the "retard" part. She has had very rough times, he is pretty much the only person that is left of her "family". That's quite hard.) I am, however, not in a position to do anything and you know that.
It's sad that you and his mother are being owned by a 14 year old and seem mentally incompetent to come up with a solution on how to deal with him. Sad. I mean give me a break. Parenting 101 for the mother and a set of balls for you.
Hold back your horses there! I told her what to do, and she failed. Sure... You cannot give me responsibility for not parenting him. He's not my kid and I have no legality of decision over him. So leave me out of this, okay? I warned, I gave a technical solution. As far as I am concerned, I did what I could do. The rest is up to them.
I know his mom is the ultimate problem here
Agreed... Can't add much to what you said. I'd do what you describe (heck, no way any of my kids even get admin on a machine), but I have no kids. It's easy for me to say this. I'm not here to fix their family you know...
I also don't think that my mother in law will take a lecture about "education" from me...
So, I'm going to replace his gaming rig with a C64, or what? Pretty much all commercially available computers are capable enough to play games. I couldn't even afford a computer at his age...
I've discussed this topic a while ago in my journal and pretty much everything said here, was said there too. One guy said that kids shouldn't have a computer in their room. I agree, but isn't it a bit too late for that now? Parents (non-technical, that is) do not see dangers in computers. Back in the day, we only had one computer and it was in the living room. Everybody could see what you did and when you did it. Perfect solution. Times have changed.... I was a teacher for 1.5 years (I gave up, I want to go back in tech) and pretty much every kid had his own computer in his own room. I don't agree with it, but these are the facts of life these days.
Evidently... I pretty much agree. He has no self-control and his mother has no control at all over him. There is nothing I can do about that.
Prepaid card.... From his allowance. I don't think I can interfere with that.
Seems to me like he was looking for a way to get away from his family and life, and that WoW is a conduit, but not the cause.
That is clear to me. That family is pretty much messed up since the divorce of his mother and father (and the death of his bigger brother, but I'd rather not talk about that one on a public forum). You should hear my wife about those topics sometimes... I know that WoW is not the cause, but I am the brother-in-law. Do you really think that I am in a position to do anything? I can fix computers, I can't fix families.
Read slashdot.org... Oh, wait.... Bugger!