I think you are missing the point here. The reason you claim to need LFS is that you do not have to use a package management system. If I understand correctly, that is because LFS does not include any sort of Package Management tool equivalent to dpkg or RPM. The solution gowen proposed is simple - don't type "dselect", don't futz with.rpm files. Install crap.tar.gz contents in/usr/tuttifruitty if you like. Then you have no problem. Debian won't try to overwrite anything, just don't encourage it to by doing something stupid like typing "apt-get crap" If you ignore the existence of package manager, then it won't try to manage your packages.
Why does LFS neglecting to provide a package manager count as an advantage? It seems like you would complain about the God awful KDE interface ruining your user experience every time you kill GNOME and click on the KDE option in XDM. So your proposed solution is to install a distribution that doesn't provide an option for KDE.
Does this make sense to you? The proper way to install stuff by hand on a Debian sytem is to place your stuff into a subdirecotry of/usr/local/. That way the Debian Package Manager won't touch it - while it controls the rest of/usr,/usr/local is off limits. The other option is don't screw with the package manager if you don't want package management. LFS is an interesting Distro, but not because it stares blankly at you when you type "dselect".
How often do you need to upgrade to a new distro? If you only have Progeny CDs, then just use Progeny Newton release. It includes xmms and mpg123. If you find that a few applications aren't recent enough for you, then you need only upgrade those individual components and their specific dependancies. Downloading a handful of.debs is hardly more bandwidth intensive than a full CVSup. If you have a Debian Woody CD, then that is even better, doing a full system update (but staying with your current release) is no more intensive than a FreeBSD cvsup. Either way, installing from floppies and Downloading will be dialup hell for either FreeBSD or Debian.
Broadband is only important if you are installing a full system or making a significant upgrade. The advantage to updating but sticking to a major release in Debian or cvsup in FreeBSD is the low delta means less download time. If you are planning to install Progeny Debian Newton release, then upgrading to Debian Woody over dialup, I'd advise against it.
I guess that you were proven correct by Progeny Debian's demise. Unfortunately, many disagreed with you. Progeny Debian's X Based installer was touted as one of it's great advantages. For many systems, I'd have to agree.
But I personally preferred the better integration with GNOME and GRUB, along with the better doumentation. Gnome-help and the centralized Gnome toolkit were nice. I feel that Progeny Debian was discontinued prematurely, but out of necessity for financial reasons.
I would suggest using CSH for scripting. AFAIK it is almost as universal as SH. Under Linux I don't think that TCSH has as many CSH emulation bugs as BASH does for emulating SH.
The C Shell was primarily intended to be a programming (scripting) shell as is evidenced by its semblance to C syntax. My old, very outdated NeXTStep installation showed that my CSH knowledge came in handy when BASH wasn't available. I don't know of any system that has a Bourne shell that doesn't also have a C Shell. It seems to fit your stated needs.
C Shell syntax is different enough that there isn't much chance of accidentally writing an incompatible script.
If this doesn't sufficiently address your needs, perhaps using NetBSD or another FreeBSD would provide more of a standard UNIX environment for development if portability is a primary concern.
I'm sure you don't see the painfully delicious irony in your post. So let me spell it out for you.
Bungee, the developer of Halo (before they were assimilated by Microsoft) was previously known for their sci-fi Doom-era superior shoot-em-up game, Marathon.
Intense stuff.
For a further, slightly aged dose of Irony, note that Marathon was a Macintosh based game. There was only a piddling port to Microsoft OSes much later.
It may have been a troll, but it wasn't as inaccurate as you think. Free can be "gratis", as in monetarily free, or "libre", as in freedom from restriction.
If that whole "free as in speech, not free as in beer" phrase sounds like nonsense to you, perhaps you might find enlightenment at http://www.gnu.org in the philosophy section.
Well, Linux was written for the i386. Now if you want to run a 64 processor cache-coherent unified memory architecture system, that would be great if there was free software to operate it. But if you can get your hands on a beast of a system, then you can surely afford a support contract for IRIX, and perhaps a dedicated team that runs your system. If Linux is disconnected from its base, then Sun, SGI et al will have to fight it for a thinner slice of their high end pie. But then what will the less affluent i386 owners run? I sure hope that they didn't misplace their original Windows 3.1 disks. And I certainly hope they don't find a bug, or need any other support.
The free software community came from humans to help humanity, when the Big Iron computer makers bound them with legal red tape and financial restraints. When Unix was no longer freely available, it was important to develop something new (GNU). GNU is not Unix so that the common man can use it, while those who would usurp it from humanity are bound by the very same legal tape that necessitated its creation.
By virtue of the corporations being comprised of memers of human society, they have a right to use this GNU software. But the software must remain accessible to the lowly 386 owner who is an equal member of society. If x386 capable Linux no will no longer work with 20 processor systems, then there is always Solaris, which should have offerings well within their budget.
Thanks you for your ginger response to my heavy handed post. I do realise that Linux could be forked and the historic Linux would be theoretically unharmed. I am comforted by the historical precident of lower end systems being in the majority. The relatively few large scale systems are free to make their modifications, but they have yet been unable to outweigh the modest majority in the Free Software system of values.
they've worked really well so far, but it's not clear if it will always work.
"Using the same code base is part of the problem under linux. "
Portability is a problem? I find it to be one of the greater virtues that make Linux worthwhile. While Microsoft couldn't financially justify supporting multiple architechtures, portability was one of the original specifications of Windows NT. It was written for MIPS and then ported to x86 just to prove it's portability. UNIX wouldn't have ever been more than a hobby for some guy who had too much time on his hands, a spare minicomputer and an affinity for Spacewar, except that it was highly portable and thus very important to harness synergies in computing technology from different hardware. If it weren't for using the same code base, there would be no GNU project for a unified system that could run under discrete UNIXes from differnt vendors. This "same code base" is the very nature of Linux. I might as well say that my consciousness, my self awareness, is part of my problem.
If performance is good on old hardware like 386/486 systems, wouldn't that imply better performance on more capable hardware? Running on a Pentium 4 does not behave the same as running on a 386 clocked to 1400 MHz. The advances of the newer architectures are recognized and utilized, while the kernel remains performant on 386 cpus.
Linux can currently support more than 2GB the last I heard. As for supporting multiple CPUs, supporting any given CPU arcitecture seems to be orthogonal. Would removing 386 support bring us closer to the goal of supporting 8 CPUs? How about removing PIII support so that 8 CPU PPro systems can be more fully supported?
I can't face the "fact" that old hardware is obsolete, when "old" is so poorly defined. If it is not useful when your goal is 3d rendered multiplayer combat environments, that does not define "obsolete." Obsolescence is the quality of no longer being able to achieve ones goals. If a bicycle was useful last week, does the existence of a helicopter remder it obsolete?
More directly, is a Motorola 68k obsolete? Not if the Palm is a useful PDA. A 386 is better than a Pentium if heat is a problem. Yes, you feel this this is a disparate function from your cutting edge desktop. As I see it, there is little need to argue over which is more important, as both needs can be fullfilled by the same codebase. I will strongly argue that despite the relative importance of each system, both do have significant importance, so such divisions are only damaging to to Kernel. There are many advantages to flexibility, scalability and portability. Instead of ending up with 3 disparate projects, none of which are useful on a fourth situation, there can be 1 project which flexibly fits the needs of multiple situations. The flexibility makes future projects more feasible with less fruitless groundwork, as the infrastructure is already present.
I would appreciate any pointers to what you read that suggests that support for previous systems bars support for future systems. This seems to me to be a most egregious embodiment of FUD that exploits technology consumers via artificial obsolecsence. From my perspective, such tripe only vilifies Intel and evidences that their monopoly may be ripe for government intervention if they continue exploiting the vulnerability of naive consumers who believe that they need the latest technology for sucessful wordprocessing. Insomuch as this nonsense is an embodiment of vestigal elitism from high powered system administrators, this is a luxury that they won't be enjoying for much longer. SGI Irix is what you want. Notice how SGI, Sun, HPCompaqDigital and especially IBM have embraced Linux, much as a drowning man has embraced the waterwings from a kiddie-pool. That Linux even has the capability to scale up anywhere near the enterprise class should be more than enough to burst your bubble, as from some points of view, (How much commodity hardware is on the top 500 supercomputer list?) the superior concept of "high powered systems" can be considered to be "obsolete." As least, it is evident that your high powered systems are not too good to share a common codebase with the lowly 386.
At least for AMD based multiproc systems, the Northbridge seems to be the hub around which the CPUs are gathered. AFAIK, the RAM doesn't have a direct connection to either CPU, it has a dedcated bus to the Northbridge. Why is the Northbridge "fluff"? Isn't is the closest thing to a host on PC systems? It is what makes the "Motherboard" the mainboard. Where is the BIOS located? If it is part of the Northbridge, then that would close the argument for me. If it is discrete, then it is a good candidate for the center of a modern PC, if you allow that once a system is booted, "central" functions (like "basic Input and Output") can be migrated to other parts of the system.
For me, anyway, the PCI-PCI bridge seems to be a pretty good negation of the "PCI bus as host" viewpoint. If anything, the PCI bus is just an extension to the PCI controller, which would seem to fall under the "Northbridge chipset as host" perspective.
As we migrate from a single CPU paradyme to multiple CPU architectures, it seems the view of "Primary CPU controlling auxilliary cpus" is vestigal, and we will be moving away from it. This seems apparent if you follow the Locking mechanisms used by Linux migrating from large per-cpu locks, to finer grained locks. It is not very useful to have a CPU centric system when CPUs are commoditized. The Chipset seems to be the lowest common denominator for the forseeable future.
Perhaps the Micrsloth is a dangerous cornered animal. But it won't hurt you if you don't try to play with it. Just keep your distance, and you should be fine. If need be, there are many other animals around to play with. Sure, that Linux can be a stinking beast, but at least it's not a predator. and it can't help it if it smells bad, there are so many people throwing it fish... do you realise how many people offer it bad herring? Regardless, many fishmongers like to play with it.
There are also many different cults of Daemon worshippers, they may not be to friendly, but the BSD bark is worse than it's byte.
You also need to keeps in mind that these animals are only the strays. If you are willing to go to a pet store, for example, there is a wide selction of other species to choose from. Get a fruit. Get a celestial body. Get a life... (I need to pay attention to that last one.)
Realise that if the animal in the corner acts a bit too feral, then there is always always someone at the pound who may have to put the beast down. (Not Uncle Sam? Then how about the EU?)
--
Ugh, this is what happens when I read Slashdot when I should be sleeping!
I have never used FreeBSD, but as for NetBSD and OpenBSD, the answer it that all of these things are done using the Shell, once the disks are in place. NetBSD is a full OS in and of itself, and XFree86 is just a really nice add on that remains distinct from the product.
It is too bad that Progeny Debian is no longer in Production, as it looked to me to have the Best answer to all of your questions. The disk partitioning item is the most difficult of your requirements; with the current computing paradyme, this would have to be handled with some kind of non-disk based ROM that ws integrated with the rest of your system. But if you allow disk partitioning to be handled once during initiall setup (Windows and Mac systems aren't that much fun during disk partitioning either) then everything else is handled in a central and consistent way in Progeny. Even the initial disk partitioning is relatively pleasant (if you aren't looking for non-EXT2).
As for every thing else, it is handled by the GNOME control center. There is also much flexibility and backward compatability in that you can also use standard Debian command-line (Newt) configuration via dpkg-reconfigure, or standard Unix style/etc configuration, and the system stays coherent, bacuse they all are just different faces to the same back end. While the Gnome Control Center is available on anything that runs X11, dpkg-reconfigure is available on any Debian based system and/etc configuration is a very widespread Unix practice, Progeny had a very consistent overall vision for these standard tools, and did much work to have them interact smoothly. Despite the discrete components, they present the appearance of a single integrated package.
Fortunately The Debian Project is in the process of reintegrating the Progeny enhancements, but that goes back to your point of individual hackers not having consistent priorities. Progeny was making an OS with a central vision of end-user ease of use and integration within the Debian framework. Now they just support Debian systems in general. Progeny has made a really nice blanket... now that it is back in the hands of the Debian Project I hope the quilt can succeed in patching it's many remaining holes.
True, it's still not at 1.0 release, but that's more of a lack of desired features than instability. It works... they're just aiming a bit higher. Keep boot disks around just in case, but give Grub a shot. It works really well, as long as you can follow the documentation. Once you have it installed properly, it's flexibility really comes in handy, especially if you experiment w/ multiple OSes.
I couldn't agree more... If I were willing to use such it boot loader, it would probably be DOS. Better support, greater variety of Bootable OSes, and more functionality built in. Mosts BIOSes are fully supported by/supportive of DOS, and any OS available can write to a FAT filesystem (for editiing Autoexec.bat)
Even better, get a GRUB boot disk. You can use it to boot Linux, Windows, and whatever the hell else you can find.
# For booting Windows NT or Windows95
title Windows NT / Windows 95 boot menu
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1
# For loading DOS if Windows NT is installed
# chainload/bootsect.dos
# For booting Linux from hdc3
title Linux 2.4.2
kernel (hd1,2)/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.2 root=/dev/hdc3 #single
Come on now... The Linux Kernel itself is practically an alternative to LILO. If you DD a kernel onto a floppy it will boot. What exactly is the problem? Can't XOSL just stay out of the way and let the kernel load itself? How does it load Windows? I sure hope it doesn't need LILO for that!
By the way, Sultan... couldn't GRUB successfully out LILO? GRUB's flexibility has saved me a few times. With GRUB I might be able to boot more copies of Windows than the NT menu allows. It let me boot NetBSD without a native bootloader the first time I even tried it. Nothing but my unmodified GRUB floppy.
I sure wish XOSL was more than it is... I was eager when I first saw it. But now I can't even peruse it again, and I don't care enough to try to circumvent the slashdotting of the site.
Damn, I was trying to get more of a rise out of you then that! I failed pretty miserably.... oh well.
Don't feel too bad about the Geos thing... I really wouldn't know. Before I actually did much of anything productive, I formatted the GEOS system disk trying to set something up I think. Ah hell, I did the same thing with my Apple IIGS trying to get the damn thing to see 5.25 inch disks. Never did succeed, but I had a nice clean disk where the system disk used to be.
I actually really liked the graphics on the C-64. It seemed like they handled their limited range better than other machines that supposedly had more potential. At least that's how it seemed when I saw games that were available for multiple platforms. Spy vs. spy had two sided disks for the Commodore and Apple systems... the Commodore version was about 20 times more playable. The AD&D gold box series, like pool of radiance, by all logical estimated should have looked better on IBM and Amiga machines, but the Commodore looked somehow less "cartoony" and more enjoyable.
Now I suppose that doesn't make sense. But it seems like Commodore game developers had a much better grasp of the system... maybe the Amiga was just too far ahead of its time? Yeah, I'm grasping here, I'll admit it. But look at Shrek and the Final Fantasy movie that were out not long ago. Final Fantasy was amazing... for a completely rendered movie, it was incredible, at times you could forget that it wasn't live action. But it still wasn't there, little niggling things would ruin the whole effect. Now Shrek while stunning, still wasn't as technically masterful, with a pseudo-live action effect that obviously wasn't trying for reality, but it worked better, because they had a better grasp of what was capable.
Now, please... feel free to regard this post as total bullshit and moderate it as such. I'm a bitter Amiga hater, Commodore should have stuck with what they had success with and let someone else with better management skills take on the admittedly amazing Amiga which ended up marking CBM's gravestone. Or more accurately, Commodore business machines was just another notch on the Amiga's morbid belt.
I wonder if anybody noticed how clever I was substituting WYSE for Wise, and then throwing in the names of a whole bunch of other companies from back in the day.
Or how stupid I was because I couldn't remember any other of the defunct companies that were in the same class as WYSE once were. Well, I did remember Cray. Jesus, I hope somebody moderates this down.
In response to your lighter note... that is a major point of the book 1984. The "powers that be" can treat you like a slave, but they won't let you use the word "slave". Instead, the word "freedom" is corrupted to mean slavery, and the irony is leached away. Without irony and shock, or language to share such things, mass rebellion is no longer an option.
Microsoft is hardly a world class government capable of enslaving otherwise free individuals. They are not capable of removing "negative" words like idiot or slavery from out language, much less of corrupting them into self-respective antonyms. But as far as computing technology is concerned, the mass culture is still too immature to have developed such "words" in the first place, so there is less work necessary. Annhiliating one word would not have provided much basis for 1984, rather is was an entire framework of words that supported a rebellious class of ideas. When in computing, such words are not yet established, then it is much easier to demonize the individual words before they have sufficient opportunity to even take hold.
Witness the term "GPL". In popular culture it is as of yet a very alien and inaccessible word, which cannot yet be used to leverage a very powerful idea. Most people who have learned of the GPL through mass culture as opposed to direct influence, can only suggest that it is "viral" and dangerous. A much less masterful form of 1984's "double-speak" for sure, but such mastery is not necessary for such nascent terms. Such words as representative of powerful ideas have difficulty being accepted even without direct and deliberate opposition from an antagonist.
Consider the difficulty of the term "Free Software." I am hardly a gifted enough poet to feasibly discuss this term with those who aren't already familiar with it. So the similar but distinct term "open source" was coined to try to overcome such difficulties. It has, to a degree, gained some modicum of acceptance, but only by sacrificing many of the ideals that made it, or "free software" worth championing in the first place.
Much easier to see for those who as of yet may be considered "outsiders" are the ideas behind the words representing "stability", "user-friendliness", "compatibility". The zeitgeist might reflect a common awareness of deficiencies with most popular computing paradymes. Most people can express that their computer is not as reliable as their car, thier dog or the average appliance. But without sufficient language of protest or rebellion, we as a society have been stuck under Microsoft's rule for about 20 years. Saying 20 years in regard to computing is similar to saying 20 dog years.
Microsoft may not intend to be "evil". It may be a "chicken and the egg" problem as to whether they support what the computing public claims to want with their limited computing vocabulary, or they shaped the computing public's perception of what things may be possible with underhanded techniques. Despite all of the evil they may seem to represent, at least they saw us, the mass public, as potential computing consumers worth subjecting to their rule. The regime they masterfully overthrew in their coup d'informatique considered us the untouchables, a caste not worthy of using a computer.
On a darker note of response, beware of those who would deprive you of sucessfully asking whether others agree with you, despite your disagreement with the current "head of state." Microsoft can only "treats you like one" when language prevents you from coherently and cohesively acting as one-of-many.
Hey now! Maybe your pseudo 4096 color graphics were pretty snazzy for playing Strip Poker(c), but that doesn't give you license to ignorantly bash the C-64! (I understand it had actual digitized hand colorized photographs of real women, but I wouldn't know. I never had an Amiga, my Commodore only had wholesome games involving violence and fantasy!)
I seem to remember accessing dark blue, light blue, blue and cyan, all at once! If those were the only four colors available, I can understand why there wasn't much Commodore hosted porn. And perhaps it's painful to hear elegantly composed music when all you know is porno-jazz!
Seriously, it wasn't 160 x 200 @ 4, it was _320_ x 200, with 16 simultaneous colors! And a 9 octave range, from.1 Hz to 4KHz. If it weren't for the lack of a subwoofer, soundtracks to some of the better C-64 games sound just like songs I hear playing in clubs today. Perhaps 320 doesn't seem much better than 160, but you gotta take all you can get when you're working with 64 KBytes of RAM, buddy. If SIDs are painful to hear, then why are they still being traded today? Because the're classics, and it took Trent Reznor making.Mp3s for Quake to outdo them. Well, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but I can still think of C-64 tracks that I'd prefer over that dour uninteresting Quake track that Trent did.
Commodores had harddrives available. There just wasn't much point in collecting porn in 16 colors. And the entire base OS could fit into 20K of ROM for instant-on capability. There was a mouse available too, and even a fully featured and compact GUI environment that is still available today, called GEOS. Anything you wanted was available, it just wasn't necessary. There is even a TCP/IP stack available for Commodore hardware if you're interested. But please, I know your type... just don't go surfing for porn.
Oh, and I didn't grumble, I just never moved to Amiga. I grumbled when Amiga finally pulled Mr Snowcone under, losing them all of the profits from the success of Mr. Sno... I mean, the C-64.
The Commodore 128 was backwards compatible with the C-64. And at the source level , the Commodore 64 was largely backwards compatible with the Commodore PET and Vic 20, if not as fully as the C-128's "GO 64" command. (source code...:P just be careful what you POKE and where you PEEK.)
But this point mmontour was trying to make could have been better made with the transition from Apple's ][ series to the Macintosh architecture. Other than a few hardware interfaces, there was almost no backwards compatibility, and Apple planned it that way.
The Amiga was not developed by Commodore as a break from their venerable C-64, rather, the Amiga was a distinct machine from a failing company which Commodore bought, and then championed as superior to their previous offerings. Unfortunately, they just succeeded in carrying on the Amiga curse.
I never had an Amiga... I couldn't betray my Commodore 64 by dating its sexy cousin like that. Instead, I later ended up skulking around with some skanky PC I picked up at CompUSA's red light dictrict. I'm sure fond of that slinky Mac, and PCs can keep my attention by parading around in NetBSD, or some indecent Linux rags. But even in the face of a new 64 bit whore of a PC, my true love will always by my Commodore.
Wow, a nonstarter. Who would have thought that the dissapointment of not even seeing an offensive link could be more offensive than actually putting some effort into a troll?
It's a new generation of trolls, I suppose... leave them hanging and wanting more. I'm seriously dissapointed! "coming soon...." ???
As an active Debian developer you don't read the webpage for Debian? Under the heading Getting Started it notes that latest stable release of Potato, release 3, was released within the lase 12 months. In the last 12 months, release 1 of Potato (2.2) was available on November 14, 2000. Debian 2.2r2 was available on December 3, 2000. 2.2r3, probably the last release in the Potato series was available since April 17, 2001.
The Next stable release is likely to be Woody, Release 3.0, which will support MIPS, ia64, HP PA-RISC, IBM S/390, in addition to the 6 architectures already supported in the Potato series. Only NetBSD has more architectures. As of yet, FreeBSD has added the Alpha Architecture to their x86 derived distribution. So far, both Debian and FreeBSD are 3 for 3 for stable releases in the past 12 months.
That's not to say that FreeBSD has a slower release cycle than Debian, but it even even less accurate to say that Debian has released nothing in the last 12 months. I guess the race is on. If Debian releases Woody 3.0 by FreeBSD's expected release date of January 15, 2002 for 4.5, then you can feel humiliated.
Honestly, my money would be on FreeBSD for this race.
(P.S.)
Don't get me wrong. I think NetBSD is far superior to FreeBSD in almost every way. I can't wait until I am running a NetBSD based Debian box. Goodbye, Linux.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you are missing the point here. The reason you claim to need LFS is that you do not have to use a package management system. If I understand correctly, that is because LFS does not include any sort of Package Management tool equivalent to dpkg or RPM. The solution gowen proposed is simple - don't type "dselect", don't futz with .rpm files. Install crap.tar.gz contents in /usr/tuttifruitty if you like. Then you have no problem. Debian won't try to overwrite anything, just don't encourage it to by doing something stupid like typing "apt-get crap" If you ignore the existence of package manager, then it won't try to manage your packages.
/usr/local/. That way the Debian Package Manager won't touch it - while it controls the rest of /usr, /usr/local is off limits. The other option is don't screw with the package manager if you don't want package management. LFS is an interesting Distro, but not because it stares blankly at you when you type "dselect".
Why does LFS neglecting to provide a package manager count as an advantage? It seems like you would complain about the God awful KDE interface ruining your user experience every time you kill GNOME and click on the KDE option in XDM. So your proposed solution is to install a distribution that doesn't provide an option for KDE.
Does this make sense to you? The proper way to install stuff by hand on a Debian sytem is to place your stuff into a subdirecotry of
A ray of brown sunshine?
Does that mean that your turds are somehow related to Guiness beer?
I'm gonna have to switch brands methinks.
How often do you need to upgrade to a new distro? If you only have Progeny CDs, then just use Progeny Newton release. It includes xmms and mpg123. If you find that a few applications aren't recent enough for you, then you need only upgrade those individual components and their specific dependancies. Downloading a handful of .debs is hardly more bandwidth intensive than a full CVSup. If you have a Debian Woody CD, then that is even better, doing a full system update (but staying with your current release) is no more intensive than a FreeBSD cvsup. Either way, installing from floppies and Downloading will be dialup hell for either FreeBSD or Debian.
Broadband is only important if you are installing a full system or making a significant upgrade. The advantage to updating but sticking to a major release in Debian or cvsup in FreeBSD is the low delta means less download time. If you are planning to install Progeny Debian Newton release, then upgrading to Debian Woody over dialup, I'd advise against it.
I guess that you were proven correct by Progeny Debian's demise. Unfortunately, many disagreed with you. Progeny Debian's X Based installer was touted as one of it's great advantages. For many systems, I'd have to agree.
But I personally preferred the better integration with GNOME and GRUB, along with the better doumentation. Gnome-help and the centralized Gnome toolkit were nice. I feel that Progeny Debian was discontinued prematurely, but out of necessity for financial reasons.
I would suggest using CSH for scripting. AFAIK it is almost as universal as SH. Under Linux I don't think that TCSH has as many CSH emulation bugs as BASH does for emulating SH.
The C Shell was primarily intended to be a programming (scripting) shell as is evidenced by its semblance to C syntax. My old, very outdated NeXTStep installation showed that my CSH knowledge came in handy when BASH wasn't available. I don't know of any system that has a Bourne shell that doesn't also have a C Shell. It seems to fit your stated needs.
C Shell syntax is different enough that there isn't much chance of accidentally writing an incompatible script.
If this doesn't sufficiently address your needs, perhaps using NetBSD or another FreeBSD would provide more of a standard UNIX environment for development if portability is a primary concern.
I'm sure you don't see the painfully delicious irony in your post. So let me spell it out for you.
Bungee, the developer of Halo (before they were assimilated by Microsoft) was previously known for their sci-fi Doom-era superior shoot-em-up game, Marathon.
Intense stuff.
For a further, slightly aged dose of Irony, note that Marathon was a Macintosh based game. There was only a piddling port to Microsoft OSes much later.
But in case you do, and you care,
The answer is BOCHS
It may have been a troll, but it wasn't as inaccurate as you think. Free can be "gratis", as in monetarily free, or "libre", as in freedom from restriction.
If that whole "free as in speech, not free as in beer" phrase sounds like nonsense to you, perhaps you might find enlightenment at http://www.gnu.org in the philosophy section.
Well, Linux was written for the i386. Now if you want to run a 64 processor cache-coherent unified memory architecture system, that would be great if there was free software to operate it. But if you can get your hands on a beast of a system, then you can surely afford a support contract for IRIX, and perhaps a dedicated team that runs your system. If Linux is disconnected from its base, then Sun, SGI et al will have to fight it for a thinner slice of their high end pie. But then what will the less affluent i386 owners run? I sure hope that they didn't misplace their original Windows 3.1 disks. And I certainly hope they don't find a bug, or need any other support.
The free software community came from humans to help humanity, when the Big Iron computer makers bound them with legal red tape and financial restraints. When Unix was no longer freely available, it was important to develop something new (GNU). GNU is not Unix so that the common man can use it, while those who would usurp it from humanity are bound by the very same legal tape that necessitated its creation.
By virtue of the corporations being comprised of memers of human society, they have a right to use this GNU software. But the software must remain accessible to the lowly 386 owner who is an equal member of society. If x386 capable Linux no will no longer work with 20 processor systems, then there is always Solaris, which should have offerings well within their budget.
Thanks you for your ginger response to my heavy handed post. I do realise that Linux could be forked and the historic Linux would be theoretically unharmed. I am comforted by the historical precident of lower end systems being in the majority. The relatively few large scale systems are free to make their modifications, but they have yet been unable to outweigh the modest majority in the Free Software system of values.
they've worked really well so far, but it's not clear if it will always work.
:D Seriously, I'm not worried. To each their own!
"Using the same code base is part of the problem under linux. "
Portability is a problem? I find it to be one of the greater virtues that make Linux worthwhile. While Microsoft couldn't financially justify supporting multiple architechtures, portability was one of the original specifications of Windows NT. It was written for MIPS and then ported to x86 just to prove it's portability. UNIX wouldn't have ever been more than a hobby for some guy who had too much time on his hands, a spare minicomputer and an affinity for Spacewar, except that it was highly portable and thus very important to harness synergies in computing technology from different hardware. If it weren't for using the same code base, there would be no GNU project for a unified system that could run under discrete UNIXes from differnt vendors. This "same code base" is the very nature of Linux. I might as well say that my consciousness, my self awareness, is part of my problem.
If performance is good on old hardware like 386/486 systems, wouldn't that imply better performance on more capable hardware? Running on a Pentium 4 does not behave the same as running on a 386 clocked to 1400 MHz. The advances of the newer architectures are recognized and utilized, while the kernel remains performant on 386 cpus.
Linux can currently support more than 2GB the last I heard. As for supporting multiple CPUs, supporting any given CPU arcitecture seems to be orthogonal. Would removing 386 support bring us closer to the goal of supporting 8 CPUs? How about removing PIII support so that 8 CPU PPro systems can be more fully supported?
I can't face the "fact" that old hardware is obsolete, when "old" is so poorly defined. If it is not useful when your goal is 3d rendered multiplayer combat environments, that does not define "obsolete." Obsolescence is the quality of no longer being able to achieve ones goals. If a bicycle was useful last week, does the existence of a helicopter remder it obsolete?
More directly, is a Motorola 68k obsolete? Not if the Palm is a useful PDA. A 386 is better than a Pentium if heat is a problem. Yes, you feel this this is a disparate function from your cutting edge desktop. As I see it, there is little need to argue over which is more important, as both needs can be fullfilled by the same codebase. I will strongly argue that despite the relative importance of each system, both do have significant importance, so such divisions are only damaging to to Kernel. There are many advantages to flexibility, scalability and portability. Instead of ending up with 3 disparate projects, none of which are useful on a fourth situation, there can be 1 project which flexibly fits the needs of multiple situations. The flexibility makes future projects more feasible with less fruitless groundwork, as the infrastructure is already present.
I would appreciate any pointers to what you read that suggests that support for previous systems bars support for future systems. This seems to me to be a most egregious embodiment of FUD that exploits technology consumers via artificial obsolecsence. From my perspective, such tripe only vilifies Intel and evidences that their monopoly may be ripe for government intervention if they continue exploiting the vulnerability of naive consumers who believe that they need the latest technology for sucessful wordprocessing. Insomuch as this nonsense is an embodiment of vestigal elitism from high powered system administrators, this is a luxury that they won't be enjoying for much longer. SGI Irix is what you want. Notice how SGI, Sun, HPCompaqDigital and especially IBM have embraced Linux, much as a drowning man has embraced the waterwings from a kiddie-pool. That Linux even has the capability to scale up anywhere near the enterprise class should be more than enough to burst your bubble, as from some points of view, (How much commodity hardware is on the top 500 supercomputer list?) the superior concept of "high powered systems" can be considered to be "obsolete." As least, it is evident that your high powered systems are not too good to share a common codebase with the lowly 386.
At least for AMD based multiproc systems, the Northbridge seems to be the hub around which the CPUs are gathered. AFAIK, the RAM doesn't have a direct connection to either CPU, it has a dedcated bus to the Northbridge. Why is the Northbridge "fluff"? Isn't is the closest thing to a host on PC systems? It is what makes the "Motherboard" the mainboard. Where is the BIOS located? If it is part of the Northbridge, then that would close the argument for me. If it is discrete, then it is a good candidate for the center of a modern PC, if you allow that once a system is booted, "central" functions (like "basic Input and Output") can be migrated to other parts of the system.
For me, anyway, the PCI-PCI bridge seems to be a pretty good negation of the "PCI bus as host" viewpoint. If anything, the PCI bus is just an extension to the PCI controller, which would seem to fall under the "Northbridge chipset as host" perspective.
As we migrate from a single CPU paradyme to multiple CPU architectures, it seems the view of "Primary CPU controlling auxilliary cpus" is vestigal, and we will be moving away from it. This seems apparent if you follow the Locking mechanisms used by Linux migrating from large per-cpu locks, to finer grained locks. It is not very useful to have a CPU centric system when CPUs are commoditized. The Chipset seems to be the lowest common denominator for the forseeable future.
Perhaps the Micrsloth is a dangerous cornered animal. But it won't hurt you if you don't try to play with it. Just keep your distance, and you should be fine. If need be, there are many other animals around to play with. Sure, that Linux can be a stinking beast, but at least it's not a predator. and it can't help it if it smells bad, there are so many people throwing it fish... do you realise how many people offer it bad herring? Regardless, many fishmongers like to play with it.
There are also many different cults of Daemon worshippers, they may not be to friendly, but the BSD bark is worse than it's byte.
You also need to keeps in mind that these animals are only the strays. If you are willing to go to a pet store, for example, there is a wide selction of other species to choose from. Get a fruit. Get a celestial body. Get a life... (I need to pay attention to that last one.)
Realise that if the animal in the corner acts a bit too feral, then there is always always someone at the pound who may have to put the beast down. (Not Uncle Sam? Then how about the EU?)
--
Ugh, this is what happens when I read Slashdot when I should be sleeping!
I have never used FreeBSD, but as for NetBSD and OpenBSD, the answer it that all of these things are done using the Shell, once the disks are in place. NetBSD is a full OS in and of itself, and XFree86 is just a really nice add on that remains distinct from the product.
/etc configuration, and the system stays coherent, bacuse they all are just different faces to the same back end. While the Gnome Control Center is available on anything that runs X11, dpkg-reconfigure is available on any Debian based system and /etc configuration is a very widespread Unix practice, Progeny had a very consistent overall vision for these standard tools, and did much work to have them interact smoothly. Despite the discrete components, they present the appearance of a single integrated package.
It is too bad that Progeny Debian is no longer in Production, as it looked to me to have the Best answer to all of your questions. The disk partitioning item is the most difficult of your requirements; with the current computing paradyme, this would have to be handled with some kind of non-disk based ROM that ws integrated with the rest of your system. But if you allow disk partitioning to be handled once during initiall setup (Windows and Mac systems aren't that much fun during disk partitioning either) then everything else is handled in a central and consistent way in Progeny. Even the initial disk partitioning is relatively pleasant (if you aren't looking for non-EXT2).
As for every thing else, it is handled by the GNOME control center. There is also much flexibility and backward compatability in that you can also use standard Debian command-line (Newt) configuration via dpkg-reconfigure, or standard Unix style
Fortunately The Debian Project is in the process of reintegrating the Progeny enhancements, but that goes back to your point of individual hackers not having consistent priorities. Progeny was making an OS with a central vision of end-user ease of use and integration within the Debian framework. Now they just support Debian systems in general. Progeny has made a really nice blanket... now that it is back in the hands of the Debian Project I hope the quilt can succeed in patching it's many remaining holes.
What would be the advantage of a cyberspace modeled around Keanu Reeves anyway?
Dude, there goes virtual So-crates! Eeeexcelent! (play wailing air guitar riff)
Which homepage is that?
True, it's still not at 1.0 release, but that's more of a lack of desired features than instability. It works... they're just aiming a bit higher. Keep boot disks around just in case, but give Grub a shot. It works really well, as long as you can follow the documentation. Once you have it installed properly, it's flexibility really comes in handy, especially if you experiment w/ multiple OSes.
I couldn't agree more... If I were willing to use such it boot loader, it would probably be DOS. Better support, greater variety of Bootable OSes, and more functionality built in. Mosts BIOSes are fully supported by/supportive of DOS, and any OS available can write to a FAT filesystem (for editiing Autoexec.bat)
Even better, get a GRUB boot disk. You can use it to boot Linux, Windows, and whatever the hell else you can find.
/bootsect.dos
# For booting Windows NT or Windows95
title Windows NT / Windows 95 boot menu
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1
# For loading DOS if Windows NT is installed
# chainload
# For booting Linux from hdc3
title Linux 2.4.2
kernel (hd1,2)/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.2 root=/dev/hdc3 #single
Come on now... The Linux Kernel itself is practically an alternative to LILO. If you DD a kernel onto a floppy it will boot. What exactly is the problem? Can't XOSL just stay out of the way and let the kernel load itself? How does it load Windows? I sure hope it doesn't need LILO for that!
By the way, Sultan... couldn't GRUB successfully out LILO? GRUB's flexibility has saved me a few times. With GRUB I might be able to boot more copies of Windows than the NT menu allows. It let me boot NetBSD without a native bootloader the first time I even tried it. Nothing but my unmodified GRUB floppy.
I sure wish XOSL was more than it is... I was eager when I first saw it. But now I can't even peruse it again, and I don't care enough to try to circumvent the slashdotting of the site.
Damn, I was trying to get more of a rise out of you then that! I failed pretty miserably.... oh well.
Don't feel too bad about the Geos thing... I really wouldn't know. Before I actually did much of anything productive, I formatted the GEOS system disk trying to set something up I think. Ah hell, I did the same thing with my Apple IIGS trying to get the damn thing to see 5.25 inch disks. Never did succeed, but I had a nice clean disk where the system disk used to be.
I actually really liked the graphics on the C-64. It seemed like they handled their limited range better than other machines that supposedly had more potential. At least that's how it seemed when I saw games that were available for multiple platforms. Spy vs. spy had two sided disks for the Commodore and Apple systems... the Commodore version was about 20 times more playable. The AD&D gold box series, like pool of radiance, by all logical estimated should have looked better on IBM and Amiga machines, but the Commodore looked somehow less "cartoony" and more enjoyable.
Now I suppose that doesn't make sense. But it seems like Commodore game developers had a much better grasp of the system... maybe the Amiga was just too far ahead of its time? Yeah, I'm grasping here, I'll admit it. But look at Shrek and the Final Fantasy movie that were out not long ago. Final Fantasy was amazing... for a completely rendered movie, it was incredible, at times you could forget that it wasn't live action. But it still wasn't there, little niggling things would ruin the whole effect. Now Shrek while stunning, still wasn't as technically masterful, with a pseudo-live action effect that obviously wasn't trying for reality, but it worked better, because they had a better grasp of what was capable.
Now, please... feel free to regard this post as total bullshit and moderate it as such. I'm a bitter Amiga hater, Commodore should have stuck with what they had success with and let someone else with better management skills take on the admittedly amazing Amiga which ended up marking CBM's gravestone. Or more accurately, Commodore business machines was just another notch on the Amiga's morbid belt.
I wonder if anybody noticed how clever I was substituting WYSE for Wise, and then throwing in the names of a whole bunch of other companies from back in the day.
Or how stupid I was because I couldn't remember any other of the defunct companies that were in the same class as WYSE once were. Well, I did remember Cray. Jesus, I hope somebody moderates this down.
Yeah, it sure is. Compared to this, the previous relase is just small potatoes.
In response to your lighter note... that is a major point of the book 1984. The "powers that be" can treat you like a slave, but they won't let you use the word "slave". Instead, the word "freedom" is corrupted to mean slavery, and the irony is leached away. Without irony and shock, or language to share such things, mass rebellion is no longer an option.
Microsoft is hardly a world class government capable of enslaving otherwise free individuals. They are not capable of removing "negative" words like idiot or slavery from out language, much less of corrupting them into self-respective antonyms. But as far as computing technology is concerned, the mass culture is still too immature to have developed such "words" in the first place, so there is less work necessary. Annhiliating one word would not have provided much basis for 1984, rather is was an entire framework of words that supported a rebellious class of ideas. When in computing, such words are not yet established, then it is much easier to demonize the individual words before they have sufficient opportunity to even take hold.
Witness the term "GPL". In popular culture it is as of yet a very alien and inaccessible word, which cannot yet be used to leverage a very powerful idea. Most people who have learned of the GPL through mass culture as opposed to direct influence, can only suggest that it is "viral" and dangerous. A much less masterful form of 1984's "double-speak" for sure, but such mastery is not necessary for such nascent terms. Such words as representative of powerful ideas have difficulty being accepted even without direct and deliberate opposition from an antagonist.
Consider the difficulty of the term "Free Software." I am hardly a gifted enough poet to feasibly discuss this term with those who aren't already familiar with it. So the similar but distinct term "open source" was coined to try to overcome such difficulties. It has, to a degree, gained some modicum of acceptance, but only by sacrificing many of the ideals that made it, or "free software" worth championing in the first place.
Much easier to see for those who as of yet may be considered "outsiders" are the ideas behind the words representing "stability", "user-friendliness", "compatibility". The zeitgeist might reflect a common awareness of deficiencies with most popular computing paradymes. Most people can express that their computer is not as reliable as their car, thier dog or the average appliance. But without sufficient language of protest or rebellion, we as a society have been stuck under Microsoft's rule for about 20 years. Saying 20 years in regard to computing is similar to saying 20 dog years.
Microsoft may not intend to be "evil". It may be a "chicken and the egg" problem as to whether they support what the computing public claims to want with their limited computing vocabulary, or they shaped the computing public's perception of what things may be possible with underhanded techniques. Despite all of the evil they may seem to represent, at least they saw us, the mass public, as potential computing consumers worth subjecting to their rule. The regime they masterfully overthrew in their coup d'informatique considered us the untouchables, a caste not worthy of using a computer.
On a darker note of response, beware of those who would deprive you of sucessfully asking whether others agree with you, despite your disagreement with the current "head of state." Microsoft can only "treats you like one" when language prevents you from coherently and cohesively acting as one-of-many.
Hey now! Maybe your pseudo 4096 color graphics were pretty snazzy for playing Strip Poker(c), but that doesn't give you license to ignorantly bash the C-64! (I understand it had actual digitized hand colorized photographs of real women, but I wouldn't know. I never had an Amiga, my Commodore only had wholesome games involving violence and fantasy!)
.1 Hz to 4KHz. If it weren't for the lack of a subwoofer, soundtracks to some of the better C-64 games sound just like songs I hear playing in clubs today. Perhaps 320 doesn't seem much better than 160, but you gotta take all you can get when you're working with 64 KBytes of RAM, buddy. If SIDs are painful to hear, then why are they still being traded today? Because the're classics, and it took Trent Reznor making .Mp3s for Quake to outdo them. Well, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but I can still think of C-64 tracks that I'd prefer over that dour uninteresting Quake track that Trent did.
I seem to remember accessing dark blue, light blue, blue and cyan, all at once! If those were the only four colors available, I can understand why there wasn't much Commodore hosted porn. And perhaps it's painful to hear elegantly composed music when all you know is porno-jazz!
Seriously, it wasn't 160 x 200 @ 4, it was _320_ x 200, with 16 simultaneous colors! And a 9 octave range, from
Commodores had harddrives available. There just wasn't much point in collecting porn in 16 colors. And the entire base OS could fit into 20K of ROM for instant-on capability. There was a mouse available too, and even a fully featured and compact GUI environment that is still available today, called GEOS. Anything you wanted was available, it just wasn't necessary. There is even a TCP/IP stack available for Commodore hardware if you're interested. But please, I know your type... just don't go surfing for porn.
Oh, and I didn't grumble, I just never moved to Amiga. I grumbled when Amiga finally pulled Mr Snowcone under, losing them all of the profits from the success of Mr. Sno... I mean, the C-64.
The Commodore 128 was backwards compatible with the C-64. And at the source level , the Commodore 64 was largely backwards compatible with the Commodore PET and Vic 20, if not as fully as the C-128's "GO 64" command. (source code... :P just be careful what you POKE and where you PEEK.)
But this point mmontour was trying to make could have been better made with the transition from Apple's ][ series to the Macintosh architecture. Other than a few hardware interfaces, there was almost no backwards compatibility, and Apple planned it that way.
The Amiga was not developed by Commodore as a break from their venerable C-64, rather, the Amiga was a distinct machine from a failing company which Commodore bought, and then championed as superior to their previous offerings. Unfortunately, they just succeeded in carrying on the Amiga curse.
I never had an Amiga... I couldn't betray my Commodore 64 by dating its sexy cousin like that. Instead, I later ended up skulking around with some skanky PC I picked up at CompUSA's red light dictrict. I'm sure fond of that slinky Mac, and PCs can keep my attention by parading around in NetBSD, or some indecent Linux rags. But even in the face of a new 64 bit whore of a PC, my true love will always by my Commodore.
I dream in 8 bits.
Wow, a nonstarter. Who would have thought that the dissapointment of not even seeing an offensive link could be more offensive than actually putting some effort into a troll?
It's a new generation of trolls, I suppose... leave them hanging and wanting more. I'm seriously dissapointed! "coming soon...." ???
at least link to goatse... have some respect!
As an active Debian developer you don't read the webpage for Debian? Under the heading Getting Started it notes that latest stable release of Potato, release 3, was released within the lase 12 months. In the last 12 months, release 1 of Potato (2.2) was available on November 14, 2000. Debian 2.2r2 was available on December 3, 2000. 2.2r3, probably the last release in the Potato series was available since April 17, 2001.
The Next stable release is likely to be Woody, Release 3.0, which will support MIPS, ia64, HP PA-RISC, IBM S/390, in addition to the 6 architectures already supported in the Potato series. Only NetBSD has more architectures. As of yet, FreeBSD has added the Alpha Architecture to their x86 derived distribution. So far, both Debian and FreeBSD are 3 for 3 for stable releases in the past 12 months.
That's not to say that FreeBSD has a slower release cycle than Debian, but it even even less accurate to say that Debian has released nothing in the last 12 months. I guess the race is on. If Debian releases Woody 3.0 by FreeBSD's expected release date of January 15, 2002 for 4.5, then you can feel humiliated.
Honestly, my money would be on FreeBSD for this race.
(P.S.)
Don't get me wrong. I think NetBSD is far superior to FreeBSD in almost every way. I can't wait until I am running a NetBSD based Debian box. Goodbye, Linux.