OK, if I have to be this literal with you... substitute "double click an installer" with "double click a PACKAGE" or something equivalent. Happy now? Why can't software installations on Linux be that easy without limiting yourself to a narrow set of distributions?
You clearly don't have the familiarity needed to make these judgements
Sorry, you're wrong. I ran Linux exclusively on my home machine for two to three years during a period ending around '99 and I currently use FreeBSD on two of my machines now (I've been using it ever since). In addition, I manage multiple Linux machines at work which use recent Linux distributions (Redhat AS 3.0 and SuSE 9.1). I am very familiar with this and many other aspects of Linux and open source software.
How I've longed to not have to deal with various quirks between the different distributions I work with. How I've longed to take package A from Redhat and install it seamlessly on SuSE. Yes, it WOULD make my life a lot easier. It IS a real problem when you have twenty different ways to install the same piece of software.
No one has to be "forced" to follow distribution standards, but it should would be nice of them to do. You Slashdotters LOVE open standards, so why shrug off a distribution standard? It would only help interoperability.
Worse yet, where do you stop this enforced sameness? Only once all Linux distros are identical? That destroys the flexibility and specialization of distributions that is one of the primary attractions to Linux in the first place.
OK, all I'm proposing is that certain guidelines be followed in the spirit of mutual compatibility and platform-neutrality. That IN NO WAY hinders you, jusdisgi, from altering your distribution to do whatever wacky crap you feel necessary. It's all "open" and "free as in freedom", remember?
There's a lot of "standards" in Linux that you take for granted. For instance, bash, ls, cd, grep, etc. are all "standard" on Linux distributions. You take them for granted, right? Now imagine if you couldn't be sure that such basic tools were available on any Linux system you happen to sit down at.
Now, back to the topic at hand, imagine if your buddy has some fringe Linux distro and needs help. You know the solution to the problem -- install some piece of software that has a million dependencies. No problem with apt-get, right? Well, his distro has apt-get, but the package repository is very small due to the relative unpopularity of this distribution. Hey, no big deal, just point to the Redhat repository, right? Woops, that package isn't compatible with this distribution. Guess you're stuck compiling a million packages by hand.
See where a little standardization in this area might be a GOOD thing?
Considering that the only way a sane person would use Linux is to install a distribution and a distribution is a collection of packages to run on the linux kernel it would make sense to leave package management at the distribution level.
... But if the majority of distribution authors agreed on standards regarding libraries, filesystem hierarchies, and package formats, then you'd basically have the "distribution-neutral" packages I'm looking for, wouldn't you? And to think, package management would STILL be left at the distribution level...
If all of this seems like spiraling out of control, perhaps you should shut the computer down and go do something slower.
Ooh, elitism. You're winning converts over to Linux as we speak.
People who value their time over "it's free" like living in the 21st century, where you double click an installer and be done with the program installation. People who value "it's free" over their time don't care about editing arcane configuration files just to install a text editor.
If you don't like trying to determine which RPM goes where, install Debian and be done with it, in sid there's over 13K packages.
But see, if there were such a thing as distribution-neutral packages, you wouldn't have to take a step as radical as dumping the distribution you're comfortable with just to install a text editor via packaging.
All I'm saying is that, barring applications for which there are known compatibility issues between Windows versions, you can basically download any application installer and it will work on Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP, 2003, etc. (and don't shrug off this fact, there is a LOT of software compatible "out of the box" on all these systems). My question is why can't Linux do this? Why can't I get a Redhat RPM and install it on, let's say, a Slackware machine without any additional work?
Installing software in a consistent manner _is_ a big deal. Why are there twenty different ways to install the same piece of software depending on what distribution of Linux you're using? Why can't someone say "if you're using Linux, this is how you install software"? You don't think this would be a tremendous help to Linux?
Yes, but you've forgotten to address my other two points, which have to do with obtaining distribution-neutral packages. I mean, you can't really assume that a Fedora package, for example, is automatically compatible with Lindows, can you? What I'm trying to say is that having a package manager is one thing, having a (large) set of compatible packages is another. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's really only Redhat and Debian that have large sets of packages, right? Step outside of those two distributions and you're basically on the fringe with regard to obtaining packaged software. Perhaps there are hacks to "convert" packages, but are they infallible and should a user have to worry about such issues?
If you value such a system, use a distribution that has it.
Why should the user get so caught up in analyzing tables or other data to figure out what a distribution can or can't do with regard to mundane topics like package management?
I think that any attempt at a general solution automatically becomes a distribution specific solution.
No, not necessarily. I'm talking about distribution authors coming to a consensus on things like the filesystem hierarchy, naming conventions,/etc structure, choice of package format, choice of desktop environment, etc. If distributions come together on key points such as those (and of course, I'm sure there's more I missed), then that will go a long way towards making packages distribution-neutral (and solving a whole slew of other problems).
1.) Apt works not just for debian packages, but for rpms, and can be installed on Fedora.
How about Slackware? SuSE? Yellowdog? Gentoo? Redhat 6?
See the pattern? You still haven't given a general "how to install packages" guide that works on _Linux_ in general. You're still talking about a subset of Linux distributions.
2.) If you want that, it's easily done with a few config file edits.
Care to list them? And would it be too bold an assumption on my part to expect that these files all exist in the same location and have the same format? If not, these "config file edits" will only be valid for a small subset of distributions.
But that's beside the point. Why should I have to edit config files to do install packages? Looks like this "simple guide to installing packages" is quickly spiraling out of control.
3.) I can't remember the last time I couldn't find an RPM.
Do you mean an RPM for your (I presume popular) distribution? Or did you mean an RPM that could work on pretty much any distribution?
The only problem is that you've posted a solution to the problem of maintaining packages on Debian/Fedora, not on Linux in general. Not every distribution has the ability to use apt or yum or whatever or even a package system. Or it may have a package system, but no one has made a decent number of packages for the distribution because it's not as popular as Debian or Fedora.
Now wouldn't it be nice if a standard were made and users could be assured that, for the most part, regardless of what distribution they're using:
apt is available,
A consistent filesystem hierarchy is followed from distribution to distribution, and
A large number of packages are available (and, more importantly, compatible) due to point 2.
Of course, every time I bring up the idea of standardizing important parts of Linux distributions the lynch mob comes after me, because consistency and distribution-neutral package installation goes against the spirit of Open Source or something ("stifles choice", I've heard).
I mean, wouldn't it be nice to tell someone "just use apt-get and do X, Y, and Z" instead of "[Install Debian] and use apt-get to do X, Y, and Z"?
It seems to me that Carville and Begala consulting for the Kerry campaign part-time, and cheerfully disclosing it, isn't a horrible conflict of interest. Especially since the show "Crossfile" is meant to be partisan opinion.
Oh please. Can you imagine the uproar if Bill O'Reilly were to work on Bush's campaign doing what Carville is doing on Kerry's?
This doesn' t compare to Fox, where the "reporter" assigned to cover Bush was married to a Bush campaigner.
Huh? From what I saw on the news last night, Carville and Begala are unpaid members of Kerry's campaign team. AND they're staying on CNN while working for Kerry. That sounds a little worse to me than having a reporter that's married to someone on the campaign...
Can you explain the "Walm*rt" thing? Are you one of those people that believes that Wal-Mart is the most evil corporation to ever exist and therefore think its name should be treated like a bad word?
But seriously folks... Is a grammar checker really that important a feature?
Zealotry in action. If an open source program lacks a feature that many people agree is important, it's a "stupid, useless feature that no one uses." Once said open source program implements the feature, it's the greatest thing since sliced bread.
A small memory footprint very often leads to more efficient use of the CPU cache, and thus, increased execution speed compared to programs with a huge memory footprint.
Well, with programs like word processors 99% of the time is spent waiting for user input, so you're unlikely to notice any appreciable speed benefit from the word processor being "smaller". I mean really, take any average Wal-Mart PC and put a new version of Word on it. It's going to run just fine. You will not be waiting seconds between keystrokes. It will be fast enough.
When DOS was around, many people had to optimize their programs to fit it completely into the RAM. Nowadays, the CPU caches are so big that - if you optimize them to be small - your programs may fit into your CPU cache, if you optimize them for size a little bit.
And I remember having to spend endless hours tweaking config.sys to get just the right amount of conventional memory free to run certain programs (and perhaps further tweaking to get the proper amount of EMS and XMS). Boy, I sure miss those days. It was worth dicking around with configuration files just to run programs because they ran so much faster than the programs I'm using today!
Your "Fuck the size! Fuck the memory footprint!" attitude is exactly the reason why the hardware gets faster and faster every year, but software does _not_ feel any faster for the last 15 to 20 years.
Software also does much more now than it ever did 15 or 20 years ago. I can live with my computing experience being seemingly as slow as my experience was years ago if I'm able to get more done and/or do more things at once.
The DVD manufacturers could make the "you don't need a backup" line a reality if they offered $1 replacements for damaged DVDs and $0.50 replacements for CDs that get damaged, and indeed, there should be a legal mandate for them to do so upon production of a scratched original.
Surely you can see the difficulties associated with such a system. First of all, you want the media companies to give you replacements on a $20 DVD or a $15 CD until the end of time? Really now. What should they do if the particular DVD you want replaced is rare and out-of-print? It's not like someone is recording this media on a CD burner, they actually use a master and stamp out copies. Should they stop everything and stamp ONE copy for you and FedEx it to the store for your $1.00 replacement? Sounds like a profitable business model.
Here's an idea. YOU could make the backups (which you CAN do) yourself. However, once you make that backup, resist the urge to stick it on some P2P network where millions of people can get a hold of it. You're forgetting that all this RIAA/MPAA bitching and moaning wouldn't have even been an issue if it wasn't for the flagrant (and, importantly, mainstream) copyright infringement that's been going on for the past couple of years.
What are you talking about? I'm making the point that the parent was saying "whoa whoa, this is Google we're talking about, don't abuse them with this GmailFS stuff!", and I have no doubt that if Hotmail had 1GB mail accounts and a "HotmailFS" were to be created that a horde of Slashdotters would be screaming "abuse the hell out of this! Make them run out of storage space! Make them rack up massive bandwidth bills!" You know, because they're Microsoft and they deserve it...
Every one of the anti-consumer rulings so far has violated the civil rights found in the U.S. Constitution.
Would this be the "right to free warez and MP3s" amendment?
Last time I checked, you can still make backups of your CDs. However, it's the "sharing them with millions of my closest 'friends'" part that's illegal...
And I can assume that if Microsoft had 1GB Hotmail accounts that you and other Slashdotters would discourage the use of an equivalent piece of software...?
If you can't accomplish the task with DHTML/JavaScript, then you need to find another way.
And inevitably, some web designer who's even more hardcore than you will say that you should hang yourself with CAT5 cable if your website uses any kind of HTML that Lynx can't render...
Eventually you will have to draw a line somewhere and realize that there is basically no way to make a modern website/web application that won't exclude some amount of the web browsing world. There's plenty of "standard" features that aren't cross-platform due simply to the fact that certain browsers haven't implemented the feature. When you consider that roughly 90% of your audience can use ActiveX that certainly makes ActiveX "compatible enough" to be suitable for web purposes.
... And I'm sure you enlightened Canadians/Europeans/Your_Nationality are, by virtue of not being American, intimately familiar with the do's and dont's of every culture on the planet.
Get real. It's not like they goofed up on things that an average child would know. They were details that most people -- including yourself -- are probably not aware of. Do you know the subtle difference between "hembra" and "mujer"? Do you know that including a certain disputed region of India on a map is illegal according to Indian law? Give me a break. Quit trying to make "stupid American" jokes -- these mistakes would be just as likely to be made by an "enlightened" non-American as an American.
I would doubt it, seeing as how Comedy Central has been showing the uncut South Park movie every couple of weeks.
What's more likely is that the show never finished production before the first half of the new season finished, pushing it up until the second half starts in October.
What is it that people have against the 49g+ keys?
These sound like the words of someone who has never used HP's 48 series. The keys were made out of a very solid plastic, never wobbled, gave you tactile feedback, etc. I think the other big complaint people have is the placement of the enter key, which was perfect on the 48 (big wide button, center left). Now I believe it's been shrunk and moved to the bottom right.
Now you may not care about all that, but the undeniable truth was that HP had a winning formula on the 48 and they threw it all away with the 49 series.
Specifically, what was your job title? I ask because you said you had this job while you were in school (in other words, before you had a degree). It sounds to me like you were probably an intern-level (not saying you WERE an intern but you probably ranked below employees with degrees) employee, so all the "cool projects" would naturally go to the regular, degree-holding employees. Without knowing more about your situation it sounds to me like you're getting a little bitter that projects were handed off to higher ranking employees who might have been "loafing" because they had other things to do than the low-level "house cleaning" work you were engaged in (and probably hired to do, being a student).
Slashdot Mirror
You don't go download a Fedora RPM on Gentoo, because that would be silly.
Why? If I'm not using Fedora and I can't find that particular package for my distribution, it WOULD be nice to use that Fedora package, wouldn't it?
It doesn't matter that it wouldn't work
With a little bit of standardization, it would come damn close to working consistently.
why would you ever want to do that when you could just use one command and have Gentoo use the Gentoo package?
You're assuming I'm using Gentoo or that my distribution has an equivalent package. That's what I've been saying all along.
OK, if I have to be this literal with you... substitute "double click an installer" with "double click a PACKAGE" or something equivalent. Happy now? Why can't software installations on Linux be that easy without limiting yourself to a narrow set of distributions?
You clearly don't have the familiarity needed to make these judgements
Sorry, you're wrong. I ran Linux exclusively on my home machine for two to three years during a period ending around '99 and I currently use FreeBSD on two of my machines now (I've been using it ever since). In addition, I manage multiple Linux machines at work which use recent Linux distributions (Redhat AS 3.0 and SuSE 9.1). I am very familiar with this and many other aspects of Linux and open source software.
How I've longed to not have to deal with various quirks between the different distributions I work with. How I've longed to take package A from Redhat and install it seamlessly on SuSE. Yes, it WOULD make my life a lot easier. It IS a real problem when you have twenty different ways to install the same piece of software.
No one has to be "forced" to follow distribution standards, but it should would be nice of them to do. You Slashdotters LOVE open standards, so why shrug off a distribution standard? It would only help interoperability.
Worse yet, where do you stop this enforced sameness? Only once all Linux distros are identical? That destroys the flexibility and specialization of distributions that is one of the primary attractions to Linux in the first place.
OK, all I'm proposing is that certain guidelines be followed in the spirit of mutual compatibility and platform-neutrality. That IN NO WAY hinders you, jusdisgi, from altering your distribution to do whatever wacky crap you feel necessary. It's all "open" and "free as in freedom", remember?
There's a lot of "standards" in Linux that you take for granted. For instance, bash, ls, cd, grep, etc. are all "standard" on Linux distributions. You take them for granted, right? Now imagine if you couldn't be sure that such basic tools were available on any Linux system you happen to sit down at.
Now, back to the topic at hand, imagine if your buddy has some fringe Linux distro and needs help. You know the solution to the problem -- install some piece of software that has a million dependencies. No problem with apt-get, right? Well, his distro has apt-get, but the package repository is very small due to the relative unpopularity of this distribution. Hey, no big deal, just point to the Redhat repository, right? Woops, that package isn't compatible with this distribution. Guess you're stuck compiling a million packages by hand.
See where a little standardization in this area might be a GOOD thing?
Considering that the only way a sane person would use Linux is to install a distribution and a distribution is a collection of packages to run on the linux kernel it would make sense to leave package management at the distribution level.
... But if the majority of distribution authors agreed on standards regarding libraries, filesystem hierarchies, and package formats, then you'd basically have the "distribution-neutral" packages I'm looking for, wouldn't you? And to think, package management would STILL be left at the distribution level...
If all of this seems like spiraling out of control, perhaps you should shut the computer down and go do something slower.
Ooh, elitism. You're winning converts over to Linux as we speak.
People who value their time over "it's free" like living in the 21st century, where you double click an installer and be done with the program installation. People who value "it's free" over their time don't care about editing arcane configuration files just to install a text editor.
If you don't like trying to determine which RPM goes where, install Debian and be done with it, in sid there's over 13K packages.
But see, if there were such a thing as distribution-neutral packages, you wouldn't have to take a step as radical as dumping the distribution you're comfortable with just to install a text editor via packaging.
All I'm saying is that, barring applications for which there are known compatibility issues between Windows versions, you can basically download any application installer and it will work on Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP, 2003, etc. (and don't shrug off this fact, there is a LOT of software compatible "out of the box" on all these systems). My question is why can't Linux do this? Why can't I get a Redhat RPM and install it on, let's say, a Slackware machine without any additional work?
Installing software in a consistent manner _is_ a big deal. Why are there twenty different ways to install the same piece of software depending on what distribution of Linux you're using? Why can't someone say "if you're using Linux, this is how you install software"? You don't think this would be a tremendous help to Linux?
Yes, but you've forgotten to address my other two points, which have to do with obtaining distribution-neutral packages. I mean, you can't really assume that a Fedora package, for example, is automatically compatible with Lindows, can you? What I'm trying to say is that having a package manager is one thing, having a (large) set of compatible packages is another. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's really only Redhat and Debian that have large sets of packages, right? Step outside of those two distributions and you're basically on the fringe with regard to obtaining packaged software. Perhaps there are hacks to "convert" packages, but are they infallible and should a user have to worry about such issues?
If you value such a system, use a distribution that has it.
Why should the user get so caught up in analyzing tables or other data to figure out what a distribution can or can't do with regard to mundane topics like package management?
I think that any attempt at a general solution automatically becomes a distribution specific solution.
/etc structure, choice of package format, choice of desktop environment, etc. If distributions come together on key points such as those (and of course, I'm sure there's more I missed), then that will go a long way towards making packages distribution-neutral (and solving a whole slew of other problems).
No, not necessarily. I'm talking about distribution authors coming to a consensus on things like the filesystem hierarchy, naming conventions,
1.) Apt works not just for debian packages, but for rpms, and can be installed on Fedora.
How about Slackware? SuSE? Yellowdog? Gentoo? Redhat 6?
See the pattern? You still haven't given a general "how to install packages" guide that works on _Linux_ in general. You're still talking about a subset of Linux distributions.
2.) If you want that, it's easily done with a few config file edits.
Care to list them? And would it be too bold an assumption on my part to expect that these files all exist in the same location and have the same format? If not, these "config file edits" will only be valid for a small subset of distributions.
But that's beside the point. Why should I have to edit config files to do install packages? Looks like this "simple guide to installing packages" is quickly spiraling out of control.
3.) I can't remember the last time I couldn't find an RPM.
Do you mean an RPM for your (I presume popular) distribution? Or did you mean an RPM that could work on pretty much any distribution?
Now wouldn't it be nice if a standard were made and users could be assured that, for the most part, regardless of what distribution they're using:
Of course, every time I bring up the idea of standardizing important parts of Linux distributions the lynch mob comes after me, because consistency and distribution-neutral package installation goes against the spirit of Open Source or something ("stifles choice", I've heard).
I mean, wouldn't it be nice to tell someone "just use apt-get and do X, Y, and Z" instead of "[Install Debian] and use apt-get to do X, Y, and Z"?
Mark Pilgrim works down the hall from me. I had no idea he wrote this particular book.
Small world.
It seems to me that Carville and Begala consulting for the Kerry campaign part-time, and cheerfully disclosing it, isn't a horrible conflict of interest. Especially since the show "Crossfile" is meant to be partisan opinion.
Oh please. Can you imagine the uproar if Bill O'Reilly were to work on Bush's campaign doing what Carville is doing on Kerry's?
This doesn' t compare to Fox, where the "reporter" assigned to cover Bush was married to a Bush campaigner.
Huh? From what I saw on the news last night, Carville and Begala are unpaid members of Kerry's campaign team. AND they're staying on CNN while working for Kerry. That sounds a little worse to me than having a reporter that's married to someone on the campaign...
Can you explain the "Walm*rt" thing? Are you one of those people that believes that Wal-Mart is the most evil corporation to ever exist and therefore think its name should be treated like a bad word?
But seriously folks... Is a grammar checker really that important a feature?
Zealotry in action. If an open source program lacks a feature that many people agree is important, it's a "stupid, useless feature that no one uses." Once said open source program implements the feature, it's the greatest thing since sliced bread.
A small memory footprint very often leads to more efficient use of the CPU cache, and thus, increased execution speed compared to programs with a huge memory footprint.
Well, with programs like word processors 99% of the time is spent waiting for user input, so you're unlikely to notice any appreciable speed benefit from the word processor being "smaller". I mean really, take any average Wal-Mart PC and put a new version of Word on it. It's going to run just fine. You will not be waiting seconds between keystrokes. It will be fast enough.
When DOS was around, many people had to optimize their programs to fit it completely into the RAM. Nowadays, the CPU caches are so big that - if you optimize them to be small - your programs may fit into your CPU cache, if you optimize them for size a little bit.
And I remember having to spend endless hours tweaking config.sys to get just the right amount of conventional memory free to run certain programs (and perhaps further tweaking to get the proper amount of EMS and XMS). Boy, I sure miss those days. It was worth dicking around with configuration files just to run programs because they ran so much faster than the programs I'm using today!
Your "Fuck the size! Fuck the memory footprint!" attitude is exactly the reason why the hardware gets faster and faster every year, but software does _not_ feel any faster for the last 15 to 20 years.
Software also does much more now than it ever did 15 or 20 years ago. I can live with my computing experience being seemingly as slow as my experience was years ago if I'm able to get more done and/or do more things at once.
CDs rust because of manufacturing defects.
I don't think I've ever seen a "rusted" CD...
The DVD manufacturers could make the "you don't need a backup" line a reality if they offered $1 replacements for damaged DVDs and $0.50 replacements for CDs that get damaged, and indeed, there should be a legal mandate for them to do so upon production of a scratched original.
Surely you can see the difficulties associated with such a system. First of all, you want the media companies to give you replacements on a $20 DVD or a $15 CD until the end of time? Really now. What should they do if the particular DVD you want replaced is rare and out-of-print? It's not like someone is recording this media on a CD burner, they actually use a master and stamp out copies. Should they stop everything and stamp ONE copy for you and FedEx it to the store for your $1.00 replacement? Sounds like a profitable business model.
Here's an idea. YOU could make the backups (which you CAN do) yourself. However, once you make that backup, resist the urge to stick it on some P2P network where millions of people can get a hold of it. You're forgetting that all this RIAA/MPAA bitching and moaning wouldn't have even been an issue if it wasn't for the flagrant (and, importantly, mainstream) copyright infringement that's been going on for the past couple of years.
Kevin Smith: "What can I say? It hasn't been easy staying in my rut!"
You're joking right?
What are you talking about? I'm making the point that the parent was saying "whoa whoa, this is Google we're talking about, don't abuse them with this GmailFS stuff!", and I have no doubt that if Hotmail had 1GB mail accounts and a "HotmailFS" were to be created that a horde of Slashdotters would be screaming "abuse the hell out of this! Make them run out of storage space! Make them rack up massive bandwidth bills!" You know, because they're Microsoft and they deserve it...
Every one of the anti-consumer rulings so far has violated the civil rights found in the U.S. Constitution.
Would this be the "right to free warez and MP3s" amendment?
Last time I checked, you can still make backups of your CDs. However, it's the "sharing them with millions of my closest 'friends'" part that's illegal...
And I can assume that if Microsoft had 1GB Hotmail accounts that you and other Slashdotters would discourage the use of an equivalent piece of software...?
If you can't accomplish the task with DHTML/JavaScript, then you need to find another way.
And inevitably, some web designer who's even more hardcore than you will say that you should hang yourself with CAT5 cable if your website uses any kind of HTML that Lynx can't render...
Eventually you will have to draw a line somewhere and realize that there is basically no way to make a modern website/web application that won't exclude some amount of the web browsing world. There's plenty of "standard" features that aren't cross-platform due simply to the fact that certain browsers haven't implemented the feature. When you consider that roughly 90% of your audience can use ActiveX that certainly makes ActiveX "compatible enough" to be suitable for web purposes.
... And I'm sure you enlightened Canadians/Europeans/Your_Nationality are, by virtue of not being American, intimately familiar with the do's and dont's of every culture on the planet.
Get real. It's not like they goofed up on things that an average child would know. They were details that most people -- including yourself -- are probably not aware of. Do you know the subtle difference between "hembra" and "mujer"? Do you know that including a certain disputed region of India on a map is illegal according to Indian law? Give me a break. Quit trying to make "stupid American" jokes -- these mistakes would be just as likely to be made by an "enlightened" non-American as an American.
I would doubt it, seeing as how Comedy Central has been showing the uncut South Park movie every couple of weeks.
What's more likely is that the show never finished production before the first half of the new season finished, pushing it up until the second half starts in October.
What is it that people have against the 49g+ keys?
These sound like the words of someone who has never used HP's 48 series. The keys were made out of a very solid plastic, never wobbled, gave you tactile feedback, etc. I think the other big complaint people have is the placement of the enter key, which was perfect on the 48 (big wide button, center left). Now I believe it's been shrunk and moved to the bottom right.
Now you may not care about all that, but the undeniable truth was that HP had a winning formula on the 48 and they threw it all away with the 49 series.
Specifically, what was your job title? I ask because you said you had this job while you were in school (in other words, before you had a degree). It sounds to me like you were probably an intern-level (not saying you WERE an intern but you probably ranked below employees with degrees) employee, so all the "cool projects" would naturally go to the regular, degree-holding employees. Without knowing more about your situation it sounds to me like you're getting a little bitter that projects were handed off to higher ranking employees who might have been "loafing" because they had other things to do than the low-level "house cleaning" work you were engaged in (and probably hired to do, being a student).