Download and use apt-get
Download and use Rpm
Download the sources of the most bleeding edge
Only the latter usually applies (IMHO) to most slackware-heads. The binary distribution just gives us a world to stand on while we do it. As for rpm or apt-get: [affecting french accent] I spit in their general direction:-)
Why would we bother using rpm or apt-get when we can use the One True packaging system, tgz?:-)
didn't want to post it to Slashdot until I got it all downloaded:).
I had a suspicion that a few people might be doing that... In my case, since I've been enjoying using Slack for so long now, I'm putting up some of my dollars for an "official" copy for once. I reckon Patrick richly deserves it.
The only criteria I used for my case selection was (a) the size of the power supply and (b) whether or not it had space for all the fans I knew I'd need. You should be able to tell from this that I run SMP Atlons:-)
to really cover yourself on-line, and that is quite simply do not put anything that your life will depend on on your computer. Rather like all those putative criminals who leave all their contacts on their mobile phone's SIM card. Stupidity, no other word for it.
Bash...has the best out of box tab completion and command history
Try zsh. I used to be a big fan of bash, but as I am a lazy typist I find zsh kicks ass in programmable command completion, globbing and history/editing. Plus it's bloody handy to be able to build custom functions into your command line. It takes a couple of days to get up to speed with it, but you won't look back.
The 9-track tapes are pretty hit-and-miss, though. If you get a good batch and your sysop is any good at keeping heads clean, there's a good atmosphere in your fire-proof safe and all that, there's a reasonable likelihood of getting a good backup you can use.
Not much fun when a multi-volume set is made worthless by one dud tape, though.
I've used tapes for many years (OK, something like 15 or 16) on sites where tape was the backup medium of choice for Big Iron. I can't say that my experience would bear out the reliability of mag tapes as a backup medium. I've run up a lot of instances of I/O errors in the middle of a multi-volume set.
However, my experience with brand-name CD-RWs on a good quality drive has shown up nearly 100% reliability (only 1 bum disk) over 4 years. FWIW, of course...
The update cycle might be long between releases, but Patrick V does a pretty good job of keeping slackware-current very current, and his packages (nearly) always work right first time. I never could say that about RedHat or Mandrake.
All of this bitching about Linux on the desktop is making me tired.
I agree. Linux has been on my desktop for quite a few years now, and I don't miss Windows one bit, and my Slackware setup has enough eye-candy on the desktop to make several Mac-heads envious. Sure, there are some more challenging things to learn if you want to get more out of the machine, but you can say that about any powerful tool.
I've seen the argument that Sawfish==bloat a few times now, but I wonder... I used Sawfish while it was the default, and I'm using Metacity now. OK, I haven't looked at the code, but the memory footprint (according to top) is pretty similar: metacity currently at 6.5 Mb vs. sawfish last time I looked was about 5.6 Mb. Given the size of the codespace, it would be nice if Metacity would remember window sizes.
The actual point of my original post was that I see no reason why Gnome and KDE should not coexist happily.
My little aside about the naming scheme (notice smiley?) was just that: an aside. I also said quite clearly that KDE does not suck. My feeling about the naming scheme is that it is unnecessarily gauche, but the fact that that is my feeling has no bearing on the fact that KDE's apps generally work pretty well.
Similarly, I don't expect everybody (or anybody, for that matter) to share my opinions about KDE's ugly icons. There's plenty of room for both environments, and having a choice is good for everyone.
I am very tired of reading flame wars between Gnome and KDE. OK, I am a big supporter of Gnome, but that doesn't mean KDE sucks. It plainly does not. I would be the first to agree that there have been some terrible blunders made by some of the Gnome developers along the way, but the current 2.2 is very sweet. Every so often I try out new versions of KDE as they come up, and every time I abandon it because my desktop looks cluttered and Kalling Keverything Kfoo.Kbar Ketc Kgives Kme Kthe Kshits...:-) [/rant]
OK, that post came out a bit more flamebaity than I intended (though I did decline the +1 karma bonus), but you might get an idea what I mean from this article.
that I've ever had was on Royal Brunei (I should add here that most citizens of that state are Muslim.) You also get a kind of warm fuzzy feeling at the beginning of the flight as they recite an Islamic travel prayer. Of course, the only people who are going to shoot down one of their planes would be the world's biggest terrorists (i.e. the US, if you're incapable of reading between the lines...)
I mostly use middle-click to open new tabs in the background (in mozilla) and just kill the tabs when I've finished with them. I almost never use the back button any more.
Re:the impportant question..
on
Gnome 2.2 Released
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Gnome 1.X was much MUCH faster than the 2.0 series. and 2.0 is tolerable when you rip out nautilus
I think you must have a bad build or something. The general experience is that Gnome and the current Nautilus are much faster than the 1.x versions. They definitely are for me, anyway.
When was the last time Gnome had anything to do with Enlightenment? I seem to remember them co-existing by default on RH5.2 and 6.x installs ('98? '99?), but I haven't heard much about Enlightenment for a while now.
But how inthe hell are people to know that these "missing features" are there?
I agree. I've been a long-time fan of Gnome, but some of the "ease-of-use" and "it-just-works" specs have only dumbed-down the interface. I really hate that GConf-editor. Sure, it works, but I much preferred the old control-center.
However, every time I get too pissed off with Gnome, I go on a round of trying out KDE, WindowMaker, BlackBox, Fluxbox et al, and I always end up back with Gnome.
They would, indeed, rock - if they were indeed transparent. I thought it was a bit sad that "they" cheated by just grabbing a section of the main window and shading it; i.e., it only looks transparent if you never hide the panel.
I run an up-to-the minute Gnome with Slackware 8.1, and am very happy with it. Every so often I try out new versions of KDE, and while I realise that the product clearly does NOT suck (I'm not interested in starting a Gnome/KDE flame war here), I always find myself getting irritated by the gaudy icons and the general clutter and cruft.
I take your point about "out of the box", though; Slackware was never intended for that, though it's a very easy platform to customise.
Can anybody explain why Gnome 2.x is reputed to be so slow on Sun boxen, while my (admittedly anecdotal, rather than formally benchmarked) experience with the product on x86 and related machines is that it's much faster than version 1.4?
Slashdot Mirror
Download and use Rpm
Download the sources of the most bleeding edge
Only the latter usually applies (IMHO) to most slackware-heads. The binary distribution just gives us a world to stand on while we do it. As for rpm or apt-get: [affecting french accent] I spit in their general direction :-)
Why would we bother using rpm or apt-get when we can use the One True packaging system, tgz? :-)
I had a suspicion that a few people might be doing that... In my case, since I've been enjoying using Slack for so long now, I'm putting up some of my dollars for an "official" copy for once. I reckon Patrick richly deserves it.
The only criteria I used for my case selection was (a) the size of the power supply and (b) whether or not it had space for all the fans I knew I'd need. You should be able to tell from this that I run SMP Atlons :-)
to really cover yourself on-line, and that is quite simply do not put anything that your life will depend on on your computer. Rather like all those putative criminals who leave all their contacts on their mobile phone's SIM card. Stupidity, no other word for it.
Try zsh. I used to be a big fan of bash, but as I am a lazy typist I find zsh kicks ass in programmable command completion, globbing and history/editing. Plus it's bloody handy to be able to build custom functions into your command line. It takes a couple of days to get up to speed with it, but you won't look back.
Not much fun when a multi-volume set is made worthless by one dud tape, though.
I can't remember ever using punch-cards for backup though; they were more a data-entry medium for me.
However, my experience with brand-name CD-RWs on a good quality drive has shown up nearly 100% reliability (only 1 bum disk) over 4 years. FWIW, of course...
The update cycle might be long between releases, but Patrick V does a pretty good job of keeping slackware-current very current, and his packages (nearly) always work right first time. I never could say that about RedHat or Mandrake.
How do you get him to keep still?
I agree. Linux has been on my desktop for quite a few years now, and I don't miss Windows one bit, and my Slackware setup has enough eye-candy on the desktop to make several Mac-heads envious. Sure, there are some more challenging things to learn if you want to get more out of the machine, but you can say that about any powerful tool.
I've seen the argument that Sawfish==bloat a few times now, but I wonder... I used Sawfish while it was the default, and I'm using Metacity now. OK, I haven't looked at the code, but the memory footprint (according to top) is pretty similar: metacity currently at 6.5 Mb vs. sawfish last time I looked was about 5.6 Mb. Given the size of the codespace, it would be nice if Metacity would remember window sizes.
My little aside about the naming scheme (notice smiley?) was just that: an aside. I also said quite clearly that KDE does not suck. My feeling about the naming scheme is that it is unnecessarily gauche, but the fact that that is my feeling has no bearing on the fact that KDE's apps generally work pretty well.
Similarly, I don't expect everybody (or anybody, for that matter) to share my opinions about KDE's ugly icons. There's plenty of room for both environments, and having a choice is good for everyone.
I am very tired of reading flame wars between Gnome and KDE. OK, I am a big supporter of Gnome, but that doesn't mean KDE sucks. It plainly does not. I would be the first to agree that there have been some terrible blunders made by some of the Gnome developers along the way, but the current 2.2 is very sweet. Every so often I try out new versions of KDE as they come up, and every time I abandon it because my desktop looks cluttered and Kalling Keverything Kfoo.Kbar Ketc Kgives Kme Kthe Kshits... :-) [/rant]
Oh no! My lab report got autoclaved! :-)
OK, that post came out a bit more flamebaity than I intended (though I did decline the +1 karma bonus), but you might get an idea what I mean from this
article.
that I've ever had was on Royal Brunei (I should add here that most citizens of that state are Muslim.) You also get a kind of warm fuzzy feeling at the beginning of the flight as they recite an Islamic travel prayer. Of course, the only people who are going to shoot down one of their planes would be the world's biggest terrorists (i.e. the US, if you're incapable of reading between the lines...)
I mostly use middle-click to open new tabs in the background (in mozilla) and just kill the tabs when I've finished with them. I almost never use the back button any more.
real men use zsh :-)
I think you must have a bad build or something. The general experience is that Gnome and the current Nautilus are much faster than the 1.x versions. They definitely are for me, anyway.
When was the last time Gnome had anything to do with Enlightenment? I seem to remember them co-existing by default on RH5.2 and 6.x installs ('98? '99?), but I haven't heard much about Enlightenment for a while now.
I agree. I've been a long-time fan of Gnome, but some of the "ease-of-use" and "it-just-works" specs have only dumbed-down the interface. I really hate that GConf-editor. Sure, it works, but I much preferred the old control-center.
However, every time I get too pissed off with Gnome, I go on a round of trying out KDE, WindowMaker, BlackBox, Fluxbox et al, and I always end up back with Gnome.
They would, indeed, rock - if they were indeed transparent. I thought it was a bit sad that "they" cheated by just grabbing a section of the main window and shading it; i.e., it only looks transparent if you never hide the panel.
The desktop is what you make it.
I run an up-to-the minute Gnome with Slackware 8.1, and am very happy with it. Every so often I try out new versions of KDE, and while I realise that the product clearly does NOT suck (I'm not interested in starting a Gnome/KDE flame war here), I always find myself getting irritated by the gaudy icons and the general clutter and cruft.
I take your point about "out of the box", though; Slackware was never intended for that, though it's a very easy platform to customise.
Can anybody explain why Gnome 2.x is reputed to be so slow on Sun boxen, while my (admittedly anecdotal, rather than formally benchmarked) experience with the product on x86 and related machines is that it's much faster than version 1.4?