Steven T. Hatton wrote:
zentara wrote:
Are there any advantages to NTFS over Linux file systems? I must plead ignorance here.
I'm fairly ignorant of the details here also. I know that ext2 is very solid. I'm sure they are similar. Although when I was playing with NT4, they did have a defragger program for it, so that may say something negative about it. I remember when NT4 came out, there was alot of talk about how the US Government had "certified it" as "secure"; and that was highly tauted by MS. However, the fine print revealed that it's certified only when using NTFS; since it, like ext2fs records ownership and permissions. If you have a fat partition, forget it. Just for the sake of talking about it, I liked the HPFS filesystem that OS2 used as the nicest for a single user system. No permissions were kept, but you got almost no slack space on huge drives, since it used 512 byte ionode sizes, thats .5k , compared to ext2fs smallest of 1k.
I played with NT4 for awhile, and it isn't any easier than linux. In fact it is harder, because everything is hidden from you in dlls.
Well for basic installation the first time around I will say that NT has the advantage. You really don't need to do a lot of thinking. On the other hand you *can't* do a lot of thinking with the NT installations.
Well I remember having as much trouble with PnP cards under NT4, as with Linux. Also alot of people have problems getting RAS to work, just as linux users struggle with mgetty. Cmmercial software does install nicer on NT than Linux, but Linux users don't have to endlessly fight with that "*%$#@! registry" !! I hate that registry. It just keeps growing until your system is slowed down, then you need a fresh install. I saw a statistic that the average Windows95 registry lasts 18 months before it makes the system useless.
I don't mind big companies. I don't like the games that MS is playing. I think it is true that MS has become something of a monopoly. This is not good for the consumer. Monopolies are price setters not price takers. It seems clear to me that MS is trying to dump products on the market in an attempt to prevent companies like Netscape from making successful inroads into the computer software industry.
Well remember the railroads and the Morgans? The Information SuperHighway is the "railroad" of the next century. Those who fail to learn the lessons of history, are doomed to repeat it. Microsoft is weilding too much clout already. This recent ruling about anti-trust and Internet Explorer is a slap on the wrist from the government. MS is trying to position itself to rule. It dosn't seem too important now, but wait until digital TV becomes the standard. The computer and TV will be all rolled into one media. We know how powerful TV is now, in terms of "controlling the masses". Wait until computer generated media starts to become standard TV fare. Whoever controls it, will be able to force their vision of reality on the public thru subliminal tricks.
Well, we are attempting what could become a huge intranet project for DoD, and we are doing much of it on NT. IT'S NOT MY FAULT! There are some pretty good MS based products out there. I am the only UNIX head in the group and my Unix experience is not great at this point. I really don't know what is out there as far as tools for UNIX / Linux and web tools go.
Well, get a book from O'Reilly on PERL, called "The Lhama book"; since it has one on the cover. It will introduce you to PERL, and CGI with it. Go to www.perl.org and check out the links to free scripts and modules. It is the biggest kept secret in the computer world. I'm just beginning to see how powerful the Linux-Perl combination is. Plus, there is a port of PERL for NT, so you can go cross platform with it. Finally, there is going to be a real compiler for Perl soon, to make stand-alone executables from your scripts. To top it off, the Perl Gurus are talking about VISUAL Perl, and it's all free!!! Then there is TCL, and TK which is sort of like Visual Basic, but Perl seems to be where you can do real nitty-gritty kind of work.
Perhaps I should get my Dad's old 386 running Linux for my little sister.
Ya you should, it might give her a head start on a rewarding career. zentara -- To get out of this list, please send email to majordomo@suse.com with this text in its body: unsubscribe suse-linux-e