-----Original Message----- From: Daniel Woodard [mailto:schreck@telocity.com] Sent: Tuesday, August 28, 2001 10:11 PM To: SLE Subject: RE: [SLE] SuSE CTO and President Steps Down If you live and breath sys admin, then of course it's easy. If it's the 7th of 10 (time consuming) hats you wear, Linux can be very hard to use. I still "break" things and then have a really hard time getting it to work again. Lib this, permission that, missing this, on and on. Yeah, I love the power, but for me it's an extended hobby/passion of love thing. Like I said, others in my shoes would never go through the learning curve and would opt for a Mac server, or a Windows server. -------------------------------------- One of the things I like most about Linux is that you *can* fix something if you've made a cockup. On windows I've suffered irretrievable Registry corruption and missing or incompatible DLLs thanks to the anarchic way that software is installed (with 3rd party software overwriting key system DLLs). It's always shocking when I hear experienced computing colleagues casually mention how they've just reinstalled a brand new system because they loaded the wrong drivers for their printer or digital camera. I have a friend who is a corporate 'expert' on Windows and managed 4 reinstalls of W2K in the first week as he tried to sort out the various driver issues on his new system! When I tried to suggest that it was indicative of how inferior Windows is he became extremely annoyed (although he hasn't got much hair left to tear out after all his windows troubles). Tim Harrell
Harrell, Tim wrote:
I think it has been said here that much of problems are attibutable to the wetware at the keyboard, not the operating system, be it Linux or Windows. Incidentally, my Windows 98 SE is system is an upgrade that started out life as DOS/Windows 3.1, upgraded many times with newer system board, hard drives, adapter cards, CD-ROMs, DVD, etc. et. al, and operating systems - Windows95, 95a, 98, 98SE, all without a hit, never formatted C or reinstalled Windows! I don't think I could have done the same thing starting out with an early version of Linux such as Slackware or Calderea Open Base 1.x (I have a copy or each) and made the same claim... There would have definitely been some destructive (read: blow the hard drive) reinstalls a long the way if not recompilations of the operating system. Clint
On Wednesday 29 August 2001 08:11 pm, you wrote:
I get the same reaction form colleagues at work. I try to tell them how much more stuff you get with Linux and how it works better. Today I tried to do a simple spell check on a windows document in Word 97, and the stupid thing resized the document and erased it's borders. I watch colleagues at work have their Excell spread sheets lock up. Yet they defend this scoundrel's software as those they were contending for God and country.
That's probably true Clint but it's an indictment of how little Windows changes not a testimonial to its stability and upgradeablity. Anything will be upgradeable if it has only trifiling changes. Windows 3.1, 95 or whatever is just rehashed crap. It's just GUI's slopped over DOS. It comes with the same sloppy software. The same Word that changes fonts when you backspace. I am not here to flame Clint, he is probably a really good guy, but it can't be that I am the only person sick to death of Gates contraptions and the overpriced crap that gets pawned off as productivity suites or what not. So what if linux does not have flash or digital camera software or it can't scan. I'll take gcc, g77 and gdb over the dozens of useless trinkets like digital camera stuff and instant messangers and flash. All of it cheap crap. Try and install a FORTRAN compiler on Windowze. First try and find one under $300. Go now and see if you can get employment because you know how to use digital camera software. The HR people will laugh at you. BTW I used the digital camera stuff that came on my freinds Millenium box; crap as usually. Supposedly America has the greatest economy in the world. with guys like Bill Gates running our businesses, I don't know how the hell we did it. Maybe it's true that a sucker is born every minute. Bill succeeded because Apple was taken over by a Pepsi Cola salesman and run into the ground. -- Cheers, Jonathan
Jonathan Drews wrote:
I would disagree that Bill "succeeded" because of Apple or IBM mis-steps and we all have reasons to not particulary like Bill and what he does sometimes but he succeeded in providing a operating platform that was GUI based sufficiently "open" and accepted in the market place where most everyone could play. I've been around the "PC" since 1977 and have a quite a museum colllection of hardware including TRS-80's, Apples, and even a KIM-1 with the expansion chasis. The Commodore/Pet was no slacker nor the Amiga. I bemoaned Radio Shack when they gave up the market in 1982 to IBM just because they were stuck in a world of 64 column monocrome displays, a maket they owned with over a millions computers installed base, several magazines dedicated to the product, and tons of software that was either free or inexpensive. It was interesting that the Radio-Shack TRS-80 was, like Microsoft, a love/hate affair and I can tell you that the TRS-80 was a wonderful little box with its entire computer bus exposed on that one little connector on the back, the world was mine as an engineer and sometimes programmer. I even used my TRS-80 to trouble shoot PDP-11 Computers in real time but a lot of people hated the TRASH-80! OS/2 is/was a great operating system. OS/2 could run Windows better than Windows was the IBM mantra back about 1993 without having to use something like VMWare and yet IBM could only attract a handful of vendors, specifically, only one decent word processor, DeScribe, if I remember correctly and even they went away... Incidently, in 1993 or thereabouts, OS/2 version 2.1 Extended Edtion could have 16 Windows applications all running concurrently and not crashing, multitreaded, mulitasking, on a 386 with a nominal amount of memory and still doing all the communication/IBM connectivity things that OS/2 was famous for. I think OS/2 might have invented the service pack but who knows, it was a joint effort with Bill at the time. Over in the HR department, Linux/Apache/PHP may get you in the door as system administrator or web developer, but as Office2000, PageMaker, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, etc. get you much further than Star Office and the Gimp albeit the powerful tools that they are. As for what I do, I am responsible for providing the desktop (read Windows 9x) environment to over 8000 workstations in a K-12 evironment running Office97/2000/XP in a connected world across a multiplicity of platforms and networking topologies where Word does not change fonts when you backspace, Excel doesn't lock up, and you don't reboot the PC everytime you walk by. The school district mantra is Preparing todays student for tomorrow's world and right now, that is a "Windows" world, whether you or I like it or not. And while Linux makes great servers, I am not ready to replace our Novell severs in providing File and Print services along with NDS based single point of administration user security including application management and desktop policies enforcement with either Linux or NT but we use both in providing application and internet services. And we don't run WindowsME! :-)) Clint
So you're still running fat 16 then?! That can't be very efficient. And how exactly do you upgrade a hard drive without reformatting? And what exactly do you think you're doing when you're 'upgrading' from one winversion to the next, if not *reinstalling*! However, if your definition if re-installation is reformatting/repartitioning then you can that is very, very possible with linux. There was a transition from the old minix file system to ext2 some time in the distant past, but apart from that I can see no *forcing* reason to reformat! Ever! On Thursday 30 August 2001 03.11, Clint Tinsley wrote:
Anders Johansson wrote:
So you're still running fat 16 then?! That can't be very efficient.
I converted to FAT 32 on the upgrade to Windows98. I used Partition Magic to perform the operation although Mickysoft provides a utility to do it as well.
And how exactly do you upgrade a hard drive without reformatting?
You run setup or let the CD automatically run. The operating system gets updated all your installed software is preserved but you get the benefit of updated drivers and refreshed DLL's. I use Drive Image and Partition Magic for migrating and messaging the drive partition from one drive to another. I own Drive Image 4.0 and Partition Magic 6.0 and I just got an email from PowerQwest for the upgrade for the 7.0 version of Partition Magic.
And what exactly do you think you're doing when you're 'upgrading' from one winversion to the next, if not *reinstalling*!
I would not call it "reinstalling" because my operating environment including some device drivers is preserved through the upgrade. I would be more prone to calling the Win9x upgrades a massive service or fix pack. That is what I called the first Windows98 upgrade because it was the first "update/fix pack" you could apply cleanly to a Windows95a installation and provide support for FAT32 and USB. Clint
Did I ever tell you about my yard broom? I've had it over twenty years! Mind you its had 7 new heads and 3 handles. Seriously though, we aren't talking like-for-like. When I installed SuSE 7.2 back in July it took under 30 minutes to have a fully functional system running. OK, my scanner had stopped working and I had to configure this and that to get the set-up how I liked - a few hours effort or so. Now, if I installed Windows 98SE or Windows 2000 Professional it would take me say 30-40 minutes to install. But guess what? I haven't got a damned application installed and can do bugger all with it! Oh, and how many Windows boxes can run for 220 days without needing a reboot? M M
On Thu, 30 Aug 2001, Martin Webster wrote:
If you have the original Win98 CD, it takes about two hours on a fast connection to get all the updates from MS Windows Update. Which is why a lot of my co-workers bring in their home computers to work to download on the T1. I think Win98 had a bug where it would crash every 45 days or so. ;) Christopher Reimer
Christopher D. Reimer wrote:
I think Win98 had a bug where it would crash every 45 days or so.
One thing I don't understand is this mantra about how long you can leave a computer up before it will crash or when you might need to force it down or reboot to get things running right again. At a Novell conference a year or so back, they had contest to find longest running server. One of the longest running ones was one that had been up over 8 years and probably hadn't been seen in that length of time because it had been walled in and the only way they found it was pull on the wire... :-)) Most people turn off their systems off when they go home at night or go to bed and that does not qualify as a reboot. As a Network Administrator, I want people to log off and turn off their computers at night before leaving... Clint
With servers at least its all about controlled outages rather than uncontrolled ones :) With desktop computers I suppose its less important - I mean, look at the plethora of Windows boxen filling up everyones desks today, if uptime -was- important on the desktop then this situation would never have gotten so out of control... Craig On Thu, 30 Aug 2001 21:58:47 -0600, Clint Tinsley wrote:
============================================ Craig Sampson Professional Systems Integration Pty Ltd Email: craig@psi-aus.com Phone: (08) 9444 5587 Fax : (08) 9444 5175 ============================================
On Thursday 30 August 2001 11:58 pm, Clint Tinsley wrote:
It's all about reliability and productivity..... How many times does one have to re-boot when doing Windows Updates? About 6 times too many. Every damn little thing that gets changed in Windows requires a re-boot! Example: I run a VPN package on Windows that likes to change the domain setting down in the DNS config of Windows Networking. It does this when you start up the package. Ok, fine and it sets it back if it closes cleanly. But usually sometime during the day there's a line drop or some other hiccup and it doesn't close cleanly. In order to get my own domain back in there I have to go change it... and then.... REBOOT! Why in hell should you have to reboot an entire operating system (using the term very loosely) when all you are doing is changing the domain setting. Don't have to reboot in Linux for almost anything. Hell, I can even add a SCSI tape and/or scanner to my setup on the fly. I think for Windows that would take two reboots.. one for it to discover that the tape is there and another after it has found some driver to use with it... In any event, this is the last we should say about this (after your retort of course) since this is costing other people money in download time. OUT -- +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ + Bruce S. Marshall bmarsh@bmarsh.com Bellaire, MI 08/31/01 00:31 + +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ First Law of Money Dynamics: "A surprise monetary windfall will be accompanied by an unexpected expense of the same amount."
On 31-Aug-01 Clint Tinsley wrote:
As I recall the business (and I'm not sure about the "45"): a certain memory location or register was used to accumulate the number of microseconds since startup. After 45 (49?) days, this overflowed. The bug was that this overflow trod on something else's toes and crashed the system. Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 167 1972 Date: 31-Aug-01 Time: 08:12:02 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
Clint Tinsley wrote:
I often have to leave my pc on performing some very long tasks. I do not think I am the only one. Obviously you are not obliged to leave it on. But it is just good that when you have to, it wont fail. Once I tried to do something long with win98SE. I did not get any result from my task... I thing the blue screen of death is a result from Windows!
Clint
I do not want my pc to be forced to reboot when I do not want to. A car which can go for 30km with no stop is just good for you, but I bet you would be the only one. Tazio
And don't forget that 99.999(9...?)% of windows desktops get a daily reboot. (ie. when the user goes home/bed ;-) ) And... I know of one international humanitarian organisation with over 200 WinNT servers - each of which runs a script to reboot at midnight local time worldwide 'just to make sure' My SuSE 6.1 router/gateway (on a Compaq Deskpro XE433S) has been running 6 months without reboot (but is about to get the 7.2 treatment!) Tony At 16:42 30/08/2001 +0200, Anders Johansson wrote:
Harrell, Tim wrote:
I think it has been said here that much of problems are attibutable to the wetware at the keyboard, not the operating system, be it Linux or Windows. Incidentally, my Windows 98 SE is system is an upgrade that started out life as DOS/Windows 3.1, upgraded many times with newer system board, hard drives, adapter cards, CD-ROMs, DVD, etc. et. al, and operating systems - Windows95, 95a, 98, 98SE, all without a hit, never formatted C or reinstalled Windows! I don't think I could have done the same thing starting out with an early version of Linux such as Slackware or Calderea Open Base 1.x (I have a copy or each) and made the same claim... There would have definitely been some destructive (read: blow the hard drive) reinstalls a long the way if not recompilations of the operating system. Clint
On Wednesday 29 August 2001 08:11 pm, you wrote:
I get the same reaction form colleagues at work. I try to tell them how much more stuff you get with Linux and how it works better. Today I tried to do a simple spell check on a windows document in Word 97, and the stupid thing resized the document and erased it's borders. I watch colleagues at work have their Excell spread sheets lock up. Yet they defend this scoundrel's software as those they were contending for God and country.
That's probably true Clint but it's an indictment of how little Windows changes not a testimonial to its stability and upgradeablity. Anything will be upgradeable if it has only trifiling changes. Windows 3.1, 95 or whatever is just rehashed crap. It's just GUI's slopped over DOS. It comes with the same sloppy software. The same Word that changes fonts when you backspace. I am not here to flame Clint, he is probably a really good guy, but it can't be that I am the only person sick to death of Gates contraptions and the overpriced crap that gets pawned off as productivity suites or what not. So what if linux does not have flash or digital camera software or it can't scan. I'll take gcc, g77 and gdb over the dozens of useless trinkets like digital camera stuff and instant messangers and flash. All of it cheap crap. Try and install a FORTRAN compiler on Windowze. First try and find one under $300. Go now and see if you can get employment because you know how to use digital camera software. The HR people will laugh at you. BTW I used the digital camera stuff that came on my freinds Millenium box; crap as usually. Supposedly America has the greatest economy in the world. with guys like Bill Gates running our businesses, I don't know how the hell we did it. Maybe it's true that a sucker is born every minute. Bill succeeded because Apple was taken over by a Pepsi Cola salesman and run into the ground. -- Cheers, Jonathan
Jonathan Drews wrote:
I would disagree that Bill "succeeded" because of Apple or IBM mis-steps and we all have reasons to not particulary like Bill and what he does sometimes but he succeeded in providing a operating platform that was GUI based sufficiently "open" and accepted in the market place where most everyone could play. I've been around the "PC" since 1977 and have a quite a museum colllection of hardware including TRS-80's, Apples, and even a KIM-1 with the expansion chasis. The Commodore/Pet was no slacker nor the Amiga. I bemoaned Radio Shack when they gave up the market in 1982 to IBM just because they were stuck in a world of 64 column monocrome displays, a maket they owned with over a millions computers installed base, several magazines dedicated to the product, and tons of software that was either free or inexpensive. It was interesting that the Radio-Shack TRS-80 was, like Microsoft, a love/hate affair and I can tell you that the TRS-80 was a wonderful little box with its entire computer bus exposed on that one little connector on the back, the world was mine as an engineer and sometimes programmer. I even used my TRS-80 to trouble shoot PDP-11 Computers in real time but a lot of people hated the TRASH-80! OS/2 is/was a great operating system. OS/2 could run Windows better than Windows was the IBM mantra back about 1993 without having to use something like VMWare and yet IBM could only attract a handful of vendors, specifically, only one decent word processor, DeScribe, if I remember correctly and even they went away... Incidently, in 1993 or thereabouts, OS/2 version 2.1 Extended Edtion could have 16 Windows applications all running concurrently and not crashing, multitreaded, mulitasking, on a 386 with a nominal amount of memory and still doing all the communication/IBM connectivity things that OS/2 was famous for. I think OS/2 might have invented the service pack but who knows, it was a joint effort with Bill at the time. Over in the HR department, Linux/Apache/PHP may get you in the door as system administrator or web developer, but as Office2000, PageMaker, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, etc. get you much further than Star Office and the Gimp albeit the powerful tools that they are. As for what I do, I am responsible for providing the desktop (read Windows 9x) environment to over 8000 workstations in a K-12 evironment running Office97/2000/XP in a connected world across a multiplicity of platforms and networking topologies where Word does not change fonts when you backspace, Excel doesn't lock up, and you don't reboot the PC everytime you walk by. The school district mantra is Preparing todays student for tomorrow's world and right now, that is a "Windows" world, whether you or I like it or not. And while Linux makes great servers, I am not ready to replace our Novell severs in providing File and Print services along with NDS based single point of administration user security including application management and desktop policies enforcement with either Linux or NT but we use both in providing application and internet services. And we don't run WindowsME! :-)) Clint
So you're still running fat 16 then?! That can't be very efficient. And how exactly do you upgrade a hard drive without reformatting? And what exactly do you think you're doing when you're 'upgrading' from one winversion to the next, if not *reinstalling*! However, if your definition if re-installation is reformatting/repartitioning then you can that is very, very possible with linux. There was a transition from the old minix file system to ext2 some time in the distant past, but apart from that I can see no *forcing* reason to reformat! Ever! On Thursday 30 August 2001 03.11, Clint Tinsley wrote:
Anders Johansson wrote:
So you're still running fat 16 then?! That can't be very efficient.
I converted to FAT 32 on the upgrade to Windows98. I used Partition Magic to perform the operation although Mickysoft provides a utility to do it as well.
And how exactly do you upgrade a hard drive without reformatting?
You run setup or let the CD automatically run. The operating system gets updated all your installed software is preserved but you get the benefit of updated drivers and refreshed DLL's. I use Drive Image and Partition Magic for migrating and messaging the drive partition from one drive to another. I own Drive Image 4.0 and Partition Magic 6.0 and I just got an email from PowerQwest for the upgrade for the 7.0 version of Partition Magic.
And what exactly do you think you're doing when you're 'upgrading' from one winversion to the next, if not *reinstalling*!
I would not call it "reinstalling" because my operating environment including some device drivers is preserved through the upgrade. I would be more prone to calling the Win9x upgrades a massive service or fix pack. That is what I called the first Windows98 upgrade because it was the first "update/fix pack" you could apply cleanly to a Windows95a installation and provide support for FAT32 and USB. Clint
Did I ever tell you about my yard broom? I've had it over twenty years! Mind you its had 7 new heads and 3 handles. Seriously though, we aren't talking like-for-like. When I installed SuSE 7.2 back in July it took under 30 minutes to have a fully functional system running. OK, my scanner had stopped working and I had to configure this and that to get the set-up how I liked - a few hours effort or so. Now, if I installed Windows 98SE or Windows 2000 Professional it would take me say 30-40 minutes to install. But guess what? I haven't got a damned application installed and can do bugger all with it! Oh, and how many Windows boxes can run for 220 days without needing a reboot? M M
On Thu, 30 Aug 2001, Martin Webster wrote:
If you have the original Win98 CD, it takes about two hours on a fast connection to get all the updates from MS Windows Update. Which is why a lot of my co-workers bring in their home computers to work to download on the T1. I think Win98 had a bug where it would crash every 45 days or so. ;) Christopher Reimer
Christopher D. Reimer wrote:
I think Win98 had a bug where it would crash every 45 days or so.
One thing I don't understand is this mantra about how long you can leave a computer up before it will crash or when you might need to force it down or reboot to get things running right again. At a Novell conference a year or so back, they had contest to find longest running server. One of the longest running ones was one that had been up over 8 years and probably hadn't been seen in that length of time because it had been walled in and the only way they found it was pull on the wire... :-)) Most people turn off their systems off when they go home at night or go to bed and that does not qualify as a reboot. As a Network Administrator, I want people to log off and turn off their computers at night before leaving... Clint
With servers at least its all about controlled outages rather than uncontrolled ones :) With desktop computers I suppose its less important - I mean, look at the plethora of Windows boxen filling up everyones desks today, if uptime -was- important on the desktop then this situation would never have gotten so out of control... Craig On Thu, 30 Aug 2001 21:58:47 -0600, Clint Tinsley wrote:
============================================ Craig Sampson Professional Systems Integration Pty Ltd Email: craig@psi-aus.com Phone: (08) 9444 5587 Fax : (08) 9444 5175 ============================================
On Thursday 30 August 2001 11:58 pm, Clint Tinsley wrote:
It's all about reliability and productivity..... How many times does one have to re-boot when doing Windows Updates? About 6 times too many. Every damn little thing that gets changed in Windows requires a re-boot! Example: I run a VPN package on Windows that likes to change the domain setting down in the DNS config of Windows Networking. It does this when you start up the package. Ok, fine and it sets it back if it closes cleanly. But usually sometime during the day there's a line drop or some other hiccup and it doesn't close cleanly. In order to get my own domain back in there I have to go change it... and then.... REBOOT! Why in hell should you have to reboot an entire operating system (using the term very loosely) when all you are doing is changing the domain setting. Don't have to reboot in Linux for almost anything. Hell, I can even add a SCSI tape and/or scanner to my setup on the fly. I think for Windows that would take two reboots.. one for it to discover that the tape is there and another after it has found some driver to use with it... In any event, this is the last we should say about this (after your retort of course) since this is costing other people money in download time. OUT -- +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ + Bruce S. Marshall bmarsh@bmarsh.com Bellaire, MI 08/31/01 00:31 + +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ First Law of Money Dynamics: "A surprise monetary windfall will be accompanied by an unexpected expense of the same amount."
participants (12)
-
Anders Johansson -
Bruce Marshall -
Christopher D. Reimer -
Clint Tinsley -
Craig Sampson -
David Milligan -
Harrell, Tim -
Jonathan Drews -
Martin Webster -
Tazio Ceri -
Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk -
Tony White