On Mon, 10 Mar 2008 13:13:10 +0000, Invisible wrote:

> I just prefer being able to add new drivers without having to recompile
> the kernel and reboot the machine - but that's just me...

Well, in Linux you don't have to.  You build the driver (if it's not 
already included), load it, and away you go.

Jim

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On Mon, 10 Mar 2008 14:06:44 +0000, Invisible wrote:

> No - but it *is* fun if you try to install some device driver that needs
> to be compiled from source and you don't have the kernel headers
> installed.

There's a reason why you install the kernel headers.  Once.

The latest nVidia drivers installed like a dream for me on openSUSE 
10.3.  The ATI drivers are, admittedly, a royal pain in the arse.

Jim

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>> The trouble with Linux is that everything is 50,000 utterly *tiny*
>> pieces, each of which does almost nothing useful by itself, and you have
>> to put thousands of these tiny pieces together to do anything useful.
> 
> Well, that's a fallacy right there.  I'm running a monolithic application 
> at the moment called "pan", which is a newsreader.
> 
> I've got another fairly monolithic application called "firefox" running 
> in the background, and another called "OpenOffice" that's at the 
> standby.  Also one called "Pidgin" which is an IM client.
> 
> None of these apps particularly *requires* any of the standard command-
> line utilities on my OS for anything short of building it (if I should 
> desire to do so).

Right. And simply booting the OS doesn't require GRUB, init, chkfs, 
getty, some kind of shell to run all the startup scripts, plus every CLI 
tool that those scripts call...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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On Mon, 10 Mar 2008 16:51:29 +0000, Invisible wrote:

> Right. And simply booting the OS doesn't require GRUB

Modern Windows has an equivalent - ever seen the boot menu?

> init

service manager

> chkfs,

chkdsk

> getty, 

GINA

> some kind of shell to run all the startup scripts, 

service manager (again)

> plus every CLI
> tool that those scripts call...

DLL hell. ;-)

You say "tomayto", I say "tomahto".

Jim

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Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> The ATI drivers are, admittedly, a royal pain in the arse.

  The ATI Linux display driver has installed itself just fine for years.
Its only problem is that it's buggy with several display cards (including
mine), which renders it unusable with them.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> 
> Well, in Linux you don't have to.  You build the driver (if it's not 
> already included), load it, and away you go.

And if the driver hangs, you unload and reload it. No need for reboot on 
that ;).

> Jim


-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
    http://www.zbxt.net
       aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid

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On Mon, 10 Mar 2008 13:05:52 -0500, Warp wrote:

> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
>> The ATI drivers are, admittedly, a royal pain in the arse.
> 
>   The ATI Linux display driver has installed itself just fine for years.
> Its only problem is that it's buggy with several display cards
> (including mine), which renders it unusable with them.

The 8.40.4 version of fglrx is the last one that works for me on my 
Thinkpad.  Installation is a pain if you have a kernel update - the 
nVidia package by comparison is smart enough to recognise that it needs 
to be rebuilt on a reboot and it does that automatically.

All the newer ATI drivers just plain don't work on this machine.

Jim

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Jim Henderson wrote:

> You say "tomayto", I say "tomahto".

Difference is, all the little bits and pieces that make up Windoze all 
come from one manufacturer, there's only one version of them, and 
they're all extensively tested together.

Linux, OTOH... You don't often find two machines set up exactly the same 
way. And all the individual parts are from different people, and there 
are a myriad of possible versions and implementations.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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On Mon, 10 Mar 2008 19:23:19 +0000, Orchid XP v7 wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
> 
>> You say "tomayto", I say "tomahto".
> 
> Difference is, all the little bits and pieces that make up Windoze all
> come from one manufacturer, there's only one version of them, and
> they're all extensively tested together.
> 
> Linux, OTOH... You don't often find two machines set up exactly the same
> way. And all the individual parts are from different people, and there
> are a myriad of possible versions and implementations.

You need to look at how the software checkins and testing are handled for 
the kernel.

And you need to look up again the definition of "DLL Hell".

Not so different as you might think.

Jim

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>> Difference is, all the little bits and pieces that make up Windoze all
>> come from one manufacturer, there's only one version of them, and
>> they're all extensively tested together.
>>
>> Linux, OTOH... You don't often find two machines set up exactly the same
>> way. And all the individual parts are from different people, and there
>> are a myriad of possible versions and implementations.
> 
> You need to look at how the software checkins and testing are handled for 
> the kernel.

Who said anything about the kernel? I'm talking about the entire Linux 
OS. (Most of which is actually GNU, if you want to be technical about it...)

> And you need to look up again the definition of "DLL Hell".
> 
> Not so different as you might think.

I have yet to experience "DLL Hell". I'm told it exists, and it's not 
fun, but I haven't seen it personally. (Don't ask me why...)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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