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Invisible <voi### [at] dev null> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> > Autoconf exists because not all systems have the same tools or libraries
> > installed, nor all systems have the same versions of those tools/libraries.
> As far as I can tell, autoconf exists because some systems use BSD awk
> and others use GNU awk, and the two aren't precisely compatible.
In other words, autoconf exists to increase portability. My point exactly.
> Multiply this by the 50,000 other tiny utilities you may or may not need
> to set up this program and you have a configuration nightmare so bad it
> requires an automated tool to make things remotely tractable.
You seem to have quite many nightmares others don't.
> > Autoconf also exists because computer architectures are different.
> > For instance, some architectures may be little-endian while others are
> > big-endian. Some architectures may be 32-bit while others are 64-bit.
> Shouldn't the compiler be dealing with those issues?
There are some cases were endianess matters, especially if you are trying
to write low-level efficient code.
A concrete example which I remember where the program has to behave
differently depending on endianess is mplayer. The source code has to
know the endianess of the target system in order to be able to write
bytes in the proper order.
(Sure, the code could have been written so that endianess doesn't matter,
but then it wouldn't have been so efficient.)
--
- Warp
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>> I just prefer being able to add new drivers without having to recompile
>> the kernel and reboot the machine - but that's just me...
>
> I have never had to recompile the kernel or reboot the machine because
> of requiring a new driver.
>
> man modprobe
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. (Whereas on Windoze you just install the driver - and hope to
God that PnP actually does what it's meant to...)
I had great fun trying to get the nVidia graphics drivers to actually
blinking work...
>> OOC, what are the benefits?
>
> For example, the interfaces and protocols between the kernel and the
> drivers can be modified easily without having to worry about backwards
> compatibility.
Mmm, OK. I can see how that would be useful...
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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On Mon, 10 Mar 2008 10:07:04 +0000, Invisible wrote:
> 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).
Jim
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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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