On Fri, 24 Oct 2008 09:14:53 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> True, but at the same time, that information being reverse-engineered
>> by Compaq really opened up the PC market;
> 
> I think the pheonix bios did more than Compaq did. The hardware was all
> very well documented by IBM before the clones started coming out, as was
> the BIOS. People didn't used to try to hide that sort of thing. :-) IBM
> wanted people building cards for it, just like Apple did for the Apple
> ][.

My recollection was that Compaq was first with the reverse-engineering, 
but Wikipedia conflicts with what I recall as well.  It may well have 
been Phoenix.

>> Which in turn has moved PC sales from a low-volume high-margin sales
>> model to a low-margin high-volume sales model.  Seems to have worked
>> out fairly well for most PC manufacturers.
> 
> I dunno about that. Worked well for, say, manufacturing plants in China.
> I don't know that it worked well for people actually selling the end
> product.

I used to sell hardware (Amigas were the main machines, but we had some 
PC hardware that was sold).  The commoditization of PC hardware lowered 
the entry level price to where it was affordable for normal people.  For 
IBM, as I recall, that happened with the early PS/2 models (the price on 
the PC/XT/AT as I recall was still relatively high).

>> Eventually, clean room reverse-engineering would expose those internals
>> anyways, and arguably the type of process Compaq followed isn't
>> something IBM could have sued over - the guys developing the Compaq
>> BIOS were working entirely from specs drawn up by the guys who were
>> looking at how the BIOS worked.
> 
> Yeah. Except I think you're confusing Phoenix with Compaq. Compaq made
> the hardware. Phoenix cloned the BIOS first.  (Unless I'm misremembering
> something.)

That could be it - a combination of what you remember and what I remember 
is probably closer to reality. :-)

> And yes, IBM *did* sue over it. That's why Phoenix followed the
> clean-room approach to start with. The original IBMs came with a
> complete commented source listing of the BIOS when you bought them.
> (Well, maybe it was an extra packet, part of the assembler or something,
> but it was an off-the-shelf purchase.)

I know (from reading that Wikipedia article) that Phoenix was concerned 
about it - but I don't recall IBM suing over it.  But I didn't follow the 
legal issues then the way I do now, either.

Jim

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Jim Henderson wrote:
>> If GRUB's boot sector actually loaded the boot sector off the active
>> partition, just like ever other boot sector written in the history of
>> hard drives on IBM computers and their clones, you could remotely switch
>> back and forth by using the same procedure that's worked since day 0 on
>> the IBM AT. Sadly, the Linux developers want to be the only OS that can
>> be booted, so they didn't bother to follow the standard. ;-)
> 
> I had thought GRUB on my system here was set up with the MBR, but I was 
> in fact mistaken - it's in the root partition instead.
> 
> Jim

Its actually a bit complicated. Windows will, if it can't find, or finds 
a damaged Boot.ini simply boot the active partition, otherwise it acts 
like Grub, and basically gives a menu, which can "default" to a specific 
partition. As I understand it, there is no direct way, short of hand 
editing, to tell it which one you want "active" as the default, so you 
**need** the "boot from the active partition" behavior. lol GRUB.. Well, 
either it or LILO, or maybe both, can be set to be either in the MBR or 
in the root. I think, either way, they will look at the root to try to 
find the menu options to display. Anyone try to delete the menu and see 
what happens? It might default to booting the "active" if it can't find 
the menu. So, the only real difference would be the redirect to the 
linux partition, in the case where its installed there, instead of in 
the MBR, presuming it does boot the active in such a case. Its kind of a 
toss up then if you think the "Windows" MBR or the Linux MBR behavior 
makes more sense.


-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> My recollection was that Compaq was first with the reverse-engineering, 
> but Wikipedia conflicts with what I recall as well.  It may well have 
> been Phoenix.

I think Compaq bought the reverse-engineered BIOS from Pheonix. That's 
my memory, at least.

> I used to sell hardware (Amigas were the main machines, but we had some 
> PC hardware that was sold).  The commoditization of PC hardware lowered 
> the entry level price to where it was affordable for normal people.

Oh, you're talking about selling end units. I was talking about selling 
it OEM. Kind of hard to make a good profit on commodity manufacturing, 
is what I meant.

> That could be it - a combination of what you remember and what I remember 
> is probably closer to reality. :-)

Yeah. I'm pretty sure my first clone was indeed a Compaq, at least. But 
I remember the lawsuits about Phoenix, too.

> I know (from reading that Wikipedia article) that Phoenix was concerned 
> about it - but I don't recall IBM suing over it.  But I didn't follow the 
> legal issues then the way I do now, either.

They did, or at least went far enough into the discovery process to 
figure out they'd lose. I actually studied that one in one of my 
graduate classes.  IANAL.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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Jim Henderson wrote:
>> I'll eat my underwears if they do. :D
> You'll have to video that one. ;-)

In my experience, the proper response is
    GIF! GIF! GIF!

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> YaST will let you do this.  I was just in there checking it out. :-)

Cool. Perhaps they improved that since I first tried it a couple years 
ago. I couldn't imagine nothing would do it. I'm pretty sure the 
command-line fdisk on Linux allows it too.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> I'm now wondering if that's the case - if it uses ntfs.sys;

I might have been out of date. Maybe that was ntfs-2g or something.  I 
just know what I've heard people tell me.  My research (as of a day or 
two ago) tells me it's actually all native code, unencumbered by IP.

> Well, yes.  There was specific boot sector code in the MBR to do that, 

Yeah, but every MBR I ever saw does it that way. It used to be the only 
way to boot a different OS.

>> Yes, MS's boot sector follows the standard that's been around for a
>> decade longer than Linux has. GRUB's doesn't. What do you think MS is
>> doing wrong here?
> 
> My understanding is that the Microsoft MBR (at least as included in 
> Vista, possibly with older versions as well) depends on that boot.ini 
> file, much as GRUB depends on the files in /boot/grub.

Maybe Vista, since it has a new boot record. I'll play with it to see.

But everything before that, from DOS thru Win95 through XP all just load 
the first sector of the active partition and jumps to it. Now, that 
said, the first sector of the XP partition relies on NTLDR and boot.ini 
being present. But you'd have to work really hard to fit NTFS into 480 
bytes, even if only to find boot.ini, you know?

> Thing is, it shouldn't require a change to the active partition list.  

It doesn't *require* it. It *allows* it.

> But also, GRUB can be told to change the default for a single boot only - 
> at least I seem to recall there's an option to do that.

Again, my Linux sysop knowledge is probably out of date. The version as 
of a couple years ago doesn't allow that, and I can't afford to risk 
breaking 60 production machines to check if it's better now. :-)

> Installing Linux (at least openSUSE) on a drive with Windows on it, the 
> installer will set Windows up as a menu option so you can select either.  
> Installing Windows after Linux, though, Windows won't add Linux to the 
> boot menu automatically.  I guess that's what I was trying to say.

Oh, it's not automated, sure. But it's pretty trivial, compared to a lot 
of Linux things. :-)  If you wind up installing Windows after Linux, you 
probably are smart enough to type the two or three command-line bits it 
takes to get the Linux boot sector into Windows.

> I had thought GRUB on my system here was set up with the MBR, but I was 
> in fact mistaken - it's in the root partition instead.

I'm not sure what that means. I know *all* of GRUB doesn't fit in the 
MBR, any more than NTLDR does. It's just a question of whether GRUB's 
MBR does something necessary to make GRUB boot, or whether you can boot 
a GRUB partition off someone else's MBR. Right now, my tests (on SuSE 
10.2) are telling me GRUB needs GRUB's MBR. It might be better now, or I 
might be doing something wrong.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> I think this is because GRUB is actually a more complex piece of software 
> compared to LILO. 

Yep.

> That's not how I remember it, but I generally didn't have multiple MS 
> OSes installed simultaneously.

Remember that MS was selling Xenix long before Linux was conceived.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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On Sun, 26 Oct 2008 09:39:34 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> My recollection was that Compaq was first with the reverse-engineering,
>> but Wikipedia conflicts with what I recall as well.  It may well have
>> been Phoenix.
> 
> I think Compaq bought the reverse-engineered BIOS from Pheonix. That's
> my memory, at least.

That could well be.  I don't know that I ever heard the specifics beyond 
Compaq was involved and it was a clean-room reimplementation.

>> I used to sell hardware (Amigas were the main machines, but we had some
>> PC hardware that was sold).  The commoditization of PC hardware lowered
>> the entry level price to where it was affordable for normal people.
> 
> Oh, you're talking about selling end units. I was talking about selling
> it OEM. Kind of hard to make a good profit on commodity manufacturing,
> is what I meant.

Yeah, end units is my point.  Agree on the profitability on the 
components, you've got to sell a lot of them to make money, and that 
includes keeping production costs really down.

>> That could be it - a combination of what you remember and what I
>> remember is probably closer to reality. :-)
> 
> Yeah. I'm pretty sure my first clone was indeed a Compaq, at least. But
> I remember the lawsuits about Phoenix, too.

Yeah, Compaq did have the first clone - that's probably what's driving my 
memory of it.

>> I know (from reading that Wikipedia article) that Phoenix was concerned
>> about it - but I don't recall IBM suing over it.  But I didn't follow
>> the legal issues then the way I do now, either.
> 
> They did, or at least went far enough into the discovery process to
> figure out they'd lose. I actually studied that one in one of my
> graduate classes.  IANAL.

Cool.  IAANAL. ;-)

Jim

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On Sat, 25 Oct 2008 20:38:15 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>>> If GRUB's boot sector actually loaded the boot sector off the active
>>> partition, just like ever other boot sector written in the history of
>>> hard drives on IBM computers and their clones, you could remotely
>>> switch back and forth by using the same procedure that's worked since
>>> day 0 on the IBM AT. Sadly, the Linux developers want to be the only
>>> OS that can be booted, so they didn't bother to follow the standard.
>>> ;-)
>> 
>> I had thought GRUB on my system here was set up with the MBR, but I was
>> in fact mistaken - it's in the root partition instead.
>> 
>> Jim
> 
> Its actually a bit complicated. Windows will, if it can't find, or finds
> a damaged Boot.ini simply boot the active partition, otherwise it acts
> like Grub, and basically gives a menu, which can "default" to a specific
> partition. As I understand it, there is no direct way, short of hand
> editing, to tell it which one you want "active" as the default, so you
> **need** the "boot from the active partition" behavior. lol GRUB.. Well,
> either it or LILO, or maybe both, can be set to be either in the MBR or
> in the root. I think, either way, they will look at the root to try to
> find the menu options to display. Anyone try to delete the menu and see
> what happens? It might default to booting the "active" if it can't find
> the menu. So, the only real difference would be the redirect to the
> linux partition, in the case where its installed there, instead of in
> the MBR, presuming it does boot the active in such a case. Its kind of a
> toss up then if you think the "Windows" MBR or the Linux MBR behavior
> makes more sense.

Interesting, now I'm going to have to do some playing with Grub (in a VM) 
when I have some time. :-)

Jim

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On Sun, 26 Oct 2008 09:49:14 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> I'm now wondering if that's the case - if it uses ntfs.sys;
> 
> I might have been out of date. Maybe that was ntfs-2g or something.  I
> just know what I've heard people tell me.  My research (as of a day or
> two ago) tells me it's actually all native code, unencumbered by IP.

I've probably been one of those people telling you, because I thought it 
did use ntfs.sys.  :-)

>> Well, yes.  There was specific boot sector code in the MBR to do that,
> 
> Yeah, but every MBR I ever saw does it that way. It used to be the only
> way to boot a different OS.

Yeah, until we got to the fancy menus, which required additional code 
that wouldn't fit in one sector.

>>> Yes, MS's boot sector follows the standard that's been around for a
>>> decade longer than Linux has. GRUB's doesn't. What do you think MS is
>>> doing wrong here?
>> 
>> My understanding is that the Microsoft MBR (at least as included in
>> Vista, possibly with older versions as well) depends on that boot.ini
>> file, much as GRUB depends on the files in /boot/grub.
> 
> Maybe Vista, since it has a new boot record. I'll play with it to see.
> 
> But everything before that, from DOS thru Win95 through XP all just load
> the first sector of the active partition and jumps to it. Now, that
> said, the first sector of the XP partition relies on NTLDR and boot.ini
> being present. But you'd have to work really hard to fit NTFS into 480
> bytes, even if only to find boot.ini, you know?

True, now you mention it, I do recall this.

>> Thing is, it shouldn't require a change to the active partition list.
> 
> It doesn't *require* it. It *allows* it.

No, I mean in order to boot a different partition.

>> But also, GRUB can be told to change the default for a single boot only
>> - at least I seem to recall there's an option to do that.
> 
> Again, my Linux sysop knowledge is probably out of date. The version as
> of a couple years ago doesn't allow that, and I can't afford to risk
> breaking 60 production machines to check if it's better now. :-)

I'll have to see if I can find that one - I was sure I saw the option 
somewhere, but of course now I can't find it. :-)

>> Installing Linux (at least openSUSE) on a drive with Windows on it, the
>> installer will set Windows up as a menu option so you can select
>> either. Installing Windows after Linux, though, Windows won't add Linux
>> to the boot menu automatically.  I guess that's what I was trying to
>> say.
> 
> Oh, it's not automated, sure. But it's pretty trivial, compared to a lot
> of Linux things. :-)  If you wind up installing Windows after Linux, you
> probably are smart enough to type the two or three command-line bits it
> takes to get the Linux boot sector into Windows.

Probably, yes - though it's probably easier to modify the Grub setup at 
that point and just add the Windows install.  Most people I know who 
install Windows second, though, use a VM rather than a native boot.

>> I had thought GRUB on my system here was set up with the MBR, but I was
>> in fact mistaken - it's in the root partition instead.
> 
> I'm not sure what that means. I know *all* of GRUB doesn't fit in the
> MBR, any more than NTLDR does. It's just a question of whether GRUB's
> MBR does something necessary to make GRUB boot, or whether you can boot
> a GRUB partition off someone else's MBR. Right now, my tests (on SuSE
> 10.2) are telling me GRUB needs GRUB's MBR. It might be better now, or I
> might be doing something wrong.

It means that GRUB on my system here is using the active partition.  I 
don't know what's in the MBR on this laptop's hard drive, but the 
settings when I go into YaST and look indicate that it's installed to the 
first sector of the active partition.

Jim

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On Sun, 26 Oct 2008 09:40:46 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> YaST will let you do this.  I was just in there checking it out. :-)
> 
> Cool. Perhaps they improved that since I first tried it a couple years
> ago. I couldn't imagine nothing would do it. I'm pretty sure the
> command-line fdisk on Linux allows it too.

Oh, sure fdisk or cfdisk will let you change the active flag in a 
partition.

Jim

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On Sun, 26 Oct 2008 09:40:02 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>>> I'll eat my underwears if they do. :D
>> You'll have to video that one. ;-)
> 
> In my experience, the proper response is
>     GIF! GIF! GIF!

LOL

Jim

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On Sun, 26 Oct 2008 09:51:04 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> I think this is because GRUB is actually a more complex piece of
>> software compared to LILO.
> 
> Yep.
> 
>> That's not how I remember it, but I generally didn't have multiple MS
>> OSes installed simultaneously.
> 
> Remember that MS was selling Xenix long before Linux was conceived.

True, but there again, the Xenix systems that I saw and worked on only 
ran Xenix....We actually used that for the "library" system in the 
computer lab at the school I went to.

Jim

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Jim Henderson wrote:
>>> Thing is, it shouldn't require a change to the active partition list.
>> It doesn't *require* it. It *allows* it.
> 
> No, I mean in order to boot a different partition.

Windows and GRUB are the same in this respect. If the active partition 
is, for some reason, unreadable, you won't get a menu to boot the other 
partition. However, you can use a non-OS tool (fdisk off a dos disk, 
say) to change the active partition and boot the other OS.

It's a two-stage boot. You're talking about the second stage. I'm 
talking about the first stage.

> Probably, yes - though it's probably easier to modify the Grub setup at 
> that point and just add the Windows install.  Most people I know who 
> install Windows second, though, use a VM rather than a native boot.

There are definitely more options now than there were, yes. :-)

> It means that GRUB on my system here is using the active partition.  I 
> don't know what's in the MBR on this laptop's hard drive, but the 
> settings when I go into YaST and look indicate that it's installed to the 
> first sector of the active partition.

It's most likely installed to both. It's a two-stage boot. Maybe that's 
what's confusing the conversation.

The first stage is to load the MBR off (basically) sector zero of the 
hard drive, which happens to include the partition table. The *stnadard* 
MBR then looks at the partition table, finds the active partition, moves 
itself out of the way, reads the first sector of the active partition 
into the same place it was, and jumps to it.

Only after that second step do you get any kind of menu. If you delete 
NTLDR or /boot off the active partition, you're not going to have an 
opportunity to boot off a different partition. With the standard MBR, 
you don't have to put NTLDR or /boot back, you just have to change the 
active flag.  Last I experiemented, the GRUB MBR booted the GRUB 
partition even if it wasn't marked active, which means if your GRUB 
partition is corrupt, you're SOL.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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On Sun, 26 Oct 2008 13:25:44 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>>>> Thing is, it shouldn't require a change to the active partition list.
>>> It doesn't *require* it. It *allows* it.
>> 
>> No, I mean in order to boot a different partition.
> 
> Windows and GRUB are the same in this respect. If the active partition
> is, for some reason, unreadable, you won't get a menu to boot the other
> partition. However, you can use a non-OS tool (fdisk off a dos disk,
> say) to change the active partition and boot the other OS.
> 
> It's a two-stage boot. You're talking about the second stage. I'm
> talking about the first stage.

Oh, right - yes, and both platforms use the two-stage system these days.

>> Probably, yes - though it's probably easier to modify the Grub setup at
>> that point and just add the Windows install.  Most people I know who
>> install Windows second, though, use a VM rather than a native boot.
> 
> There are definitely more options now than there were, yes. :-)

Absolutely. :-)

>> It means that GRUB on my system here is using the active partition.  I
>> don't know what's in the MBR on this laptop's hard drive, but the
>> settings when I go into YaST and look indicate that it's installed to
>> the first sector of the active partition.
> 
> It's most likely installed to both. It's a two-stage boot. Maybe that's
> what's confusing the conversation.

Perhaps.

> The first stage is to load the MBR off (basically) sector zero of the
> hard drive, which happens to include the partition table. The *stnadard*
> MBR then looks at the partition table, finds the active partition, moves
> itself out of the way, reads the first sector of the active partition
> into the same place it was, and jumps to it.
>
> Only after that second step do you get any kind of menu. If you delete
> NTLDR or /boot off the active partition, you're not going to have an
> opportunity to boot off a different partition. With the standard MBR,
> you don't have to put NTLDR or /boot back, you just have to change the
> active flag.  Last I experiemented, the GRUB MBR booted the GRUB
> partition even if it wasn't marked active, which means if your GRUB
> partition is corrupt, you're SOL.

Well, only as far as that disk is - a bootable rescue disk can fix that, 
but also in my experience GRUB can get to a point where you can type in 
commands to boot the system.  I used to have to do that with RH9 systems 
I'd imaged on occasion.  So even if it didn't read the menu, I could get 
the system up to a point where I could fix the menu.

Jim

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Darren New wrote:
> 
> Yeah. Funny enough, people complain about Vista not supporting hardware
> right, but don't think that's a problem for Linux. :-) "Just buy the
> right hardware to start with."  My machines tend to last a number of
> years, so "buy the right hardware" isn't always possible for me.
> 

To exactly how many pieces of hardware have you lost the support on
Linux while upgrading to a newer version of Linux? The difference
between Linux and Vista here is that if your device worked with Zoot
(RedHat 6.2) and 2.2 -series kernel, it most probably still works with
newest SuSE and 2.6 -series kernel - at least if you're still able to
physically plug the device in.

If your hw works with Linux now, it'll work for the number of years,
even if you do update your software. As far as I've understood, if your
hw works with 2k or XP, you can't be sure it'll still work with Vista.

And yes, I'll have to admit - em8300 -support took a while to work in
64-bit. That's the only case I've hit my head with.

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

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> 
> I've also heard that some of the newer HP laserjet printers don't have 
> open specs so there aren't drivers yet for them.  That one I haven't 
> confirmed, just have heard about.

That must be the cheapest bonk-line LJ's. All real-printer LJ's I've
seen have talked PostScript and various PCL versions and are supported
very widely.

> 
> Jim


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

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> 
> Oh, that's not Grub, that's SYSLINUX - Grub is hard-disk only to the best 
> of my knowledge.
> 

I'm not sure about CD-ROM, but at least Grub is able to boot via PXE.

> Jim


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

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Eero Ahonen <aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid> wrote:
> To exactly how many pieces of hardware have you lost the support on
> Linux while upgrading to a newer version of Linux? The difference
> between Linux and Vista here is that if your device worked with Zoot
> (RedHat 6.2) and 2.2 -series kernel, it most probably still works with
> newest SuSE and 2.6 -series kernel - at least if you're still able to
> physically plug the device in.

  I think one advantage of Linux over Windows is that Linux has absolutely
no need to try to "sell" new versions of itself. This allows for a much
more gradual development of the entire system, and there's no need to
artificially make a "new version of linux" (if we even can rationally talk
about one) look&feel different from earlier versions. On the contrary, one
of the strengths of Linux is precisely that it doesn't need to try to be
different with each new version, so it can not only keep backwards
compatibility at software level, but also at the user interface level.
Any changes in usage are caused by necessity, not by an attempt to be
different for the sake of being different.

  Not so with Windows. Microsoft *must* sell a completely brand new version
of Windows each n years. Of course people wouldn't buy the new version if
it was basically identical to the old version, with just internal invisible
improvements, and perhaps a few new programs (which would work in the old
version anyways). Thus MS has to make new versions of Windows look&feel
different from earlier versions. MS has to create the illusion that the
new version is much better than the old version, and that people should
definitely upgrade. That sells.
  The sad thing that changing the look&feel often means artificial changes
which are not for the better. It also sometimes means breaking backwards
compatibility with older software and even hardware.
  Another way of selling the new version is to include something which
does not work in the older version (DirectX10 anyone?)

  The sad thing is that people are ready to conform.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> Eero Ahonen <aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid> wrote:
> > To exactly how many pieces of hardware have you lost the support on
> > Linux while upgrading to a newer version of Linux? The difference
> > between Linux and Vista here is that if your device worked with Zoot
> > (RedHat 6.2) and 2.2 -series kernel, it most probably still works with
> > newest SuSE and 2.6 -series kernel - at least if you're still able to
> > physically plug the device in.
>
>   I think one advantage of Linux over Windows is that Linux has absolutely
> no need to try to "sell" new versions of itself. This allows for a much
> more gradual development of the entire system, and there's no need to
> artificially make a "new version of linux" (if we even can rationally talk
> about one) look&feel different from earlier versions. On the contrary, one
> of the strengths of Linux is precisely that it doesn't need to try to be
> different with each new version, so it can not only keep backwards
> compatibility at software level, but also at the user interface level.
> Any changes in usage are caused by necessity, not by an attempt to be
> different for the sake of being different.
>
>   Not so with Windows. Microsoft *must* sell a completely brand new version
> of Windows each n years. Of course people wouldn't buy the new version if
> it was basically identical to the old version, with just internal invisible
> improvements, and perhaps a few new programs (which would work in the old
> version anyways). Thus MS has to make new versions of Windows look&feel
> different from earlier versions. MS has to create the illusion that the
> new version is much better than the old version, and that people should
> definitely upgrade. That sells.
>   The sad thing that changing the look&feel often means artificial changes
> which are not for the better. It also sometimes means breaking backwards
> compatibility with older software and even hardware.
>   Another way of selling the new version is to include something which
> does not work in the older version (DirectX10 anyone?)
>
>   The sad thing is that people are ready to conform.
>
> --
>                                                           - Warp

I wouldn't say it any better.

Post a reply to this message

Eero Ahonen wrote:
> I'm not sure about CD-ROM, but at least Grub is able to boot via PXE.

I've done more experimenting with this, now that I have a Vista machine 
I can wipe and restore easily.  I wouldn't recommend trying this without 
a complete-machine backup.

At least on the 64-bit OSes (Vista x64 and Suse11 x64) it seems that the 
default MBR for either will now try to boot the active partition. That's 
nice.

And in spite of the baroque advice on the intratubes, it's pretty 
trivial to set up the same mechanism to get Vista to boot Linux without 
any extra software necessary (assuming you don't have only a recovery 
disk or some other lossage like that).

Install Vista. If it's already installed, shrink the partition from 
inside Vista (since it is claimed Linux messes that up on Vista's NTFS).

Install Linux, but don't set the active partition or install grub to the 
MBR. (I install it all in one primary partition, just because it's easy 
enough to back up only what you want to in Linux.)

Figure out which boot block boots Linux. In my case, it's the boot block 
of that one primary partition. It's probably the boot block of whatever 
/dev/sda? that holds your root partition. Use dd to make a copy:
dd if=/dev/sda2 bs=512 count=1 of=/media/my-usb-stick/linboot.bin

Boot back to Vista. (If you messed up, boot the Vista disk, go to 
recovery, start a command prompt, and use diskpart to set the Vista 
partition active.)

Copy x:linboot.bin to (say) the root directory. (Where x: is your usb 
stick, obviously.)

Then, tell Vista about it, which goes something like this:
bcdedit /create /d "SuSE 11 Linux" /application bootsector

This will print out a GUID, which you should copy into the copy buffer.
Then bcdedit this, pasting in the GUID for each "<paste>"

bcdedit /displayorder {current} <paste>
bcdedit /set <paste> device partition=C:
bcdedit /set <paste> path \linboot.bin

And if I remember right, that's all you need to do. The next boot will 
give you a choice of Vista or Linux.

The advice on the intertubes is to download a replacement for bcdedit 
with its own version of grub (which doesn't work, at least with my 
suse). It worked when I told it to boot via LILO oddly enough. :-)

One of these days, I'll get around to making my own site for putting up 
stuff like this I've figured out that can actually be searched.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

Eero Ahonen wrote:
> To exactly how many pieces of hardware have you lost the support on
> Linux while upgrading to a newer version of Linux? 

That's a very good point.

The webcam is the only one I can think of. (See 
http://kerneltrap.org/node/3729 not that it affected me personally)

(I resist the urge to be snarky and talk about losing hardware to new 
drivers. 
http://fixunix.com/linux/539688-linux-will-destroy-your-hardware.html
Pretty funky story there.   ;-)

I also wonder about the people who use the closed-source video drivers - 
do they really keep working with new kernels and ABIs and all? Or does 
ATI release a new driver periodically? I honestly don't know, so I'm 
honestly asking.

As well, going from 98 to an NT-based kernel killed a lot of software 
that bypassed the OS and (for example) frobbed the serial ports 
directly. And I wouldn't bet that every video and sound card worked 
smoothly on every upgrade of OS, even from 2000 to XP. One of the nice 
things about Matrox video cards is they (at least used to - haven't 
checked lately) would release drivers for new cards and old OSes, and 
for old cards and new OSes.

> If your hw works with Linux now, it'll work for the number of years,
> even if you do update your software. As far as I've understood, if your
> hw works with 2k or XP, you can't be sure it'll still work with Vista.

I'm not sure about Vista 32-bit, but Vista 64-bit requires signed 
drivers that have passed MS's testing, because MS was tired of taking 
the flack for crappy drivers taking out the OS. If the HW vendor wanted 
you to buy a new card rather than keep the one you have, you're pretty 
SOL. :-)

Again, sure, your hardware may continue to be supported, but that's 
because the drivers are open-source. They don't "keep working" for new 
releases, they "get fixed" for new releases. If someone doesn't fix it, 
it won't work after they change the ABI again.

The closed-source nature of Windows drivers means there's a much smaller 
group of people who can fix drivers for the hardware, and they usually 
don't have too much incentive to do so.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
>   Not so with Windows. Microsoft *must* sell a completely brand new version
> of Windows each n years. Of course people wouldn't buy the new version if
> it was basically identical to the old version, with just internal invisible
> improvements, and perhaps a few new programs (which would work in the old
> version anyways). 

I agree.

Actually, I've found a bunch of new good stuff in Vista. It's just hard 
to explain to someone who only uses the computer casually. How do you 
explain to someone who knows nothing about computers why the backup 
utility is superior in the event of a disk crash, for example? Or why 
RAID support is improved?

MS has to not only do stuff to improve an OS that's already pretty darn 
mature, but also has to make it visibly enticing at first glance, 
regardless of what's under the hood.

Of course, MS also has to make it nicer for hardware sellers, since 
that's something like 85% of their sales last I heard. So driver stuff 
has to be easier, installation has to be easier (even tho most users 
never see that), branding has to be easier, and so on.

It's a funky world, comparing commercial to free software.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> It's just hard to explain to someone who only uses the computer casually. 

For example, try to explain to someone who doesn't know the difference 
between a root account and a normal account why UAC is a good thing. :-)

As far as I can tell, UAC is sudo and nothing more or less, except that 
even the root account is required to use sudo to do rooty things, unless 
you turn it off. Seems like a reasonable comprimise.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> I also wonder about the people who use the closed-source video drivers -
> do they really keep working with new kernels and ABIs and all? Or does
> ATI release a new driver periodically? I honestly don't know, so I'm
> honestly asking.

No, and in fact Ubuntu 8.10 currently has worse video performance than 8.04
on nVidia cards. Until nVidia makes an updated driver to work correctly
with the kernel used on 8.10.

Or at least that's what I understood.

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> MS has to not only do stuff to improve an OS that's already pretty darn 
> mature, but also has to make it visibly enticing at first glance, 
> regardless of what's under the hood.

  And in many cases they only can do that by breaking the basic engineer
rule "if it works, don't fix it", as well as making the UI so heavy that
you need a supercomputer to run it.

  AFAIK Windows is the only OS out there for which each version has been
slower than the previous version (even with all the eyecandy turned off).
Clearly their priorities are not in efficiency.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

On Sat, 01 Nov 2008 13:25:52 +0200, Eero Ahonen wrote:

> That must be the cheapest bonk-line LJ's. All real-printer LJ's I've
> seen have talked PostScript and various PCL versions and are supported
> very widely.

Could be - I don't recall where I saw it, but yeah, in general, if it 
support PCL or PostScript, you're good to go.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Sat, 01 Nov 2008 13:29:30 +0200, Eero Ahonen wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> 
>> Oh, that's not Grub, that's SYSLINUX - Grub is hard-disk only to the
>> best of my knowledge.
>> 
>> 
> I'm not sure about CD-ROM, but at least Grub is able to boot via PXE.

Is it?  That's new...I've always used PXELinux...

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Sat, 01 Nov 2008 13:19:44 +0200, Eero Ahonen wrote:

> To exactly how many pieces of hardware have you lost the support on
> Linux while upgrading to a newer version of Linux? The difference
> between Linux and Vista here is that if your device worked with Zoot
> (RedHat 6.2) and 2.2 -series kernel, it most probably still works with
> newest SuSE and 2.6 -series kernel - at least if you're still able to
> physically plug the device in.

Arguably, that's only if the driver is part of the kernel build.  I've 
got an old flatbed scanner here that the kernel drivers were no longer 
developed for after 2.2 kernels.  No matter, because I got a new scanner.

If the code is no longer maintained, then changes in the kernel can (and 
do) prevent the module from building at all.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Sat, 01 Nov 2008 09:38:26 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Darren New wrote:
>> It's just hard to explain to someone who only uses the computer
>> casually.
> 
> For example, try to explain to someone who doesn't know the difference
> between a root account and a normal account why UAC is a good thing. :-)
> 
> As far as I can tell, UAC is sudo and nothing more or less, except that
> even the root account is required to use sudo to do rooty things, unless
> you turn it off. Seems like a reasonable comprimise.

Except that something like kdesu asks you once for the root password (per 
run), but UAC asks you incessantly (in my own experience - which is 
somewhat limited) whether or not you want to allow X, Y, or Z to happen.  
It's not content with just asking once.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Sat, 01 Nov 2008 09:11:16 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> I also wonder about the people who use the closed-source video drivers -
> do they really keep working with new kernels and ABIs and all? Or does
> ATI release a new driver periodically? I honestly don't know, so I'm
> honestly asking.

I used to do regular updates of the closed source ATI kernel - but the 
newer OSS drivers work well enough for my uses, so I use those now.  I 
just did a kernel update on my HP system (which has an nVidia card in it) 
and it went completely smoothly.  I don't believe there was a new binary 
driver update for it as well.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Sat, 01 Nov 2008 13:29:30 +0200, Eero Ahonen wrote:
> 
>> I'm not sure about CD-ROM, but at least Grub is able to boot via PXE.
> 
> Is it?  That's new...I've always used PXELinux...

Apparently, since it works on my media-player-PC, which has no HD
(moving parts makes noise).

> Jim


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

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> 
> That's a very good point.

Actually, that's the only point I can think of. I haven't yet seen any
other difference between Linux and Windowses on this matter.

> The webcam is the only one I can think of. (See
> http://kerneltrap.org/node/3729 not that it affected me personally)

Ah, I've missed that. I'd guess (yep, guess, ie. don't know, so don't
rely on it) that the modules (both parts) are still available from
somewhere and can be installed afterwards.

> (I resist the urge to be snarky and talk about losing hardware to new
> drivers.
> http://fixunix.com/linux/539688-linux-will-destroy-your-hardware.html
> Pretty funky story there.   ;-)

IIRC the e1000's actually weren't totally destroyed, even though they
did look like it at first sight, but they could be restored by
reflashing either theier original firmware or some interesting part
outside the chip (might be BIOS on some mark-vendor computers). But yes,
pretty funky story - and surely scares the hell out of people easily.

Somewhere around 1999 there was a virus released at internet, which
reflashed the BIOS (if possible) and therefore rendered the MoBo
unusable for most people.

> I also wonder about the people who use the closed-source video drivers -
> do they really keep working with new kernels and ABIs and all? Or does
> ATI release a new driver periodically? I honestly don't know, so I'm
> honestly asking.

That's a good point, too. I didn't even think about this, since I
haven't used them myself. I have so far used Matrox and Intel GPU's,
since - you know - They Just Work. I don't play much, though, so 3D
performance won't matter a lot to me.

> As well, going from 98 to an NT-based kernel killed a lot of software
> that bypassed the OS and (for example) frobbed the serial ports
> directly. 

Transport Tycoon Deluxe wasn't able to open serial ports for multiplayer
gaming on NT :/.

Now, OpenTTD supports TCP/IP... :)

> And I wouldn't bet that every video and sound card worked
> smoothly on every upgrade of OS, even from 2000 to XP. 

I think the worst fight I've had on this matter was installing SB16PnP
under NT4. It demanded some extra drivers for the PnP part, IIRC before
the card could have even be seen.

> One of the nice
> things about Matrox video cards is they (at least used to - haven't
> checked lately) would release drivers for new cards and old OSes, and
> for old cards and new OSes.

Another nice thing about them is that they give out what you ask them to
give out. My G400 on my media-player-PC is currently configured to
964x544, which is the native resolution of my projectors LCD-panel. OTOH
I'm slightly dissapointed, while I had to calculate the timeline for
X.org myself.

> I'm not sure about Vista 32-bit, but Vista 64-bit requires signed
> drivers that have passed MS's testing, because MS was tired of taking
> the flack for crappy drivers taking out the OS. If the HW vendor wanted
> you to buy a new card rather than keep the one you have, you're pretty
> SOL. :-)

Yep. Basically that's a good idea, but it does render bunch of old
hardware useless in the lack of drivers.

> Again, sure, your hardware may continue to be supported, but that's
> because the drivers are open-source. They don't "keep working" for new
> releases, they "get fixed" for new releases. If someone doesn't fix it,
> it won't work after they change the ABI again.

True.

> The closed-source nature of Windows drivers means there's a much smaller
> group of people who can fix drivers for the hardware, and they usually
> don't have too much incentive to do so.

True.

One more point is that the hw-manufacturers won't get any more money of
writing drivers for old hw on new os. The money is collected when the
new hw is sold - and on that time most buyers won't check the company
habits for this kind of things.

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

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> (I resist the urge to be snarky and talk about losing hardware to new 
> drivers. 
> http://fixunix.com/linux/539688-linux-will-destroy-your-hardware.html
> Pretty funky story there.   ;-)

  Beta software has bugs. Shocking.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
>   AFAIK Windows is the only OS out there for which each version has been
> slower than the previous version (even with all the eyecandy turned off).
> Clearly their priorities are not in efficiency.

There was some website claiming that about Ubuntu...

Post a reply to this message

On Sat, 01 Nov 2008 23:50:13 +0200, Eero Ahonen wrote:

> Apparently, since it works on my media-player-PC, which has no HD
> (moving parts makes noise).

I'll now have to look into that - PXELinux wasn't hard to set up, but 
using GRUB for that would be easier just from the perspective of one tool 
to learn how to use. :-)

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Sat, 01 Nov 2008 23:50:13 +0200, Eero Ahonen wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> On Sat, 01 Nov 2008 13:29:30 +0200, Eero Ahonen wrote:
>> 
>>> I'm not sure about CD-ROM, but at least Grub is able to boot via PXE.
>> 
>> Is it?  That's new...I've always used PXELinux...
> 
> Apparently, since it works on my media-player-PC, which has no HD
> (moving parts makes noise).

JUst a thought, does the device have a SSD drive in it?  Or does it run 
completely over the network?

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Sat, 01 Nov 2008 21:41:25 -0200, Nicolas Alvarez wrote:

> Warp wrote:
>>   AFAIK Windows is the only OS out there for which each version has
>>   been
>> slower than the previous version (even with all the eyecandy turned
>> off). Clearly their priorities are not in efficiency.
> 
> There was some website claiming that about Ubuntu...

Yeah, I've read a few stories about the newest Ubuntu (8.10 IIRC) 
delivery that state that the benchmarks are slower than the previous 
version.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Sat, 01 Nov 2008 18:35:43 -0400, Warp wrote:

> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> (I resist the urge to be snarky and talk about losing hardware to new
>> drivers.
>> http://fixunix.com/linux/539688-linux-will-destroy-your-hardware.html
>> Pretty funky story there.   ;-)
> 
>   Beta software has bugs. Shocking.

And what's more, it didn't actually "destroy" the hardware, Intel was 
able to work out a fix for the corrupted firmware.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
> > It's just hard to explain to someone who only uses the computer casually.
>
> For example, try to explain to someone who doesn't know the difference
> between a root account and a normal account why UAC is a good thing. :-)

The UAC in Vista is schizophrenic.  It's not simply sudo, it's shell-shocked
sudo on crack and will annoy you to no end.  I'm on an admin account, with UAC
/turned off/ (or at least as off as it can be) and it still annoys me from time
to time with stupidities like asking wether I'm sure I should let notepad show
me an html source...

Post a reply to this message

On Sat, 01 Nov 2008 21:39:12 -0400, nemesis wrote:

> The UAC in Vista is schizophrenic.  It's not simply sudo, it's
> shell-shocked sudo on crack and will annoy you to no end.

That's the funniest (and best) description of UAC I've ever read....

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson wrote:
> Except that something like kdesu asks you once for the root password (per 
> run), but UAC asks you incessantly (in my own experience - which is 
> somewhat limited) whether or not you want to allow X, Y, or Z to happen.  
> It's not content with just asking once.

Well, it asks once per process you invoke with admin rights, just like 
sudo. No, sudo doesn't ask for the password every time, but it makes you 
type "sudo" every time, which was kind of what I was saying. I guess the 
difference is that a program can ask for admin rights, and you type the 
password to get them, just like starting up yast2 from the gui menu, I 
guess. If the stuff would just silently fail if you don't invoke it 
properly (like, say, linux's fdisk does), I guess you could get away 
with not asking the password.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

nemesis wrote:
> and it still annoys me from time
> to time with stupidities like asking wether I'm sure I should let notepad show
> me an html source...

How do you make it do that, other than trying to open an HTML file you 
don't have unpriv'ed read access to?

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
>   And in many cases they only can do that by breaking the basic engineer
> rule "if it works, don't fix it", as well as making the UI so heavy that
> you need a supercomputer to run it.

Yep. It can be ugly in some ways. They also wind up inventing solutions 
to problems nobody actually had, and half the time those solutions don't 
actually work right, after they've been widely hyped.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

Eero Ahonen wrote:
> Somewhere around 1999 there was a virus released at internet, which
> reflashed the BIOS (if possible) and therefore rendered the MoBo
> unusable for most people.

I remember that. You could also reprogram both hercules graphics cards 
and Radio Shack TRS-80 Model II machines to turn off the H and V refresh 
on the video, overheating the spot in the middle of the screen until the 
tube cracked.

> One more point is that the hw-manufacturers won't get any more money of
> writing drivers for old hw on new os. The money is collected when the
> new hw is sold - and on that time most buyers won't check the company
> habits for this kind of things.

Yeah. It's just reputation-enhancing. I think a lot of CAD-using 
companies relied on Matrox, so knowing their expensive workstations 
weren't going to need to be fixed was a useful thing for Matrox, 
encouraging future sales.  But the really high-end gaming cards are out 
of date faster than the OS is anyway, so ... what difference does it make?

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> nemesis wrote:
>> and it still annoys me from time
>> to time with stupidities like asking wether I'm sure I should let 
>> notepad show
>> me an html source...
> 
> How do you make it do that, other than trying to open an HTML file you 
> don't have unpriv'ed read access to?

Generally by trying to view the source of any website from within IE7. 
It's true and I'll be glad to take a picture of the lame moment once I'm 
back at work on monday.  More than once it also asks me if I should 
permit an already installed program to execute.  I'm not making this up 
nor trying to spread FUD...

What really annoys me the most is that I'm quite sure I turned the 
damned UAC feature off...

Post a reply to this message

nemesis wrote:
> Generally by trying to view the source of any website from within IE7. 

Odd. Maybe it's more IE than UAC; as I understand it, it's only UAC if 
the screen goes dim except for the prompt. (That's something that only 
the UAC can do, so you can be sure it's a real UAC prompt, sort of like 
the control-alt-delete thing popping up the password prompt.)

I can see IE asking if you want to execute some external program with 
input downloaded from the web. Or maybe it's just f'ed, and you don't 
have rights to see your own web history. I'll agree that sounds broken, 
tho. I haven't used IE in ages, so I'm not familiar with its quirks.

> More than once it also asks me if I should 
> permit an already installed program to execute.  

I think it does that when the program explicitly asks for privs, even if 
it's already installed. I mean, all the stuff like chkdsk and defrag are 
already installed, and they ask for privs.

> What really annoys me the most is that I'm quite sure I turned the 
> damned UAC feature off...

I believe you. I don't have a whole lot of experience with it yet. I 
just have to say it hasn't annoyed *me* yet, except for the broken 
software crap that came with the computer.

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson wrote:
> 
> JUst a thought, does the device have a SSD drive in it?  Or does it run 
> completely over the network?

Completely over network. It's a low-budget system, built from leftovers
- AMD Athlon 1,2GHz, 768MiB, Matrox G400 16MiB, Intel EtherExpress
Pro/100+, some random case, Gentoo Linux. The PSU still makes slight noise.

> Jim


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

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> 
> I remember that. You could also reprogram both hercules graphics cards
> and Radio Shack TRS-80 Model II machines to turn off the H and V refresh
> on the video, overheating the spot in the middle of the screen until the
> tube cracked.

Nnnice. That must have made a nice cracking sound :).

> 
> Yeah. It's just reputation-enhancing. I think a lot of CAD-using
> companies relied on Matrox, so knowing their expensive workstations
> weren't going to need to be fixed was a useful thing for Matrox,
> encouraging future sales.  But the really high-end gaming cards are out
> of date faster than the OS is anyway, so ... what difference does it make?
> 

Yep, pure business. I'm pretty sure if I was running a company like
Nvidia I'd work exactly the same. I might do some time-shifting for the
drivers, but releasing Vista-drivers for G400-aged card... No way.

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

Post a reply to this message

Eero Ahonen wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>> I remember that. You could also reprogram both hercules graphics cards
>> and Radio Shack TRS-80 Model II machines to turn off the H and V refresh
>> on the video, overheating the spot in the middle of the screen until the
>> tube cracked.
> 
> Nnnice. That must have made a nice cracking sound :).

The one time I saw it done to a TRS, the glass went all over. More a 
"poomf" sound, really.

> Yep, pure business. I'm pretty sure if I was running a company like
> Nvidia I'd work exactly the same. I might do some time-shifting for the
> drivers, but releasing Vista-drivers for G400-aged card... No way.

I don't know how far back they really go, but I remember it was least a 
couple of generations. And, of course, it's a thing that's easy to point 
out, unlike (say) reliability. You just point to the web pages and say 
"See? We do that."

-- 
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)

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