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Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] dev null> wrote:
> Some day, I might run a Linux box again. But I don't think I'd set one
> up for my grandma.
Then you'll have to clean it from spyware once a month. Is that really a
better alternative?
--
- Warp
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>> Some day, I might run a Linux box again. But I don't think I'd set one
>> up for my grandma.
>
> Then you'll have to clean it from spyware once a month. Is that really a
> better alternative?
In my experience, only certain people have this problem.
My dad's PC seems to get infected with puzzling frequency. But my
mother's PC has yet to be infected, ever. Same goes for my PC, my
sister's laptop, my grandparents' PC, and so on. Also, where I work,
certain people's PCs get infected from time to time, but most of them
remain completely clean.
Certainly Windows is radically more vulnerable to malware than Linux.
But if you operate the computer sensibly, it tends not to cause
problems. In other words, using Windows does *not* necessarily mean
constant malware issues.
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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>> Not all distros are equally easy to use. And Red Hat in particular is
>> more or less obsolete now (since they stopped developing it).
>
> The red-hat distros were also primarily targetting the server market.
> "Fedora" was the home user market, which they kind of gave up on.
>
>> Most people consider OpenSUSE and Ubuntu to be the user-friendliest.
>> Personally I only have experience of the former.
>
> Ubuntu isn't bad, but OpenSuSE is easier to learn IMO. I'd start with
> OpenSuSE if you can, and Ubuntu after that if OpenSuSE doesn't easily
> support your hardware and all.
I choose which distro to use based mainly on how pretty the installer
and the default desktop are. Arbitrary and shallow, but I have no idea
what else to base the choice on.
I tried Ubuntu, and while it was quite easy to set up, I dislike the
drab shade of brown. OpenSUSE is a lush shade of green, however.
(Similarly, uninstall OpenSUSE 7 and install OpenSUSE 8. Now the
graphics look a different, but... is that the only difference??)
One somewhat annoying thing is that most distros will automatically
install multiple gigabytes of "stuff", most of which I have no interest
in. Sure, you could *try* to uninstall it all, but you still have to
wait for it to install in the first place. *Some* distros give you a
"minimal text install" option or similar, and if so I usually start from
there. However...
...package management. Doesn't really exist on Windows. You just install
something, and either it works or it tells you it can't find XYZ and you
should install that first. On Linux, dependency management is insane
sometimes.
I don't have any specific, repeatable examples. But, from memory, I once
had a KDE desktop, and I just wanted to install gnumeric (because
KSpread was rubbish). Watch as the dependency resolver decides I need to
download and install every GNOME library known to man - including the
GNOME sound system (something beginning with e?) In fact, I recall it
was something like KDE was using one kernel API for audio, and GNOME
wanted to use a completely different one, and it starts getting *really*
interesting...
I guess Windows is pretty monolithic. You install "Windows", and you
have a sound API, a graphics API, a window manager, a user shell, etc.
On Linux, these are all seperate bits, and there are several
[incompatible] options for each. /dev can be static files, or one of
several automatic device creator modules. There are at least 2 seperate
kernel sound APIs. The text-mode portion of the system can be direct VGA
text mode or some mannar of framebuffer or some other thing. The
graphics system will usually be X11, but there are often multiple
drivers that will drive your particular graphics hardware (with
differing flaws and limitations). Then of course there's KDE or GNOME
(or FluxBox or Enlightenment or OneNote or twm or ...) And then there
are widget toolkits. And then... are you bored yet?
Software written against "Windows" expects one set of APIs. (Or maybe a
few, if it supports several versions of Windows.) Software written
against "Linux"? Maybe it supports one random combinations of libraries.
Maybe there's a build option? Good luck getting it to work. On Linux you
*need* automated dependency management if you expect anything to work!
Also... Debian's dselect thing is a horrid, horrid tool! >_<
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> Sometimes misusing quotes can result in rather hilarious, albeit unintended,
> meanings. http://adamcadre.ac/images/topa4.jpg
haha, Adam Cadre used to be a great interactive fiction writer.
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Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> Compare that to the situation where, in Windows, you don't have any software
> to create mp3 files and you want to get one.
>
With both systems it's equally easy to get freeware on a whim's notice. The
difference is that in windows you get it from a site with flashing porn ads and
malware, and then your brower starts doing something realllly funky the minute
you leave the site.
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>> Compare that to the situation where, in Windows, you don't have any software
>> to create mp3 files and you want to get one.
>
> With both systems it's equally easy to get freeware on a whim's notice. The
> difference is that in windows you get it from a site with flashing porn ads and
> malware, and then your brower starts doing something realllly funky the minute
> you leave the site.
Hehe. Yeah, well, I guess it depends which sites you try to get the
software from. And whether you use IE or something else...
--
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*
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Warp wrote:
> The finnish word "kursiivi" means italic or oblique (I'm not exactly sure
> what the difference is between those two, as I'm not a typographist), while
> the English word "cursive" is a completely different word in Finnish
> ("kaunokirjoitus").
Kewl.
"italic" is a different font, while "oblique" just means "slanted."
See this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblique_type
for roman, italic, and oblique. :-)
(I learned *that* from TeX and Metafont.
> Sometimes misusing quotes can result in rather hilarious, albeit unintended,
> meanings.
Heh.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
much longer being almost empty than almost full.
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Warp wrote:
> It's one thing that a program collects some data about how it's being used
> and phones home with it (is that even legal?),
They ask you if you want to participate, so yeah, I'd guess so.
> and a completely different
> thing when single person makes one post in a forum, causing a significant
> improvement to be made to the distro. I can see the latter happening quite
> often in the Linux world.
It's definitely easier to make a difference as an individual contributor.
It's also the case that even a small company can make a difference in
Microsoft's stuff. Like the company that did the first defrag program for NT
designed the APIs for that and told MS how to write it.
And I would guess security vulnerabilities found by an individual can get
them fixed.
But yah, definitely not as *rewarding* as doing it in Linux. You'll
certainly not get the sort of recognition for improving MS software, if
nothing else.
> I think some features of Vista are a sign that Microsoft is not always
> so good at implementing what people want. (Yes, people wanted more security,
> but not of the type that MS implemented in Vista.)
Well, as I said, people want it for free, too. :-) Overall, they did a
pretty good job with UAC, but it needed tuning. And people aren't that used
to having to deal with it in Windows. *Some* of what they do users don't
want (like signed drivers) but MS does for their own good.
I was thinking more the DRM stuff, myself.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
much longer being almost empty than almost full.
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Stephen wrote:
> Thanks for the advice, I might just do that when this contract finishes.
It's what Warp recommended to me when I needed to set up several dozen
machines around the country, and it was pretty darn easy to administer.
It made the sysadmin annoyed, because apparently things are in somewhat
weird places or something, so if you want to do something like bind two
ethernet connectors so it uses both but falls over to the working one when
one fails, it takes more work than with (say) red hat. But for a desktop? Go
for it.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
much longer being almost empty than almost full.
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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Software written against "Windows" expects one set of APIs.
Well, except for cutting-edge stuff. Different wireless connectors, or
different USB connections, can be problematic for the people writing
*drivers*. And if there isn't a standard windows API, there's usually
custom software that comes with the device to do the thing. (Think about the
first scanners before TWAIN and WIA was around.)
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
much longer being almost empty than almost full.
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