On Fri, 07 Oct 2011 15:56:12 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> On 10/7/2011 12:08, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> Or when my mom starts reading an error message to me - and after three
>> words, I know what the next thing is and what to do next.
> 
> "Tell me what the window says, Dad."
> 
> "Well, there's a picture of an E with a circle around it, then it says
> "Internet explor.."
> 
> "No, no. Below that. In the big space."
> 
> "Oh. It says Done and Internet Protected Mode On"
> 
> "No, Dad. That's the status bar. See that great big white space between
> the two? What's in there?"

LOL

Sounds *so* familiar.  Another reason to use Linux. ;)

(When I can afford it, I'm getting my mom a Mac.  I know next to nothing 
about using a Mac, but I can have her take it to the Apple store and 
drive someone at the Genius Bar 'round the bend. ;) )

Jim

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On Fri, 07 Oct 2011 15:51:14 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> On 10/7/2011 12:07, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> It's usually under "system tools", which is appropriate.
> 
> Funny enough, people will bitch that Window's CLI sucks, and at the same
> time show off how far Linux has managed to get away from needing a CLI
> by hiding it under "advanced system tools." :-)

The standard command interpreter in Windows (cmd.exe, not powershell) 
does pretty much suck.  bash/tcsh are *far* more powerful. :)

But part of the suckage that is the Windows CLI is the registry.  Linux 
using text files for most configuration means that using the CLI to make 
changes actually makes a lot of sense.

Jim

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On Fri, 07 Oct 2011 23:03:19 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

>>> 1. How do you get it so a terminal is always available? (Most distros
>>> I've seen make the terminal program one of the hardest things to find.
>>
>> Alt-F2 ->  gnome-terminal.
>>
>> Done.
> 
> I presume that only works if GNOME is your WM?

Pretty sure that's also in KDE3 and KDE4 as well.

>>> It's easy to find Firefox or Evolution or Jabba, but the terminal
>>> window is usually somewhere under "advanced"... It's almost as if I'm
>>> using a Microsoft OS!)
>>
>> It's usually under "system tools", which is appropriate.
> 
> With Ubuntu, it's "accessories". With OpenSUSE, it was somewhere else. I
> forget where the heck it was with Debian.
> 
> KNOPPIX put it right on the desktop though. Smart guys...

Easy enough to do with other distributions, excepting GNOME3, which 
doesn't let you put anything on the desktop (but I actually quite like 
GNOME3).

>>> 2. Why type "bc" when you can type "ghci"? ;-)
>>
>> Because 'bc' actually does something on my system - namely, it starts
>> an arbitrary precision calculator. :)
> 
> Yeah, I wasn't entirely serious with that one. ;-)
> 
> Typing "ghci" starts the Glasgow Haskell Compiler in Interactive mode -
> i.e., an REPL for Haskell. Which has arbitrary math support backed by
> the GMP [which is probably what powers bc, I wouldn't be surprised...]
> But it's also a full Turing-complete programming language, not just a
> calculator.

See, that's why I get "command not found".  I do nothing with Haskell.  
But you're right, bc is more than a simple calculator.  bc is actually an 
'arbitrary precision calculator language'.

bc only has dependencies on libc, ncurses, and a few other things.  
Nothing related to GMP that I see.

Jim

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On Fri, 07 Oct 2011 15:42:39 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> On 10/7/2011 12:15, Jim Henderson wrote:
>>> Oh, right. I thought that refers only to when you run an X application
>>> that emulates a terminal in a window.
>>
>> That's technically called a 'pseudoterminal' - pts.  "man pts" is
>> interesting reading, if you like that sort of thing.
> 
> No, that's an xterminal or a terminal window. A pts (actually, ptty) is
> a device driver that isn't a terminal but exposes the same ioctls as a
> terminal (and in particular can belong to a process group). Because UNIX
> never figured out the concept of a "login".
> 
> Unless a pts is different from a ptty?

When not logged in on my console or terminals, typing 'who' gets the 
following result:

jhenderson :0           2011-09-08 16:21 (console)
jhenderson console      2011-09-08 16:21 (:0)
jhenderson pts/1        2011-10-06 13:25
jhenderson pts/2        2011-10-07 21:17 (:0.0)
jhenderson pts/5        2011-10-06 13:25
jhenderson pts/3        2011-09-08 16:24 (:0.0)

console, pts/2, and pts/3 are the GUI desktop (identified as display :0 
and :0.0).  pts/1 and pts/5 are currently running under screen.

jhenderson tty2         2011-10-07 21:50

That shows up if I hit alt-f2 and login on that terminal.

That should clear it up. :)

Jim

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On Fri, 07 Oct 2011 23:00:35 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

>>>> Audio certainly is an area that's recognised as being problematic.
>>>
>>> Really? I thought that was Wi-Fi.
>>
>> Nah, Wi-Fi is pretty easy - either it works or it doesn't.  Either you
>> have the firmware necessary or you don't.
>>
>> Audio is so horribly complex on Linux because there's at least 3
>> different systems to use it, and nobody's standardised on one.  OSS.
>> Alsa.  PulseAudio.
> 
> Ah yes, that's fun.
> 
> I especially like the way that installing one GNOME application installs
> the entire GNOME system, including the GNOME sound daemon. And all I
> actually wanted to do was run gedit...

Just like installing an app on Windows that requires specific DLLs, which 
require other components, which require .NET 3.5.

>> The standards were all not standardised, so they decided to fix the
>> problem by creating ANOTHER STANDARD.
>>
>> Gah.
> 
> Required XKCD quote: http://xkcd.com/927/

I knew you were going to cite that one. :)

Jim

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On Fri, 07 Oct 2011 15:48:35 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> On 10/7/2011 2:38, Stephen wrote:
>> That is a good point. But I've reached a point where I feel that
>> computers and their software are no longer devices that need to be
>> studied, understood and mastered but used as tools. My life and
>> interests have changed over time.
> 
> Plus, Linux vs Windows isn't really that big a difference, if you really
> want to study something new. Learn how Lisp Machines worked, 

Ah, Lisp machines.  Been a long time since I saw one of those.  ATC 
trainer project that I worked on in college was built on one of those 
things; one of the geniuses (seriously) who worked on that code explained 
how on the system we were using he could change how the instruction 
pointer ran and break the machine.

Pretty incredible piece of hardware.  Can't remember who made it, 
timeframe was the early 90's.

> or how
> AmigaOS was organized, or how Singularity works, rather than studying
> two OSes that are at this point overall pretty similar.

Architecturally they're fairly different, though.  Depends on what 
aspects you want to study, and how much access you have to the underlying 
code (with Windows, there is an academic source license available IIRC).

Jim

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On 10/7/2011 20:50, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Fri, 07 Oct 2011 15:42:39 -0700, Darren New wrote:
>
>> On 10/7/2011 12:15, Jim Henderson wrote:
>>>> Oh, right. I thought that refers only to when you run an X application
>>>> that emulates a terminal in a window.
>>>
>>> That's technically called a 'pseudoterminal' - pts.  "man pts" is
>>> interesting reading, if you like that sort of thing.
>>
>> No, that's an xterminal or a terminal window. A pts (actually, ptty) is
>> a device driver that isn't a terminal but exposes the same ioctls as a
>> terminal (and in particular can belong to a process group). Because UNIX
>> never figured out the concept of a "login".
>>
>> Unless a pts is different from a ptty?
>
> When not logged in on my console or terminals, typing 'who' gets the
> following result:
>
> jhenderson :0           2011-09-08 16:21 (console)
> jhenderson console      2011-09-08 16:21 (:0)
> jhenderson pts/1        2011-10-06 13:25

OK. "pts" is the new abbreviation for "ptty".

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   How come I never get only one kudo?

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On 10/7/2011 20:54, Jim Henderson wrote:
> Architecturally they're fairly different, though.

Yeah. And architecturally, C++ and Java are different, but if you're bored 
of learning new programming languages, looking at Smalltalk or APL might be 
exciting again. :-)


-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   How come I never get only one kudo?

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On 10/7/2011 20:44, Jim Henderson wrote:
> The standard command interpreter in Windows (cmd.exe, not powershell)
> does pretty much suck.  bash/tcsh are *far* more powerful. :)

That wasn't the point, tho. :-) It doesn't really matter how much your CLI 
sucks if the goal is to avoid using it.  Anyway, wsh is probably a better 
comparison to bash than cmd.exe.

> But part of the suckage that is the Windows CLI is the registry.  Linux
> using text files for most configuration means that using the CLI to make
> changes actually makes a lot of sense.

Windows has no trouble dealing with the registry from the command line. 
Certainly less than trying to parse Apache config files with bash or 
something. For example:

http://216.101.58.3/MIS/Articles/RegistryEdit.htm

Sure, it's an extra install of the free developer tools, but hey.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   How come I never get only one kudo?

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On 10/7/2011 20:43, Jim Henderson wrote:
> Sounds *so* familiar.  Another reason to use Linux. ;)

How the hell would that help? What, the file navigators and web browsers in 
Linux automatically tell you what part of the window is important?

What helped was getting him off dial-up so I could talk to him at the same 
time he's on the net, *and* connect into his computer remotely.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   How come I never get only one kudo?

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