On Sun, 09 Oct 2011 18:10:18 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> On 10/9/2011 16:14, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> On Sun, 09 Oct 2011 14:34:50 -0700, Darren New wrote:
>>
>>> On 10/9/2011 14:04, Jim Henderson wrote:
>>>> How is it that it would cost more to host a repository for software
>>>> for one platform than the other?
>>>
>>> Insurance. Management. Stuff like that. Basically, overhead and risk
>>> abatement.
>>
>> So, the same kinds of things that you have to be careful of with Linux
>> repositories as well.
> 
> No. People putting things into a Linux repository aren't going to sue
> them for failing to distribute it properly. Nobody is going to sue Red
> Hat when Reader crashes their machines. Etc.

Are you sure about that?  And of course, why would it be any different 
for Windows?  If Acrobat Reader crashed a Windows box, it would be 
Adobe's problem regardless of if Microsoft distributed the file or if 
they got it from Adobe.

>> That's why, for example, the official openSUSE repos don't have any
>> proprietary codecs or device drivers in them.  Because of liability,
>> insurance, and management.
> 
> Well, there you go, then. Why are you asking why Microsoft doesn't do
> it, then? There are tons of repositories of free Windows software that
> Microsoft doesn't run.

I should clarify that the Fluendo codecs are in there - and are properly 
licensed in order to be in there.  I always forget about those. :)

Point is, openSUSE is just one distro and made their decision on it, but 
you can add the Packman repository and add the other codecs if you so 
desire (and then the burden of liability falls to the user, since Packman 
is non-US - based in Germany, IIRC).

But a "repository" for Windows is just a "download" site.  It doesn't 
include actual software management elements per se.

Jim

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On Sun, 09 Oct 2011 18:11:55 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> On 10/9/2011 16:12, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> On Sun, 09 Oct 2011 14:39:39 -0700, Darren New wrote:
>>
>>> On 10/9/2011 14:00, Jim Henderson wrote:
>>>> The point was that Andy said that binary blob data could be stored in
>>>> the registry and not a Linux configuration file.
>>>
>>> Oh. I thought that was more "you *could* do it that way, but it would
>>> be a stupid way to do it" sort of comment. OK.
>>
>> Oh, no.  It was entirely about the fact that saying the registry is
>> unique (or whatever) because you can store binary data in it was kinda
>> silly.
> 
> I didn't catch that assertion. OK. It's fairly unique in being a
> standard searchable format with an API, but not in that it stores binary
> data.

grep -ri text /etc/*

Works pretty well for being a standard searchable format on Linux. ;)

>> But the term "BSOD" originally meant "Black Screen of Death" and came
>> with certain versions of Novell's VLM client (1.02, IIRC) with DOS and
>> Windows 3.1.  To the best of my knowledge, that's where BSOD was first
>> used.
> 
> Interesting.

Most people who haven't had a lot of exposure to NetWare are unaware of 
the term's origin. ;)

Jim

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>>>>> or cooperative shared editting.
>>>>
>>>> It's news to me that /any/ version of Office has that.
>>>
>>> That's kind of my point.
>>
>> So... how do you do that?
>
> You stick it on a share and you go to the menu that says something like
> "cooperative editing" or some such. You're sitting in front of a
> google-enabled computer just like I am. :-)

You're the one claiming that this feature exists. :-P

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On 09/10/2011 03:12 AM, Darren New wrote:

> I learned UNIX by sitting down and reading thru the tome of man
> pages.

You learned Unix by reading a reference manual? How is that even 
possible? That's like trying to learn biology from an encyclopaedia...

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>>> Well, yes and no.  Users of SUSE products (openSUSE and SLE*) often do
>>> know how to do the manual edits, but prefer using YaST anyways.
>>
>> If you pull up the documentation for (say) Apache, it won't tell you how
>> to use the Apache YaST module. It will tell you how to edit the
>> underlying text file.
>
> If you use openSUSE for configuration, you use the openSUSE documentation
> to see how to use YaST to make those configuration changes.

Wait - YaST has documentation?

> And if that
> doesn't get you where you need to be, you ask a question in the community.
>
> OSS is big about community.

That sounds very nice and all, but if I'm trying to quickly set 
something up, I don't really want to have to go onto the Internet and 
beg for help, and then spend a week or two hoping that somebody 
knowledgeable will just happen across my message and actually take the 
time to give me a helpful response. I want to read a manual that tells 
me how to do this RIGHT NOW.

>>>> Under Windows, the GUI is the "real" interface. The configuration data
>>>> is stored in the registry, but you're not supposed to edit it
>>>> directly.
>>>
>>> Except for when there's no other way.
>>
>> Except that this almost never happens. That's the entire point. Most
>> Linux front-ends seem to be tacked on afterwards, whereas on Windows,
>> the GUI is the primary focus.
>
> I guess I imagined all those Technet articles that have the warning I
> sited earlier about how editing the registry can screw your system up.
> That must be it, because of course Microsoft would *never* recommend you
> do something that might bork your system.

The warning is partly there because if you're a clueless user who 
doesn't know how to work a computer properly, it's very easy to do a 
hell of a lot of damage using a registry editor. Personally, I have 
almost never borked my system by editing the registry. The only time 
it's happened is when I started deleting stuff at random in a desperate 
attempt to make something work. If you follow the instructions, it works 
fine.

My point remains: It's very uncommon to /need/ to touch the registry in 
the first place. Whereas under Unix, the text configuration files are 
the first port of call, not the last. That's just the difference in 
design mentality.

>> OK. But certainly most Linux uses seem to have the opinion of "GUI? Pah!
>> We don't need that. That's just for n00bs who don't know what they're
>> doing..." (Whether this attitude applies to most /developers/ is more
>> debatable.)
>
> Obviously you don't know many Linux users.  I know at least 5,000, and
> many of them not only love and use the GUI, but tend to have religious
> wars over which GUI is better.

And yet, the vast majority of all Linux software is strictly CLI-only, 
and developers always seem to expect somebody /else/ to build the pretty 
front-end for it.

>> I notice that there's always a lot of stuff "happening" with Linux. I'm
>> never sure what the hell any of it actually /does/.
>
> Linux (and most OSS software) evolves rather than going through discrete
> cycles.

Sure. The "release early and often" approach. I'm just saying, as an 
outsider, it's not always clear what actually changed between versions. 
(I guess often it's stuff under the hood that you won't notice anyway.)

>>> Transactionality is a function of the filesystem, and I use a journaled
>>> filesystem.
>>
>> Doesn't stop two scripts both trying to update the same config file at
>> the same time. If you do that with the registry, it works. Because it's
>> a proper database engine, not just a flat file.
>
> I'm not sure how "proper" that database engine is - IIRC, it's JET, and
> most DBAs that I know would say that's certainly not a proper database
> engine.

JET is no match for an enterprise database engine, sure. But it's more 
transactional than a flat file.

Also, I'm not completely sure that the registry is actually JET. It 
might be, but I didn't think it was. For one thing, registry files grow 
as needed, but never shrink. I don't think JET has that limitation.

>> Personally, I'm not very impressed by the Windows Update system. Like,
>> it'll install a bazillion updates for IE6 in the same session as it also
>> installs IE8. And then you go back and it wants to install a bunch of
>> IE8 updates. Um, why couldn't you do that the first time around??
>
> Yep, I've been frustrated by that as well.

I'd ask if Linux gets this right - expect Linux generally won't replace 
one version of an application with a totally different one just because 
you asked for security updates...

>> I love how multiple courts have proved that what MS is doing is illegal,
>> and as a result they have received NO PUNISHMENT OF ANY KIND. That's
>> such a big motivation for them to stop casually disregarding the law...
>
> Oh, I don't know, having to admit that Firefox is a reasonable browser to
> use and they should change Windows architecturally to decouple IE from it
> (or at least loosen the coupling) is a pretty significant sanction.

Admitting you're wrong is one thing. But they did something illegal; 
where is the *financial* pain for that?

> Maintaining multiple versions of an entire operating system can be time
> and resource intensive.

Maybe it's there then. Still seems like a fairly tiny price for, you 
know, BREAKING THE LAW...

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>>>> Seriously?
>>>>
>>>> The Windows XP CD holds less than 650 MB of data. (It's a CD.)
>>>
>>> Oh, so you want to compare a modern Linux distribution against Windows
>>> from 10-ish years ago?  *Really*?
>>
>> I'm comparing Linux against the Windows release that most people are
>> currently using.
>
> A more appropriate comparison is latest against latest.

I don't know how big the latest version of Windows is. I've never 
installed it. More to the point, I don't know of anybody who's using it yet.

>> It's still frustrating that I have to download multiple GB of data for
>> libraries that I'm not actually going to use, just because the package
>> dependency system isn't a little more fine-grained.
>
> You don't know that you're not going to use them.

That's an absurd argument.

If the PC doesn't have a sound card then I know, for a fact, that I 
don't need the sound daemon. If there are no Windows machines on the 
network then I know, for a fact, that I don't need Samba. I could go on.

The only reason that installing a text editor installs multi-GB of 
unrelated stuff is because dependency tracking is too coarse.

> If you want something more specialized, you can do a custom roll-your-own
> with SUSE Studio.  No need to download anything you don't want, because
> you build the distribution on a remote system using a web browser, test
> it, and then download it.

Now that's what I'm talking about... That sounds actually useful.

>> Yes. Because spending a week trying to fix something it *totally* the
>> same as just giving up and complaining about it. Oh, wait...
>
> You spent a week trying to fix something that had you asked a question in
> an online forum, you probably could've gotten an answer for in a day or
> two.
>
> And then you complained that you couldn't figure it out.
>
> Yeah, ultimately, you gave up without asking for help.  If you'd asked
> for help, someone probably would've been able to help you.

1. You're assuming that it's /possible/ to fix this.

2. You're assuming that had I asked, somebody would have actually 
bothered to reply. And that their reply would have been helpful.

>> Again, I didn't say Linux sucks. I said one specific aspect of it sucks.
>
> An aspect you didn't ask any questions about, but beat your head against
> the desk for a week without asking for help.

We seem to be crossed here slightly. (For amusement, go compute what 
time of day it was in my time zone when I wrote this...)

I spent a week trying to fix my dad's failed OpenSUSE upgrade. The 
statement above was referring to the granularity of dependency 
management, which is a different topic.

>> Now, to me, if the only way to make a system work is to find a
>> super-expert to explain it, then it's not a very good system. If only
>> the distribution developers themselves have enough insider knowledge to
>> figure out how to work the package manager, then it's not a terribly
>> good system. Just, you know, my opinion. Feel free to disagree...
>
> You don't need a super expert to explain it.  You need someone with more
> knowledge than you have to explain it.  Plenty of normal everyday non-
> technical end users manage to use it without problems.

As I say, I can get Linux to /work/ OK. Indeed, my dad still uses it on 
a daily basis. It's just that one or two things - like getting the 
package manager to install just the packages I actually need - are 
annoyingly fiddly.

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On 09/10/2011 02:00 AM, Darren New wrote:

> I still giggle when I see someone using a gui in Linux to do things like
> find files. Just because I'm so used to the command line (and GUIs for
> Linux tend to suck horribly compared to something where it's the
> expected interface) that it looks silly to me.

In my humble opinion, if you need to *search* for a file on your local 
system, you're doing something horribly wrong...

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On 09/10/2011 02:03 AM, Jim Henderson wrote:

> find or locate does the job just fine, and beagle
> and its successors are just resource pigs.

And yet, everybody seems to think that Beagle and similar should be 
installed and enabled by default on every desktop system. It's usually 
one of the first things I go to uninstall. (But then of course, it 
complains about all the other stuff that won't work any more...)

> Though I find that the state of Linux GUIs is improving.  Certainly has
> since I started using it.

Linux GUIs used to suck horribly. Now they're mostly reasonable, but 
usually not as good as a typical Windows program. (There are of course 
many individual exceptions to this generalisation...)

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>> Oh, tremendously. But they're still a PITA compared to Windows'
>> explorer, methinks.
>
> Depends entirely on what you're used to.

Not /entirely/, no. Many things are subjective, but not all of them.

> Having recently been asked to do some work that requires Windows, I've
> had my own frustrations with the Windows interface and things that don't
> work as efficiently on Windows as they do in Linux.

My favourite one is how inserting a CD is enough to completely lock up 
the entire Windows GUI. Or how if your DHCP server doesn't answer, 
Windows locks up until that times out. Or...

> The same is true for comparing featuresets between Hyper-V and VMware
> Workstation.  For example, in Hyper-V, if you "pause" a machine, it stays
> allocated in memory rather than suspending.  "Pause" means "suspend
> execution".
>
> In VMware, if you "pause" the VM, VMware grabs the state and commits it
> to disk, freeing up the memory for other VMs.  I find VMware's usage
> makes a lot more sense.

Personally, I'd prefer having two separate buttons for these functions. 
Sometimes I just want to pause a VM just for a sec so I can use the CPU 
power for something else. So I hit pause in VMware, and facepalm as I 
have to wait ten minutes for it to trash the hell out of my HD. The 
/entire/ computer is unusable until this finishes. And when I decide to 
unpause the VM, we go through the same dance again.

Also fun: Pausing a VM makes the display go away. So it's useless if 
you're trying to quickly pause the display so you can *read* that error 
message that flashes past too fast to see...

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>>> Microsoft never did, that was an Amiga error code.
>>
>> I know. And I always thought it was a really weird name...
>
> So did I.  For that matter, I still do. :)

Also, it contains far less information than a STOP message does. 
Basically an error code (plus textual translation) and a memory address. 
Good luck working out, say, what was *at* that address or anything...

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