Bizarrely, I got offered a job writing Python yesterday—sort of.

A few weeks ago, I took some design work I’d done (a tiny part of my job) to a
printer to discuss printing options.  The printer looked over my files and asked
presumptively, “Adobe?” His eyes went wide with admiration/horror when I said,
“No, Microsoft Word.” His eyes got even bigger when I told him how I’d done the
vector graphics.

We’ve since become pretty chummy.

I went in yesterday to look at some proofs and the printer told me he’d shown
some of my vector graphics to a programmer friend. The friend reportedly
“laughed for five minutes” and offered me a job (he “creates apps”). Of course,
that’s not a real job offer, but I like that my results (OK, I know enough to
know that correct output is only one aspect of “results”) are able to fool
people.

This morning, I dug up a few old procedurally-created 3D works and sent them to
the printer for a(-nother) laugh. Thinking back to those old works and how
relatively quickly I was able to produce them, I am reminded of what I was able
to accomplish when I spent my time working instead of searching for a panacea.

This isn’t about just programming. I’ve become “ate up” with complexity and
perfectionism, but I’m committed to change. I want to avoid the “spend half your
life acquiring things and the other half carrying them around” trap.

Some of the corrections have been obvious. For instance, I’ve given away all but
my work and workout clothes and will somehow make slacks or gym shorts work for
everything in between. I don’t need to hang on to a shirt for ten years
anticipating one perfect occasion to wear it.

But not everything has been so straight forward: I was proud of my personal
growth when I *didn’t* install Linux over the perfectly good Win7 on my new
laptop, but now I’m facing the same frustration and steep learning curve that
drew me into Linux in the first place.[1] So I’m questioning whether some
aspects of my simplification are actually disguised panacea hunting and/or
self-abuse.

 -Shay

[1] Started with Slackware about ten years ago. I’ve moderated some since, but
still wept for my wasted hours when I recently installed Mepis on my desktop in
all of ten minutes.

Post a reply to this message

On 18/10/2012 01:56 PM, Shay wrote:
> But not everything has been so straight forward: I was proud of my personal
> growth when I *didn’t* install Linux over the perfectly good Win7 on my new
> laptop, but now I’m facing the same frustration and steep learning curve that
> drew me into Linux in the first place.

Wait, you left Windows and went to Linux because of the steep learning 
curve of *Windows*??

Post a reply to this message

On 18-10-2012 14:56, Shay wrote:

> This morning, I dug up a few old procedurally-created 3D works and sent them to
> the printer for a(-nother) laugh. Thinking back to those old works and how
> relatively quickly I was able to produce them, I am reminded of what I was able
> to accomplish when I spent my time working instead of searching for a panacea.

If those were the intricate mesh object you showed in these newsgroups I 
am more amazed that nobody offered you a job before.

-- 
Women are the canaries of science. When they are underrepresented
it is a strong indication that non-scientific factors play a role
and the concentration of incorruptible scientists is also too low

Post a reply to this message

Orchid Win7 v1 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> On 18/10/2012 01:56 PM, Shay wrote:
> > But not everything has been so straight forward: I was proud of my personal
> > growth when I *didn’t* install Linux over the perfectly good Win7 on my new
> > laptop, but now I’m facing the same frustration and steep learning curve that
> > drew me into Linux in the first place.
>
> Wait, you left Windows and went to Linux because of the steep learning
> curve of *Windows*??

No, I was enticed by the steep learning curve of Linux. I was convinced that
something earned must be better than something purchased.

That being said, the Win7 "Windows Explorer" is more confusing that any
standard, modern Linux application I can think of.

 -Shay

Post a reply to this message

andrel <byt### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>
> If those were the intricate mesh object you showed in these newsgroups I
> am more amazed that nobody offered you a job before.

Thank you. Amazing enough that anyone remembers that far back.

Post a reply to this message

>> Wait, you left Windows and went to Linux because of the steep learning
>> curve of *Windows*??
>
> No, I was enticed by the steep learning curve of Linux. I was convinced that
> something earned must be better than something purchased.

Oh, right. That makes far more sense...

Having said that, from what I can tell, Linux is far more flexible, and 
Windows has a far higher probability of actually working.

> That being said, the Win7 "Windows Explorer" is more confusing that any
> standard, modern Linux application I can think of.

Really?

Post a reply to this message

Orchid Win7 v1 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>
> Having said that, from what I can tell, Linux is far more flexible, and
> Windows has a far higher probability of actually working.

That about sums it up for laptops with their extra buttons, hard-drive
protection, thumb scanners, etc. Linux "just works" (maybe not 100% optimally,
but you probably wouldn't notice) for a standard desktop.

But Linux has more going for it than "far more flexible". It won't be as
compatible as Windows, but it will do what it does do (e.g., window managers)
better[1]. Windows only wins with top-shelf software installed.

>
> > That being said, the Win7 "Windows Explorer" is more confusing that any
> > standard, modern Linux application I can think of.
>
> Really?

Maybe I just don't have it configured correctly. Not in front of it atm, but
iirc, the first screen doesn't show your file system as a connected network of
folders. What you see is shortcuts to various folders in your file system. This
is confusing if you want to go somewhere that doesn't have a shortcut. Two
clicks to get to my home folder, and, in my case, my home folder is called
"LENOVO_USER" in DOS and "Shay" in Windows Explorer. I found it frustrating at
first.

 -Shay

[1] This mirrors my limited experience with IDEs vs. text editors: the IDE can
do a lot of things, but the text editor component is never as nice ime as a
dedicated text editor. Similarly, Windows Explorer, Internet Explorer, and
Explorer shell aren't nearly as nice as their FOSS counterparts.

Post a reply to this message

>> Having said that, from what I can tell, Linux is far more flexible, and
>> Windows has a far higher probability of actually working.
>
> That about sums it up for laptops with their extra buttons, hard-drive
> protection, thumb scanners, etc. Linux "just works" (maybe not 100% optimally,
> but you probably wouldn't notice) for a standard desktop.

This has not been my experience. I'm sure we could have a very long 
flamewar about this. (In fact, I can promise you that somebody, 
somewhere is having this exact discussion /right now/...)

In essence, my experience has been this:

* If the distro installs it by default, it'll probably work perfectly.

* If there is a package for your version of your distro, you can 
/probably/ install it. Often this works perfectly. And often this fails 
spectacularly, and it's impossible to figure out why.

* If there isn't a suitable package... you probably need to build the 
thing from source. If it's a simple item, this might work. If it has 
non-trivial external dependencies... forget it. You could waste several 
months of your life utterly failing to make it work. It isn't worth it.

For example, when you run VMware Workstation, you can install "VMware 
Tools" on the guest OS, which greatly improves integration with the host 
OS. At least, you can if the guest OS is Windows. If it's Linux, then 
this never, ever, under any circumstances, works. It's /supposed/ to 
work; they provide Linux-compatible packages. They just don't /work/.

I imagine the problem basically comes down to this: "Windows" is one OS. 
"Linux" is several hundred similar but incompatible OSes. You haven't 
got a snowball's chance in hell of writing an installer that works on 
all of them.

> But Linux has more going for it than "far more flexible". It won't be as
> compatible as Windows, but it will do what it does do (e.g., window managers)
> better[1]. Windows only wins with top-shelf software installed.

That's an interesting choice of example.

 From what I've seen, KDE is reasonable, and GNOME is reasonable. Every 
other window manager I've ever seen has been /horrifyingly awful/! I 
mean, they're literally /so bad/ that you wonder why the hell anybody 
even bothered to build the RPM for it. It looks so utterly hideous, and 
it's so difficult to use... WHY WOULD YOU BOTHER?

KDE or GNOME aren't too bad. I haven't really used KDE much recently, 
but I think I could probably live with GNOME as my actual desktop. (You 
mean, I mean, if I could actually get my software to run on Linux.) 
Either of these desktops usually has far more configuration options than 
Windows ever had. [Although I see that with GNOME 3 they've removed most 
if not all configuration options, for no defined reason...]

>>> That being said, the Win7 "Windows Explorer" is more confusing that any
>>> standard, modern Linux application I can think of.
>>
>> Really?
>
> Maybe I just don't have it configured correctly. Not in front of it atm, but
> iirc, the first screen doesn't show your file system as a connected network of
> folders. What you see is shortcuts to various folders in your file system. This
> is confusing if you want to go somewhere that doesn't have a shortcut. Two
> clicks to get to my home folder, and, in my case, my home folder is called
> "LENOVO_USER" in DOS and "Shay" in Windows Explorer. I found it frustrating at
> first.

Yeah, I'm not fond of that. Basically Microsoft is all like "why should 
you care where your file are, or what the filesystem structure looks 
like? Let me hide all that computery stuff away from your so you don't 
have to even /touch/ it. Let's just pretend that I'm in charge of your 
PC, not you..."

You can fight it, and work around it. But you can't turn it off, sadly...

> [1] This mirrors my limited experience with IDEs vs. text editors: the IDE can
> do a lot of things, but the text editor component is never as nice ime as a
> dedicated text editor.

IME, a good IDE has a text editor roughly comparable to a good 
standalone text editor. The difference is, I can press a button and 
compile my stuff, or whatever. And I've yet to see a standalone text 
editor which understands source code well enough to do really decent 
syntax highlighing, much less anything more sophisticated.

What I /will/ say is that most IDEs tend to be unreasonably slow...

> Similarly, Windows Explorer, Internet Explorer, and
> Explorer shell aren't nearly as nice as their FOSS counterparts.

I don't like Internet Explorer at all. I use Firefox instead. (I tried 
Chrome, but didn't like it.)

However, I prefer Windows Explorer to any FOSS alternative I've seen. 
[Not that I've seen any that run on Windows in the first place.] It 
defaults to assuming you're a total moron who is too stupid to operate a 
computer. Once you turn all that crap off, it looks nicer and works with 
less fuss than anything else I've seen.

In Windows 7, the main user shell now basically looks like KDE or GNOME. 
I preferred the old one, but it's a mere personal preference rather than 
a strong opinion.

Post a reply to this message

On Fri, 19 Oct 2012 22:10:57 +0100, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:

> If it's Linux, then this never, ever, under any circumstances, works.
> It's /supposed/ to work; they provide Linux-compatible packages. They
> just don't /work/.

No, it would be accurate for you to say that you've never gotten it to 
work.  It's not accurate for you to say it never, ever, under any 
circumstances just cannot possibly be made to work by anybody ever in the 
entire universe.

The counter example?  I've used the VMware Tools in Linux guests, and 
they've worked perfectly.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson wrote:
>
> The counter example?  I've used the VMware Tools in Linux guests, and
> they've worked perfectly.

Me too. So there's at least two of us against one Andrew ;-).

> Jim
>

-Aero

Post a reply to this message

Orchid Win7 v1 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> >> Having said that, from what I can tell, Linux is far more flexible, and
> >> Windows has a far higher probability of actually working.
> >
> > That about sums it up for laptops with their extra buttons, hard-drive
> > protection, thumb scanners, etc. Linux "just works" (maybe not 100% optimally,
> > but you probably wouldn't notice) for a standard desktop.
>
> This has not been my experience. I'm sure we could have a very long
> flamewar about this. (In fact, I can promise you that somebody,
> somewhere is having this exact discussion /right now/...)
>
> In essence, my experience has been this:
>

Fair enough. You're probably more of a "power user" than I am. I don't even work
on things remotely. That being said, VMWare is on the Arch Linux wiki, and I'll
bet you could get it working in ten minutes if you followed that.

>
> > But Linux has more going for it than "far more flexible". It won't be as
> > compatible as Windows, but it will do what it does do (e.g., window managers)
> > better[1]. Windows only wins with top-shelf software installed.
>
> That's an interesting choice of example.
>
>  From what I've seen, KDE is reasonable, and GNOME is reasonable. Every
> other window manager I've ever seen has been /horrifyingly awful/! I
> mean, they're literally /so bad/ that you wonder why the hell anybody
> even bothered to build the RPM for it. It looks so utterly hideous, and
> it's so difficult to use... WHY WOULD YOU BOTHER?

Why I would bother:
(12" laptop)
* Multiple workspaces
* Keybord control
* Ability to fullscreen almost any application
* Ability to alter and hide window decorations
* At least rudimentary tiling
(Shared Desktop)
* Switch users with a key-combination
* Configurable for wide monitors

Of course, that's not only true of the ugly ones. I prefer xfce (an ugly one).
It's easy to make attractive (fo my tastes: small, simple, square window
decorations and a nice nature wallpaper) and it's simple to set up hotkeys. The
default ugliness must be a pride issue with some of those projects. Doesn't make
sense to me either.

>
> Yeah, I'm not fond of that. Basically Microsoft is all like "why should
> you care where your file are, or what the filesystem structure looks
> like? Let me hide all that computery stuff away from your so you don't
> have to even /touch/ it. Let's just pretend that I'm in charge of your
> PC, not you..."
>
> You can fight it, and work around it. But you can't turn it off, sadly...

I guess I'm bone-headed. I'm a user. I don't try anything fancy with the
interface. But I always seem to quickly run into something the UI guys didn't
expect me to.

>
> > [1] This mirrors my limited experience with IDEs vs. text editors: the IDE can
> > do a lot of things, but the text editor component is never as nice ime as a
> > dedicated text editor.
>
> IME, a good IDE has a text editor roughly comparable to a good
> standalone text editor.

I remember now: you don't care for featureful text editors. They've been working
on Vim for decades now. It can do a lot of things.

>
> > Similarly, Windows Explorer, Internet Explorer, and
> > Explorer shell aren't nearly as nice as their FOSS counterparts.
>
> I don't like Internet Explorer at all. I use Firefox instead. (I tried
> Chrome, but didn't like it.)
>
> However, I prefer Windows Explorer to any FOSS alternative I've seen.

Ignore the FOSS. I don't know what is and isn't FOSS. I was just too lazy to
type 'Open Source'. I meant Firefox, KDE, etc.

 -Shay

Post a reply to this message

>> If it's Linux, then this never, ever, under any circumstances, works.
>> It's /supposed/ to work; they provide Linux-compatible packages. They
>> just don't /work/.
>
> No, it would be accurate for you to say that you've never gotten it to
> work.

OK, fair enough. But I doubt I'm the only person having this trouble.

So on Windows, they support at least Windows NT 4. So VMware Tools is 
probably an NT4-compliant application, which would therefore also work 
under later OSes. They might have had to write more than one version of 
some of the device drivers, and get the installer to pick the right one. 
But there's less than half a dozen possibilities to consider.

For Linux... well, last time I visited Distro Watch, there was well over 
a hundred entries. And that's just the number of distros; each point 
release of a distro is more or less incompatible with all over point 
releases of that same distro. That gives us a combinatorial explosion of 
/thousands/ of possible combinations.

Naturally, VMware aren't going to test against all of them. Certainly 
they aren't going to produce binaries that work against all of them. 
Indeed, producing binaries at all seems kind of pointless; they will 
almost never match the guest OS.

And so, inevitably, when you try to run the installer script, it says it 
doesn't have any modules that match the running kernel. The next thing 
it says is "would you like to try compiling it yourself?" So OK, let me 
just install a C compiler and a few other bits... Right, go for it.

What? What do you mean no kernel headers? OK, let me go install those. 
What do you mean they "don't match" the running kernel? I got them from 
the right repo... OK, well, proceed anyway. What? GCC doesn't match the 
version used to build the kernel? How do you even /know/ that?? And, uh, 
why is the version you want not even listed as an option in any repo for 
any release of this distro?

IIRC, I did get this stuff to actually compile and install once. But 
after completing the install and rebooting the guest as requested, the 
software /still/ didn't actually work. (Presumably there's some way 
somewhere of determining whether it's even running, but I don't know 
what that is.)



In other news, my new employer is apparently paying for me to get Linux 
Professional Institute Certified...

Post a reply to this message

On 19/10/2012 11:50 PM, Shay wrote:
> Fair enough. You're probably more of a "power user" than I am. I don't even work
> on things remotely. That being said, VMWare is on the Arch Linux wiki, and I'll
> bet you could get it working in ten minutes if you followed that.

I did wonder if maybe making /Linux/ the host OS and using Xen to run 
various guest OSes might work more reliably. Maybe I'll try it some day...

>>   From what I've seen, KDE is reasonable, and GNOME is reasonable. Every
>> other window manager I've ever seen has been /horrifyingly awful/! I
>> mean, they're literally /so bad/ that you wonder why the hell anybody
>> even bothered to build the RPM for it. It looks so utterly hideous, and
>> it's so difficult to use... WHY WOULD YOU BOTHER?
>
> Why I would bother:
> (12" laptop)
> * Multiple workspaces
> * Keybord control
> * Ability to fullscreen almost any application
> * Ability to alter and hide window decorations
> * At least rudimentary tiling
> (Shared Desktop)
> * Switch users with a key-combination
> * Configurable for wide monitors

I meant more why would people bother packaging up an WM that's so ugly 
that nobody would ever install it, but OK...

Most of the things listed look like they would be fairly easy under 
Windows as well.

> Of course, that's not only true of the ugly ones. I prefer xfce (an ugly one).
> It's easy to make attractive (fo my tastes: small, simple, square window
> decorations and a nice nature wallpaper) and it's simple to set up hotkeys.

Every time I use xfce, or fluxbox, or twm, or whatever, I hear a voice 
calling me, saying "1974 called, and they want their user interface back".

> The
> default ugliness must be a pride issue with some of those projects. Doesn't make
> sense to me either.

Wait, you mean there's a way to make it /not/ look nauseatingly awful?

>> You can fight it, and work around it. But you can't turn it off, sadly...
>
> I guess I'm bone-headed. I'm a user. I don't try anything fancy with the
> interface. But I always seem to quickly run into something the UI guys didn't
> expect me to.

Yeah, unfortunately Windows /is/ designed around the idea that the user 
is a total moron, and has to be "protected" from anything vaguely 
technical. Which is extremely irritating when you /do/ understand 
technical things!

Then again, Linux (or rather, Unix) is designed around the idea that the 
user is an elite hacker expert. And if you aren't, it's really quite 
hard to use.

Don't get me wrong, Linux is way, /way/ easier now than it used to be. 
But if you use Linux, sooner or later the shiny, whizzy GUI breaks, and 
you have to look under the covers to figure out why. And then it's still 
as hard as ever. Particularly now, as there's lots of new stuff with 
inadaquate documentation.

(I'm just bitter because I've spent two entire days trying to figure out 
GNOME 3 extensions. One forum post asked for a list of stock icon names. 
And somebody replied "there is no such list, and nor should there be; 
the source code is the documentation". WTF? Who /the hell/ reads 25,000 
LOC just to look up an icon name or find out what arguments a function 
takes? That's retarded.)

>> IME, a good IDE has a text editor roughly comparable to a good
>> standalone text editor.
>
> I remember now: you don't care for featureful text editors.

I don't care for features? Or I don't care for the features that a 
typical VT100 editor typically implements? ;-)

> They've been working on Vim for decades now. It can do a lot of things.

Perhaps. I still haven't figured out how to do simple things like "quit"...

Post a reply to this message

On 10/18/2012 14:56, Shay wrote:
> No, I was enticed by the steep learning curve of Linux. I was convinced that
> something earned must be better than something purchased.

I'm convinced that's true of a lot of people who learn really complex and 
baroque and pitfall-encrusted(*) programming languages first, and then are 
reluctant to learn others because they're worried it will take five years to 
get good enough to write a usable program in them.

> That being said, the Win7 "Windows Explorer" is more confusing that any
> standard, modern Linux application I can think of.

It grows on you, tho, once you figure out the conventions. In particular, 
the same conventions are used pretty much everywhere. There are a few 
annoying bits you'll come to know. You might want to tap the alt key, then 
go into tools->folder options and play around a bit to see if you can get 
something that seems a little friendlier.

On the other front, I just got upgraded to Ubuntu "precise" from "lucid" 
(assuming these aren't just Google-specific distros), and pretty much 
everything sucks far, far worse. It's like they tried to make it as simple 
as a Mac, without actually adding in any usability.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "They're the 1-800-#-GORILA of the telecom business."

Post a reply to this message

On Sat, 20 Oct 2012 07:52:20 +0100, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:

>>> If it's Linux, then this never, ever, under any circumstances, works.
>>> It's /supposed/ to work; they provide Linux-compatible packages. They
>>> just don't /work/.
>>
>> No, it would be accurate for you to say that you've never gotten it to
>> work.
> 
> OK, fair enough. But I doubt I'm the only person having this trouble.

That doesn't translate to "nobody can get it to work".

> What? What do you mean no kernel headers? OK, let me go install those.
> What do you mean they "don't match" the running kernel? I got them from
> the right repo... OK, well, proceed anyway. What? GCC doesn't match the
> version used to build the kernel? How do you even /know/ that?? And, uh,
> why is the version you want not even listed as an option in any repo for
> any release of this distro?

They build against some specific releases and have a generic installer 
for the rest.

It seems  you found one that's not common and not compatible.  It 
happens.  I've also seen the incorrect GCC version error (how do they 
determine that?  Perhaps, just maybe, there's a "compiled with gcc 
version x" bit in the header so that can be determined when trying to 
figure out issues.  You know, some sort of data storage that indicates 
how it was built).  There's an override option for that.

That also doesn't translate to "nobody can get it to work".

> IIRC, I did get this stuff to actually compile and install once. But
> after completing the install and rebooting the guest as requested, the
> software /still/ didn't actually work. (Presumably there's some way
> somewhere of determining whether it's even running, but I don't know
> what that is.)

Hmmm.  So, you say it doesn't work, but you don't know if it was 
running.  So how do you know it didn't work?

> In other news, my new employer is apparently paying for me to get Linux
> Professional Institute Certified...

That's handy/convenient.  :)

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On 10/19/2012 5:10, Shay wrote:
> but it will do what it does do (e.g., window managers) better[1].

Yeah, as long as you're in the same room. :-)  You realize that Linux window 
managers are a festering pit of kludge piled on kludge, right? Half the 
complexity in X is there to deal with window managers deciding when to 
change the focus asynchronously from what the input stream is, right?

> Maybe I just don't have it configured correctly. Not in front of it atm, but
> iirc, the first screen doesn't show your file system as a connected network of
> folders. What you see is shortcuts to various folders in your file system. This
> is confusing if you want to go somewhere that doesn't have a shortcut. Two
> clicks to get to my home folder, and, in my case, my home folder is called
> "LENOVO_USER" in DOS and "Shay" in Windows Explorer. I found it frustrating at
> first.

Well, here's problem one: You didn't ditch their dumb-ass Windows and 
install a fresh intall. Instead, you took whatever the manufacturer 
trademarked-up.  :-)  I'll grant you that very few Linux distros try to keep 
you from getting rid of their trademarks. So that's the problem with the 
home directory. If you do a fresh install, it cal

Second, the start menu has shortcuts for your home directory (first on the 
list, basically your login name), the whole file system (called "computer"), 
and the "libraries" thing is a collection of shortcuts itself basically. But 
if you get in the habit of hitting the start menu for your first step of 
navigation, you'll probably be more comfortable.

> [1] This mirrors my limited experience with IDEs vs. text editors: the IDE can
> do a lot of things, but the text editor component is never as nice ime as a
> dedicated text editor. Similarly, Windows Explorer, Internet Explorer, and
> Explorer shell aren't nearly as nice as their FOSS counterparts.

I think FOSS has a lot more options, because certainly the "Explorer" I use 
on Linux sucks moose.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "They're the 1-800-#-GORILA of the telecom business."

Post a reply to this message

On Sat, 20 Oct 2012 08:04:01 +0100, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:

>> They've been working on Vim for decades now. It can do a lot of things.
> 
> Perhaps. I still haven't figured out how to do simple things like
> "quit"...

Yes you have, back when you told this group that you had to shut a system 
down to exit because you didn't know how, we told you to use ":q" or shift
+zz to quit.

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On 10/20/2012 10:38, Darren New wrote:
> baroque and pitfall-encrusted(*) programming languages first,


(*) Yes, I know being encrusted with pitfalls makes no sense.
-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "They're the 1-800-#-GORILA of the telecom business."

Post a reply to this message

On 20/10/2012 06:38 PM, Darren New wrote:
> On 10/18/2012 14:56, Shay wrote:
>> No, I was enticed by the steep learning curve of Linux. I was
>> convinced that
>> something earned must be better than something purchased.
>
> I'm convinced that's true of a lot of people who learn really complex
> and baroque and pitfall-encrusted(*) programming languages first, and
> then are reluctant to learn others because they're worried it will take
> five years to get good enough to write a usable program in them.

Huh. Is *that* why nobody wants to learn Haskell? ;-)

Post a reply to this message

On 10/20/2012 12:04 AM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> Yeah, unfortunately Windows /is/ designed around the idea that the user
> is a total moron, and has to be "protected" from anything vaguely
> technical. Which is extremely irritating when you /do/ understand
> technical things!
>
Yep!

> (I'm just bitter because I've spent two entire days trying to figure out
> GNOME 3 extensions. One forum post asked for a list of stock icon names.
> And somebody replied "there is no such list, and nor should there be;
> the source code is the documentation". WTF? Who /the hell/ reads 25,000
> LOC just to look up an icon name or find out what arguments a function
> takes? That's retarded.)
>
Which you can, sometimes, run into with Windows. Example: Context Menu 
Handlers. There is, short of looking in the registry, no list of them 
that I know of. Since XP, I think, there has been an option on the start 
menu for some folders to list subfolders. This isn't context menu, but.. 
maybe you could add it as one, only.. again, nothing documenting what 
exactly is doing it (its probably not though). So, where it might make 
sense to be able to "right click" a folder, and see the files in it, 
instead of having to open the folder.... well, there doesn't seem to be 
a way to manage it, even though, if you know the registry, it is 
semi-trivial to add in context for things like a) opening your stuff in 
another application, even if it didn't install one of those already, or 
b) add more "New" items, to the menu for that, or even move/copy, etc. 
functions, of one sort or another. Good luck finding sane documentation 
on any of it at the MS site either, unless you want the skeleton of what 
is needed to make a new context menu item, and have it tie itself into 
the OS itself.

My last irritation was that I have two choices - Turn off, "New program 
installed" notifications, or run all of them. Since half the time these 
"New Programs" are set up to change settings, or reset data, or do other 
things I damn well don't want, why the hell isn't there a, "Mark this as 
run.", context item, and how the hell would you create one? Uh, duh!! 
Who would possibly want that? Sigh...

Post a reply to this message

Le 2012-10-19 18:13, Eero Ahonen a écrit :
> Jim Henderson wrote:
>>
>> The counter example?  I've used the VMware Tools in Linux guests, and
>> they've worked perfectly.
>
> Me too. So there's at least two of us against one Andrew ;-).
>
>> Jim
>>
>
> -Aero
>

This can only mean one thing.  You are not of this world.

I, for one, welcome our new extra-terestrial Linux overlords.
-- 
/*Francois Labreque*/#local a=x+y;#local b=x+a;#local c=a+b;#macro P(F//
/*    flabreque    */L)polygon{5,F,F+z,L+z,L,F pigment{rgb 9}}#end union
/*        @        */{P(0,a)P(a,b)P(b,c)P(2*a,2*b)P(2*b,b+c)P(b+c,<2,3>)
/*   gmail.com     */}camera{orthographic location<6,1.25,-6>look_at a }

Post a reply to this message

Francois Labreque wrote:
>
> This can only mean one thing.  You are not of this world.
>
> I, for one, welcome our new extra-terestrial Linux overlords.

We come in peace. Please don't release pigeons.

Post a reply to this message

>>> No, it would be accurate for you to say that you've never gotten it to
>>> work.
>>
>> OK, fair enough. But I doubt I'm the only person having this trouble.
>
> That doesn't translate to "nobody can get it to work".

I think the operative question is "how much of an expert do you need to 
be to make this work?"

> They build against some specific releases and have a generic installer
> for the rest.
>
> It seems  you found one that's not common and not compatible.  It
> happens.

When you create a new VM, it asks for the type of guest OS. It has 
options listed for RedHat (which I haven't used for decades), Ubuntu, 
and SUSE (but not OpenSUSE).

Amusingly, I tried Ubuntu and it didn't work. I also tried OpenSUSE and 
it didn't work.

To be fair though, /some/ of these distros somehow "detect" that they're 
running in a VM and install optimised video drivers. Windows doesn't do 
that.

> I've also seen the incorrect GCC version error (how do they
> determine that?  Perhaps, just maybe, there's a "compiled with gcc
> version x" bit in the header

Interesting. I'm not aware of any standard for doing that...

> There's an override option for that.

Now how the heck do you know that? Where is this written down?

> That also doesn't translate to "nobody can get it to work".

Well, no. Strictly speaking, the engineer employed by VMware presumably 
got it to work on his test bench. The question is, can anybody /else/ 
get it to work?

>> IIRC, I did get this stuff to actually compile and install once. But
>> after completing the install and rebooting the guest as requested, the
>> software /still/ didn't actually work. (Presumably there's some way
>> somewhere of determining whether it's even running, but I don't know
>> what that is.)
>
> Hmmm.  So, you say it doesn't work, but you don't know if it was
> running.  So how do you know it didn't work?

Because I couldn't actually transfer files between the guest OS and the 
host OS? That's more or less the only reason to bother installing VMware 
Tools. (Other than the accelerated hardware drivers...)

>> In other news, my new employer is apparently paying for me to get Linux
>> Professional Institute Certified...
>
> That's handy/convenient.  :)

Well, maybe. Apparently everybody else in the room is LPIC too, and none 
of them seem to know anything about Linux either...

Post a reply to this message

On 20/10/2012 11:23 PM, Eero Ahonen wrote:
> Francois Labreque wrote:
>>
>> This can only mean one thing.  You are not of this world.
>>
>> I, for one, welcome our new extra-terestrial Linux overlords.
>
> We come in peace. Please don't release pigeons.

LOL One of the great SF films of all time, IMO.

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

Post a reply to this message

On Sun, 21 Oct 2012 00:41:47 +0100, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:

>>>> No, it would be accurate for you to say that you've never gotten it
>>>> to work.
>>>
>>> OK, fair enough. But I doubt I'm the only person having this trouble.
>>
>> That doesn't translate to "nobody can get it to work".
> 
> I think the operative question is "how much of an expert do you need to
> be to make this work?"

That should have been your leading question, then. ;)

>> They build against some specific releases and have a generic installer
>> for the rest.
>>
>> It seems  you found one that's not common and not compatible.  It
>> happens.
> 
> When you create a new VM, it asks for the type of guest OS. It has
> options listed for RedHat (which I haven't used for decades), Ubuntu,
> and SUSE (but not OpenSUSE).

And in the docs they have a list of supported releases.

> Amusingly, I tried Ubuntu and it didn't work. I also tried OpenSUSE and
> it didn't work.

Version?

> To be fair though, /some/ of these distros somehow "detect" that they're
> running in a VM and install optimised video drivers. Windows doesn't do
> that.

Yes, some/many distributions use an open source version of VMware's 
tools, and in those cases, the VMware supplied package actively conflicts 
with the OST package (as I recall it's named).

>> I've also seen the incorrect GCC version error (how do they determine
>> that?  Perhaps, just maybe, there's a "compiled with gcc version x" bit
>> in the header
> 
> Interesting. I'm not aware of any standard for doing that...
> 
>> There's an override option for that.
> 
> Now how the heck do you know that? Where is this written down?

As I recall, from the last time I installed the tools (which has been a 
while as I'm using VirtualBox now), it was part of the tools build script 
- provides an option to "build anyways".

>> That also doesn't translate to "nobody can get it to work".
> 
> Well, no. Strictly speaking, the engineer employed by VMware presumably
> got it to work on his test bench. The question is, can anybody /else/
> get it to work?

Asked and answered.  I had it working when I used VMware.
 
>> Hmmm.  So, you say it doesn't work, but you don't know if it was
>> running.  So how do you know it didn't work?
> 
> Because I couldn't actually transfer files between the guest OS and the
> host OS? That's more or less the only reason to bother installing VMware
> Tools. (Other than the accelerated hardware drivers...)

So, shared folders didn't work.  That's but one feature the tools 
provide.  As noted, they add accelerated (or more properly /optimised/) 
hardware drivers, and also some host/guest API integration.

> 
>>> In other news, my new employer is apparently paying for me to get
>>> Linux Professional Institute Certified...
>>
>> That's handy/convenient.  :)
> 
> Well, maybe. Apparently everybody else in the room is LPIC too, and none
> of them seem to know anything about Linux either...

LPIC-1 is a starting point, but it doesn't cover a lot of depth.  I've 
held that one since 2003 myself.

But remember that technical certifications are a measurement of the /
minimally qualified candidate/ (and remember that I used to work in 
certification program development, so I do know what I'm talking about 
with it).

Jim

Post a reply to this message

>> I think the operative question is "how much of an expert do you need to
>> be to make this work?"
>
> That should have been your leading question, then. ;)

Well, it's certainly not as simple as just clicking a button. (Whilst it 
*is* literally that simple under Windows.) But sure, maybe there's some 
secret technique which makes it actually work properly...

>> Amusingly, I tried Ubuntu and it didn't work. I also tried OpenSUSE and
>> it didn't work.
>
> Version?

I don't recall that information off the top of my head.

I tried Debian, I *think* it was Etch.

I tried Ubuntu. I think I tried Maverick Meerkat, and I definitely tried 
Natty Narwhal. (But sure if I ever tried Oneiric Ocelot.)

I tried OpenSUSE, I believe it was 10.something, but I don't really 
recall anything further than that. (I suppose I could try searching for 
images...)

>> To be fair though, /some/ of these distros somehow "detect" that they're
>> running in a VM and install optimised video drivers. Windows doesn't do
>> that.
>
> Yes, some/many distributions use an open source version of VMware's
> tools, and in those cases, the VMware supplied package actively conflicts
> with the OST package (as I recall it's named).

I suppose that's not *so* surprising... although I would have expected 
either the VMware package or the open source replacements to have code 
to detect this and deal with it.

>>> Hmmm.  So, you say it doesn't work, but you don't know if it was
>>> running.  So how do you know it didn't work?
>>
>> Because I couldn't actually transfer files between the guest OS and the
>> host OS? That's more or less the only reason to bother installing VMware
>> Tools. (Other than the accelerated hardware drivers...)
>
> So, shared folders didn't work.  That's but one feature the tools
> provide.  As noted, they add accelerated (or more properly /optimised/)
> hardware drivers, and also some host/guest API integration.

I don't use "shared folders" at all. I just use the feature where you 
can drag and drop files between the guest OS and the host OS. Works fine 
for Windows, doesn't seem to work for Linux.

All it means is that for Linux, I have to use Samba instead. (Assuming 
the distro in question installs that by default. Installing it manually 
doesn't appear to make it work...) I suppose the really ironic thing is 
that Linux can connect to the host OS via SMB just fine, and yet a 
Windows guest OS cannot seem to achieve this feat. (??!)

> LPIC-1 is a starting point, but it doesn't cover a lot of depth.  I've
> held that one since 2003 myself.
>
> But remember that technical certifications are a measurement of the /
> minimally qualified candidate/ (and remember that I used to work in
> certification program development, so I do know what I'm talking about
> with it).

I gather that being Microsoft-certified has become something of a joke 
in industry circles. I'm wondering how much credibility LPIC actually 
has. (Although I guess that depends primarily on who you ask.)

Regardless, I may learn something interesting in the process. E.g., 
everybody knows that you can go through the Bash history using the arrow 
keys. But did you realise you can actually /search/ this? I had no idea. 
There's also half a dozen text-processing commands that I've never heard 
of. (E.g., "od", "fmt", "pr", "nl", etc.)

Post a reply to this message

On Mon, 22 Oct 2012 21:25:50 +0100, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:

>>> I think the operative question is "how much of an expert do you need
>>> to be to make this work?"
>>
>> That should have been your leading question, then. ;)
> 
> Well, it's certainly not as simple as just clicking a button. (Whilst it
> *is* literally that simple under Windows.) But sure, maybe there's some
> secret technique which makes it actually work properly...

Up until my experience with WS 7, it was pretty straightforward.  The 4.x 
days might have been when it started getting "difficult" because they 
tried to include pre-built modules for many distributions.  As a result, 
I think they didn't spend as much time on the "build your own" modules.

>>> Amusingly, I tried Ubuntu and it didn't work. I also tried OpenSUSE
>>> and it didn't work.
>>
>> Version?
> 
> I don't recall that information off the top of my head.
> 
> I tried Debian, I *think* it was Etch.
> 
> I tried Ubuntu. I think I tried Maverick Meerkat, and I definitely tried
> Natty Narwhal. (But sure if I ever tried Oneiric Ocelot.)
> 
> I tried OpenSUSE, I believe it was 10.something, but I don't really
> recall anything further than that. (I suppose I could try searching for
> images...)

All fairly old, IIRC.  Certainly openSUSE (note: spelling is important - 
it's openSUSE, not OpenSUSE, OpEnSuSe, OpenSuSE, opensuse, ....) is well 
past a 10.x release being supported.

>> Yes, some/many distributions use an open source version of VMware's
>> tools, and in those cases, the VMware supplied package actively
>> conflicts with the OST package (as I recall it's named).
> 
> I suppose that's not *so* surprising... although I would have expected
> either the VMware package or the open source replacements to have code
> to detect this and deal with it.

Certainly that would make sense.

>> So, shared folders didn't work.  That's but one feature the tools
>> provide.  As noted, they add accelerated (or more properly /optimised/)
>> hardware drivers, and also some host/guest API integration.
> 
> I don't use "shared folders" at all. I just use the feature where you
> can drag and drop files between the guest OS and the host OS. Works fine
> for Windows, doesn't seem to work for Linux.

I've never counted on that working, and have never used it.  I prefer my 
guests to be somewhat more isolated than allowing drag and drop.

> All it means is that for Linux, I have to use Samba instead. (Assuming
> the distro in question installs that by default. Installing it manually
> doesn't appear to make it work...) I suppose the really ironic thing is
> that Linux can connect to the host OS via SMB just fine, and yet a
> Windows guest OS cannot seem to achieve this feat. (??!)

You don't have to use SAMBA, use shared folders.  That's what it's for.

But when connecting a host to a guest filesystem, make sure the firewall 
permits it.  Most Linux distros lock the firewall down to only permitted 
services.

>> LPIC-1 is a starting point, but it doesn't cover a lot of depth.  I've
>> held that one since 2003 myself.
>>
>> But remember that technical certifications are a measurement of the /
>> minimally qualified candidate/ (and remember that I used to work in
>> certification program development, so I do know what I'm talking about
>> with it).
> 
> I gather that being Microsoft-certified has become something of a joke
> in industry circles. I'm wondering how much credibility LPIC actually
> has. (Although I guess that depends primarily on who you ask.)

MS certifications are somewhat regarded as a joke.  LPI doesn't have that 
reputation, and have worked to try to prevent that, but IME there are 
things on their exams that don't make sense to test on - things like what 
command-line switches are used to create a user's home directory when 
using the useradd command.  I can find that out easily by using -h or man 
to find out, so I don't need to memorise that useless kind of information.

I prefer hands-on exams, myself - much better to show that you can do 
something rather than that you know something.  Application of knowledge 
is important to me, moreso than the knowledge itself.

I did a practical Linux exam once that required bash scripting.  I taught 
myself the syntax during the exam.  If it'd been a written exam, I'd have 
been stuffed, but because it was a practical exam, I could demonstrate an 
ability to do what I needed to do in the time allotted.  That's far more 
valuable. :)

> Regardless, I may learn something interesting in the process. E.g.,
> everybody knows that you can go through the Bash history using the arrow
> keys. But did you realise you can actually /search/ this? I had no idea.
> There's also half a dozen text-processing commands that I've never heard
> of. (E.g., "od", "fmt", "pr", "nl", etc.)

Well, I did, of course.  Did you know there are a bunch of different 
shells?  I use tcsh myself. :)

Jim

Post a reply to this message

>>> Version?
>>
>> I don't recall that information off the top of my head.
>>
>> I tried Debian, I *think* it was Etch.
>>
>> I tried Ubuntu. I think I tried Maverick Meerkat, and I definitely tried
>> Natty Narwhal. (But sure if I ever tried Oneiric Ocelot.)
>>
>> I tried OpenSUSE, I believe it was 10.something, but I don't really
>> recall anything further than that. (I suppose I could try searching for
>> images...)
>
> All fairly old, IIRC.  Certainly openSUSE (note: spelling is important -
> it's openSUSE, not OpenSUSE, OpEnSuSe, OpenSuSE, opensuse, ....) is well
> past a 10.x release being supported.

At the time when I tried this, these were the latest versions available 
for download.

> I've never counted on that working, and have never used it.  I prefer my
> guests to be somewhat more isolated than allowing drag and drop.

Fair enough. For particularly /large/ binaries, I sometimes use other 
methods. (In the vein hope that it will keep the disk image size under 
control...)

>> All it means is that for Linux, I have to use Samba instead. (Assuming
>> the distro in question installs that by default. Installing it manually
>> doesn't appear to make it work...) I suppose the really ironic thing is
>> that Linux can connect to the host OS via SMB just fine, and yet a
>> Windows guest OS cannot seem to achieve this feat. (??!)
>
> You don't have to use SAMBA, use shared folders.  That's what it's for.

Like I say, I don't even know how that works. Presumably under Linux it 
would show up as an NFS share or something weird which would be hard to 
configure.

> But when connecting a host to a guest filesystem, make sure the firewall
> permits it.  Most Linux distros lock the firewall down to only permitted
> services.

It seems to vary. I did a default install of OpenSUSE 12.2 yesterday, 
and it defaults to leaving the firewall disabled. (I'm pretty sure 
earlier versions had it enabled by default...)

> MS certifications are somewhat regarded as a joke.  LPI doesn't have that
> reputation, and have worked to try to prevent that

Well, it makes sense that any provider would /try/ to prevent the 
devaluing of their expensive certifications...

> but IME there are
> things on their exams that don't make sense to test on - things like what
> command-line switches

Yeah, indeed. The difference between cat -n and cat -b? Well, if I EVER 
NEED TO KNOW THAT, it's going to take me a few split seconds to look 
that up. Knowing that cat is even the program I need to be looking at in 
the first place? That sounds far more important.

> I prefer hands-on exams, myself - much better to show that you can do
> something rather than that you know something.  Application of knowledge
> is important to me, moreso than the knowledge itself.

I hear you...

>> Regardless, I may learn something interesting in the process. E.g.,
>> everybody knows that you can go through the Bash history using the arrow
>> keys. But did you realise you can actually /search/ this? I had no idea.
>> There's also half a dozen text-processing commands that I've never heard
>> of. (E.g., "od", "fmt", "pr", "nl", etc.)
>
> Well, I did, of course.  Did you know there are a bunch of different
> shells?  I use tcsh myself. :)

I knew several shells exist. I didn't realise quite how many though. 
Also, the book I'm reading seems to indicate that these shells are 
actually far more similar than I had imagined; I expected the similarity 
between (say) bash and zsh to be the same as the similarity between Lisp 
and Python (i.e., no similarity whatsoever). But the impression I get is 
that actually that's not true... which leaves me wondering what the 
actual difference is.

Still, I'm only a few chapters in. Perhaps this will become clear later...

Post a reply to this message

On Tue, 23 Oct 2012 08:52:44 +0100, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:

>> All fairly old, IIRC.  Certainly openSUSE (note: spelling is important
>> - it's openSUSE, not OpenSUSE, OpEnSuSe, OpenSuSE, opensuse, ....) is
>> well past a 10.x release being supported.
> 
> At the time when I tried this, these were the latest versions available
> for download.

Ah, I see - a present idea of how it works based on something that 
happened at least several years ago.  (openSUSE 10.x is at least 3 years 
old now, since 11.0, 11.1, 11.2, 11.3, 11.4, 12.1, and 12.2 have been 
released pretty consistently - except for 12.2 - on an 8-month release 
cycle.  So that's about 50 months of openSUSE releases, as 12.2 was a 10-
month cycle IIRC....)

>> I've never counted on that working, and have never used it.  I prefer
>> my guests to be somewhat more isolated than allowing drag and drop.
> 
> Fair enough. For particularly /large/ binaries, I sometimes use other
> methods. (In the vein hope that it will keep the disk image size under
> control...)

Or indeed the "vain" hope. ;)

What I do is used shared folders and put data on the host.  That way I 
can just have the software installed in the VM and take a snapshot, and 
if something gets borked in the VM, I can just revert and not lose data.

>>> All it means is that for Linux, I have to use Samba instead. (Assuming
>>> the distro in question installs that by default. Installing it
>>> manually doesn't appear to make it work...) I suppose the really
>>> ironic thing is that Linux can connect to the host OS via SMB just
>>> fine, and yet a Windows guest OS cannot seem to achieve this feat.
>>> (??!)
>>
>> You don't have to use SAMBA, use shared folders.  That's what it's for.
> 
> Like I say, I don't even know how that works. Presumably under Linux it
> would show up as an NFS share or something weird which would be hard to
> configure.

Nope.

Shared folders are VERY easy to use.  Take the time to try it rather than 
assuming it's impossible to use (and then declaring it's impossible to 
use).  Giving up without even trying is a poor approach to life.

>> But when connecting a host to a guest filesystem, make sure the
>> firewall permits it.  Most Linux distros lock the firewall down to only
>> permitted services.
> 
> It seems to vary. I did a default install of OpenSUSE 12.2 yesterday,
> and it defaults to leaving the firewall disabled. (I'm pretty sure
> earlier versions had it enabled by default...)

That doesn't sound right for 12.2.  If it does, that's something that 
needs to be fixed.  All earlier versions do leave it enabled by default, 
and 12.2 *should* as well.

>> MS certifications are somewhat regarded as a joke.  LPI doesn't have
>> that reputation, and have worked to try to prevent that
> 
> Well, it makes sense that any provider would /try/ to prevent the
> devaluing of their expensive certifications...

Yes, but dealing with braindump sites (for example) is like a huge game 
of whack-a-mole.  The same organizations shut down one site and open a 
new one under a new name.

There are other ways to address it - one of the more interesting 
techniques I heard of was to create a HUGE question pool - say 10,000 
items, and release it publicly.

All questions on the exam come from the pool, but only use about 1% of 
the questions from the pool, with the item bank changing frequently.

Creating a pool that large takes a huge amount of effort, though.

There are some specific countries where item banks tend to leak from - 
due to poor security practices or (more often) testing centres that 
actively participate in stealing the content for publication.  I've had 
to deal with some of those in the past myself.  It's sometimes why you'll 
see exams available worldwide except for select countries.

>> but IME there are things on their exams that don't make sense to test
>> on - things like what command-line switches
> 
> Yeah, indeed. The difference between cat -n and cat -b? Well, if I EVER
> NEED TO KNOW THAT, it's going to take me a few split seconds to look
> that up. Knowing that cat is even the program I need to be looking at in
> the first place? That sounds far more important.

Yep.  Which is why I would tend to look for (and value) performance based 
exams like the SUSE CLP/CLE and Cisco CCIE more than something like an 
MCSE.

>> I prefer hands-on exams, myself - much better to show that you can do
>> something rather than that you know something.  Application of
>> knowledge is important to me, moreso than the knowledge itself.
> 
> I hear you...

It's one of the reasons I didn't start taking certification exams until I 
was employed by the exam sponsor (Novell/SUSE in my case).

>>> Regardless, I may learn something interesting in the process. E.g.,
>>> everybody knows that you can go through the Bash history using the
>>> arrow keys. But did you realise you can actually /search/ this? I had
>>> no idea.
>>> There's also half a dozen text-processing commands that I've never
>>> heard of. (E.g., "od", "fmt", "pr", "nl", etc.)
>>
>> Well, I did, of course.  Did you know there are a bunch of different
>> shells?  I use tcsh myself. :)
> 
> I knew several shells exist. I didn't realise quite how many though.
> Also, the book I'm reading seems to indicate that these shells are
> actually far more similar than I had imagined; I expected the similarity
> between (say) bash and zsh to be the same as the similarity between Lisp
> and Python (i.e., no similarity whatsoever). But the impression I get is
> that actually that's not true... which leaves me wondering what the
> actual difference is.

Well, derivatives of bash tend to use one type of scripting, csh 
derivatives use another.  Most of the actual differences seem to be 
fairly small, though, these days.

> Still, I'm only a few chapters in. Perhaps this will become clear
> later...

Probably. :)

Jim

Post a reply to this message

>>> All fairly old, IIRC.  Certainly openSUSE (note: spelling is important
>>> - it's openSUSE, not OpenSUSE, OpEnSuSe, OpenSuSE, opensuse, ....) is
>>> well past a 10.x release being supported.
>>
>> At the time when I tried this, these were the latest versions available
>> for download.
>
> Ah, I see - a present idea of how it works based on something that
> happened at least several years ago.

Perhaps I was mistaken and it was 11.x; I can't really be sure. I rather 
doubt that 18 months or whatever is really going to make that much of a 
difference to how easy it isn't to compile new kernel modules from 
source and get them to install...

> What I do is used shared folders and put data on the host.  That way I
> can just have the software installed in the VM and take a snapshot, and
> if something gets borked in the VM, I can just revert and not lose data.

Yeah, that sounds like the way to go, if it wasn't so hard to set up. 
(Then again, I generally use a VM so that I can install some piece of 
software and check that it works. Once I've done that I delete the VM 
and install on my real box...)

>>> You don't have to use SAMBA, use shared folders.  That's what it's for.
>>
>> Like I say, I don't even know how that works. Presumably under Linux it
>> would show up as an NFS share or something weird which would be hard to
>> configure.
>
> Nope.
>
> Shared folders are VERY easy to use.  Take the time to try it rather than
> assuming it's impossible to use (and then declaring it's impossible to
> use).  Giving up without even trying is a poor approach to life.

Well let's face it, /most/ things are pretty hard under Linux. And 
VMware's documentation isn't exactly stellar either...

> There are other ways to address it - one of the more interesting
> techniques I heard of was to create a HUGE question pool - say 10,000
> items, and release it publicly.

I gather from my colleagues that LPIC chooses each question at random, 
but from a set of only 5 possibilities. So once a few people from your 
office have been certified, everybody knows the entire question pool... heh.

>>> I prefer hands-on exams, myself - much better to show that you can do
>>> something rather than that you know something.  Application of
>>> knowledge is important to me, moreso than the knowledge itself.
>>
>> I hear you...
>
> It's one of the reasons I didn't start taking certification exams until I
> was employed by the exam sponsor (Novell/SUSE in my case).

Like I say, my employer wants me LPIC-1 certified. It wasn't *my* 
idea... ;-)

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On Tue, 23 Oct 2012 19:18:05 +0100, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:

>>>> All fairly old, IIRC.  Certainly openSUSE (note: spelling is
>>>> important - it's openSUSE, not OpenSUSE, OpEnSuSe, OpenSuSE,
>>>> opensuse, ....) is well past a 10.x release being supported.
>>>
>>> At the time when I tried this, these were the latest versions
>>> available for download.
>>
>> Ah, I see - a present idea of how it works based on something that
>> happened at least several years ago.
> 
> Perhaps I was mistaken and it was 11.x; I can't really be sure. I rather
> doubt that 18 months or whatever is really going to make that much of a
> difference to how easy it isn't to compile new kernel modules from
> source and get them to install...

Because of course VMware wouldn't be aware that their script has problems 
and, you know, *fix it* in that time period.  They'd sooner have it be 
broken for everyone but the guy who did the QA on it.

Of course that's how business operates.  How silly of me to think that 
they'd try to fix something that was so clearly broken that anyone below 
advanced God could possibly make it work. m-/

>> What I do is used shared folders and put data on the host.  That way I
>> can just have the software installed in the VM and take a snapshot, and
>> if something gets borked in the VM, I can just revert and not lose
>> data.
> 
> Yeah, that sounds like the way to go, if it wasn't so hard to set up.
> (Then again, I generally use a VM so that I can install some piece of
> software and check that it works. Once I've done that I delete the VM
> and install on my real box...)

As I recall, it wasn't so difficult to set up.

>> Shared folders are VERY easy to use.  Take the time to try it rather
>> than assuming it's impossible to use (and then declaring it's
>> impossible to use).  Giving up without even trying is a poor approach
>> to life.
> 
> Well let's face it, /most/ things are pretty hard under Linux. 

No, most things are pretty easy under Linux when you know what you're 
doing.  Just like most things are pretty easy under Windows when you know 
what you're doing.

Put me in front of Windows 8 (I looked at the consumer preview), and 
without documentation, I found it damned near impossible to figure out 
how to use effectively.

I'm sure you found it simple.

> And
> VMware's documentation isn't exactly stellar either...

I never really had to refer to it.

>> There are other ways to address it - one of the more interesting
>> techniques I heard of was to create a HUGE question pool - say 10,000
>> items, and release it publicly.
> 
> I gather from my colleagues that LPIC chooses each question at random,
> but from a set of only 5 possibilities. So once a few people from your
> office have been certified, everybody knows the entire question pool...
> heh.

But of course the testing agreement prohibits you from sharing that 
information, and if you're found out to have done that, you can lose your 
certification.

Most certifying bodies will take demonstrable cheating very seriously, 
because it leads to "paper" certifications that employers don't value.  
That's how Microsoft's cert programs lost a lot of their status in the 
90's, and it's been an uphill battle to fix the damage.

>>>> I prefer hands-on exams, myself - much better to show that you can do
>>>> something rather than that you know something.  Application of
>>>> knowledge is important to me, moreso than the knowledge itself.
>>>
>>> I hear you...
>>
>> It's one of the reasons I didn't start taking certification exams until
>> I was employed by the exam sponsor (Novell/SUSE in my case).
> 
> Like I say, my employer wants me LPIC-1 certified. It wasn't *my*
> idea... ;-)

It's a starting point.  Maybe you'll learn enough so that Linux isn't so 
"hard". ;)

Jim

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