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>> 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...
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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"...
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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."
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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
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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."
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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
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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."
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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? ;-)
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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...
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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 }
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