Misc. Ramblings

Top of the morning to you! It's Monday. I picked up a Viking USB 56K modem last week to replace a Motorola 28.8 that was being used on Keiki (the PC SWCNBD uses). I think I'm going to like USB. A lot. Disconnect the serial cable for the old modem. Plug in the USB cable for the new. Win98 recognizes that the modem is now connected and asks for the drivers diskette. Pop the diskette in and press enter and Bob's your father's brother. The lights on the modem come on and it's ready to go. Way Cool. BTW, this Viking is the same company that makes memory chips. Recommended.

As soon as I find a good scanner with a USB interface I'll by one (anyone out there with any suggestions?). I don't know if all peripherals will work this well, but so far so good.

No sooner asked than answered! This in from Richard Jobity:

Hi. I got on to your page through a link on http://216.102.91.55/bpages/current.html (BPB Graffiti). Your site makes for great reading, along with the other tech journals, such as Dr. Pournelle's.

I haven't yet heard anyone say bad things about Acer USB scanners. HP, as always, are supposed to be quite reliable. Lot of complaints about Umax, though.
Just my $0.02.

Thanks to Mr. Jobity for the kind words (and to Brian for the mention on his site - hopefully he doesn't regret it!) and information. I've been looking (read that drooling) at HP . But PCMag.net recently did a review of scanners and chose the Visioneer OneTouch 760 and the Epson Perfection 636/636/U. I'll have to check out our local CompUSA and see what they look like. As an aside, it is an honor to be mentioned in the same sentence as Dr. Pournelle. That makes my day!

I figured I might get a response from somebody regarding my misadventures with Linux. And sure 'nuf, this in from my friend Brian. He says:

> So the moral of the story my children is that you can fool some
> of the people all of time, and all of the people some of the time,
> but Linux, as a replacement for Windows, has no clothes.

The faithful would have you drawn and quartered. The pragmatic would say, "OK, then don't use it. Stick with a system subject to viruses and the BSOD and the MS upgrade cycle." The strange (including myself) would stand at the podium at the UN, pounding my shoe on the desk and shouting odd and incoherent things :).

So you purchased and installed Caldera OL2.2, huh? Why back a revision level? The version that has a "good" installation rep is 2.3 (the current rev). I am running RH6.0 (haven't seen a need to upgrade to 6.1), X, KDE, Netscape 4.7, WordPerfect8.0, StarOffice5.1, Apache, Sendmail, etc. On a 233MHz PII, 128K ram, SoundBlaster, Creative Riva TNT 16M, tape backup, cdrom, floppy, 5G HD, of which 2.5 G is in use. It all worked (except for sound) on initial installation. Certainly Linux is not vying for king of the desktop, yet. Yet. But things are improving. I am quite happy with Linux as a desktop environment.

Clearly it is still a YMMV product. But I have not been fooled, and I am happy. --

regards,
Brian Bilbrey

Hey Brian! Lighten up a bit. All I was saying was that Linux, or perhaps more to the point, many applications that run on Linux, put forth as replacements for MS products, are not ready for prime time (not that Win apps are). I think Linux apps will eventually get there. And I hope they get there soon because it's better for everyone when there are two strong applications butting head-to-head. Or as they say; "Competition improves the breed."

But as you noted on your own site, applications such as Netscape lockup on a regular basis under Linux. That's not to say that applications for Windows such as Opera 3.60 (which is the browser I use the most) don't lock up on a regular basis because they do. But again, the point is that applications on Linux do that also. And to the extent that they do, the question becomes why change to something else when you have the same problems?

Is Linux better as a network operating system? I don't know for sure because that's not what I was using it for. People who know more than I on this point say that it is. If so, this is great because it gives competition to Windows NT. But I was looking at it from the standpoint of a desktop OS.

As far as installing 2.2 rather than 2.3. Well, at the time I got it, which is a couple of months ago, that's all there was. I would also note that at the time, it was hailed as the easiest install of all distributions. And after seeing a few other distributions I would agree that it is. Notwithstanding that, KDE, sound support, and kppp did not work out of the box.

Compare this with Win98, which out of the box, had all of those things identified, configured, and running without my having to do anything. Does that make Windows a huge program? Absolutely. Does that mean that Windows is therefore prone to bugs? Absolutely. But the chief alternatives - Linux and MacOS seem to be also.

And while I enjoyed working with Linux as an end in itself, at the end of the day, I still need to get my work done. And frankly, I don't care what operating system I am using to do that (heresy you say!). I just want to get my work done and get out the door at closing time...

So, the bottom line is, if you can get your work done better using Linux than you can using Windows, MacOS, BeOS, etc. then by all means continue to do so! I admire your pioneer attitude and your willingness to take on new challenges. As for me, I hate to have to learn a new operating system only to have similar problems to what I had before (sigh).

Thanks for your views and thanks for taking the time to check out my site. Aloha!

And now Tom weighs in with additional information and views about Linux (does it seem like I'm being daynotes ganged-up on? (grin)). First my email to him and then his response:

-----Original Message-----
From: Dan Seto
Sent: Monday, November 01, 1999 4:31 PM
To: Tom
Subject: Linux and other Sharp Objects

Hey Tom!

I don't get a chance to check out all of the daynote pages so I'm sorry I didn't read your comments on my experiences with Linux until Brian emailed me about it. First, thanks for taking a look at my site. Someday, maybe I will attain the status of the august group known as daynoters. But for now, I just do the best that I can with the time that I have - shuffle shuffle (since I actually have a day job that pays the bills - well, mostly. Bills seem to breed at night faster than I can work...sigh).

And before I start, may I also offer my deepest condolences to the family and friends of Indy car driver Greg Moore. I watched with horror the replays of his shunt. One only hopes that an in-depth finite analysis of the crash will be done and perhaps, changes in the roll cage or other areas of the chassis can be made so that this does not occur again.

With that, I've sharpened my number two pencil and note the following: Linux 2.3 shipped on 9/13/99. I will plead guilty that I was and am not using the latest distribution. But I figured since I've been using 2.2 since at least June of this year (and perhaps earlier, the mind goes as one ages) I should report on that rather than something that just came out. Especially since during the intervening time, I downloaded and installed almost all of the approximately 39 bug fixes and security patches on the Caldera site which gets me at least 90% of the way to 2.3. But you are right, I did not use 2.3 and it could well fix all of the problems noted by me. The reason I haven't "upgraded" (in quotes because there isn't such a thing is there in Caldera Linux? You upgrade by copying your configuration files to another location and then delete everything - or at least that's what Caldera said to do...) is that 2.4 is rumored to be much better and here Real Soon Now. And since I didn't want to get locked in to an endless round of updates, each of which would require more downloading of fixes, I decided to pass on this one.

PR hype aside? Hmmm. I hope you are right when you say that the core Linux community views Linux as an alternative to Windows rather than a replacement. Given the flames coming my way, I'm not so sure that statement is accurate, but I will give them the benefit of the doubt (grin). OK, so if it is an alternative (which obviously it is), how good of an alternative is it? In my experience, not very. At least not yet. As I mentioned to Brian, I sincerely hope that it gets there, and soon. MS, and everyone who uses their products, needs the benefits that can accrue when there is true head-to-head competition. But it would have been a disservice to the tens of readers (you know who you are) of my site to say that StarOffice or WordPerfect 8 for Linux were ready for prime time when clearly they are not.

Finally, someone much wiser than I once said that users don't buy operating systems, they buy applications. In other words, they buy programs that will help them do their memos, spreadsheets, or business presentations. Most people don't give a rodent's derriere (forgive my French) about what OS is best. Just what helps them do their job. And that's all I've been trying to do since the first time I logged into a DEC PDP-11/45 in 1978 to use RunOff so I could write my terms papers...

Thanks again for the mention on your page and keep up the good work!

Greetings Dan, and thanks for the note.

On Greg Moore: I'm not sure the design of modern racing machines can be advanced much more safety wise than they already are. Roll cages are custom tailored to the individual driver, made of titanium, and assembled by the very best in the industry to incredibly exacting specifications and an amazing array of tests. On impact, the cage is designed to separate from the car itself and propel the driver away from the debris of an accident. A CART race has a team of some of the most highly trained physicians in the country seconds away and a helicopter on standby throughout the duration of a race. None of this, however, helped Greg one nit. Driving into a concrete barrier at 350 KM/HR is rarely survivable. Why the barrier was not protected by tires or another shock absorbing device remains to be seen and answered for.

And yes, I know all about bills too. They mutate in the night. I hate it when they do that, but rest assured, Saskatchewan is no different than Hawaii.

Sorry, my friend... I was looking for a topic of discussion and you just happened to be handy on Sunday (g).

Linux 2.3 is a vast improvement over 2.2 when it comes to installation and configuration. So is RH 6.1 compared to 6.0. I wasn't really trying to make excuses for Linux; merely to point out some of the cautions and caveats involved when one elects to go experimenting. Whether kernel 2.4 is "better" or not remains to be seen. Expect it before year's end.

mmm. Core Linux Community. Maybe I overstated my case. The core Linux community tends to be a bit overzealous about their passions. Let me rephrase that: Many of the people I work and communicate with every day who have deep roots in the MS way of thinking and wait eagerly for the day when a true replacement for Windows is here and we once again have a choice. Mmmm. Now I remember why I just said Core Linux Community. It was simpler.

And you are absolutely correct when you mention that people use applications, not operating systems. As a writer I sometime get lost in the underlying structures and loose sight of land. On the other hand, the stability (or lack thereof) of an operating system directly impacts my experience of the applications I'm using. And in the case of Windows 2000, the line between applications and operating system is no longer clear and concise. Which is one reason I have an avid interest in working more with Linux -- the barrier here is still sharp and focused. Which is one of the primary reasons why Linux remains the stable platform it is.

Finally, you are quit right -- WordPerfect for Linux and StarOffice for Linux are NOT ready for prime time. Close, I think, but not there yet. But as I said yesterday, perhaps this is not the best way to use Linux at this stage of it's evolution... And until both the OS and the applications it spawns mature, if you're going to play with Linux, you have to belly up to the bar with a bit of forethought to what you want to drink. How do you get this knowledge? Well, you can spend countless days reading and researching other people's experiences, OR... you can do just what you did -- open the box and find out for yourself. You'll find that most members of the daynotes gang use a mix of both approaches, seasoned to suit individual taste buds.

I could prattle on and on, but I have this screaming baby my wife just thrust in my face, and...

/tom

Quick Notes:
I see that Dr. Pournelle is still working on getting his mailing list sorted out (pun intended). Here's to hoping it works out and he writes a good column about it...

The Jennicam site has some updated photos of their namesake. Be warned that there is some nudity there so don't blame me if you get all bent out of shape (as it were). I can hear the hot headed herds heading her way now...

Other than a couple of charts I need to update, I'm done working on the proposed legislation for next year so I guess I'll see what this week brings.

See you tomorrow!