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Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> In message <450afb14$>, Robert Cooze wrote:
>
>> I remember the words in a book about installing Linux after you have
>> installed it format and start again! you will learn more that way!
>
> Well, I wouldn't go that far.
>
> I have done a whole bunch of Linux installs by now--probably got a total of
> a couple of dozen machines--servers and desktops--running for different
> clients. I like sniffing around config files and startup scripts and stuff
> to figure out how things work. I figure that GUI tools tend to be
> distro-specific, whereas there's a lot more commonality in the structure
> and function of the underlying config files and scripts.
>

I had to reinstall Gentoo not by choice really broke the thing but I
wasn't doing the regular user or admin thing, I ran out of disk space
when trying to rearrange where parts of the system was living. big
lesson learned and I know why and how to avoid killing it if I ever have
to rearrange a system again.

> Nowadays I have users who are wanting to do more and more things themselves,
> without calling on me all the time. Naturally they prefer to do things
> through the GUI. So I have to become more familiar with that way of doing
> things, just so I can explain it to them. And back it up with a few choice
> command-line snippets, for situations that the GUI can't handle on its own.

Yes the command line, That has saved my bacon more than a few times. yep
a bit lazy and use MC a lot but did learned the basics. It reminds me of
the amiga CLI the syntax is very much the same.

Love the emerge command, but I don't think it is for the absolute
average I don't care how it works camp these people cant really be
helped at all. something really automated would be for them.

As for the wife she is working with Gentoo with out problems, finds
gonme good and not as complex as KDE or XP.



--
http://cooze.co.nz home of the RecyclerMan aka Robert Cooze

/ __/ / / / / /__ / / ___/ / __/ / / / |/ / /__ /
/ / / /_/ / / /_/ / _-' / __/ / / / /_/ / / /| / _-'
___\ ____/ ____/ /___/ /____/ /_/ ___\ ____/ /_/ /_/ |_/ /___/

Fred Dagg wrote:
> On Sat, 16 Sep 2006 16:28:27 +1200, Lawrence D'Oliveiro
> <_zealand> exclaimed:
>
>> In message <450afb14$>, Robert Cooze wrote:
>>
>>> I remember the words in a book about installing Linux after you have
>>> installed it format and start again! you will learn more that way!
>> Well, I wouldn't go that far.
>>
>> I have done a whole bunch of Linux installs by now--probably got a total of
>> a couple of dozen machines--servers and desktops--running for different
>> clients. I like sniffing around config files and startup scripts and stuff
>> to figure out how things work. I figure that GUI tools tend to be
>> distro-specific, whereas there's a lot more commonality in the structure
>> and function of the underlying config files and scripts.
>>
>> Nowadays I have users who are wanting to do more and more things themselves,
>> without calling on me all the time. Naturally they prefer to do things
>> through the GUI. So I have to become more familiar with that way of doing
>> things, just so I can explain it to them. And back it up with a few choice
>> command-line snippets, for situations that the GUI can't handle on its own.
>
> Ok, I've resisted up until now, but I really would like to make a
> genuine comment here. And no, this is not taking a cheap shot, but
> more to highlight the point I've made several times in the past, to
> the "poo poo" of the Linux fraternity.
>
> Firstly, I'm not an MS fanboy. I work with both Windows and Linux
> regularly, and honestly believe in the best tool for the job, which is
> why I use Windows on the desktop, file server, groupware server, etc,
> and Linux at the firewall, web server, and sometimes for things like
> DNS in a high demand environment.
>
> However, here's my point. I'm not saying that Linux on the desktop is
> right for everyone, but over the last few posts you've made the
> following points regarding your current favourite flavour of Linux.
> This is against a background of the zealots on the group trying to say
> that it is a far better option for the mass market than other, more
> mature, operating systems (such as Windows).
>
> Just to reiterate a few of your comments:
>
> 1. Installation is via a command-line, and you must manually partition
> the drive, copy things, build and compile a kernel, etc.

Mine installed from a live disk with GUI had the option for command line
Slackware has one of the best command line installers I have seen

> 2. The GUI you ended up with was bare and lacked functionality. You
> could change to a development version that was very broken but looked
> "pretty".

All of the gui's I installed work as I would expect I have kept to the
standard safe tree there.

> 3. Your terminal application did not seem to support copy/paste (this
> seems to be common amongst Linux apps - they either don't support it,
> each use different shortcuts, or do not support it between
> applications).

My copy and past works Ok through the xwindow system though GPM is not
installed and mouse don't work in terminal

> 4. The Usenet reader is broken in a number of ways, from random error
> messages through to blank dialogs and images not showing, which, to
> date, and despite upgrades etc, you've not been able to fix.
> 5. It took several hours to download and install a more comprehensive
> window manager, which you were, for the most part, not using (just
> needed shared libraries).
> 6. It took an entire day (and god knows how much bandwidth) updating a
> minor version of the OS (the equivalent of a "Service Pack"). I assume
> the system was either unavailable or available with a reduced response
> during this time?

Most of that would have been compile time

> 7. In the Linux world, GUI tools tend to be distribution-specific
> rather than standardised.
> 8. Users have said that they don't want to keep having to pay and pay
> to have you come and do basic tasks on their systems, and prefer a GUI
> that allows them to do it.

Agreed But you cant help everybody perhaps they should own a Mackintosh
I have seen people screwup the basics such as getting the photos of a
digital camera and deleting all of them before they have even seen the pics!

> 9. You still have to provide command-line snippets, as the GUIs in
> Linux are not capable of handling non-arbitrary tasks.
> 10. Not to mention other users who have chimed in with gems like
> updating applications breaking the system, etc.
>
> And all this being labelled "bleeding edge".

fun aint it mine was a trying out the "bleeding edge" so to speak so see
what Gentoo was all about, some time after a set of updates my windows
setup became very unstable, many apps becoming unresponsive and the
system would swich off!

>
> Do you really, in all honesty, think this is a superior solution than
> Windows for the momma and poppa users out there?
>

In this gupe we are mostly enthusiasts and people who will and can
install an OS from scratch most average users would buy a new computer
if they have killed there system.

> And to reiterate, I don't want this to turn into a flame war. Just
> honest and frank discussion.

To be frank I see thre is no perfect OPERATING SYSTEM for all and any
users just look at all of the attacks on windows machines and the
complexity's of Linux as for apple too much expense!

As for myself there are stuff I do in windows and stuff I use linux for
I like to think I am the master of my system and hope it will do the
task I have set out for it to do it has to work as I don't have time to
muck around with it.

--
http://cooze.co.nz home of the RecyclerMan aka Robert Cooze

/ __/ / / / / /__ / / ___/ / __/ / / / |/ / /__ /
/ / / /_/ / / /_/ / _-' / __/ / / / /_/ / / /| / _-'
___\ ____/ ____/ /___/ /____/ /_/ ___\ ____/ /_/ /_/ |_/ /___/

Fred Dagg wrote:
>
> Ok, I've resisted up until now, but I really would like to make a
> genuine comment here. And no, this is not taking a cheap shot, but
> more to highlight the point I've made several times in the past, to
> the "poo poo" of the Linux fraternity.
>
> Firstly, I'm not an MS fanboy. I work with both Windows and Linux
> regularly, and honestly believe in the best tool for the job, which
> is why I use Windows on the desktop, file server, groupware server,
> etc, and Linux at the firewall, web server, and sometimes for things
> like DNS in a high demand environment.
>
> However, here's my point. I'm not saying that Linux on the desktop is
> right for everyone, but over the last few posts you've made the
> following points regarding your current favourite flavour of Linux.
> This is against a background of the zealots on the group trying to
> say that it is a far better option for the mass market than other,
> more mature, operating systems (such as Windows).
>
> Just to reiterate a few of your comments:
>
The comments pertain to the 'gentoo' distribution which is intended as
an 'install from source' distribution. You want "Windows-like"? Gentoo
is not it.

> 1. Installation is via a command-line, and you must manually
> partition the drive, copy things, build and compile a kernel, etc.

This is gentoo specific.

> 2. The GUI you ended up with was bare and lacked functionality. You
> could change to a development version that was very broken but looked
> "pretty".

This is gentoo specific and probably related to the OP's lack of
knowledge of gentoo.

> 3. Your terminal application did not seem to support copy/paste (this
> seems to be common amongst Linux apps - they either don't support
> it, each use different shortcuts, or do not support it between
> applications).

This is *******s. Select your text, move to where you want it to go and
click the middle button. This is common across all applications that I
know of and is far simpler than the select, hit shortcut keys, move to
target area, hit shortcut keys that Windows uses. Various applications
do have shortcut keys so that you can do it the Windows way, and most
support the Windows standard of Ctrl-C (copy) and Ctrl-V (paste). I
presume that's a hangover from the days when mice didn't have a middle
button.

I originally asked if the OP was joking because he said that the xterm
he was using didn't support cut and paste. I don't believe it.

> 4. The Usenet reader is broken in a number of ways, from random error
> messages through to blank dialogs and images not showing, which, to
> date, and despite upgrades etc, you've not been able to fix.

Probably the user's inexperience with the application.

> 5. It took several hours to download and install a more comprehensive
> window manager, which you were, for the most part, not using (just
> needed shared libraries).

Unlike Windows where every product brings its own DLLs, in Unix
libraries are shared. This was the original Windows paradigm, which was
broken because the software writers did not know what DLLs would be on a
system. This does work better on Unix.

The issue of Gnome/KDE libraries when you are not using Gnome/KDE is a
valid one. However, if the dependencies are correctly set in the
application it will bring in *only* the required libraries. Not the
whole of Gnome or KDE.

> 6. It took an entire day (and god knows how much bandwidth) updating
> a minor version of the OS (the equivalent of a "Service Pack"). I
> assume the system was either unavailable or available with a reduced
> response during this time?

As it is with Windows. At times I've downloaded over 150MB of Windows
patches. And, no the system would not have been down while he was
downloading the patches, but the Internet may have been slowed somewhat
as it would be if he had been downloading the equivalent Windows patches.

Gentoo is a source based distribution so it is likely that there would
be more to download than for a more normal distribution.

> 7. In the Linux world, GUI tools tend to be distribution-specific
> rather than standardised.

*******s. Except for the package managers that is not true.

> 8. Users have said that they don't want to keep having to pay and pay
> to have you come and do basic tasks on their systems, and prefer a
> GUI that allows them to do it.

On most Unix/Linux systems a GUI is provided to do whatever you need to
do. It is rare to have to drop to the command line these days. My
current Ubuntu system is my first GUI-based desktop. I'm impressed at
how much I can do through the GUI.

> 9. You still have to provide command-line snippets, as the GUIs in
> Linux are not capable of handling non-arbitrary tasks.

What the hell are you talking about?

> 10. Not to mention other users who have chimed in with gems like
> updating applications breaking the system, etc.
>
You mean, like the XP SP2 hosing the system? Like Windows patches
completely removing the networking components? Like updates breaking
Windows Media Applications?
>
> And all this being labelled "bleeding edge".
>
Yes. The original poster deliberately chose gentoo, which is a 'bleeding
edge' distro
>
> Do you really, in all honesty, think this is a superior solution than
> Windows for the momma and poppa users out there?
>
The average Windows user would be quite capable of running one of the
mainstream distros, such as Ubuntu, Mandriva, SuSe, or even Debian.
>
> And to reiterate, I don't want this to turn into a flame war. Just
> honest and frank discussion.
>
It is scarcely 'honest and frank' to compare gentoo with Windows. If you
could imagine a Windows 'distro' which required you to start from the
bare metal and compile everything (including such 'optionals' as
Microsoft Office) then that is gentoo's Windows equivalent. It's an
enthusiasts distribution, not an end-user distribution.

Cheers,

Cliff

"Enkidu" <> wrote in message
news:...
> >
> It is scarcely 'honest and frank' to compare gentoo with Windows. If you
> could imagine a Windows 'distro' which required you to start from the bare
> metal and compile everything (including such 'optionals' as Microsoft
> Office) then that is gentoo's Windows equivalent. It's an enthusiasts
> distribution, not an end-user distribution.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Cliff

Windows can run top commercial software from other companies that have no
relation to Microsoft what so ever.
I can go into any store and be damn sure that most of the software will
easily run on my PC.
Obviously one doesn't need to have every bit of software that's created for
PCs using a Windows benchtop to run on, but having such a huge choice of
software available to choose from is what most PC users like to have.

If you enjoy eating, then you like to have a far bigger choice of foods to
enjoy than just bread and water, even if the damn bread and water does
happen to be free.

Linux will never have an equal footing until the day comes that it's fully
compatible with all PC software.
Compared to Windows Linux is severely handicapped - all because the of the
very limited range of software for Linux.

Put 10 Linux PC Systems into a large store up against 10 XP PC Systems in
the same store and see which is going to outsell the other.

And that's without the large store putting a sign on each Linux PC System
stating with full honesty that there's very little commercial PC software
that will run well on any of the Linux PC Systems.

Even without the signs pointing out the severe software limitations of
Linux, most people would think twice about buying them over a PC System that
uses XP.

The fact that a few Linux users in this group do nothing but post after post
day after day only proves how little good software there is for Linux
otherwise the geniuses would be actually using it instead of using their
Linux PCs to do nothing else but complain about MS and people who use MS
products day after day.

E. Scrooge

In message <>, Allistar wrote:

> I like the fact that I can tweak the
> installation of packages for my exact architecture.

OK, I know this is a different kind of "tweaking", but ...

I just tried installing Inkscape. Built just fine, can start it up OK.

But I want to play with this concept of plug-in scripts. Now I know Inkscape
can spawn any executable you like, feed it an SVG stream as its standard
input, and get back modified SVG from its standard output.

But there's another feature, where it can execute a Perl or Python script
directly from within the application, allowing callbacks into Inkscape
itself. But when I try this with the version installed under my Gentoo
system, I get the message "Internal Python script functionality requested,
but it was not compiled in!" displayed on my terminal.

Checking through the source code, I see that a conditional "WITH_PYTHON" has
not been defined. This needs to be enabled with the "--with-python" option
to the configure script. Looking at the Gentoo ebuild, I can't see any easy
way to specify that I want this--no mention of any relevant USE-flags that
I can enable, as far as I can see. So I tried modifying the ebuild, but
then got a complaint when I tried to use it, saying the MD5 checksum didn't
match (why are they still using MD5?).

Is there any way of enabling options like this within the Gentoo Portage
system? Otherwise it seems to defeat a lot of the point of
build-from-source.

a_l_p wrote:
>
> Must say I wondered why you were doing that Gentoo thing - killing
> time? To see if you could? Because the things Fred correctly (except
> that he took them to be common to all Linux distros) picked out of your
> post as being disadvantageous to the user would have driven me up the
> wall, but then I'm not a geek, I'm a tool-user and all I ask is for the
> computer-machine to be a useful tool so I can do the things I want to
> do, and those things are challenge enough for me!
>
> So I guess I'll never understand the people who really enjoy the
> challenge of putting the machine together, hard- and software, finding
> out what works and what doesn't, or not very well, and figuring our how
> to make it work right. I'm sure I benefit from people like you, because
> without you and your kind Linux wouldn't be forever improving - I just
> don't "get" making life for yourselves that difficult in the meantime!
>
> A L P

This is a special interest group despite the attempts to restrict it to
the "average Windows desktop user" (AWDU)
Commodity PC hardware is amazingly versatile and capable of being
optimized for tasks a lot more diverse than the traditional office and
browser stuff.
Linux on a PC offers the opportunity to use free industrial strength
software power tools for building not just a Windows replacement but a
diversity of other options free, like say a PABX or PVR or audio or
video workstation or rendering engine.
Starting from the basic installs you can build your skills untill you
feel competent to install a low latency kernel or add drivers for
multiple audio input/output.
Its like gardening, cooking, brewing, baking, electronics, mechanics etc
you can keep going to the supermarket and/or you can have a go at
making, or growing stuff yourself. The and/or is really important,
because it includes most of us that enjoy having a go ourselves.
Theres a bunch of AWDUs that tell you constantly the equivalent of that
its not necessary to make your own pizza, like Pizza Hut will do that
for you, theres no need for the ingredients to be available.
But lots of people enjoy the opportunity to do this stuff with computers
too in varying degrees, they make up the "long tail" of users.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_tail
Long tail users are ideally catered for by Web 2.0 technologies and
FLOSS software where the economics of scarcity don't apply as the Tim
O'Reilly ventures can explain far more eloquently than me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oreilly_Media
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_%28magazine%29
Hacking is a natural human instinct.

In message <eefthd$464$>, I wrote:

> However, I
> have this problem that my libexpat keeps getting upgraded to version 2.0
> whereas KNode seems to want a 1.x version. I can re-emerge KNode, and it
> builds and installs, but then it won't run because it wants libexpat.so.0,
> whereas my system has libexpat.so.1. I can't understand how it can build
> against a version of the library that isn't on my system.

Joy!

I managed to fix the libexpat problem by the simple expedient of symlinking
my existing libexpat.so.1.5.0 to libexpat.so.0. The missing libexpat was
also stopping Enlightenment from starting up, which was leaving me feeling
very sad.

But it all works now! KNode starts without any complaints about missing
mimetypes, and its configuration dialogs come up OK, whereas they wouldn't
before. I can even start up Konqueror just fine!

In other words, it looks like my KDE is all functional now.

Big grins all round, second thoughts about abandoning Gentoo just yet ...

Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

> In message <eefthd$464$>, I wrote:
>
>> However, I
>> have this problem that my libexpat keeps getting upgraded to version 2.0
>> whereas KNode seems to want a 1.x version. I can re-emerge KNode, and it
>> builds and installs, but then it won't run because it wants
>> libexpat.so.0, whereas my system has libexpat.so.1. I can't understand
>> how it can build against a version of the library that isn't on my
>> system.
>
> Joy!
>
> I managed to fix the libexpat problem by the simple expedient of
> symlinking my existing libexpat.so.1.5.0 to libexpat.so.0. The missing
> libexpat was also stopping Enlightenment from starting up, which was
> leaving me feeling very sad.
>
> But it all works now! KNode starts without any complaints about missing
> mimetypes, and its configuration dialogs come up OK, whereas they wouldn't
> before. I can even start up Konqueror just fine!
>
> In other words, it looks like my KDE is all functional now.
>
> Big grins all round, second thoughts about abandoning Gentoo just yet ...
>

Good news. Seems like an obscure issue in an ebuild somewhere. Symlinking
libraries is the sort of thing I used to do to keep Mandrake happy, but if
it works then great!

Allistar.

Robert Cooze wrote:

> Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>> In message <450afb14$>, Robert Cooze wrote:
>>
>>> I remember the words in a book about installing Linux after you have
>>> installed it format and start again! you will learn more that way!
>>
>> Well, I wouldn't go that far.
>>
>> I have done a whole bunch of Linux installs by now--probably got a total
>> of a couple of dozen machines--servers and desktops--running for
>> different clients. I like sniffing around config files and startup
>> scripts and stuff to figure out how things work. I figure that GUI tools
>> tend to be distro-specific, whereas there's a lot more commonality in the
>> structure and function of the underlying config files and scripts.
>>
>
> I had to reinstall Gentoo not by choice really broke the thing but I
> wasn't doing the regular user or admin thing, I ran out of disk space
> when trying to rearrange where parts of the system was living. big
> lesson learned and I know why and how to avoid killing it if I ever have
> to rearrange a system again.

There are ways of reszing or moving your partitions to other hard disks
(it's a pain, but pretty straight forward - the "tar" command comes in
really handy).

>> Nowadays I have users who are wanting to do more and more things
>> themselves, without calling on me all the time. Naturally they prefer to
>> do things through the GUI. So I have to become more familiar with that
>> way of doing things, just so I can explain it to them. And back it up
>> with a few choice command-line snippets, for situations that the GUI
>> can't handle on its own.
>
> Yes the command line, That has saved my bacon more than a few times. yep
> a bit lazy and use MC a lot but did learned the basics. It reminds me of
> the amiga CLI the syntax is very much the same.
>
> Love the emerge command, but I don't think it is for the absolute
> average I don't care how it works camp these people cant really be
> helped at all. something really automated would be for them.
>
> As for the wife she is working with Gentoo with out problems, finds
> gonme good and not as complex as KDE or XP.

Good to hear!

Allistar.

In message <>, Allistar wrote:

> Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>
>> In other words, it looks like my KDE is all functional now.
>>
>> Big grins all round, second thoughts about abandoning Gentoo just yet ...
>>
>
> Good news. Seems like an obscure issue in an ebuild somewhere.

I think the cure happened as part of my upgrade to 2006.1.

> Symlinking
> libraries is the sort of thing I used to do to keep Mandrake happy, but if
> it works then great!

I'm still trying to figure out how things managed to link against a version
of the library that wasn't even there...