On Sun, 02 Oct 2011 11:17:56 -0500, dave wrote:

On Sat, 01 Oct 2011 23:49:22 -0700, AJL wrote:


The current version allows you to easily revert to the old desktop if
you want. I did. But IMO there is not that much overall OS improvement
to do the upgrade unless you just want to try it which is why I did.

11.04 did. 11.10 does not. I'm sticking with 10.04 LTS. The new desktop
is for morons. They are obviously trying to appeal to tablet-brains.

The Unity desktop is usable, but not for me. I don't think it was
designed for tablets. Methinks it was an attempt to use the "extra"
screen space afforded by 16:9 displays. In effect, it leaves the menu
on the left side of the screen most of the time. I switched back to
the older Gnome 2 desktop on 10.04 and am living happily without
Unity.
http://www.geekgumbo.com/2011/05/04/switching-the-unity-desktop-to-the-gnome-desktop/

On Fedora 15, the new and improved Gnome 3 is in my never humble
opinion a step backwards. The designers apparently decided that
configuration options should now be either well hidden, or
intentionally misplaced in non-obvious places. Some of the logic is
amazing. For example, requiring a logout before a restart. Is there
a problem with killing user processes that justifies this?

Meanwhile, KDE 4.6 seems quite good (I haven't used it much) but
really gobbles RAM. I also tried Mac4Lin with 10.04 and had problems.
Oh well.



--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

On Wed, 05 Oct 2011 04:39:14 -0700, Jeff Liebermann wrote:

On Sun, 02 Oct 2011 11:17:56 -0500, dave wrote:

On Sat, 01 Oct 2011 23:49:22 -0700, AJL wrote:


The current version allows you to easily revert to the old desktop if
you want. I did. But IMO there is not that much overall OS improvement
to do the upgrade unless you just want to try it which is why I did.

11.04 did. 11.10 does not. I'm sticking with 10.04 LTS. The new desktop
is for morons. They are obviously trying to appeal to tablet-brains.

The Unity desktop is usable, but not for me. I don't think it was
designed for tablets. Methinks it was an attempt to use the "extra"
screen space afforded by 16:9 displays. In effect, it leaves the menu
on the left side of the screen most of the time. I switched back to the
older Gnome 2 desktop on 10.04 and am living happily without Unity.
http://www.geekgumbo.com/2011/05/04/...esktop-to-the-
gnome-desktop/

On Fedora 15, the new and improved Gnome 3 is in my never humble opinion
a step backwards. The designers apparently decided that configuration
options should now be either well hidden, or intentionally misplaced in
non-obvious places. Some of the logic is amazing. For example,
requiring a logout before a restart. Is there a problem with killing
user processes that justifies this?

Meanwhile, KDE 4.6 seems quite good (I haven't used it much) but really
gobbles RAM. I also tried Mac4Lin with 10.04 and had problems. Oh well.

At least we're not spending $160 for the privilege of BSODs! I like Puppy
Linux, which I believe is GTK on top of Ubuntu. Not pretty but incredibly
responsive. Will run on anything from first gen Pentium.

On Wed, 05 Oct 2011 07:35:02 -0500, dave wrote:

At least we're not spending $160 for the privilege of BSODs! I like Puppy
Linux, which I believe is GTK on top of Ubuntu. Not pretty but incredibly
responsive. Will run on anything from first gen Pentium.

I haven't seen many BSOD's on Windoze boxes in maybe 10 years. The
only time I see them is when I'm playing with drivers or when I'm
trying to untrash the filesystem. I look at it differently. $160 is
a bit over 2 hours of my billable labor rate. If Windoze saves me 2
hours of time, I break even.

I think the desktop manager in Puppy Linux is JWM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JWM
apparently on top of Ubuntu.
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS5855706811.html

I like AntiX for small footprint machines.
http://antix.mepis.org
PII with 128MB is about the minimum usable config although it will
allegedly run on older CPU's with 64MB.

Features and functions get added faster than bugs get fixed. The end
result is a bloated and buggy machine, full of useless features, that
runs at the speed of a snail. This applies to Linux distro as well as
Windoze and OS/X. "Bigger, Better, Faster.... pick any two".

--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

On Wed, 05 Oct 2011 09:59:44 -0700, Jeff Liebermann wrote:

On Wed, 05 Oct 2011 07:35:02 -0500, dave wrote:

At least we're not spending $160 for the privilege of BSODs! I like
Puppy Linux, which I believe is GTK on top of Ubuntu. Not pretty but
incredibly responsive. Will run on anything from first gen Pentium.

I haven't seen many BSOD's on Windoze boxes in maybe 10 years. The only
time I see them is when I'm playing with drivers or when I'm trying to
untrash the filesystem. I look at it differently. $160 is a bit over 2
hours of my billable labor rate. If Windoze saves me 2 hours of time, I
break even.

I think the desktop manager in Puppy Linux is JWM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JWM
apparently on top of Ubuntu.
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS5855706811.html

I like AntiX for small footprint machines. http://antix.mepis.org
PII with 128MB is about the minimum usable config although it will
allegedly run on older CPU's with 64MB.

Features and functions get added faster than bugs get fixed. The end
result is a bloated and buggy machine, full of useless features, that
runs at the speed of a snail. This applies to Linux distro as well as
Windoze and OS/X. "Bigger, Better, Faster.... pick any two".

You can run J Window Manager or GTK at the click of the mouse and a
restart of X Windows. If someone wants me to do Windows things they have
to give me a Windows box to do them on. I have an Atom netbook with XP I
use to feed my iPod. None of my ham radio stuff requires Windows. None of
my audio production requires Windows.

I use "BSODs" generically for any unrecoverable error that the 3 Finger
Mickey (or "Kill") won't fix.

On Wed, 05 Oct 2011 12:08:26 -0500, dave wrote:

I use "BSODs" generically for any unrecoverable error that the 3 Finger
Mickey (or "Kill") won't fix.

Well, since you haven't been using Windoze much, you probably haven't
had much experience with its stability. In my day job, I fix
computahs, mostly running various Windoze mutations. I get very few
unrecoverable errors, hung processes, comatose peripherals, or general
weirdness, if the machine is in fairly good shape. No points for
static electricity fried RAM, overheating CPU's (AMD early Athelon),
buggy apps that won't die (Acrobat Reader 10.x and Skype), overly
aggressive backup programs (Memeo), or various sync programs that
fumble over their own semaphores (iTunes, MS ActiveSync). If I try
hard, I can hang a Windoze box running any of the aforementioned. If
I run alternatives, or run them in a VM sandbox, no problem. If
uptime is your standard for reliability, then I can offer several
weather stations running Windoze 2000 that typically stay up for
months. For my personal assortment of machines, I only reboot after
an update, or after a sufficiently large number of config changes to
make sure I still have a working system. When a customer drags in a
system that is acting "erratic" and tends to hang, it's usually either
malware or the all too common bulging capacitor problem. Cleaning up
the malware and replacing the bulging caps usually stabilizes the
system. Incidentally, I only reinstall windoze from scratch if the
malware has made such a mess that it would take me longer to fix than
to reinstall.



--
# Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060
# 831-336-2558
# http://802.11junk.com
# http://www.LearnByDestroying.com AE6KS

On 10/5/2011 10:26 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
On Wed, 05 Oct 2011 12:08:26 -0500, wrote:

I use "BSODs" generically for any unrecoverable error that the 3 Finger
Mickey (or "Kill") won't fix.

Well, since you haven't been using Windoze much, you probably haven't
had much experience with its stability. In my day job, I fix
computahs, mostly running various Windoze mutations. I get very few
unrecoverable errors, hung processes, comatose peripherals, or general
weirdness, if the machine is in fairly good shape. No points for
static electricity fried RAM, overheating CPU's (AMD early Athelon),
buggy apps that won't die (Acrobat Reader 10.x and Skype), overly
aggressive backup programs (Memeo), or various sync programs that
fumble over their own semaphores (iTunes, MS ActiveSync). If I try
hard, I can hang a Windoze box running any of the aforementioned. If
I run alternatives, or run them in a VM sandbox, no problem. If
uptime is your standard for reliability, then I can offer several
weather stations running Windoze 2000 that typically stay up for
months. For my personal assortment of machines, I only reboot after
an update, or after a sufficiently large number of config changes to
make sure I still have a working system. When a customer drags in a
system that is acting "erratic" and tends to hang, it's usually either
malware or the all too common bulging capacitor problem. Cleaning up
the malware and replacing the bulging caps usually stabilizes the
system. Incidentally, I only reinstall windoze from scratch if the
malware has made such a mess that it would take me longer to fix than
to reinstall.

Funny, but my experience has been a lot different. Every month after
Patch Tuesday, the phone lines would light up, as people's computers
would stop working, or specific programs would stop. Some times it was
because Microsoft would turn off something that was supposed to be a
security problem, which just happened to be a needed feature for a
program. I had one computer that every time it reached a certain place
in the upgrade cycle, it would hose the OS, requiring a reinstall. Had
to take a perfectly good computer off line. Even aside from instability
issues - and a computer that might work one day, and not the next for no
good reason is unstable - there were issues like killing DVD codec for
Windows media player. Yeah nothing like a serving of ****ed off users
wondering why they couldn't play that demo DVD at their important meeting.

The fact is, my Windows computers had one problem after the other, while
my Mac's just tended to chug along, and their users said we could take
them from them after prying their cold dead fingers off them. Same for
me. I supported Windows, I did as much of my work as possible on the Mac.

There was 1 (one) case where an update made a problem for the mac users.

Windows? Couldn't even count.

Now that I'm retired, I will only be doing computer support for my
family, and as my Windows Desktop just died last week, I'm going to be
replacing it with a yummy 27 inch IMac, and the laptops will all be
running Linux.

Free at last! Thank God Almighty, I'm free at last!

All apologies to MLK

- 73 de Mike N3LI -

On Thu, 06 Oct 2011 21:18:39 -0400, Michael Coslo
wrote:

On 10/5/2011 10:26 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
Cleaning up
the malware and replacing the bulging caps usually stabilizes the
system.

it would hose the OS, requiring a reinstall. Had
to take a perfectly good computer off line.

From "The IT Crowd" (a British TV comedy program):
(answering a ringing telephone in the shop - without pause for a
Hello)
"Have you tried turning it off and back on?"
....
"Is it plugged in?"

73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC

On 10/5/2011 11:59 AM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
On Wed, 05 Oct 2011 07:35:02 -0500, wrote:

At least we're not spending $160 for the privilege of BSODs! I like Puppy
Linux, which I believe is GTK on top of Ubuntu. Not pretty but incredibly
responsive. Will run on anything from first gen Pentium.

I haven't seen many BSOD's on Windoze boxes in maybe 10 years. The
only time I see them is when I'm playing with drivers or when I'm
trying to untrash the filesystem. I look at it differently. $160 is
a bit over 2 hours of my billable labor rate. If Windoze saves me 2
hours of time, I break even.


Unless that sentences you to lots more hours later. Then you cost
yourself. Beware the easy path. Or at least research it.

I have to say the front end investment on Linux has been proven to be a
better investment than Windows "ease of install" and nasty programming
environment. For instance dot net does seem to leak.

Been there, worked all sides of the argument including Apple and I'll
take Linux and Apple in that order.

tom
K0TAR

On 10/5/2011 9:56 PM, tom wrote:
I have to say the front end investment on Linux has been proven to be a
better investment than Windows "ease of install" and nasty programming
environment. For instance dot net does seem to leak.


Actually I misspoke there. I have hard evidence that some parts of dot
net leak. We are fighting a nasty problem at work because of that.

Managed code is not all it's cracked up to be. Especially when from
certain software houses.

tom
K0TAR

On Wed, 05 Oct 2011 21:56:11 -0500, tom wrote:

Unless that sentences you to lots more hours later. Then you cost
yourself. Beware the easy path. Or at least research it.

Not my pain or my decision. My customers are the Windoze users. I
also have a few Linux users. Mostly they run Linux servers and a few
desktops. In almost all cases, the decision of the OS is made by the
applications vendors or whatever apps the hired help is familiar with
using. I have little say in the matter.

One of my bad jokes is that I would be out of business if Microsoft
had done a better job. There's quite a bit of truth to that.

I have to say the front end investment on Linux has been proven to be a
better investment than Windows "ease of install" and nasty programming
environment. For instance dot net does seem to leak.

I'm not a programmer, and therefore not qualified to comment on the
relative merits of programming environments. However, I have had to
deal with the multiple mutations of dot.nyet. It sucks. It's quite
common to have to uninstall all 4 mutations of dot.nyet, with a 3rd
party app, and reinstall the whole mess from scratch. I also have a
suspicion that dot.net is responsible for some bizarre application
crashes. I've seen memory leaks, but they seem to be coming from the
apps, not the libraries.

Been there, worked all sides of the argument including Apple and I'll
take Linux and Apple in that order.

I prefer Windoze, Linux, and Apple, in that order. My choice has
nothing to do with the quality of the product. It's in order of which
OS will make me money, and continue to support my decadent and lavish
lifestyle. Windoze needs help, I provide help, and therefore I make
money. At the other end, Apple users assume that if anything goes
wrong, it must be their own fault, and not that of the OS or apps.
They'll only ask for help if they're really desperate. Since I'm not
Apple approved, blessed, and authorized, I can buy parts or get inside
info. I'm also competing with AppleCare. Linux is a mix of the two.
Setting up complex SNMP monitoring and performance tuning is what pays
the bills. Dealing with hardware incompatibilities, is another Linux
favorite.

tom
K0TAR

--
# Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060
# 831-336-2558
# http://802.11junk.com
# http://www.LearnByDestroying.com AE6KS