men.... feck linux!

[trochej]

[cut]
 Perhaps that is a worthy programming project? Developing a new graphics infrastructure for Linux? Much better than writing yet another toolkit if you ask me.

Weeks ago almost every single distribution I know dumped XWindow in favor of X.org.

--
trochej

[trochej]

Linux builds are so abstracted that practically anything UNIX will run. The downside is that they are damn slow and built on ancient standards, and pretty much require you to do things the UNIX way whether you want to or not.

Windows is faster than Linux overall, but speed isn't everything.

   I disagree. First: which Windows? My LFS runs my box faster and more reliably that Windows 2000. I can do more tasks at the same time. And there is, of course, the question, wheter doing things UNIX way is a bad thing?

Or, maybe I'm just pissed that so many Perl books do a sucky job of teaching people how to write actual perl code. Doesn't anyone know how to use this language properly?

    As do many books on programming in C, using APIs and so on... There are also good books on Perl out there.

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trochej

[Hyperspeed]

In the golden days when I used to spend my entire life scrabbling
through Aminet for stuff to build my Workbench up nice I always
groaned when I came across the following:

1) A program that didn't have a GUI
2) A program that needed complex Shell parameters (LHA anyone?)
3) Anything written in AMOS
4) Any Linux port (things using ixemul etc.)
5) Any distribution that had orange and navy blue icons (WB1.3 ARGH!)

:-D :-D :-D

Long live the GUI, down with command lines.

Oh, and longer live Directory Opus!

:-)

[trochej]

Long live the GUI, down with command lines.

    I find it useful, when I can fit full rescue system on one floppy. I also don't know, why should I install GUI on a server, where it would only waste reasources.

--
trochej

[Holley]

So far I've tried more Linux from Kernel 1.1 through 2.4, I have to say that as time has gone on problems with daft errors, dependancies, and sloppy distros have gone through the roof.  This isn't the fault of the kernel, more that distros are including too much software, and making a full install the only working configuration ...

Being stuck in a command line when things go wrong isn't a problem when you can work out where the error came from, rather than trawling through increasing numbers of directories and config files.  The last time I felt confident about knowing Linux enough to handle it myself was when running Red Hat 5.1 :-(

No matter how much I have tried Linux has always felt like an adversary (when it doesn't work it's because it doesn't want to work), Workbench has felt like a friend (when it doesn't work it's not intentional).

[trochej]

So far I've tried more Linux from Kernel 1.1 through 2.4, I have to say that as time has gone on problems with daft errors, dependancies, and sloppy distros have gone through the roof. This isn't the fault of the kernel, more that distros are including too much software, and making a full install the only working configuration ...

    Try Slackware (http://www.slackware.com/). No dependencies, minimal default installation. Or, if your have time: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/. Everything your way. :-) (OK., that your way was a joke, I know :-D.)

--
trochej

[HopperJF]

The larger distros (Mandrake, Linspire, Fedora) are very easy to learn and use.  These have graphic installers and package managers that are quite a bit better than found in Windows.  But these distros need horsepower.  And lots of it.

However, some programs still will not run with the package managers/graphic installers and STILL insist on using CLI, leaving the average Joe Public confused and often frustrated.

[Floid]

Ilwrath wrote:

The smaller distros (and the BSDs and whatnot) are much more difficult, if you're new to them.  But they can run faster, because they are a little trimmed back...  So they don't need quite as big a system...  It's all a trade-off....  And finding the sweet spot is tough.

BSD, harder than Linux?  You must be on drugs. :afro:

But seriously, the "speed" you kids feel (or don't feel) on the desktop is more a function of the massive GUI toolkits in use than anything else.  To put it charitably, that's what Windows would feel like if it didn't compromise security or stability... and the situation on UNIX-alikes is much like that with MS-DOS; things are fine until you start WIN.COM.*

@Whoever:  No such thing as "XWindows," the dumped project was XFree86.


*If it helps, remember that the X server itself is basically just a big, full-featured graphics driver... one that any system with 32MB RAM can probably handle easily.  It's KDE and Gnome... or worse, running programs linked to major portions of each of the two at once, which you'll probably end up doing with a 'cute and friendly' distribution like Mandrake until you learn better... that really bog the system down.  There is a single major counterexample that comes to mind -- if you are still running XFree86 4.1 or possibly 4.2, the "XRender" extension was horribly slow when first introduced, and is now taken advantage of heavily by roughly anything offering AA fonts.

[pixie]

Wrong. Windows can boot to safe mode for non critical errors, but for system critical failures (bad patch, driver, service, etc.) you have to use the recovery console, a (very limited) CLI.

I have seen it the bad way, I try to fix the MBR but without sucess until now... I've tried all under the roof without luck... :-(

[pixie]

No matter how much I have tried Linux has always felt like an adversary (when it doesn't work it's because it doesn't want to work), Workbench has felt like a friend (when it doesn't work it's not intentional).

Exactly my feelings... Even when Amiga crash you know what you'd done 'wrong' so you wouldn't do it next time, heck even my father could spot what he could or couldn't do... :-D on Windows (and on linux too), most time you get an halted application which one doesn't know if it crashed or is just hanged up for no apparent reason...

[Cymric]

pixie wrote:
Exactly my feelings... Even when Amiga crash you know what you'd done 'wrong' so you wouldn't do it next time, heck even my father could spot what he could or couldn't do... :-D on Windows (and on linux too), most time you get an halted application which one doesn't know if it crashed or is just hanged up for no apparent reason...

Personally, I think the hanging-program-argument is a non-issue. If an application hangs, it hangs, whether it is an Amiga, Windows, Linux or some other OS. There is no blinking warning light on the screen telling you about it. You have to infer the fact that it did hang from long periods of unresponsiveness, or unreasonable and unexpected CPU loads. The major difference is that recent versions of Windows and all versions of Linux can quickly dislodge the offending program without bringing down the entire system (except in very rare cases), and even reclaim most to all allocated resources. Try that on an Amiga.

If you are lucky, the offending program really crashes, but I see little difference in the Amiga informing me of a 80000003 Guru, Linux of a segmentation fault, and Windows telling me the exception taken by the CPU (sometimes :-)). The names may be different, but the message is clear everytime: 'Don't do what you did just now, it's bad for my silicon'. In all cases, you knew what you did. Unless the error was very complex in nature, and you still wouldn't have had a clue.

[pixie]

Personally, I think the hanging-program-argument is a non-issue. If an application hangs, it hangs, whether it is an Amiga, Windows, Linux or some other OS.

In my experience with Amiga it rarely happened if at all, on AROS when it crashes it does it immediately ad also never see it hang... but it is y personal experience, whether on windows it does it all the time.

[Holley]

Slackware is the best distro I've tried so far, but that was a long time ago (it was the last one on a.out binaries, can't remember the version now!).

In general under Workbench you don't have the huge pile of demons/TSRs/services that you do under Linux/Windows, hence easier to work out the source of the error.  Cue quote from the recycling hippie in the Simpsons "Simplify, man!"

[bhoggett]

Another hilarious thread, with some people demonstrating a remarkable lack of understanding of what they are using, or else stuck with a mentality and ideas from ten years ago.

Let's see: "Linux ix slow and bloated." Bollox. Some Linux distros have default installations which are bloated, yes. Modern mainstream Linux distros are not suited for use with ancient hardware with the default installation, also yes. In both cases, either use optimised distros for your need or tweak one of the main ones to remove everything that you don't need.

"Windows is faster than Linux on the same hardware." Again, bunkum. Default Windows desktops are faster than default KDE or Gnome, yes. That's because default Windows desktops are actually quite spartan both in fuctionality and features. Add enough third party tweaks to Windows to bring it to the same level of features as KDE and Gnome, and Windows slows down considerably.

"AmigaOS is the king of user-friendly". Oh boy! There's a time warp if ever I saw one. AmigaOS was user-friendly 10 years ago, relatively speaking, but not today. By today's standards, even when compared to Linux, AmigaOS is a nightmare for anyone except those who have a decade of familiarity behind them. Not only is quite a lot of stuff counter-intuitive really, but there is little consistency and far too many missing features for a modern OS.

Try getting AmigaOS to print to a network printer, for instance, then think how much trouble a complete AmigaOS novice would have.

No, AmigaOS is only a panacea in the mind of the few and the ignorant, and I mean that in the nicest possible way. They say "ignorance is bliss", and in this case it is most certainly true. :-P

[Holley]

By today's standards, even when compared to Linux, AmigaOS is a nightmare for anyone except those who have a decade of familiarity behind them.

? Swap those two to get that right, as far as I'm concerned.

Workbench is quirky, but the whole system is so much simpler under the surface - yes it loses features for that, but then look at what you get with mini-linux in it's tiny 20Mb footprint.

That said Windows seems to get more and more complex, so that when you get problems it ends up being as hard to work with as Linux (ie. when Windows Update stops working after installing an 'essential update').

[pixie]

"AmigaOS is the king of user-friendly". Oh boy! There's a time warp if ever I saw one. AmigaOS was user-friendly 10 years ago, relatively speaking, but not today. By today's standards, even when compared to Linux, AmigaOS is a nightmare for anyone except those who have a decade of familiarity behind them. Not only is quite a lot of stuff counter-intuitive really, but there is little consistency and far too many missing features for a modern OS.

Explain it further please... I used a lot of OSes in recent years, and have to say that AmigaOS does many things right when it comes to UI experience... and altough many things are lacking the back bones are there... Devs for example, shell and gui integration, visual installation (I never saw AmigaOS being installed through monotasked system like them all) ... etc. Many thing could be improved I don't discuss that, but a nightmare!? Please... I had to learn AmigaOS as well as Windows (MacOS and QNX at some extent) and now Linux, and none compare to AmigaOS...

You see I also said nothing at all, but as you didn't specifiedP