LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Alan Kennington <akenning@dog.topology.org>
  To  : Mark Newton <newton@atdot.dotat.org>
  Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2000 07:21:44 +101800

Re: Self help

Mark,

Unwise though it is to respond to a string
or normative missives, here's my little bit
on this subject.

In Unix, everything is possible and difficult.

In MS OSs, half the things are easy, and the
other half are impossible.

When I use Unix, I hate the fact that I have to
work so hard to get simple things done which
MS users find easy.

When I use MS OSs, I have the fact that I can't
do half the things I want to do.

Faced with a long term on a desert island,
at least with unix, you can work out everything
from the manuals.

================================================
And now the true reason for this e-mail....

Being stuck in the wildernesses of Europe
right now, in the middle of MS territory, I'm
forced to use Star Office, and I've got it to
print to the local NT print server (thanks to
hints from this mail group, and a patient
sys admin who is not anti-linux).

The result is, that after uisng Star Office
in earnest for a week or so, I'm starting
to really appreciate it.
It's still a load of old sludge, but with
160 MB RAM on the laptop, it loads quite fast,
and the print-outs look good, and I'm able
to read all the .doc, .ppt and .xls files
which people send me, and I can send some
back of my own.

You have to unlearn a lot of MS things, but
my main point is -- you _can_ get real work done.

Without Star Office, I would definitely have
a foul, unnatural OS on my laptop right now.

====================================================
By the way, OpenSSH (for my secure comms back to
my home computer-on-the-net) is somewhat flakey.
It drops out sometimes 5 times in a row,
at intervals of 10 minutes.
I haven't the time to investigate right now,
but over a 128 k line, this should not happen.

====================================================
On another point, a surprising amount of
switching and routing gear in products by
serious companies runs linux.
I don't want to drop names, but some
rather serious companies put their products
for mission critical fucntions on linux boxes.

A guy in Paris doing some serious system testing for
a multi-billion dollar prduct line told me that
to get the fastest possible speed of internet
traffic he used linux or FreeBSD.
FreeBSD was the fastest by about 20%, he said.

====================================================
On another point, not one single computer shop
has assistants who blink an eyelid when I say linux.
It's not by any means predominant yet,
but it is definitely popular.

=======================================================
Thanks to those who gave hints on webcams.
I've located a couple of parallel port
webcams (logitech quickcam VC and 
creative video blaster webcam II),
and have decided for the video blaster,
on the basis of fullest linux support.

Cheers,
Alan Kennington.

Wise Dutch saying:

Na opening in koelkast bewaard,
binnen max. 5 dagen konsumeren.