<b...@yahoo.com> wrote in message 
news:9...@x41g2000hsb.googlegroups.com...
"I guess I'll never understand the attraction of linux, guys I know
will spend all afternoon just to get something to start up, usually
some bizarre entry in a config file needs to changed, Windows may be
crappy/buggy/inefficient but at least it works"

There are plenty of people in the Linux community who are actively working to 
make it just as easy to use as Windows is.  In many areas once can reasonably 
claim it's comparable or perhaps even better (printer and software 
installations are often quite painless these days compared to what they once 
were); it others, yes, it still needs works (there's a very active project in 
getting scanners to "play nice" with Linux, for instance).  I'd admit that 
Linux doesn't pass the "grandma test" as well as Windows does in most cases 
(but in many cases it can, indeed, now pass -- whereas 5+ years ago generally 
it couldn't)... but then again, Windows doesn't pass it as well as the Mac OS 
X (*NIX-derived, of course) either.

Good post, David -- thanks.  I don't agree completely with everything, but I 
think your points have plenty of merit.  I'd only add that I just haven't had 
the amount of problems with registry corruption that it appears that you 
have -- if I had, I could very easily find myself thinking much more poorly of 
the registry.

"David Brown" <d...@hesbynett.removethisbit.no> wrote in message 
news:M...@lyse.net...
> There *are* standard tools for viewing and editing *nix configuration 
> files - any text editor will do the job.

Yes, my criticisms were that the format isn't standardized (as you point out), 
often *isn't* hierarchical, and -- for the *average* user -- isn't always in 
an "obvious" location (copying /etc is easy, but then you need, umm... 
.mozilla?  .gnome-desktop?  etc.? --> the average user shouldn't have to dig 
through their home directory figuring out which "dot" directories contain 
configuration information).

> Oh, and one more thing - *nix configuration files are almost always well 
> documented.  How much windows software comes with documentation for the 
> registry settings?

For publicly-developed programs, almost as many?  ...it's just that so many 
more "typical" programs on a Windows PC are commercial, and these of course 
often don't document their settings.

> This was NT 3.51.  *All* these solid design decisions were thrown out step 
> by step through NT 4.0, W2K, XP, and Vista (against Dave Cutler's 
> recommendations, I believe).

Yeah, I know -- ostensibly it was for performance, right?  That video back in 
the NT 3.51 days going through the Kernel each time was never going to be fast 
enough for games/multimedia applications?

---Joel

On 2008-08-26, Joel Koltner <z...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> "AZ Nomad" <a...@PremoveOBthisOX.COM> wrote:
>
>> Oh yeah, and if it gets corrupted, you lose your entire system.
>
> Same thing happens if your configuration files get corrupted on *NIX systems 
> and, as I mentioned, often far lesser corruption leads to far greater loss of 
> functionality (e.g., Xorg.conf being a little corrupted completely removes 
> your ability to get to a GUI desktop.)

Thus increasing the user's productivity significantly!

http://www.simson.net/ref/ugh.pdf (chapter seven)

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow! I'm a GENIUS!  I want
                                  at               to dispute sentence
                               visi.com            structure with SUSAN
                                                   SONTAG!!

On Tue, 26 Aug 2008 10:00:28 -0700, Joel Koltner <z...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>"AZ Nomad" <a...@PremoveOBthisOX.COM> wrote in message 
>news:s...@ip70-176-155-130.ph.ph.cox.net...
>> If you have
>> executables that require one version of their registry components and
>> you go back to a old version, you'll fuck everything up.

>So re-install the software.  *NIX has the exact same problem -- if you restore 
>configuration files for a different version of some applicaiton, it's a toss 
>up as to whether or not the software will still work.

You can't selectively install windows components.
W/ unix, you can individually fix the bad config file or get its backup.

W/ windows, none of it is documented and you're fucked if you can't
bring up the system well enough to even edit the registry.

On Tue, 26 Aug 2008 14:31:30 +0200 (CEST), Jack <p...@pluto.com> wrote:
>AZ Nomad <a...@PremoveOBthisOX.COM> wrote in
>news:s...@ip70-176-155-130.ph.ph.cox.net: 

>> The joy of microsoft operating systems that have consistently stayed
>> two steps ahead of available hardware.  Requiring 3 BILLION bytes of
>> memory just to draw a desktop and run a few relatively simply low
>> performance applications like a word processor and web browser is an
>> incredible feat.  
>> 
>> Just think.  In ten years will have 200ghz machines and microsoft will
>> still make them dog slow.

>That's not (only) Microsoft. That's Software Engineer and OO programming.

It is only microsoft.  Other companies have no problem using OO
programming and actually getting *more* efficient over time.

On Tue, 26 Aug 2008 16:01:02 +0200, Dombo <d...@disposable.invalid> wrote:
>JosephKK schreef:
>> On Mon, 25 Aug 2008 14:04:20 -0500, AZ Nomad
>> <a...@PremoveOBthisOX.COM> wrote:
>> 
>>> On Mon, 25 Aug 2008 09:49:35 -0700, Joel Koltner <z...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>> "Michael N. Moran" <m...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message 
>>>> news:%aBsk.16396$k...@bignews3.bellsouth.net...
>>>>> Like the registry, which is *so* much better ;)
>>>> It's better than the *NIX approach in that there are standard tools and APIs 
>>>> for creating, editing, and saving individual entries, branchs, etc.  Is it 
>>>> great?  No.  But I haven't seen any "great" answers to the problem -- storing 
>>>> configuration settings is such a general problem that there really aren't any 
>>>> great one-size-fits-all solutions, I expect.
>>>>> Fortunately, the Windoze registry is intuitive *and* robust.
>>>> Actually, yes -- the arrangement is reasonably intuitive, and it keeps backup 
>>>> copies of itself around to provide some degree of robustness.  (And as with 
>>>> *NIX text configuration files, you can certainly make as many manual backups 
>>>> as you feel like.)
>>>>> As opposed to the years that it took Mirco$oft to figure out
>>>>> how to do preemptive multi-tasking?
>>>> No one considered Windows 3.1/95/98 to be in the same class of operating 
>>>> systems as *NIX, you know. :-)  That started with Windows NT, which had plenty 
>>>> of "real OS" programmers on the team (including David Cutler, who had done 
>>>> plenty of VMS development... and one might argue he learned from many of his 
>>>> mistakes there? :-) ).
>>> Oh yeah, and if it gets corrupted, you lose your entire system.  
>>> Fucking wonderful.
>> 
>> Since MSwin 2000 the tools are reasonably reliable, though well short
>> of good.  One of the biggest problems is doofii getting into the
>> registry with regedit and mangling their system (often without
>> protecting themselves nor learning diddly from their misadventures).

>The problem with Windows is that out of the box it is pretty easy to 
>screw it up because for user convenience everyone gets administrative 
>privileges. You could solve that problem by removing administrative 
>privileges for those users that are too smart for their own good. With 
>proper user rights it can be pretty hard to screw up a Windows 
>installation.

Running internet applications as  administrater or root is absolute insanity.

If you try to bring up a linux system's desktop as root, it is usually
not even available, or has a bright red desktop and dire warning.  Many
apps will not let you start them as root.  xscreensaver is a good
example.  Users are expected to log in as a non-root user, and then
switch to root on a per application basis when necessary.  There is
never a good reason to run an internet app as root.

On Tue, 26 Aug 2008 09:46:40 -0700, Joel Koltner <z...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>"AZ Nomad" <a...@PremoveOBthisOX.COM> wrote in message 
>news:s...@ip70-176-155-130.ph.ph.cox.net...
>> Oh yeah, and if it gets corrupted, you lose your entire system.

>Same thing happens if your configuration files get corrupted on *NIX systems 
>and, as I mentioned, often far lesser corruption leads to far greater loss of 
>functionality (e.g., Xorg.conf being a little corrupted completely removes 
>your ability to get to a GUI desktop.)

Except that on a unix/linux system, the config file can be repaired.  On
windows, it'll be impossible to even run regedit or to even reinstall
the OS without blowing away the entire system.

On 2008-08-26, Grant Edwards <g...@visi.com> wrote:
> On 2008-08-26, Joel Koltner <z...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> "AZ Nomad" <a...@PremoveOBthisOX.COM> wrote:
>>
>>> Oh yeah, and if it gets corrupted, you lose your entire system.
>>
>> Same thing happens if your configuration files get corrupted on *NIX systems 
>> and, as I mentioned, often far lesser corruption leads to far greater loss of 
>> functionality (e.g., Xorg.conf being a little corrupted completely removes 
>> your ability to get to a GUI desktop.)
>
> Thus increasing the user's productivity significantly!
>
> http://www.simson.net/ref/ugh.pdf (chapter seven)

Here's direct link to that chapter:

http://art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix-haters/x-windows/disaster.html

  [Somebody needs to run a spell-checker on that page -- I've
   never seen so many typos on a web page before.]

-- 
Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow! I brought my BOWLING
                                  at               BALL -- and some DRUGS!!
                               visi.com            

"Grant Edwards" <g...@visi.com> wrote in message 
news:1...@posted.visi...
> http://www.simson.net/ref/ugh.pdf (chapter seven)

Nice.

I think it was the Qt documentation that, at one point while discussing fonts, 
made a point of how easy it was with Qt compared to, "...the horror that is 
X." 

Joel Koltner wrote:
> "AZ Nomad" <a...@PremoveOBthisOX.COM> wrote in message 
> news:s...@ip70-176-155-130.ph.ph.cox.net...
>> Oh yeah, and if it gets corrupted, you lose your entire system.
> 
> Same thing happens if your configuration files get corrupted on *NIX systems 
> and, as I mentioned, often far lesser corruption leads to far greater loss of 
> functionality (e.g., Xorg.conf being a little corrupted completely removes 
> your ability to get to a GUI desktop.)

Easy to fix.  Boot with init 3 then cp your xorg.conf.orig to xorg.conf. 
  Or you might not even have to reboot.  Just switch to a virtual 
console via Ctrl-Alt-Fn.



-- 
Good day!

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