[CLUE-Tech] Enthusiasm for Linux

[black at galaxy.silvren.com]

Every now and then a dose of reality is good, even for Linux enthusiasts
:)

First off, I am not going to answer any of your questions but instead
give unsolicited commentary on the state of Linux. If you're still
interested, read on.

This is exactly why Linux has had a slow uptake with the masses. To a
certain extent I totally agree - why should I spend twice as long making
it work with Linux than on Windows?

The reason I use Linux is for all the tools and features that Windows does
NOT have. Things like regexps, a real shell, and text utilities.

Mostly what I use Windows for is games and watching all the video clips
that sneak into my email. Linux gaming is very limited, and to be honest
I've not really bothered to try most of the video apps under Linux since
there's Samba.

How many of you CLUEbies do the same thing?

On Fri, 24 Oct 2003, Chuck Downing wrote:

> Gang,
>
> This will be a long rant.  I am so frustrated at the moment that I need someone(s) who is/are truly a Colorado Linux User and Enthusiast to remind me why it is that I should want to drop Windoze and move to Linux as my personal OS.
>
> First, some background.  About 40 years ago, give or take a couple months, I was first introduced to computers.  I had had no exposure to computers in college, because they didn't really exist in the 1950's.
>
> In 1964, my employer had an IBM 1401 computer with 4k of RAM, that's right 4096 bytes, ladies and gentlemen.  The CPU was the size of a four-drawer chest of drawers I have in my master bedroom.  Attached to it were a card reader/card punch larger than the chest-type freezer you have in your basement, several refrigerator-sized, reel-to-reel magnetic tape drives and a line printer bigger than your propane grill.  I programmed in Fortran, Cobol and Assembly Language for this beast.  Programmers and users worked in batch mode,  handing a job request to the supervisor and getting a call two or three hours later when the job was done.  For rush jobs, programmers were free to stay after hours for a one-on-one session with the 1401--all night, if no one else also had a rush job.  I'm not sure how my wife got pregnant during those days.
>
> When I was transferred to Pittsburgh in the late 1960's, my employer had an IBM 360, with a whopping 1 meg of RAM and a 1 MHz CPU.  It had tape drives and a card reader/punch and a few hard disk drives which accepted mountable "cake tins" with our very own hard disks.  Nevertheless, we were able to run the world's largest LP model of some refineries in a reasonable length of time, say 20-40 minutes per run.  We also had rudimentary spreadsheets and other economic analysis tools.  Before I came back to Denver, we could submit jobs remotely from network terminals located in the computer closet in each department--some of them even had printers attached!
>
> In Denver, my employer had a similar local setup, but we had a remote terminal connected from an office building near Kennedy Golf Course to the main office in Writer's Manor.  Using this system, I developed a Fortran-based mathematical model of one of the key elements of an oil shale extraction process.  I had started with a set of equations and a TI programmable calculator and then switched to Fortran.  Before I was finished, I converted most of the model to my personal Radio Shack TRS-80 Model I, running Basic.
>
> That Trash-80 started with 4k of RAM and cassette tape I/O for "permanent" data storage.  Radio Shack did sell monitors, keyboards and line printers, too.  I later expanded it to have 5 1/4 inch diskette drives and, I think, 16k of RAM.  Then I was in hog heaven, Radio Shack came out with the Model III and the Model 4 computers, with integrated monitors and diskette drives and up to 64k of RAM!  All of these beasts ran some version of Basic.
>
> I suppose I could rant on about the Radio Shack Model 1000 and DOS, various "IBM-clones" and DOS, then Windows 3.1, etc.  I have had my frustrations with all of them, but nothing like the past few months.  For the most part, my recent experience with Windoze has been relatively smooth "Plug and Play", except for the occasional system crash.  I even have a 1998 Windoze box in Highlands Ranch with two USB scanners, a USB printer, a USB Zip drive and a USB LS120 drive and USB camera access operating seamlessly.
>
> Now for the need for somebody to work up some enthusiasm.  In the last couple of years, I have tried to migrate from Windows to Linux.  I have had two distros of RedHat, Mandrake 8.1 and Libranet 2.8.  I have even tried Cygwin, UWIN and msys/mingw.  My major problems are as follows:
>
> 1.  While I realize that manufacturer cooperation is required, I have been unable to get any of those distros to recognize a winmodem.  Several driver-makers make wild promises, but none of them work because of dependancy issues.
>
> 2.  I would like to be able to have a "demand dial" approach to my ISPs because the ISP which is a local call doesn't do Usenet and the other charges by the hour.  Even though they claim to fit the bill, Pan, NewsFleX and newsleader don't function as off-line readers.  Pan stalls completely and then won't recognize that the computer is connected to the ISP, while the others don't even compile because of Libranet dependancies.  While I can get diald and wvdial to install and run, their performance is so spotty that it is easier to remember to manually dial an ISP before asking for downloads.
>
> 3.  Open Office 1.1.0 for Linux can't even recognize characters in a file saved by Open Office 1.1.0 for Windows--all apostrophes and quote marks show up on-screen as question marks.  Try to explain that to a computer-phobic spouse.  In addition, the index to the OO help files is so fouled up that I can't find instructions about changing to a readable display font.  These problems are solved when printing a document, but make OO 1.1.0 for Linux impossible to use.
>
> 4.  OO would like me to install Java.  The Blackdown Java installation included with Libranet 2.8 on the CD cannot be completed because some library dependancies are not available on the debian web site.  Java has installed on Windoze for at least 8 years!
>
> 5.  I have no idea whether the fault lies with Wine or with Libranet, however, I can't get the out of the box Wine to work even with notepad.exe from Windows XP.  This is a step backward because Wine worked a little with RH 7.2.  Win4Lin worked really well with RH 8, but the same install CD claims to be incompatible with Libranet 2.8.
>
> 6.  USB connections to PDAs seem to be impossible to make work.  I have been unable to find a HOW-TO that is actually understandable.  It worked for the author, but not for me.  Even the Sharp Zaurus, which is a Linux box, cannot be syncronized using Linux.  Sharp refuses to acknowledge that PC-Linux exists!
>
> That's enough.  In the early 1980s I used shareware because I felt that Windoze and others wanted too much of my money for crappy programs--I even bought a copy of Borland's Turbo Pascal because it was an inexpensive, working tool.  I no longer work in Visual Basic; I don't use Adobe products and I 've tried to develop programs in Java because of the low initial cost.  However, right now I can't really get anything done in Linux because of all of the barriers.  I can't imagine my 89-year-old uncle ever liking Linux.  My wife would need me or one of our CS-grad sons to hold her hand for the rest of her life if her only choice were Linux.
>
> So, somebody please tell me how Linux is the greatest thing since sliced bread and how it's the wave of the future and will be in every home during my lifetime.
>
> --
> Chuck Downing
> Leadville, Colorado, USA
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