[SWLUG] Problems

[Chris M. Jackson]

On Tue, 11 Nov 2003, Steve Anderson wrote:

> Way-hey - my first reply after much lurking. Way-hey!

and a very warm welcome to you.  Take a mug of hot caffeinated fluid and 
join us by the fire. :)

>     Not defending it, it's a necessary evil, that's all.

I feel your pain.  I live in a house full of Windows users.  All the 
computers in our house run Windows XP, with some exceptions.  The "file 
server" is on Win2k, and one person has a PC which isn't quite up to XP 
spec and so runs Win98.  Our self-proclaimed sysadmin seems to be of the 
opinion that Windows is the way to go, and that Linux is broken 
(s/kettle/pot).  Assuming that this is true, then does that make the fact 
that 75%+ of the Internet is powered by Unix-based systems something of 
an anomaly?  Does it therefore make 75% of sysadmins stupid?  
Of course, it might suggest that our house has a dumb sysadmin :)

>     b) WineX can play all the new games as well as XP can. So sometime 
> over the rainbow...

That's my *only* reason for keeping a Windows boot (and the only thing I 
ever use it for anymore) - my framerates suffer terribly for multiplayer 
games.  With reasonably-highish settings, I can muster 150fps on a good 
day playing UT on Windows.  I daren't try the Linux version of UT - even 
Tux Racer gives me about 3spf (sic - after killing the usual unnecessary 
processes).  Oh, well ...
Start weighing those pies already :)

> Red Hat 9 (hey, I'm a newbie - one of my cardboard-box mounted computers 
> is going to be Debian or Gentoo now I'm getting to grips)

Given the choice of the two, I'd take Debian.  The install process is 
painful at times, and up-to-date software is occasionally difficult to 
come by ("How many known bugs are you willing to live with?") though I'm 
told this is improving).  That said, Debian-based systems have the very 
handy one-line install and upgrade mechanisms via apt - something which 
vanilla RPM has yet to achieve.

Undoubtedly I will get flamed for what I am about to say, but here follows 
my usual diatribe on Gentoo.  If I want to play with source packages, then 
I will experiment with Linux From Scratch, or similar systems, which 
typically involve actually sitting down and manually putting the 
compilation process into action.  There is much to be learnt from 
going through this process.  Gentoo (in part) "works" by taking a 
bunch of source packages, and automatically building them all.  Given that 
it builds such things as X, you'll be waiting for quite some time for 
everything to build, and you typically learn nothing from the experience 
(other than the fact that X takes a fscking long time to build 8), and end 
up with binaries very much like any other system.  If I want my binaries 
to be very much like any other system, then I'll let other people use 
their CPU cycles to build the software, and issue binaries that they have 
kindly provided, rather than waste my own time and effort.  To 
paraphrase what many people have said over the years: "As nice as it is to 
have a computer build all this, to be honest I'd rather be using the thing 
instead."

That said, I'm a Red Hat user who has experimented with LFS previously, 
however I just do not have the patience or strength of will to complete 
the Debian install process :)

Anyway, have fun, and welcome to your local LUG,

-- 
|/  Chris M. Jackson
C>  Be seeing you!
H