Corporate creep in Linux? (mini-rantette)
in [Slackware]
|
From: Keith Keller on 9 Sep 2009 22:19 On 2009-09-09, Mike Jones <Not(a)Arizona.Bay> wrote: > > Been reading a bit on people complaining about KDE's "features" and other > similar "What the hell is it doing NOW?" stuff, and I'm thinking that > there is a significant drift toward corporate convenience in Linux distro > development, including Slackware (audience gasps!). > > While "improved market share" If you-know-who shows up, you are hereby banished to using SuSE till the end of days. It will be a specially configured SuSE that doesn't allow runlevels 2-4, and doesn't run gettys on tty[1-6]. ;-) > In "the good old days" we got to write things as we wanted them and they > stayed that way. These days that is becoming a luxury as learning how to > use the software that controls your hardware is replaced by auto-this and > auto-that, which don't always do that brilliant a job, and can take > longer to fix when they barf that simply hacking a plain text config file > would have done doing things "the old way". Perhaps. Perhaps I just don't have the right hardware? Most of what I use (in Slackware) uses a text config file, but I don't have much in the way of exotic hardware. > I've recently switched back from using Xfce4 (the luxury sports-estate > car of GUIs) to IceWM (the open top kit-car car of GUIs), and having > recently played about with KDE (the Prof-Pat-Pending-mobile of GUIs) I've > noticed a distinct difference in the concepts behind these GUIs, and the > thing that gives me cause for concern is that we appear to be sliding > toward the click-it-for-me world of Win-D'ohz with all this semi- > automation IIRC blackbox and/or fluxbox still come with Slackware. [checking...] Ah, yes, blackbox. Or if you don't like the bundled version, the source builds fairly easily. Slackware also comes with my second-favorite terminal emulator for X, rxvt. (I've recently discovered urxvt.) So you will only slide toward Windohz if you let yourself. > especially as a lot of it seems to be created and maintained > by coporate development teams If the other you-know-who comes back, you will be forced to use his shell scripts till the end of days. > Maybe its time to start up some kind of "Campaign for Real UNIX > \Linux" (CRU\L) or something? How about "Campaign for Real UNIX Et Linux" (CRUEL)? > Scuse... The meds nurse is here. Later. ;) Ask her to bring enough for the entire newsgroup! --keith -- kkeller-usenet(a)wombat.san-francisco.ca.us (try just my userid to email me) AOLSFAQ=http://www.therockgarden.ca/aolsfaq.txt see X- headers for PGP signature information
From: notbob on 9 Sep 2009 23:25 On 2009-09-10, Old Man <bill(a)witch.lan.invalid> wrote: > Good luck with that. You might want to browse distrowatch first. You might > find several lean, basic distributions already available. They'll be based > on Slackware. While looking for icewm info, I ran across this Slack spin-off I'd not seen before: http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=absolute nb
From: ~kurt on 10 Sep 2009 00:58 Keith Keller <kkeller-usenet(a)wombat.san-francisco.ca.us> wrote: > On 2009-09-10, ~kurt <actinouranium(a)earthlink.net> wrote: >> For example, many distros will not distribute the Sun >> JRE, and opt for the FSF one, which does nothing but give Java a bad >> name.... > > Perhaps that's the goal of the FSF? ;-) > Those bastards. - Kurt
From: Glyn Millington on 10 Sep 2009 02:08 Mike Jones <Not(a)Arizona.Bay> writes: > For example, I spent way longer writing a usbmsd loading script than I > needed to because the HAL system kept getting in the way, and, because I > now don't have a range of devs to manually assign, I'm still expecting > resources to go missing as some automated process steals them before my > scripts can use them. I've brought Slackware back onto my main working machine after a couple of years with FreeBSD, so may be a bit rusty (but mention it so that you see I like the old-fashioned way too!) Isn't it possible just to turn off HAL? - I'm sure that was the case a couple of years ago. And the samed with udev if you don't like that system? > In "the good old days" we got to write things as we wanted them and they > stayed that way. These days that is becoming a luxury as learning how to > use the software that controls your hardware is replaced by auto-this and > auto-that, which don't always do that brilliant a job, and can take > longer to fix when they barf that simply hacking a plain text config file > would have done doing things "the old way". Yes, that is certainly true, but the advantage of having learned the old way is that you know how to do it again - to read the docs, find the examples, get out your trusty text editor and start work on taking control and shaping the system/network/world the way you like it. HAL and udev and the rest have config files somewhere :-) atb Glyn -- RTFM http://www.tldp.org/index.html GAFC http://slackbook.org/ The Official Source :-) STFW http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&group=alt.os.linux.slackware JFGI http://jfgi.us/
From: Peter Chant on 10 Sep 2009 03:14
Mike Jones wrote: > > Been reading a bit on people complaining about KDE's "features" and other > similar "What the hell is it doing NOW?" stuff, and I'm thinking that > there is a significant drift toward corporate convenience in Linux distro > development, including Slackware (audience gasps!). I'd rather have a system where everything just works. What wrong with that. Examples: Is it not a good idea to have the OS ask if you want USB sticks mounted in one click when you plug them in, rather than have root mount them for you? On my eee with Slack 12.2 X just works, including open GL. Fantastic as I'm having difficulty messing around with two other machines who refuse to play ball. Remember when you had to recomile your kernel to get a sound card to work? Personally I'd rather it all worked automagically leaving me to get on with doing useful / interesting things. But I would like the option to tweek where necessary. I think slack has that. Pete -- http://www.petezilla.co.uk |