Corporate creep in Linux? (mini-rantette)
in [Slackware]
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From: Dan C on 12 Sep 2009 14:30 On Sat, 12 Sep 2009 07:42:41 -0700, wexfordpress wrote: > After installing Slack 13 on its own partition I went through a "make it > right" cycle as follows. > 1. Use XFCE instead of kookie KDE4. There, that's better. Left KDE after > many years of use. Outstanding idea. > 3. Reconfigure text editor to call Gvim instead of the standard XFCE > text editor. Not bad, but I kinda like the default 'mousepad' editor. Simple to use. > 4. Reconfigure the terminal button to call Konsole. Bookmarks and choice > of color scheme. "Bookmarks" in a terminal emulator? Huh? By the way, Xfce's Terminal certainly has color scheme choices, right there in the menus. Tabs, too. -- "Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me". "Bother!" said Pooh, as he garotted another passing Liberal. Usenet Improvement Project: http://twovoyagers.com/improve-usenet.org/
From: goarilla on 12 Sep 2009 14:40 On Wed, 09 Sep 2009 22:17:25 -0400, Old Man wrote: > Mike Jones wrote: > > <snip> > >> 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". > > In the good old days, I set a jumper or a dip switch and it stayed set. > I also find auto-this and auto-that frustrating sometimes, but that's > because I already knew how it worked and how to fix it before, and now > I have to learn how this new stuff works and how to fix it. And I'm > lazy, so the problem lies with me, not the change in methods. Besides, > this is computing. Automation is the point of it all, isn't it? > > >> 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 > > Why? are you afraid KDE is going to kill off IceWM? Hasn't happened in > ten years. Heck, fvwm is still being maintained. > >> with all this semi- >> automation, especially as a lot of it seems to be created and >> maintained by coporate development teams that encourage increasing >> levels of dependancy on ever more complex software, to do only the same >> jobs we were doing a decade ago with much lighter software. > > Again, automation is what computers and software are supposed to do. > And what does it matter that employees of corporations participate in > development? Do you really thing they are working "to encourage ... > dependency on ... complex software?" Maybe, more likely, they are > working to solve perceived problems. > >> In the 21st Century, one might expect flicker-fast boot ups, and light- >> switch responses from software, but no, things appear to be slower on >> average, and way more disk-space is used up for tools that should >> surely by now have become sleeker and more optimised for what they are >> supposed to do. > > My phone boots really, really fast; and so does my TV set (which runs > Linux, btw), and either is more powerful than the first Cray > supercomputer. As for my desktop machine, it's pretty old, and it feels > sleeker and more responsive with each new release of Slackware. > >> Am I suffering from classic nostalgia here? > > I would say so. > >> Or is there a distinct >> presence of corporate "just leave it to us" development replacing the >> ingenuity of home-hackers we used to admire so much? > > Maybe we should be happy that so many of those home hackers we admire so > much are making a decent living developing Linux products. > > >> Does everything need to look feel and work like Win-D'ohz to appeal? > > That's not necessary to appeal to me, or to you. > > >> Are we being slowly trained to expect "click-me" interfaces by default? > > Not me, not you. > > >> Maybe its time to start up some kind of "Campaign for Real UNIX \Linux" >> (CRU\L) or something? Some kind of grass-roots thing that at least >> could establish that there IS still a desire on the part of many to NOT >> have 5GiB of auto-stuff getting in the way of things that used to only >> need about 500MiB to do pretty much the same thing? > > 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. > that's a pretty big generalisation: puppy linux, damn small linux and tinycore are all based on debian IIRC > >> Or am I just getting old(er)? > > We're all getting older. It sucks, but what are you gonna do?
From: notbob on 12 Sep 2009 14:57 On 2009-09-12, Dan C <youmustbejoking(a)lan.invalid> wrote: >> 1. Use XFCE instead of kookie KDE4. There, that's better. Left KDE after >> many years of use. > > Outstanding idea. More outta self defense than anythng else. I went to fluxbox, having seen even xfce begin to bloat in the hot dry bling-race sun. nb
From: goarilla on 12 Sep 2009 15:00 On Thu, 10 Sep 2009 08:14:47 +0100, Peter Chant wrote: > 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? > wait until you get a bad usb key/disk that re-registers itself over and over see how you like the 'nagscreens' then > 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
From: goarilla on 12 Sep 2009 15:14
On Sat, 12 Sep 2009 14:16:26 +0000, Joost Kremers wrote: > notbob wrote: >> If you mean /dev, I still have one. And despite the fact I see no >> /dev/sda's, apparently it's still there, somewhere, or something is. > > udev creates the relevant device nodes automatically when e.g. a usb > disk or thumb drive is inserted. > which is nice since you use use find when you plug something in find /dev -mmin -1 (yes you can tail messages as well) |