Corporate creep in Linux? (mini-rantette)
in [Slackware]
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From: Mike Spencer on 4 Oct 2009 03:32 Mike Jones <Not(a)Arizona.Bay> wrote: > And, due to this creeping "no choice coz its standard now" automation, we > stand at the cusp of a Linux system finally telling us "I'm sorry Dave. I > can't allow you to do that." > > I don't like it. Not one bit. Yo, Mike, can I buy you a beer? I don't like it one bit either. -- Mike Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada
From: Mike Jones on 4 Oct 2009 04:49 Responding to Mike Spencer: > Mike Jones <Not(a)Arizona.Bay> wrote: > >> And, due to this creeping "no choice coz its standard now" automation, >> we stand at the cusp of a Linux system finally telling us "I'm sorry >> Dave. I can't allow you to do that." >> >> I don't like it. Not one bit. > > Yo, Mike, can I buy you a beer? I don't like it one bit either. You seem to be buying somebody a beer. Do you need help with that? Click here for more help with [BEER] Yes\Ok -- *===( http://www.400monkeys.com/God/ *===( http://principiadiscordia.com/ *===( http://www.slackware.com/
From: notbob on 4 Oct 2009 15:18 On 2009-10-04, Mike Spencer <mds(a)bogus.nodomain.nowhere> wrote: > In NN 4.76: > > I can disable images. Then every image (except very tiny, 1x1 or > 2x2) are rendered as a place-holder icon. Clicking on the > icon (or choosing "show image" from a popup menu while hovering > the mouse pointer on the icon) will load and render *just that one > image*. Seamonkey does that. > In Firefox 2: I changed from FF to SM cuz FF started removing control options it had in previous revs. IOW, it started getting that we-know-better attitude. > Firefox be made to do this? I haven't been able to contrive it. Does > NoScript make this possible? SM has a "do not load any images", which does just what is says. It allows you to put cursor over empty image box and "view image" from cursor menu. > Of course, I want to be able to disable on the fly javascript, Java, > popunders, iframes, flash, stylesheets etc. If it's a client-side script, noscript kills it. If you really want to see a barren landscape, try using your /etc/hosts file. http://accs-net.com/hosts/ > 1. I would sooner just forget about 90% or more of the web and Hell, why half-step. Make it 99.9%. Use lynx. nb
From: Mike Spencer on 4 Oct 2009 16:00 me> And I may be permanently stuck at Slack 11 for my main box because the me> new libs don't support old closed-source software (not to mention me> having to recompile OSS apps where I like older versions.) emmel> Huh? The OSS compat layer not working? Er, I don't get that. I have two apps (NN 4.76, see other posts for why; and Maple V) that are proprietary/closed-source. They were compiled with versions of libc abandoned with Slack 12. Nothing I could hack -- many hours -- would get them up. I posted quite a bit about this back in February. What's "OSS compat layer" in the context of running proprietary apps compiled with old libc or libc++? me> Command line is a BMW motorcycle. X is a Land Rover with fore and me> aft PTOs and a winch. KDE is a 40-foot Winnebago that sleeps six me> with a Zodiac and a satellite dish on the roof, a Chev Cavalier in me> tow and a wine cellar under the floor. I'm a Land Rover guy. emmel> So... Does the Winnebago sit on top of the Land Rover or does emmel> it have to tow it? Well, that's kinda stretching the metaphor to make it fit the conceptualization of X "on top of" the kernel and KDE "on top of" X. Maybe when you open the engine compartment of the Winnebago, there's a whole Land Rover inside, borged, bound a gagged but with its PTOs running the Winnebago's toaster, tanning bed, sauna, bowling green, Stairmaster, barbecue and other similarly essential GUI apps. 8-) -- Mike Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada
From: Sidney Lambe on 4 Oct 2009 23:51
On alt.os.linux.slackware, 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" is obviously helped by providing > installations that have all the clicky-interface controls > traditional Win- D'ohz users have come to expect (due to being > trained by M$ software to expect things to work that way) I > have a concern that the "traditional" ways of doing things are > being slowly eroded by this feature-creep. > > 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. > > 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". > > 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, 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. > > 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. > > Am I suffering from classic nostalgia here? 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? > > Does everything need to look feel and work like Win-D'ohz to > appeal? > > Are we being slowly trained to expect "click-me" interfaces by > default? > > 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? > > Or am I just getting old(er)? > > Scuse... The meds nurse is here. Later. ;) > Right on. Sid |