Corporate creep in Linux? (mini-rantette)
in [Slackware]
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From: Glyn Millington on 10 Sep 2009 17:47 notbob <notbob(a)nothome.com> writes: > On 2009-09-10, Glyn Millington <wistanswick(a)linuxmail.org> wrote: > >> 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 :-) > > Very true, but how does this help the newbie. I got in early so was > forced to learn the ins and outs of basic bash scripting to make > changes. Now, it's not like that. Well it is IF they want to change anything. At the moment I guess the complete Linux innocent has a machine which works with a minimum amount of effort on their part. That's good!! But if they want to change things they still have to read, learn, foul it up a few times and generally get under the hood. They start pretty much where you and I started but they are dealing with a different set of difficulties, handling udev and hal and the 2.6 kernels. Like us they have to learn to RTFM and to use Google. It's all good clean fun and keeps a few interesting individuals off the streets :-) I'm impressed that neither AL C nor RM let alone the dear departed Sidney have joined this thread so far ...... 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: Leonard the Committed on 10 Sep 2009 17:52 On Wed, 09 Sep 2009 22:47:20 +0000, Mike Jones wrote: > 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 agree with this part of the post. The reason I've stuck with Slackware was the obvious lack of auto-this and that which always seemed to glitch on the other distro's I've tried. Been trying on and off for a week to get my daughters webcam up on her laptop. It used to be more predictable to troubleshoot things, I've "hit alot of stumps" lately.
From: Keith Keller on 10 Sep 2009 18:17 On 2009-09-10, Leonard the Committed <leothecomm(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > I agree with this part of the post. The reason I've stuck with Slackware > was the obvious lack of auto-this and that which always seemed to glitch > on the other distro's I've tried. This is a stated design goal of Slackware--as much as possible, rely on the various packages' configuration tools instead of writing new, distro- specific, replacements. This is more of the principle of "don't modify packages", which is why Slackware ships with a stock kernel instead of a mildly- to heavily-modified one like many others do. --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: Mike Jones on 10 Sep 2009 19:25 Responding to notbob: > On 2009-09-10, Loki Harfagr <l0k1(a)thedarkdesign.free.fr.INVALID> wrote: > >> Or if, instead of a 'good alt', you even dare to try a 'better alt' ;-) >> $ Eterm -t Escreen > > I remember trying eterm and aterm back when I first discovered > slackware. aterm had all the whistles and bells and silliness like > translucent, etc, when that was all the rage. I may look again. > > nb Whats wrong with RXVT? If you want extended function, MRXVT? -- *===( http://www.400monkeys.com/God/ *===( http://principiadiscordia.com/ *===( http://www.slackware.com/
From: notbob on 10 Sep 2009 19:36
On 2009-09-10, Leonard the Committed <leothecomm(a)gmail.com> wrote: > was the obvious lack of auto-this and that which always seemed to glitch > on the other distro's I've tried. Slack is not totally immune. I just used xwmconfig to change from default kde to fluxbox. What do I get when I invoke startx? twm! What the...?? Yes, the symlink is xinitrc -> xinitrc.fluxbox, but it goes to twm. In fact, now matter what wm I choose with xwmconfig, I get twm. I'm reduced to using startx /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.foowm to get the wm I want. So much for autoconfig. I used strace startx > foo to get a read, but got no data. It created a file, but it was empty. Do I have the wrong syntax? > Been trying on and off for a week to > get my daughters webcam up on her laptop. It used to be more predictable > to troubleshoot things, I've "hit alot of stumps" lately. I notice 13 has gphoto2, so am hoping I can get my dig camera (dreaded Canon!) to work. Got too much to do, yet, before I start flogging that horse. ;) nb |