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From: Aragorn on 15 Nov 2009 00:36
On Saturday 14 November 2009 03:46 in alt.os.linux, somebody identifying
as RodMcKay wrote...

> On Fri, 13 Nov 2009 05:42:51 +0100, Aragorn
> <aragorn(a)chatfactory.invalid> wrote:
>
>> On Friday 13 November 2009 00:38 in alt.os.linux, somebody
>> identifying as RodMcKay wrote...
>>
>>> But I can live with the limitations, I believe. But Outlook no. It
>>> handles my rather large email needs like no other. However,
>>> wouldn't like to run it under Wine, I definitely would prefer to
>>> find a Linux "equivalent" to.
>>
>> You could try that Java Outlook clone - unfortunately I do not know
>> what it's called, but Google should be able to provide for some
>> clues.
>
> Wow, sounds interesting. Definitely something to look for. It's not
> just how Outlook looks and its structure, it's the power it has which
> I've enhanced with VB scripts.

I do not know whether this application I spoke of supports VB scripting,
and if it doesn't, then that's a Good Thing (TM). <grin> VB scripting
is one of the mechanisms that allows malware to peruse your address
book and forward itself to everyone listed in there.

>>> And, YES, I definitely like all those things that Linux provides:
>>> - no need to update virus/malware definitions so often
>>
>> "So often"? How about "never"? ;-) There are no viruses for
>> GNU/Linux in the wild. Attempts have been made in controlled
>> environments as a "proof of concept" that an ELF executable could be
>> appended with virus code, but this in itself proves nothing, really.
>
> So, as I hoped, it's like a MAC in that way! Excellent!

Actually, Apple's OS-X is based upon FreeBSD, which is a UNIX-style
operating system similar to GNU/Linux. The main difference however is
that the BSD license permits the proprietary recycling of the software,
which the GNU GPL does not permit. This is one of the reasons why
Steve Jobs chose FreeBSD as the foundation for OS-X. The other reason
was that he was a longtime BSD fan, and that he had previously released
a BSD-based operating system called NeXtSTeP, which used a proprietary
graphical user interface - of which clones exist for the X Window
System.

NeXtSTeP originally ran on proprietary hardware, which was pretty much
the same as that in the MacIntosh of that era - i.e. late '80s, early
to mid '90s'. This was all during the time that Jobs was fired from
Apple Computer. Later on he was offered a return to Apple and then he
sold the hardware to Canon and took NeXtSTeP with him as a future
operating system for the Mac. NeXt computers were quite eccentric - in
both the good and the bad sense - but they were far too expensive for
the enduser and in addition to that, Jobs had a habit of spending huge
amounts of money on trivial things - e.g. he had his office repainted
several times in only a few weeks time - so the company was not exactly
granted a lot of succes.

However, all things considered, if we discard Jobs's NeXtSTeP adventure,
then GNU/Linux is older than OS-X.

>> In order for a virus to work in a UNIX operating system, the virus
>> has to be downloaded, it has to be given ownership by the root user,
>> it has to be given execute permission in the filesystem layer and it
>> then has to be manually started. All of those require conscious
>> actions from the root user. In Windows, "open" equals "execute", and
>> files are considered executable depending on the last three
>> characters of the filename - as was the case in DOS and OS/2 - while
>> in UNIX, a file is executable only if it has execute permission for
>> your user account - either directly, as in "you own the file and it
>> has execute permission for you", or indirectly, as in "you are a
>> member of a group of users who have execute permission", or "you are
>> not a member of the group of users the owner belongs to, but the file
>> has execute permission for everyone else".
>
> Very good. That's what I've always envied for MAC users.

As explained above, OS-X is younger than GNU/Linux, and this aspect of
GNU/Linux is simply an aspect of UNIX as an operating system
architecture. UNIX was first released in 1970, long before Bill Gates
ever founded MICROS~1, and I doubt whether Steve Jobs would have been
very active around that time already as well. ;-)

> But MACs are an impossible situation since there's nothing like WINE
> for those apps we absolutely cannot find a native replacement for.

It is possible to install Wine on OS-X, but it requires installing an X
Window System, which is the default graphical engine in a UNIX-style
operating system. It is possible to install X.Org or XFree86 on OS-X,
but OS-X natively uses a proprietary graphical user interface which
itself is not X11-compatible.

> Linux seems to be the best of both worlds!

GNU/Linux is better than either one. It is free - as in "freedom" - and
most distributions are also available /for/ free - as in "free beer".

>>> - no need to repeatedly wipe the drive and reinstall!!! That I've
>>> always loved the idea of.
>>
>> Actually, that is how a computer should be used. All of the quirks
>> of regualarly rebooting, running antivirus software and a tight
>> firewall, periodically defragmenting the filesystem, periodically
>> reinstalling the operating system, periodic crashes et al, are all
>> MICROS~1'isms. Real computers don't do that. MICROS~1 has built its
>> entire career around turning a computer into a kitchen sink appliane
>> with a perverse sense of humor. That's an awful waste of a perfectly
>> good computer.
>
> You know, it's been said by others but I remember thinking early on
> how clever a plot Micro$oft had in keeping all the Windows
> vulnerabilities it has! And time has proven this sentiment correct!
> The anti-malware industry earns big bucks for so many companies!

Exactly, and so does the hardware industry. MICROS~1 bloats its next
versions of FascistOS so much and breaks backward compatibility, so
that the customer is forced to buy a new and more powerful computer,
which the hardware manufacturers reward by supporting Windows only with
their various peripherals. It's pure fascism: corporations working
together and covering eachother's back.

> I want out of that!! It's things like have my computer slow down each
> night while it takes several hours to run through my 200gig hdd that
> feels so unnecessary! So glad that it's been confirmed that Linux
> won't need that. What a relief!

The only thing UNIX systems typically do - although you can of course
tweak or disable this as per your preferences - is rotate logs
overnight, usually around 04:00, and index files for the (s)locate
feature. However, this only takes a few minutes.

>> UNIX systems are secure, stable, portable, flexible, scalable,
>> versatile, powerful multi-user platforms and always have been. It's
>> the core design of UNIX, which was developed on a multi-user
>> minicomputer. UNIX is designed for 24/7 uptime - one does not just
>> go and reboot a mission-critical minicomputer, supercomputer or
>> mainframe, and an operating system crash on such a system is
>> intolerable as well, given the responsibilities towards the paying
>> customers and the financial implications of failing to live up to
>> those responsibilities.
>
> Wow, thanks for the education. Makes infinite sense to me. But,
> then, I've never equated Micro$oft with sense ... at any moment!

MICROS~1 is all about power, more than about money. Every computer
running MICROS~1 software is endebted to MICROS~1 for use of their
<cough> "intellectual property". That, plus that FascistOS is spyware;
it phones home once every week.

>> As for the learning curve, *everything* has one, but many people hide
>> behind that term "learning curve" simply because they can't let go of
>> a Windows addiction and habituation. This is not a flaw in GNU/Linux
>> but a flaw in the biological unit between the keyboard and the chair.
>> ;-)
>
> I hear you. I've had other obstacles, too. But I've taught myself
> everything I know. From DOS to Windows 3.1/3.11 to Win95, Win98SE to
> WinXP ... and I was running Win3.x at the end with a Win95 GUI called
> Calmira so with all these experiences, have had to deal with steep
> learning curves before. As long as I can eventually run at the same
> speed on my end with none of the Windows hassles, that's all I care
> about. One of the two biggest obstacles seemed the file system one.
> But I should have known that Linux wouldn't have a FAT32 size
> limitation problem and that there was a way around that.

You are not supposed to install GNU/Linux on a FAT/FAT32. The current
Linux-native filesystems are ext2, ext3 and ext4. The latter two have
journaling and are to be preferred over ext2, but you are not limited
to those only. The Linux kernel also has built-in support for
reiserfs, XFS and JFS as filesystems upon which you can install the
system. XFS in Linux is a port from SGI's IRIX filesystem, and JFS is
a port of IBM's AIX filesystem.

The latter two are extremly fast and robust, but I would recommend
connecting your computer to a UPS if you're going to use one of these,
since they only commit the data to disk at the last moment so as to
increase performance, and this could lead to serious data loss in the
event of a power failure. They also have journaling, but due to the
aggressive caching, you would suffer more dataloss than in the event of
a powerfailure while using ext3 or ext4.

GNU/Linux requires at least two partitions, i.e. one for the main
filesystem - called "the root filesystem - and a dedicated swap
partition. Linux can use swapfiles, but a swap partition is still
faster. (Note: This is not a partition with a swapfile on it; it
doesn't have a filesystem on it even, and it's formatted in an entirely
different way.)

While the above is the easy approach in terms of allocating enough space
for the system, the applications and your own work files, it is
possible to "split off" certain sections of the system onto other
partitions with a filesystem of their own (and of your choice). Per
illustration, here's my current partitioning on this box here:

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda2 393M 179M 214M 46% /
/dev/hda1 197M 38M 159M 20% /boot
/dev/hda3 9.8G 2.5G 7.3G 26% /usr
/dev/hda6 746M 33M 714M 5% /opt
/dev/hda7 2.0G 359M 1.6G 19% /var
/dev/hda8 298M 33M 266M 11% /usr/local
/dev/hda9 79G 2.0G 77G 3% /home
/dev/hda10 21G 3.2G 18G 16% /srv
none 1014M 16M 999M 2% /tmp

The leftmost column represents the device special files which form the
abstraction layer for userspace access to the various partitions.
The "none" in the last line is there because I have "/tmp" reside on
a /tmpfs/ - i.e. a pageable RAM-based filesystem that only consumes as
much RAM as the space occupied by what's residing on that filesystem.

The rightmost column represents the directories the partitions are
mounted on. To the enduser, this bears no importance as the file
hierarchy is always the same whether you are using multiple partitions
or just one root filesystem with everything on it. As you can tell,
the swap partition is also not listed there because it is mounted into
the kernel directly, not via userspace.

The "/srv" directory may or may not exist in the distribution of your
choice. It is included in the File Hierarcy Standard (FHS) version 2.3
for shareable storage of things that would traditionally be placed
under the "/var" tree but don't really belong there - e.g. webpages, an
FTP repository, etc. - but not all GNU/Linux distributions implement
it, and those that do usually leave it at the administrator's
discretion how to further organize this directory.

Another useful thing to mention - at least, in my opinion - is that in
the event of using multiple partitions, not only can you use a
different filesystem type for each of them if so desired, but you can
also format them with different blocksizes and specify different mount
options for them. For instance, I have "/boot", "/usr", "/usr/local"
and "/opt" mounted read-only during normal operation, since they only
contain static data - i.e. the bulk of the multi-user software. Having
them read-only also improves system security and reduces any chances of
data corruption should a crash occur - which happens quite a lot on
this machine here due to flawed hardware, by the way.

With regard to the consumed diskspace in the above overview, this is
only a temporary installation - of PCLinuxOS 2009.2 - given that the
hardware has flaws, and so I don't have too much installed, but it does
have a complete OpenOffice /and/ KOffice, The Gimp and a bunch of very
common other software.

The filesystem used on each of the above partitions is reiserfs - since
recently also cynically referred to as killerfs[1] - which is fairly
reliable and fast but unfortunately does not have a complete toolset
like ext2/3/4, XFS or JFS. I am using it because it's a B-plus tree
filesystem (like XFS and JFS, but without the aggressive caching) and
it's quite a lot faster than ext2/3. ext4 is still relatively new and
promises to be a lot faster than its predecessors. The ext-family of
filesystems also has B-trees but they are disabled by default. (They
can be switched on via the /tune2fs/ tool, though.)

[1] This is version 3.6 of the Reiser Filesystem. Version 4.0 is called
reiser4 and is quite revolutionary, but it's not part of the
upstream Linux kernel. Version 3.6 is still being maintained
somewhat, but Hans Reiser, the chief developer of these filesystems
and the founder of NameSys, is currently serving a long prison
sentence for the murder of his estranged wife. I don't know what
has become of NameSys in the meantime, but it was already put up for
sale even before Reiser was convicted, albeit that nobody seemed
interested in buying it.

--
*Aragorn*
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)
From: RodMcKay on 15 Nov 2009 13:59
On Sun, 15 Nov 2009 06:36:35 +0100, Aragorn
<aragorn(a)chatfactory.invalid> wrote:

>On Saturday 14 November 2009 03:46 in alt.os.linux, somebody identifying
>as RodMcKay wrote...
>
>> On Fri, 13 Nov 2009 05:42:51 +0100, Aragorn
>> <aragorn(a)chatfactory.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>> On Friday 13 November 2009 00:38 in alt.os.linux, somebody
>>> identifying as RodMcKay wrote...
>>>
>>>> But I can live with the limitations, I believe. But Outlook no. It
>>>> handles my rather large email needs like no other. However,
>>>> wouldn't like to run it under Wine, I definitely would prefer to
>>>> find a Linux "equivalent" to.
>>>
>>> You could try that Java Outlook clone - unfortunately I do not know
>>> what it's called, but Google should be able to provide for some
>>> clues.

Interesting. Wonder how good it'll be. Interesting to find out.

[snip]

>Actually, Apple's OS-X is based upon FreeBSD, which is a UNIX-style
....

[snip] Most interesting. I didn't know all this stuff.

>GNU/Linux is better than either one. It is free - as in "freedom" - and
>most distributions are also available /for/ free - as in "free beer".

<sigh> Yup! Great news.

>>>> - no need to repeatedly wipe the drive and reinstall!!! That I've
>>>> always loved the idea of.
>>>
>>> Actually, that is how a computer should be used. All of the quirks
>>> of regualarly rebooting, running antivirus software and a tight
>>> firewall, periodically defragmenting the filesystem, periodically
>>> reinstalling the operating system, periodic crashes et al, are all
>>> MICROS~1'isms. Real computers don't do that. MICROS~1 has built its
>>> entire career around turning a computer into a kitchen sink appliane
>>> with a perverse sense of humor. That's an awful waste of a perfectly
>>> good computer.

Yeah, you've expressed what I've been most disgruntled about; I like
that, _real_ computers shouldn't be that way and _don't_ operate that
way. You don't know how many times I've been forced to answer that
one to my family ... "yup, you're absolutely right, but that's Window$
for you and what can we do ... ???? <sigh>.

Get this, I'm scheduled for two sessions in near future, as soon as I
can manage it, time-wise - the friend I gave my old 11gig box to with
Win98SE can't burn anymore. Well, time to go over and
reformat/reinstall 'cause that's a sure sign that it's time to do the
old overhaul! Fortunately, it's my old box and I kept all the
drivers, etc., for it. A 2-3 hour session to get her back up and
running and a free lunch and it'll be done.

My sister's computer quit about a month ago. I'll have to go over
there and do the same for her, but no such luck re the drivers and
such. Probably no installation CD, either. So that one will probably
be a much longer session or multiple sessions ... <gr> Free lunch
ain't gonna cut that one!

But my friend has been warned. The instant, and I mean the instant
that I'm more comfortable with Linux, enough to show her how to rip
CDs and burn, she's getting switched over to it, no ifs ands or buts!!

My sister, well, she's going to get the Linux talk, too, and very
soon!

My uncle's laptop stopped being able to install last year. The
instant it gets worse and he gets desperate, he's going to get the
"Linux talk", too. I think that my own buggy system and all these
other systems failing in the family and with my friend have
accelerated this decision.

Enough is enough, M$!!! <g>

[snip]

>MICROS~1 is all about power, more than about money. Every computer
>running MICROS~1 software is endebted to MICROS~1 for use of their
><cough> "intellectual property". That, plus that FascistOS is spyware;
>it phones home once every week.

Ahhh, yes. That, too. An oversight on my part for not saying it, but
you're right that it's all about power, too.

>>> As for the learning curve, *everything* has one, but many people hide
>>> behind that term "learning curve" simply because they can't let go of
>>> a Windows addiction and habituation. This is not a flaw in GNU/Linux
>>> but a flaw in the biological unit between the keyboard and the chair.
>>> ;-)

True. But I'm not such an animal. I've migrated from electric
typewriters, to electronic ones, to the first office wordprocessors,
to DOS, from DOS through Win3x and then all the Window$ flavours,
except Vista (and I'm never even going there, never mind Win7!).
Alongside that I've also gone through literally _thousands_ of
different pieces of software. I don't think it would be an
over-estimation to say that I've literally tested 2000-3000 software
titles in last 10 years ever since I got my own home computer. I
literally have to test at least 50 pieces of software till I find the
one that does _everything_ that I need for each task and in a good
way, and that adds up over time since I do so much both at office and
at home. The only things that have stuck throughout the years are the
apps that I have never managed to replace: WordPerfect, Filemaker
Pro, Outlook and Excel and PowerPoint. Those are the constants (and
I'm no MS fan, although if memory serves, the MS apps weren't even
developed by MS anyway, merely taken over by).

The _only_ reason I even have MS to begin with is because of work.
For me, I wouldn't even have it most likely except that now that I
know them, I know it'll be difficult to find replacements for them.
VB might be basis for malware, that's true, but once you start using
it, wow. OpenOffice translated my files, sure, but I lost all
automation and power besides which OO still has some finetuning to do
on its processes/interface as it's really rather clunky.

[snip]

>You are not supposed to install GNU/Linux on a FAT/FAT32. The current
>Linux-native filesystems are ext2, ext3 and ext4. The latter two have
>journaling and are to be preferred over ext2, but you are not limited
>to those only. The Linux kernel also has built-in support for

Thanks.

>GNU/Linux requires at least two partitions, i.e. one for the main
>filesystem - called "the root filesystem - and a dedicated swap
>partition. Linux can use swapfiles, but a swap partition is still
>faster. (Note: This is not a partition with a swapfile on it; it
>doesn't have a filesystem on it even, and it's formatted in an entirely
>different way.)

Kewl, thanks.

[snip - great figures and explanation here]

>Another useful thing to mention - at least, in my opinion - is that in
>the event of using multiple partitions, not only can you use a
>different filesystem type for each of them if so desired, but you can
>also format them with different blocksizes and specify different mount
>options for them. For instance, I have "/boot", "/usr", "/usr/local"
>and "/opt" mounted read-only during normal operation, since they only
>contain static data - i.e. the bulk of the multi-user software. Having
>them read-only also improves system security and reduces any chances of
>data corruption should a crash occur - which happens quite a lot on
>this machine here due to flawed hardware, by the way.

I'm guessing it isn't necessary, though? We can just stick with one
across the board, like ext3, or what have you?

>With regard to the consumed diskspace in the above overview, this is
>only a temporary installation - of PCLinuxOS 2009.2 - given that the
>hardware has flaws, and so I don't have too much installed, but it does
>have a complete OpenOffice /and/ KOffice, The Gimp and a bunch of very
>common other software.

Um, your hardware or hardware in general? Not sure I got that part.

[snip]

I have to admit that I didn't understand all of that but that's just
because I've not learned a lot about hardware issues. I can't replace
my box easily so I've never messed with it, otherwise I'd be as strong
in this aspect as I am in the software side of things.

Thanks, lots of great information here. :oD

From: J.O. Aho on 15 Nov 2009 14:37
RodMcKay wrote:

> I have no choice there. Work will be M$ probably for the foreseeable
> future. I can't give it up completely at work so I'll have to keep it
> on hand at home. Recently had to go to Office 2007 and that further
> alienated me from M$. But I've switched OSsa before several times,
> nothing new there.

I have been quite lucky, I have been able to choose my OS to use at work the
last 4 employments I have had, and I have of course chosen to use Linux, it
have given mer more than use microsoft.


--

//Aho
From: Aragorn on 15 Nov 2009 16:04
On Sunday 15 November 2009 19:59 in alt.os.linux, somebody identifying
as RodMcKay wrote...

> On Sun, 15 Nov 2009 06:36:35 +0100, Aragorn
> <aragorn(a)chatfactory.invalid> wrote:
>
>>>> As for the learning curve, *everything* has one, but many people
>>>> hide behind that term "learning curve" simply because they can't
>>>> let go of a Windows addiction and habituation. This is not a flaw
>>>> in GNU/Linux but a flaw in the biological unit between the keyboard
>>>> and the chair. ;-)
>
> True. But I'm not such an animal. I've migrated from electric
> typewriters, to electronic ones, to the first office wordprocessors,
> to DOS, from DOS through Win3x and then all the Window$ flavours,
> except Vista (and I'm never even going there, never mind Win7!).

I myself had been using DOS on other people's computers, and when I
bought my first own computer, it came with DOS 5.0 and Windows 3.x. I
only used it like that for about five months, until OS/2 2.0 became
available for retail.

Then I've used OS/2 2.0 and 2.1 for about five years, and although I
really wanted a UNIX for my next system, proprietary UNIX was
incredibly expensive for endusers, and GNU/Linux was still largely
unknown to me - it was still in its infancy and I didn't even have an
internet connection - so I compromised on NT 4.0 Workstation. I used
that for only two years and then I switched to a (purchased) Mandrake
GNU/Linux distribution. I have never used anything other than
GNU/Linux on my own computers since, and I only got my internet
connection after I was already exclusively running GNU/Linux.

> Alongside that I've also gone through literally _thousands_ of
> different pieces of software. I don't think it would be an
> over-estimation to say that I've literally tested 2000-3000 software
> titles in last 10 years ever since I got my own home computer. I
> literally have to test at least 50 pieces of software till I find the
> one that does _everything_ that I need for each task and in a good
> way, and that adds up over time since I do so much both at office and
> at home. The only things that have stuck throughout the years are the
> apps that I have never managed to replace: WordPerfect, Filemaker
> Pro, Outlook and Excel and PowerPoint. Those are the constants (and
> I'm no MS fan, although if memory serves, the MS apps weren't even
> developed by MS anyway, merely taken over by).

That is the case for most of their stuff. You (or someone else)
mentioned WordPerfect. Well, WordPerfect existed in a GNU/Linux
version, but WordPerfect had been bought by Corel - who also had their
own, albeit crappy GNU/Linux distribution.

Then MICROS~1 expressed an interest in acquiring Corel - officially so
that they could incorporate the CorelDRAW technology into their own
products, but everyone knows that the main incentive was to kill of
Corel's GNU/Linux distribution and its WordPerfect for GNU/Linux
support.

>> Another useful thing to mention - at least, in my opinion - is that
>> in the event of using multiple partitions, not only can you use a
>> different filesystem type for each of them if so desired, but you can
>> also format them with different blocksizes and specify different
>> mount options for them.
>>
>> For instance, I have "/boot", "/usr", "/usr/local" and "/opt" mounted
>> read-only during normal operation, since they only contain static
>> data - i.e. the bulk of the multi-user software. Having them
>> read-only also improves system security and reduces any chances of
>> data corruption should a crash occur - which happens quite a lot on
>> this machine here due to flawed hardware, by the way.
>
> I'm guessing it isn't necessary, though? We can just stick with one
> across the board, like ext3, or what have you?

It is not necessary to use different types of filesystems for different
partitions, and it is indeed also not necessary to use multiple
partitions, but it *is* advised to at the very least keep "/home" on a
separate partition, and in professional circles one typically opts for
spreading out the system over multiple partitions. They don't even
need to be physical partitions, because you can use logical volumes for
most of those filesystems instead, even, which offers more flexibility
than static partitions in terms of assigning diskspace.

Having the system spread out over multiple partitions or logical volumes
reduces fragmentation - not that this is an issue, but every filesystem
eventually gets fragmented when it starts to fill up - and reduces the
chances of data corruption. The idea is to keep the static filesystems
separate from the dynamic ones - such as "/var" and "/tmp" - and the
shareable separate from the non-shareable.

It's all about organization and efficiency. In the end, you get to
decide, because it's your computer, not MICROS~1's. ;-)

>> With regard to the consumed diskspace in the above overview, this is
>> only a temporary installation - of PCLinuxOS 2009.2 - given that the
>> hardware has flaws, and so I don't have too much installed, but it
>> does have a complete OpenOffice /and/ KOffice, The Gimp and a bunch
>> of very common other software.
>
> Um, your hardware or hardware in general? Not sure I got that part.

This particular computer here from which I am typing this. At the
moment this is my only usable machine so I need it for a few elementary
tasks, but its hardware is flawed - probably bad capacitors or a broken
keyboard controller.

First I thought it was the RAM but this has already been replaced. It
regularly hangs with flashing keyboard LEDs. I'm no engineer so I
can't really say what the problem is. Oh well, it'll have to make do
for now... :-/

--
*Aragorn*
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)
From: RodMcKay on 16 Nov 2009 23:15
On Sun, 15 Nov 2009 20:37:17 +0100, "J.O. Aho" <user(a)example.net>
wrote:

>RodMcKay wrote:
>
>> I have no choice there. Work will be M$ probably for the foreseeable
>> future. I can't give it up completely at work so I'll have to keep it
>> on hand at home. Recently had to go to Office 2007 and that further
>> alienated me from M$. But I've switched OSsa before several times,
>> nothing new there.
>
>I have been quite lucky, I have been able to choose my OS to use at work the
>last 4 employments I have had, and I have of course chosen to use Linux, it
>have given mer more than use microsoft.

Yes, lucky you! Wish we had that kind of choice. If it weren't for
the fact that that's the OS everywhere I go re work, I'd be able to
drop Window$ much more easily. <g>

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