Social October 2001

social@lists.alug.org.uk

14 participants
33 discussions

Re: [alug social] FW: (forw) Of Linux bigots
by MJ Ray 16 Oct '01

16 Oct '01

oms101(a)freeuk.com writes: > It seems to me rock solid under motif or lestif, Ah, remember that the motif at UEA will be some ancient OSF build... That may well explain it. -- MJR

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Re: [alug social] FW: (forw) Of Linux bigots
by MJ Ray 16 Oct '01

16 Oct '01

oms101(a)freeuk.com writes: > If you want an easy to use GUI X based text editor you may want to try nedit ...if you can stand *that* toolkit... seriously, I know Andrew swears by it, while I just swear at it for the Motif flakiness at UEA ;-) Is it any better built against lesstif? > PS I would like to suggest we get adam or another vi fan and an emacs fan such > as Mark here to run a debate at an alug meeting over which is better Vi or > emacs. I think you'd need someone who followed the religion a bit more closely than me. Most of my interest in XEmacs comes from the wonderful applications which have been developed on top of it, such as gnus and pcl-cvs. -- MJR Do you need advice about the Internet or particular net services? Why not talk to my employers? See http://www.luminas.co.uk/ for details.

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Re: [alug social] FW: (forw) Of Linux bigots
by MJ Ray 15 Oct '01

15 Oct '01

"John Woodard" <mail(a)johnwoodard.co.uk> writes: > As an aside I'm totally impartial in this conflict coz I can't understand > either of the buggers so I'll stick with Pico or Kwrite for now. People attack one editor I use (XEmacs) because of its keyboard shortcuts and they attack the other (wily) because of its extensive use of the mouse. Can't win, can you? By the way, if you like pico, try jpico from the joe package. nano is also another good replacement for it. -- MJR

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Re: [alug social] FW: (forw) Of Linux bigots
by MJ Ray 15 Oct '01

15 Oct '01

Jonathan McDowell <noodles(a)earth.li> writes: > Operatives have already been dispatched. Sadly, Jonathan didn't think to cc me, so I was already dead by the time I read this. I also made approximately the same points. Anyone else in London on Thursday and want to meet up? Or Norwich tomorrow? -- MJR

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Re: [alug social] FW: (forw) Of Linux bigots
by MJ Ray 14 Oct '01

14 Oct '01

Ashley <ash(a)blueskyresearch.net> writes: > I'm guessing you're an Emacs user. <ashley starts to zip up flamesuit> I'm far more of a vi-hater than an Emacs user, I think. The one reason to learn vi is that it is on every system. How the hell they got it into the standard is beyond me. That anyone uses it when there's a choice is incredible. -- MJR

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Re: [alug social] FW: (forw) Of Linux bigots
by MJ Ray 14 Oct '01

14 Oct '01

oms101(a)freeuk.com writes: > This does not meen I think that drag and drop is imposible on light weight > applications my favourate graphical file manager XFtree/Xtree is an ideal xftree is dead! Long live ROX-Filer! > having played with Motif now I shall finish my current project and if I ever > right a linux GUI based application again I am using Qt because I think David > is right Motif and maybe other "traditional" widget sets are poor. Qt is just another traditional widget set. Well, actually, no, it's a widget set with a particularly stupid preprocessor requirement which tries to "embrace and extend". It annoys me. I'm planning to look more closely at GTK. Probably with guile-gtk. > vi does not folloew conventional User Interface theory but still is imprssive as > one gets to use it, maybe the theory is wrong. vi is impossible. Because of its stupendously braindead interface, I *still* end up nuking large chunks of files in error and have to abort the edit. vim's multiple undo makes it tolerable, but vim is hardly light. Hidden "modes" are UI blasphemy, I think. I can't give a single situation where they improve matters. Can you? -- MJR

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Re: [alug social] FW: (forw) Of Linux bigots
by MJ Ray 14 Oct '01

14 Oct '01

"John Woodard" <mail(a)johnwoodard.co.uk> writes: > Why? AFAIA a pragmatist is a person who takes a practical approach to > problems. What is the matter with that? I can understand that sort of > reaction for anti-Microsoft zealots. Those partisans really don't do any > favours for the open source/free software movement but as you say "Realists > are good" surely in this context realists and pragmatists are one in the > same, or at least a pragmatist is a type of realist. Pragmatists are people who like something because "it does the job". These are the people who are coming to Linux because they feel it does the job better than Windows, but they do not feel any particular sympathy with the software freedoms which are the root cause of why Linux does the job better for them. As a result, they're all too happy to continue using closed software on a free platform and we will sink slowly back into the mire, losing each iteration of software development through corporate games, instead of standing on the shoulders of giants as free software allows us. Realists are people who can see the value of software freedoms, but can accept that sometimes the perfect world doesn't exist here yet. A Linux-using pragmatist is someone who wishes they could run Microsoft Office on Linux (or maybe does). A realist is someone who is using whatever tool does the job now, but is helping to test or develop one of the free office suites. Yes to realists. No to pragmatists. Just my opinion. -- MJR

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Re: [alug social] FW: (forw) Of Linux bigots
by MJ Ray 14 Oct '01

14 Oct '01

oms101(a)freeuk.com writes: > So why do I think we stand a chance of fixing the situation? Simple - KDE and > GNOME. KDE and Gnome both solve the basic problem of making writing GUIs > for applications on Unix a lot easier, making the applications look good and > providing all the mod-cons that users expect (internationalisation, > drag-drop, object linking etc). Uh, did we need KDE or Gnome to provide them? Yes, they make some of them rather easier, but the core problems (translators, choice) aren't addressed by those hooge wedges of code in the current top desktop environments. Others (drag-drop) are perfectly possible just from the toolkit level. > * bigots are bad Agreed. > * pragmatists and enthusiasts are good. Wrong! Pragmatists are the most terrible thing that we have ever been cursed with. Realists are good, but most pragmatists would sell all the progress we've made with Free software down the river in order to overtake the market leader. Thank $DEITY for fundamentalists to keep the balance. > * The Unix/X desktop has been a mess for the last 10 years+ > * Finally there is some movement but there is a long way to go. Has the movement been in the correct direction, or just following the Jones's though? One of the most innovative interfaces I use is the "wily" text editor, which breaks nearly every "rule" in the accepted traditions of user interface design, but still works because it is very efficient to use. > * For many applications Linux or Unix is a very good choice. > Even some applications on the desktop can be very well fulfilled > with Linux. It is difficult to convince people - to the bigots I > say don't just argue with people - show them what it can do! And > if it can't do what people need retire gracefully and make sure > the writers of the applications know about the shortcoming or > help add features yourself! Again, very very true. Remember to scratch your itches, people! -- MJR Do you need advice about the Internet or particular net services? Why not talk to my employers? See http://www.luminas.co.uk/ for details.

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FW: (forw) Of Linux bigots
by oms101＠freeuk.com 12 Oct '01

12 Oct '01

I just felt that this was a nice post on another lug list that should be posted. Regards Owen Synge -----FW: <20011012220624.D372@tardis>----- Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2001 22:06:24 +0100 Sender: linux-users-admin(a)lists.man.ac.uk From: "Dr. David Alan Gilbert" <gilbertd(a)treblig.org> To: linux-users(a)lists.man.ac.uk Subject: (forw) Of Linux bigots Hi, I wrote the following reply to Jack Schofield's article in computer weekly; I'm not quite sure where I saw a link to it from however and the URL is enormous and just going to the home page gives me a registration thing. Dave -- Forwarded message from "Dr. David Alan Gilbert" <gilbertd(a)treblig.org> ----- Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2001 21:54:11 +0100 To: cw360editorial(a)cw360.com User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.22i From: "Dr. David Alan Gilbert" <gilbertd(a)treblig.org> Subject: Of Linux bigots Hi, I'd like to respond a little to your article about Linux bigots. I've got to say I fall a little into that category but I hope I have at least some pragmatism! (For reference I run Linux at home and on my desktop at work, but also run NT at work for MS-Office. Let me also admit to previously being an Acorn owner who bailed out to Linux) Let me first agree that there are a lot of Linux bigots out there; let me say that this is a bad thing and most people in the Linux community would agree that pragmatism can help a lot! Let me also say that I couldn't presently do everything I wanted to do to my satisfaction compltely on Linux; but most things I can and that is what I use most of the time. So now the places I disagree. The important place I disagree is in the lack of improvement relative to the late 80's. Fundamentally the problem with Next and NeWS were that they were only championed by one company on their hardware. That hardware was expensive and didn't keep up with the performance advances being made on the PC. It is obvious that the PC has won in hardware terms - something I realised towards 1994 when I gave up on my Acorn Archimedes and bought my first PC (running Linux). (OK then I fell for this Alpha pack in 97......) Unfortunatly Next and NeWS died with their hardware pretty much (yes I know NeWS went to PCs at one point - name a few people who used it? I seem to remember it being ludicrously expensive) and very little if anything developed in Next and NeWS made their way back into the rest of the Unix community - and that is the prime reason Unix hasn't landed on the desktop. Writing graphical applications for Unix under X Windows under the traditional tools is a pain; they look crap, they are about as user friendly as a brick and take real effort to do simple things in. That is why for perhaps 15 years X looked crap and all the applications people write are crap. So I think what you are suggesting is that the Linux users should shut up because they are never going to get out of this mess and go and install Windows? Well sorry; I'm not going to do that - and I think we do stand a chance of digging ourselves out - but at the moment for a lot of people they will need Windows - purely because there is nothing yet to compete with MS Office (StarOffice/OpenOffice/KDE Office isn't there yet for the advanced user). So why do I think we stand a chance of fixing the situation? Simple - KDE and GNOME. KDE and Gnome both solve the basic problem of making writing GUIs for applications on Unix a lot easier, making the applications look good and providing all the mod-cons that users expect (internationalisation, drag-drop, object linking etc). This means that people are now starting to write applications for Linux and Unix that actually look good, that feel easy to use and are reliable. More importantly it means that those programmers are now spending their time actually working on giving their applications facilities - the ones users of large software packages have had for a while - rather than spending 6 months trying to add drag and drop. The other thing about KDE and Gnome is that they have been developed outside of hardware vendors. This gives the fading few Unix hardware vendors the opportunity to come together rather than arguing with each other all the time. In particular Sun has been very helpful with Gnome. Are we there yet? No. Do we stand a chance? Yes I think so - but we have a lot to do. So back to bigots. We can do without them; we need enthusiasts; we need people who understand what Linux can be used for and push it for it - hard! We also need people who understand the limitations - and we need to address those limitations rather than turning over and giving up! At the moment I see a big danger in the Gnome v KDE bigotry. Many of the developers are now cooperating but there are many biggotted users and developers. It is important to understand that with any tool KDE and GNOME each have their own strengths and weeknesses. Konqueror on KDE is one hell of a web browser; Gnumeric on Gnome is a pretty decent spreadsheet; there are other particularly good points and bad points about each. However the advantage of open source software is that while the tools are flexible and we can beat those weaknesses out. The other danger is distribution bigotry. Again each has strengths and weeknesses. what is more difficult is to iron these out because many of the distributions want to fight each other. We need to take care but the point is that we should be able to make Linux usable for everyone if we are careful. Just comparing a Linux installation from today with one of perhaps 5 years ago will show you that they are now much easier; but there is still a way to go. In summary, * bigots are bad * pragmatists and enthusiasts are good. * The Unix/X desktop has been a mess for the last 10 years+ * Finally there is some movement but there is a long way to go. * For many applications Linux or Unix is a very good choice. Even some applications on the desktop can be very well fulfilled with Linux. It is difficult to convince people - to the bigots I say don't just argue with people - show them what it can do! And if it can't do what people need retire gracefully and make sure the writers of the applications know about the shortcoming or help add features yourself! Dave ----- End forwarded message ----- ---------------- Have a happy GNU millennium! ---------------------- / Dr. David Alan Gilbert | Running GNU/Linux on Alpha,68K| Happy \ \ gro.gilbert @ treblig.org | MIPS,x86,ARM, SPARC and HP-PA | In Hex / \ _________________________|_____ http://www.treblig.org |_______/ --------------End of forwarded message------------------------- Date: 12-Oct-01 Time: 23:37:24

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Quoted-Printable Test (EOL Test)
by Steve Fosdick 12 Oct '01

12 Oct '01

This is line one with a coded space at the end and this is line two without and lines three which has two coded spaces

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Social October 2001