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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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Quoted-Printable Test (no attachment)
by Steve Fosdick 12 Oct '01

12 Oct '01

This contains some eight bit characters like pound sign � and e with a variety of accennts (��).

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Re: [alug social] My Palm Vx has a problem with its screen :-( pleasehelp
by MJ Ray 10 Oct '01

10 Oct '01

David Freeman <david_freeman(a)rocketmail.com> writes: > An Ipaq with the PCMCIA jacket with a cisco aironet card is the dogs > dangly's. Get it with linux on it and desable one of the cisco antenna > and you have a tricorder for finding wireless lans! Free surfing! Where's the howto for it, David? ;-) -- 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] My Palm Vx has a problem with its screen :-( pleasehelp
by MJ Ray 09 Oct '01

09 Oct '01

Adam Bower <abower(a)thebowery.co.uk> writes: > Yeah, but both of my palm devices say on the back 3com, also the Palm > office is less than a stones throw from the 3com hq. I am seriously > thinking about an Ipaq now (there is a new model coming out v.soon) as > they have full multimedia and support compact flash cards. Well, I thought my Palm III was one of the last 3com units. Maybe I was wrong. YMMV, but when I last saw an Ipaq running its native software, the user interface was very poor compared to the palm, the writing seemed a bit skittish and it was over-priced for what it was. Have they improved much? Do they improve more if nuxed? > It seems that the Palm is a little dated now, as I can't see any real > innovation with the latest models (at least nothing thats worth my money), > they still have slow dragonball processors and have a new type of expansion > interface. Yes, most of the innovations seem to be coming from 3rd parties instead of Palm themselves just now. (Can you say "Psion"?) I think there's probably some life in the design yet, though. Slower CPU means more battery life... -- 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] My Palm Vx has a problem with its screen :-( pleasehelp
by MJ Ray 09 Oct '01

09 Oct '01

Adam Bower <abower(a)thebowery.co.uk> writes: > My bruv, has a handspring, complete crap. [...] It looks like you're expecting more from a palmtop than most people. I don't use IR modems and haven't run into a bug with PalmOS severe enough to warrant a full upgrade yet. What do you do to yours? > 1st is a bit of a dumb question. Its monday Oh whoops. It's Monday. > [...] anyway my less than 2 month old 3Com pcmcia network card > broke tonight so I guess maybe quality is lacking somewhere in the > production line at those ppl. Palm != 3com. Not for some time now. > I am on IRC, just in a different channel, why aren't you on #alug. or if > you are then I am nearly there as far as drinking goes ;-) but I just > caught you anyway. Damn. It's Monday. -- MJR

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Re: [alug social] My Palm Vx has a problem with its screen :-( pleasehelp
by MJ Ray 09 Oct '01

09 Oct '01

Adam Bower <abower(a)thebowery.co.uk> writes: > What gets me is that this one is a replacement for one of the ones with > the memory problem bug that was reported about a year ago :-( kind of a > bit gaulling that it is my second palm in less than a year and it is now > hosed. Well, if Palm kit is giving you trouble, why not try a Palm-compat? You can find very good reports about some of them on the groups, especially the HandSprings. > [...] Also my opinion is that if M$ get my > money if I buy a palm and I nuke the OS it is better than PalmOS taking > the money and being stuck with PalmOS and not having a choice of linux. Have you been drinking again? I just gave you the name of a Palm Linux, LinuxDA, but there are others, I think. Yes, the ipaq has more features than the low-end palms, but you pay (and pay and pay) for that. > hmmm, all to difficult, want another lightning strike to kill all of my > kit so I can start again... /me dreams Yep, drinking again. Why aren't you on IRC? -- 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] My Palm Vx has a problem with its screen :-( pleasehelp
by MJ Ray 09 Oct '01

09 Oct '01

Adam Bower <abower(a)thebowery.co.uk> writes: > Does anyone have any good suggestions for a replacement? ISTR posting asking for opinions on a cheaper palm-compat which came preinstalled with LinuxDA to uk.comp.sys.palmtops. Maybe you feel like cutting some edges? ;-) I think you've just had a rogue bad palm and shouldn't judge the whole field of palm-compats on one bad experience. I also wouldn't buy an ipaq as MS get your money even if you nux it, but that's a more personal choice, I guess.

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