why do people post just for the heck of it

[vitalstatistix]

I know this is gonna cause lotsa bad mouthing, but i guess about time

have a look at the kind of opinions being passed around on http://www.pcmech.com/ubb/Forum11/HTML/000423.html

lots of emotions and self assumptions, i really doubt if that helps anyone. and Thats certainly not fair.

Its fair to share experiecne about different distro etc, but hwo much do some of these people know what *nix tecnology is anyways. "Command Line Junkies huh" . well .. thats a stupid insulting phrase for all the seasoned people in the open source community who contribute not make sweeping statements
http://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/doc...nux-HOWTO.html

I think the best will be to warn people b4 they post junk.

advantage
a) threads will be shorter
b) will be to-the-point
c) will only increase the credibility of the boards

all flamer are welcome, please follow the well guided path to my garbage bin, and yeah . mind that CAT5 cable, dont trip over it, its carrying Linux data!

gtfx

[Statica]

This is most definitely not a flame, but an agreement, I find the buzz words aimed, maybe harmless in spirit, but still are pretty offensive.

The command line is the essence of what makes a UNIX/Linux as powerful as it is. The GUI is what imparts its flakiness. I know that the GUI is the reason why people have been going towards Linux as a desktop OS, but it still doesnt teach the users to use the OS correctly, and leads to a lot of security breaches. I shudder at the thought of Linux users wooed by the promise of a stable desktop, without knowing much else, running this OS on a broadband, thankfully the fone lines are too narrow to cause much damage, but imagine the same havoc across a wider pipe.

If you wish to learn Linux, learn it right, respect the commandline, use the GUI as a tool not as the OS, and research research research!

Good luck with Linux.

[mairving]

Now wait a minute guys. You can't have both. You can't have Linux taking over the OS world but have most everything still at the command line. I agree to be successful in Linux, you must know the strokes it takes. But if Linux is to be made for the masses, this won't play.
I would have to disagree with your other point about emotions and self-assumptions. This is a public forum and emotions and self-assumptions are what people are about. I don't think that you should put a notice on the door for people to check their emotions at the door. If that was the case, PC Mech would be gone. Instead I think that we ought to say all opinions, even stupid ones, are welcome. I am not trying to bash you bro' but I don't agree with you. But hey it's a free country, I have a right to be wrong.

[Xayd]

I agree mairving. If I wanted mundane discussion about open source, I could find it easily somewhere else. There are tons of sites full of it.

I also disagree with the assumption that this is only a "tech help" board. Again, if I wanted to participate in such a mundane environment as people saying "x is my problem, help is appreciated", I could find plenty of it somewhere else.

This board is the closest thing to "conversation" that I've seen with "technical oriented" boards.

And the "command line junky" comment was posted in jest, and if someone can't take a joke, perhaps that person should avoid human contact and casual conversation, which can be done very successfully on most of the "open source" help forums.

Here's a sweeping statement that I think holds pretty true...

I find that the active member of the open source community on average thinks he or she is better than everyone else, simply by virtue of learning how to compile a kernel from How-To docs. Their hatred of "user friendliness" and other "graphical" operating systems is more political in nature than practical. Sure, everyone can play in the open source sandbox, great. All you have to do is read through 334537094578039475 doc pages and learn how to sift through their beaurocratic means of organizing everything they take part in.

At this point you'll surely raise your "it isn't supposed to be EASY" fist, but take note of the fall of Linuxcare. The internal bickering and whining and overall childishness by the open source side of the management of that company doomed it from the get go. There are a thousand and one theoretical assumptions made by the open source crowd every day about the rest of the "proprietary" world. It's when accurate theoretical assumptions get made back at them that they get riled up.

I'll still use my favorite distro because of its stability and functionality, but if Linux ever wants to achieve real potential, some very core assumptions and ideas must change within the open source community. Top of that list being that they are not by virtue of existence better than anyone else, neither do they have the right to pass judgement on anyone else because they don't make any money, and the others do.

The current situation is, if I want total ease of use and good stability, I buy NT or a MAC. If I need something for a large network, then I'm the company with money to spend, so I buy Solaris and the hardware and support from Sun to go with it.

If I'm the one in a thousand computer users that likes to tinker, or the one in a million who just likes his OS to be stable for the (very few) supported games, I get Linux.

The open source people have been excluding themselves from the rest of the world, purposefully, for years. Because of who and what they are, they'll continue to do so, I'm sorry to say. I'll keep tinkering and playing with my Red Hat partition, and I still like it for its stability, but Linux will never be a significant threat to other "proprietary" operating systems, due to the egoes and attitudes that contribute to it. In essence, they are what they claim to hate.


Xayd



[This message has been edited by Xayd (edited 08-07-2000).]

[LawyerRon]

Hey!
Where did my post go?

------------------
"To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves"

[Statica]

Just a quick note :

quote:

---

Originally posted by Xayd:
And on the note of "this is a very serious board", you started the flames, not me. Someone posted a valid question and you took the opportunity to turn it into a cheap shot. People in glass houses don't throw stones.

---

I dont know abt VTSTX intent, I only know that I found it very relevant in the sense that trivializing with labelling users on this forum does indeed take away from the purpose of this board.

Its not a flame, consider it as point of view.. if you guys all feel that this is a flame, I will lock it up; sometimes its helpful to know all opposing points of view; because it gives us insights into where the OS is heading.

If you find this discussion offensive let me know! The point is, and this is a very nice feature that the Linux, is that the users are extremely passionate about it, more so than any easy come easy crash OS out there. You will hardly, if ever, find people who use the OS they work with as part of their phhilosophy; and I'll admit, as sappy as it sounds, what Linus has done and is doing, appeals immensely to my sense of ethics as well. I admit there are blind fanatics in every field, but as long as we agree to keep the name calling away and being mature; we can actually have a lot of ideas meshed.

This is another piece of malformed information, much like the take on GUI install being absent from downloaded versions ..[ http://www.pcmech.com/ubb/Forum11/HTML/000423.html ] Please verify your sources. The new kernel and the new distributions ARE NOT to make things userfriendly, for this, I urge you to follow kernel traffic and AC diaries, cos they are the best, these are done with a view to incorporate features into Linux that are VERY VERY VERY far from your definition of a GUI and a userfriendly environment.
The way the kernel works for hardware is by incorporation when the developers get to it, they dont need to stoop to the level of any h/w mfger per se, the mfger better start bringing out drivers for Linux. Other than that, being an OpenSource, someone will eventually make u a module .. the modular kernel is what allows you to vary your choices.

quote:

---

We'll never agree guys, but the way I see it, the new kernel and the distributors are coming around to making things "user friendly", because the hardware market is up to this point solely driven by Microsoft and Intel. Now, with that said, the Linux community has two choices. Either play along and match the OS to the hardware, or gradually fade into nothingness, as people get tired of using 400mhz machines full of ISA cards.

---

Again XayD, but dont you think you are a bit premature on your diagnosis... in all fairness, I have run Linux inside and out, for the past decade or so, and I do see the differences, my analysis is based also on checking out the core dumps as well. If you do have claims to your theory, I would be very interested in knowing it.
If you would like to read about crashes and system hangups I can give you links to a rough cross section, of crashes and we could do a survey of what are caused by an oversimplified GUI.

quote:

---

I don't see the changes as a shot to stability and "tried and true" methods. I see it as a valid (and justified) attempt to play the game that has been dominated by others to this point.

---

The public discussion that I see is this...

The distributors are making a push to turn Linux into a household name, and a valid OS choice of the average user. At the same time, the long term champions of open source groan at the thought of the average user being able to use "their" OS.

From the current state of the marketplace, with Microsoft being torn down by the courts, this is the big chance for the distributors to get a foothold.

The day when Linux distributions install and configure themselves ala Windows isn't here yet, but it's coming. As long as everything is still "configurable", I have no problem with that. User friendliness and desktops aren't "evil" things in my book.
[/QUOTE]

Again, you dont seem to have followed the justification of having a console mode browser, I am very disappointed to note, you dont code websites that are Lynxable to put in cool flashy thingamajigs, you code it with the intent of speedy information delivery, the distinction between NEEDFULNESS and WISHFULNESS should be made, but then again you are a webdeveloper [are u? just curious], and should realize that.
Whats next? Would you like to have ActiveX on SMS platforms?

quote:

---

For instance, I play with websites all day at work, how in the hell am I supposed to see what those cool java scripts look like with Lynx? The computer world is being driven by what goes on here, online. And what's online now is mostly eye candy. An OS without a fully functional GUI will never be an option, for work or play, for the average user out there.

The distributors have made their intentions clear, and are gonna win out on this, no matter what anyone says or thinks.

Xayd[/b]

---

---

[b]Just as a matter of curiosity, XayD, how much have you used a Network OS [for networks not as a gaming system] Linux, UNIX, NT etc, in a server environment/desktop .. just wondering so I understand better. If you have a lot of experience with a lot of kernels over a lot of distribs, it would just be interesting to note your pros towards simplifying. In all these years it would be a first to come across that point of view

Cheers

[This message has been edited by Ex-Static-Cling (edited 08-08-2000).]

[vitalstatistix]

the reason i started this thread is not to nit pick at someone specific, but over some time, the thread has seen more and more mis leading postings from people who have no grasp of realities.

That certainly is not helping the community or otherwise. There are a whoe lot of stuff that i dont know about and i dont end up posting about it based on my assumptions.

People forget that when replying, they are not expressing their opinions (assumpitons etc) but ALSO implying a solution (though exceptions are there). My point been a NO answer is better then wrong / misleading answer.

Case in hand:
a) Downloaded distro not having GUI installation
b) Downloaded distro dont have partitioning utils
c) Kernel upgrade is to make it user friendly, shows the absolute lack of reality.

I guess ppl b*tch about linux for lack of resources like M$ Technet which goes something like this
http://support.microsoft.com/support.../Q157/6/68.asp

i rest my case

Its a honest suggestion that you do not believe in the hearsay of some conny sales man and then start spreading false news.

XAYD, and everyone, people please think and verify your information, not once but twice.

This thread is/was not for flames, but will be nice if this thread can finally culminate into some kind off code of conduct for this board.

gtfx

[This message has been edited by vitalstatistix (edited 08-08-2000).]

[Statica]

Lookin left ... lookin right .. *shrug* .. repost?

quote:

---

Originally posted by LawyerRon:
Hey!
Where did my post go?

---

[This message has been edited by Ex-Static-Cling (edited 08-08-2000).]

[Statica]

Mundane discussions? Taking over the OS world? Maybe we should go over the mandate of Linux as set forth by Linus himself; so you know its not a figment of my imagination. Here's a guy who develops an OS for absolutely no profit/$$ for himself .. this is above and beyond his day job at Transmeta [explaining why we have the delays in the new kernel] and then we have an absolutely brilliant guy by the name of AC and his wife, who sit and code and liason with programmers the world over on wht should be put in and what is buggy; who actually listen to what they have to say and actually .. yeah PHYSICALLY go into discussion threads and forums and help people out .. and you got the idea that they want to dominate the OS world? No the primary goal of Linux is to, and ONLY to, create a secure and stable environment for computing. PERIOD.

Hitherto, Linux has been that way; right uptil kernel 2.0.36; I was rather proud of being able to have a system that was rock solid and impervious to the woes of blue screens! And with the sudden explosion of awareness of the bugs and vulnerabilities a Windows environment, people tried looking elsewhere [NB: XayD, if you think that you will buy an NT system for stability, you obviously havent worked with NT, or are measuring NT performance vs win9x performance, thats all i gotta say on that, research out the vulnerabilities on NT, ntbugtrak or packetstorm might be a good place to start, although it wouldnt hurt to lend your email address to M$ vulnerability mass mailer]. So now over the development of kernel 2.2.xx I have been getting disillusioned by Linux, and not cos I feel that script kiddies or those that want an alternative to their flaky Quake running Win9x machines are using Linux GUI; but because in designing distribs that cater to these mouse pushers; the stability and the performance of Linux has taken a hit; and so has the amt of bloatware. And so now I look towards BSD to bring out the same performance that Linux is now whining about. With 2.4.xx, I hope that it will be a while before the windoze/alt OS seeking genre are going to come out with experiments like WinLinux; simply because this is a SERIOUS OS, and CATERING TO THE LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR OF TECH ABILITIES IS COUNTER PRODUCTIVE!

I wouldnt have condoned the efforts of userfriendliness so much, had they been able to educate the masses rather than stoop to their level.

And finally; in my view, this is a very serious board, if there are issues abt your personal preference of who is a command line addict and who's a GUI user, it might be a good idea to leave the discussion to the General Forum where such a platform is welcome simply cos its a free forum for everyone to rant and rave. If you have serious Linux issues that you wish solved, or comment on the merits or demerits of a particular piece of code or would like to help someone who needs it then that is what this forum is for.

I come here with the intent at helping people out on this place, not with an intent to talk to people, that I do on the general forum.

Cheers

[vitalstatistix]

I cudnt agree any less with EX-Static
adding my 2 cents

funny, why do people expect a community to change which is living and thriving as it always been? and there is NO threat to its existance. why shud they lower the standards? If people want to embrace open-source, they will have live by the envelope of open-source. They always have an option to not embrace it, who is stoping them.

Linux or BSD (F or O) do not offer any functionality or promises, they are just bunch of tools, use them if u like, dont use them shud you wish so. People forget, OpenSource is NOT trying to grab market from any other vendor, its people who are looking for an alternative from the likes of Micro$oft.

mairving, I respect free speech, but making senseless comments isnt free speech. One gotta be sensible while taking shelter under the premise of free speech. Also, 'free hatred' is not free speech.

and IMHO , i wouldnt like linux to serve masses, because then u cater to the needs of "least common denominator".

as regards spending $$ for some system, yup sure, any Linux/FreeBSD beats $$$driven system hands down in price to performance any day and it also include security etc etc etc.

cheeers

gtfx

>>>> as regards
"And the "command line junky" comment was posted in jest, and if someone can't take a joke, perhaps that person should avoid human contact and casual conversation, which can be done very successfully on most of the "open source" help forums."

its not that i dont see the mirth, i find it offensive to the beliefs of myself

and regarding human contact, i dont attempt to have my conversations with pages of text labelled 000427.html, but i talk to the people in my life.



[This message has been edited by vitalstatistix (edited 08-08-2000).]

[Statica]

I thought I'd post this out .. just to give you an idea of open source and how you readily dismiss something that is so perfect in spirit, all it demands of you is to be research your material!

This is NOT about pointing to some documentation .. contrary to what XayD in your rather limited perspective have said, and maybe you should start looking at the big picture and not in terms of the M$ knowledgebase scenario;
we point to the documentation because
A: these have been written by people who are closest to the project in question and because we users acknowledge the work they have done and their expertise in the field
B: they are referenced to because, we users, in our humility also realize that we may make mistakes, and wouldnt like to do that to anyone who is in need of assistance, and hence point them to the right person/documentation, while also acknowledging the work they have done
C: they are referenced, because that keeps operations streamlined, there is no reason to reinvent the wheel.

A true GPL-er is better than the rest cos she/he has the acumen to sit and read something that has already been documented, and assimilate the knowledge that is been put on there .. rather than pressing C-A-D to reboot and see if it solves itself out. So I would appreciate it if you could put some thought behind the rant.

I quote howto's because all of the above, not because I remember them by heart, when someone asks a question, I have done my work before, and will search out which document is of most relevance and then post it here as a hope that it will help out!

---

A short while back, for the OS site I have been working on, there was the need of a bulletin board software that we wanted to use from the GPL arena.. we needed functionality and performance for the bulletin board we were using. We managed to find one from sourceforge.net .. that was simply perfect .. very customizable and purely on PHP .. but unfortunately it was in severe Alpha .. I mailed the developer, and he replied within an hour of my email promising to keep me in touch with the progress of his forum software; and the moment it was available he gave it to me by email before he put it on his site. For my groupware/collaboration software, we wanted bleeding edge again; and the again, the version was a bit buggy from our use with MySQL; we emailed the developer and he simplymailed us one that wasnt even released that he was working on. In essence now we help them out with feedback from what we get.
Now I ask you, mention one other OS that will allow you this level of interaction on the basis of the love for coding, nothing more .. there is no issue of money or links or fame .. all they like to do is code .. and all we liked to do was put up some good GPL sources.

So if you think that just by running a simple desktop with 12 icons, makes you look down upon the active member of the Open Source Community, I urge you to look deeper into the impact this way of technology and information exchange has.

[Xayd]

My statement about NT was intended to be viewed as "from the eyes of the average computer user", who doesn't consider Linux when he needs a workstation/server for his office. Not yet anyways.

And on the note of "this is a very serious board", you started the flames, not me. Someone posted a valid question and you took the opportunity to turn it into a cheap shot. People in glass houses don't throw stones.

We'll never agree guys, but the way I see it, the new kernel and the distributors are coming around to making things "user friendly", because the hardware market is up to this point solely driven by Microsoft and Intel. Now, with that said, the Linux community has two choices. Either play along and match the OS to the hardware, or gradually fade into nothingness, as people get tired of using 400mhz machines full of ISA cards.

I don't see the changes as a shot to stability and "tried and true" methods. I see it as a valid (and justified) attempt to play the game that has been dominated by others to this point.

The public discussion that I see is this...

The distributors are making a push to turn Linux into a household name, and a valid OS choice of the average user. At the same time, the long term champions of open source groan at the thought of the average user being able to use "their" OS.

From the current state of the marketplace, with Microsoft being torn down by the courts, this is the big chance for the distributors to get a foothold.

The day when Linux distributions install and configure themselves ala Windows isn't here yet, but it's coming. As long as everything is still "configurable", I have no problem with that. User friendliness and desktops aren't "evil" things in my book.

For instance, I play with websites all day at work, how in the hell am I supposed to see what those cool java scripts look like with Lynx? The computer world is being driven by what goes on here, online. And what's online now is mostly eye candy. An OS without a fully functional GUI will never be an option, for work or play, for the average user out there.

The distributors have made their intentions clear, and are gonna win out on this, no matter what anyone says or thinks.

Xayd

[LawyerRon]

I just changed my mind about Linux.

------------------
"To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves"

[Xayd]

Ex, no, I still consider myself a fairly "new" Unix/Linux user. I've been about a year now using Linux at home, originally Red Hat 5.1 and now 6.1, and have a little tinkering experience with Solaris. Tinkering in that we had a Solaris server at the hotel I worked for, and used to have the support people work on problems with me over the phone, rather than drive out there. I've looked around in other Linux distributions on friends' machines, but haven't used any other distribution very extensively.

I do have experience with NT, from a work environment. Basically my current position is a tech support gig with a company that sells legal research online, as well as sells software with the same legal libraries on CD. The NT experience comes in when people call us and say "we just got this server thing, can you help me set up your software on it". For all of it's shortcomings, I think you can see why NT is "necessary" for these folks . But, we're also in the odd situation of our site is basically written by people using homesite and dreamweaver all day, and they can't grasp the fact that WYSIWYG compilers don't exactly produce clean (and sometimes even working) code for the site, so it's up to us to debug it when problems arise .

Vital, ya missed my point again on the downloads. My point was intended to point out that if there were no distributors, selling those CD's down at the local software shop, then the number of new users (myself included) that have come along recently wouldn't have come along at all. Hell most people don't get 56k, who wants to download 500 megs at 28.8kbps? Sure, I can hit a distro's FTP server and get a full download of their recent distribution, but I'll tell you what the next question is gonna be from the mouths of the people I talk to every day..."ok, downloaded it. now what?"

Hardware manufacturers will never fully support and embrace Linux. There's no money in it for them. Same goes for commercial software vendors. A few will offer limited support and some FAQ's, but Linux support will never be widespread.

I suppose the argument at the root of my opinions is that money isn't evil. In fact I think money is grand. Macintosh learned this. Ok, fine, you can charge outrageous amounts of money for a MAC box and OS, but it better outperform the competition if you wanna stay afloat for very long. So it does.

I think this is at the root of the Red Hat training courses and the Mandrake drag and drop kernel modifications. Distributors want money like everyone else.

People are willing to pay someone else to do it for them, they're not willing to figure it out themselves. I personally am all for distributions that'll do it for them if they don't choose otherwise.

Xayd

[mairving]

The main point I was trying to make was that if you make a statement like you did Vital, you discourage people from posting which is a worse thing. Case in point is LawyerRon. I would rather weed through the garbage and find some nuggets in there. To me this board has two purposes. One is to learn. The other is to teach. If you discourage one or the other, it fails. From the prior statements I would say that no newbie may ever post here. They can view the posts but not until they have become an expert are they able to post anything themselves. It is frustrating to see some of the posts. Some people will give up on Linux in a matter of minutes and come over here and have a flamefest. I have certainly learned a lot at this forum. Keep up the good work Static & Vital but come on and lighten up.