Derivative effects.

From: Day Brown (daybrown_at_hypertech.net)
Date: 01/24/04

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    Date: Fri, 23 Jan 2004 22:43:56 -0800
To: "debian-user@lists.debian.org" <debian-user@lists.debian.org>

    Linux comes from Unix, which was designed for mainframes.
    windows comes from dos, which was designed for personal desktops.

    One of the reasons I like to run the Corel version of debian, is that
    because they wrote software for the single user desktop for a decade or
    more, they intuitively understood what the single user wanted.

    I *never* get told I dont have 'permission' to access a floppy. which is
    what a dos/win user would expect. The Unix people run networks, and dont
    mess with floppies, so they dont notice the problem. Unless you tell it
    otherwise, it will default to the dos file system so you can take the
    floppy to a dos/win machine. Which is prolly why you want to use it
    anyway. With corel/debian, I dont havta 'mount' a floppy. Click on the
    gui file manager, and theres a "+" to click on for the floppy or cdrom;
    rw floppy access is the *default* just as a single user of dos/win would
    expect. I dunno why so many distros just dont get this either.

    Yes, Linux is terrific for networks. And if you are a sysad, by all
    means rely on it. If however, you are trying to run a single user
    desktop, then the whole business of having to logon and enter your
    password are a pain in the rectal orifice. With Corel, all I havta do is
    hit [CR] to accept the blank pw and bring me to my desktop. I'd prefer
    that it went automatically to my desktop like dos does, but it aint too
    bad. If I want root, I dont bother to login as root, but use su in a
    terminal. But lotsa distros just do not get it. Perhaps, as home
    networks become more common, this will be more acceptable, but even
    then, most of us in the home have "our" computer, and they have theirs,
    and we still dont need the logon process.

    And please dont tell me that I am ignoring security safeguards. If
    someone accesses this 'terminal' in my own house, I have a *family*
    problem, not a computer problem. This is not a problem that Linux distro
    programmers could not fix, but they themselves work at 'terminals' on
    networks and rely on passwords and authentication, and they just dont
    get it.

    I've had the corel deluxe cds for years, put them away because as much
    as I liked it, with only 32megs of dram, it churned the hell out of the
    hard drive and kept crashing. But now I've got 384, and the only buggy
    problem is the netscape 4.7 that came with it.

    Which I'd like to replace, but there seems to be problems with my
    apt-get, a beautiful idea in principle, but perhaps of obsolescence in
    the sources.list file, or whatever, has yet to get me anything
    successfully. And here again.... DOS has been using .zip files for
    years. I downloaded BasicLinux (BL-2.zip) and unzipped it into the
    /BLINUX directory of my FAT-32 dos drive, and ran LOADLIN from the dos
    prompt. It loads BL into a ramdisk, and gives me the bash prompt from a
    DOS drive. Which is really neat if I ever need to access an ext2
    partition or drive to copy my personal data onto the dos drive before
    trying to repair a trashed Linux. But as this example shows, when I
    download a .zip archive, I know I have the tools to deal with it. With
    Linux there are so many different archive formats, and more seem to be
    invented on a regular basis, that I dont have the confidence that I am
    not, as I have so many times before, been wasting my time.

    I see the Linux lists frequently citing error messages.
    Like when I type
    #apt-get update
    #ign file: ...(five lines looking at the cdrom)
    #err http://non-us.debian.org/main/contrib release
    404 file not found.
    and so it goes, about 20 lines, some 'hit' some 'ign', some err.
    but my point is, and this is especially helpful during the boot process
    where Linux users report 'kernel panic' or whatever, that with dos,
    there is this button on the keyboard next to the scrollock. *PRINT
    SCREEN*. And you know what? when I hit it in dos, it gives me a hard
    copy so I dont havta get out a pen and write down all that crap. But-
    somehow the distro programmers never looked at their own keyboards, or
    maybe they never have considered how handy hard copy would be of boot
    crashes. They are all busy trying to provide us with more eye candy for
    our multimedia presentations.

    There are some very fundamental *functionality* issues which were worked
    out in dos years ago, but the 'not invented here' syndrome kicks in, and
    they get ignored. The people who bought the corel/deb desktop are coming
    out with a new edition, IRC "saratoga", and I'll be watching for it.

    To some extent there is a culture clash between newbie win users who
    continually post on these points, and the geeky gurus who just love to
    spend time tweaking, who also get annoyed at the stupidity of the
    newbies. But if Linux is to be the desktop for everyone which the gurus
    say they want, then they'll havta provide this transparent functionality
    instead of getting to sound so professional with directions on how to
    use the CLI.

    And to an increasing extent, multimedia functionality is being ported to
    Linux; but not having a simple and obvious way for newbies to get to
    these newsgroups for help from a text mode screen to fix gui problems
    makes no sense. It would be better if the whole logon process ran in
    ansi color scrollbar like cfdisk or MC, and only switched to the gui
    when needing to load gui webpages. No matter what your os is, dos, win,
    or nix, everyone with an x86 starts out with the default CMOS ansi color
    scrollbar setup screens, and anyone who has ever installed an os knows
    how to work with them.

    My first experience with Linux was with RH 5.2; the install cd had lotsa
    errors. But the kicker was that after many days of deleting the faulty
    packages from the list to get a set that worked, when I tried to make a
    rescue floppy, it got a rw error on the floppy, and crashed, wiping out
    the whole install. This sort of thing is a prime example of sloppy
    programming. Perhaps it is due to some interesting changes going on in
    the earth's magnetic field in certain hot spots, but in my neck of Ozark
    woods, compasses dont point north, and the half life of floppies is
    about 3 weeks. Rescue floppies aint any good by the time you need them.
    Is it possible to make a 'rescue.img' file to put on another hard drive,
    so I can boot off a dos partition, and make the disk when I need it? Or-
    at least, be able to email 'rescue.img' to a friend so that they can
    make one if needed?

    Lastly, I post all this to debian because I thot it was the most user
    oriented and composed os, whereas other distros focus more on their
    commercial network applications... which is where the money is. I dont
    blame them for ignoring the above problems because of the trivial impact
    on networks and skills of the sysads that run them. But, I think there
    is also an opportunity to organize the user base to challenge the
    attempts by the transnats and goverments to control and exploit the
    internet and contents.

    I am reminded of the CB radio fad years ago. Every CB radio was sold
    with a registration card which the owner was spozed to send in to the
    FCC. People ignored them, and the FCC ignored the violations because the
    sheer volume was way beyond anything the courts could handle, and the
    cost of the devices was so low that threats of confiscation were
    meaningless. The model applies to the recent attempts by the powers that
    be to control the nature of the content and their attempts to protect
    their copywrites and other forms of intellectual turf. If- we organize,
    it aint upta them.

    The technology already exists to extend ham and other wireless long
    distance technologies to the point where we can do point to point
    communication with our friends in the community without even having a
    phone or cable line, or the associated power, control, and money, which
    the buried linear networks provide. The cost of the hardware to deliver
    ascii like this to your desktop has declined so much that threats by the
    powers that be to seize your equipment are meaningless. It is, and
    always has been, about the money. But if it costs them more money to
    come to your house to seize your equipment than what they can get from
    your efforts to retain it... you win, and they wont bother.

    The powers that be, which began with Unix, were happy to promote
    networks with dumb terminals (webTV) because only they could afford the
    servers and could control the content. But even servers are cheap now,
    and all we havta do is realize that we can afford to own *all* of the
    network hardware (some communities now have coop ISPs) and neither the
    government nor the transnats can do schitt about it. We can also rely on
    Debian and other forms of open source freeware which- because it is
    free, they cannot control either.

    There is one other example from computer history that applies to our
    power to control our own system: ".zip". Years ago, the BBS networks
    were setup with archived files available with the ".PAK" extension. When
    Phil Katz crafted a new archive tool, he offered it to BBS users for
    free, to extract their .pak downloads. The corporate owners of PAK had
    the money and the lawyers, and found a judge who saw things their way,
    and sued Phil, saying that they owned 'pak' as a copywrite. So- Phil
    sent out an email to all the BBSes, announcing that his software would
    no longer be able to extract '.pak' files, and suggested that we all use
    .zip instead. PKZIP/PKUNZIP is still the defacto dos/win archive
    standard, and PAK INC... went out of business. Point being, that it was
    not up to the judge, nor the lawyers, it is up to us. 

    -- 
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