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Re: [PLUG] socf: questions
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CIA reports from Mar 7 indicate fourje may or may not have said:
>Bill,
>I'm not in Linux right now, but I have used lynx off and on and if I
>remember correctly if you type the "=" sign, that will give you the
>necessary info you're looking for. Then there's some other key to get
>out of the display and I believe there's a help bar displaying the
>return key.
Oh, wow -- gold mine! :) Thanks *so much* -- that's very cool.
>Hope this helps.
Sure does.
>Also - are you using Slack. 7 ? If so - what's it like??
Well, I think it's all right, but I have no basis for comparison (other
than Slack 4). Kind of a fast-and-loose -type feel. "Package
management" consists of using tarballs -- and, of course, that the
install programs and the "package managers" (ie, installpkg, pkgtool)
are (n)curses-based shell scripts. (If I'm not mistaken, they use a
flat text file to store where all the files go from the tarballs.)
I've heard it described as a "hacker's Linux" for those who want *total*
control over every aspect of their system and like to roll their own..
Of course, with power comes responsibility. :) I haven't gotten to the
point yet where I want to try removing some of the stuff I've installed
from source (or binaries) out of tarballs; that seems like it'd take
some effort, though (as I didn't use installpkg). installpkg can be
quite dumb, though; unless you have a certain environment variable set
(and I haven't looked into it too closely, since I've just found it
easier to "tar -xzpvf", although I'll probably pay for this when I *do*
want to take stuff out and spend hours chasing down cruft, that is, if
I'm still running Slack then), it insists on unpacking the tarball
relative to /. ($ENV_VAR (whatever it is) has to be set to the
directory you want to unpack relative to.)
On the plus side, it has the latest glibc (as opposed to 4.0, which I
think used some version of libc5) *and* came with support for the
(experimental 2.2 feature) kernel framebuffer device, which caused X to
"just work" without *any* tweaking. (It don't get no easier than this,
folks. (Granted, it's more than likely not optimized, but...))
Incidentally, this is the only way I've found to make my X look right.
(The ATI Rage IIc 3D Pro that integrated onto my mobo (ick) is, I
suspect, non-standard.) OTOH, I'm probably taking a performance hit
(esr explained in one of his writings I found last night that the CPU
has to do *all* the work with a framebuffer), but it's not *nearly* as
bad as using the SVGA driver (on this machine, anyway), which caused the
KDE menu bar to quite slowly and quite visibly inch its way across the
screen when I told it to go away or come back. Ugh. The framebuffer is
much better (again, on this machine), *and* I get a nice little penguin
graphic when I power on the machine, to boot. (Yes, that horrible pun
was intended.)
I'm considering giving Debian a spin, because I've heard rockin' things
about apt-get. Red Hat or Mandrake is worth a look, to me, simply
because of the ubiquity of RPMs, although I've heard not-too-flattering
things about RH. SuSE's getting more and more interesting to me, for
some reason (maybe it's the fact that you get 6 shovelware :) cdroms,
although I've heard that Debian has the most software); maybe it's
because it's Europe's Most Popular (tm), maybe it's because of the
hardware support, I don't know. I just now poked around on their ftp
site (the directory structure there is remarkable similar to the
/pub/linux/slackware tree at cdrom.com), and it appears that rpm is the
native packaging format, which is both fortunate and unfortunate; rpms
are ubiquitous, but I've heard the .debs are much better.
(Incidentally, Stampede Linux has Yet *Another* Packaging Format,
although they claim that you can extract their .slp's using standard tar
and gzip.) In any case, I guess that that took away my compelling
reason to look at RH or a derivative (LinuxOne? <duck>). :)
Pardon me for thinking out loud here. You'd asked about Slackware,
right? :) I guess 200 bytes or less says, "Efficient, doesn't get in
your way, feels a bit dated, fun to play with, you could make a mean
server out of this, could automate things for you a bit." It's
outstanding considering basically one guy maintains it, and still not
bad otherwise. For a roll-up-your sleeves kind of feel, I'd propose
that it'd be hard to beat.
Now that I've spent a dozen pages holding forth on a subject on which
I'm not qualified to speak :), I'll shut up after I quote Rick Moen
(http://www.linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/):
"But that's just my opinion. I could be wrong."
Bill
--
"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought.
But World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." -- A. E.
Harry Browne for President: http://www.harrybrowne2000.com/
Stop abusive software patents! Start typing http://www.noamazon.com/
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