• Old computer

    From Utopian Galt@21:4/108 to All on Tue Jun 21 12:13:46 2022
    My old computer is not loved by microsoft. Its a Ryzen 7 1700 and Windows 11 is not supported. I am thinking I might just run Linux on it when Microsoft decides not to support this old computer I use to play Final Fantasy 14 and run my bbs on.


    --- WWIV 5.5.1.3261
    * Origin: inland utopia * california * iutopia.duckdns.org:2023 (21:4/108)
  • From nblade@21:3/170 to Utopian Galt on Tue Jun 21 22:37:24 2022
    Not a bad plan. Personally, I only use Windows in a VirtualBox to support some Radio programming software that only works on Windows. Even then, it typically Windows XP as momst of the radio programming software still works on it and I only use it for that and nothing else.

    ... A penny saved is not very much

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: RVs and RPGs BBS (21:3/170)
  • From fusion@21:1/616 to Utopian Galt on Tue Jun 21 18:16:03 2022
    On 21 Jun 2022, Utopian Galt said the following...

    My old computer is not loved by microsoft. Its a Ryzen 7 1700 and
    Windows 11 is not supported. I am thinking I might just run Linux on it when Microsoft decides not to support this old computer I use to play Final Fantasy 14 and run my bbs on.

    seems like a shame.. pcs are already overkill for desktop windows programs. only reason i've upgraded pcs since the ol' core2quad was for gaming and
    video editing stuff.. nothing else really feels that much different from back then..

    ... "I am" is the shortest sentence in English. Is 'I do' the longest?

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/25 (Windows/32)
    * Origin: cold fusion - cfbbs.net - grand rapids, mi (21:1/616)
  • From Nightfox@21:1/137 to fusion on Tue Jun 21 16:12:14 2022
    Re: Re: Old computer
    By: fusion to Utopian Galt on Tue Jun 21 2022 06:16 pm

    seems like a shame.. pcs are already overkill for desktop windows programs.

    Not sure what you mean about PCs being overkill for desktop Windows programs.. What other device (that isn't overkill) are you going to run desktop Windows programs on?

    Nightfox
    --- SBBSecho 3.15-Linux
    * Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)
  • From Zero Reader@21:4/177 to Utopian Galt on Tue Jun 21 21:20:47 2022
    On 21 Jun 2022, Utopian Galt said the following...

    My old computer is not loved by microsoft. Its a Ryzen 7 1700 and
    Windows 11 is not supported. I am thinking I might just run Linux on it when Microsoft decides not to support this old computer I use to play

    Yep, I'm in the same boat. I have a Ryzen 1700x, and it's plenty powerful, so it's a shame we are stuck on Windows 10 like zombies.

    I ended up installing EndeavorOS (An Arch-based distro) and it's better than ever.

    -ZR

    ... If a pig loses its voice, is it disgruntled?

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 2022/04/26 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: alcoholidaybbs.com / Est. 1995 / Columbia, SC (21:4/177)
  • From fusion@21:1/616 to Nightfox on Tue Jun 21 21:47:57 2022
    On 21 Jun 2022, Nightfox said the following...

    Re: Re: Old computer
    By: fusion to Utopian Galt on Tue Jun 21 2022 06:16 pm

    seems like a shame.. pcs are already overkill for desktop windows programs.

    Not sure what you mean about PCs being overkill for desktop Windows programs.. What other device (that isn't overkill) are you going to run desktop Windows programs on?

    i guess i meant to imply that PCs have been overkill for most users for a while.. so blocking certain more-than-capable machines is a shame. web browsimg, document editing..

    many of them can decode 4k video on the CPU if there isn't a hardware option, still play most modern games, etc. yet lesser specced laptops support Windows 11 and hardware acceleration is required to play video at all.

    i duno, everyone has been talking about e-waste but this just flies under the radar..that Ryzen 7 1700 is still an awesome cpu right now. just feels wrong.

    ... Top secret! Burn before reading!

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/25 (Windows/32)
    * Origin: cold fusion - cfbbs.net - grand rapids, mi (21:1/616)
  • From Utopian Galt@21:4/108 to Fusion on Tue Jun 21 15:21:15 2022
    BY: fusion(21:1/616)


    seems like a shame.. pcs are already overkill for desktop windows
    programs.
    only reason i've upgraded pcs since the ol' core2quad was for gaming and video editing stuff.. nothing else really feels that much different from back then..
    It seems like planned obsolencence where software becomes even more dependent on newer hardware. I had kittens trying to load recent versions of web browsers on a core 2 box.


    --- WWIV 5.5.1.3261
    * Origin: inland utopia * california * iutopia.duckdns.org:2023 (21:4/108)
  • From Utopian Galt@21:4/108 to Zero Reader on Tue Jun 21 22:02:52 2022
    BY: Zero Reader(21:4/177)


    Yep, I'm in the same boat. I have a Ryzen 1700x, and it's plenty
    powerful, so it's a shame we are stuck on Windows 10 like zombies.
    I think we have support until 2025.


    --- WWIV 5.5.1.3261
    * Origin: inland utopia * california * iutopia.duckdns.org:2023 (21:4/108)
  • From Spectre@21:3/101 to Utopian Galt on Wed Jun 22 17:43:00 2022
    My old computer is not loved by microsoft. Its a Ryzen 7 1700 and Windows 11 is not supported. I am thinking I might just run Linux on it when

    Lol. Wonder what they'd make of my old Core2 Quad then... I don't think I
    even knew 11 was a thing.. whats its minimum hurdles? I still haven't gotten past 7.

    Spec


    *** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
    --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
    * Origin: The future's uncertain, the end is always near. (21:3/101)
  • From claw@21:1/210 to Utopian Galt on Wed Jun 22 07:56:29 2022
    On 21 Jun 2022, Utopian Galt said the following...

    My old computer is not loved by microsoft. Its a Ryzen 7 1700 and
    Windows 11 is not supported. I am thinking I might just run Linux on it when Microsoft decides not to support this old computer I use to play Final Fantasy 14 and run my bbs on.

    Both will work just fine in Linux :D

    What flavor do you prefer?

    |23|04Dr|16|12Claw
    |16|14Sysop |12Noverdu |14BBS |04(|14Noverdu.com|04)
    |10Standard Ports for SSH/Telnet Web/HTTP://|14Noverdu.com:808
    |20|15fsxNet/MRC Chat/Registered Doors!/50Nodes/No Time Use! Stay On!|16|07

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Noverdu BBS (21:1/210)
  • From Nightfox@21:1/137 to fusion on Wed Jun 22 08:54:19 2022
    Re: Re: Old computer
    By: fusion to Nightfox on Tue Jun 21 2022 09:47 pm

    i guess i meant to imply that PCs have been overkill for most users for a while.. so blocking certain more-than-capable machines is a shame. web browsimg, document editing..

    many of them can decode 4k video on the CPU if there isn't a hardware option, still play most modern games, etc. yet lesser specced laptops support Windows 11 and hardware acceleration is required to play video at all.

    i duno, everyone has been talking about e-waste but this just flies under the radar..that Ryzen 7 1700 is still an awesome cpu right now. just feels wrong.

    I dunno.. If someone just wants to read their email, browse the web, edit documents, etc., I guess as long as they can find a PC within their budget, I don't really see it as a problem. There is a wide variation in PCs at a lot of different price points. If someone has a use for a PC, it's not really going to waste, even if it is more powerful than they really need.

    Nightfox
    --- SBBSecho 3.15-Linux
    * Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)
  • From Nightfox@21:1/137 to Utopian Galt on Wed Jun 22 09:02:07 2022
    Re: Re: Old computer
    By: Utopian Galt to Fusion on Tue Jun 21 2022 03:21 pm

    It seems like planned obsolencence where software becomes even more dependent on newer hardware. I had kittens trying to load recent versions of web browsers on a core 2 box.

    I'm not sure if it's planned obsolescence all the time, but there's a cycle where software eventually does more, which requires a more powerful PC, which in turn allows software to do even more, and so on..

    Nightfox
    --- SBBSecho 3.15-Linux
    * Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)
  • From Spectre@21:3/101 to Nightfox on Thu Jun 23 07:30:00 2022
    I'm not sure if it's planned obsolescence all the time, but there's a cycle where software eventually does more, which requires a more powerful PC, which in turn allows software to do even more, and so on..

    Its just schnitzengruben software... the more grunt you give a system, the worse the software gets. We were using the same applications 30 years ago... sure some are a bit different, there's more encryption going on, but the
    basic function hasn't changed. Why do you need to uber powered thing to
    manage the same functions?

    whichever way you look at it, whats being described is waste... I wouldn't describe a ryzen 7 as old...if its obsoleted by software requirements its waste.

    Spec


    *** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
    --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
    * Origin: The future's uncertain, the end is always near. (21:3/101)
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to Utopian Galt on Wed Jun 22 08:02:00 2022
    Utopian Galt wrote to All <=-

    My old computer is not loved by microsoft. Its a Ryzen 7 1700 and
    Windows 11 is not supported. I am thinking I might just run Linux on it when Microsoft decides not to support this old computer I use to play Final Fantasy 14 and run my bbs on.

    You've got until 2025 to make a choice. I was set on migrating my desktop to Linux, but WSL 2 seems to do everything I'd want it to do under Linux, with
    a little lack in the eye-candy department - but not a major concern.




    ... Don't sue your customers.
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    * Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to fusion on Wed Jun 22 08:06:00 2022
    fusion wrote to Utopian Galt <=-

    seems like a shame.. pcs are already overkill for desktop windows programs. only reason i've upgraded pcs since the ol' core2quad was for gaming and video editing stuff.. nothing else really feels that much different from back then..

    Virtualization is one aspect -- I had a Core 2 Quad that I upgraded last
    year, I was stuck running ECC memory and found a core i7 with 16 GB of RAM
    for less than it would cost for 16GB on the old machine.

    I'm running VirtualBox for a couple of virtual machines, and it handles virtualization better than the old CPU.

    But, yeah - the processor was fine for most things. It was the lack of
    support for larger drives and USB 2 that bothered me the most.


    ... Are there sections? Consider transitions
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    * Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)
  • From Utopian Galt@21:4/108 to Spectre on Thu Jun 23 11:51:01 2022
    BY: Spectre(21:3/101)


    whichever way you look at it, whats being described is waste... I
    wouldn't
    describe a ryzen 7 as old...if its obsoleted by software requirements
    its
    waste.
    Not supporting 1st gen ryzens was a mistake by microsoft. Im thinking this box might end up being an Linux and OS/2 box instead.


    --- WWIV 5.5.1.3261
    * Origin: inland utopia * california * iutopia.duckdns.org:2023 (21:4/108)
  • From Utopian Galt@21:4/108 to Poindexter Fortran on Thu Jun 23 11:52:11 2022
    BY: poindexter FORTRAN(21:4/122)


    You've got until 2025 to make a choice. I was set on migrating my
    desktop to
    Linux, but WSL 2 seems to do everything I'd want it to do under Linux,
    with
    a little lack in the eye-candy department - but not a major concern.
    I have a Windows 11 laptop, but I will maximize this desktop for the time being.

    Might get a pci 3/m2 stick and that might be the last upgrade for it.


    --- WWIV 5.5.1.3261
    * Origin: inland utopia * california * iutopia.duckdns.org:2023 (21:4/108)
  • From claw@21:1/210 to poindexter FORTRAN on Thu Jun 23 18:19:07 2022
    On 22 Jun 2022, poindexter FORTRAN said the following...
    Utopian Galt wrote to All <=-
    You've got until 2025 to make a choice. I was set on migrating my
    desktop to Linux, but WSL 2 seems to do everything I'd want it to do under Linux, with a little lack in the eye-candy department - but not a major concern.

    MS will make Win10 slower and have strange bugs and such all saying it doesn't do that in 11 until people switch. Linux is where its going to be at. Until we see switching in mass MS isn't going to stop the selling you a product that they then use to sell you to their actual customers.

    Just say no

    |23|04Dr|16|12Claw
    |16|14Sysop |12Noverdu |14BBS |04(|14Noverdu.com|04)
    |10Standard Ports for SSH/Telnet Web/HTTP://|14Noverdu.com:808
    |20|15fsxNet/MRC Chat/Registered Doors!/50Nodes/No Time Use! Stay On!|16|07

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Noverdu BBS (21:1/210)
  • From fusion@21:1/616 to claw on Thu Jun 23 23:40:36 2022
    On 23 Jun 2022, claw said the following...

    MS will make Win10 slower and have strange bugs and such all saying it doesn't do that in 11 until people switch. Linux is where its going to

    this is silly. Windows 7 still activates (i used the 800 #), Windows update still brings Windows 7 up to it's most recent patch, and Windows Defender still receives new virus signatures. i did this all a few weeks ago. this on an OS that has been unsupported for some time now.

    sure it won't get updates to fix security issues or bugs.. (and i only use the machine for the bbs..) but they definitely aren't going out of their way
    to keep me from using it and bringing it up to date as possible.

    (and for a little icing on the cake, the current MS Edge version is fully supported on Windows 7..)

    but ya, m$ boogeyman and all that ;)

    ... BREAKFAST.COM Halted... Cereal port not responding.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/25 (Windows/32)
    * Origin: cold fusion - cfbbs.net - grand rapids, mi (21:1/616)
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to claw on Fri Jun 24 06:34:00 2022
    claw wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

    MS will make Win10 slower and have strange bugs and such all saying it doesn't do that in 11 until people switch. Linux is where its going to
    be at. Until we see switching in mass MS isn't going to stop the
    selling you a product that they then use to sell you to their actual customers.

    I've gotten the feeling that corporate customers are Microsoft's customer,
    and we're along for the ride, for some time now.


    ... Abandon desire
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    * Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to fusion on Fri Jun 24 06:47:00 2022
    fusion wrote to claw <=-

    this is silly. Windows 7 still activates (i used the 800 #)

    Adobe got burned when they took down the activation servers for Creative
    Suite 2, which a lot of people (myself included) use. They ended up
    releasing a version with an activation key that didn't require phoning home.

    I suppose selling people a software package then later removing their
    ability to install it looks bad. :)


    ... Filters, the sublime elevation of the lifter and the filters
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    * Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)
  • From Atreyu@21:1/176 to Claw on Fri Jun 24 11:12:09 2022
    On 23 Jun 22 18:19:07, Claw said the following to Poindexter Fortran:

    MS will make Win10 slower and have strange bugs and such all saying it doesn do that in 11 until people switch. Linux is where its going to be at. Unti we see switching in mass MS isn't going to stop the selling you a product th they then use to sell you to their actual customers.

    Lol, every year since Windows NT4 someone somewhere somehow reposts this same apocalyptic nonsense and of how "This will be the year of the Linux Desktop".

    I don't know exactly what technically happens during a Linux install that
    seems to turn otherwise smart logical BBS guys into retarded fanatical screaming teenage girls eager to give Torvalds a fingerlicking-good blowjob while everyone who runs Windows or remotely an MS fan is looked upon as
    having little pointed ears and a pitchfork tail.

    And every year for the last decade I see every Linux desktop only being just skin-deep. As in, doing anything beyond simple tasks seems to require the command prompt... so, the year of the Linux desktop seemed to skip 2022.

    Far be it for me to tell someone what OS to run or how to spend their free
    time but I enjoy having a cold beer on a summer afternoon knowing my BBS "works" and has worked for decades on Windows, on the same hardware, the same setup, same scripts, you name it. Theres something amusing about tossing mail from this net and others, where the vast majority of convo is "Linux testing and tinkering". Always something wrong or always adjusting.

    Mannnnn.... in my house, computers work for me and not the other way around.

    Atreyu

    --- Renegade vY2Ka2
    * Origin: Joey, do you like movies about gladiators? (21:1/176)
  • From nblade@21:3/170 to poindexter FORTRAN on Fri Jun 24 16:50:58 2022
    Activation is one of those odd things. I know for several of the MS products you can still use some sort 800 number, althought, they don't like to tell you that.

    Personally, I still remember when some things like Autocad, had hardware dongles that you would have to attach to your LPT port or somethings to use it. Of course there were software hacks that would defeat them that even legal owners would use because the hardware dongles were a pain in the ass.

    I do agree that not being able to install old software becuase of registration system is bad. I guess that's why I do tend to use more opensource software than not. Or just use software that doesn't require some soft of complex registration.

    For transparancy, I do use Linux as my daily driver. However, I'm a firm believer that you can use whatever works for you. Linux works for me, but it might not work for you. That said for many old computers, it is worth a try to find a Linux version to run on them. That's how I ended up on Linux. I had an old computer I put it on, next to my newer machine that ran windows.I found that after a while I just kept using the Linux machine.

    ... Everyone has a photographic memory. Some don't have film.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: RVs and RPGs BBS (21:3/170)
  • From Nightfox@21:1/137 to poindexter FORTRAN on Fri Jun 24 10:13:52 2022
    Re: Re: Old computer
    By: poindexter FORTRAN to claw on Fri Jun 24 2022 06:34 am

    I've gotten the feeling that corporate customers are Microsoft's customer, and we're along for the ride, for some time now.

    I've sort of had that feeling too. Over the last 10 years or so, it seems fewer and fewer people have a desktop or laptop computer, and might use a tablet more often. So home users may not be using Windows as much as before.

    Nightfox
    --- SBBSecho 3.15-Linux
    * Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)
  • From nblade@21:3/170 to Nightfox on Fri Jun 24 19:38:13 2022


    I've sort of had that feeling too. Over the last 10 years or so, it
    seems fewer and fewer people have a desktop or laptop computer, and
    might use a tablet more often. So home users may not be using Windows
    as much as before.


    You know that's an intresting observation. I know more and more people are using Tablets either iPads or some Android device. Hell some people even get physical keyboards for them.

    ... They say there's always one weirdo on the bus, but I couldn't find them!

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: RVs and RPGs BBS (21:3/170)
  • From Arelor@21:2/138 to Atreyu on Fri Jun 24 13:56:52 2022
    Re: Re: Old computer
    By: Atreyu to Claw on Fri Jun 24 2022 11:12 am

    Mannnnn.... in my house, computers work for me and not the other way arou

    Chances are your computers work for Microsoft as much as they do for you, if not more.

    I am not a Linux fan (I am a BSD guy) but I get more distressed calls for Windows issues than for Linux and BSD issues at $job. The problem Linux has
    is that there are many distributions which are great for development, having fun and testing, but not for getting any work done in production... however,
    if you set a production-ready one it tends to carry along nearly unattended until its software is EOLed.

    I am not buying the argument that Windows is the stuff you set when you want things to just work. Windows is the platform in which if a hard drive dies
    you need to get a new license from the OEM because the activation key was included within the drive (many OEMs don't include the sticker anymore).
    There is a store from which I buy spare computer parts whose main source of revenue is fixing Windows installs and software issues. It is very far from "just works".

    Most people in the "Windows just works" field has never had to perform a Windows install. My mother wants Windows because it is "easy" but if she had
    to install it and chase down the required drivers for her computer she would fall on her knees ripping her hair out.

    If anything the problem here is that many people in the Linux ecosystem is trying to replicate Windows on an Unix-like base, which is bonkers. This is
    the reason why I have more respect for the smaller BSD projects: they do
    their own thing and they don't try to be somebody's imitator.

    --
    gopher://gopher.richardfalken.com/1/richardfalken
    --- SBBSecho 3.15-Linux
    * Origin: Palantir * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL * (21:2/138)
  • From Atreyu@21:1/176 to Arelor on Fri Jun 24 16:05:25 2022
    On 24 Jun 22 13:56:52, Arelor said the following to Atreyu:

    I am not buying the argument that Windows is the stuff you set when you want things to just work. Windows is the platform in which if a hard drive dies

    Linux has never been able to cut it on the desktop which is what this was about. Its not about how many tech-calls you get for Windows desktops.

    That every year some people believe its the year of mass-migration away from
    MS and I just laugh wholeheartedly because it never happens, I wonder what these people are smoking. On the server Linux is a different story and where
    it belongs. Google and Apple may of got it "right" but not the other distros where one GUI operation beyond anything simple puts you in Bash territory.

    Windows is what works "for me". Because I know what I'm doing... I did not just get my node number yesterday. But to some Linux fanatics, I'm an idiot
    for running anything MS. Or I'm apparently not understanding something so the fanatics feel compelled to rant & rave about Linux or their system or (not picking on you) someone tells me about all the problems with Windows, how often they get support calls, etc. I've worked in IT for 25+ years, know
    what the problems are. I made a career from fixing them which is why I actually admire MS to a certain extent... was able to have a tech career.

    There seems to be an unwritten rule everywhere in BBS'ing that one must love Linux and hate MS. No exceptions. Its very amusing to me how much I'm told "Windows sucks" when it powers a very large mail Hub here with over a hundred downlinks.. 24/7, 365, 99% uptime... no tinkering or babysitting needed. Ever.

    MS is a sleezeball company but Linux fanatics, to me, are far more fascist and intolerant, far more arrogant, far more likely to shove their OS down my throat at every opportunity. Especially when I disagree about "Desktop Linux".

    Atreyu

    --- Renegade vY2Ka2
    * Origin: Joey, do you like movies about gladiators? (21:1/176)
  • From nblade@21:3/170 to Atreyu on Fri Jun 24 22:31:05 2022
    Linux has never been able to cut it on the desktop which is what this was about. Its not about how many tech-calls you get for Windows desktops.

    That every year some people believe its the year of mass-migration away from MS and I just laugh wholeheartedly because it never happens, I
    wonder what these people are smoking. On the server Linux is a different story and where it belongs. Google and Apple may of got it "right" but
    not the other distros where one GUI operation beyond anything simple
    puts you in Bash territory.

    I do agree that mass migration right now from Windows is not happing now or very likely in the near future.. That said, I've very curious what sort of complex things put one into Bash territory?

    ... Origin of Life? Just check my refrigerator...

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: RVs and RPGs BBS (21:3/170)
  • From Avon@21:1/101 to nblade on Sat Jun 25 09:35:25 2022
    On 21 Jun 2022 at 10:37p, nblade pondered and said...

    Not a bad plan. Personally, I only use Windows in a VirtualBox to
    support some Radio programming software that only works on Windows. Even then, it typically Windows XP as momst of the radio programming software still works on it and I only use it for that and nothing else.

    I'm a bit like this also... is the radio software for HAM purposes or something else? Just curious :)

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From Avon@21:1/101 to nblade on Sat Jun 25 10:04:36 2022
    On 24 Jun 2022 at 07:38p, nblade pondered and said...



    I've sort of had that feeling too. Over the last 10 years or so, it seems fewer and fewer people have a desktop or laptop computer, and might use a tablet more often. So home users may not be using Window as much as before.


    You know that's an intresting observation. I know more and more people
    are using Tablets either iPads or some Android device. Hell some people even get physical keyboards for them.


    yes this is an interesting comment to me also, I must be old school and I still like to build my own hardware and run things on a desktop vs using mobile and apps all the time. Sure I do the latter also but give me a desktop and a big screen (if only! heh) and I'm a happy chappy.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From Nightfox@21:1/137 to nblade on Fri Jun 24 15:54:27 2022
    Re: re: Old computer
    By: nblade to Atreyu on Fri Jun 24 2022 10:31 pm

    I do agree that mass migration right now from Windows is not happing now or very likely in the near future.. That said, I've very curious what sort of complex things put one into Bash territory?

    I've often thought that migration to Linux would probably happen slowly rather than en masse. One problem is that, while there has been more and more software developed for Linux, there are still some programs for other platforms that don't have a version or an equivalent in Linux, and it will take time to develop more Linux software. It's not going to happen overnight.

    Another thing is that there are a lot of people these days who seem to mainly use a tablet or smartphone and might not even have a desktop or laptop computer to run Linux on. So for desktop operating systems, the market is probably more limited now than it used to be.

    However, in recent years I have been seeing more software for Linux, and it seems thereh as been more of an effort to support Linux from some companies. I think one big hurdle is PC gaming - but Steam has been supporting Linux more and more. I've also recently become aware of Proton, which is supposed to help run some Windows games in Linux. I've also seen more Linux native ports of some PC games as well.

    Nightfox
    --- SBBSecho 3.15-Linux
    * Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)
  • From Arelor@21:2/138 to Nightfox on Fri Jun 24 18:22:55 2022
    Re: re: Old computer
    By: Nightfox to nblade on Fri Jun 24 2022 03:54 pm


    However, in recent years I have been seeing more software for Linux, and it seems thereh as
    cently become aware of Proton, which is supposed to help run some Windows games in Linux. I

    Nightfox
    --- SBBSecho 3.15-Linux

    The real lacks in Linux software used to be programs for professional tasks, such as programs
    for dumping the meassures of a total station and generating a map from them, or structure
    simulation programs. As of late some vendors have started to actively use portable languajes
    (such as Java) so it is less of a concern than it used to be. The main hospital my clinic works
    as a contractor for already includes a multiplatform radiodiagnostics image viewer with their
    radiodiagnostics DVDs, so people can access the medical data contained therein from any popular
    platform. It even works on OpenBSD.

    The people who uses a smartphone as their only "computer" is, in my experience, the poorest and
    most uneducated people. They tend to have entry-level devices because they need something to
    grab emails or interact with the administration (which is gradualy forcing everybody to be
    Internet connectable) but can't afford anything expensive. I think they walk into a big store,
    compare the price of a budget laptop against a budget phone, and get the budget phone.

    --
    gopher://gopher.richardfalken.com/1/richardfalken
    --- SBBSecho 3.15-Linux
    * Origin: Palantir * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL * (21:2/138)
  • From paulie420@21:2/150 to Atreyu on Fri Jun 24 16:33:43 2022
    Windows is what works "for me". Because I know what I'm doing... I did
    not just get my node number yesterday. But to some Linux fanatics, I'm
    an idiot for running anything MS. Or I'm apparently not understanding something so the fanatics feel compelled to rant & rave about Linux or their system or (not picking on you) someone tells me about all the problems with Windows, how often they get support calls, etc. I've
    worked in IT for 25+ years, know what the problems are. I made a career from fixing them which is why I actually admire MS to a certain
    extent... was able to have a tech career.

    This is the paragraph that makes the most sense. You use what you like. So do 'we'..

    I use /bin/bash because I *want* to, not because one needs to... there is a graphical application for [mostly] every task one would ever need to do - and if you simply install any half-decent suite; GNOME, KDE, PopOS! - you have a full suite of graphical apps; same as MacOS, Windows or Haiku.

    I do agree with you that its never going to be 'the year of Linux'... but do think that users [can have] more control of their hardware and create more stable systems using *nix. I don't play games - and for me Linux is the only thing that works.

    By all means, use what you love.



    |07p|15AULIE|1142|07o
    |08.........

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 2022/04/03 (Raspberry Pi/32)
    * Origin: 2o fOr beeRS bbs>>>20ForBeers.com:1337 (21:2/150)
  • From deon@21:2/116 to nblade on Sat Jun 25 10:46:28 2022
    Re: Re: Old computer
    By: nblade to poindexter FORTRAN on Fri Jun 24 2022 04:50 pm

    For transparancy, I do use Linux as my daily driver. However, I'm a firm believer that you can use whatever works for you. Linux
    works for me, but it might not work for you. That said for many old computers, it is worth a try to find a Linux version to run
    on them. That's how I ended up on Linux. I had an old computer I put it on, next to my newer machine that ran windows.I found
    that after a while I just kept using the Linux machine.

    So I used to use Linux as my primary desktop (on a laptop) for about 5 or so years (IIRC) at a major enterprise. Mail was Lotus Domino, I dont recall what VPN tool I used, Office was OpenOffice. OpenOffice was a pain, especially if my peers used Microsoft Office and any documents or powerpoints need to be "adjusted" because of different fonts, etc.

    I had switched from Windows when Red Worm was rampant and I had spent a day "re-installing" Windows because it become so slow. (Something I used to do every 6-9 months if I recall). I remember after spending 2 days setting up everything and it was running well again, I went to the office and plugged into the network (to install the corporate virus tool) and within 5 mins, red worm got me. I didnt install it again, I just installed Ubuntu.

    When using the work laptop, I dont tinker or re-engineer to get things to work, I install if it works, I use it, and if it doesnt I ditch it (dont have the time to mess around).

    My only complaint, and the reason I eventually switched to Mac was hybernation. It worked randomly, and when it did work, it was quicker to shutdown and reboot, rather than wait for it to resume from suspension. Sometimes it didnt suspend (and I wouldnt notice), and I'd get off a plane with a red hot backpack if the batter didnt run out of power first.

    Been pretty happy with my Mac(s) ever since - "it just works".


    ...лоеп
    --- SBBSecho 3.15-Linux
    * Origin: I'm playing with ANSI+videotex - wanna play too? (21:2/116)
  • From Atreyu@21:1/176 to Nblade on Fri Jun 24 21:28:00 2022
    On 24 Jun 22 22:31:05, Nblade said the following to Atreyu:

    I do agree that mass migration right now from Windows is not happing now or very likely in the near future.. That said, I've very curious what sort of complex things put one into Bash territory?

    - Basic Software management, ie adding a new repository or 3rd-party software. - Troubleshooting when a system update breaks dependancies or libraries.
    - Audio mixer settings beyond basics, what is trivial to do in Windows.
    - Easy automatic launching of services or programs. Crontab is a joke.
    - No feasable alternative to the Windows Task Manager or Resource Monitor.
    - RDP is a popular remote-control protocol... on Linux, RDP is convoluted.
    - Same with Bluetooth, USB Wifi, multiple monitors, OpenVPN, L2sec/Ipsec.
    - Suspend/hibernate on new Thinkpad laptops. *Doesn't work* without tinkering. - Image/snapshot/sector-based backups with a simple GUI frontend.
    - MS-DOS stuff works natively via NTVDM. On Linux its emulator nonsense.

    I mention the last because of what I said about Linux fanatics shoving it down my throat about how great their boards are and mine is quaint. Mystic and Synchronet on Linux are wonderful - except DOS doors don't work without convoluted nonsense or "doorparty"... I don't want to join a party.

    And this Wine total BS. Linux fanatics tell me I can run all my Windows
    stuff via Wine. Uhhhhh no I can't and really, no thankyou. I'm being told to expect that Linux can run Windows programs without any problems. Thats just
    as unrealistic as expecting the Windows 10 Linux subsystem to "be" Linux.

    You cannot get support or updates from an ERP/CRM/POS outfit or accounting software vendor if they find out you're running "Wine" instead of "Windows".

    All of my email accounts are Exchange/Outlook, even my personal. Not any Imap/Pop3. There is not an equal Linux solution I've seen in terms of GUI or usage that will talk to Exchange server. Sorry but Exchange onprem runs a
    lot of business and OWA won't cut it. Mine is maybe a unique case as many use SaaS email or the Imap stuff but for me this is a dealbreaker and I'm not installing some halfassed 3rd-party thing to do what Outlook does natively.

    Atreyu

    --- Renegade vY2Ka2
    * Origin: Joey, do you like movies about gladiators? (21:1/176)
  • From tassiebob@21:3/169 to poindexter FORTRAN on Sat Jun 25 13:13:57 2022
    I suppose selling people a software package then later removing their ability to install it looks bad. :)

    IMHO, not just looks bad, but is bad. If I pay once/off for a perpetual license (or what is implied to be a perpetual license) to use software then I expect to be able to use it as long as I wish.

    Sure it may have security issues and so on, but while I'm willing, and the hardware is willing/available, I should be able to continue using it.

    Of course if I'm paying periodically to use the product then it's fair enough for the vendor to discontinue the product - with appropriate notice - at the end of the period. Sadly this seems to be the in thing these days, and I hate it.

    My 2c...

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: TassieBob BBS, Hobart, Tasmania (21:3/169)
  • From tassiebob@21:3/169 to Atreyu on Sat Jun 25 13:23:19 2022
    Lol, every year since Windows NT4 someone somewhere somehow reposts this same apocalyptic nonsense and of how "This will be the year of the Linux Desktop".

    I don't think Linux will be dominating the desktop any time soon, but for some uses cases it can indeed replace a Windows desktop. My daily driver at work is Linux - I have the option of Linux, Windows, and OSX, but Linux suits my needs (network engineering) the best. Some of my colleagues use Windows and OSX and those work for them too - so horses for courses...

    There was a time when Linux was not much more than a toy when it came to desktop work, but that time has passed and it is a viable alternative for those who want to use it.

    Over the years I'd tried a Linux desktop many times and ended up back on Windows. This last time it cut the mustard and 3+ years in I'm still using it.

    My "daily driver" home PC is running Windows, although that's mostly for video editing and may change next time I upgrade it.

    amusing about tossing mail from this net and others, where the vast majority of convo is "Linux testing and tinkering". Always something
    wrong or always adjusting.

    Perhaps Linux based sysops are more inclined to fiddle with their setup? Then again, when I ran a BBS back in the late 80's on DOS and later OS/2 I used to fiddle with things all the time - so maybe the choice of OS has nothing to do with it? :-)

    Cheers.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: TassieBob BBS, Hobart, Tasmania (21:3/169)
  • From Atreyu@21:1/176 to Tassiebob on Sat Jun 25 02:33:01 2022
    On 25 Jun 22 13:23:19, Tassiebob said the following to Atreyu:

    amusing about tossing mail from this net and others, where the vast majority of convo is "Linux testing and tinkering". Always something wrong or always adjusting.

    Perhaps Linux based sysops are more inclined to fiddle with their setup? Th

    Oh yes they are... makes for a lot of topics here and elsewhere. :)

    Linux Sysops with Ham radio or engineering backgrounds are the worst. Oh mannnnn can they ever defend their beloved OS as if their life depends on it.

    again, when I ran a BBS back in the late 80's on DOS and later OS/2 I used fiddle with things all the time - so maybe the choice of OS has nothing to d with it? :-)

    I get that fiddling comes with the territory... but for me, once my
    computers work the way I want them to, they are imaged and left alone.

    I just don't have the time anymore... the endless nights messing around with some program or scripts or OS is long over with.

    Atreyu

    --- Renegade vY2Ka2
    * Origin: Joey, do you like movies about gladiators? (21:1/176)
  • From tassiebob@21:3/169 to Atreyu on Sat Jun 25 18:27:34 2022
    Oh yes they are... makes for a lot of topics here and elsewhere. :)

    Linux Sysops with Ham radio or engineering backgrounds are the worst. Oh mannnnn can they ever defend their beloved OS as if their life depends
    on it.

    I'm very much in the "whatever works" camp - if Linux works for them then great. If it works for me, great. If Windows works for you, then great. Nice to have choices :-)

    I get that fiddling comes with the territory... but for me, once my computers work the way I want them to, they are imaged and left alone.

    I'm not quite there yet - be it Windows or Linux I still fiddle from time to time :-) Much less fiddling than I used to though - I probably haven't built a Linux kernel since the 90's :-)

    I just don't have the time anymore... the endless nights messing around with some program or scripts or OS is long over with.

    I hear ya :-)

    Cheers.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: TassieBob BBS, Hobart, Tasmania (21:3/169)
  • From Weatherman@21:1/132 to Atreyu on Sat Jun 25 12:00:01 2022

    I get that fiddling comes with the territory... but for me, once my computers work the way I want them to, they are imaged and left alone.

    I just don't have the time anymore... the endless nights messing around
    with some program or scripts or OS is long over with.

    As some know, I am a pretty big fan of home automation and been running Home Assistant for years. I was one of the rare people running the entire environment on Windows 10 with SQL Server, etc. It was originally a supported configuration, but a very manual and different process to get working vs the around 90% of others running it on a different OS.

    Fast forward to last year - Home Assistant officially dropped Windows support and some of my integrations no longer worked properly. Fortunately they created an open source OS to run the entire platform in docker containers. Much easier than native Linux since it is all wrapped together in the OS and no messing with dependencies, etc.

    The nice thing about containers is they are not really OS dependant. Windows can run Dockers as well, so with things virtualed at the application level the OS becomes a tad less important.

    I prefer Windows, but it really depends on what the application was made to run on. Which is one reason I still run my BBS nodes on eCS (OS/2). It just works.

    - Mark
    яяя
    --- WWIVToss v.1.52
    * Origin: http://www.weather-station.org * Bel Air, MD -USA (21:1/132.0)
  • From Nightfox@21:1/137 to Atreyu on Sat Jun 25 10:32:24 2022
    Re: Re: Old computer
    By: Atreyu to Tassiebob on Sat Jun 25 2022 02:33 am

    Linux Sysops with Ham radio or engineering backgrounds are the worst. Oh mannnnn can they ever defend their beloved OS as if their life depends on it.

    That kinda describes me (I recently moved my BBS from Windows to Linux, and I have a software development background) - but I wouldn't go as far as feeling like my life depended on Linux. I think it's just a tool for a job.

    Nightfox
    --- SBBSecho 3.15-Linux
    * Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)
  • From Spectre@21:3/101 to Atreyu on Sat Jun 25 13:28:00 2022
    Linux has never been able to cut it on the desktop which is what this was about. Its not about how many tech-calls you get for Windows desktops.

    Only for those that want to push the bleeding edge on it, and call some of
    the extra eye candy available indispensible.

    There seems to be an unwritten rule everywhere in BBS'ing that one must love Linux and hate MS. No exceptions. Its very amusing to me how
    much I'm told "Windows sucks" when it powers a very large mail Hub
    here with over a hundred downlinks.. 24/7, 365, 99% uptime...

    I think that goes back to MS-SOD and win 3.11. They were the company everyone loved to hate. And as they went on they became more and more overbearing.
    Most MS-SOD stuff was pretty solid for me, you'd get the odd software badly written that'd screw things over... was able to configure 3.11 but never used it... skipped to 95 before I started down that path... the other thing was
    poor relative performance win 3.x was giving compared to ms-sod.

    Spec


    *** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
    --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
    * Origin: The future's uncertain, the end is always near. (21:3/101)
  • From paulie420@21:2/150 to deon on Sat Jun 25 19:39:29 2022
    So I used to use Linux as my primary desktop (on a laptop) for about 5
    or so years (IIRC) at a major enterprise. Mail was Lotus Domino, I dont recall what VPN tool I used, Office was OpenOffice. OpenOffice was a
    pain, especially if my peers used Microsoft Office and any documents or powerpoints need to be "adjusted" because of different fonts, etc.

    I hated LibreOffice and thought it was 'the' choice on Linux for office suites, but have since found ONLYOffice and really like it. It looks and feels like MS Office and I find myself getting some real work done with it.

    One thing I don't love is their lack of available templates - and yes, I did find one Github with SOME... but nothing as vast and complete as other options that you can find w/ MS...

    I haven't tried OpenOffice and wonder what its like...



    |07p|15AULIE|1142|07o
    |08.........

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 2022/04/03 (Raspberry Pi/32)
    * Origin: 2o fOr beeRS bbs>>>20ForBeers.com:1337 (21:2/150)
  • From deon@21:2/116 to paulie420 on Sun Jun 26 15:43:16 2022
    Re: Re: Linux Office Suite
    By: paulie420 to deon on Sat Jun 25 2022 07:39 pm

    I hated LibreOffice and thought it was 'the' choice on Linux for office suites, but have since found ONLYOffice and really like it. It looks and feels like MS
    Office and I find myself getting some real work done with it.

    Yeah, I found ONLYoffice not so long ago and installed it at home - looks good, although I havent used it extensively. Good to know that somebody else is liking it.

    I haven't tried OpenOffice and wonder what its like...

    OpenOffice is what LibreOffice forked from (IIRC). I did many a presentation with it, and it worked well. The only challenge was collaboration, especially if the other editors were using MSOffice. While it could read-write the docs, it always rendered differently - and when you present you cant have that :(


    ...лоеп
    --- SBBSecho 3.15-Linux
    * Origin: I'm playing with ANSI+videotex - wanna play too? (21:2/116)
  • From apam@21:1/101 to deon on Sun Jun 26 19:15:17 2022
    OpenOffice is what LibreOffice forked from (IIRC). I did many a

    Yep that's right, before open office it was called star office and was open sourced by Sun, I forget who they bought it off. It's come a long way since then. I remember how it was all sort of contained in one program, rather than split off into several programs like writer spreadsheets etc, really didn't like that much.

    Andrew

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From boraxman@21:1/101 to Spectre on Sun Jun 26 22:23:38 2022
    Linux has never been able to cut it on the desktop which is what this about. Its not about how many tech-calls you get for Windows desktops

    Only for those that want to push the bleeding edge on it, and call some
    of the extra eye candy available indispensible.

    The argument that Linux is not ready seems to come from people who have very specific requirements and preferences, and Linux doesn't match them exactly. I find Windows deficient in many ways, and lacking things that I'm use to in Linux. Virtual desktop support is only OK, no ability to do anything meaningful without running a GUI, and for that matter, I can't choose my GUI at all.

    My wife is a computer noob, and I got her a "new" laptop with Linux, and she can use it just fine. This is someone who was previously using Macs. My kids use Linux (Plasma more specifically) just find.
    I think that goes back to MS-SOD and win 3.11. They were the company everyone loved to hate. And as they went on they became more and more overbearing. Most MS-SOD stuff was pretty solid for me, you'd get the
    odd software badly written that'd screw things over... was able to configure 3.11 but never used it... skipped to 95 before I started down that path... the other thing was poor relative performance win 3.x was giving compared to ms-sod.

    Spec

    They were hated with good reason. Microsoft did engage in some very cruddy practices and in my opinion, ruined computing by focusing on making it for the masses. They did to computing what the automobile did to cities.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From boraxman@21:1/101 to apam on Sun Jun 26 22:26:18 2022
    OpenOffice is what LibreOffice forked from (IIRC). I did many a

    Yep that's right, before open office it was called star office and was open sourced by Sun, I forget who they bought it off. It's come a long
    way since then. I remember how it was all sort of contained in one program, rather than split off into several programs like writer spreadsheets etc, really didn't like that much.

    Andrew


    I remember StarOffice was really slow, took ages to load. When you started it, it was a GUI within a window, and with its own 'start' menu like thing that you would use to start the sub-program. One giant program which was its own desktop environment with the office programs within.

    OpenOffice was a welcome change, must faster and each program (writer, calc, etc), finally separate.

    But I prefer to just use plaintext now, or groff or latex for formatted documents mostly. Only occasionally have use for Calc when needing to make data into a spreadsheet format others need to open.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to Atreyu on Sat Jun 25 09:25:00 2022
    Atreyu wrote to Arelor <=-

    There seems to be an unwritten rule everywhere in BBS'ing that one must love Linux and hate MS. No exceptions. Its very amusing to me how much
    I'm told "Windows sucks" when it powers a very large mail Hub here with over a hundred downlinks.. 24/7, 365, 99% uptime... no tinkering or babysitting needed. Ever.

    I ran a DOS BBS for years, then went mail-only while I concentrated on a consulting business.

    What inspired me to get back into it was running into Synchronet, and realizing I could run a BBS, web server, FTP server, mail, news, and IRC -- all on a crappy little tossed-aside Windows desktop PC.

    I've made a couple of attempts to move my BBS to linux, but end up running
    on a small cast-off box, or as of yesterday, a small Windows guest VM.

    MS is a sleezeball company but Linux fanatics, to me, are far more
    fascist and intolerant, far more arrogant, far more likely to shove
    their OS down my throat at every opportunity. Especially when I
    disagree about "Desktop Linux".

    We have a cohort of BSD users at work, they seem pretty content to just quietly use what works for them. I may need to join them someday - my first experience running public servers was BSD/OS and FreeBSD.






    ... When in doubt, predict that the trend will continue.
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    * Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to Avon on Sat Jun 25 09:29:00 2022
    Avon wrote to nblade <=-

    yes this is an interesting comment to me also, I must be old school and
    I still like to build my own hardware and run things on a desktop vs
    using mobile and apps all the time. Sure I do the latter also but give
    me a desktop and a big screen (if only! heh) and I'm a happy chappy.

    Ditto. I built a homelab using Proxmox and a junk-shop Synology NAS and have
    a ultrawide monitor at my desk. I started using an email app instead of a
    web app and don't know why I went with webmail in the first place. spent a week using a phone exclusively for restaurant reservations, looking at
    menus, banking, booking tickets, and using my phone for everything, and
    there are a ton of web sites that *still* aren't mobile friendly.
    Surprising, since you can easily make Wordpress mobile-friendly with a
    single plug-in (and WP seems to run most of the small business web space)



    ... When in doubt, predict that the trend will continue.
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    * Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to Nightfox on Sat Jun 25 09:33:00 2022
    Nightfox wrote to nblade <=-

    I've often thought that migration to Linux would probably happen slowly rather than en masse. One problem is that, while there has been more
    and more software developed for Linux, there are still some programs
    for other platforms that don't have a version or an equivalent in
    Linux, and it will take time to develop more Linux software. It's not going to happen overnight.

    The biggest detractor for desktop linux IMO was a desktop suite. While Libreoffice is a pretty killer package, it's not Microsoft Office, and
    people used to one will take a while to get used to it.

    Microsoft's improved cloud services are changing that. With a $99/year Microsoft365 subscription, you can get 5 people in your house with Office
    for Windows or Mac, a terabyte of OneDrive space each, full Outlook application support (address books, notes, tasks, calendaring and so on) and access to the web apps, which are pretty good now -- and run just fine on Linux.

    Lots of companies offer discounted Microsoft365 subscriptions, too - I pay $69/year for my 5 seats.






    Another thing is that there are a lot of people these days who seem to mainly use a tablet or smartphone and might not even have a desktop or laptop computer to run Linux on. So for desktop operating systems, the market is probably more limited now than it used to be.

    However, in recent years I have been seeing more software for Linux,
    and it seems thereh as been more of an effort to support Linux from
    some companies. I think one big hurdle is PC gaming - but Steam has
    been supporting Linux more and more. I've also recently become aware
    of Proton, which is supposed to help run some Windows games in Linux.
    I've also seen more Linux native ports of some PC games as well.

    Nightfox
    --- SBBSecho 3.15-Linux
    * Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)

    ... When in doubt, predict that the trend will continue.
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    * Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to deon on Sat Jun 25 09:37:00 2022
    deon wrote to nblade <=-

    So I used to use Linux as my primary desktop (on a laptop) for about 5
    or so years (IIRC) at a major enterprise. Mail was Lotus Domino, I dont recall what VPN tool I used, Office was OpenOffice. OpenOffice was a
    pain, especially if my peers used Microsoft Office and any documents or powerpoints need to be "adjusted" because of different fonts, etc.

    I did the same thing back in 2012-2014, I was tasked with building a Linux desktop platform for engineers at my all Windows/Mac company. Once I added
    the ms-ttf package, I got Verdana and Tahoma, which was all most documents
    in the office used. No comic sans support, if memory serves.

    OpenOffice and Evolution were nice - with a little tweaking from Evo, I was able to make an office suite that looked and worked like MS Office.



    ... When in doubt, predict that the trend will continue.
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    * Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to Atreyu on Sat Jun 25 09:42:00 2022
    Atreyu wrote to Nblade <=-

    All of my email accounts are Exchange/Outlook, even my personal. Not
    any Imap/Pop3. There is not an equal Linux solution I've seen in terms
    of GUI or usage that will talk to Exchange server. Sorry but Exchange onprem runs a lot of business and OWA won't cut it.

    Evolution does Outlook, but it has its quirks.

    I'd argue that Outlook365 on the web is quite workable; when we all went
    home in March of 2020, a lot of people in my company ditched their small laptop screens and just used Microsoft 365 web apps on their personal desktops.

    I did the same for 3 months, using my home desktop for all of my admin work (Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Outlook) and only used my work laptop when I needed to VPN in and ssh into a box. I found it perfectly capable, with the exception of Excel having a bit of a learning curve.

    They've come a long way from on-prem OWA.




    ... When in doubt, predict that the trend will continue.
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    * Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)
  • From paulie420@21:2/150 to deon on Sun Jun 26 10:29:56 2022
    Yeah, I found ONLYoffice not so long ago and installed it at home -
    looks good, although I havent used it extensively. Good to know that somebody else is liking it.

    OpenOffice is what LibreOffice forked from (IIRC). I did many a presentation with it, and it worked well. The only challenge was collaboration, especially if the other editors were using MSOffice.
    While it could read-write the docs, it always rendered differently - and when you present you cant have that :(

    Ok, yeah... I think OnlyOffice looks and functions more like the standards that most folks are used to... I'm gonna keep hunting for more templates and/or pre-made .doc files; I'm sure they're out there...



    |07p|15AULIE|1142|07o
    |08.........

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 2022/04/03 (Raspberry Pi/32)
    * Origin: 2o fOr beeRS bbs>>>20ForBeers.com:1337 (21:2/150)
  • From Nightfox@21:1/137 to poindexter FORTRAN on Sun Jun 26 14:46:18 2022
    Re: Re: Old computer
    By: poindexter FORTRAN to Nightfox on Sat Jun 25 2022 09:33 am

    The biggest detractor for desktop linux IMO was a desktop suite. While Libreoffice is a pretty killer package, it's not Microsoft Office, and people used to one will take a while to get used to it.

    I thought LibreOffice (and OpenOffice before that) was similar enough to Microsoft Office. But I suppose I may have only been using basic features at the time.

    Nightfox
    --- SBBSecho 3.15-Linux
    * Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)
  • From Nightfox@21:1/137 to poindexter FORTRAN on Sun Jun 26 14:48:54 2022
    Re: Re: Old computer
    By: poindexter FORTRAN to Atreyu on Sat Jun 25 2022 09:42 am

    Evolution does Outlook, but it has its quirks.

    Years ago, the company I worked for used Windows across the company and was using a Microsoft Exchange email server, with Outlook on the employee laptops. One time, they brought in a guy who was very much a Linux person, and he even went as far as installing a Linux virtual machine on his company laptop to use as his main environment. He was able to get an email client set up with the company's email server. But when he sent emails, sometimes we'd notice that his emails were formatted differently and would look weird. IMO it seemed like a lot of effort to install a Linux VM on the company laptop and get it all set up, rather than just use the Windows installation on it.

    Nightfox
    --- SBBSecho 3.15-Linux
    * Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)
  • From Spectre@21:3/101 to paulie420 on Mon Jun 27 07:43:00 2022
    I haven't tried OpenOffice and wonder what its like...

    I have open office on my daily drive, Win7. For the most part its a swimming drop in for any other office. The version I have is probably long in the
    tooth now, probably during my last Win install.

    The biggest foible I found with it, were not saving current win document formats, although it'll import them. That doesn't put it to far in front of office 2003 for my money which will do the same. I've no idea about
    templates never use them. My requirements are quite modest.

    Spec


    *** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
    --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
    * Origin: The future's uncertain, the end is always near. (21:3/101)
  • From Spectre@21:3/101 to boraxman on Mon Jun 27 07:58:00 2022
    The argument that Linux is not ready seems to come from people who have very specific requirements and preferences, and Linux doesn't match them exactly. I find Windows deficient in many ways, and lacking things that I'm use to in Linux. Virtual desktop support is only OK, no ability to do anything meaningful without running a GUI, and for that matter, I can't choose my GUI at all.

    Pretty none of those things are a problem for me. I'm generally using linux for CLI, although I recall no liking whatever the standard GUI was back whenever it was I tried it, let me count the years... Aside from VirtualBox
    I have no use for any kind of virtual desktop either.. I tend to be fairly general purpose, but one of the reasons for using Windoze on the every day is in fact within reason and the worst exception that comes to mind is Win8
    looks and uses pretty much like every other version.

    Spec


    *** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
    --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
    * Origin: The future's uncertain, the end is always near. (21:3/101)
  • From TALIADON@21:3/138 to paulie420 on Mon Jun 27 00:27:57 2022
    I hated LibreOffice and thought it was 'the' choice on Linux for office suites, but have since found ONLYOffice and really like it. It looks and feels like MS Office and I find myself getting some real work done with it.

    Thanks for sharing Paulie: I'm always on the lookout for new Linux solutions and always found LibreOffice to be something of a half-measure. My requirements are not complicated these days, but better MS compatibility would be a welcome feature.

    I shall take a look at ONLYOffice on the morrow.

    ==================================================================
    TALIADON (Lee Westlake) | TALIADON BBS (taliadon.ddns.net:23)
    FidoNet: 2:250/6 | fsxNet: 21:3/138 | Email: taliadon-bbs@mail.com ==================================================================

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: TALIADON BBS (21:3/138)
  • From Arelor@21:2/138 to Atreyu on Mon Jun 27 04:56:12 2022
    Re: Re: Old computer
    By: Atreyu to Tassiebob on Sat Jun 25 2022 02:33 am

    again, when I ran a BBS back in the late 80's on DOS and later OS/2 I used
    fiddle with things all the time - so maybe the choice of OS has nothing to d
    with it? :-)

    I get that fiddling comes with the territory... but for me, once my computers work the way I want them to, they are imaged and left alone.

    I just don't have the time anymore... the endless nights messing around with some program or scripts or OS is long over with.

    I think the point is that with Linux/BSD/Whatever you get to build your production
    engine and then never touch it ever again, and then use a -current/-beta/-development
    version in your toy computers for fun.

    ie. I run OpenBSD -stable on computers I use for work and never touch them except for
    upgrades, then I use -current in computers I want to fiddle with and break from time
    to time.

    --
    gopher://gopher.richardfalken.com/1/richardfalken
    --- SBBSecho 3.15-Linux
    * Origin: Palantir * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL * (21:2/138)
  • From Arelor@21:2/138 to paulie420 on Mon Jun 27 04:58:22 2022
    Re: Re: Linux Office Suite
    By: paulie420 to deon on Sat Jun 25 2022 07:39 pm

    I haven't tried OpenOffice and wonder what its like...

    If you didn't like LibreOffice, I think you will hate OpenOffice. OpenOffice is LibreOffice with worst performance.

    --
    gopher://gopher.richardfalken.com/1/richardfalken
    --- SBBSecho 3.15-Linux
    * Origin: Palantir * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL * (21:2/138)
  • From boraxman@21:1/101 to poindexter FORTRAN on Mon Jun 27 22:10:35 2022
    I've often thought that migration to Linux would probably happen slow rather than en masse. One problem is that, while there has been more and more software developed for Linux, there are still some programs for other platforms that don't have a version or an equivalent in Linux, and it will take time to develop more Linux software. It's no going to happen overnight.

    The biggest detractor for desktop linux IMO was a desktop suite. While Libreoffice is a pretty killer package, it's not Microsoft Office, and people used to one will take a while to get used to it.

    Microsoft's improved cloud services are changing that. With a $99/year Microsoft365 subscription, you can get 5 people in your house with
    Office for Windows or Mac, a terabyte of OneDrive space each, full Outlook application support (address books, notes, tasks, calendaring
    and so on) and access to the web apps, which are pretty good now -- and run just fine on Linux.

    Lots of companies offer discounted Microsoft365 subscriptions, too - I
    pay $69/year for my 5 seats.



    The desktop suite is a wrong approach to a problem to begin with. Office software, especially word processors are still stuck with the idea that we should organise text in a WYSIWYG fashion for paper. It often leads to suboptimal solutions where a database and generated documentation could have been better.

    I use Office a lot at work, and I estimate that at least 75% of the time I use this "solution", there is a better way to solve the problem than using a word processor or spreadsheet.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From boraxman@21:1/101 to Spectre on Mon Jun 27 22:13:23 2022
    The argument that Linux is not ready seems to come from people who ha very specific requirements and preferences, and Linux doesn't match t exactly. I find Windows deficient in many ways, and lacking things t I'm use to in Linux. Virtual desktop support is only OK, no ability anything meaningful without running a GUI, and for that matter, I can choose my GUI at all.

    Pretty none of those things are a problem for me. I'm generally using linux for CLI, although I recall no liking whatever the standard GUI was back whenever it was I tried it, let me count the years... Aside from VirtualBox I have no use for any kind of virtual desktop either.. I tend to be fairly general purpose, but one of the reasons for using Windoze
    on the every day is in fact within reason and the worst exception that comes to mind is Win8 looks and uses pretty much like every other
    version.

    Spec



    Well, that is kind of my point. People who are used to Windows will see an alternative as "deficient", wheras people used to Linux will find Windows deficient. This shows that much of the "deficiencies" that are claimed are really a matter of the alternative not matching their habits.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From claw@21:1/210 to poindexter FORTRAN on Mon Jun 27 07:57:06 2022
    On 24 Jun 2022, poindexter FORTRAN said the following...
    I've gotten the feeling that corporate customers are Microsoft's
    customer, and we're along for the ride, for some time now.


    That is why there is the much more expensive enterprise editions of windows. They don't spy, install things when someone pays to be in your system, and allow for more control over things like updates and when they install. We are the product and are being charged for windows at the same time. Corporate folks Will pay much more and have service contracts for all that testing to be done on you and not them and often to get their products in your face.

    Move to Linux.

    If you are not a gamer then you really have no reason to be on Windows anymore. If you really need some piece of software you can typically run it in wine, proton, or use a FOSS alternate.

    |23|04Dr|16|12Claw
    |16|14Sysop |12Noverdu |14BBS |04(|14Noverdu.com|04)
    |10Standard Ports for SSH/Telnet Web/HTTP://|14Noverdu.com:808
    |20|15fsxNet/MRC Chat/Registered Doors!/50Nodes/No Time Use! Stay On!|16|07

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Noverdu BBS (21:1/210)
  • From claw@21:1/210 to Atreyu on Mon Jun 27 08:04:09 2022
    On 24 Jun 2022, Atreyu said the following...
    Lol, every year since Windows NT4 someone somewhere somehow reposts this same apocalyptic nonsense and of how "This will be the year of the Linux Desktop".

    I wasn't saying this is the year of the Linux Desktop. But this should be mostly viewed by upper level users. I don't see many unexpierence users getting on a BBS. I would say if thats you then yeah you should be running Linux.

    I don't know exactly what technically happens during a Linux install that seems to turn otherwise smart logical BBS guys into retarded fanatical screaming teenage girls eager to give Torvalds a fingerlicking-good blowjob while everyone who runs Windows or remotely an MS fan is looked upon as having little pointed ears and a pitchfork tail.

    Its not so much the users that are viewed this way. I feel bad for the folks with zero choice. Microsoft is at fault for not choosing be be a better cooperate entity.

    |23|04Dr|16|12Claw
    |16|14Sysop |12Noverdu |14BBS |04(|14Noverdu.com|04)
    |10Standard Ports for SSH/Telnet Web/HTTP://|14Noverdu.com:808
    |20|15fsxNet/MRC Chat/Registered Doors!/50Nodes/No Time Use! Stay On!|16|07

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Noverdu BBS (21:1/210)
  • From nblade@21:3/170 to Avon on Mon Jun 27 15:02:04 2022
    I'm a bit like this also... is the radio software for HAM purposes or something else? Just curious :)

    Yes, I use them to program HAM radios. I have some DMR radios for example that the only way you can program them is to use Windows based software. Right now that software still runs on XP. So I have an XP virtualbox that I use under Linux. Hell even if I didn't use Linux, I'd likely have a virtualbox or VMWare virtual Machine just to keep all the that software in one place and working.

    ... Reward for a job well done: More work

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: RVs and RPGs BBS (21:3/170)
  • From Spectre@21:3/101 to boraxman on Mon Jun 27 23:54:00 2022
    Well, that is kind of my point. People who are used to Windows will see an alternative as "deficient", wheras people used to Linux will find Windows deficient. This shows that much of the "deficiencies" that are claimed are really a matter of the alternative not matching their habits.

    I think one of its limiting factors, is there is no compelling reason to use
    a linux desktop. If some large proportion of business uses something then it is generally going to be easier to stick with that as a "standard".

    For my money both a deficient... but also good enough for what they have to
    do.

    Spec


    *** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
    --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
    * Origin: The future's uncertain, the end is always near. (21:3/101)
  • From nblade@21:3/170 to paulie420 on Mon Jun 27 15:11:17 2022
    Ok, yeah... I think OnlyOffice looks and functions more like the
    standards that most folks are used to... I'm gonna keep hunting for more templates and/or pre-made .doc files; I'm sure they're out there...

    It's funny but I never heard of OnlyOffice. I'll have to look at that.

    One thing to be sure of that for a lot of places are going towards things like Google Drive (or whatever they call it). My current place of employment uses it. Now Googles products have no where near the features that any of other office products have but I would argue that it works for most of the basic stuff people do.

    ... Origin of Life? Just check my refrigerator...

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: RVs and RPGs BBS (21:3/170)
  • From paulie420@21:2/150 to Arelor on Mon Jun 27 17:50:09 2022
    If you didn't like LibreOffice, I think you will hate OpenOffice. OpenOffice is LibreOffice with worst performance.

    LOLS - I'm not in any rush to check it out. :P



    |07p|15AULIE|1142|07o
    |08.........

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 2022/04/03 (Raspberry Pi/32)
    * Origin: 2o fOr beeRS bbs>>>20ForBeers.com:1337 (21:2/150)
  • From coin@21:1/158 to nblade on Tue Jun 28 04:15:45 2022
    It's funny but I never heard of OnlyOffice. I'll have to look at that.

    OnlyOffice would have been great for me, since it looks like MS Office and it runs great on my machine. The only gripe that breaks the deal is the lack of RtL language support which I need to use.

    I have LibreOffice but I for text editing I just default to Vim.

    t. coin@asimon.org

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/13 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: thE qUAntUm wOrmhOlE, rAmsgAtE, uK. bbs.erb.pw (21:1/158)
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to claw on Mon Jun 27 06:39:00 2022
    claw wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

    Move to Linux.

    I keep saying that I could do that, I run Linux almost exclusively on my laptops. My desktop has remained on Windows, and I just migrated my BBS
    over to a VM. I'd toyed with the idea of moving it to Linux, but ended up copying the installation over to a fresh copy of Windows and fired it up.

    If you are not a gamer then you really have no reason to be on Windows anymore. If you really need some piece of software you can typically
    run it in wine, proton, or use a FOSS alternate.

    Windows just *works* for me, partly because I've been running it for so long that it's comfortable. When it doesn't work anymore, I'll probably move to a BSD, as that's more my F/OSS style.


    ... Look closely at the most embarrassing details and amplify them
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    * Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)
  • From DustCouncil@21:1/227 to boraxman on Tue Jun 28 09:35:36 2022
    Well, that is kind of my point. People who are used to Windows will see an alternative as "deficient", wheras people used to Linux will find Windows deficient. This shows that much of the "deficiencies" that are claimed are really a matter of the alternative not matching their habits.

    Well, this has been an interesting bunch of messages because I just spent the last week migrating back to Linux after about a decade of using Windows.

    Windows 10 Home Edition was a travesty of an operating system. A travesty, for no other reason, than its forced-reboot crap, which caused me initially to lose data in the event I left a document open (not a good habit but it happened a few times), or in cases where I was rendering a fractal or something and Microsoft made the decision for me to reboot. This is intolerable. The idea that I have to pay more to have Microsoft not forcibly reboot my system steams my proverbial clams.

    I am sympathetic to Microsoft's reason for doing this, but my suggestion to Microsoft is when people aren't installing updates and rebooting with any regularity, change the theme to Hot Dog Stand and have an annoying pulsing thing in the notification area or something until they do -- don't reboot their damned systems forcibly so they lose work.

    I was also convinced that Windows 10 would be, in essence, the last version of Windows, receiving endless incremental updates. When Windows 11 came out, I thought, "you have to be kidding me." And, of course, it won't run on my current system. By the time Win10 is officially EOL'ed, I'll have a more current system but frankly that little blip a few months ago where they were experimenting with ads in the file manager, I thought, "Yeah...no. I think I am done with this company."

    I spent 2002-2009 running Gentoo on my desktop, and that was, in the end, disastrous because while I loved the whole philosophy behind Gentoo (it's like Linux for BSD fans), when it broke, it *really* broke, disastrously. After one too many times of that happening I went back to Debian Stable for two years and at the time there was no decent video editing solution, and so I switched to Windows 7 out of disgust, keeping a headless, shell-only Linux system on a separate system. This was a nice combination. I lived in PuTTY all day and had the best of both worlds.

    The best Linux desktop I've ever used was KDE 3.5.9 - it was probably the high water mark for the Linux desktop, and, well, I'd hoped that modern KDE would be even better. I'm typing this on Kubuntu now, and I have to say the migration to it has been...irritating.

    I can't speak for the Linux desktop as a whole, but Kubuntu is sloppy. Quirky. And full of little irritations, most of which I've fixed but I've noticed my patience for these quirks is not what it once was. There is an old saw that Linux is a great operating system if your time is worthless. Well, that's absolutely *not* true for the shell, which is the real draw for me, but as for the desktop (well, at least Kubuntu), it has taken far too much time to get myself to where I'm at now. Sound is still stupid; whole inputs are missing in Audacity, like my line in, which I need to record from. Just doesn't show up.

    As to your point, though, workflow on operating systems is an issue. How much can you stand to change workflow based on habits which may be decades old? One truly infuriating thing I can't fix is desktop icons will execute with a single click, which is not what I am used to (and will never be used to), and the settings option will make double-clicking necessary everywhere (like in Dolphin, the file manager, for instance) - EXCEPT on the stupid desktop.

    And here's a major annoyance: Linux is fairly terrible with cloud storage, except for Dropbox. And Dropbox has this piddly little free plan, and then it wants me to pay $120 a year for way more storage than I need. There is no lighter usage tier. Cloud storage is worth $60 a year to me - $5 a month, so of course Dropbox doesn't have any such plan.

    I use an iPhone (I had three Androids before it, and I definitely prefer the iPhone for a variety of reasons), and forget iCloud - at least, forget mounting it as a drive anywhere (you can do this with Dropbox). So now I have this clunky web-only interface with iCloud, and have had to move various other resources over to the piddly free Dropbox tier. I have two cloud services now and I don't want two. I want everything integrated nicely, and Apple would, of course, like me to buy a Mac, which I do not want to do.

    One of my tasks over the coming months, and I have little patience for this anymore, is to try some other distributions, and especially window managers/windowing environments, to see if they better suit my needs.

    I think have replicated about 90% of my needs in Kubuntu now, after a lot of profanity and manual compiling, and that brings me to another gripe. I don't like all of this chaotic packaging business, with flatpaks, snaps, and the traditional package managers. I don't have any problem with any *one* of them, but by now I really wish there was a single standard way of packaging things.

    Then there are the multiple network configuration methods, and I need to untangle all of that business at some point.

    I guess I could compare this to the pure ugly chaos of Windows 10's weirdly inconsistent configuration/settings pages, the need to *sometimes* go into the control panel and get those old Windows NT looking settings dialogs...SOMETIMES, only for other things to be modern.

    Maybe it's just me but right now things really seem messy to me on both the Microsoft end and the Linux end.

    I'd love there to be some order. The BSDs have order but what they don't have is, oh, the ability to basic everyday things like play Netflix videos, on account of the futile DRM Netflix insists on using. I'd love to listen to the suits rationalizing that, like, oh if we don't DRM our shows, people might pirate them.

    I can capture them with OBS just fine as it is. And I can, of course, pirate the hell out of them with Bittorrent if I am so inclined. But what I cannot do is play them legally in FreeBSD, which seems downright stupid since, it is at least rumored, Netflix is using one of the BSDs on the server side.

    Here is one last gripe: there is no equivalent of Irfanview for Linux. Irfanview is, so far as I can tell, the best image viewer I've ever used, and gwenview, the Linux alternative which is widely recommended in its place, is fairly pathetic by comparison. Surprisingly, it won't even display HEIC files, which is the default image file the iPhone uses. I had to compile a plugin from github to enable that. I don't know if it's a patent thing or what. In any case, it is a *major* gap, to not be able to display the default image format of iPhones (whether Apple should use this widely unsupported format is a fair question, but it is what it is.)

    Anyway this is a VERY long whine, but it is fun reading this discussion now as I am in the middle of moving my daily driver to Linux. I want to like Linux. But it is slovenly on the desktop. Some of it may be my distribution choice. I don't know.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Shipwrecks & Shibboleths [San Francisco, CA - USA] (21:1/227)
  • From Arelor@21:2/138 to boraxman on Tue Jun 28 05:48:25 2022
    Re: Re: Old computer
    By: boraxman to poindexter FORTRAN on Mon Jun 27 2022 10:10 pm

    The desktop suite is a wrong approach to a problem to begin with. Office software,
    ase and generated documentation could have been better.

    I use Office a lot at work, and I estimate that at least 75% of the time I use this


    Yes and no. When you want to produce a printer-ready report, a program that lets you
    edit paper-alike documents is not a bad aproximation to the task.

    That said, when you want to produce an electronic-only document you are better off
    using other alternatives that generate output which is easy to convert to different
    formats later on. For example, I use Wrodgrinder for writing short stories, because I
    get an output in a relatively portable format which I can painlessly convert into a
    printer-ready format later if need be.

    --
    gopher://gopher.richardfalken.com/1/richardfalken
    --- SBBSecho 3.15-Linux
    * Origin: Palantir * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL * (21:2/138)
  • From Arelor@21:2/138 to DustCouncil on Tue Jun 28 06:03:23 2022
    Re: Re: Old computer
    By: DustCouncil to boraxman on Tue Jun 28 2022 09:35 am

    Anyway this is a VERY long whine, but it is fun reading this discussion now as I am
    in
    the middle of moving my daily driver to Linux. I want to like Linux. But it is
    slovenly on the desktop. Some of it may be my distribution choice. I don't know.

    A problem with FOSS desktop environments is that many are attempting to be look-alikes
    of mainstream platforms. That always fails because you are never going to be a better
    Mac Desktop Environment than Mac Desktop Environment.

    I have much more respect for things like the Calm Window Manager or DWM because they
    are what they want to be. Bonus points because they waste less resources and are
    actually faster to worth with once you learn them (which definitively takes time).

    KDE can be made to open and execute programs upon doubble click rather than single
    click by the way. IN fact I think such behaviour is so for many distributions which
    ship KDE.

    If I wanted to use something Windowsy or Macy I would run Windows or Mac, personally.
    People who moves to Linux expecting to have a Windows-like experience seem so weird to
    me.

    --
    gopher://gopher.richardfalken.com/1/richardfalken
    --- SBBSecho 3.15-Linux
    * Origin: Palantir * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL * (21:2/138)
  • From boraxman@21:1/101 to Spectre on Tue Jun 28 23:25:24 2022
    Well, that is kind of my point. People who are used to Windows will an alternative as "deficient", wheras people used to Linux will find Windows deficient. This shows that much of the "deficiencies" that a claimed are really a matter of the alternative not matching their hab

    I think one of its limiting factors, is there is no compelling reason to use a linux desktop. If some large proportion of business uses
    something then it is generally going to be easier to stick with that as
    a "standard".

    For my money both a deficient... but also good enough for what they have to do.

    Spec

    People don't see the compelling reason, which is software freedom and moving to a different model of software creation, distribution and ownership. People tend to compare objects from what is printed on the box, and mis the meta-analysis, the relationship between you and the software, and the implications of making this or that choice.

    If you view things from a purely technical point of view, in terms of software only, then yes, there is no compelling reason. But when you expand your view, take into account other considerations, other factors come into view which were previously in the periphery.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From boraxman@21:1/101 to nblade on Tue Jun 28 23:26:29 2022
    It's funny but I never heard of OnlyOffice. I'll have to look at that.

    One thing to be sure of that for a lot of places are going towards
    things like Google Drive (or whatever they call it). My current place of employment uses it. Now Googles products have no where near the features that any of other office products have but I would argue that it works
    for most of the basic stuff people do.

    ... Origin of Life? Just check my refrigerator...


    Kind of worrying that people are moving more and more to "cloud computing" and subscription services, where they are more at the mercy of other companies.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From TALIADON@21:3/138 to DustCouncil on Tue Jun 28 12:26:17 2022
    I am sympathetic to Microsoft's reason for doing this, but my suggestion to Microsoft is when people aren't installing updates and rebooting with any regularity, change the theme to Hot Dog Stand and have an annoying pulsing thing in the notification area or something until they do --
    don't reboot their damned systems forcibly so they lose work.

    Agreed. I've nothing against Windows/MacOS/Linux (I use them all), but this is draconian at best.

    Instead of rebooting, perhaps they could disable the volume control and loop Justin Bieber tracks until the user relents?

    ==================================================================
    TALIADON (Lee Westlake) | TALIADON BBS (taliadon.ddns.net:23)
    FidoNet: 2:250/6 | fsxNet: 21:3/138 | Email: taliadon-bbs@mail.com ==================================================================

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: TALIADON BBS (21:3/138)
  • From boraxman@21:1/101 to DustCouncil on Tue Jun 28 23:54:55 2022
    Well, this has been an interesting bunch of messages because I just
    spent the last week migrating back to Linux after about a decade of
    using Windows.

    Windows 10 Home Edition was a travesty of an operating system. A travesty, for no other reason, than its forced-reboot crap, which caused me initially to lose data in the event I left a document open (not a
    good habit but it happened a few times), or in cases where I was
    rendering a fractal or something and Microsoft made the decision for me
    to reboot. This is intolerable. The idea that I have to pay more to
    have Microsoft not forcibly reboot my system steams my proverbial clams.


    I am sympathetic to Microsoft's reason for doing this, but my suggestion to Microsoft is when people aren't installing updates and rebooting with any regularity, change the theme to Hot Dog Stand and have an annoying pulsing thing in the notification area or something until they do --
    don't reboot their damned systems forcibly so they lose work.

    I was also convinced that Windows 10 would be, in essence, the last version of Windows, receiving endless incremental updates. When Windows 11 came out, I thought, "you have to be kidding me." And, of course, it won't run on my current system. By the time Win10 is officially EOL'ed, I'll have a more current system but frankly that little blip a few
    months ago where they were experimenting with ads in the file manager, I thought, "Yeah...no. I think I am done with this company."

    I spent 2002-2009 running Gentoo on my desktop, and that was, in the end, disastrous because while I loved the whole philosophy behind Gentoo
    (it's like Linux for BSD fans), when it broke, it *really* broke, disastrously. After one too many times of that happening I went back to Debian Stable for two years and at the time there was no decent video editing solution, and so I switched to Windows 7 out of disgust, keeping
    a headless, shell-only Linux system on a separate system. This was a
    nice combination. I lived in PuTTY all day and had the best of both worlds.

    The best Linux desktop I've ever used was KDE 3.5.9 - it was probably
    the high water mark for the Linux desktop, and, well, I'd hoped that modern KDE would be even better. I'm typing this on Kubuntu now, and I have to say the migration to it has been...irritating.

    I can't speak for the Linux desktop as a whole, but Kubuntu is sloppy. Quirky. And full of little irritations, most of which I've fixed but
    I've noticed my patience for these quirks is not what it once was.
    There is an old saw that Linux is a great operating system if your time
    is worthless. Well, that's absolutely *not* true for the shell, which
    is the real draw for me, but as for the desktop (well, at least
    Kubuntu), it has taken far too much time to get myself to where I'm at now. Sound is still stupid; whole inputs are missing in Audacity, like
    my line in, which I need to record from. Just doesn't show up.

    As to your point, though, workflow on operating systems is an issue.
    How much can you stand to change workflow based on habits which may be decades old? One truly infuriating thing I can't fix is desktop icons will execute with a single click, which is not what I am used to (and
    will never be used to), and the settings option will make
    double-clicking necessary everywhere (like in Dolphin, the file manager, for instance) - EXCEPT on the stupid desktop.

    And here's a major annoyance: Linux is fairly terrible with cloud
    storage, except for Dropbox. And Dropbox has this piddly little free plan, and then it wants me to pay $120 a year for way more storage than
    I need. There is no lighter usage tier. Cloud storage is worth $60 a year to me - $5 a month, so of course Dropbox doesn't have any such plan.

    I use an iPhone (I had three Androids before it, and I definitely prefer the iPhone for a variety of reasons), and forget iCloud - at least,
    forget mounting it as a drive anywhere (you can do this with Dropbox).
    So now I have this clunky web-only interface with iCloud, and have had
    to move various other resources over to the piddly free Dropbox tier. I have two cloud services now and I don't want two. I want everything integrated nicely, and Apple would, of course, like me to buy a Mac,
    which I do not want to do.

    One of my tasks over the coming months, and I have little patience for this anymore, is to try some other distributions, and especially window managers/windowing environments, to see if they better suit my needs.

    I think have replicated about 90% of my needs in Kubuntu now, after a
    lot of profanity and manual compiling, and that brings me to another gripe. I don't like all of this chaotic packaging business, with flatpaks, snaps, and the traditional package managers. I don't have any problem with any *one* of them, but by now I really wish there was a single standard way of packaging things.

    Then there are the multiple network configuration methods, and I need to untangle all of that business at some point.

    I guess I could compare this to the pure ugly chaos of Windows 10's weirdly inconsistent configuration/settings pages, the need to
    *sometimes* go into the control panel and get those old Windows NT
    looking settings dialogs...SOMETIMES, only for other things to be modern.

    Maybe it's just me but right now things really seem messy to me on both the Microsoft end and the Linux end.

    I'd love there to be some order. The BSDs have order but what they
    don't have is, oh, the ability to basic everyday things like play
    Netflix videos, on account of the futile DRM Netflix insists on using. I'd love to listen to the suits rationalizing that, like, oh if we don't DRM our shows, people might pirate them.

    I can capture them with OBS just fine as it is. And I can, of course, pirate the hell out of them with Bittorrent if I am so inclined. But
    what I cannot do is play them legally in FreeBSD, which seems downright stupid since, it is at least rumored, Netflix is using one of the BSDs
    on the server side.

    Here is one last gripe: there is no equivalent of Irfanview for Linux. Irfanview is, so far as I can tell, the best image viewer I've ever
    used, and gwenview, the Linux alternative which is widely recommended in its place, is fairly pathetic by comparison. Surprisingly, it won't
    even display HEIC files, which is the default image file the iPhone
    uses. I had to compile a plugin from github to enable that. I don't
    know if it's a patent thing or what. In any case, it is a *major* gap,
    to not be able to display the default image format of iPhones (whether Apple should use this widely unsupported format is a fair question, but
    it is what it is.)

    Anyway this is a VERY long whine, but it is fun reading this discussion now as I am in the middle of moving my daily driver to Linux. I want to like Linux. But it is slovenly on the desktop. Some of it may be my distribution choice. I don't know.


    I think software in general has regressed, both in the Windows and Linux world. There have been some changes in Linux which were less than welcome, some of which you alluded to, Snap, Flatpak. There is a tendency to want to reinvent thing, use new paradigms. The one saving grace of Linux is you have the option to have something more stable. KDE 3.5 was fantastic, and the shift to version 4 and 5 was not without friction, but I did get used to it. BUT, I moved to FVWM which hasn't changed in a long time, and is static. My FVWM configuration will just keep working for years and they don't see the need to reinvent things for the sake of reinventing it. Same for other software choices, I can choose software which is more stable. I use Emacs and vim, where the skills I learned 10 years ago are still usable today. Linux pays off for me because my workflows, using Z Shell, FVWM, Emacs, Groff, Awk, don't change. I try to avoid 'flavour of the day' software and solutions and use tried and true solutions, preferring to leverage generic tools.

    I would recommend not really worrying too much about distros, and just pick one and get to know it. Most of the 'spins', like Kubuntu are just the base distro with different defaults. Gentoo was probably not a good choice, as it was designed for those who want to spend time to tinker.

    You can just install regular Fedora, and use KDE instead, no need to move from Fedora to Fedora KDE Spin. I've only ever changed distro once on my laptop, and only because Fedora dropped 32 bit support. The base Fedora or Debian distro will have all the Window managers and desktop environments available, so you can try them all out without changing distros. Just install them from the repository and choose them from the login screen.

    By the way, I'm surprised Plasma/KDE doesn't support single click. I could swear I set mine up that way, but I don't have Plasma on this laptop so can't test it now. There is also the Trinity Desktop Environment, which is a fork of KDE 3.5! So if you really want that desktop, look into Trinity Desktop Environment.


    Admittedly sacrifices are made, but these are sacrifices I am willing to make. Sure, there is some software I don't have, but I can do without it. The payoff is being able to make my computer MINE, have a set up that I'm very comfortable with, and being free from having the rug pulled out from under me because some corporation has a different vision. Linux has taken some of my time, but if you invest your time wisely, the payoff is larger. I've spent some time setting up FVWM, some scripts, but they save me time now, over and over again ,for as long as I want them to, and the investment that you need to make now is smaller than it used to be. It also is different, in that the Unix philosophy lends itself towards using sepearate programs for different tasks, rather than big monolithic apps.

    I set up Linux on a Thinkpad for my wife, and it really was a breeze.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From boraxman@21:1/101 to Arelor on Tue Jun 28 23:59:58 2022
    The desktop suite is a wrong approach to a problem to begin with. Offi software,
    ase and generated documentation could have been better.

    I use Office a lot at work, and I estimate that at least 75% of the tim use this


    Yes and no. When you want to produce a printer-ready report, a program that lets you
    edit paper-alike documents is not a bad aproximation to the task.

    That said, when you want to produce an electronic-only document you are better off
    using other alternatives that generate output which is easy to convert to different
    formats later on. For example, I use Wrodgrinder for writing short stories, because I
    get an output in a relatively portable format which I can painlessly convert into a
    printer-ready format later if need be.

    --

    Agreed, but this happens less often that you think. I write procedures and protocols at work. It would be better for me to write these in markdown, org mode or some other simpler format, and have it 'processed' into a PDF for printing and signing. One could then use this text data as input for other documents, or publish via HTML. Instead, we have a weird system where you upload a .DOCX file to some document management software. The PDF cannot be scanned, or read, so people have to manually open it by navigating to it using a web browser, then visually read the text and type it in elsewhere. The "online" version is just a PDF, not really suitable for online reading.

    Word is also troublesome when you have formatting issues, when automatic numbering doesn't work as you expect, or when the format between different documents which should have the same format differ.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From boraxman@21:1/101 to Arelor on Wed Jun 29 00:03:19 2022
    Anyway this is a VERY long whine, but it is fun reading this discussion as I am
    in
    the middle of moving my daily driver to Linux. I want to like Linux. B is
    slovenly on the desktop. Some of it may be my distribution choice. I d know.

    A problem with FOSS desktop environments is that many are attempting to
    be look-alikes
    of mainstream platforms. That always fails because you are never going
    to be a better
    Mac Desktop Environment than Mac Desktop Environment.

    I have much more respect for things like the Calm Window Manager or DWM because they
    are what they want to be. Bonus points because they waste less resources and are
    actually faster to worth with once you learn them (which definitively takes time).

    KDE can be made to open and execute programs upon doubble click rather than single
    click by the way. IN fact I think such behaviour is so for many distributions which
    ship KDE.

    If I wanted to use something Windowsy or Macy I would run Windows or Mac, personally.
    People who moves to Linux expecting to have a Windows-like experience
    seem so weird to
    me.

    --

    This whole idea of "lets make a clone of the other platform to win people" is misguided. People won't switch to Linux to use a 2nd rate Windows or 2nd rate MacOS X. Linux has to offer a unique value proposition, a different way which can offer a better alternative for some people.

    Trying to win Windows and Mac users over is counter productive. Find your own unique strengths, and work on that.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From TALIADON@21:3/138 to boraxman on Tue Jun 28 13:19:50 2022
    People don't see the compelling reason, which is software freedom and moving to a different model of software creation, distribution and ownership. People tend to compare objects from what is printed on the box, and mis the meta-analysis, the relationship between you and the software, and the implications of making this or that choice.

    The majority of programmers are like doctors: doing something good or interesting for humanity is a great thing, but it's the benefits, house, car, and foreign holidays they're ultimately after. Personally, I love the idea behind the GNU movement, but nothing motivates innovation quite like cold hard cash.

    I don't ever see Linux becoming a truly mainstream desktop, because there isn't enough money to attract the necessary talent and there are simply too many cooks trying to bake the same piece of pie. Without standardisation, software development on Linux will always be problematic for commercial developers - DPI support is one of many issues that M$ and Apple solved through standardisation.

    In fact, M$ stole the entire PC market in the early 90s when they decided to assimilate an established hardware standard into their WDM driver model: instead of building to the IBM PC standard, third-party manufacturers would now build to their own specifications and standardise via the WDM model - without a Windows driver, you couldn't use the hardware. This is when the IBM PC truly became the M$ PC, and Linux devs have been reverse engineering WDM drivers ever since.

    I'd love to see the Linux desktop become a standardised environment where both users and developers can thrive, but Apple already did this 20 years ago and called it Mac OS X. When looking for a truly viable Unix desktop, Mac OS X is where most commercial/corporate developers will go.

    ==================================================================
    TALIADON (Lee Westlake) | TALIADON BBS (taliadon.ddns.net:23)
    FidoNet: 2:250/6 | fsxNet: 21:3/138 | Email: taliadon-bbs@mail.com ==================================================================

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: TALIADON BBS (21:3/138)
  • From Nightfox@21:1/137 to DustCouncil on Tue Jun 28 08:02:11 2022
    Re: Re: Old computer
    By: DustCouncil to boraxman on Tue Jun 28 2022 09:35 am

    Windows 10 Home Edition was a travesty of an operating system. A travesty, for no other reason, than its forced-reboot crap, which caused me initially to lose data in the event I left a document open (not a good habit but it happened a few times), or in cases where I was rendering a fractal or something and Microsoft made the decision for me to reboot. This is intolerable. The idea that I have to pay more to have Microsoft not forcibly reboot my system steams my proverbial clams.

    I honestly don't know what you mean.. I ran Windows 10 since it was released and don't remember ever being forced to reboot.

    Nightfox
    --- SBBSecho 3.15-Linux
    * Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)
  • From Nightfox@21:1/137 to TALIADON on Tue Jun 28 08:07:37 2022
    Re: Re: Old computer
    By: TALIADON to boraxman on Tue Jun 28 2022 01:19 pm

    The majority of programmers are like doctors: doing something good or interesting for humanity is a great thing, but it's the benefits, house, car, and foreign holidays they're ultimately after. Personally, I love the idea behind the GNU movement, but nothing motivates innovation quite like cold hard cash.

    That seems like a fairly negative view of the profession. I'm a software developer, but I got into this field because I actually enjoy it. I like making things (software) that are useful that people enjoy using. It's also about solving problems, which can be fun.
    I think I'd have a hard time doing something if I didn't really enjoy it, even if there was a lot of money in it.

    Nightfox
    --- SBBSecho 3.15-Linux
    * Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)
  • From acn@21:3/127.1 to apam on Tue Jun 28 16:54:00 2022
    Am 26.06.22 schrieb apam@21:1/101 in FSX_GEN:

    Hallo apam,

    OpenOffice is what LibreOffice forked from (IIRC). I did many a

    Yep that's right, before open office it was called star office and was open sourced by Sun, I forget who they bought it off. It's come a long way since then. I remember how it was all sort of contained in one program, rather than split off into several programs like writer spreadsheets etc, really didn't like that much.

    The storyline goes this way:

    Company "StarDivision" (Germany):
    - StarWriter (CP/M, DOS, Win16, Atari ST)
    - StarOffice (Win16, Win32, OS/2, Linux, Solaris)
    up to version 5.1a (Win32, OS/2, Linux, Solaris)

    Sun Microsystems:
    - StarOffice 5.2 (Win32, Linux, Solaris)
    up to version 9

    When Sun bought StarDivision, they open-sourced StarOffice, which
    became OpenOffice.
    After Oracle bought Sun, many developers left OpenOffice.org and
    started LibreOffice as a fork.

    Regarding the "all in one"-program:
    Yes, from version 4 till version 5.2, StarOffice was a 'all in one'
    program, containing everything and a kitchen sink :)
    It even contained a web browser, mail client, news reader and HTML
    editor.
    And yes, that really slowed down the startup of StarOffice, but once
    it was started, it was quite quick, AFAIR.
    I even liked the concept and also used the mail client back in the
    day.

    I've used StarOffice since version 4 on OS/2 and later on Linux (and
    on Windows, when I had to use it).

    So, I'm used to the way it worked and sometimes with newer versions of LibreOffice, I have some problems finding stuff, as I only use it from
    time to time (I have less and less documents to create...), as some
    things keep on changing and the icons are getting uglier and harder to identify every year.

    But there is one thing that I would like to state:
    Even today, as LibreOffice seems to be divived into several
    applications, it still is run from the binary "soffice.bin".
    There is just no desktop around anymore :)

    Regards,
    Anna

    --- OpenXP 5.0.56
    * Origin: Imzadi Box Point (21:3/127.1)
  • From acn@21:3/127.1 to boraxman on Tue Jun 28 17:39:00 2022
    Am 27.06.22 schrieb boraxman@21:1/101 in FSX_GEN:

    Hallo boraxman,

    Well, that is kind of my point. People who are used to Windows
    will see an alternative as "deficient", wheras people used to Linux
    will find Windows deficient. This shows that much of the
    "deficiencies" that are claimed are really a matter of the
    alternative not matching their habits.

    Well, I've started my computer career (after the C64 phase in the
    early 90s) with a MS-DOS/Win3 system and upgraded to Win95 (starting
    with the March '95 beta!).
    I liked it and played around with that quite a lot, later I upgraded
    to Win98. But with the deep integration of IE, I more and more
    disliked it and moved to OS/2, which I had seen running on a BBS PC of
    some sysop.
    Later, I moved to Linux and stayed there (with some years of MacOS on
    my main desktop machine).

    So, I should be preferring the Windows style of computing, as I
    started there. But I don't.
    Today, I have to use Windows on my work machine, but I'm thankful that
    I could install MobaXterm, which contains a local bash shell.
    There are quite some tasks where I need some of the basic UNIX text
    mangling commands that don't have feasible equivalents on Windows.

    I only have a Windows PC at home for Fusion 360 (3D design) and some
    old Windows games, my main desktop (and the one of my wife) are
    running Linux (KDE Plasma).

    Regards,
    Anna

    --- OpenXP 5.0.56
    * Origin: Imzadi Box Point (21:3/127.1)
  • From TALIADON@21:3/138 to Nightfox on Tue Jun 28 17:54:30 2022
    That seems like a fairly negative view of the profession. I'm a software developer, but I got into this field because I actually enjoy it. I like making things (software) that are useful that people enjoy using. It's also about solving problems, which can be fun.
    I think I'd have a hard time doing something if I didn't really enjoy
    it, even if there was a lot of money in it.

    Possibly, but it's human nature - there's nothing quite like pay disparities to create discontent amongst the members of a team. Sadly, money is freedom in this crazy world of ours, and freedom ultimately means happiness.

    I was an analogue/digital designer for over 30 years and worked with like-minded people who adored the job, but motivation/innovation was primarily driven by promotion and money. When a man has a family, his prime directive is to provide them with the best lifestyle he can. With the best intentions in the world, a man will always look for the greatest return on his investment.

    Negative or not, it was money, promotion, and competition, that kept me sharp and keen when I was an engineer - in that order :)

    ==================================================================
    TALIADON (Lee Westlake) | TALIADON BBS (taliadon.ddns.net:23)
    FidoNet: 2:250/6 | fsxNet: 21:3/138 | Email: taliadon-bbs@mail.com ==================================================================

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: TALIADON BBS (21:3/138)
  • From fusion@21:1/616 to DustCouncil on Tue Jun 28 17:59:17 2022
    On 28 Jun 2022, DustCouncil said the following...

    I can capture them with OBS just fine as it is. And I can, of course, pirate the hell out of them with Bittorrent if I am so inclined. But
    what I cannot do is play them legally in FreeBSD, which seems downright stupid since, it is at least rumored, Netflix is using one of the BSDs
    on the server side.

    the current best pirated copies of a lot of things that don't come on Blu-Ray are direct downloads from Amazon/Netflix/etc. a few of the groups have
    defeated the DRM. whether you agree with DRM or not, if they manage to fix the hacks people use, the 4K torrents of a lot of new shows/movies would be gone.

    currently it's not easy, and the release groups don't share their tools
    because they'd immediately be patched.

    capturing with OBS is trash. that's how you get inferior encodes with frame rate problems, jittery motion during action scenes, etc. they know it sucks and no release groups use it.

    Here is one last gripe: there is no equivalent of Irfanview for Linux.

    irfanview is just a knockoff of pmview. unfortunately the same problem tho, no linux version. i've considered cloning it because i too think gwenview is rather lame. irfanview does work just fine with wine though, and there aren't any downsides other than that it's kinda ugly against KDE's ui.

    don't know why everyone dislikes wine..

    ... A program is used to turn data into error messages.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/25 (Windows/32)
    * Origin: cold fusion - cfbbs.net - grand rapids, mi (21:1/616)
  • From fusion@21:1/616 to boraxman on Tue Jun 28 18:04:36 2022
    On 28 Jun 2022, boraxman said the following...

    Kind of worrying that people are moving more and more to "cloud
    computing" and subscription services, where they are more at the mercy
    of other companies.

    we've gone back in time.. just a bunch of VT100 terminals connecting to the university's mainframe.

    ... You can learn many things from children... like how much patience you have

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/25 (Windows/32)
    * Origin: cold fusion - cfbbs.net - grand rapids, mi (21:1/616)
  • From Nightfox@21:1/137 to fusion on Tue Jun 28 15:19:06 2022
    Re: Re: Old computer
    By: fusion to DustCouncil on Tue Jun 28 2022 05:59 pm

    Here is one last gripe: there is no equivalent of Irfanview for
    Linux.

    irfanview is just a knockoff of pmview. unfortunately the same problem

    Interesting, I hadn't heard of PMView (or maybe I have and forgot). It looks like PMView definitely has been around longer than IrfanView.

    Nightfox
    --- SBBSecho 3.15-Linux
    * Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)
  • From boraxman@21:1/101 to TALIADON on Wed Jun 29 10:42:51 2022
    The majority of programmers are like doctors: doing something good or interesting for humanity is a great thing, but it's the benefits, house, car, and foreign holidays they're ultimately after. Personally, I love
    the idea behind the GNU movement, but nothing motivates innovation quite like cold hard cash.

    I don't ever see Linux becoming a truly mainstream desktop, because
    there isn't enough money to attract the necessary talent and there are simply too many cooks trying to bake the same piece of pie. Without standardisation, software development on Linux will always be
    problematic for commercial developers - DPI support is one of many
    issues that M$ and Apple solved through standardisation.

    In fact, M$ stole the entire PC market in the early 90s when they
    decided to assimilate an established hardware standard into their WDM driver model: instead of building to the IBM PC standard, third-party manufacturers would now build to their own specifications and
    standardise via the WDM model - without a Windows driver, you couldn't
    use the hardware. This is when the IBM PC truly became the M$ PC, and Linux devs have been reverse engineering WDM drivers ever since.

    I'd love to see the Linux desktop become a standardised environment
    where both users and developers can thrive, but Apple already did this
    20 years ago and called it Mac OS X. When looking for a truly viable
    Unix desktop, Mac OS X is where most commercial/corporate developers
    will go.

    ================================================================== TALIADON (Lee Westlake) | TALIADON BBS (taliadon.ddns.net:23)
    FidoNet: 2:250/6 | fsxNet: 21:3/138 | Email: taliadon-bbs@mail.com ==================================================================


    Standards are missing, but standards are only standards when people choose to follow them. Discipline and willingness to abide is really the issue, not the existence of standards. I struggle with Windows, and the myriad of different "save as" dialog boxes that present themselves to me during the working day.

    I think Microsoft ruined computing, the way that Henry Ford ruined transportation. The motive was to make it as available to everyone, as much as possible, as quickly as possible, and the result is a mess. It's hard for people to see that, because we know nothing else, and we are brought up to believe that personal innovation and individual success is the be all and end all. A very American way of looking at things, and ultimately, a dead end. Computers at work now are utterly awful because of Microsofts vision and goal. I spend so, so, so much time juggling applications, files, and so much time doing things manually that could, should, be automated. It is this way because computing evolved with a particular business model, the one you described, and with the 'cloud', things are getting worse as we cede autonomy and sovriegnty of our own digital lives to corporations.

    We kind of intuitively know the Windows/sold software model is broken, because a LOT of software is bespoke, created to solve a particular purpose, not a shrink wrap product. The problem is that software still is packaged and tries to be THE solution. The GNU way makes more sense. You have hardware, tools, and you put them together in a way which solves your problem, modifying, writing new software, or commissioning it as you see fit. It leans itself more to asking "how can I make this computer do X" instead of "where can I find an app that does X". Your OS should be 'the app', and you interact directly with it to solve problems, do you work, instead of merely being the vehicle to launch apps from. For example, "how can I make the computer file a specification, update the database of products the specifications refers to and supercede the old one by taking necessarily input from a single dialog box and then automating all the later processes" would be a question answered by creating a workflow within the OS. Instead, we use all these different "apps" to do each of these tasks manually, which means humans grappling with machines.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From boraxman@21:1/101 to Nightfox on Wed Jun 29 10:45:41 2022
    The majority of programmers are like doctors: doing something good or interesting for humanity is a great thing, but it's the benefits, hou car, and foreign holidays they're ultimately after. Personally, I lov idea behind the GNU movement, but nothing motivates innovation quite cold hard cash.

    That seems like a fairly negative view of the profession. I'm a software developer, but I got into this field because I actually enjoy it. I like making things (software) that are useful that people enjoy using. It's also about solving problems, which can be fun.
    I think I'd have a hard time doing something if I didn't really enjoy
    it, even if there was a lot of money in it.

    Nightfox
    --- SBBSecho 3.15-Linux

    Do you develop for a company, or as a hobby? Because the experience between these two modes of development is vastly different. I do enjoy programming as a hobby, because I enjoy the intellectual pursuit, just making the computer do what I want (which is what drew me to it in the first place), and making my life a little easier. Thought about doing it for a career, but I'd had to do thing the companies way, which I may not enjoy.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From boraxman@21:1/101 to acn on Wed Jun 29 11:01:15 2022
    Hallo boraxman,

    Well, that is kind of my point. People who are used to Windows
    will see an alternative as "deficient", wheras people used to Linux will find Windows deficient. This shows that much of the "deficiencies" that are claimed are really a matter of the
    alternative not matching their habits.

    Well, I've started my computer career (after the C64 phase in the
    early 90s) with a MS-DOS/Win3 system and upgraded to Win95 (starting with the March '95 beta!).
    I liked it and played around with that quite a lot, later I upgraded
    to Win98. But with the deep integration of IE, I more and more
    disliked it and moved to OS/2, which I had seen running on a BBS PC of some sysop.
    Later, I moved to Linux and stayed there (with some years of MacOS on
    my main desktop machine).

    So, I should be preferring the Windows style of computing, as I
    started there. But I don't.
    Today, I have to use Windows on my work machine, but I'm thankful that
    I could install MobaXterm, which contains a local bash shell.
    There are quite some tasks where I need some of the basic UNIX text mangling commands that don't have feasible equivalents on Windows.

    I only have a Windows PC at home for Fusion 360 (3D design) and some
    old Windows games, my main desktop (and the one of my wife) are
    running Linux (KDE Plasma).

    Regards,
    Anna

    That is almost identical to my story! Except I didn't use OS/2 and moved to Windows 95 at the end of 1996 and Linux in 2000. Windows I only have for games, but it is not functional at the moment as I only have XP and there are no drivers for my current video card, so I run all my games either natively or Wine/Proton in the rare occasion that I need to.

    Initially I used to use Linux "Windows style", but moved more and more to using it "Unix style" over time. You know, using the GNU tools more and Windows equivalents of applications less. I generate financial reports for a company I'm a director of, and I've automated a lot of it with groff and a simple program I wrote. Other tasks I employed Awk instead of wrangling spreadsheets. Instead of thinking "is there an application I an download to so specific task X" I think "how can I make what I've got do task X".

    The real difference is in the value in learning the tools. In the Windows world, you really learn to use 3rd Party applications, you don't really learn to use Windows because there is nothing to learn, really, except Control Panel. Powershell has changed that, but its just not BASH. In GNU/Linux/Unix, there are many tools to learn, but the learning pays off differently because with a little imagination you can employ them to solve novel problems.

    So yeah, I too started my PC use in the MS world (DOS and Windows), and while I did like DOS, and was used to Windows, I couldn't go back. Using Windows at work, I'm struck by how often I have this tedious task to do, which I *COULD* automate, but can't because Windows isn't designed for that kind of power user.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From boraxman@21:1/101 to fusion on Wed Jun 29 11:09:40 2022
    Kind of worrying that people are moving more and more to "cloud computing" and subscription services, where they are more at the merc of other companies.

    we've gone back in time.. just a bunch of VT100 terminals connecting to the university's mainframe.

    ... You can learn many things from children... like how much patience

    Sort of, except the university is a for profit, evil business which pushes woke politics and sees itself as being the shaper of our new world. Well, that describes universities nowadays too, doesn't it?

    I'm Australian, and I think its stupid that Australian business would rely on foriegn companies for basic things like this. Why oh why people trust companies like Google is beyond me.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From Blue White@21:4/134 to deon on Tue Jun 28 16:16:56 2022
    OpenOffice is what LibreOffice forked from (IIRC). I did many a

    Correct. LibreOffice forked because OpenOffice was bought by, or somehow associated with, Oracle? I think that is right.



    ... Internal Error: The system has been taken over by sheep at line 19960
    --- MultiMail
    * Origin: Possum Lodge South * possumso.fsxnet.nz:7636/SSH:2122 (21:4/134)
  • From Nightfox@21:1/137 to boraxman on Tue Jun 28 16:25:01 2022
    Re: Re: Old computer
    By: boraxman to Nightfox on Wed Jun 29 2022 10:45 am

    Do you develop for a company, or as a hobby? Because the experience between these two modes of development is vastly different. I do enjoy programming as a hobby, because I enjoy the intellectual pursuit, just making the computer do what I want (which is what drew me to it in the first place), and making my life a little easier. Thought about doing it for a career, but I'd had to do thing the companies way, which I may not enjoy.

    Both. I've been doing it for a living since 2003, and I also sometimes have some side projects on my own involving some software development (including my BBS stuff).

    You do have to do things the company way when it's for a job, but I do like actual programming/software development work.

    Nightfox
    --- SBBSecho 3.15-Linux
    * Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)
  • From Spectre@21:3/101 to boraxman on Wed Jun 29 18:10:00 2022
    People don't see the compelling reason, which is software freedom and moving to a different model of software creation, distribution and ownership. People tend to compare objects from what is printed on the

    Yeah, nah.. that might be alright for those as care, but the average mug pooterist these days...just wants something that works, with the things they have to interact with... you can wrestle with a linux gui until it might finally do what you need, or you get the default install of WindBlows, and
    bolt on whatever mediocre software will do your bidding despite any perceived shortcomings... how it comes about is far less important than it does what
    you need it too.

    When either one will do the job its just a matter of how, then no there is no compelling reason to swap from one to another. It's not like you're going to be able to bang out an email, write a document of your preferred perusausion, browse the interwebs or play the occasional game... to the exclusion of the alternate platform... so no...

    Think of it this way... the Apple II had Visicalc, it was "THE" killer application people bought the II to run the software... there is nothing equivalent on either platform now.

    Spec


    *** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
    --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
    * Origin: The future's uncertain, the end is always near. (21:3/101)
  • From Spectre@21:3/101 to boraxman on Wed Jun 29 18:12:00 2022
    Kind of worrying that people are moving more and more to "cloud computing" and subscription services, where they are more at the mercy of other companies.

    Now that is something we can agree on... they look like lemmings to the slaughter...

    Spec


    *** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
    --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
    * Origin: The future's uncertain, the end is always near. (21:3/101)
  • From Spectre@21:3/101 to boraxman on Wed Jun 29 18:17:00 2022
    Agreed, but this happens less often that you think. I write procedures and protocols at work. It would be better for me to write these in markdown, org mode or some other simpler format, and have it 'processed' into a PDF for printing and signing. One could then use this text data as input for other documents, or publish via HTML. Instead, we have a weird system where you upload a .DOCX file to some document management software.

    That sounds like either poor corporate planning, or an adhoc addition to fill
    a perceived void rather than an indictment of any particular software....

    Spec


    *** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
    --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
    * Origin: The future's uncertain, the end is always near. (21:3/101)
  • From boraxman@21:1/101 to Spectre on Wed Jun 29 21:36:59 2022
    Spectre wrote to boraxman <=-

    People don't see the compelling reason, which is software freedom and moving to a different model of software creation, distribution and ownership. People tend to compare objects from what is printed on the

    Yeah, nah.. that might be alright for those as care, but the average
    mug pooterist these days...just wants something that works, with the things they have to interact with... you can wrestle with a linux gui until it might finally do what you need, or you get the default install
    of WindBlows, and bolt on whatever mediocre software will do your
    bidding despite any perceived shortcomings... how it comes about is far less important than it does what you need it too.

    When either one will do the job its just a matter of how, then no there
    is no compelling reason to swap from one to another. It's not like
    you're going to be able to bang out an email, write a document of your preferred perusausion, browse the interwebs or play the occasional
    game... to the exclusion of the alternate platform... so no...

    Think of it this way... the Apple II had Visicalc, it was "THE" killer application people bought the II to run the software... there is
    nothing equivalent on either platform now.

    Spec


    Yes my point is that most people don't really inderstand what they are buying or doing. The fact they don't makes them prey. Companies can take advantage of this to leverage control. I feel it my duty to let people I know of the full implications of their decisions.

    ... MultiMail, the new multi-platform, multi-format offline reader!
    ___ MultiMail/Linux v0.52

    --- Mystic BBS/QWK v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From boraxman@21:1/101 to Spectre on Wed Jun 29 21:36:59 2022
    Spectre wrote to boraxman <=-

    Agreed, but this happens less often that you think. I write procedures and protocols at work. It would be better for me to write these in markdown, org mode or some other simpler format, and have it 'processed' into a PDF for printing and signing. One could then use this text data as input for other documents, or publish via HTML. Instead, we have a weird system where you upload a .DOCX file to some document management software.

    That sounds like either poor corporate planning, or an adhoc addition
    to fill a perceived void rather than an indictment of any particular software....

    Spec

    It is all if these. But underneath it all is a mindset which makes people gravitate towards solving problems in this way. This mindset is based on experience which was generally limited from only witnessing one paradigm, that created by Microsoft and corporate production of software as a product. I create my own solutions at work and to people it is like magic.


    ... MultiMail, the new multi-platform, multi-format offline reader!
    ___ MultiMail/Linux v0.52

    --- Mystic BBS/QWK v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From Arelor@21:2/138 to Spectre on Wed Jun 29 04:47:45 2022
    Re: Re: Old computer
    By: Spectre to boraxman on Wed Jun 29 2022 06:17 pm

    Agreed, but this happens less often that you think. I write procedures and protocols at work. It would be better for me to write these in markdown, org mode or some other simpler format, and have it 'processed'
    into a PDF for printing and signing. One could then use this text data as
    input for other documents, or publish via HTML. Instead, we have a weird
    system where you upload a .DOCX file to some document management software.

    That sounds like either poor corporate planning, or an adhoc addition to fill
    a perceived void rather than an indictment of any particular software....

    Spec


    *** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
    --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
    * Origin: The future's uncertain, the end is always near. (21:3/101)

    That sort of mess is very common.

    FOr example, many self-publishing platforms want you to submit your manuscripts in
    *.doc(x?). Then they run an automated converter on it that turns them into more typical e-boor bormats (such as epub). Usually they butcher them in the process.
    Sadly, they don't allow you to send formats designed to be portable and converted to
    other formats (such as markdown) which would make so much more sense.

    --
    gopher://gopher.richardfalken.com/1/richardfalken
    --- SBBSecho 3.15-Linux
    * Origin: Palantir * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL * (21:2/138)
  • From tassiebob@21:3/169 to DustCouncil on Wed Jun 29 20:13:18 2022
    to reboot. This is intolerable. The idea that I have to pay more to
    have Microsoft not forcibly reboot my system steams my proverbial clams.

    You actually don't - there are registry changes you can make to stop this intolerable behaviour. I've done this on a couple of my Windows machines.

    Of course you shouldn't have to edit the registry to effect a basic change like this, but as far as I'm aware there is no way to do it from the GUI.

    don't reboot their damned systems forcibly so they lose work.

    ...and some corporate IT departments could do to read this too. Reboot machines to force updates if you have to, but for F's sake please don't do it in the middle of the business day with little to no warning!

    version of Windows, receiving endless incremental updates. When Windows 11 came out, I thought, "you have to be kidding me." And, of course, it won't run on my current system.

    Same here, and as a result Windows 10 might be the last version of windows I run - because I'm definitely not buying new hardware just to jump to 11.

    I have a couple of apps I use Windows for - most notably video editing - but I'm only a new video card away from being able to do that on Linux (I need a new video card to do a better job of it on windows too).

    The best Linux desktop I've ever used was KDE 3.5.9 - it was probably
    the high water mark for the Linux desktop, and, well, I'd hoped that modern KDE would be even better. I'm typing this on Kubuntu now, and I have to say the migration to it has been...irritating.

    Kubuntu is my work daily driver, and for the most part just works.

    I can't speak for the Linux desktop as a whole, but Kubuntu is sloppy. Quirky. And full of little irritations, most of which I've fixed but
    I've noticed my patience for these quirks is not what it once was.

    I haven't had too many irritations, but my use case is probably different to yours. I live in a terminal and web browser most of the day, but also do some software development - which I find much less painful on Linux.

    decades old? One truly infuriating thing I can't fix is desktop icons will execute with a single click, which is not what I am used to (and
    will never be used to), and the settings option will make
    double-clicking necessary everywhere (like in Dolphin, the file manager, for instance) - EXCEPT on the stupid desktop.

    Yeah, that'd be painful - I've always been a double-clicker, so I haven't noticed that one.

    One of my tasks over the coming months, and I have little patience for this anymore, is to try some other distributions, and especially window managers/windowing environments, to see if they better suit my needs.

    Good luck - interested in hearing how you go. $employer has a preference for Fedora, but I'd already well and truly installed Kubuntu before they went that way. I've tried several window managers over the years and KDE is the closest to what I can just sit down and use without having to adapt too much to it.

    I don't like all of this chaotic packaging business, with
    flatpaks, snaps, and the traditional package managers. I don't have any problem with any *one* of them, but by now I really wish there was a single standard way of packaging things.

    107%

    I'd love to listen to the suits rationalizing that, like, oh if we don't DRM our shows, people might pirate them.

    It's more likely the studios refusing to license them content without DRM.

    what I cannot do is play them legally in FreeBSD, which seems downright stupid since, it is at least rumored, Netflix is using one of the BSDs
    on the server side.

    Their OCA appliances are FreeBSD based. No idea what their cloud based stuff uses, but it'd be logical to assume the same.

    Anyway this is a VERY long whine, but it is fun reading this discussion now as I am in the middle of moving my daily driver to Linux.

    I enjoyed the read TBH, and look forward to hearing how it goes.

    Cheers.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: TassieBob BBS, Hobart, Tasmania (21:3/169)
  • From tassiebob@21:3/169 to boraxman on Wed Jun 29 20:41:27 2022
    Kind of worrying that people are moving more and more to "cloud
    computing" and subscription services, where they are more at the mercy
    of other companies.

    Personally, I've been doing the exact opposite (migrating things back home) where I can. Most of my stuff runs on my own hardware in a local datacentre, and gets backed up to home (or vice-versa, as the need dictates).

    As someone once said, "If you're not paying, then you are the product" - or words to that effect. I'd prefer that me, and my data, are not the product :-)

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: TassieBob BBS, Hobart, Tasmania (21:3/169)
  • From claw@21:1/210 to Nightfox on Wed Jun 29 07:54:47 2022
    On 28 Jun 2022, Nightfox said the following...
    I honestly don't know what you mean.. I ran Windows 10 since it was released and don't remember ever being forced to reboot.

    Nightfox

    If its connected to the Internet it will eventually get updates and ask you to reboot it. If you choose to ignore it, then it will eventually just do it for you when you least expect it.

    |23|04Dr|16|12Claw
    |16|14Sysop |12Noverdu |14BBS |04(|14Noverdu.com|04)
    |10Standard Ports for SSH/Telnet Web/HTTP://|14Noverdu.com:808
    |20|15fsxNet/MRC Chat/Registered Doors!/50Nodes/No Time Use! Stay On!|16|07

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Noverdu BBS (21:1/210)
  • From nblade@21:3/170 to Nightfox on Wed Jun 29 14:57:54 2022
    Interesting, I hadn't heard of PMView (or maybe I have and forgot). It looks like PMView definitely has been around longer than IrfanView.


    You know I hadn't heard of it either. Looks like it was originally made for OS/2, which could be why. My guess IrfanView is more well known because it is free for non-commercial use.

    ... That's not a bug, it's an undocumented feature

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: RVs and RPGs BBS (21:3/170)
  • From Nightfox@21:1/137 to claw on Wed Jun 29 08:27:01 2022
    Re: Re: Old computer
    By: claw to Nightfox on Wed Jun 29 2022 07:54 am

    On 28 Jun 2022, Nightfox said the following...
    I honestly don't know what you mean.. I ran Windows 10 since it was
    released and don't remember ever being forced to reboot.

    If its connected to the Internet it will eventually get updates and ask you to reboot it. If you choose to ignore it, then it will eventually just do it for you when you least expect it.

    And you can disable that. I've done it before.
    https://bit.ly/3ucbuFE
    Full link: https://winbuzzer.com/2021/09/14/how-to-stop-automatic-restart-in-windows-10-af ter-a-windows-update-xcxwbt/

    Sometimes I do tasks with my computer that take many hours (video upscaling or conversion, etc.) and I can't have it reboot in the middle of that, which is when I found out how to disable the automatic reboot/updates process.

    Nightfox
    --- SBBSecho 3.15-Linux
    * Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)
  • From Nightfox@21:1/137 to nblade on Wed Jun 29 08:27:58 2022
    Re: Re: Old computer
    By: nblade to Nightfox on Wed Jun 29 2022 02:57 pm

    Interesting, I hadn't heard of PMView (or maybe I have and forgot).
    It looks like PMView definitely has been around longer than
    IrfanView.

    You know I hadn't heard of it either. Looks like it was originally made for OS/2, which could be why. My guess IrfanView is more well known because it is free for non-commercial use.

    I saw that too. I had used OS/2 for a bit around 1996-1998 and I still hadn't heard of PMView.

    It looks like PMView is shareware though (costs money to keep using it), whereas IrfanView is free.

    Nightfox
    --- SBBSecho 3.15-Linux
    * Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)
  • From fusion@21:1/616 to Nightfox on Wed Jun 29 13:35:17 2022
    On 29 Jun 2022, Nightfox said the following...

    Re: Re: Old computer
    By: nblade to Nightfox on Wed Jun 29 2022 02:57 pm

    Interesting, I hadn't heard of PMView (or maybe I have and forgot).
    It looks like PMView definitely has been around longer than
    IrfanView.

    You know I hadn't heard of it either. Looks like it was originally ma for OS/2, which could be why. My guess IrfanView is more well known because it is free for non-commercial use.

    I saw that too. I had used OS/2 for a bit around 1996-1998 and I still hadn't heard of PMView.

    It looks like PMView is shareware though (costs money to keep using it), whereas IrfanView is free.


    Yeah, PM originally meaning "Presentation Manager" :)

    There was a decent amount of quite impressive OS/2 software.. though yeah, definitely shareware. PMMail and PMINews were quite nice when your friends were stuck with Outlook.

    I still keep my copy of ZOC (originally "Zap-O-Comm") up to date, though it's Windows/MacOS only nowadays. Miles ahead of PuTTY and looks great for BBS's too obviously ;)

    ... My reality check just bounced

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/25 (Windows/32)
    * Origin: cold fusion - cfbbs.net - grand rapids, mi (21:1/616)
  • From Nightfox@21:1/137 to fusion on Wed Jun 29 10:55:27 2022
    Re: Re: Old computer
    By: fusion to Nightfox on Wed Jun 29 2022 01:35 pm

    I saw that too. I had used OS/2 for a bit around 1996-1998 and I
    still hadn't heard of PMView.

    Yeah, PM originally meaning "Presentation Manager" :)

    Yep :)

    There was a decent amount of quite impressive OS/2 software.. though yeah,

    Yeah, there was. I remember Stardock's Object Desktop originally being for OS/2, and it worked quite well and was stable. They went on to develop an Object Desktop for Windows, which I've used, but it seems the Windows versions haven't always been as stable as the OS/2 versions were.

    Nightfox
    --- SBBSecho 3.15-Linux
    * Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to nblade on Tue Jun 28 07:19:00 2022
    nblade wrote to paulie420 <=-

    One thing to be sure of that for a lot of places are going towards
    things like Google Drive (or whatever they call it). My current place
    of employment uses it. Now Googles products have no where near the features that any of other office products have but I would argue that
    it works for most of the basic stuff people do.

    Around here, if you're an agile startup, you use Google products. Once you
    get past a certain size, it's all Microsoft365. I've been a G suite user at home, and after years of Microsoft Office use, prefer it at home.

    I'd claim that Google products do the majority of what people need in office use, where it falls apart is third-party plugins for Excel.


    ... Find a safe part and use it as an anchor
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    * Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)
  • From Spectre@21:3/101 to boraxman on Thu Jun 30 07:01:00 2022
    Yes my point is that most people don't really inderstand what they are buying or doing. The fact they don't makes them prey. Companies

    I think you're badly confusing, not understanding, and not caring, so long as it works... functionality is 95%. The rest is semantics.. if it comes with Winblows good enough, if it comes with linux probably tricker to set up IMHO but still good enough...

    Spec


    *** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
    --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
    * Origin: The future's uncertain, the end is always near. (21:3/101)
  • From Spectre@21:3/101 to Nightfox on Thu Jun 30 07:12:00 2022
    I honestly don't know what you mean.. I ran Windows 10 since it was
    released and don't remember ever being forced to reboot.

    If its connected to the Internet it will eventually get updates and ask you to reboot it. If you choose to ignore it, then it will eventually
    just do it for you when you least expect it.

    And you can disable that. I've done it before.

    My experience with Win10 is seriously limited... only time I've had to wave a stick at it, was doing the church video streaming for the time that was a thing.

    I was initially going to go down the path of not having seen spontaneous reboots, but then it occured to me, I had to get there early each week, the system was only powered on once a week, and the first thing it'd do after
    yawn and stretch was in face download updates and reboot... nearly got caught out the first time... so it made me modify my use of it..

    Spec


    *** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
    --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
    * Origin: The future's uncertain, the end is always near. (21:3/101)
  • From seeLive@21:2/128 to TALIADON on Wed Jun 29 18:44:56 2022
    The majority of programmers are like doctors: doing something good or interesting for humanity is a great thing, but it's the benefits, house, car, and foreign holidays they're ultimately after. Personally, I love
    the idea behind the GNU movement, but nothing motivates innovation quite like cold hard cash.

    As much as I want to disagree with you... the facts are on your side... it's not that the FOSS world isn't there and thriving... it is, but if you compare it to where all cash is, it's not in the same orbit... I love linux (god bless Torvalds!) it's an amazing adaptation of software to do exactly what is needed and not the shotgun approach micros***t and other big corporations take in just trying separate users from their dollars...

    I much prefer linux on an amazingly crafted mac where the fan never comes on to a hideous windoze box that always seems like it trying push boulders up a hill each and every day... sputtering and wheezing all day long... there is elegance to the simplicity of linux, but people are mostly driven by money... that's why we are where we are, it's undeniable, just unfortunate...

    Re-livin' the dream...

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Raspberry Pi/32)
    * Origin: oNyX bBs - onyxbbs.mywire.org:2300 (21:2/128)
  • From Nightfox@21:1/137 to seeLive on Wed Jun 29 16:50:18 2022
    Re: Re: Old computer
    By: seeLive to TALIADON on Wed Jun 29 2022 06:44 pm

    As much as I want to disagree with you... the facts are on your side... it's not that the FOSS world isn't there and thriving... it is, but if you compare it to where all cash is, it's not in the same orbit... I love linux (god bless Torvalds!) it's an amazing adaptation of software to do exactly what is needed and not the shotgun approach micros***t and other big corporations take in just trying separate users from their dollars...

    I suppose priorities are a part of it, which is understandable. I work as a software developer, but I do enjoy what I do (very much). But I'd probably prioritize paying work over hobby/unpaid work. If I can earn some money doing what I enjoy, then I see that as a double-win.

    Nightfox
    --- SBBSecho 3.15-Linux
    * Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)
  • From 2twisty@21:3/166 to tassiebob on Wed Jun 29 21:05:43 2022
    ...and some corporate IT departments could do to read this too. Reboot machines to force updates if you have to, but for F's sake please don't
    do it in the middle of the business day with little to no warning!

    Shit. I couldn't even get people to save their work at the end of the day to allow for updates and needed reboots.

    Tried to get a policy in place for people to at least log off before leaving for the day. I would then schedule our WSUS install to do updates off hours.

    Management agreed to it, and we told everyone to log off or reboot at the end of each day and that if they failed to save their work, TOO EFFING BAD.

    That went great until the President of the Company didnt save her work and I got chewed out for rebooting her PC at 3AM.

    This is why I got out of IT. No matter what happened, it was ALWAYS my fault.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: The Ratrace Losers (21:3/166)
  • From 2twisty@21:3/166 to fusion on Wed Jun 29 21:11:28 2022
    I saw that too. I had used OS/2 for a bit around 1996-1998 and I sti hadn't heard of PMView.

    I bought a copy of OS/2 Warp! (3.0???) when it came out. At the time, it was superior for multitasking than anything else on a PC. Some were using Desqview/386, but that was a text-mode thing. If you wanted a GUI to do multitasking, OS/2 was a pretty good bet.

    I was into it because at the time I ran a BBS but I only owned one computer. So, I didn't have to take the board down to do other things.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: The Ratrace Losers (21:3/166)
  • From fusion@21:1/616 to 2twisty on Wed Jun 29 23:54:57 2022
    On 29 Jun 2022, 2twisty said the following...

    I bought a copy of OS/2 Warp! (3.0???) when it came out. At the time,
    it was superior for multitasking than anything else on a PC. Some were using Desqview/386, but that was a text-mode thing. If you wanted a GUI to do multitasking, OS/2 was a pretty good bet.

    I was into it because at the time I ran a BBS but I only owned one computer. So, I didn't have to take the board down to do other things.

    almost the same story here but with Warp 4. i still miss some of the random features.. being able to drag and drop random things like "wouldn't it be cool if you could just do this.." and then being blown away when it works
    like you imagined.. all my folders had custom backgrounds and icons (nicked a bunch from BeOS lol)

    ah the good old days. i should see if i can decorate my KDE setup a little
    bit. bring back some of that comfy feeling.

    ... A house is a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get more stuff

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/25 (Windows/32)
    * Origin: cold fusion - cfbbs.net - grand rapids, mi (21:1/616)
  • From tassiebob@21:3/169 to 2twisty on Thu Jun 30 18:44:12 2022
    Shit. I couldn't even get people to save their work at the end of the
    day to allow for updates and needed reboots.

    Those who don't save their work - especially at the end of the day - get what they deserve.

    Management agreed to it, and we told everyone to log off or reboot at
    the end of each day and that if they failed to save their work, TOO
    EFFING BAD.

    Yup.

    That went great until the President of the Company didnt save her work
    and I got chewed out for rebooting her PC at 3AM.

    Rock | you | hard-place

    Updates gotta be applied sometime lady! I personally have no issue with IT people rebooting my work machine after hours if they've told me it's going to happen (so I can deliberately not leave some long running thing going).

    This is why I got out of IT. No matter what happened, it was ALWAYS my fault.

    Reboot PC at 3am to apply security updates = chewed out.

    Don't reboot PC at 3am to apply security updates and her PC gets 0wn3d = chewed out.

    Damned if you do, damned if you don't. I'm a network engineer, so I feel your pain.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: TassieBob BBS, Hobart, Tasmania (21:3/169)
  • From Arelor@21:2/138 to 2twisty on Thu Jun 30 05:02:49 2022
    Re: Re: Old computer
    By: 2twisty to tassiebob on Wed Jun 29 2022 09:05 pm

    This is why I got out of IT. No matter what happened, it was ALWAYS my fault.

    To be fair, the practice is not exclusive of IT. Any technical position subordinate to
    a management-type boss is subgect to it since managers can't figure how things work
    and it is easier for them to blame subordinates in positions they don't understand.

    --
    gopher://gopher.richardfalken.com/1/richardfalken
    --- SBBSecho 3.15-Linux
    * Origin: Palantir * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL * (21:2/138)
  • From claw@21:1/210 to Nightfox on Thu Jun 30 07:57:31 2022
    On 29 Jun 2022, Nightfox said the following...
    And you can disable that. I've done it before.
    https://bit.ly/3ucbuFE
    Full link: https://winbuzzer.com/2021/09/14/how-to-stop-automatic-restart-in-windows- ter-a-windows-update-xcxwbt/

    Sometimes I do tasks with my computer that take many hours (video upscaling or conversion, etc.) and I can't have it reboot in the middle
    of that, which is when I found out how to disable the automatic reboot/updates process.

    Nightfox

    That is some really good info. I just run Linux now. I dual boot so if I really need it I can use windows on the rare occasion that its really needed. Typically it's when I want to play VR. Until I can afford a better fully Linux compatible head set I'm stuck with it. I will eventually get one. Wish facebook would just make Linux drivers for their headsets.

    |23|04Dr|16|12Claw
    |16|14Sysop |12Noverdu |14BBS |04(|14Noverdu.com|04)
    |10Standard Ports for SSH/Telnet Web/HTTP://|14Noverdu.com:808
    |20|15fsxNet/MRC Chat/Registered Doors!/50Nodes/No Time Use! Stay On!|16|07

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Noverdu BBS (21:1/210)
  • From TALIADON@21:3/138 to boraxman on Thu Jun 30 15:35:41 2022
    Standards are missing, but standards are only standards when people
    choose to follow them. Discipline and willingness to abide is really the issue, not the existence of standards.

    Standards & adherence is indeed a cooperative rather than pre-emptive relationship, but standards are the only way to reliably factor scale into multi-domain projects. Back in the day when layouts/designs started to employ IC units smaller than our lithographic wavelength, we often employed Unix/Solaris boxes in order to develop bespoke OPC/Phase-Shift geometry processors - it was near impossible to do this manually once the geometry had been separated out for masking. As we were never quite sure where this processing would need to take place - some designs would require post-process input from various disciplines - it had to be designed in such a way that it was portable across the entire organisation. As the operating environment was already standardised via x11, a language (POSIX C) & toolkit (Motif) standard were enough to get the job done successfully. But these were simpler times, when all of the program logic/data was designed from scratch and complex OS/inter-application transactions were not an end-user expectation. Today, desktop functionality has become synonymous with the end-user experience,
    where components and features are expected to interact seamlessly and without fuss. In turn, even bespoke applications are now built using standardised paradigms, and commercial developers expect their target OS/Framework/APIs to handle these standards as par for the course.

    Sadly, as of today, desktop Linux is far from being able to provide the cohesive GUI/Core integration that developers have come to expect from the likes of Apple, Google, and M$ - even Qt struggles to traverse the minefield that is the Linux desktop (Gnome, KDE, Cinnamon, Xfce; Wayland, x11, etc). Ironically, Unix/Linux encompasses many standards under the hood, but for
    some unknown reason the GUI fraternity decided to take an entirely different path altogether - each providing the developer with more headaches than solutions. It's not all bad news, however, as many Linux developers have now begun standardising their apps around the Ubuntu core/desktop, with a
    "mileage may vary" caveat for all other platforms. IMHO, herein lays the salvation of the Linux desktop: if developers pick a side, then both
    standards and users will eventually follow, not to mention the closed-source developers who abandoned Linux when 20+ years of desktop development failed
    to establish any semblance of synergy. Of course, if the Linux community
    wants to remain an open-source arena where hobby projects can be recompiled against the user's chosen distro, then I'm happy for it to remain so, but it must also resign itself to a perpetual existence of "alternatives" and workarounds.

    Imagine a world where mathematics hadn't been standardised through number, algebra, geometry, and calculus - a world where every generation must
    stagnate whilst they reinvent the concept of quantity and magnitude all over again. IMHO, this is where the Linux desktop finds itself today.

    I struggle with Windows, and the myriad of different "save as" dialog boxes that present themselves to me during the working day.

    I think this is more a GUI vs CLI issue than a M$ or Windows thing per se. Generally speaking, most tasks are better suited to either one or the other;
    I can't really blame Screwfix if I chose to purchase a Phillips screwdriver
    to tighten a flathead screw.

    I think Microsoft ruined computing, the way that Henry Ford ruined transportation. The motive was to make it as available to everyone, as much as possible, as quickly as possible, and the result is a mess. It's hard for people to see that, because we know nothing else, and we are brought up to believe that personal innovation and individual success is the be all and end all. A very American way of looking at things, and ultimately, a dead end.

    Perhaps I'm reading this wrong, but this comes across as more of a broader world view than any specific criticism of Ford. I suppose it depends upon
    which world we feel more comfortable in: one where a replacement alternator
    can be purchased off the shelf, or one where we have to go in search of like-minded people who happened to design their charabanc around a compatible specification. TBH, this really is the same paradigm, but at disparate scales.

    Computers at work now are utterly awful because of Microsofts vision and goal. I spend so, so, so much time juggling applications, files, and so much time doing things manually that could, should, be automated.

    Perhaps we're back to the Screwfix analogy I used earlier: is M$ the real problem here, or the choices made by those who employ their
    products/services? M$, Apple, and Linux, all have back-end automation tools capable of solving this task.

    It is this way because computing evolved with a particular business
    model, the one you described, and with the 'cloud', things are getting worse as we cede autonomy and sovriegnty of our own digital lives to corporations.

    Agreed. This is a trend that should concern many people, but it also
    represents the only way software companies can truly protect their investment in the 21st century. In direct response to the threat created by the warez/piracy scene, these companies have finally found a way to get users to pay for their product time and time again. TBH, the lease paradigm is nothing new in the corporate arena, but it looks like many developers are now
    adopting this approach across the board. Adobe is one that springs
    immediately to mind.

    We kind of intuitively know the Windows/sold software model is broken, because a LOT of software is bespoke, created to solve a particular purpose, not a shrink wrap product. The problem is that software still
    is packaged and tries to be THE solution. The GNU way makes more sense. You have hardware, tools, and you put them together in a way which solves your problem, modifying, writing new software, or commissioning it as you see fit. It leans itself more to asking "how can I make this computer do X" instead of "where can I find an app that does X". Your OS should be 'the app', and you interact directly with it to solve problems, do you work, instead of merely being the vehicle to launch apps from. For example, "how can I make the computer file a specification, update the database of products the specifications refers to and supercede the old one by taking necessarily input from a single dialog box and then automating all the later processes" would be a question answered by creating a workflow within the OS. Instead, we use all these different "apps" to do each of these tasks manually, which means humans grappling with machines.

    Again, M$, Apple, and Linux, all have generalised back-end technologies for solving specific problems, and all are ultimately destined to become the constituent part of a solution or "app". Linux itself, or the functionality that most people associate with Linux, is in and of itself a collection of
    apps moderated by the Linux kernel.

    Unfortunately, you find yourself in the unenviable situation where your employer has given you a wrench in lieu of a hammer.

    ==================================================================
    TALIADON (Lee Westlake) | TALIADON BBS (taliadon.ddns.net:23)
    FidoNet: 2:250/6 | fsxNet: 21:3/138 | Email: taliadon-bbs@mail.com ==================================================================

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: TALIADON BBS (21:3/138)
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to acn on Wed Jun 29 15:51:00 2022
    acn wrote to boraxman <=-

    Well, I've started my computer career (after the C64 phase in the
    early 90s) with a MS-DOS/Win3 system and upgraded to Win95 (starting
    with the March '95 beta!).

    Those betas made for crazy times. Features would come and go with different versions - at one point they added Netware file services in to one of the Chicago betas, which made my netware servers unavailable, as it responded to client requests faster than the loaded servers.


    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    * Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)
  • From TALIADON@21:3/138 to seeLive on Thu Jun 30 16:23:01 2022
    As much as I want to disagree with you... the facts are on your side... it's not that the FOSS world isn't there and thriving... it is, but if
    you compare it to where all cash is, it's not in the same orbit... I
    love linux (god bless Torvalds!) it's an amazing adaptation of software
    to do exactly what is needed and not the shotgun approach micros***t and other big corporations take in just trying separate users from their dollars...

    I much prefer linux on an amazingly crafted mac where the fan never
    comes on to a hideous windoze box that always seems like it trying push boulders up a hill each and every day... sputtering and wheezing all day long... there is elegance to the simplicity of linux, but people are mostly driven by money... that's why we are where we are, it's
    undeniable, just unfortunate...

    I too love the FOSS community, but where there's cash there's direction - the people footing the bill tend to have very specific goals in mind.

    IMO, the main issue with the FOSS community is lack of direction - too much crossover; too much redundancy; too many people baking the same piece of code. Way too much FOSS code/talent ends-up down the pishadoo.

    Perhaps it's better for the Linux desktop to remain separate/discrete from the commercial mainstream, but then the dichotomy must also remain, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.

    ==================================================================
    TALIADON (Lee Westlake) | TALIADON BBS (taliadon.ddns.net:23)
    FidoNet: 2:250/6 | fsxNet: 21:3/138 | Email: taliadon-bbs@mail.com ==================================================================

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: TALIADON BBS (21:3/138)
  • From Arelor@21:2/138 to TALIADON on Fri Jul 1 05:12:22 2022
    Re: Re: Old computer
    By: TALIADON to seeLive on Thu Jun 30 2022 04:23 pm

    I too love the FOSS community, but where there's cash there's direction - the peopl

    IMO, the main issue with the FOSS community is lack of direction - too much crossov

    Perhaps it's better for the Linux desktop to remain separate/discrete from the comm

    The idea that Linux is built by hippies coding in basements for the fun of it is long
    gone. If you check the kernel mailing list, it is all corporative contributors as of
    late. Linux is a corporative product built using an open-source-free model because it
    better suits the needs of the corporations rolling it out.

    BTW another reason why I like the BSD is that they tend to have a more cohesive vision
    when it comes to develoment XD

    --
    gopher://gopher.richardfalken.com/1/richardfalken
    --- SBBSecho 3.15-Linux
    * Origin: Palantir * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL * (21:2/138)
  • From acn@21:3/127.1 to poindexter FORTRAN on Fri Jul 1 12:13:00 2022
    Am 29.06.22 schrieb poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 in FSX_GEN:

    Hallo poindexter,

    Well, I've started my computer career (after the C64 phase in the
    early 90s) with a MS-DOS/Win3 system and upgraded to Win95 (starting
    with the March '95 beta!).

    Those betas made for crazy times. Features would come and go with
    different versions - at one point they added Netware file services in to one of the Chicago betas, which made my netware servers unavailable, as it responded to client requests faster than the loaded servers.

    Oh, okay... But as I remember, you had to manually enable those
    "NetWare file services", which emulated a NetWare server, right?

    But generally, adding those NetWare services and a client, which only
    were half-baked (and -AFAIR- only NetWare 3 compatible), was a typical Microsoft move to kill NetWare.

    Regards,
    Anna

    --- OpenXP 5.0.56
    * Origin: Imzadi Box Point (21:3/127.1)
  • From boraxman@21:1/101 to Spectre on Fri Jul 1 22:32:05 2022
    Spectre wrote to boraxman <=-

    Yes my point is that most people don't really inderstand what they are buying or doing. The fact they don't makes them prey. Companies

    I think you're badly confusing, not understanding, and not caring, so
    long as it works... functionality is 95%. The rest is semantics.. if
    it comes with Winblows good enough, if it comes with linux probably tricker to set up IMHO but still good enough...

    Spec

    Functionality is only part if it. What does, say, using Facebook to host your business really involve. I heard someone whos
    business was no longer visible because Facebook zucced the account for no known reason. These are the scenarios not considered. The company I work for is another example where there has been a lack of foresight.

    It is both not understanding and not caring. Technology is not a neutral tool. I would argue people don't care because they don't understand, at least in many cases. Even I myself was somewhat ignorant of the importance of free software, until I learned WHY it was important. Then I went from 'not caring' to 'caring'.



    ... MultiMail, the new multi-platform, multi-format offline reader!
    ___ MultiMail/Linux v0.52

    --- Mystic BBS/QWK v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From TALIADON@21:3/138 to Arelor on Fri Jul 1 11:55:49 2022
    The idea that Linux is built by hippies coding in basements for the fun
    of it is long
    gone. If you check the kernel mailing list, it is all corporative contributors as of
    late. Linux is a corporative product built using an open-source-free
    model because it
    better suits the needs of the corporations rolling it out.

    Sure, I agree: where there's corporate involvement, there's direction - this is why the Linux back-end is a solid product.

    BTW another reason why I like the BSD is that they tend to have a more cohesive vision
    when it comes to develoment XD

    Again, as long as we're not talking about desktop development, I couldn't agree more :)

    ==================================================================
    TALIADON (Lee Westlake) | TALIADON BBS (taliadon.ddns.net:23)
    FidoNet: 2:250/6 | fsxNet: 21:3/138 | Email: taliadon-bbs@mail.com ==================================================================

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: TALIADON BBS (21:3/138)
  • From boraxman@21:1/101 to TALIADON on Fri Jul 1 23:26:09 2022
    Standards & adherence is indeed a cooperative rather than pre-emptive relationship, but standards are the only way to reliably factor scale
    into multi-domain projects. Back in the day when layouts/designs started to employ IC units smaller than our lithographic wavelength, we often employed Unix/Solaris boxes in order to develop bespoke OPC/Phase-Shift geometry processors - it was near impossible to do this manually once
    the geometry had been separated out for masking. As we were never quite sure where this processing would need to take place - some designs would require post-process input from various disciplines - it had to be designed in such a way that it was portable across the entire organisation. As the operating environment was already standardised via x11, a language (POSIX C) & toolkit (Motif) standard were enough to get the job done successfully. But these were simpler times, when all of the program logic/data was designed from scratch and complex OS/inter-application transactions were not an end-user expectation.
    Today, desktop functionality has become synonymous with the end-user experience, where components and features are expected to interact seamlessly and without fuss. In turn, even bespoke applications are now built using standardised paradigms, and commercial developers expect
    their target OS/Framework/APIs to handle these standards as par for the co

    Sadly, as of today, desktop Linux is far from being able to provide the cohesive GUI/Core integration that developers have come to expect from
    the likes of Apple, Google, and M$ - even Qt struggles to traverse the minefield that is the Linux desktop (Gnome, KDE, Cinnamon, Xfce;
    Wayland, x11, etc). Ironically, Unix/Linux encompasses many standards under the hood, but for some unknown reason the GUI fraternity decided
    to take an entirely different path altogether - each providing the developer with more headaches than solutions. It's not all bad news, however, as many Linux developers have now begun standardising their
    apps around the Ubuntu core/desktop, with a "mileage may vary" caveat
    for all other platforms. IMHO, herein lays the salvation of the Linux desktop: if developers pick a side, then both standards and users will eventually follow, not to mention the closed-source developers who abandoned Linux when 20+ years of desktop development failed to
    establish any semblance of synergy. Of course, if the Linux community wants to remain an open-source arena where hobby projects can be recompiled against the user's chosen distro, then I'm happy for it to remain so, but it must also resign itself to a perpetual existence of "alternatives" and workarounds.

    Imagine a world where mathematics hadn't been standardised through
    number, algebra, geometry, and calculus - a world where every generation must stagnate whilst they reinvent the concept of quantity and magnitude all over again. IMHO, this is where the Linux desktop finds itself today.


    Standards go beyond those ratified by documents, such as ISO standards or RFC, but also incorporate social expectations and practices. The value of a standards is interoperability. A standard language in mathematics exists to allow one to communicate with another. The standards for e-mail operation are not necessarily for e-mail, as Google could create their own protocol, proprietary and hidden, but they allow people to implement their own serves and clients, and for all these to inter-operate.

    If you step back, the key here is inter-operability. Having data stored in known formats, known standards, allows programs to share data between them. The standards though should exist to serve the user as much as the developer. While we may make things easier for developers of graphical environments, developers seem quite self-centered in thinking their own needs trump all. For me, the problem is, how can a user use data they've stored in a spreadsheet, and have it available from another application, or script? The data we have tabulated in Excel, how can we insert that into a formatted document?
    I think this is more a GUI vs CLI issue than a M$ or Windows thing per
    se. Generally speaking, most tasks are better suited to either one or
    the other; I can't really blame Screwfix if I chose to purchase a
    Phillips screwdriver to tighten a flathead screw.


    My point was more that a lot of importance is placed on standardised GUI appearance, especially for Linux, but it doesn't exist, not even in Windows. It is perhaps not as important as people thing. The fact that one program may look different to another is not a big deal. The fact they can't readily stitch them together is.

    Perhaps I'm reading this wrong, but this comes across as more of a
    broader world view than any specific criticism of Ford. I suppose it depends upon which world we feel more comfortable in: one where a replacement alternator can be purchased off the shelf, or one where we have to go in search of like-minded people who happened to design their charabanc around a compatible specification. TBH, this really is the
    same paradigm, but at disparate scales.

    You are correct, but it is not about repairs but how we solve problems. Ford solved a problem by producing a product that can be purchased, but the product was not the best solution to all the problems for which it was applied. Cars are not the best solution for transit in a city, but because that is what was on offer (and pushed heavily), cities changes to accomodate the car, and were designed around that. Likewise, we use hardware to store and compute and manage data, and what was put on offer to do this, was discreet software packages, designed as suites, self-contained solutions. Just like how the car was a solution in and of itself, independent, each software package was the same. A total solution in and of itself which had no relationship to the computing ecosystem it was installed in.

    Car manufacturers are not going to think about urban design which is based on some other paradigm which doesn't involve selling their product, just as software companies don't think about solving computing problems based on other paradigms which don't involve selling their product. The Free Software model, because of its different mode of production, leverages existing tools more than proprietary software does. Software is created more in mind of it being part of a large ecosystem it cooperates with, rather than a be-all solution against competitors.

    Perhaps we're back to the Screwfix analogy I used earlier: is M$ the real problem here, or the choices made by those who employ their products/services? M$, Apple, and Linux, all have back-end automation tools capable of solving this task.


    Unix is built upon tools which are the building blocks for larger more complex solutions. Automation exists in Windows, though far limited, and in the Apple world, the only one worth a damn, is the BSD base. Microsoft were doing what you would expect a company to do, but because they dominated the PC world, everyone was used to buying a computer which couldn't be made to do anything unless you purchased other packaged software.

    Agreed. This is a trend that should concern many people, but it also represents the only way software companies can truly protect their investment in the 21st century. In direct response to the threat created by the warez/piracy scene, these companies have finally found a way to
    get users to pay for their product time and time again. TBH, the lease paradigm is nothing new in the corporate arena, but it looks like many developers are now adopting this approach across the board. Adobe is one that springs immediately to mind.
    This is a fundamental problem of "for profit" software development, and why computing is held back when software development is done just "for profit". The user doesn't have this problem, how a company can make money, but is hobbled because of someone elses need.

    Now think of how things could be, if people could share not just software and scripts, but techniques, "how to's", formula's, etc. IT professionals working for companies wouldn't just be figuring out what software to install, but how to apply these techniques, using base tools, to create workflows and working environments. People would understand how things work, for instance, how the documents generated are saved in the filesystem, how the parsing of CSV data works, etc, etc.
    Again, M$, Apple, and Linux, all have generalised back-end technologies for solving specific problems, and all are ultimately destined to become the constituent part of a solution or "app". Linux itself, or the functionality that most people associate with Linux, is in and of itself
    a collection of apps moderated by the Linux kernel.

    Unfortunately, you find yourself in the unenviable situation where your employer has given you a wrench in lieu of a hammer.


    Unix is a little different in that it contains user tools for managing and processing data, which can be composed to create more complex solutions. MS is just a blank slate that can't do anything. I'm not saying that Unix is the best example, but it does something important, give the owner of the computer immediate means to construct solutions. Basic functionality is exposed to the user (think of the OS as an API, cut, sed, awk, tr being functions), which can interface with a CLI, or even a GUI window. This doesn't replace all applications obviously, but can fill the gaps inbetween, the gap between say, generating a .DOCX and a PDF version, or pulling data from a CSV and generating a report or document, or a simple database query, or to add data to an existing file, etc.

    The way things work now, you open an application to edit data, then close the application. If you want to add a row of data, you open the application responsible, add the line, save, close. To get data, again, open the app, use that apps functionality to get the data. To put that data elsewhere, that is your responsibility. But for corporate use, the OS's desktop itself should be able to offer this common functionality. A widget or shortcut which brings up a dialog which shortcuts straight to the task being performed. A quick form which takes input and adds it correctly formatted to whatever file stores that data. Meta programs/widgets which use different apps and programs in concert to go all the way from initial input to the final output. Not having the user have to manually process the data all the way through.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From TALIADON@21:3/138 to boraxman on Sat Jul 2 14:39:38 2022
    Standards go beyond those ratified by documents, such as ISO standards or RFC, but also incorporate social expectations and practices.

    Unfortunately, this simply isn't the case in the 21st century. Standards and "accepted/subjective practices" are diametrically opposed in almost every way imaginable; the days of corporate developers picking their preferred tools
    and "doing it their way" are long gone. This is precisely the way it was back in my day - engineers often made themselves "indispensable" by using techniques/methods that only they were familiar with - and corporations are unlikely to make the same mistake again. From a corporate perspective, employees are no different from any other kind of asset, and thus should be transparently replaceable once they become a liability. Of course, rather
    than playing the "irresistible force" to their "immovable object", creating your own business/product is a sure way of avoiding this scenario altogether.

    The value of a standards is interoperability.

    You'll find no argument from me :)

    A standard language in mathematics exists to allow one to communicate
    with another.

    Agreed, but it's much more than that. Standard methodology allows us to
    employ proofs without the need for persistent verification. Once an engineer has satisfied themselves with a particular proof, it may be subsequently employed in a natural, almost casual, fashion - variables may be shuffled
    about in an agreed manner, safe in the knowledge that it can be relied upon today, tomorrow, or the next time it's pertinent to do so. Standards, or empirical correctness in this particular case, permits the engineer to learn once, use many, and focus their concerns on more immediate tasks - engineers and physicists are not mathematicians per se, and standards allow us to leverage knowledge from disciplines that are often opaque in nature. To put it another way, standards allow disparate fields to work together more effectively - I always viewed algebra & calculus as the API that allowed me to interface with the mathematicians and physicists who also played a crucial role in my industry. Nonetheless, as you say, it's essentially a means of efficient communication.

    The standards for e-mail operation are not necessarily for e-mail, as Google could create their own protocol, proprietary and hidden, but they allow people to implement their own serves and clients, and for all these to inter-operate.

    Sure, user-centric companies like Google also appreciate the value of standards.

    If you step back, the key here is inter-operability. Having data stored
    in known formats, known standards, allows programs to share data between them. The standards though should exist to serve the user as much as the developer. While we may make things easier for developers of graphical environments, developers seem quite self-centered in thinking their own needs trump all.

    I can't really comment as to the selfishness of programmers today, but
    software development is certainly a more complex arena than it was in my day: we already used Verilog/VHDL for chip layout, and microcode/asm for chip/firmware, so a procedural language like C presented itself as a natural choice for tool development. TBH, if I was starting out as a software
    developer today, I really wouldn't know where to start, but one thing's for sure, whichever road you travel you're going to be lumbered with abstract
    data types, object models, and a ton of third-party code/libraries you didn't write yourself. If ever there was a paradigm that lends itself to over-engineering it's OOP; OOP programmers spend more time making their code programmer-proof than user-proof these days. For sure, it's a quagmire out there, and I have the utmost respect for anyone who dares venture across it.

    For me, the problem is, how can a user use data they've stored in a spreadsheet, and have it available from another application, or script? The data we have tabulated in Excel, how can we insert that into a formatted document?

    If we're talking about Excel or M$ products specifically, then all I can say
    is that M$ has one of the most integrated server/development/deployment
    stacks I've ever seen: cross-application scripting for user automation, and full multi-language Visual Studio integration for the in-house development team. That said, however, if all you have is a basic windows/office
    deployment and little or no in-house development, then you're never going to see the magic M$ developers can pull off in a couple of hours - things that would have taken months back in my day.

    My point was more that a lot of importance is placed on standardised GUI appearance, especially for Linux, but it doesn't exist, not even in Windows. It is perhaps not as important as people thing. The fact that one program may look different to another is not a big deal. The fact
    they can't readily stitch them together is.

    As you stipulated earlier, the user's needs should always take precedence
    over those of the programmer - this used to be the job of an "analyst" back
    in my day - and the desktop experience really does matter to a large majority of users. If this wasn't the case, then Linux itself wouldn't have such a diverse offering. IMO, standards, or lack thereof, across the Linux desktop is more of a functional issue than an aesthetic inconvenience: commercial developers are simply not willing to rewrite large portions of their code every time Gnome/KDE reinvent the concept of the desktop. Many closed-source developers left the Linux scene when Gnome 2 disappeared as the de facto desktop model, and most are unlikely to return en masse until there's some kind of synergy. To push the point a little further, the majority of x11 apps, many written decades ago, can still be compiled/run on Linux without modification. x11 was standardised a long time ago, and these standards can still be relied upon today. Even Win32 apps written two decades ago - a binary standard M$ maintains to this day - can still be run on the current Windows desktop without any recompilation at all. As you say, they look a little different to the newer .net apps (as do x11 apps on Linux), but they still work nonetheless. I have no problem with the Linux desktop as it is - I'm currently writing this on a Ubuntu machine - but there would certainly be some advantages to enticing a few of the closed-source developers back into the fold.

    You are correct, but it is not about repairs but how we solve problems. Ford solved a problem by producing a product that can be purchased, but the product was not the best solution to all the problems for which it
    was applied. Cars are not the best solution for transit in a city, but because that is what was on offer (and pushed heavily), cities changes to accomodate the car, and were designed around that. Likewise, we use hardware to store and compute and manage data, and what was put on offer to do this, was discreet software packages, designed as suites, self-contained solutions. Just like how the car was a solution in and of itself, independent, each software package was the same. A total solution in and of itself which had no relationship to the computing ecosystem it was installed in.

    Car manufacturers are not going to think about urban design which is
    based on some other paradigm which doesn't involve selling their product, just as software companies don't think about solving computing problems based on other paradigms which don't involve selling their product. The Free Software model, because of its different mode of production, leverages existing tools more than proprietary software does. Software
    is created more in mind of it being part of a large ecosystem it cooperates with, rather than a be-all solution against competitors.

    Agreed. There is no single solution that encompasses every problem, but
    that's why Ford produce cars/vans/trucks/etc, and why M$ sell both off-the-shelf packages and integrated server/client/development solutions. Again, if your only experience of M$ is a basic windows/office deployment and no in-house development, then a lot of the magic is going to be lost. If we're talking about passing data between M$ systems specifically, then the M$ developer stack is always going to be the quickest/best option, IMHO. Don't
    get me wrong: if I needed to develop a quick app, then I'd probably choose Linux and POSIX C - not because it's the best tool for the job, but because it's what I know.

    Unix is built upon tools which are the building blocks for larger more complex solutions. Automation exists in Windows, though far limited, and in the Apple world, the only one worth a damn, is the BSD base.
    Microsoft were doing what you would expect a company to do, but because they dominated the PC world, everyone was used to buying a computer which couldn't be made to do anything unless you purchased other packaged software. This is a fundamental problem of "for profit" software development, and why computing is held back when software development is done just "for profit". The user doesn't have this problem, how a company can make money, but is hobbled because of someone elses need.

    Now think of how things could be, if people could share not just software and scripts, but techniques, "how to's", formula's, etc. IT
    professionals working for companies wouldn't just be figuring out what software to install, but how to apply these techniques, using base tools, to create workflows and working environments. People would understand
    how things work, for instance, how the documents generated are saved in the filesystem, how the parsing of CSV data works, etc, etc.

    Unix is a little different in that it contains user tools for managing
    and processing data, which can be composed to create more complex solutions. MS is just a blank slate that can't do anything. I'm not saying that Unix is the best example, but it does something important, give the owner of the computer immediate means to construct solutions. Basic functionality is exposed to the user (think of the OS as an API, cut, sed, awk, tr being functions), which can interface with a CLI, or even a GUI window. This doesn't replace all applications obviously, but can fill the gaps inbetween, the gap between say, generating a .DOCX and
    a PDF version, or pulling data from a CSV and generating a report or document, or a simple database query, or to add data to an existing file, etc.

    The way things work now, you open an application to edit data, then close the application. If you want to add a row of data, you open the application responsible, add the line, save, close. To get data, again, open the app, use that apps functionality to get the data. To put that data elsewhere, that is your responsibility. But for corporate use, the OS's desktop itself should be able to offer this common functionality. A widget or shortcut which brings up a dialog which shortcuts straight to the task being performed. A quick form which takes input and adds it correctly formatted to whatever file stores that data. Meta programs/widgets which use different apps and programs in concert to go all the way from initial input to the final output. Not having the user have to manually process the data all the way through.

    As far as Apple are concerned, I stand by my previous statement: Apple took BSD and turned it into the only commercially viable "Linux" desktop available today. It has the solid back-end we've come to expect from Linux, and so it's capable of much the same thing. As for M$, I think you have to see the full stack in action to truly appreciate how good their technology is - if you're encumbered with the basic packages then other avenues are likely to present themselves as more amenable solutions.

    TBH chap, I don't really think our opinions are as disparate as they may at first appear. Without real investment (staff and appliances), M$ will always struggle to provide the versatility many companies require - money and investment is the M$ business model after all. Linux, on the other hand, is a free and proven technology that provides a solid back-end that's accessible to users, tinkerers, and developers alike. As I'm sure you're aware by now, my only real gripe is the Linux desktop model :)

    ==================================================================
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  • From ACMEBBS@21:4/10 to acn on Sat Jul 2 15:11:00 2022
    On Fri Jul 1 12:13:00 2022, acn wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

    > Oh, okay... But as I remember, you had to manually enable those
    "NetWare file services", which emulated a NetWare server, right?

    But generally, adding those NetWare services and a client, which only
    were half-baked (and -AFAIR- only NetWare 3 compatible), was a typical Microsoft move to kill NetWare.

    This takes me back! Got my MCSE WinNT/MCP 2000 back in 2000. Remember looking at Netware instead...along with OS/2 wondering which one will give me the best bang for the buck. Coming up to today and what actually happened...spent time/money on a fool's errand. Have forgotten much of what I learned from being out of IT for 20 years...which started with the recession around 2001.

    ... A day without sunshine is like, night
    === TitanMail/winnt v1.1.6
    --- SBBSecho 3.06-Win32
    * Origin: fsxNet FTN<>QWK Gateway (21:4/10)
  • From Avon@21:1/101 to poindexter FORTRAN on Sun Jul 3 15:50:46 2022
    On 25 Jun 2022 at 09:29a, poindexter FORTRAN pondered and said...

    Ditto. I built a homelab using Proxmox and a junk-shop Synology NAS and have a ultrawide monitor at my desk. I started using an email app
    instead of a web app and don't know why I went with webmail in the

    I'm still running on some old Dell 19 inch monitors x 2 side by side... but one day the dream is to get something nice and big, by then I'll likely upgrade the desktop too which is currently an i3 with about 12 gig of ram and a mix of SSD and mechanical HD

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From Avon@21:1/101 to nblade on Sun Jul 3 15:51:36 2022
    On 27 Jun 2022 at 03:02p, nblade pondered and said...

    I'm a bit like this also... is the radio software for HAM purposes or something else? Just curious :)

    Yes, I use them to program HAM radios. I have some DMR radios for
    example that the only way you can program them is to use Windows based software. Right now that software still runs on XP. So I have an XP virtualbox that I use under Linux. Hell even if I didn't use Linux, I'd likely have a virtualbox or VMWare virtual Machine just to keep all the that software in one place and working.

    Ah OK, we should move this to the FSX_HAM echomail area but, thanks good to know :)

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to Arelor on Fri Jul 1 08:43:00 2022
    Arelor wrote to TALIADON <=-

    BTW another reason why I like the BSD is that they tend to have a more cohesive vision when it comes to develoment XD

    Better mascots.


    ... A closed system lacks the ability to renew itself.
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    * Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to acn on Fri Jul 1 08:47:00 2022
    acn wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

    But generally, adding those NetWare services and a client, which only
    were half-baked (and -AFAIR- only NetWare 3 compatible), was a typical Microsoft move to kill NetWare.

    Yep, that was Peak Microsoft - right after they made Windows 3.1 break with DR-DOS. My co-sysop at the time worked for Addstor, the company that made a disk compression program similar to Stacker. They had a bear of a time
    getting Windows to run on it, but Microsoft's compression tool ran just
    fine. He could discuss at great length about the suspicions they had.

    I used it to get the last bit of life out of a 70mb drive the BBS was
    running on... How far we've come.





    ... When in doubt, predict that the trend will continue.
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    * Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to boraxman on Fri Jul 1 08:56:00 2022
    boraxman wrote to Spectre <=-

    Functionality is only part if it. What does, say, using Facebook to
    host your business really involve. I heard someone whos
    business was no longer visible because Facebook zucced the account for
    no known reason. These are the scenarios not considered. The company I work for is another example where there has been a lack of foresight.

    There's design in social media where you write once and syndicate everywhere
    - but you host the material on your site. Most of my content posted on other sites starts in my blog, so if my pages were zucced (like that term) I'd
    still have the content online. I couldn't imagine building a business on FB and having the same thing happen.

    Imagine getting your business' Facebook page into Google's caches and then having it taken down, and search links breaking -- and I could imagine Facebook reselling a page link for the right price.

    The only reason I'm still on FB is thinking I might need it if I restart a freelance business or a side hustle.


    ... When in doubt, predict that the trend will continue.
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    * Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to Avon on Sun Jul 3 07:18:00 2022
    Avon wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

    I'm still running on some old Dell 19 inch monitors x 2 side by side... but one day the dream is to get something nice and big, by then I'll likely upgrade the desktop too which is currently an i3 with about 12
    gig of ram and a mix of SSD and mechanical HD

    It was expensive, but I upgraded to a 32" ultrawide monitor, Logitech MX
    Keys keyboard and MX master mouse. I figure that if I'm going to be working from home, I might as well optimize the heck out of it.


    ... Be extravagant
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    * Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)
  • From Warpslide@21:3/110.2 to poindexter FORTRAN on Sun Jul 3 11:28:06 2022
    *** Quoting poindexter FORTRAN from a message to Avon ***

    It was expensive, but I upgraded to a 32" ultrawide monitor, Logitech
    MX Keys keyboard and MX master mouse. I figure that if I'm going to
    be working from home, I might as well optimize the heck out of it.

    What do you think of the MX Keys keyboard? I was drooling over it but that was one of those things where what I already have works, but that set did
    look nice.

    I've also been eyeing up some ways to covert my current desk into a standing desk, which would be a nice upgrade. I could probably justify that cost
    using the "it's for my health" excuse... ;)


    Jay

    ... Sure, I drink brake fluid. But I can stop anytime!

    --- Telegard v3.09.g2-sp4/mL
    * Origin: Northern Realms/TG м tg.nrbbs.net м Binbrook, ON (21:3/110.2)
  • From Avon@21:1/101 to poindexter FORTRAN on Mon Jul 4 15:42:33 2022
    On 03 Jul 2022 at 07:18a, poindexter FORTRAN pondered and said...

    It was expensive, but I upgraded to a 32" ultrawide monitor, Logitech MX Keys keyboard and MX master mouse. I figure that if I'm going to be working from home, I might as well optimize the heck out of it.

    Out of curiosity, is it very curved or not so much? I'm wondering about the merits of the 'curve' as to my bear-of-little-brain the curve may be a nuisance.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From Zip@21:1/202 to Avon on Mon Jul 4 12:17:01 2022
    Hello Avon!

    On 04 Jul 2022, Avon said the following...
    It was expensive, but I upgraded to a 32" ultrawide monitor, Logitech

    Out of curiosity, is it very curved or not so much? I'm wondering about the merits of the 'curve' as to my bear-of-little-brain the curve may be
    a nuisance.

    It appears this differs quite a lot between brands and models -- I see many curved gaming monitors being very curved, whereas my 34" ultrawide Samsung SE790 at work is hardly curved at all (at least not noticably so).

    Best regards
    Zip

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 2022/04/26 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Star Collision BBS, Uppsala, Sweden (21:1/202)
  • From boraxman@21:1/101 to TALIADON on Mon Jul 4 22:52:08 2022
    Standards go beyond those ratified by documents, such as ISO standard RFC, but also incorporate social expectations and practices.

    Unfortunately, this simply isn't the case in the 21st century. Standards and "accepted/subjective practices" are diametrically opposed in almost every way imaginable; the days of corporate developers picking their preferred tools and "doing it their way" are long gone. This is
    precisely the way it was back in my day - engineers often made
    themselves "indispensable" by using techniques/methods that only they
    were familiar with - and corporations are unlikely to make the same mistake again. From a corporate perspective, employees are no different from any other kind of asset, and thus should be transparently
    replaceable once they become a liability. Of course, rather than playing the "irresistible force" to their "immovable object", creating your own business/product is a sure way of avoiding this scenario altogether.


    An engineer doing things "his own way" is not equivalent to a company or an industry having its own methodology or techniques. But this is a little beside the point that I was trying to make. What we sometimes get is code written in a way that only the developer can understand. What I was trying to allude to was techniques or practices which are widely know, and can be adopted and adapted to solve particular problems. For example, a way of using existing tools to create a private internet-accessible file system, or a way of creating and accessing, modifying and appending to registers as an alternative to using Excel. In short, a kind of "did you know you can build this with tools you've got in your backyard" way of thinking.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From boraxman@21:1/101 to poindexter FORTRAN on Mon Jul 4 23:07:52 2022
    Functionality is only part if it. What does, say, using Facebook to host your business really involve. I heard someone whos
    business was no longer visible because Facebook zucced the account fo no known reason. These are the scenarios not considered. The company work for is another example where there has been a lack of foresight.

    There's design in social media where you write once and syndicate everywhere - but you host the material on your site. Most of my content posted on other sites starts in my blog, so if my pages were zucced
    (like that term) I'd still have the content online. I couldn't imagine building a business on FB and having the same thing happen.

    Imagine getting your business' Facebook page into Google's caches and
    then having it taken down, and search links breaking -- and I could imagine Facebook reselling a page link for the right price.

    The only reason I'm still on FB is thinking I might need it if I restart
    a freelance business or a side hustle.


    A little while ago the Australian Government and Facebook had a bit of a spat regarding proposed laws in Australia which would see some Big Tech having to pay for journalistic content they used from Australian news media. Facebook suspended news sites I beleive, but also other innocents got caught up in it, sites for hospitals, charities, etc. They had their FB withdrawn.

    Syndicating what you have on your own site on Social Media is good practice, but sadly many see Facebook as a public service, which it isn't.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From acn@21:3/127.1 to poindexter FORTRAN on Mon Jul 4 14:17:00 2022
    Am 01.07.22 schrieb poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 in FSX_GEN:

    Hallo poindexter,

    Yep, that was Peak Microsoft - right after they made Windows 3.1 break
    with DR-DOS.

    Well, in fact Windows 3.1 really worked fine on DR-DOS, only M$ had discovered how they can detect if MS-DOS or PC-DOS (and not something
    else) is running. If one is running something else, a warning message
    was displayed.
    See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code

    Digital Research offered a patch ("Business update") for DR-DOS, so
    that this detection did not work any longer.

    My co-sysop at the time worked for Addstor, the company that
    made a disk compression program similar to Stacker. They had a bear of a time getting Windows to run on it, but Microsoft's compression tool ran just fine. He could discuss at great length about the suspicions they had.

    Oh, I remember SuperStor, which was bundled with DR-DOS 6, but I had
    not used it.

    I used it to get the last bit of life out of a 70mb drive the BBS was running on... How far we've come.

    Yep :) My first PC (a 386sx with 25MHz) had a 52 MB hard disk :)

    Regards,
    Anna

    --- OpenXP 5.0.56
    * Origin: Imzadi Box Point (21:3/127.1)
  • From TALIADON@21:3/138 to boraxman on Mon Jul 4 17:28:20 2022
    An engineer doing things "his own way" is not equivalent to a company or an industry having its own methodology or techniques. But this is a little beside the point that I was trying to make. What we sometimes
    get is code written in a way that only the developer can understand.
    What I was trying to allude to was techniques or practices which are widely know, and can be adopted and adapted to solve particular
    problems. For example, a way of using existing tools to create a
    private internet-accessible file system, or a way of creating and accessing, modifying and appending to registers as an alternative to
    using Excel. In short, a kind of "did you know you can build this with tools you've got in your backyard" way of thinking.

    Okay, I think I understand your point a little more clearly now :)

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  • From Bex@21:1/137 to All on Mon Jul 4 15:22:00 2022
    tassiebob wrote to DustCouncil <=-

    version of Windows, receiving endless incremental updates. When Windows 11 came out, I thought, "you have to be kidding me." And, of course, it won't run on my current system.

    Same here, and as a result Windows 10 might be the last version of
    windows I run - because I'm definitely not buying new hardware just to jump to 11.

    I always tell my f&f not to upgrade to a new version of Windows for at least six months to a year. Previous Windows versions seem to be able to function well for quite a while, and 12 months gives Microsoft time to iron out the worst issues in a new version.


    The best Linux desktop I've ever used was KDE 3.5.9 - it was probably
    the high water mark for the Linux desktop, and, well, I'd hoped that

    I think there might be a little bit of a nostalgia bias there. Or you haven't tried very many different DEs since? There are some really good DEs out there now - I'm partial to Cinnamon on Linux Mint, Patheon (elementary OS) and Budgie (Solus) are both strong also.

    Kubuntu is my work daily driver, and for the most part just works.

    Word!

    I haven't had too many irritations, but my use case is probably

    I had issues using the Plasma desktop with weird graphics issues, from what I read online a lot of people have issues with kwin and nvidia GPUs.

    different to yours. I live in a terminal and web browser most of the
    day, but also do some software development - which I find much less painful on Linux.

    Amen! I actually spend a huge part of my day in a terminal for various work tasks, and come out into the GUI world from time to time for email.

    decades old? One truly infuriating thing I can't fix is desktop icons will execute with a single click, which is not what I am used to (and

    Like tassiebob, I wouldn't notice this, DustCouncil. Not just because I double-click things in my dreams, but also because the first thing I do on a computer is disable desktop icons. I can't stand clutter on my desktop, I want it to be there just for windows to be arranged on. Desktop icons just distract me.

    Good luck - interested in hearing how you go. $employer has a
    preference for Fedora, but I'd already well and truly installed Kubuntu

    Fedora and centOS were always good business choices, because of their direct ties to Redhat. Of course, centOS is not really centOS anymore, so that leaves either Fedora or RHEL. So it's understandable. For a work desktop, I would want to go with Linux Mint 'cuz I use it everywhere else, but I could make Fedora work for 40 hours a week.

    flatpaks, snaps, and the traditional package managers. I don't have any problem with any *one* of them, but by now I really wish there was a single standard way of packaging things.

    107%

    Word! To both of you! Since I run Linux Mint on everything, I use apt for 98% of software installation so I am mostly not effected by package wars, but I do have more than zero .AppImages installed.





    --
    Brightening the BBS world since 1990
    - Bex <3

    ... Bother, said Pooh as he realized he couldn't speak Klingon.
    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.49
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  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to Warpslide on Mon Jul 4 08:03:00 2022
    Warpslide wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

    What do you think of the MX Keys keyboard? I was drooling over it but that was one of those things where what I already have works, but that
    set did look nice.

    I love it - it's got a nice positive feel - nothing near a mechanical keyboard. The keys are dished, which makes touch typing feel easier. It's heavy, so it doesn't slide around on my desk. And, it can connect to 3 peripherals, so I have a unifying receiver in my work laptop and my home desktop, have both computers plugged into the 2 HDMI ports on my monitor,
    and I can switch between work and home without needing a KVM - just press a button on the monitor, keyboard and mouse.

    I've spent most of my life typing on a Model M I got from work in 1992 or cheap keyboards, it was nice to splurge for once.


    ... Good {$Greeting_Time}, $User!
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
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  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to Avon on Mon Jul 4 08:07:00 2022
    Avon wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

    Out of curiosity, is it very curved or not so much? I'm wondering about the merits of the 'curve' as to my bear-of-little-brain the curve may
    be a nuisance.

    It's flat. My son has a curved gaming monitor, and looking at it I suppose there's some benefit in the focus distance in the middle is closer to the distance on the ends.

    I wear pregressive lenses, and should be the target audience for a curved monitor, but flat seems to work just fine. Windows has native window tiling built-in, and LG has an app that sets up "zones" that windows snap to, so
    you can easily set up 2, 3, 4, up to 8 screen splits, or picture in picture.

    It took me a while to get used to it, as I used to use 2 monitors to run two different tasks, but this is a lot cleaner (and it frees up a lot of desk space...)

    I feel constrained now when I go into work and use 2 24" monitors.


    ... FOR SYSOP USE ONLY - Do not write below this line.
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  • From Warpslide@21:3/110.2 to poindexter FORTRAN on Tue Jul 5 13:39:46 2022
    *** Quoting poindexter FORTRAN from a message to Warpslide ***

    I love it - it's got a nice positive feel - nothing near a mechanical
    keyboard. The keys are dished, which makes touch typing feel easier.
    It's heavy, so it doesn't slide around on my desk. And, it can
    connect to 3 peripherals

    I'm typing this reply on an MX Keys keyboard. I read your reply this morning and then noticed an article on MobileSyrup that Best Buy has the MX Keys & MX Master 3S bundled together for $199:

    https://bbs.lc/nwR3P

    I've spent most of my life typing on a Model M I got from work in
    1992 or cheap keyboards, it was nice to splurge for once.

    I was using a Logitech K810 keyboard which has a somewhat modified 75% layout on it, I thought I wouldn't mind not having home/end/pgup & down keys but
    they do come in handy.

    The only thing I need to get used to is having a lot more keyboard to my right, meaning that my mouse is somewhat further away than my muscle memory knows about... ;)


    Jay

    ... Click...click...click...damn, out of taglines!

    --- Telegard v3.09.g2-sp4/mL
    * Origin: Northern Realms/TG м tg.nrbbs.net м Binbrook, ON (21:3/110.2)
  • From ACMEBBS@21:4/10 to Avon on Tue Jul 5 11:31:00 2022
    On Sun Jul 3 15:50:00 2022, Avon wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

    Ditto. I built a homelab using Proxmox and a junk-shop Synology NAS and have a ultrawide monitor at my desk. I started using an email app instead of a web app and don't know why I went with webmail in the
    I'm still running on some old Dell 19 inch monitors x 2 side by side... but one
    day the dream is to get something nice and big, by then I'll likely upgrade the
    desktop too which is currently an i3 with about 12 gig of ram and a mix of SSD
    and mechanical HD

    Around here...I run a 19" flat screen TV on a mount which lets me have it sitting above my 21" monitor. During the worst part of Covid...got some decent bonuses...so got a 50" 4K TV to replace a 32" 720K TV I bought in 2008. Still works & is in the living room as a TV I use when cooking.

    It does have a VGA connector...but was too big to mount on my desk. If you've got the space...why not buy a couple of used TV's or cheap TV's...if you don't want to go with an actual monitor?

    ... Beatles hit: She loves to, yeah, yeah, yeah...
    === TitanMail/winnt v1.1.6
    --- SBBSecho 3.06-Win32
    * Origin: fsxNet FTN<>QWK Gateway (21:4/10)
  • From Bex@21:1/137 to All on Mon Jul 4 15:22:00 2022
    tassiebob wrote to DustCouncil <=-

    version of Windows, receiving endless incremental updates. When Windows 11 came out, I thought, "you have to be kidding me." And, of course, it won't run on my current system.

    Same here, and as a result Windows 10 might be the last version of
    windows I run - because I'm definitely not buying new hardware just to jump to 11.

    I always tell my f&f not to upgrade to a new version of Windows for at least six months to a year. Previous Windows versions seem to be able to function well for quite a while, and 12 months gives Microsoft time to iron out the worst issues in a new version.


    The best Linux desktop I've ever used was KDE 3.5.9 - it was probably
    the high water mark for the Linux desktop, and, well, I'd hoped that

    I think there might be a little bit of a nostalgia bias there. Or you haven't tried very many different DEs since? There are some really good DEs out there now - I'm partial to Cinnamon on Linux Mint, Patheon (elementary OS) and Budgie (Solus) are both strong also.

    Kubuntu is my work daily driver, and for the most part just works.

    Word!

    I haven't had too many irritations, but my use case is probably

    I had issues using the Plasma desktop with weird graphics issues, from what I read online a lot of people have issues with kwin and nvidia GPUs.

    different to yours. I live in a terminal and web browser most of the
    day, but also do some software development - which I find much less painful on Linux.

    Amen! I actually spend a huge part of my day in a terminal for various work tasks, and come out into the GUI world from time to time for email.

    decades old? One truly infuriating thing I can't fix is desktop icons will execute with a single click, which is not what I am used to (and

    Like tassiebob, I wouldn't notice this, DustCouncil. Not just because I double-click things in my dreams, but also because the first thing I do on a computer is disable desktop icons. I can't stand clutter on my desktop, I want it to be there just for windows to be arranged on. Desktop icons just distract me.

    Good luck - interested in hearing how you go. $employer has a
    preference for Fedora, but I'd already well and truly installed Kubuntu

    Fedora and centOS were always good business choices, because of their direct ties to Redhat. Of course, centOS is not really centOS anymore, so that leaves either Fedora or RHEL. So it's understandable. For a work desktop, I would want to go with Linux Mint 'cuz I use it everywhere else, but I could make Fedora work for 40 hours a week.

    flatpaks, snaps, and the traditional package managers. I don't have any problem with any *one* of them, but by now I really wish there was a single standard way of packaging things.

    107%

    Word! To both of you! Since I run Linux Mint on everything, I use apt for 98% of software installation so I am mostly not effected by package wars, but I do have more than zero .AppImages installed.





    --
    Brightening the BBS world since 1990
    - Bex <3

    ... Bother, said Pooh as he realized he couldn't speak Klingon.
    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.49
    * Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)
  • From Nightfox@21:1/137 to Bex on Tue Jul 5 13:50:11 2022
    Re: Re: Old computer
    By: Bex to All on Mon Jul 04 2022 03:22 pm

    I always tell my f&f not to upgrade to a new version of Windows for at least six months to a year. Previous Windows versions seem to be able to function well for quite a while, and 12 months gives Microsoft time to iron out the worst issues in a new version.

    That's good advice. I'll admit I upgraded to Windows 11 soon after it was released, and I actually do like some of the UI improvements it has. I largely haven't had any issues with it, although there's an old program I still use from 2007 (its last version) that seems to cause problems with Alt-Tab and sometimes causes Windows Explorer to freeze up - but it may be time to find a good alternative for that old program anyway.

    The best Linux desktop I've ever used was KDE 3.5.9 - it was
    probably the high water mark for the Linux desktop, and, well, I'd
    hoped that

    I think there might be a little bit of a nostalgia bias there. Or you haven't tried very many different DEs since? There are some really good DEs out there now - I'm partial to Cinnamon on Linux Mint, Patheon

    I also like the Cinnamon interface in Linux Mint. Currently I have my main desktop PC in a dual-boot setup with Windows and Linux Mint with Cinnamon.
    I also run Linux Mint on my BBS PC, although for that I chose to use the Xfce environment as it's a bit lighter.

    Nightfox
    --- SBBSecho 3.15-Linux
    * Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)
  • From Avon@21:1/101 to Zip on Wed Jul 6 18:05:18 2022
    On 04 Jul 2022 at 12:17p, Zip pondered and said...

    It appears this differs quite a lot between brands and models -- I see many curved gaming monitors being very curved, whereas my 34" ultrawide Samsung SE790 at work is hardly curved at all (at least not noticably
    so).

    That sounds like the kind of monitor for me, I worry about those curves... I worry too much :)

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From Zip@21:1/202 to Avon on Wed Jul 6 10:32:41 2022
    Hello Avon!

    On 06 Jul 2022, Avon said the following...
    That sounds like the kind of monitor for me, I worry about those
    curves... I worry too much :)

    I'd say your concerns are relevant indeed! :)

    Best regards
    Zip

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 2022/04/26 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Star Collision BBS, Uppsala, Sweden (21:1/202)
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to Warpslide on Wed Jul 6 08:19:00 2022
    Warpslide wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

    The only thing I need to get used to is having a lot more keyboard to
    my right, meaning that my mouse is somewhat further away than my muscle memory knows about... ;)

    Yar, for the same reasoning I can't use a laptop with a numeric keypad, I
    feel like I'm shifted off to the left of the laptop.


    ... Consider transitions
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    * Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)
  • From Bex@21:1/137 to Nightfox on Thu Jul 7 15:54:00 2022
    Nightfox wrote to Bex <=-

    Cinnamon. I also run Linux Mint on my BBS PC, although for that I chose
    to use the Xfce environment as it's a bit lighter.

    I've been wondering how the BBS packages and utilities run - are they console or GUI? My initial thought would be to run it headless, like any other server, but if the software only runs in a x11/wayland/etc then that point is moot.

    And I have a major console bias. I'm answering message in multimail, running syncterm in console mode, using mutt for email, using lynx for my "lite" browser, rainbowstream for twitter...

    Sorry, I digress.




    --
    Brightening the BBS world since 1990
    - Bex <3

    ... "Fortunately, I'm adhering to a pretty strict, uh, drug, uh, regimen to keep
    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.49
    * Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)
  • From acn@21:3/127.1 to Bex on Mon Jul 11 15:11:00 2022
    Am 07.07.22 schrieb Bex@21:1/137 in FSX_GEN:

    Hallo Bex,

    I've been wondering how the BBS packages and utilities run - are
    they console or GUI? My initial thought would be to run it
    headless, like any other server, but if the software only runs in a x11/wayland/etc then that point is moot.

    I'm using Synchronet for my BBS, and it's running on an old Igel Thin
    Client which doesn't have a screen attached :)

    The BBS daemons do run as background services on my Devuan GNU/Linux
    system and I can manage everything via SSH - no need for any GUI
    programs here.

    Regards,
    Anna

    --- OpenXP 5.0.56
    * Origin: Imzadi Box Point (21:3/127.1)
  • From Spectre@21:3/101 to Bex on Tue Jul 12 08:56:00 2022
    I always tell my f&f not to upgrade to a new version of Windows for at least six months to a year. Previous Windows versions seem to be able
    to function well for quite a while, and 12 months gives Microsoft
    time to iron out the worst issues in a new version.

    Chuckle, I almost live by this, still on 7, and didn't move to 7 until XP was so obsolete as to be in the grave. :) Only used anything later in other locations where its already installed.

    Spec


    *** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
    --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
    * Origin: The future's uncertain, the end is always near. (21:3/101)
  • From 2twisty@21:3/166 to Spectre on Tue Jul 12 10:20:57 2022
    Chuckle, I almost live by this, still on 7, and didn't move to 7 until
    XP was so obsolete as to be in the grave. :) Only used anything later
    in other locations where its already installed.

    I wish I could get 7 on one of my other laptops. Apparently it was made right after win10 came out, and there are no win7 drivers officially available.

    Haven't gone through the "dig all over the net" process yet, though.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: The Ratrace Losers (21:3/166)
  • From Adept@21:2/108 to Atreyu on Wed Jul 13 20:03:35 2022
    it down my throat about how great their boards are and mine is quaint. Mystic and Synchronet on Linux are wonderful - except DOS doors don't
    work without convoluted nonsense or "doorparty"... I don't want to join
    a party.

    I'm well behind on messages (again), but I was entertained by this paragraph.

    Mostly because I expect that most everything I do with BBSing stuff will involve some level of convoluted nonsense.

    E.g., try changing the order of message bases in Mystic. It makes a certain amount of sense, and I did not understand how to do it until someone brought
    it up in a message.

    And, while Mystic and Synchronet make life a _lot_ easier for things like setting up networks and whatnot (and a variety of things that doubtlessly
    were _way_ more of a pain back in 2000), there's generally _something_ that requires looking up a guide to make it happen.

    But I do things like make 80x23 ANSI graphics for fun, and I do enjoy a bit
    of coding, so all this seems basically normal.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/26 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Storm BBS (21:2/108)
  • From Adept@21:2/108 to tassiebob on Wed Jul 13 20:11:57 2022
    Of course if I'm paying periodically to use the product then it's fair enough for the vendor to discontinue the product - with appropriate
    notice - at the end of the period. Sadly this seems to be the in thing these days, and I hate it.

    Ugh. I'm with you on that.

    I still use Eudora as an e-mail client, and that's so old that it's owned by the Computer History Museum.

    But with some hacks to make the security reasonable (stunnel is a
    requirement, these days) and the knowledge that having "Eudora" as the listed client ups messages on spam lists, it _still works_. And I can still periodically backup my e-mail by copying off a bunch of text files that, if everything broke but the text files, I could write my own parser.

    Do I trust that Gmail or Office365 will exist in 20 years? Or that I'll be
    able to use things without paying for them? Not really, no.

    Will Eudora still work? Probably. Unless technology marches on a bit too far.

    But, having said that, I purchase every DLC for Age of Empires II, because I want them to continue supporting it. Well, and I like the DLC. But even if it were terrible DLC...

    But I'd draw the line at a monthly fee, because it changes the incentives too much.

    And I think Jetbrains hits a nice happy medium. I keep my subscription to
    their IDEs up to date, but if I didn't, I'd still have a license for older versions.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/26 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Storm BBS (21:2/108)
  • From nblade@21:3/170 to Adept on Wed Jul 13 22:02:56 2022

    And I think Jetbrains hits a nice happy medium. I keep my subscription to their IDEs up to date, but if I didn't, I'd still have a license for
    older versions.


    As user of PHPStorm, I have to agree. I like they way the failback license. I pay the yearly updates right now but if I didn't, it's good know that I have a license that will just work for at least some version of it.

    ... Old computers make great boat anchors

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: RVs and RPGs BBS (21:3/170)
  • From Atreyu@21:1/176 to Adept on Wed Jul 13 18:47:06 2022
    On 13 Jul 22 20:03:35, Adept said the following to Atreyu:

    I'm well behind on messages (again), but I was entertained by this paragraph

    Mostly because I expect that most everything I do with BBSing stuff will involve some level of convoluted nonsense.

    I spent most of the early to mid 90's learning all the convoluted nonsense of running Renegade and doors and networks, etc... UUCP gated email, Planet connect, you name it. Multi-line operation, subscribers, keeping up with all the latest warez of the time and whatever.

    After an honest reflection on the whole hobby of it all, I conclude that
    maybe I outgrew the long nights of tinkering, messing around with an OS
    or experimenting with anything newer than what I run for a board.

    I have a successful career in IT, at least I think so... but coming home from work I'm dead tired and mentally exhausted, just want to have a cold beer and relax without dealing with any tech problems.

    Once any techie thing of mine is configured and working up to my satisfaction its mostly left alone. I built a home rack with commercial-grade routing, switches, servers, mesh-Wifi, UPS, proper redundant backups, the works.

    Plus I raise a kid on my own... so tech stuff is very low on priorities here.

    Atreyu

    --- Renegade vY2Ka2
    * Origin: Joey, do you like movies about gladiators? (21:1/176)
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to Adept on Wed Jul 13 16:47:14 2022
    Re: Re: Old computer
    By: Adept to Atreyu on Wed Jul 13 2022 08:03 pm

    Mostly because I expect that most everything I do with BBSing stuff will involve some level of convoluted nonsense.

    I'm here for the nonsense - been trying to get my board working right since 1991. The moment everything works as it should, I'll turn it off and move on to creating a new blockchain made of grey nano-goo.
    --- SBBSecho 3.15-Win32
    * Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to Adept on Wed Jul 13 16:49:27 2022
    Re: Re: Old computer
    By: Adept to tassiebob on Wed Jul 13 2022 08:11 pm

    I still use Eudora as an e-mail client, and that's so old that it's owned by the Computer History Museum.

    eudora.wav is my new mail notification sound.

    I used to use an old version of Eudora on the BBS, but I changed ports and it's so old it can't talk to ports besides 25/110. We used it at a company I supported, were able to push out company address books, and if it borked, the messages were all in plaintext.

    Simpler times.
    --- SBBSecho 3.15-Win32
    * Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to Atreyu on Wed Jul 13 16:51:51 2022
    Re: Re: Old computer
    By: Atreyu to Adept on Wed Jul 13 2022 06:47 pm

    I have a successful career in IT, at least I think so... but coming home from work I'm dead tired and mentally exhausted, just want to have a cold beer and relax without dealing with any tech problems.

    When I come home, I just want to have a cold beer and lose myself in my own tech problems - at least they're surmountable. Tweaking the BBS? Fun. Dealing with home wifi issues, not so much. :)
    --- SBBSecho 3.15-Win32
    * Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)
  • From Atreyu@21:1/176 to Poindexter Fortran on Wed Jul 13 23:02:41 2022
    On 13 Jul 22 16:51:51, Poindexter Fortran said the following to Atreyu:

    When I come home, I just want to have a cold beer and lose myself in my own tech problems - at least they're surmountable. Tweaking the BBS? Fun. Deali with home wifi issues, not so much. :)

    I'm a huge fan of Aruba... their stuff "just works".

    Atreyu

    --- Renegade vY2Ka2
    * Origin: Joey, do you like movies about gladiators? (21:1/176)
  • From boraxman@21:1/101 to Adept on Fri Jul 15 00:24:40 2022
    Adept wrote to tassiebob <=-

    Of course if I'm paying periodically to use the product then it's fair enough for the vendor to discontinue the product - with appropriate
    notice - at the end of the period. Sadly this seems to be the in thing these days, and I hate it.

    Ugh. I'm with you on that.

    I still use Eudora as an e-mail client, and that's so old that it's
    owned by the Computer History Museum.

    But with some hacks to make the security reasonable (stunnel is a requirement, these days) and the knowledge that having "Eudora" as the listed client ups messages on spam lists, it _still works_. And I can still periodically backup my e-mail by copying off a bunch of text
    files that, if everything broke but the text files, I could write my
    own parser.

    Do I trust that Gmail or Office365 will exist in 20 years? Or that I'll
    be able to use things without paying for them? Not really, no.

    Will Eudora still work? Probably. Unless technology marches on a bit
    too far.

    When was Eudora last updated? Does it even work with modern versions of Windows?

    I don't think I've ever used it, but new clients have so many cool features to pass up.


    ... Overtly resist change
    ___ MultiMail/Linux v0.52

    --- Mystic BBS/QWK v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From Margaerynne@21:2/138 to poindexter FORTRAN on Thu Jul 14 08:18:51 2022
    Re: Re: Old computer
    By: poindexter FORTRAN to Atreyu on Wed Jul 13 2022 04:51 pm

    When I come home, I just want to have a cold beer and lose myself in my own tech problems - at least they're
    surmountable. Tweaking the BBS? Fun. Dealing with home wifi issues, not so much. :)

    I'm starting to tinker more with meatspace machines. A wrench and some WD-40 is much more relaxing than hours of looking through documentation.
    --- SBBSecho 3.15-Linux
    * Origin: Palantir * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL * (21:2/138)
  • From Adept@21:2/108 to poindexter FORTRAN on Fri Jul 15 01:10:57 2022
    I used to use an old version of Eudora on the BBS, but I changed ports
    and it's so old it can't talk to ports besides 25/110. We used it at a company I supported, were able to push out company address books, and if it borked, the messages were all in plaintext.

    ...that's what stunnel is for. :)

    What'd you move to? And did it actually improve upon the Eudora experience
    for you?

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/26 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Storm BBS (21:2/108)
  • From Adept@21:2/108 to boraxman on Fri Jul 15 01:24:53 2022
    When was Eudora last updated? Does it even work with modern versions of Windows?

    I run it on Win10, with stunnel to handle the bits involving talking to the internet.

    I guess 7.1 was released in 2006. I'm not really sure what version 8.0 of Eudora is, nor if Eudora Open Source Edition (from 2010) was useful or interesting.

    And I guess Project HERMES now exists, that was based off of the Eudora
    source code. But that hasn't seen an update in two years.

    I don't think I've ever used it, but new clients have so many cool features to pass up.

    Like what?

    It's possible that I'm missing various things, but while I use Outlook at
    work, I can't say there's much there that I appreciate more than having my e-mail databases in plain text.

    But I do mean that question seriously; it's possible that I should give up on Eudora. I just haven't heard about any tempting features.

    Unlike, oh, browsers, where the closest I'll get to an old browser is using frogfind.com or 68k.news. But I use those because lots of the internet would
    be better in plain text, not because I want to experience Netscape 1.0.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/26 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Storm BBS (21:2/108)
  • From boraxman@21:1/101 to Adept on Fri Jul 15 22:41:32 2022
    I run it on Win10, with stunnel to handle the bits involving talking to the internet.

    I guess 7.1 was released in 2006. I'm not really sure what version 8.0 of Eudora is, nor if Eudora Open Source Edition (from 2010) was useful or interesting.

    And I guess Project HERMES now exists, that was based off of the Eudora source code. But that hasn't seen an update in two years.


    I did get my e-mail working, sort of, with DOS, but just for kicks and giggles.
    I don't think I've ever used it, but new clients have so many cool features to pass up.

    Like what?

    It's possible that I'm missing various things, but while I use Outlook at work, I can't say there's much there that I appreciate more than having
    my e-mail databases in plain text.

    But I do mean that question seriously; it's possible that I should give
    up on Eudora. I just haven't heard about any tempting features.

    Unlike, oh, browsers, where the closest I'll get to an old browser is using frogfind.com or 68k.news. But I use those because lots of the internet would be better in plain text, not because I want to experience Netscape 1.0.


    Depends on what you are looking for. For me, I like the GPG integration that comes with Thunderbird and Claws-Mail. The GPG intergration in Claws-Mail is better. I also use Mutt, which is extensible.

    Anyway, I like having my e-mails stored on disk in a format which allows me to go through them with other tools. Storing the e-mails in a standard maildir format allows me to use other tools to search through them or manipulate them. So I can view them with the GUI in Claws-Mail, but if I SSH in, I can still use mutt to access those saved on disk. I also like the fact with Mutt I can use my own custom editor, which is Emacs, to compose an e-mail. This gives me the awesome power of Emacs in my e-mail client.

    I use a plugin to export the messages after a while to HTML pages, all indexed, so I can archive my e-mails as items in a web page that you can just click through.

    These probably won't matter to you, and I admit they are kind of niche advantages, but for me what I like most of all, is being able to disentangle my e-mails from any particular client quite easily.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From ACMEBBS@21:4/10 to Atreyu on Fri Jul 15 04:50:00 2022
    On Wed Jul 13 23:02:00 2022, Atreyu wrote to Poindexter Fortran <=-

    On 13 Jul 22 16:51:51, Poindexter Fortran said the following to Atreyu:

    When I come home, I just want to have a cold beer and lose myself in my own
    tech problems - at least they're surmountable. Tweaking the BBS? Fun. Deali
    with home wifi issues, not so much. :)

    I'm a huge fan of Aruba... their stuff "just works".

    Also not a bad place to be at any time. ;)

    ... First, listen to sermon, THEN eat missionary!
    === TitanMail/winnt v1.1.6
    --- SBBSecho 3.06-Win32
    * Origin: fsxNet FTN<>QWK Gateway (21:4/10)
  • From nblade@21:3/170 to Adept on Fri Jul 15 15:46:45 2022
    Unlike, oh, browsers, where the closest I'll get to an old browser is using frogfind.com or 68k.news. But I use those because lots of the internet would be better in plain text, not because I want to experience Netscape 1.0.


    You know sometimes I use lynx or elinks (on Linux) just to get the text myself. I have no idea if those are available to Windows.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: RVs and RPGs BBS (21:3/170)
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to Adept on Fri Jul 15 12:56:00 2022
    Adept wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

    What'd you move to? And did it actually improve upon the Eudora
    experience for you?

    I left that company, and the new company was running WordPerfect office - an app that tied for Lotus Notes for bloat. Then again, LAN-based email systems were all like that.

    I then landed at another tech company that one of my guys from my original Eudora install had worked for, and they were running Eudora, too.

    After that, it was all Exchange.


    ... UNPRISON YOUR THINK RHINO
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    * Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)
  • From tenser@21:1/101 to TALIADON on Mon Jul 18 05:27:22 2022
    On 02 Jul 2022 at 02:39p, TALIADON pondered and said...

    As far as Apple are concerned, I stand by my previous statement: Apple took BSD and turned it into the only commercially viable "Linux" desktop available today. It has the solid back-end we've come to expect from Linux, and so it's capable of much the same thing. As for M$, I think
    you have to see the full stack in action to truly appreciate how good their technology is - if you're encumbered with the basic packages then other avenues are likely to present themselves as more amenable
    solutions.

    Actually, I'd push back a bit here: I'd offer that Android does
    that, perhaps even better than Apple.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From bex@21:4/141 to Spectre on Sun Jul 17 15:15:00 2022
    Spectre wrote to Bex <=-

    least six months to a year. Previous Windows versions seem to be able
    to function well for quite a while, and 12 months gives Microsoft

    Chuckle, I almost live by this, still on 7, and didn't move to 7 until
    XP was so obsolete as to be in the grave. :) Only used anything later
    in other locations where its already installed.

    That is dedication! Windows 7 was the best version of Windows, IMHO, but I think it's pretty far past itse Use By date.



    --
    Brightening the BBS world since 1990
    - Bex <3

    ... It is necessary to cultivate some discipline of mind, for an undisciplined m
    === MultiMail/Linux v0.49
    --- SBBSecho 3.11-Win32
    * Origin: -=[conchaos.synchro.net | ConstructiveChaos BBS]=- (21:4/141)
  • From Spectre@21:3/101 to bex on Mon Jul 18 18:44:00 2022
    That is dedication! Windows 7 was the best version of Windows, IMHO, but I think it's pretty far past itse Use By date.

    I don't have anything that requires anything later, but by the time I finally dropped XP there were things I needed 7 for. I s'pose I can move along to the next obsolete OS.... Win 8.. but I'm loathe to have anything to do with 8..

    Spec


    *** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
    --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
    * Origin: There is no cloud, just someone elses computer! (21:3/101)
  • From TALIADON@21:3/138 to tenser on Mon Jul 18 13:01:50 2022
    Actually, I'd push back a bit here: I'd offer that Android does
    that, perhaps even better than Apple.

    Android certainly has Linux roots, and there's no arguing that it's commercially viable, but is it really a complete x11 desktop environment?

    Admittedly, I don't really know a thing about Android - I always preferred the software/hardware synergy of Apple's offerings - so you may well be right.

    ===============================================================
    TALIADON (Lee Westlake) | TALIADON BBS (taliadon.ddns.net:23)
    FidoNet: 2:250/6 | fsxNet: 21:3/138 | tqwNet: 1337:1/116 ===============================================================

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: TALIADON BBS (21:3/138)
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to TALIADON on Mon Jul 18 08:08:00 2022
    TALIADON wrote to tenser <=-

    Actually, I'd push back a bit here: I'd offer that Android does
    that, perhaps even better than Apple.

    Android certainly has Linux roots, and there's no arguing that it's commercially viable, but is it really a complete x11 desktop
    environment?

    Maybe not out of the box, but there are some interesting experiments. I had
    a rooted android phone, and was able to run a full distro in a chroot'ed
    jail, using Android's Linux kernel.

    Ran VNC server in the Linux instance, and was able to run a full windows environment locally on the phone using an Android VNC client, or run it from my desktop. It was an interesting experiment in taking your environment with you.

    I don't know if there's an RDP protocol server for Linux (I think there is), but that would be ideal - use any standard Windows environment to access a desktop environment that fits in your pocket...


    ... UNPRISON YOUR THINK RHINO
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    * Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)
  • From bex@21:4/141 to Spectre on Sun Jul 17 15:15:00 2022
    Spectre wrote to Bex <=-

    least six months to a year. Previous Windows versions seem to be able
    to function well for quite a while, and 12 months gives Microsoft

    Chuckle, I almost live by this, still on 7, and didn't move to 7 until
    XP was so obsolete as to be in the grave. :) Only used anything later
    in other locations where its already installed.

    That is dedication! Windows 7 was the best version of Windows, IMHO, but I think it's pretty far past itse Use By date.



    --
    Brightening the BBS world since 1990
    - Bex <3

    ... It is necessary to cultivate some discipline of mind, for an undisciplined m
    === MultiMail/Linux v0.49
    --- SBBSecho 3.11-Win32
    * Origin: -=[conchaos.synchro.net | ConstructiveChaos BBS]=- (21:4/141)
  • From tenser@21:1/101 to TALIADON on Tue Jul 19 09:36:29 2022
    On 18 Jul 2022 at 01:01p, TALIADON pondered and said...

    Actually, I'd push back a bit here: I'd offer that Android does
    that, perhaps even better than Apple.

    Android certainly has Linux roots, and there's no arguing that it's commercially viable, but is it really a complete x11 desktop environment?

    Admittedly, I don't really know a thing about Android - I always
    preferred the software/hardware synergy of Apple's offerings - so you
    may well be right.

    Oh no, it's not. But neither is the Mac (at least not without
    installing an X11 server, like XQuartz). However, the Android
    kernel is Linux, and the user experience and interface are
    quite nice. Similarly with ChromeOS: Linux kernel, with a very
    different userspace. The critical observation here is that
    many use-cases are perfectly adequately served by a web browser.

    It's curious how the world keeps reinventing the 3270 and VTAM.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From Utopian Galt@21:4/108 to Spectre on Mon Jul 18 20:57:06 2022
    On Mon Jul 18 00:00:00 2022, SPECTRE(21:3/101) wrote to bex <=-

    I don't have anything that requires anything later, but by the time I finally
    dropped XP there were things I needed 7 for. I s'pose I can move along to the
    next obsolete OS.... Win 8.. but I'm loathe to have anything to do with 8..
    My old 11 year old laptop I sent to the recycling center in the sky, could not suipport SSD drives. If it was able to handle a SSD drive, it could handle Windows 10 at least. But Windows 10 was so freaing sluggish and I ended up giving up for a Dell Ryzen laptop of 2021 vintage.

    The G15 5515 has windows 11, but I will get used to that clusterfeck it is.


    === TitanMail/winnt v1.1.6


    --- WWIV 5.5.1.3261
    * Origin: inland utopia * california * iutopia.duckdns.org:2023 (21:4/108)
  • From Spectre@21:3/101 to Utopian Galt on Tue Jul 19 19:48:00 2022
    8.. My old 11 year old laptop I sent to the recycling center in the
    sky, could not suipport SSD drives. If it was able to handle a SSD

    So I have to ask, seeing as SSD's just look like standard SATA interfaces why couldn't it handle one? Tres Strange...

    Spec


    *** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
    --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
    * Origin: There is no cloud, just someone elses computer! (21:3/101)
  • From vorlon@21:1/195.1 to Spectre on Tue Jul 19 21:01:16 2022
    Hi Spec,

    8.. My old 11 year old laptop I sent to the recycling center in
    the sky, could not suipport SSD drives. If it was able to handle a
    SSD

    So I have to ask, seeing as SSD's just look like standard SATA
    interfaces why couldn't it handle one? Tres Strange...

    Some controller chips just don't like SSD's. I have a LSI controller
    here, that can only support hard drives. It see's the SSD is happer to
    write data to it ect, but after some time it start's generating errors
    like mad. I've also seen some that will only address a certian max TB
    size of drive.

    Put the SSd on a standard controller (ie: mb) and run the software diag
    from the maker of the drive and it reports no error's at all.



    \/orlon
    aka
    Stephen


    --- Talisman v0.43-dev (Linux/m68k)
    * Origin: Vorlon Empire: Amiga 3000 powered in Sector 550 (21:1/195.1)
  • From boraxman@21:1/101 to TALIADON on Tue Jul 19 23:55:55 2022
    Android certainly has Linux roots, and there's no arguing that it's commercially viable, but is it really a complete x11 desktop environment?

    Admittedly, I don't really know a thing about Android - I always
    preferred the software/hardware synergy of Apple's offerings - so you
    may well be right.


    Not by default, but you can get X for Android.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From acn@21:3/127.1 to poindexter FORTRAN on Tue Jul 19 15:16:00 2022
    Am 18.07.22 schrieb poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 in FSX_GEN:

    Hallo poindexter,

    I don't know if there's an RDP protocol server for Linux (I think there is), but that would be ideal - use any standard Windows environment to access a desktop environment that fits in your pocket...

    There is xrdp. I'm running it on a machine here and can connect to it
    via RDP, eg. from Guacamole or KRDC (KDE remote desktop client), or
    from Windows mstsc.exe

    Regards,
    Anna

    --- OpenXP 5.0.56
    * Origin: Imzadi Box Point (21:3/127.1)
  • From Utopian Galt@21:4/108 to Spectre on Tue Jul 19 06:52:39 2022
    BY: Spectre(21:3/101)


    So I have to ask, seeing as SSD's just look like standard SATA
    interfaces why
    couldn't it handle one? Tres Strange...
    The Bios couldnt handle it.


    --- WWIV 5.5.1.3261
    * Origin: inland utopia * california * iutopia.duckdns.org:2023 (21:4/108)
  • From Spectre@21:3/101 to vorlon on Wed Jul 20 00:10:00 2022
    Some controller chips just don't like SSD's. I have a LSI controller
    here, that can only support hard drives. It see's the SSD is happer to write data to it ect, but after some time it start's generating errors like mad. I've also seen some that will only address a certian max TB
    size of drive.

    Sizing makes sense, just like the old 500Mb bios limit.. I'm somewhat
    surprised at the chipsets not liking them though. Despite the mish mash of semi antique equipment I have, I've never come across the problem before.

    Spec


    *** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
    --- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
    * Origin: There is no cloud, just someone elses computer! (21:3/101)
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to acn on Tue Jul 19 08:53:00 2022
    acn wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

    There is xrdp. I'm running it on a machine here and can connect to it
    via RDP, eg. from Guacamole or KRDC (KDE remote desktop client), or
    from Windows mstsc.exe

    I'll look into this. I hate VNC, and would love to standardize on one client for Windows and Linux hosts.

    Thanks for the pointer.


    ... alphabetise the alphabet (it's all wrong. will explain later)
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    * Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to Spectre on Tue Jul 19 08:55:00 2022
    Spectre wrote to vorlon <=-

    Sizing makes sense, just like the old 500Mb bios limit.. I'm somewhat surprised at the chipsets not liking them though. Despite the mish
    mash of semi antique equipment I have, I've never come across the
    problem before.

    I had a PATA SSD that, surprisingly, worked on an IBM (not Lenovo) Thinkpad from 2004.


    ... SURELY NOT EVERYONE WAS KUNG FU FIGHTING
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    * Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)
  • From ogg@21:2/147 to poindexter FORTRAN on Tue Jul 19 11:26:17 2022
    There is xrdp. I'm running it on a machine here and can connect to it via RDP, eg. from Guacamole or KRDC (KDE remote desktop client), or from Windows mstsc.exe

    I'll look into this. I hate VNC, and would love to standardize on one client for Windows and Linux hosts.

    Thanks for the pointer.


    I've run xrdp on both my raspberry pi and a laptop running Ubuntu. I've connected to both via rdp on my win10 desktop and win11 laptop. The only issue I've run into on Ubuntu is I cannot be logged in when trying to connect from somewhere else. If I log out and keep Ubuntu running I can get in fine. It's not an issue with my raspberry. I've read it's an Ubuntu issue.

    ogg

    Sysop, Altair IV BBS
    Lufkin, TX
    fsxnet: 21:2/147

    ... I wish life had a scroll-back buffer.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 2022/07/15 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Altair IV BBS (21:2/147)
  • From esc@21:4/173 to poindexter FORTRAN on Tue Jul 19 21:08:46 2022
    I'll look into this. I hate VNC, and would love to standardize on one client for Windows and Linux hosts.

    Here, here!

    Thanks for the pointer.

    Indeed, this is something I look forward to experimenting with as well. Thanks to OP.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 2022/07/11 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: m O N T E R E Y b B S . c O M (21:4/173)
  • From vorlon@21:1/195.1 to Spectre on Wed Jul 20 11:11:04 2022
    Hi Spec,

    Some controller chips just don't like SSD's. I have a LSI
    [...]
    controller like mad. I've also seen some that will only address a certian max TB size of drive.

    Sizing makes sense, just like the old 500Mb bios limit..

    Yep. 2Tb drive's hadn't been invented yet when that controller was made.
    The max was around the 800Mb/1Tb size back then.

    I'm somewhat surprised at the chipsets not liking them though. Despite
    the mish mash of semi antique equipment I have, I've never come across
    the problem before.

    I have, and with the amount of hardware that's gone past my hands I'm not supprised at all.

    It's just the like transition from IDE to Sata.. At first it was like a translation thing, and then sata bacame solid and and standard.




    \/orlon
    aka
    Stephen


    --- Talisman v0.43-dev (Linux/m68k)
    * Origin: Vorlon Empire: Amiga 3000 powered in Sector 550 (21:1/195.1)
  • From claw@21:1/210 to poindexter FORTRAN on Wed Jul 20 07:59:07 2022
    On 19 Jul 2022, poindexter FORTRAN said the following...
    I'll look into this. I hate VNC, and would love to standardize on one client for Windows and Linux hosts.

    Thanks for the pointer.

    I know network chuck just did a video on something like this.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsvS2M5knOw&list=LL&index=29

    Might be worht checking out.

    |23|04Dr|16|12Claw
    |16|14Sysop |12Noverdu |14BBS |04(|14Noverdu.com|04)
    |10Standard Ports for SSH/Telnet Web/HTTP://|14Noverdu.com:808
    |20|15fsxNet/MRC Chat/Registered Doors!/50Nodes/No Time Use! Stay On!|16|07

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Noverdu BBS (21:1/210)
  • From claw@21:1/210 to ogg on Wed Jul 20 07:59:57 2022
    On 19 Jul 2022, ogg said the following...
    I've run xrdp on both my raspberry pi and a laptop running Ubuntu. I've connected to both via rdp on my win10 desktop and win11 laptop. The
    only issue I've run into on Ubuntu is I cannot be logged in when trying
    to connect from somewhere else. If I log out and keep Ubuntu running I can get in fine. It's not an issue with my raspberry. I've read it's an Ubuntu issue.

    I'm lazy so I use AnyDesk

    |23|04Dr|16|12Claw
    |16|14Sysop |12Noverdu |14BBS |04(|14Noverdu.com|04)
    |10Standard Ports for SSH/Telnet Web/HTTP://|14Noverdu.com:808
    |20|15fsxNet/MRC Chat/Registered Doors!/50Nodes/No Time Use! Stay On!|16|07

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Noverdu BBS (21:1/210)
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to claw on Wed Jul 20 07:08:00 2022
    claw wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

    I know network chuck just did a video on something like this.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsvS2M5knOw&list=LL&index=29

    Can't trust him. He slurps his coffee.


    ... If it isn't broken, I can fix it.
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    * Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)
  • From Gamgee@21:2/138 to poindexter FORTRAN on Wed Jul 20 11:41:00 2022
    poindexter FORTRAN wrote to claw <=-

    I know network chuck just did a video on something like this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsvS2M5knOw&list=LL&index=29

    Can't trust him. He slurps his coffee.

    Agreed. I found his mannerisms quite annoying generally. It was like
    he was trying too hard to be cute/funny.


    ... Windows 3.1 - From the people who brought you EDLIN.
    === MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    --- SBBSecho 3.15-Linux
    * Origin: Palantir * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL * (21:2/138)
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to Gamgee on Thu Jul 21 07:10:00 2022
    Gamgee wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

    poindexter FORTRAN wrote to claw <=-

    I know network chuck just did a video on something like this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsvS2M5knOw&list=LL&index=29

    Can't trust him. He slurps his coffee.

    Agreed. I found his mannerisms quite annoying generally. It was like
    he was trying too hard to be cute/funny.

    I do appreciate his enthusiasm, he combines entertainment with a love of
    what he does, and I've gotten some inspiration for my own homelab along the way.


    ... Not building a wall but making a brick
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    * Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)
  • From Gamgee@21:2/138 to poindexter FORTRAN on Thu Jul 21 18:29:00 2022
    poindexter FORTRAN wrote to Gamgee <=-

    I know network chuck just did a video on something like this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsvS2M5knOw&list=LL&index=29

    Can't trust him. He slurps his coffee.

    Agreed. I found his mannerisms quite annoying generally. It was like
    he was trying too hard to be cute/funny.

    I do appreciate his enthusiasm, he combines entertainment with a
    love of what he does, and I've gotten some inspiration for my own
    homelab along the way.

    Haha, he does indeed have plenty of enthusiasm! I may give him a
    re-visit. :-)



    ... Want to meet new people? Pick up the wrong golf ball.
    === MultiMail/Linux v0.52
    --- SBBSecho 3.15-Linux
    * Origin: Palantir * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL * (21:2/138)
  • From TALIADON@21:3/138 to poindexter FORTRAN on Sat Jul 23 16:14:14 2022
    Maybe not out of the box, but there are some interesting experiments. I had a rooted android phone, and was able to run a full distro in a chroot'ed jail, using Android's Linux kernel.

    Ran VNC server in the Linux instance, and was able to run a full windows environment locally on the phone using an Android VNC client, or run it from my desktop. It was an interesting experiment in taking your environment with you.

    As I say, I don't really know a thing about Android, but it certainly appears to have a few more tricks than the phone OS I took it for.

    I don't know if there's an RDP protocol server for Linux (I think there is), but that would be ideal - use any standard Windows environment to access a desktop environment that fits in your pocket...

    I could certainly find a use for that!

    ===============================================================
    TALIADON (Lee Westlake) | TALIADON BBS (taliadon.ddns.net:23)
    FidoNet: 2:250/6 | fsxNet: 21:3/138 | tqwNet: 1337:1/116 ===============================================================

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: TALIADON BBS (21:3/138)
  • From TALIADON@21:3/138 to tenser on Sat Jul 23 16:30:47 2022
    Oh no, it's not. But neither is the Mac (at least not without
    installing an X11 server, like XQuartz). However, the Android
    kernel is Linux, and the user experience and interface are
    quite nice. Similarly with ChromeOS: Linux kernel, with a very
    different userspace. The critical observation here is that
    many use-cases are perfectly adequately served by a web browser.

    Agreed: neither are strictly X11 out of the box, but I was alluding more to the practicality/functionality of running each platform within their respective X11 environments.

    From other comments recently posted on the subject, the Android platform appears to offer a lot more functionality than I gave it credit for.

    It's curious how the world keeps reinventing the 3270 and VTAM.

    LOL, you've noticed that too? Truth be told, whatever the idea, Big Blue usually has an earlier manifestation logged in the annals of history.

    ===============================================================
    TALIADON (Lee Westlake) | TALIADON BBS (taliadon.ddns.net:23)
    FidoNet: 2:250/6 | fsxNet: 21:3/138 | tqwNet: 1337:1/116 ===============================================================

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: TALIADON BBS (21:3/138)
  • From TALIADON@21:3/138 to boraxman on Sat Jul 23 16:36:52 2022
    Not by default, but you can get X for Android.

    From the other comments posted here, this certainly appears to be the case. What's more, it's far more viable than I'd previously thought.

    I quite like the idea of having Linux in my pocket, so I may even splash out on an Android phone and have a play :)

    ===============================================================
    TALIADON (Lee Westlake) | TALIADON BBS (taliadon.ddns.net:23)
    FidoNet: 2:250/6 | fsxNet: 21:3/138 | tqwNet: 1337:1/116 ===============================================================

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: TALIADON BBS (21:3/138)
  • From claw@21:1/210 to TALIADON on Sat Jul 23 12:49:10 2022
    On 23 Jul 2022, TALIADON said the following...
    From the other comments posted here, this certainly appears to be the case. What's more, it's far more viable than I'd previously thought.

    I quite like the idea of having Linux in my pocket, so I may even splash out on an Android phone and have a play :)


    I love android, however if your main goal is to have Linux in the phone just put a bootloader in it and install ARM based Linux on it. If you actually still need it as a phone there are plenty to choose from if you don't need it to be a phone there are tons of distros.

    If you don't already have a phone for this and are shopping buy one that is made for and comes with Linux on it.

    https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/
    or
    https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/
    or maybe
    https://www.fxtec.com/pro1x
    then there is
    https://volla.online/en/
    not to forget
    https://www.fairphone.com/en/

    The cool thing is its a phone that works like a computer. You can install which ever OS you want on these.

    Here are some phone based distros.

    postmarketOS (Based on Alpine Linux)
    UBports (Ubuntu Touch)
    Mobian (Debian for mobiles)
    Tizen (supported by The Linux Foundation)
    KaiOS (based on Firefox OS)
    Maemo (Debian)
    ExpidusOS (Void Linux)
    PureOSPlasma
    MobileNemo
    MobileNixOS

    I'm sure there are tons more. It's been a while since I looked on to replacing boot loaders and the like on these. If you want an Android phone and the easy freedom to do what you want get a OnePlus phone. They let you root your phone. Its a check box in the settings. they see it as well you own your phone and as long as you know you won't get support once you mess it up. :D

    Hope this helps someone.

    Enjoy

    |23|04Dr|16|12Claw
    |16|14Sysop |12Noverdu |14BBS |04(|14Noverdu.com|04)
    |10Standard Ports for SSH/Telnet Web/HTTP://|14Noverdu.com:808
    |20|15fsxNet/MRC Chat/Registered Doors!/50Nodes/No Time Use! Stay On!|16|07

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Noverdu BBS (21:1/210)
  • From boraxman@21:1/101 to claw on Sun Jul 24 12:34:10 2022

    I love android, however if your main goal is to have Linux in the phone just put a bootloader in it and install ARM based Linux on it. If you actually still need it as a phone there are plenty to choose from if you don't need it to be a phone there are tons of distros.

    If you don't already have a phone for this and are shopping buy one that is made for and comes with Linux on it.

    https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/
    or
    https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/
    or maybe
    https://www.fxtec.com/pro1x
    then there is
    https://volla.online/en/
    not to forget
    https://www.fairphone.com/en/

    The cool thing is its a phone that works like a computer. You can
    install which ever OS you want on these.

    Here are some phone based distros.

    postmarketOS (Based on Alpine Linux)
    UBports (Ubuntu Touch)
    Mobian (Debian for mobiles)
    Tizen (supported by The Linux Foundation)
    KaiOS (based on Firefox OS)
    Maemo (Debian)
    ExpidusOS (Void Linux)
    PureOSPlasma
    MobileNemo
    MobileNixOS

    I'm sure there are tons more. It's been a while since I looked on to replacing boot loaders and the like on these. If you want an Android phone and the easy freedom to do what you want get a OnePlus phone.
    They let you root your phone. Its a check box in the settings. they
    see it as well you own your phone and as long as you know you won't get support once you mess it up. :D

    Hope this helps someone.

    Enjoy

    I tried to put LineageOS, but found it was more complicated, having to unlock the bootloader and such. I cannot recall whether it turned out not to be feasible for this phone or not, or whether I decided not to take the risk.

    In the end, I found that the OS preinstalled had a pretty good ultra-power saving mode that I wasn't sure the other OS's would be able to duplicate,and I realised that I just wanted a phone, not a computer. Running a full Linux desktop is cool and all, but what I NEED is phone and message functionality, and if that is compromised, what is the point? Long battery life and reliable telephony is critical, and all the other stuff, web browsing, GPG, SSH client, I could already do.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From claw@21:1/210 to boraxman on Mon Jul 25 07:51:27 2022
    I tried to put LineageOS, but found it was more complicated, having to unlock the bootloader and such. I cannot recall whether it turned out
    not to be feasible for this phone or not, or whether I decided not to
    take the risk.

    In the end, I found that the OS preinstalled had a pretty good
    ultra-power saving mode that I wasn't sure the other OS's would be able
    to duplicate,and I realised that I just wanted a phone, not a computer. Running a full Linux desktop is cool and all, but what I NEED is phone
    and message functionality, and if that is compromised, what is the
    point? Long battery life and reliable telephony is critical, and all
    the other stuff, web browsing, GPG, SSH client, I could already do.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)

    the Linux phones do look awesome. Dock for full desktop experience.

    But I do like my phone with android in it. doubt that will change anytime
    soon. Wouldn't mind a Linux for playing around with. Just not my main phone.

    We will see the world seems to be shifting away from corporate control.

    |23|04Dr|16|12Claw
    |16|14Sysop |12Noverdu |14BBS |04(|14Noverdu.com|04)
    |10Standard Ports for SSH/Telnet Web/HTTP://|14Noverdu.com:808
    |20|15fsxNet/MRC Chat/Registered Doors!/50Nodes/No Time Use! Stay On!|16|07

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Noverdu BBS (21:1/210)
  • From TALIADON@21:3/138 to claw on Tue Jul 26 11:42:07 2022
    I love android, however if your main goal is to have Linux in the phone just put a bootloader in it and install ARM based Linux on it. If you actually still need it as a phone there are plenty to choose from if you don't need it to be a phone there are tons of distros.

    I'm happy with my iPhone for calls/texting, so it would really be an exercise in getting Linux into my pocket.

    If you don't already have a phone for this and are shopping buy one that is made for and comes with Linux on it.

    https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/
    or
    https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/
    or maybe
    https://www.fxtec.com/pro1x
    then there is
    https://volla.online/en/
    not to forget
    https://www.fairphone.com/en/

    Wow, I'm so far behind the scene I actually think I'm winning - never knew this was even a thing. I'll certainly take a look at each of these over the coming days.

    The cool thing is its a phone that works like a computer. You can
    install which ever OS you want on these.

    This is precisely what I'm looking for - I'm not overly familiar with Android, so I don't want to find myself in the position where I'm wrestling with a system I don't understand.

    Here are some phone based distros.

    postmarketOS (Based on Alpine Linux)
    UBports (Ubuntu Touch)
    Mobian (Debian for mobiles)
    Tizen (supported by The Linux Foundation)
    KaiOS (based on Firefox OS)
    Maemo (Debian)
    ExpidusOS (Void Linux)
    PureOSPlasma
    MobileNemo
    MobileNixOS

    I'm sure there are tons more. It's been a while since I looked on to replacing boot loaders and the like on these. If you want an Android phone and the easy freedom to do what you want get a OnePlus phone.
    They let you root your phone. Its a check box in the settings. they
    see it as well you own your phone and as long as you know you won't get support once you mess it up. :D

    Again, I'll take a look at each of these, but a Ubuntu based distro is likely to appeal more than those I'm less familiar with.

    Hope this helps someone.

    It most certainly did - very much appreciated :)

    ===============================================================
    TALIADON (Lee Westlake) | TALIADON BBS (taliadon.ddns.net:23)
    FidoNet: 2:250/6 | fsxNet: 21:3/138 | tqwNet: 1337:1/116 ===============================================================

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: TALIADON BBS (21:3/138)
  • From claw@21:1/210 to TALIADON on Tue Jul 26 19:36:36 2022
    On 26 Jul 2022, TALIADON said the following...
    This is precisely what I'm looking for - I'm not overly familiar with Android, so I don't want to find myself in the position where I'm wrestling with a system I don't understand.

    Well I have been an android guy for years rooted my fair share of phones and tablets. If there is anything you need let me know. I know some of those Linux phones are around $200 so if you need a cheep experiment it will do the job without disconnecting your current setup.

    |23|04Dr|16|12Claw
    |16|14Sysop |12Noverdu |14BBS |04(|14Noverdu.com|04)
    |10Standard Ports for SSH/Telnet Web/HTTP://|14Noverdu.com:808
    |20|15fsxNet/MRC Chat/Registered Doors!/50Nodes/No Time Use! Stay On!|16|07

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Noverdu BBS (21:1/210)
  • From Vk3jed@21:1/109 to TALIADON on Wed Jul 27 20:30:00 2022
    On 07-26-22 11:42, TALIADON wrote to claw <=-

    I'm happy with my iPhone for calls/texting, so it would really be an exercise in getting Linux into my pocket.

    I prefer iPhone for the daily driver, but Android is better for some things, especially in the ham radio world.


    ... Shock me, say something intelligent!
    === MultiMail/Win v0.52
    --- SBBSecho 3.10-Linux
    * Origin: Freeway BBS Bendigo,Australia freeway.apana.org.au (21:1/109)
  • From Adept@21:2/108 to boraxman on Wed Jul 27 21:23:29 2022
    Well, that is kind of my point. People who are used to Windows will see an alternative as "deficient", wheras people used to Linux will find Windows deficient. This shows that much of the "deficiencies" that are claimed are really a matter of the alternative not matching their habits.

    When I use Windows, I'm annoyed that I can't tab-complete to help me more quickly type out part of a file name in the command line.

    When I use Linux, I'm annoyed that I can't tab-complete to choose among a couple of different file names with similar starts.

    Perhaps I just need to be better about naming files to make sure my tab-complete needs line up with my OS.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/26 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Storm BBS (21:2/108)
  • From Nightfox@21:1/137 to Adept on Wed Jul 27 15:05:43 2022
    Re: Re: Old computer
    By: Adept to boraxman on Wed Jul 27 2022 09:23 pm

    When I use Windows, I'm annoyed that I can't tab-complete to help me more quickly type out part of a file name in the command line.

    The Windows command prompt has tab-complete for filenames...?

    Nightfox
    --- SBBSecho 3.15-Linux
    * Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)
  • From boraxman@21:1/101 to Adept on Thu Jul 28 21:53:19 2022
    When I use Windows, I'm annoyed that I can't tab-complete to help me more quickly type out part of a file name in the command line.

    Doesn't Powershell do this? I'm pretty sure it does.

    When I use Linux, I'm annoyed that I can't tab-complete to choose among a couple of different file names with similar starts.


    ZSH can do this. ZSH can do a lot.

    Perhaps I just need to be better about naming files to make sure my tab-complete needs line up with my OS.


    Nah, use better software or a better shell. Your computer should work for you, not you adapt to work to its limitations.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From Atreyu@21:1/176 to Adept on Thu Jul 28 15:21:16 2022
    On 27 Jul 22 21:23:29, Adept said the following to Boraxman:

    When I use Windows, I'm annoyed that I can't tab-complete to help me more quickly type out part of a file name in the command line.

    When I use Linux, I'm annoyed that I can't tab-complete to choose among a couple of different file names with similar starts.

    Windows and Linux doe this perfectly. Is your tab key working?

    Atreyu

    --- Renegade vY2Ka2
    * Origin: Joey, do you like movies about gladiators? (21:1/176)
  • From Adept@21:2/108 to Nightfox on Fri Jul 29 18:05:30 2022
    When I use Windows, I'm annoyed that I can't tab-complete to help me quickly type out part of a file name in the command line.

    The Windows command prompt has tab-complete for filenames...?

    It's neat. And a neat solution that I'd probably more fully appreciate if I weren't also familiar with the Linux version.

    But you type part of the name, then tab through the options that start with that name.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/26 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Storm BBS (21:2/108)
  • From Adept@21:2/108 to boraxman on Fri Jul 29 18:07:33 2022
    When I use Windows, I'm annoyed that I can't tab-complete to help me quickly type out part of a file name in the command line.

    Doesn't Powershell do this? I'm pretty sure it does.

    I imagine there are always ways. That I am almost certainly not interested in spending the effort to figure out.

    Perhaps I just need to be better about naming files to make sure my tab-complete needs line up with my OS.
    Nah, use better software or a better shell. Your computer should work
    for you, not you adapt to work to its limitations.

    I think I meant that mostly as a joke, as it's silly to name files based on tab-complete needs.

    But only _mostly_, because I'd definitely consider it, if I thought that I
    had a reasonable naming convention.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/26 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Storm BBS (21:2/108)
  • From Adept@21:2/108 to Atreyu on Fri Jul 29 18:10:06 2022
    When I use Windows, I'm annoyed that I can't tab-complete to help me mo quickly type out part of a file name in the command line.

    When I use Linux, I'm annoyed that I can't tab-complete to choose among couple of different file names with similar starts.

    Windows and Linux doe this perfectly. Is your tab key working?

    Does your tab key do something mine doesn't?

    I type part of a file name in Windows, then tab through the options.

    I type part of a file name in Linux, then tab to get to the next decision point, then type a bit more, then tab to complete (or get to the next
    decision point, or tab-complete with the previous one).

    If I type enough of the file name that the names are unique on either system, the behavior would be exactly the same.

    What does _your_ tab key do? And are you using something custom?

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/26 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Storm BBS (21:2/108)
  • From Atreyu@21:1/176 to Adept on Fri Jul 29 16:21:02 2022
    On 29 Jul 22 18:10:06, Adept said the following to Atreyu:

    What does _your_ tab key do? And are you using something custom?

    I open either CMD or Powershell on Windows.

    For example. cd \, Enter. cd, space, then hitting Tab cycles through the subdirectories.

    I connect via Putty SSH to a Ubuntu VM hosted on OVH in Montreal.

    For example. cd /etc, Enter, cd, space, then hitting tab cycles through the subdirectories.

    On Windows CMD, I type Find, space, then Tab and it cycles through the available files in the directory.

    Nothing custom on either and this behavior has worked here for years.

    Atreyu

    --- Renegade vY2Ka2
    * Origin: Joey, do you like movies about gladiators? (21:1/176)
  • From boraxman@21:1/101 to Adept on Sat Jul 30 11:39:19 2022
    Doesn't Powershell do this? I'm pretty sure it does.

    I imagine there are always ways. That I am almost certainly not
    interested in spending the effort to figure out.


    What effort? You just press 'Tab'!

    I think I meant that mostly as a joke, as it's silly to name files based on tab-complete needs.

    But only _mostly_, because I'd definitely consider it, if I thought that
    I had a reasonable naming convention.


    Gotcha... I think,

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From boraxman@21:1/101 to Adept on Sat Jul 30 11:47:33 2022

    Does your tab key do something mine doesn't?

    I type part of a file name in Windows, then tab through the options.

    I type part of a file name in Linux, then tab to get to the next decision point, then type a bit more, then tab to complete (or get to the next decision point, or tab-complete with the previous one).

    If I type enough of the file name that the names are unique on either system, the behavior would be exactly the same.

    What does _your_ tab key do? And are you using something custom?

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/26 (Linux/64)

    Ahh, I see what you mean. I use ZSH, so when I press tab, I get all the options. Press it again, and I can use the arrows to select all the options as if scrolling through a menu. I add the
    zstyle 'completion:*' menu select
    option to my .zshrc.

    You probably use bash, I'm guessing bash can do something similar. Try the option
    bind 'TAB:menu-complete'
    and see how you go. Add it to your .bashrc if it is what you want.

    You can type
    bind 'TAB:menu-complete'
    on the command prompt to try it out.

    Linux and Linux programs are generally quite configurable, there is usually a way to get something to work just the way you want it.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From deon@21:2/116 to Adept on Sat Jul 30 09:51:16 2022
    Re: Re: Old computer
    By: Adept to Atreyu on Fri Jul 29 2022 06:10 pm

    Does your tab key do something mine doesn't?

    I type part of a file name in Windows, then tab through the options.

    I type part of a file name in Linux, then tab to get to the next decision point, then type a bit more, then tab to complete (or
    get to the next decision point, or tab-complete with the previous one).

    If I type enough of the file name that the names are unique on either system, the behavior would be exactly the same.

    Do you double tab? For me, at the decision point, double tab will list all the available files that meet what you have typed so far and that it cannot proceed to complete because there is no longer uniqueness in your input.


    ...лоеп
    --- SBBSecho 3.15-Linux
    * Origin: I'm playing with ANSI+videotex - wanna play too? (21:2/116)
  • From Adept@21:2/108 to deon on Sun Jul 31 16:29:54 2022
    Do you double tab? For me, at the decision point, double tab will list
    all the available files that meet what you have typed so far and that it cannot proceed to complete because there is no longer uniqueness in your input.

    Interesting! I had never thought to try that, so thanks for that.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/26 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Storm BBS (21:2/108)
  • From bex@21:4/141 to boraxman on Wed Aug 3 19:21:00 2022
    At 9:53 PM on 28 Jul 22, boraxman said to Adept:


    When I use Linux, I'm annoyed that I can't tab-complete to choose among a couple of different file names with similar starts.


    ZSH can do this. ZSH can do a lot.

    Why yes, yes it does! :) It was really hard for me to move away from bash, but I'm a complete zsh devotee now. It's conveniences are truly labor
    saving.


    --
    Brightening the BBS world since 1990. - Bex <3
    --
    "Pooh sat down on a large stone, and tried to think this out. It
    sounded to him like a riddle, and he was never much good at riddles,
    being a Bear of Very Little Brain."
    - "Winnie-the-Pooh"

    -*- ASTG 1.8

    * Q-Blue 2.4 *
    --- SBBSecho 3.11-Win32
    * Origin: -=[conchaos.synchro.net | ConstructiveChaos BBS]=- (21:4/141)
  • From boraxman@21:1/101 to bex on Fri Aug 5 10:05:21 2022
    ZSH can do this. ZSH can do a lot.

    Why yes, yes it does! :) It was really hard for me to move away from bash, but I'm a complete zsh devotee now. It's conveniences are truly labor saving.



    I found a lot of things that I did with ZSH, BASH could do. I don't know if I wrongfully thought they were ZSH only features, or if BASH had changed since I converted to ZSH, but I read through some BASH documentation and was thinking "I thought this was specific to ZSH..."

    Being able to use arguments from previous commands without having to press
    the up arrow and hand edit the command and do substitutions using the "/s" syntax is probably my favourite feature. I also like the glob qualifiers, and that you can select files that pass a certain test.

    I add an "archived" extended attribute to any files I've put on my archive drive, but still want to keep around, and I can list those files with
    ls *(+archived) or delete them with
    rm *(+archived). Kind of like a command line tagging system where you can select files which have a particular tag on the shell.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From poindexter FORTRAN@21:4/122 to bex on Thu Aug 4 07:36:00 2022
    bex wrote to boraxman <=-

    Why yes, yes it does! :) It was really hard for me to move away from bash, but I'm a complete zsh devotee now. It's conveniences are truly labor saving.

    Could you elaborate? I'm getting into working with shells more, haven't
    looked at a shell other than Bash since the csh/bash wars of the late '80s.


    ... Onward, to meatspace!
    --- MultiMail/DOS v0.52
    * Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)
  • From esc@21:4/173 to poindexter FORTRAN on Fri Aug 5 11:11:09 2022
    Could you elaborate? I'm getting into working with shells more, haven't looked at a shell other than Bash since the csh/bash wars of the late '80s.

    The whole bash vs zsh thing for me is about convenience these days. The main reason I use zsh is because of things like oh-my-zsh and prezto, which essentially give you a tuned zsh experience out of the box. It's easy to manage plugins, etc., with one of these configuration frameworks.

    Now, I think there are probably bash frameworks that offer similar capabilities but the community around zsh suggests to me that usability will always be improved.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 2022/07/11 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: m O N T E R E Y b B S . c O M (21:4/173)
  • From bex@21:4/141 to boraxman on Sat Aug 6 09:02:00 2022
    At 10:05 AM on 5 Aug 22, boraxman said to bex:

    I found a lot of things that I did with ZSH, BASH could do. I don't
    know if I wrongfully thought they were ZSH only features, or if BASH had changed since I converted to ZSH, but I read through some BASH documentation and was thinking "I thought this was specific to ZSH..."

    In the end, all of the shells can do most of the same things, it's just a matter of how easy it is to do those things. zsh makes things like working
    with history and searching easy-peasy. And oh-my-zsh plugins make adding environment variables and variables a piece of cake.

    I add an "archived" extended attribute to any files I've put on my
    archive drive, but still want to keep around, and I can list those files with ls *(+archived) or delete them with

    That is friggin BRILLIANT! I am going to implement that on my test system!


    Have a place for everything and keep the thing somewhere else; this is not advice, it is merely custom.
    - Mark Twain

    -*- ASTG 1.8

    * Q-Blue 2.4 *
    --- SBBSecho 3.11-Win32
    * Origin: -=[conchaos.synchro.net | ConstructiveChaos BBS]=- (21:4/141)
  • From boraxman@21:1/101 to bex on Sun Aug 7 13:07:54 2022
    In the end, all of the shells can do most of the same things, it's just a matter of how easy it is to do those things. zsh makes things like
    working with history and searching easy-peasy. And oh-my-zsh plugins
    make adding environment variables and variables a piece of cake.

    I add an "archived" extended attribute to any files I've put on my archive drive, but still want to keep around, and I can list those fil with ls *(+archived) or delete them with

    That is friggin BRILLIANT! I am going to implement that on my test system!


    Have a place for everything and keep the thing somewhere else; this is
    not advice, it is merely custom.
    - Mark Twain

    The magic happens with this ZSH function. Note that you need to add
    zmodload zsh/attr
    to your .zshrc as well to add support for extended attributes.

    function archived() {
    # just a check whether the archived attribute exists, regardless of value.
    local val
    zgetattr $REPLY user.archived val 2>/dev/null
    }


    All you need to do to set a file as "archived" is created an extended attribute with that name on the file

    ie
    # setfattr -n user.archived mysticBBS_Release3.RAR

    then you can refer to files with this 'tag' using the following glob *(.+archived)
    as in
    # rm *(.+archived)

    Which removes all files with the tag
    ...or recursively
    # rm **/*(.+archived)
    The following glob is the negation
    *(.^+archived)

    So
    # cp *(.^archived) /mnt/external
    copies all files which have NOT got the tag
    which you can then tag as archived with

    # setfattr -n user.archived *(.^+archived)

    I have folders I download things in, which I then save on an external drive, but may want to keep locally for a moment longer.

    Of course, you can duplicate that function with other tags.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From Bex@21:1/137 to poindexter FORTRAN on Mon Aug 8 15:35:00 2022
    poindexter FORTRAN wrote to bex <=-

    bex wrote to boraxman <=-

    Why yes, yes it does! :) It was really hard for me to move away from bash, but I'm a complete zsh devotee now. It's conveniences are truly labor saving.

    Could you elaborate? I'm getting into working with shells more, haven't looked at a shell other than Bash since the csh/bash wars of the late '80s.

    More robust tab completion: case is ignored, fuzzy matching, wildcard tab competion

    The wildcard tab completion is super-crazy. For example, if I type:

    vi /v/l/p/library and hit tab, it exampds to:
    vi /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library

    Auto-complete history. I used to *hate* this, but now I rely on it. Start typing, for example, "vi " and you'll see the last time you ran vim. If you had run it with "vim thisIsSilly.example" then while typing "vi" the rest of your previous run is shown, and you can hit tab to fill. But even more handy, say you are like me and edit a kajillion text files in any particular work day. I can type "vi" and then hit the up arrow to go through all matching lines. Or I can keep typing until I can see the autocomplete has worked.

    Last one for now: zsh plugins. My favorite example is a silly little history plugin. The plugin creates a few different aliases which get processed when .zshrc is sourced, including "hsi" to do a case-insensitve grep on history. It's something that I can easily replicate in bash, of course. I just think that it's cool to have it separated out into its own container. If I don't want to have those aliases anymore, in bash I have to go through my aliases file, finding and deleting each one. In zsh, I just remove the plugin.

    Silly stuff, but the expansion of tab completion and auto-complete history has sped up my productivity by a good 5%. Over an 8 hour day, I dig having time for another coffee break. :D


    "Well I can't figure out just two! So let's say that you opened 200."
    - Professor Turpentine, "Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory"

    --
    Brightening the BBS world since 1990
    - Bex <3


    --- MultiMail/Linux v0.49
    * Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)
  • From boraxman@21:1/101 to Bex on Thu Aug 11 23:38:12 2022
    Last one for now: zsh plugins. My favorite example is a silly little history plugin. The plugin creates a few different aliases which get processed when .zshrc is sourced, including "hsi" to do a
    case-insensitve grep on history. It's something that I can easily replicate in bash, of course. I just think that it's cool to have it separated out into its own container. If I don't want to have those aliases anymore, in bash I have to go through my aliases file, finding
    and deleting each one. In zsh, I just remove the plugin.

    Silly stuff, but the expansion of tab completion and auto-complete history has sped up my productivity by a good 5%. Over an 8 hour day, I dig having time for another coffee break. :D


    http://zzapper.co.uk/zshtips.html

    Lots of good tips here. Will give you an indication of what you can do.
    The most common 'features' I use are glob modifiers, particularly those to select files modified within the last X days, using substition on previous commands.

    --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
    * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)
  • From Bex@21:1/137 to boraxman on Sun Aug 14 14:29:00 2022
    boraxman said to bex: <=-


    The magic happens with this ZSH function. Note that you need to add zmodload zsh/attr
    to your .zshrc as well to add support for extended attributes.

    Thank you thank you!!!

    -- Bex <3 (via Q-Blue 2.4)
    "I doubt any of us will get out of here alive."
    "You should never ever doubt what nobody is sure about."
    - "Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory"
    -*- ASTG 1.8

    * Q-Blue 2.4 *
    --- SBBSecho 3.15-Linux
    * Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)
  • From Bex@21:1/137 to boraxman on Sun Aug 14 16:06:00 2022
    http://zzapper.co.uk/zshtips.html
    Lots of good tips here. Will give you an indication of what you can do.


    Thank you so much! I am betting this going to be an invaluable resource.

    -- Bex <3 (via Q-Blue 2.4)
    Bender: Farewell, big blue ball OF IDIOTS!
    -*- ASTG 1.8

    * Q-Blue 2.4 *
    --- SBBSecho 3.15-Linux
    * Origin: Digital Distortion: digdist.synchro.net (21:1/137)