Alpha Core Directions

[Jeff A.]

My point is, the systems are getting a little too far away from each other.
There is "freedom" and then there is "mess because everyone is doing their
own thing."  Someone else said it... why do we need 35 different text
editors?  The same thing will have an entirely different name on another
machine, and that's assuming you even found it to install in the first
place.

I'm sure some of you are familiar with this thing...

http://bhami.com/rosetta.html

Hooray for Unix.

My point is, the customization of linux is great, but effed if someone like
me could ever get to the point where I could customize my linux.  This Alpha
and unix and linux stuff is hard to dig up proper how-tos on.  Even the SRM
how-to that floats around the internet *does not answer my questions*.  It
says, "Here is an example... don't ask why."  I can make the SRM console
boot my linux install, but I don't really know what any of the other
settings do.  The assumption is that I know ahead of time why I am setting
certain paramaters.  I see a whole wack of commands and parms and nobody
will tell me what they all mean.  When it comes to downloading linux stuff,
it's assumed that if you're looking for linux, if you're looking for linux
software, you must already know exactly what you're looking for.

As far as compiling things goes, you can follow everyone's instructions
perfectly, and something may still be missing.  Then you try to compile the
missing piece and it won't compile.  Barely-technical people like myself
won't know why.  For example, I tried to complile xine on Alpha.  Well, it
said something was missing, go get it here.  So I did.  Then that bit
wouldn't compile.  I think it was pkgconfig or something?

You can install linux on *any* architecture, and something simply won't work
from the moment it's done.  You click on a program in the launchbar thingy,
it sits there for a while rumbling the hard drive, then nothing happens.  No
reason, no warning, nothing.  NOTHING HAPPENS.  You run a command from the
command line.  It sits there thinking for a while.  THEN NOTHING HAPPENS.
What's going on?  How am I going to know?

I know all about OSX.  It doesn't matter what OSX is *based* on... it's what
they've turned the final product into.  What the final product is is a
bloated mess of Apple.  If you've ever installed it, you know all about the
barrage of "give us your personal info, your parents, a cookie and your
first born child" screens.  You know the, "Hey!  You can't have the hardware
support we promised you we would give you a long time ago!"  No, you can't
use that video card with this update because we said so.  No, you can't use
that network card, we don't want you to.  No, you can't install me on an old
machine... that interferes with us owning your lifestyle.

I don't doubt the usefulness of linux.  I'm serving up websites and FTP and
backups on linux machines.  There's just too many people in too many
exclusive clubs, with no time or patience for n00bs like me.  Linux keeps
old hardware alive, and I'm a hardware enthusiast.  My Olivetti 2x133
struggles along a lot more happily with Linux than Win2000.  I get by, and
that's about it.

Alphacore, reduced to a nice streamlined and fully capable OS is a great
idea.  It's still going to be different from everything else though.  If it
keeps us up to date with the rest of the world's capabilities though, then I
guess that's all we can ask for.  Me, I can't demand anything from the
AlphaLinux community.  I'm just a guy who is thankful that someone else is
doing the gruntwork, that I can't comprehend, to keep my machine from
obscurity.

When it came to "Mandrake or Yellow Dog or something else?" with the Mac, I
went with Yellow Dog because at least it was *close* to what I sort of knew
from Red Hat on Alpha.  I stopped trying to use Mandrake on *anything* a
long time ago, because their end-user configuration tools never worked...
even when they were supposed to be there.

See?  I don't know what I'm doing!  Mostly because I can't get the
information I need.

JA


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Nelson Brito" <ntbrito at fc.up.pt>
To: "Linux and Red Hat on Alpha processors" <axp-list at redhat.com>
Sent: Tuesday, December 21, 2004 5:35 PM
Subject: Re: Alpha Core Directions


>
> >I'm using PPC and Alpha machines as an excuse to finally learn linux, but
> >when every release is different and nobody uses the same editors and
setups,
> >it's really, really stupid.  Mandrake does this, SuSE does that, and Red
Hat
> >does something else.   Then Yellow Dog does *almost* like Red Hat.  Then
I
> >
> >
> that's the beauty of linux you can chose whatever tools you like the best.
> there are even some famous discutions about which tool is the best for a
> specific purpuse, and i don't beleave that someone is waiting to know
> the answers ;-)
> I am a sysadmin and i have several dist of linux in the machines i
> manage, if you want to know what i use on my machine i tell you it's
> win... upss, i mean Fedora3. My favorite dist was Suse for some years,
> but i swapped to redhat because i needed it for some alphas i have at
> work. as far as i know suse didn't have a dist for alphas at that time
> (i only knew redhat and debian).
> this is not stupid, is freedom. but linux has some stupid things, and no
> one that uses it will deny that. I can tell you one thing i sometimes
> find stupid: the fact of diferent dist have diferent organization of the
> filesystem, lets say Mandrake puts named setup files under /var/named
> and redhat under /var/lib/named - i don't know if this is true but it's
> an example. In fact there's a file where you can define this for your
> self, and you can use /my_name/named for some vanity. Do you still find
> it stupid??
>
> the best of it is that you have this lists where you can learn from the
> others.
>
> unfortunately i have to tell you that OSX is Linux... if you don't like
it!!
>
> nelson
>
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