Linux test

[David G. Sizemore]

Are you using slrnpull? Are you using slrnpull to connect to multiple servers? If so, howdja do it?

BTW, I know the wreck is no place for a Linux distro war, but I do see some interesting parallels(between users of different distributions, I am not taking a bully pulpit to Window$ bash). There are those who must have the "whiz-bang" bells-n-whistles latest-n-greatest doesitallforyou distro/tool/fence/whatever, and are willing to sacrifice understanding for ease of use. Call it "getting a fish" They can usually do the job that they originally got the tool for, but don't see how it could apply to a lifetime of enjoyment/productivity.

Then there are those who take the time to understand the workings of the tools they have, and are able to see how they fit in with a good "toolset"; they learn to apply/modify techniques/configurations to suit the "project" they are currently on. Knowing the right tool for the job usually results in needing less of the wrong tools. Call it "learning to fish"

There are the rest of us, who, due to time/money/interest/desire/life/SWMBO(yes, "are you still fiddling with that Slackware?" is equal to "shouldn't the table saw just cut well right out of the box?") fall somewhere in the middle. Call it "having a nice fishing boat, but knowing there is a Red Lobster on the way home."

Notice I chose to put no particular tool brand or Linux distribution in the descriptions of the groups; If what you use suits your needs, then it is not my place to tell you what you "need". Have fun with whatcha got. Always try to get more! If you got too much, email me for my address-I'll be glad to take it off your hands

[Dave Hinz]

I was using something but it was a while ago now, and I don't remember what (let alone how) I set it up, sorry.

Well, I've been using RedHat (and now Fedora) for rather a long time. Yes, there are distros out there that are "better" for various purposes, but...I work in IT, and it's easier to sell management on Redhat Linux than, say, Slackware, just based on name recognition. Yes, it's silly. Yes, there are cases where Slackware, or Debian, or any of a number of other distros would be a closer fit to what we're trying to do, but by the time I install and config a system, it's not all that generic anyway. I'll be building a mailhub, and I think that one is gonna be OpenBSD, just for the security reasons.

Yes. Those who just learn how to drag-n-drool on the admintool of whatever they're working with, only learn how to drag-n-drool. Going in command line, or at least knowing what the drag-n-drool stuff actually is _doing_, is the key. Once you 'get' it, you can switch from Linux, to any of the other Unix / SYSV / BSD systems out there with little problem. But, if you memorize tools, you'll be lost when you switch.

Heh. For a while, I was running Redhat on a Sun Ultra5, right next to Solaris on a Intel PC, _just because_. Started out as a lark, but the UltraPenguin just kept running, so it served well for several years before I ended up doing something different.

[Silvan]

OTOH, if you have GOOD tools.... I've forgotten how to mange all the module config stuff, compile kernels, and various other things because Debian Just Works (tm).

There's something to be said for knowing how to vim around, and something to be said for tools that work too. After awhile doing everything by hand gets to be a PITA.

[J. Clarke]

If it "just works" that's because the kernel was compiled with everything turned on. Means that it's bigger and slower than it needs to be. Probably not optimized for your processor either.

[Dave Hinz]

That's fine, but it's not as portable as knowing what it's really doing. It depends on how many flavors of unix you routinely deal with. For me, (let's call all Solaris variants one Unix to make it reasonable), on a weekly basis, I deal with FreeBSD, RedHat, Fedora, Solaris, IRIX, and MacOSX. Some weeks, HP-UX as well. I'd go nuts memorizing all of the admin tools for each, but as long as I can find the tool, the "Unix Rosetta Stone" comes in quite handy. (if you're not familiar with it, do yourself a favor and google for it).

Well, most of those things are a set-and-forget task, though. Also, I don't know of any admin tool that, for instance, allows me to gracefully create new virtual interfaces on an active ethernet port (hme0:15) kind of things.

[Silvan]

Yes, but big deal. I've done kernels both ways. Any performance difference is negligible at best, and it takes a substantial amount of fiddling to arrive at a kernel config with all of the wheat and none of the chaff. After about the fourth time my perfectly hone config didn't port forward without problems, I gave a stock kernel a try. It annoys me on general principles that there is so much chaff, but it's more of a theoretical than actual annoyance.

I think my perspective on a lot of this changed when my mobo died and I got stuck using a PII-233 for a few months. I had to go get a new kernel for the i686 architecture, and it was a lot faster to download a pre-compiled kernel image than to build one from scratch on that thing. Once I made that switch, I never have fooled with kernel tweaking again. I mean hell, when you're going from a PII-233 to a P4-2000, it doesn't really matter if you're running an i386 kernel or one custom tweaked to perfection. It's still a bazillion and a half times faster, no matter what.

So I just don't care anymore, basically. Spew all you want about the exciting advantages of doing all that crap by hand. I couldn't care less anymore. I have the T-shirt. I have better things to do now.

[J. Clarke]

Personally I don't find the few minutes it takes to go through menuconfig to be any particular burden.

Now I can see where recompiling the kernel on that would be a pain. I've got a dual 1 GHz machine here and an Athlon-64 machine--either of them handles the cross-compile right quick.

Long as it suits your purpose. You're not going to get a single-diskette router out that kernel though, to take one example of why tuning is beneficial.

>

[Silvan]

It's not the few minutes it takes to go through menuconfig, but the number of times you have to go through menuconfig, compile, boot, and test before you get everything exactly right. Whoops, crap, how did I forget to compile agpgart or whatever.

I have a single 2 GHz box, and I have no idea how fast it can build a kernel. It can do a completely clean build of Rosegarden in 40 minutes though, which is a big improvement over the ten hours it was taking on that junker I got stuck using for far too long. :)

Well, if I were trying to build a single diskette router, I'd tweak the kernel! Duh! :)

(For that matter, I don't think I still own a diskette that actually works, let alone a functional drive to put it in. :)

[Larry Blanchard]

Sheesh! I posted a simple test to see if my new newsreader was working and the thread has been going for days.

Get a life, guys :-). It's not like I posted something cotroversial. Which I have been known to do :-).

[Silvan]

Linux IS my life. I spend enough time hacking on stuff, writing about stuff, talking about stuff, helping people figure out stuff, that it's a second job and then some.

Well, that and making purty noises in various other ways. Trumpet, table saw, plane taking whisper quiet shavings, it's all good. :)