OT:I really, really want to like Linux ...

Yup.

Its optional.

Not using it allows pedants to maintain their fragile sense of self-esteem by resorting to pathetic spelling lames.

As I said, Windows caters for everyone.

michael adams

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I never said windows 286 didnt exist, I merely remarked that yuou were in a paralell universe.

I simpluy could not be arsed. I mean really - who gives a s*it? Oh YOU do.

Your ego at stake agian huh?

Christ.

None that you would understand.

More like an utter dork, but we can pass over that...

Bless!

Is that what you said to your friend Peter, when he gave you another hammering at bridge ?

Its seems you must have really given a s*it about that, given that you dragged it up all those years later.

michael adams

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No you didn't. NT's remark was directed at Tim not at me. It's that you were agreeing with.

Nothing to do with me at all.

See above.

You weren't playing this bridge for money, by any chance ?

michael adams

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It's very confusing when NT and Turnip seem to post parallel replies.

Hence the number of comments before about being the same poster.

Oh, he never did that.

I just remeber it as a foolish statement.

You really are very intense...wrong time of the month?

I have never played bridge for money.

Irfanview is one of the few Windows things I still use in preference to any that I've found on Linux (not that I've looked very hard, because on Wine it runs as well as a native app anyway). I just had a quick rummage and Fotoxx looks like it might offer similar function and usability - I shall try it and see.

Isn't it funny though, there they are, brain as big as a planet and yet few of 'them' can keep track of what they are saying (or insulting etc) to whom.

It's as if anyone who isn't them just blends into one being?

Cheers, T i m

I tried a couple the other night and some were so illogical I couldn't make any use of them at all. ;-(

Pan is another example where they have got close (to Forte Agent) but not close enough to make it as easy to use (well, the way I use FA anyway).

Some Lini are slowly getting to be as friendly as Windows re putting more 'tools' into the GUI and the 'Control Panel' and even the 'Driver Manager'.

And I'm sure the concept of 'Mount points' allows for a very flexible filesystem but it often isn't easy when you click on something and it presents you with something that means nothing. Whilst the OSX / Linux fanboys poo poo drive labels, I consider them easier for 'most people' to navigate (after the first time) than the alternatives.

COM1: is also pretty straightforward, compared with \dev\s01 or whatever it is, especially when your Windows program running under WINE is looking for a COM port or whatever.

Cheers, T i m

The latter may have been true 20 years ago but the advent of winXP showed (me at least!) that Microsoft's interest wasn't in users so much as *consumers* (a much softer target to exploit for financial gain).

As for the former, I do wonder whether said 'Geeks' are simply serving their own selfish interests by deliberately keeping Linux distros 'unpopular' so as not to become worthy of attention by crass commercial interests and ultimately attract the attention of the 'Black Hat' community as yet another revenue stream via ransomware and the like. Let's face it, as soon as anything is designed so that even a fool can use it, then only a fool will want to use it.

I'd say otherwise. winXP was a blinged up braindead s*it version of win2kSP4 (just as win98 was a blinged up s*it version of win95osr2).

It couldn't do proper multitasking like win95osr2. For example, you couldn't get inertiaplayer to produce recognisably musical playback of music modules in a dos box in WfW like you could in win95osr2 (and beyond).

Win95 and win2k represented the epitome of user orientated OSes from Microsoft. WinXP was just the start of the downhill progression to

Incidentally, if you're keen to build your own server or NAS box and need high performance SMB file sharing, don't waste time using a Linux distro. Just go straight for a FreeBSD solution such as NAS4Free or FreeNAS where the limit is entirely due to the over the wire speed of GBe connections rather than the 70MB/s of a 'modern Linux distro'.

This was a fact that didn't hit home until I happened to test transfers between a customer's win7 desktop PC and my own 5 or 6 year old NAS4Free box some 4 or 5 years ago when I'd erroneously assumed the 64MB/s transfers between said NAS box and my win2k desktop machine had been a NAS4Free issue. Boy, was I proved wrong! :-(

Previous experience running a Knoppix Live CD as a temporary measure to overcome an EXT2 BSD bug with 1TB sized disk volumes had confirmed what I'd earlier experienced with Linux as a server host OS on Fast Ethernet LANs with it's pathetic 6.8MB/s speed limit compared to win2k to win2k's

Anyone considering a Linux based fileserver or NAS box would be well advised to at least trial a NAS4Free or FreeNAS setup before making such a commitment.

Did you make that up yourself? ;-(

Pretty well everything is being 'dumbed down' as you might see it because that's what 'most people' want, not just those who can actually do all those things themselves.

The like cars that turn on their lights automatically, have automatic transmission, turn on their wipers or even brake on their own in an emergency. You don't have to 'bother' to learn how to parallel park as the car does it for you. How many 'non foolish' people turn all that off I wonder?

Same with having an OS that installs hardware drivers or 'finds' network devices for you, you would prefer to find, download, compile and install the drivers or type in the ip address of *everything* manually?

If not, does that make you 'a fool'?

Cheers, T i m

I just checked that here. NFS 12MBps SMB 6.8MBps

But SNB can be tuned - it comes out of the box 'safe'