[Coco] Re: Where's everybody goin'?

[Theodore Evans (Alex)]

On Mar 20, 2004, at 4:23 PM, James Ross wrote:

> Theodore (Alex) Evans wrote:
>
>> James Ross wrote
>>> I tried a few games on Linux. Loki games (I think, something
>>> like that). And I have to say, that in more cases than not they did
>>> not run correctly if at all.
>>
>> This is rather hard to swallow.
>
> So what are you saying?  What have I said on this forum that makes you
> think I make up facts?  Did you try any of the Loki games? I wonder
> why Loki is out of business by the way? http://www.lokigames.com/

It is just rather difficult to believe that anyone would release a port 
of a game which didn't work at all.  One that had a few (or even many) 
less than totally obvious bugs II can easily believe, one that doesn't 
work at all is hard to swallow.

> I used it for browsing the Internet, reading and writing email, and
> newsgroups. Played around with installing packages, did a little
> programming. For 6 Weeks. A few hours after work each day.
>
>> 2) spent time setting things
>> up because you could rather than because you had to, or
>
> If you call setting things up so they will work the way you want them
> to, and include the learning curve it takes to do that. Trying out
> different programs because the ones your using are not good enough.  I
> would call that necessary.  I probably spent 6 to 8 hours trying to
> figure out why my KVM USB mouse and keyboard worked when it was first
> installed but not after it was rebooted. Only by going through a
> rigmarole (which included attaching a PS/2 keyboard) could I get it to
> work after rebooting.
>
> Never did figure that one out until recently when I installed SuSE 3.2
> on a P4 3.0g with 1Gig of RAM and still had the exact same problem.
> And only when I asked for help on the SuSE newsgroup to find out it
> was some friggen obscure setting, like all the other times I have had
> problems with stuff related to Linux. (perhaps you think I am making
> this up too?)

I have no problem believing that you had a component which was either 
poorly supported, or wasn't supported at all.  As a shot in the dark, I 
would guess that your problem was that you system didn't see the USB 
keyboard at boot time due to the KVM and automatically disabled it, and 
that the fix was basically to tell the machine to ignore this.

Obscure problems like sound randomly ceasing to work, or a scanner 
which is recognized some of the time by Windows.

>> 3) were using a
>> distribution targeted to the more extreme technical users this is also
>> hard to swallow.

> The distribution I am using was mentioned in the post I was responding
> to before this one.  SuSE 8.1  One of the easiest distributions there
> is (supposedly)

I have used SuSE distros and would say that they are in general 
trivially easy to install and configure.  However, I have encountered 
hardware which either wasn't supported at all, of for which I had to 
find compile and install the appropriate drivers.  The breadth of *new* 
hardware support by Linux is narrower than that for Windows, however 
you can run into the opposite with older components as there is 
hardware which was supported but no longer is.

>> It generally takes me less time to install and
>> configure Linux on a machine than it does for me to install and
>> configure Windows on the same machine.
>
> That is hard for me to swallow :)
>
> Seriuosly good for you! I would have to conclude then, that you are a
> Linux guru.

Hardly, I have installed a number of different Linux distributions over 
the years, and when I did my first one with Slackware 3.2 (and that is 
a three and not an eight) it did take me a little while (about as long 
as Windows 95) and the process was most definitely not friendly even 
with a reasonable understanding of a number of the significant 
configuration file.

> But with me it is just the opposite.  And even on a Windows box to
> install my applications and set everything up the way I like it. I am
> still looking at quite a few hours.

You mean to say that Windows actually lets you configure things the way 
that you like it.  You must like it pretty close to the way that 
Windows wants to give it to you considering that the degree of 
flexibility of configuration of Windows and most Windows applications 
is pretty low.

It sounds like (2) was the answer, you spent all that time on 
configuration because you could rather than because you had to.

-- 
Theodore (Alex) Evans | 2B v ~2B = ?