Re: linux _still_ sucks

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From: peter (Peter da Silva)
Subject: Re: linux _still_ sucks
Date: 17:05 on 16 Jan 2004
> And you can play the whole "GNU/linux" vs. "linux" vs. "whatever" thing,
> but most of the problems I'm having are essentially fundamental to how the
> OSS people view the world:  It doesn't need to be easy, it just needs to
> be possible.

First it needs to be possible, then you make it easy. Both OS 9 and BeOS
fail the "first, make it possible" test.

I can deal with "it sucks, but I can work around it" better than "it sucks,
but it looks pretty".

> Been there, done that, don't remember why I left.  But I can guarantee
> that replacing the boot drive won't be anywhere near as trivial as it was
> on BeOS, or as it was, for instance, on Mac OS 9 (OS X has definitely
> regressed in this area).

Assuming BeOS will handle the contortions your IDE controller goes through
when it decides you're using too large a drive (it wouldn't on mine) and if
that's not an Apple-approved drive you've got to buy a third party formatter.
And then whan you upgrade to OS X it turns out you need to format the drive
again. And neither BeOS nor Mac OS is really happy with the idea of splitting
or merging partitions without blowing away everything on the drive, though
at least it's *usually* possible with BeOS... but if you use BeOS to redo
your partitions you can't get an HFS[+] FS on either of the new partitions
because BeOS won't create an HFS[+] FS and Mac OS won't recognise the
partitions...

You can always do what I did, and buy a cheap Beige G3 and use Mac OS X as
your desktop. It's got lots of its own suck, but at least it usually looks
pretty and you can usually work around it.

> At this point I'm just fighting off replacing all of my x86 hardware with
> Mac hardware; at least then I don't have to deal with the disgustingly bad
> features of this platform:  20-30 seconds to get through the BIOS,
> incredibly retarded boot sequences, retarded rules about how you boot off
> a given disk or partition, retarded limitations on partitioning methods (I
> guess that's the software, though, huh?).

Just wait until you try and repartition a drive on your Mac, or you get
OpenFirmware wodged so you need to pull the PRAM battery, whack the CUDA
switch, and let it sit overnight with no power so it'll forget the bad
settings...

You can't avoid the suck, all you can do is pick the combination that causes
the least pain for the moment.

			"Suck Different[ly]"

> And I've got plenty of non-linux hate that would be just as present on
> FreeBSD, for things like Gnome, OpenLDAP, etc.

I can't imagine becoming so inured to suck that I'd trade my Windowmaker
environment for Gnome or KDE. :)

And my NeXTstation has just decided to quit booting from floopy. Anyone
got a NeXTstation boot floppy image they can send me?

There's stuff above here

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