From: "John R. Chaffer" <jrc...@jrchaff.seanet.com>
Subject: LINUX - Pathetic Toy
Date: 1997/01/26
Message-ID: <32EB8C57.43BB@jrchaff.seanet.com>#1/1
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I am writing this from Microsoft Windows 95 / Netscape - it is
one of the Many Many things that I can do MUCH EASIER and
BETTER from any one of several MS / Borland or other systems
in the DOS/WINDOWS world, than in the absurd world of
interlaced nonsense called Linux/Unix.
A knowledgeable programmer said a while back,
" UNIX: a singularly user-unfriendly, but otherwise mediocre,
operating system."
The same is true, in spades, of Linux.
I am a professional engineer, with many miles of computer programming
experience. It is sad and unfortunate that the latest people to
be hoodwinked into the Unix nonsense (a spinoff of too many tax-
supported do-nothings in the fault-tolerant and unreal world
of academia) are the technical firms silly enough to waste time
and money paying for experts to get linux "systems" working,
and to make them do mundane, trivial things like not crash,
print documents, etc. Really sad.
My experience with linux is now some 8 months old, I have read nearly
all the major books, have an extensive X library, and I have never
seen such a compendium of disorganized nonsense in my entire life.
It is literally true that nearly every new task in linux is a
(very unpleasant) head-banging uphill climb of a painful learning
experience, along the way of which one is constantly admonished
not to bother the busy people who wrote the nonworking, nonintegrated,
nonfaulttolerant, nonprofessional garbage which passes as software,
with stupid questions like, "can you give me a few WORKING tutorial
examples please ?" - there are some examples associated with
Linux/GNU "programs", but many simply don't work at all as listed.
Example: the syntax coloring in the xemacs sample .emacs file.
Another example: the utter frustration and foolish time-wasting
task of trying, somehow, to get decent wysiwyg printing on linux;
since many "program" writers insist on publishing guides/manuals
in Postscript, (another expensive, difficult to use environment),
the Ghostscript program is available - but just try getting it to
work to print technical graphs --- hahahahahaha.
All of these things WILL work (I take your word for it...)
but the learning curve is so steep and time-wasting, that the
price is too high.
I am not a Microsoft fan - or rather, I wasn't. But the world
of computing - including Scientific computing - is SO MUCH easier
and SO MUCH higher quality in that world than here, that my
comment to those who seriously believe in linux is simple:
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA..
how foolish you all are.
jr
From: Andrew Veliath <vel...@rpi.edu>
Subject: Re: LINUX - Pathetic Toy
Date: 1997/01/27
Message-ID: <m3vi8jv67n.fsf@pluto.solarsystem.org>#1/1
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sender: vel...@pluto.solarsystem.org
references: <32EB8C57.43BB@jrchaff.seanet.com>
organization: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, The United States of America
newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc
>>>>> John R Chaffer writes:
John> I am writing this from Microsoft Windows 95 / Netscape - it
John> is one of the Many Many things that I can do MUCH EASIER and
John> BETTER from any one of several MS / Borland or other systems
John> in the DOS/WINDOWS world, than in the absurd world of
John> interlaced nonsense called Linux/Unix.
I'm sorry you feel this way. I can do many many things better in
Linux and Unix. Hahahaha... this post is so funny... I apologize if
this is not you or you had a bad day.
For what it's worth, I can barely operate in Windows 95 (that's not
worth much of course). Seriously, how do you do things in it? Do you
sit there dragging files across the screen everyday? Making
wow-bang-cool macros in doskey? When I was a kid I used to drag and
drop all the time (sorry, I had to say that :-). Microsoft _thrives_
on the fact that most of its users and many of its developers do not
have truly in-depth knowledge of their products (unless they pay lots
of $$$ then which they become one of MS's puppies); they withhold what
they want when they want for the sole purpose of maintaining control,
which is pretty logical considering their primary motivation is not
only profit, but some sort of world domination given their recent
infiltration into mass-media.
If I have to work or develop for Windows 95/NT for business or
contract, I will. But, for my own use, business or contract, I prefer
Unix. Why? It is more than opinion for myself; I'm about 5 times
more productive with a customized Linux/Unix system right now. I
would mention, however, that fully updated and consolidated
documentation is not exactly easy to come by, and it does take a bit
more time to find out some things. Actually, that is a bunch of BS
since if you go work anywhere for doe you get lots of docs on whatever
software you're using, and you can always get decent POSIX reference
books and hordes of X/Windows references. Configuring my soundcard
takes a bit longer in Linux than in Windows. But on the other hand,
there are many, many things which are cake to do under Linux which are
near impossible or absurd to do or attempt under stock Windows 95/NT.
Of course, for others more familiar with Windows, the opposite will be
true.
Linux is becoming nicely POSIX compliant. But hmm... lets see, who is
related to POSIX? Who was it? Hmm... might it be the Institute of
Electrical and Electronics Engineers...?
But every now and again I remember when I first used Unix I felt
handcuffed. To really obtain a handle on Unix requires persistance,
and, understandably (some say "unfortunately" instead), a lot of spare
time.
--
Andrew Veliath <vel...@rpi.edu> http://www.rpi.edu/~veliaa
I'm not scared of anything because I'm scared of everything.
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