dreamwidth.org_rss.xml - sfeed_tests - sfeed tests and RSS and Atom files
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dreamwidth.org_rss.xml (44666B)
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1 <?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8' ?>
2
3 <rss version='2.0' xmlns:lj='http://www.livejournal.org/rss/lj/1.0/' xmlns:atom10='http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom'>
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5 <title>Liam on Linux</title>
6 <link>https://liam-on-linux.dreamwidth.org/</link>
7 <description>Liam on Linux - Dreamwidth Studios</description>
8 <lastBuildDate>Sat, 25 Jun 2022 11:05:46 GMT</lastBuildDate>
9 <generator>LiveJournal / Dreamwidth Studios</generator>
10 <lj:journal>liam_on_linux</lj:journal>
11 <lj:journaltype>personal</lj:journaltype>
12 <image>
13 <url>https://v.dreamwidth.org/15491837/3887720</url>
14 <title>Liam on Linux</title>
15 <link>https://liam-on-linux.dreamwidth.org/</link>
16 <width>100</width>
17 <height>75</height>
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20 <item>
21 <guid isPermaLink='true'>https://liam-on-linux.dreamwidth.org/84023.html</guid>
22 <pubDate>Sat, 25 Jun 2022 11:05:46 GMT</pubDate>
23 <title>Why I think the GNOME designers are incompetent</title>
24 <link>https://liam-on-linux.dreamwidth.org/84023.html</link>
25 <description><span style="color: rgb(26, 26, 27); font-family: &quot;Noto Sans&quot;, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">[Nicked from a Reddit comment to <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/bbcmicro/comments/vjlltx/risc_os_35yearold_original_arm_operating_system/">one of my own posts</a>]<br /><br />I love Unity and I still use it daily. I think it's the single most polished Linux desktop there's ever been, and although it is succumbing to bitrot a little now, it still works very well indeed.</span><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-size: 14px; line-height: inherit; font-family: &quot;Noto Sans&quot;, Arial, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(26, 26, 27);">Whereas GNOME is the canonical (pun intended) instantiation of Chesterton's Fence in desktop design.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-size: 14px; line-height: inherit; font-family: &quot;Noto Sans&quot;, Arial, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(26, 26, 27);"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence" class="_3t5uN8xUmg0TOwRCOGQEcU" rel="noopener nofollow ugc" target="_blank" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence</a></p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-size: 14px; line-height: inherit; font-family: &quot;Noto Sans&quot;, Arial, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(26, 26, 27);">They don't know what the top panel is for, but all the desktops they know have one, so they kept it. But they don't know how to use title bars, so removed them. Desktop icons were hard, so remove them.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-size: 14px; line-height: inherit; font-family: &quot;Noto Sans&quot;, Arial, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(26, 26, 27);">It's a deep lack of understanding.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-size: 14px; line-height: inherit; font-family: &quot;Noto Sans&quot;, Arial, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(26, 26, 27);">So, for example, title bars. First, you need to know how to use a 3-button mouse properly. The middle button is&nbsp;<em class="_7s4syPYtk5hfUIjySXcRE" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-size: inherit; line-height: inherit; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">important</em>. Middle-click a title bar and it sends it to the back of the Z-stack: behind all other windows.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-size: 14px; line-height: inherit; font-family: &quot;Noto Sans&quot;, Arial, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(26, 26, 27);">Select text, then middle-click elsewhere, and it copies it. No formatting, just text, and without going through the clipboard.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-size: 14px; line-height: inherit; font-family: &quot;Noto Sans&quot;, Arial, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(26, 26, 27);">So, you get the ability to copy &amp; paste&nbsp;<em class="_7s4syPYtk5hfUIjySXcRE" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-size: inherit; line-height: inherit; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">two things at once</em>. One in the clipboard, one by middle-clicking. Copy a web page title and the URL in a single action.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-size: 14px; line-height: inherit; font-family: &quot;Noto Sans&quot;, Arial, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(26, 26, 27);">But trackpad pilots don't know this, so they think the middle button isn't important, so they take its functionality away.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-size: 14px; line-height: inherit; font-family: &quot;Noto Sans&quot;, Arial, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(26, 26, 27);">Secondly, once you know how to use the middle button, turn it into a scroll wheel.&nbsp;<em class="_7s4syPYtk5hfUIjySXcRE" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-size: inherit; line-height: inherit; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">It's still a button</em>. You can click it. All the above still works.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-size: 14px; line-height: inherit; font-family: &quot;Noto Sans&quot;, Arial, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(26, 26, 27);">But now, you can scroll up on a title bar, and it collapses into&nbsp;<em class="_7s4syPYtk5hfUIjySXcRE" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-size: inherit; line-height: inherit; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">just</em>&nbsp;the title bar. It's an alternative to minimisation, called the windowblind or windowshade effect.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-size: 14px; line-height: inherit; font-family: &quot;Noto Sans&quot;, Arial, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(26, 26, 27);">Scroll down, it unrolls again.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-size: 14px; line-height: inherit; font-family: &quot;Noto Sans&quot;, Arial, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(26, 26, 27);">But GNOME folk didn't know how to do this. They don't know how to do window management properly at all. So they take away the title bar buttons, then they say nobody needs title bars, so they took away title bars and replaced them with pathetic &quot;CSD&quot; which means that action buttons are now&nbsp;<em class="_7s4syPYtk5hfUIjySXcRE" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-size: inherit; line-height: inherit; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">above</em>&nbsp;the text to which they are responses. Good move, lads. By the way, every written language ever goes from top to bottom, not the reverse. Some to L to R, some go R to L, some do both (boustrophedon) but they all go top to bottom.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0.25em; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-size: 14px; line-height: inherit; font-family: &quot;Noto Sans&quot;, Arial, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(26, 26, 27);">The guys at Xerox PARC and Apple who invented the GUI knew this. The clowns at Red Hat don't.</p><p class="_1qeIAgB0cPwnLhDF9XSiJM" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0.8em 0px 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-size: 14px; line-height: inherit; font-family: &quot;Noto Sans&quot;, Arial, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(26, 26, 27);">There are a thousand little examples of this. They are trying to rework the desktop GUI without understanding how it works, and for those of us who&nbsp;<em class="_7s4syPYtk5hfUIjySXcRE" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-size: inherit; line-height: inherit; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">do</em>&nbsp;know how it works, and also know of alternative designs these fools have never seen, such as RISC OS, which are far more efficient and linear and effective, it's extremely annoying.</p><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=liam_on_linux&ditemid=84023" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> comments</description>
26 <comments>https://liam-on-linux.dreamwidth.org/84023.html</comments>
27 <lj:security>public</lj:security>
28 <lj:reply-count>0</lj:reply-count>
29 </item>
30 <item>
31 <guid isPermaLink='true'>https://liam-on-linux.dreamwidth.org/83538.html</guid>
32 <pubDate>Fri, 06 May 2022 09:04:53 GMT</pubDate>
33 <title>The real reason that the first version of Windows NT was called 3.1</title>
34 <link>https://liam-on-linux.dreamwidth.org/83538.html</link>
35 <description><span style="font-size: medium;">&nbsp;<span style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: &quot;helvetica neue&quot;, arial, sans-serif;">A lot of history in computing is being lost. Stuff that was mainstream, common knowledge early in my career is largely forgotten now.</span></span><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: &quot;helvetica neue&quot;, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254);"><span style="font-size: medium;">This includes simple knowledge about how to operate computers&hellip; which is I think why Linux desktops (e.g. GNOME and Pantheon) just throw stuff out: because their developers don&rsquo;t know how this stuff works, or why it is that way, so they think it&rsquo;s unimportant.</span></p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: &quot;helvetica neue&quot;, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254);"><span style="font-size: medium;">Some of these big companies have stuff they&rsquo;ve forgotten about. They don&rsquo;t know it&rsquo;s historically important. They don&rsquo;t know that it&rsquo;s not related to any modern product. The version numbering of Windows was&nbsp;<em>intentionally</em>&nbsp;obscure.</span></p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: &quot;helvetica neue&quot;, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254);"><span style="font-size: medium;">Example: NT. First release of NT was, logically, 1.0. But it wasn&rsquo;t called that. It was called 3.1. Why?</span></p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: &quot;helvetica neue&quot;, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254);"><span style="font-size: medium;">Casual apparent reason: well because mainstream Windows was version 3.1 so it was in parallel.</span></p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: &quot;helvetica neue&quot;, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254);"><span style="font-size: medium;">This is marketing. It&rsquo;s not actually true.</span></p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: &quot;helvetica neue&quot;, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254);"><span style="font-size: medium;">Real reason: MS had a deal in place with Novell to include some handling of Novell Netware client drive mappings. Novell gave MS a little bit of Novell&rsquo;s client source code, so that Novell shares looked like other network shares, meaning peer-to-peer file shares in Windows for Workgroups.</span></p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: &quot;helvetica neue&quot;, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254);"><span style="font-size: medium;">(Sound weird? It wasn&rsquo;t. Parallel example: 16-bit Windows (i.e. 3.x) did not include TCP/IP or any form of dial-up networking stack. Just a terminal emulator for BBS use, no networking over modems. People used a 3rd party tool for this.</span></p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: &quot;helvetica neue&quot;, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254);"><span style="font-size: medium;"><em>But</em>&nbsp;Internet Explorer was supported on Windows 3.1x. So MS had to write its own alll-new dialup PPP stack and bundle it with 16-bit IE. Otherwise you could download the MS browser for the MS OS and it couldn&rsquo;t connect and that would look very foolish.</span></p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: &quot;helvetica neue&quot;, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254);"><span style="font-size: medium;">The dialup stack only did dialup and could not work over a LAN connection. The LAN connection could not do PPP or SLIP over a serial connection. Totally separate stacks.</span></p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: &quot;helvetica neue&quot;, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254);"><span style="font-size: medium;">Well, the dominant server OS was Netware and again the stack was totally separate, with different drivers, different protocols, everything. So Windows couldn&rsquo;t make or break Novell drive mappings, and the Novell tools couldn&rsquo;t make or break MS network connections.</span></p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: &quot;helvetica neue&quot;, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254);"><span style="font-size: medium;">Thus the need for some sharing of intellectual property and code.)</span></p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: &quot;helvetica neue&quot;, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254);"><span style="font-size: medium;">Novell was, very reasonably, super wary of Microsoft. MS has a history of stealing code: DoubleSpace contained stolen STAC code; Video for Windows contained stolen Apple QuickTime code; etc. etc.</span></p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: &quot;helvetica neue&quot;, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254);"><span style="font-size: medium;">The agreement with Novell only covered &ldquo;Windows 3.1&rdquo;. That is why the second, finished, working edition of Windows for Workgroups, a big version with massive changes, was called&hellip; Windows for Workgroups&nbsp;<em>3.11</em>.</span></p><p style="margin: 0.5em 0px;"><span style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254); font-size: medium;"><font color="#333333" face="helvetica neue, arial, sans-serif">And that&rsquo;s why NT was also called 3.1. Because that way it fell under the Novell agreement.</font><br /><br /><strong><font color="#333333" face="helvetica neue, arial, sans-serif">Postscript</font></strong><br /><br /><font color="#333333" face="helvetica neue, arial, sans-serif">A decade ago I wrote about the decline and fall of Netware:</font><br /><font color="#333333" face="helvetica neue, arial, sans-serif">https://www.theregister.com/Print/2013/07/16/netware_4_anniversary/<br /><br />But I didn't mention another pecularity of the Novell/MS uneasy relationship around the time of the launch of NT.<br /><br />Novell did not really believe that a new MS</font>&nbsp;OS had a chance. So, although MS kept asking, and provided Novell with betas, Novell did not write a Netware client for NT.&nbsp;<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254);">So MS wrote its own. It reverse-engineered the protocol and embedded its own Netware client into NT. It was initially able to connect to Netware 3 servers, but later gained basic authentication-only support for Netware 4's NDS as well.</span><br /><br /><span style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254);">Novell backpedalled and hastily wrote a client. If I recall correctly &ndash; it's more than 30 years ago now &ndash; it shipped after NT 3.1 came out. So it was initally buggy and that meant it could crash the new crash-proof OS.</span><br /><br /><span style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254);">Meaning that they competed: admins, including me, had a choice. Run the functionally-limited but stable MS client, or the feature-rich Novell client that could destabilise your very expensive high-end workstations?</span><br /><br /><span style="background-color: rgb(254, 254, 254);">Worse was to come. Since they'd already reverse-engineered the client, MS implemented a server as well. NT</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;could pretend to be a Netware server, and unmodified Netware client PCs (DOS, Windows 3, Windows for Workgroups, whatever) could connect to an NT box without changing the client. And as that was elaborate and involved a lot of memory optimisation, that helped.<br /><br />The server emulation wasn't a deal-breaker, but it weakened the Novell position. But failing to write a client for what rapidly became a serious business workstation OS was a critical error and at that extremely risky time for Novell, it contributed to the company's fall.</span></span></p><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=liam_on_linux&ditemid=83538" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> comments</description>
36 <comments>https://liam-on-linux.dreamwidth.org/83538.html</comments>
37 <category>novell</category>
38 <category>windows nt</category>
39 <category>netware</category>
40 <category>windows for workgroups</category>
41 <category>microsoft</category>
42 <category>windows 3</category>
43 <lj:security>public</lj:security>
44 <lj:reply-count>1</lj:reply-count>
45 </item>
46 <item>
47 <guid isPermaLink='true'>https://liam-on-linux.dreamwidth.org/83201.html</guid>
48 <pubDate>Sun, 24 Apr 2022 12:46:43 GMT</pubDate>
49 <title>The best FOSS email client, and what's wrong with it</title>
50 <link>https://liam-on-linux.dreamwidth.org/83201.html</link>
51 <description>&nbsp;About 5Y ago, I got a job at a big FOSS vendor and needed a desktop client. The company no longer maintained its own client for its own in-house email server.<div>&nbsp;</div><div>I started with Thunderbird.</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>I found a problem -- later identified as being server-side -- and tried as many others as I could find in the distro's repos: Evolution, Sylpheed, Claws, KMail, Balsa, GNUstep Mail.app, Geary, and more.</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>Evolution is better than it was and isn't quite so determinedly Outlook-like any more. (I do not like Outlook.)</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>Claws is pretty good, but it isn't multithreaded, so it hangs when collecting mail. This is very annoying.</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>Claws and Sylpheed <strong>desperately</strong> need to merge again. They are basically the same app, but with slightly different feature sets. AIUI the author of Sylpheed, Yamamoto Hiroyuki, refuses to accept patches/PRs. He really needs to get over himself and learn to act a bit more like Linus Torvalds did. This intransigence is crippling both programs.</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>It is the 21st century and I do not want a CLI/text-mode email app. They have their place, for instance if you need to do email over ssh. I do not. But I want something that readily scales to a large window, has a CUA UI, can show basic formatting, etc. So, no Mutt/Neomutt/Pine for me.</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>In the end, I went back to Thunderbird and I still use it today. It is, after considerable research and experimentation, the best FOSS email app there is.</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>It is cross-platform: I can and do use the same app on Linux, Windows and macOS.</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>It talks to everything. I have or have had it connecting to Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL, Exchange Server, Groupwise, CIX, and more different accounts and servers than I can remember.</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>It does address books and calendaring as well.</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>It has integration with handy features like Google's various chat and note-taking services.</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>It uses standard storage formats that can be accessed from other apps.</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>It's big, it is a bit sluggish, and like Firefox Quantum, some add-ons no longer work. This is a foolish decision of Mozilla's. However, it still has a useful range of add-ons.</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>It handles secure email and encryption well.</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>Snags: it <strong>really</strong> needs a working sync function.</div><div>&nbsp;</div><div>But, after a lot of time and effort, it remains best-of-breed for my needs.</div><div>&nbsp;</div><br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=liam_on_linux&ditemid=83201" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> comments</description>
52 <comments>https://liam-on-linux.dreamwidth.org/83201.html</comments>
53 <category>thunderbird</category>
54 <category>clients</category>
55 <category>email</category>
56 <category>foss</category>
57 <lj:security>public</lj:security>
58 <lj:reply-count>4</lj:reply-count>
59 </item>
60 <item>
61 <guid isPermaLink='true'>https://liam-on-linux.dreamwidth.org/83004.html</guid>
62 <pubDate>Tue, 22 Mar 2022 11:25:05 GMT</pubDate>
63 <title>On why Apple-haters are every bit as misguided as any fanboy</title>
64 <link>https://liam-on-linux.dreamwidth.org/83004.html</link>
65 <description>I really hate it whenever I see someone calling Apple fans fanboys or attacking Apple products as useless junk that only sells because it's fashionable.<br /><br />Every hater is 100% as ignorant and wrong as any fanatically-loyal fanboy who won't consider anything else.<br /><br />Let me try to explain why it's toxic.<br /><br />If someone/some group are not willing to make the effort to see why a very successful product/family/brand <strong>is</strong> successful, then it prevents them from learning any lessons from that success. That means that the outgroup is unlikely to ever challenge the success.<br /><br />In life it is always good to ask <em>why.</em> If this thing is so big, why? If people love it so much, why?<br /><br />I use a cheap Chinese Android phone. It's my 3rd. I also have a cheap Chinese Android tablet that I almost never use. But last time I bought a phone, I had a Planet Computers Gemini on order, and I didn't want <em>two</em>&nbsp;new ChiPhones, so I bought a used iPhone. This was a calculated decision: the new model iPhones were out and dropped features I wanted. This meant the previous model was now quite cheap.<br /><br />I still have that iPhone. It's a 6S+. It's the last model I'd want: it has a headphone socket and a physical home button. I like those. It's still updated and last week I put the latest iOS on it.<br /><br />It allowed me to judge the 2020s iOS ecosystem. It's good. Most of the things I disliked about iOS 6 (the previous iPhone model I had) have been fixed now. Most of the apps can be replaced or customised. It's much more open than it was. The performance is good, the form factor is good, way better than my iPhone 4 was.<br /><br />I don't use iPhones because I value things like expansion slots, multiple SIMs, standard ports and standard charging cables, and a customisable OS. I don't really use tablets at all.<br /><br />But my main home desktop computer is an iMac. I am an expert Windows user and maintainer with 35 years' of experience with the platform. I am also a fairly expert Linux user and maintainer with 27 years' experience. I am a full-time Linux professional and have been for nearing a decade... <strong>because&nbsp;</strong>I am a long-term Windows expert and that is <strong>why</strong>&nbsp;I choose not to use it any more.<br /><br />My iMac (2015 Retina 27&quot;) is the most gorgeous computer I've ever owned. It looks good, it's a joy to use, it is near silent and trouble-free to a degree that any Windows computer can only aspire to be. I don't <em>need</em>&nbsp;expansion slots and so on: I want the vendor to make a good choice, integrate it well and for it to <em>just work</em> and <em>keep</em>&nbsp;just working, and it does.<br /><br />It is slim, unobtrusive for a large machine, silent, and the picture (and sound) quality is astounding.<br /><br />I chose it <em>because</em> I have extensive knowledge of building, specifying, benchmarking, reviewing, fixing, supporting, networking, deploying, and recycling old PCs. It is over 3 decades of expert knowledge of PCs and Windows that is <em>why</em>&nbsp;I spent my own money on a Mac.<br /><br />So every time someone calls Mac owners fanboys, I know they know less than me and therefore I feel entirely entitled to dump on their ignorance from a great height.<br /><br />I do not use iDevices. I also do not use Apple laptops. I don't like their keyboards, I don't like their pointing devices, I don't like their hard-to-repair designs. I use old Thinkpads, like most experienced geeks.<br /><br />But I know <em>why</em>&nbsp;people love them, and if one wishes to pronounce edicts about Apple kit, you had better bloody well know your stuff.<br /><br />I do not recommend them for everyone. Each person has their own needs and should learn and judge appropriately. But I also do not condemn them out of hand.<br /><br />I have put in an awful lot of Windows boxes over the years. I have lost large potential jobs when I recommended Windows solutions to Mac houses, because it was the best tool for the job. I have also refused large jobs from people who wanted, say, Windows Server or Exchange Server when it *wasn't* the right tool for the job.<br /><br />It was my job to assess this stuff.<br /><br />Which equips me well to know that every single time someone decries Apple stuff, that means that they <strong>h</strong><strong>aven't</strong>&nbsp;done the work I have. They <strong>don't</strong> know and they can't bothered to learn.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=liam_on_linux&ditemid=83004" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> comments</description>
66 <comments>https://liam-on-linux.dreamwidth.org/83004.html</comments>
67 <category>iphone</category>
68 <category>windows</category>
69 <category>thinkpad</category>
70 <category>ios</category>
71 <category>linux</category>
72 <category>apple</category>
73 <lj:security>public</lj:security>
74 <lj:reply-count>2</lj:reply-count>
75 </item>
76 <item>
77 <guid isPermaLink='true'>https://liam-on-linux.dreamwidth.org/82913.html</guid>
78 <pubDate>Mon, 14 Mar 2022 18:08:46 GMT</pubDate>
79 <title>I want to see AROS, MorphOS or Haiku on the Raspberry Pi</title>
80 <link>https://liam-on-linux.dreamwidth.org/82913.html</link>
81 <description>But the dev teams are quite negative. <br /><br />A common objection is that supporting ARM SBCs is hard, because there are so many.<br /><br />This is true. There are indeed dozens, maybe hundreds, of ARM SBCs out there. Many don't have very good Linux support, which is why ARMbian exists, for example.<br /><br />Supporting them all is a massive undertaking for a small community-driven OS.<br /><br />But the RasPi is not just another ARM SBC. It is *the* inexpensive SBC. They had already sold *38 million* of the things by this time last year:<br /><a href="https://www.tomshardware.com/news/raspberry-pi-9th-birthday">https://www.tomshardware.com/news/raspberry-pi-9th-birthday</a><br /><br />As they sell about ⅔ of a million per month, and 1¾ million per quarter:<br /><a href="https://www.zdnet.com/article/raspberry-pi-sales-jump-heres-why-the-tiny-computers-in-demand-in-coronavirus-crisis/">https://www.zdnet.com/article/raspberry-pi-sales-jump-heres-why-the-tiny-computers-in-demand-in-coronavirus-crisis/</a><br /><br />There are more RasPis out there than anything since the Commodore 64 or Sinclair ZX Spectrum.<br /><br />Yes there are over 20 models, but basically, if one confines one's efforts to the latest model, then they're _still_ in the millions of units, there's basically just 1 chipset to support, and they're so cheap that potential users with a different SBC can just buy a RasPi instead for the cost of a modest restaurant meal.<br /><br />Even the £5 Pi Zero is a quad-core machine with ½ gig of RAM, a very capable target for most hobbyist OSes. It costs less than a small SD card.<br /><br />Yes, it's true, supporting all SBCs is very hard -- *so don't*. Support 1 or at most 2 models: the best-selling ones in the world, which are in fact already the largest compatible hardware platform in the world outside of the x86 PC, with more machines that are highly compatible with each other, that have only used 2 or 3 SBCs in a decade, than even x86 Apple Macs.<br /><br />It's not a comparison of equals. All ARM hardware isn't alike. Yes, there is a vast profusion of ARM hardware. Even of ARM SBCs. Even of cheap consumer end-user ARM SBCs. <br /><br />But even so, despite that, there is a very clear obvious market leader, and it's well-documented, and there are already multiple FOSS OSes that run on it, with drivers available for study. Not just Linux, like basically every other ARM SBC. <br /><br />Most RasPi round ups of operating systems just list half a dozen Linux distros, but OSnews readers know that Linux is just one OS. Distros are cosmetics.<br /><br />*Excluding* Linux, the RasPi runs FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Plan 9, Inferno, and RISC OS. (And Windows IoT but that's not FOSS.)<br /><br />No other SBC in the world can run as many different OSes. In fact, aside from the PC, I don't think any other single model range of computers ever made can run as many different OSes as the RasPi.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=liam_on_linux&ditemid=82913" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> comments</description>
82 <comments>https://liam-on-linux.dreamwidth.org/82913.html</comments>
83 <lj:security>public</lj:security>
84 <lj:reply-count>3</lj:reply-count>
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86 <item>
87 <guid isPermaLink='true'>https://liam-on-linux.dreamwidth.org/82596.html</guid>
88 <pubDate>Fri, 11 Mar 2022 20:04:42 GMT</pubDate>
89 <title>If Apple never did the Mac, would the Apple IIGS have thrived?</title>
90 <link>https://liam-on-linux.dreamwidth.org/82596.html</link>
91 <description>The 65C816 was a dead end, I'm afraid. It was a fairly poor 16-bit chip, and the notional successor, the 65C832, was never made. It only existed as a datasheet: <br /><br /><a href="https://downloads.reactivemicro.com/Electronics/CPU/WDC%2065C832%20Datasheet.pdf">https://downloads.reactivemicro.com/Electronics/CPU/WDC%2065C832%20Datasheet.pdf</a><br /><br />Backwards compatibility is really limiting. Look how long it took the PC to catch up with mid-1980s graphical computers, such as the Mac, Amiga or ST. Any of them was frankly far ahead of Windows 3.x, and it wasn't 'til Windows 95 that it could compare.<br /><br />Innovation is hard. Everyone tends to overlook the Lisa, which is the machine that pioneered most of the significant concepts of the Mac: not just the GUI, but a rigorously and completely specified set of UI guidelines, plus a polished, 2nd-generation GUI.<br /><br />(Xerox's original was very Spartan. No menu bars, no standardised window controls, no standardised dialog boxes, etc. It was a toolkit for writing GUI apps, and a fancy language to implement them in.<br /><br />Apple added a _lot_. But the first version was, just like the Xerox Star, way too complicated (hard disk! Multitasking!) and *way* too expensive. <br /><br />It took a second system to get it right, and it took cutting it back *HARD* to make it affordable enough so people would notice. Yes, sure, 128 kB wasn't really enough. One single-sided floppy wasn't enough. But even so it was $2500. It had to be pared to the *bone* to get it down to a quarter of the price of the Lisa.<br /><br />It was a trailblazer. It showed that a single-user standalone GUI machine was doable, and worth having, and could be just about affordable.<br /><br />Just 9 months later, a 512 kB model was doable for only $200 more. Tech advanced fast back then.<br /><br />They simply could not have done a IIGS at that kind of price point in 1984. It wasn't possible. The Mac was only barely possible. The other new 680x0 personal computer of 1984, the Sinclair QL, had 128 kB too.<br /><br />If there'd been no Mac, the GS wouldn't have had its GUI. The GUI was a re-implementation of the Mac one. Without that, it would have just been a slow kinda-sorta 16-bit machine, released a year and 2 months after the Amiga 1000 – which was $1300 but which had much better graphics, comparable sound, a full multitasking GUI, and a 7.1 MHz 68000 – a much more capable chip.<br /><br />Or the Atari ST, which was another full 68000 machine, with half a meg of RAM, and a GUI, and was (unlike the Amiga) usable with a single floppy because the OS was in ROM... and which was $800 in June 1985.<br /><br />There is more to the universe than just Apple.<br /><br />In the gap between the Lisa and the Apple IIGS, IBM released the PC-AT, which my friend Guy Kewney, perhaps the most famous IT journalist in the UK then, called "his first experience of Raw Computer Power". His caps.<br /><br />The year after that, Intel released the 80386, a true 32-bit chip. The same month as the IIGS, Compaq released the Deskpro 386, the first true 32-bit PC. Sure, $6,500 -- but vastly more powerful and capable than a 65C816.<br /><br />The IIGS was a gorgeous machine. I was at the UK launch. I wanted one very badly. But bear in mind that the Apple II was _not_ a successful machine in Europe -- it was was too expensive. A $1000 computer in 1977 was no use to us: that was more than the price of a car. We got Sinclair ZX80s and ZX81s, the first £100 computers. :-)<br /><br />So outside a few countries, the IIGS had no existing catalogue of software and so on. Neither did the Amiga or ST at launch, but they'd been around for over a year by the time the IIGS appeared, and they had amazing best-of-breed apps and games by then.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=liam_on_linux&ditemid=82596" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> comments</description>
92 <comments>https://liam-on-linux.dreamwidth.org/82596.html</comments>
93 <lj:security>public</lj:security>
94 <lj:reply-count>7</lj:reply-count>
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97 <guid isPermaLink='true'>https://liam-on-linux.dreamwidth.org/82394.html</guid>
98 <pubDate>Sat, 26 Feb 2022 16:46:53 GMT</pubDate>
99 <title>Upgrade time – and a question</title>
100 <link>https://liam-on-linux.dreamwidth.org/82394.html</link>
101 <description>Thanks to a fellow member on a mailing list, who sent me a replacement motherboard (complete with RAM!) I've been able get my Microserver N40L working again (as well as to upgrade my recently-bought cheap 2nd hand Microserver N54L to 8GB.)<br /><br />So far the N40L has no disks. I plan to reinstall the disks of its old RAID, built under Ubuntu 14.04 about 8 years ago by <span style='white-space: nowrap;'><a href='https://hobnobs.dreamwidth.org/profile'><img src='https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png' alt='[personal profile] ' width='17' height='17' style='vertical-align: text-bottom; border: 0; padding-right: 1px;' /></a><a href='https://hobnobs.dreamwidth.org/'><b>hobnobs</b></a></span>.<br /><br />Because the array is a Linux <tt>mdraid</tt>, which won't work on FreeBSD (I think), I put OpenMediaVault on a USB key. The web UI works although IMHO it does look, well, a little bit amateurish.<br /><br />I've upgraded its firmware to the Oct 2013 version, which AFAIK is the latest.<br /><br />The thing is, its fans run full-speed all the time. It didn't do that before.<br /><br />Is there anything you can do to set the fans to automatic speed control rather than full? My N54L is virtually silent, but the N40L sounds like a vacuum cleaner and can be heard 2 rooms away.<br /><br />Speaking of the N54L: I put TrueNAS Core on an old laptop HDD in an eSATA caddy (powered from a USB port). It works like a dream. It happily imported my old ZFS RAIDZ, created with <a href="https://liam-on-linux.dreamwidth.org/70107.html" target="_blank">64-bit Ubuntu Server on a Raspberry Pi 4</a> a couple of years ago now. It allowed me to add a couple of shares, and without any faffing around with permissions, it Just Works&trade;. I'm very impressed. It even has <tt>htop</tt> preinstalled. The web GUI is very smart and professional-looking.<br /><br />It supports both SMB and AFP out of the box, and right now my fianc&eacute;e's MacBook Pro is backing up to a Time Machine share on the TrueNAS box, over wifi.<br /><br />But TrueNAS Core does want to be installed on a proper hard disk. The old FreeNAS and NAS4Free could be installed onto, and run from, a USB key. If you still want that, you might try XigmaNAS. It's a fork of FreeNAS before iXsystems renamed it, and it does still support booting from a USB key. I gave it a quick whirl in VirtualBox and found its installer a lot more complex and confusing, though, so I gave it a pass.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=liam_on_linux&ditemid=82394" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> comments</description>
102 <comments>https://liam-on-linux.dreamwidth.org/82394.html</comments>
103 <lj:security>public</lj:security>
104 <lj:reply-count>0</lj:reply-count>
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