[POLL] - What OS do YOU use???
Sam Powell
would also be really interesting to know this for other reasons.
Oh and by the way lets try to keep this thread on-topic for at least 10mins.
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graham...@hotmail.com
"Sam Powell" <sp...@globalnet.co.uk> wrote:
> Please help me in developing my game - by posting the name of your OS - It
> would also be really interesting to know this for other reasons.
>
> Oh and by the way lets try to keep this thread on-topic for at least 10mins.
I use AmigaDos / Intuition, Windows 95, WindowsNT, and MacOS8. 9 minutes
remaining.
- GLYPH
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Sanctuary
<sp...@globalnet.co.uk> wrote:
=>Oh and by the way lets try to keep this thread on-topic for at least
10mins.
Why even bother to say that? I mean, it's not as though people don't
stay on-topic. Just the other day I was telling someone about how
amazingly on-topic threads are on raif, and then this UFO landed in
the front yard and we got in and went for a nice ride to the beer
distributor for a case of zima which seems to be quite popular with
the alien crowd, but there's no accounting for taste, is there.
Anyway, the real problem with anti-gravity is that it requires a
practical monopolar field, and that's just silly. Remember cavorite,
from HG's "First Men in the Moon"? Was cavorite supposed to be a
gravitic "shield", or a gravitationally-oriented monopolar material?
That still confuses me.
Oh, I'm sorry! What was your question, again?
Still on-topic after a hundred lifetimes,
RudeJohn
Iain Merrick
> On Wed, 2 Sep 1998 10:44:41 +0100, "Sam Powell"
> <sp...@globalnet.co.uk> wrote:
>
> =>Oh and by the way lets try to keep this thread on-topic for at least
> 10mins.
>
> Why even bother to say that? I mean, it's not as though people don't
> stay on-topic. Just the other day I was telling someone about how
> amazingly on-topic threads are on raif, and then this UFO landed in
> the front yard and we got in and went for a nice ride to the beer
> distributor for a case of zima which seems to be quite popular with
> the alien crowd, but there's no accounting for taste, is there.
> Anyway, the real problem with anti-gravity is that it requires a
> practical monopolar field, and that's just silly. Remember cavorite,
> from HG's "First Men in the Moon"? Was cavorite supposed to be a
> gravitic "shield", or a gravitationally-oriented monopolar material?
> That still confuses me.
That reminds me, must pick up the dry-cleaning.
So... has anyone got an iMac yet? Any good?
Andrew Plotkin
> Sanctuary wrote:
> > Anyway, the real problem with anti-gravity is that it requires a
> > practical monopolar field, and that's just silly. Remember cavorite,
> > from HG's "First Men in the Moon"? Was cavorite supposed to be a
> > gravitic "shield", or a gravitationally-oriented monopolar material?
> > That still confuses me.
It was pretty obviously supposed to be a gravity shield or insulator. Only
affected the column directly above it. Of course this doesn't really work
even in Newtonian physics; if you're any distance above the cavorite
plate, it doesn't shadow you from most of the Earth's mass.
> That reminds me, must pick up the dry-cleaning.
>
> So... has anyone got an iMac yet? Any good?
I played with one at CompUSA. It felt like a really fast Mac with a
squished-down mouse and keyboard.
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."
Adam J. Thornton
Sam Powell <sp...@globalnet.co.uk> wrote:
>Please help me in developing my game - by posting the name of your OS - It
>would also be really interesting to know this for other reasons.
I develop under Linux. I've been writing more Inform than TADS; I use
emacs with inform-mode as my editor.
Occasionally I run NT, because some of my consulting life requires me to
use Office apps. I also will eventually be developing a Win32 client for
my game in NT.
I get really peeved at IF that requires DirectX 5, since NT doesn't and
won't support it, and really, you don't need anything that's not in DirectX
3 for sound and reasonable graphics.
I will boot DOS and W95 occasionally to play games, but I prefer not to.
And games that shouldn't require DirectX 5 tend not to get booted. Let
that be a warning for HTML-TADS and Hugo....
Adam
--
ad...@princeton.edu
"There's a border to somewhere waiting, and a tank full of time." - J. Steinman
ka...@mousetrap.ml.org
: Please help me in developing my game - by posting the name of your OS - It
: would also be really interesting to know this for other reasons.
I use Linux, on a Pentium 120. I know there aren't many of us, but we're
vocal when we get left out. If you need help porting your game to Linux, let
me know, and I'll be glad to help.
Doeadeer3
Of course, that means I also rarely have problems.
Doe :-)
Doe doea...@aol.com (formerly known as FemaleDeer)
****************************************************************************
"In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane." Mark Twain
Allen Garvin
Please help me in developing my game - by posting the name of your OS
- It would also be really interesting to know this for other reasons.
I hope you aren't going to use html-tads, unless someone makes an X
version someday soon. At work, during my copious free time, I mostly
play IF on Linux and AIX consoles, though I have access to a great
hodge-podge of just about every known system here at the university.
At home, I have a slow 486-66 that spends most of its time in non-X Linux,
though it has a Windows 95 partition that I can boot up. Except html-tads
is very slow on it.
--
Allen Garvin I think I'll
--------------------------------------------- Let the mystery be
eare...@faeryland.tamu-commerce.edu
http://faeryland.tamu-commerce.edu/~earendil Iris Dement
Allen Garvin
Mary K. Kuhner
> Please help me in developing my game - by posting the name of your OS - It
> would also be really interesting to know this for other reasons.
Unix, specifically Digital Unix. If absolutely forced I'd consider
running a DOS or Win3.1 game, but you're much more likely to get me
to play if it will run under Unix.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Jurgen Lerch)
Sam Powell <sp...@globalnet.co.uk> wrote:
> Please help me in developing my game - by posting the name of your OS - It
> would also be really interesting to know this for other reasons.
I use AmigaOS 3.1. (And what reasons?)
> Oh and by the way lets try to keep this thread on-topic for at least 10mins.
You do know how tempting this is, do you?
Ad Astra!
JuL
--
ler...@rz.uni-duesseldorf.de / Never disturb a dragon, for you will
J"urgen ,,JuL'' Lerch / be crunchy and taste good with ketchup!
http://sunserver1.rz.uni-duesseldorf.de/~lerchj/
Mike Roberts
>I will boot DOS and W95 occasionally to play games, but I prefer not to.
>And games that shouldn't require DirectX 5 tend not to get booted. Let
>that be a warning for HTML-TADS and Hugo....
I'm not sure what you're getting at, since HTML TADS only needs DirectX 3
(and even that is only for .WAV playback; everything else works without
DirectX being installed at all).
--Mike Roberts
Note: to reply by email, please remove the "-SEENOTE" suffix (including the
hyphen) from my username, and replace it with a single underscore.
Neil Brown
<URL:mailto:Sus...@Zearthlink.net> wrote:
> >Please help me in developing my game - by posting the name of your OS - It
> >would also be really interesting to know this for other reasons.
>
> This isn't to say Microsoft is great by any means but rather that
> nothing else is as great.
Someone at work reckons that Linux is the next big thing and that it
could topple the great Windows one day. Personally I can't see it
myself, but while there's still a spark of life in the Acorn market,
I'm going to hold off contributing towards Mr Gates's empire. :-)
--
Neil Brown
ne...@highmount.demon.co.uk
Thomas Aaron Insel
> Please help me in developing my game - by posting the name of your OS - It
> would also be really interesting to know this for other reasons.
On a basically daily basis -- SunOS or Solaris, Mac OS, Linux
Weekly -- FreeBSD, NeXTSTEP
Monthly or so -- Windows 95
Tom
Brian 'Beej' Hall
>would also be really interesting to know this for other reasons.
99.5% Linux. 0.5% W95. I very rarely download or buy anything for
DOS/Windows, as it requires me to reboot and I am a Linux bigot. ;-)
-Beej
Ricardo Dague
John Francis
Sam Powell <sp...@globalnet.co.uk> wrote:
>Please help me in developing my game - by posting the name of your OS - It
>would also be really interesting to know this for other reasons.
OS? Irrelevant, really; I generally play games that run under the
TADS or Inform run-time systems. That's because nothing else, much,
runs on an Irix box, and I don't run random executables on my home PCs.
--
John Francis jfra...@sgi.com Silicon Graphics, Inc.
(650)933-8295 2011 N. Shoreline Blvd. MS 43U-991
(650)933-4692 (Fax) Mountain View, CA 94043-1389
Hello. My name is Darth Vader. I am your father. Prepare to die.
Evin C Robertson
Arcum Dagsson
> Please help me in developing my game - by posting the name of your OS - It
> would also be really interesting to know this for other reasons.
>
> Oh and by the way lets try to keep this thread on-topic for at least 10mins.
Primarily MacOS(on my computer at home, which 95% of my games, if or otherwise, are played on). At work, Windows 95.
I've used Dos, Windows 3.1, the BeOS, and assorted 8-bit OSes on occassion, and have been meaning to check out Linux sometime...
--Arcum Dagsson
"Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse
the darkness."
--Terry Pratchett
"Men At Arms"
Bizzara Barba
Sam Powell wrote in message <6sj9jg$2pg$2...@heliodor.xara.net>...
>Please help me in developing my game - by posting the name of your OS - It
>would also be really interesting to know this for other reasons.
>
>Oh and by the way lets try to keep this thread on-topic for at least
10mins.
Windows 95.
Bizzarra Barba
weird...@prodigy.net
Russell Mirabelli
>Sanctuary wrote:
>So... has anyone got an iMac yet? Any good?
Yes and yes. Its ease of use is as complete as promised. I actually like
the mouse and keyboard (it only takes a short time), and it's REALLY
exciting to have space on top of my desk again.
R
--
Russell Mirabelli
russ...@fastlane.net
Macintosh Programmer
Erik Max Francis
> : Oh and by the way lets try to keep this thread on-topic for at least
> : 10mins.
>
> Say, did you hear about brown recluses coming to Michigan?
MY CAT'S BREATH SMELLS LIKE CAT FOOD
--
Erik Max Francis / email m...@alcyone.com / whois mf303 / icq 16063900
Alcyone Systems / irc maxxon (efnet) / finger m...@sade.alcyone.com
San Jose, CA / languages En, Eo / web http://www.alcyone.com/max/
USA / icbm 37 20 07 N 121 53 38 W / &tSftDotIotE
\
/ Courage is the fear of being thought a coward.
/ Horace Smith
Drone
> >would also be really interesting to know this for other reasons.
>
First of all, my news server is burping, so I don't have the original
message, so sorry Adam for using your reply as a springboard to answer
Sam.
Sam, I use MacOS 7.5.5.
Drone.
Adam J. Thornton
Neil Brown <ne...@highmount.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>Someone at work reckons that Linux is the next big thing and that it
>could topple the great Windows one day. Personally I can't see it
Theory I heard: the "Linux is the next big thing" meme is in all the (Z-D,
therefore MS-) owned trade rags, so that Billy can point to the mags and
say "I don't have a monopoly."
Adam J. Thornton
Mike Roberts <mjr-S...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Adam J. Thornton wrote in message <6sjr6s$5b7$1...@cnn.Princeton.EDU>...
>>I will boot DOS and W95 occasionally to play games, but I prefer not to.
>>And games that shouldn't require DirectX 5 tend not to get booted. Let
>>that be a warning for HTML-TADS and Hugo....
>I'm not sure what you're getting at, since HTML TADS only needs DirectX 3
>(and even that is only for .WAV playback; everything else works without
>DirectX being installed at all).
I know. However, IIRC, the first or second HTML-TADS release *did* want
DX5 before you reconverted the sound to DX3. I want to make sure it stays
that way, since I like HTML-TADS a lot and would like to keep using it.
Adam J. Thornton
Kent Tessman <tes...@remove-to-reply.interlog.com> wrote:
>Not sure how Hugo got mentioned. It doesn't require DirectX at all. Even the
>mixer is in software.
Just want to make sure it says that way, and that you guys know there is at
least one user who will be gravely displeased if either product suddenly
starts to require DirectX 5.
Mark J. Tilford
(Redhat 5.1, if it matters)
--
-----------------------
Mark Jeffrey Tilford
til...@cco.caltech.edu
ja...@yeahright.com
: Please help me in developing my game - by posting the name of your OS - It
: would also be really interesting to know this for other reasons.
Another vote for Linux, and it looks like we're in the majority!!
Hooray! Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Bill!
Jason Tucker
e-mail to: "jason at loring dot mpls dot mn dot us"
Adam C. Emerson
: Please help me in developing my game - by posting the name of your OS - It
: would also be really interesting to know this for other reasons.
I use only Linux, but can use most DOS programs and some Windows 3.1
programs.
: Oh and by the way lets try to keep this thread on-topic for at least 10mins.
Say, did you hear about brown recluses coming to Michigan?
: --
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--
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GPG fingerprint = 7967 DD2E F340 9928 0D67 308F 66E8 15EB EC21 7DBB
Full key at: http://www.calvin.edu/~aemers19/gpgkey.txt
pke...@hotmail.com
>Please help me in developing my game - by posting the name of your OS - It
>would also be really interesting to know this for other reasons.
I use AmigaOS 3.1 at home, Win95 at work. Hopefully I'll have a PC put
together soon so I can run NetBSD and/or BeOS (most likely NetBSD, it
rather rocks)
>Oh and by the way lets try to keep this thread on-topic for at least 10mins.
Ahhh, you take the fun out of everything :-)
BTW, anyone ever consider writting a GUI for the z-machine? It's
possable, but I never got around to even starting it. Or finding a use
for one.
Patrick
C.A. Wiebering
I use an Atari ST (MiNT and Thing Desktop) and Windows NT.
> - It would also be really interesting to know this for other reasons.
Which ones?
Greetings, Kees
--
ir C.A. Wiebering
Center for Telematics and Information Technology
Twente University, Enschede, the Netherlands
tel: +31.53.4894226 or +31.6.22195940
research www: www.ctit.utwente.nl/~wieberin/idylle
personal www: www.ctit.utwente.nl/~wieberin
email: c.a.wi...@ctit.utwente.nl
J. Robinson Wheeler
Mac OS 8. Apple DOS 3.3 when I'm feeling nostalgic...
--
J. Robinson Wheeler
whe...@jump.net http://www.jump.net/~wheeler/jrw/home.html
Ed Stauff
>would also be really interesting to know this for other reasons.
Windows NT, the only REAL operating system for which there's a
sufficient
wealth of applications.
Dan Knapp
> : would also be really interesting to know this for other reasons.
>
>
> Hooray! Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Bill!
In that case, I'd better stick my voice in...
I use primarily MacOS. I find it very easy to program in. I also like
Windows and think that it's very well-done (DLLs let Microsoft empower other
programmers to make better programs), but I get the Mac free from my school...
Unix is my OS-of-choice, however, and I have to say that I find Linux
suffers quite a lot from having just sort of conglomerated - there's no
overall design at all.
____________________________________________________________________________
|The Mauve Baron| Beep |dan...@bergen.org * http://www.bergen.org/~dankna|
|---------------| Blip |-------------------------------------------------|
| Dan Knapp | Bonk | This notice copyright (C)1997 Dan Knapp |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andrew Plotkin
> > Another vote for Linux, and it looks like we're in the majority!!
> >
> > Hooray! Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Bill!
> In that case, I'd better stick my voice in...
> I use primarily MacOS. I find it very easy to [...]
From now on, in this thread, it is illegal to post *reasons* why you use a
particular OS. Just name the damn thing and get out.
I mean it.
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the
borogoves..."
Simon 'tufty' Stapleton
> >Please help me in developing my game - by posting the name of your OS - It
> >would also be really interesting to know this for other reasons.
>
> Windows NT, the only REAL operating system for which there's a
> sufficient
> wealth of applications.
OK. I'll bite. Which particular field are we talking about which
NT has any particular advantage in?[1]
As for my OS (in no particular order), we have Solaris, NT, Win95,
MacOS 8.1, MacOS 7.5.5, LinuxPPC, NetBSD and a few others which are
too minor to mention. Most productive time is spent on Solaris and
MacOS. Most crashes on NT.[2]
Simon
[1] i.e. Where are the programs better than those available on other
platforms (or simply not available on other platforms).
[2] Sorry, it had to turn into a platform war at some point. In my
defence, can I claim the 7th NT[5] crash in 5 hours?[3]
[3] All I was running was a mail client[4], all I wanted to do was
collect my £$%^ mail!
[4] Yes, it was Microsoft Outlook.
[5] Pentium II, 64MB, loadsa disk space, NT 4, all the latest patches,
no viruses, no user-installed software. Should be solid.
--
_______
| ----- | Biased output from the demented brain of
||MacOS|| Simon Stapleton.
|| NOW ||
| ----- | sstaple AT liffe DoT com
| -+-.| (if you can't figure it out...)
|¬¬¬¬¬¬¬|
-------
Jonathan W Hendry
> >Please help me in developing my game - by posting the name of your OS - It
> >would also be really interesting to know this for other reasons.
> Windows NT, the only REAL operating system for which there's a
> sufficient
> wealth of applications.
My NT box gets the Blue Screen Of Death when I insert a Zip disk.
Ergo, it doesn't quite qualify as a REAL operating system. REAL
operating systems can handle removable media without keeling
over.
--
Note: email to this address goes to /dev/null
To email a reply, write to jon at exnext dot com
Jonathan W Hendry
When I have to I use NT 4.0.
Benjamin Kenward
ka...@mousetrap.ml.org
: BTW, anyone ever consider writting a GUI for the z-machine? It's
: possable, but I never got around to even starting it. Or finding a use
: for one.
By gui, do you mean a widget set, with buttons and textboxes, etc?
I've thought about it, but a) it'd be a hell of a lot of work, b) I don't know
that much about it, and c) it looks like it might just be easier to implement
under glk.
Speaking of glk, is anyone working on porting it to X-windows? Curses is
nice, but it looks really ugly on an xterm.
Evin C Robertson
OS do YOU.. by Dan Kn...@brain.mics.net
> Windows and think that it's very well-done (DLLs let Microsoft empower
> other programmers to make better programs), but I get the Mac free from my
> school...
>
> Unix is my OS-of-choice, however, and I have to say that I find Linux
> suffers quite a lot from having just sort of conglomerated - there's no
> overall design at all.
Um, I hope you're being sarcastic about every one of those points, as
I've found quite the opposite.
Andrew Plotkin
> pke...@hotmail.com wrote:
> : BTW, anyone ever consider writting a GUI for the z-machine? It's
> : possable, but I never got around to even starting it. Or finding a use
> : for one.
> By gui, do you mean a widget set, with buttons and textboxes, etc?
> I've thought about it, but a) it'd be a hell of a lot of work, b) I don't know
> that much about it, and c) it looks like it might just be easier to implement
> under glk.
Probably, but it'd still be fairly crude-looking. Even after Glk has
graphics capabilities.
You may want to use native widgets, instead of drawing and handling your
own buttons and such from a user library. That's the road Java's GUI
toolkit (AWT) went down. It's a gross and bloated road, but this may be
inherent to the task. Widget sets are *complicated*.
> Speaking of glk, is anyone working on porting it to X-windows? Curses is
> nice, but it looks really ugly on an xterm.
I started cranking out xglk code this past weekend. Right now I have a
blue square window with a white bar at the bottom. :) Will do more on
Sunday.
Brian 'Beej' Hall
Adam J. Thornton <ad...@princeton.edu> wrote:
>Theory I heard: the "Linux is the next big thing" meme is in all the (Z-D,
>therefore MS-) owned trade rags, so that Billy can point to the mags and
>say "I don't have a monopoly."
And he is getting more correct every day! :-) Quite honestly, lots of
IT people are choosing Linux. Doesn't sound like much of a monopoly to
me.
Now, a year ago is a different matter. The desktop is still iffy, but I
think Linux will eventually gain big there.
-Beej
World Domination!
Jonadab the Unsightly One
Sam Powell <sp...@globalnet.co.uk> wrote in article
<6sj9jg$2pg$2...@heliodor.xara.net>...
> Please help me in developing my game - by posting the name of your OS -
It
> would also be really interesting to know this for other reasons.
I have three OSes on my computer: DOS 6, Win '95, and Debian Gnu Linux.
At this point I use Windows '95 the most, but most of the *programs* I use
(especially games) are for DOS. I generally do not like Windows software,
personally. As for Linux, I will be learning it after I get my game
done...
--
All my usenet posts are General Public License unless stated otherwise.
Dyslexic email address: ten.thgirb@badanoj
Dan Knapp
No, I meant every one. Want to have a shouting match in private email?
Den of Iniquity
>Please help me in developing my game - by posting the name of your OS - It
>would also be really interesting to know this for other reasons.
Other reasons? For play, Amiga OS 3.1.
>Oh and by the way lets try to keep this thread on-topic for at least 10mins.
Your .sig's too big. I suggest dropping the Geek code block. Also, given
that you tend to smaller messages, you might consider a small .sig. Or an
adaptable one - a small one for small messages, a fuller one for longer
messages. Like mine. If my .sig looks like making up more than 20% of my
post I usually remember to drop it altogether.
--
Den
J. Holder
> Please help me in developing my game - by posting the name of your OS - It
> would also be really interesting to know this for other reasons.
> Oh and by the way lets try to keep this thread on-topic for at least 10mins.
I use:
RedHat Linux (4.2 and 5.0)
HP-UX 10.2
Solaris 2.6
DOS 6.22
Windows NT 4.0 sp3
--
John Holder (jho...@frii.com) http://www.frii.com/~jholder/
TenthStone
>Your .sig's too big. I suggest dropping the Geek code block.
When possible, I suggest putting such things in a .plan file (i.e. readable by finger).
If someone cares enough to decipher the GCB, they'll finger your e-mail address.
Besides, all REAL geeks have .plan files. (a joke, for clarification)
>Also, given that you tend to smaller messages, you might consider a small .sig.
>Or an adaptable one - a small one for small messages, a fuller one for longer
>messages. Like mine. If my .sig looks like making up more than 20% of my
>post I usually remember to drop it altogether.
I used to just sign the posts I felt good about
-- TenthStone
but Free Agent, naughtily, always appends a signature, and I can't turn it off with resorting
to the options menus.... it's not even nice enough to let me change it from the screen. I love
the software (especially the keyboard support: attention Netscape?) but I suppose I'll just
have to live with what I didn't pay for.
-----------
The inperturbable TenthStone
tenth...@hotmail.com mcc...@erols.com mcc...@gsgis.k12.va.us
Alex Warren
> I'm not sure what you're getting at, since HTML TADS only needs DirectX 3
> (and even that is only for .WAV playback; everything else works without
> DirectX being installed at all).
DirectX for WAV playback? Bit of an overkill surely? There's a built-in Windows
API call (sndPlaySound) that will play WAV files without any need for DirectX at
all...
Alex Warren
email: alexw...@writeme.com · ICQ: 4043750
http://come.to/axe - Axe Software: freeware for DOS & Windows
http://come.to/basixfanzine - Basix Fanzine: magazine for BASIC programmers
http://members.tripod.com/~perditionproductions - mods (IT format)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
(please reply to the newsgroup - if you must reply by email, change the anti-
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Branko Collin
<sp...@globalnet.co.uk> wrote:
>Please help me in developing my game - by posting the name of your OS - It
>would also be really interesting to know this for other reasons.
I remember the days when a poll keeper would invite e-mails and
promised to post a digest.
However, as most people here do not seem to mind...
For general purposes: Win 3.1, Linux, AmigaOS 3.1.
For playing IF: DOS 6.2, AmigaOS 3.1, Linux.
For developing IF (rare): a combination of Win 3.1 and DOS 6.2.
--
Branko Collin: col...@xs4all.nl
<<I would hate to see you a few years from now trying to pick
someone up with "Hey baby, I was voted the sex symbol of the
last millenium.">> - Anson Turner about Graham Nelson
ro000524
> could topple the great Windows one day. Personally I can't see it
> myself, but while there's still a spark of life in the Acorn market,
> I'm going to hold off contributing towards Mr Gates's empire. :-)
My machine is a double-boot setup with both Linux and Win98, but I
almost exclusively use Linux. In over 6 months, it only crashed once on
me, when I set the sound cards irq/dma to wrong values. Working with it
on a daily basis, this is an excellent result. After 4/5 hours of heavy
application work with Win98 it will become unstable and a single
application will bring down the whole system, blue screen phenomenon you
know.
Regarding IF, I compiled Frotz for Linux and downloaded Inform 6.15 as
well, and it works just great.
With StarOffice 4.0 (www.stardivision.de), which is free also, I have no
need for Win95/98/NT.
David
Erik Max Francis
> My machine is a double-boot setup with both Linux and Win98, but I
> almost exclusively use Linux. In over 6 months, it only crashed once
> on
> me, when I set the sound cards irq/dma to wrong values.
Linux is indeed very stable. I have five machines here running Linux
pretty much 24 hours a day (one is a laptop), and the only times I've
ever seen any problems is with bad memory or when occasionally a SCSI
device will freak out (usually from a minor crash) and scare the bus
into shutting down. Both of these, of course, are hardware problems
that would kill pretty much any operating system.
--
Erik Max Francis / email m...@alcyone.com / whois mf303 / icq 16063900
Alcyone Systems / irc maxxon (efnet) / finger m...@sade.alcyone.com
San Jose, CA / languages En, Eo / web http://www.alcyone.com/max/
USA / icbm 37 20 07 N 121 53 38 W / &tSftDotIotE
\
/ Life is something to do when you can't get to sleep.
/ Fran Lebowitz
Mike Roberts
>DirectX for WAV playback? Bit of an overkill surely?
past discussion of this subject.
--Mike Roberts
Darin Johnson
> From now on, in this thread, it is illegal to post *reasons* why you use a
> particular OS. Just name the damn thing and get out.
Personally, I don't care what OS the game is for, as long as there is
source code available so someone can port it elsewhere. This means
that text-games are preferred, since porting is simpler (ie, something
writen in an abomination like MFC will be very difficult to port).
ISO standard C/C++, using only standard or common libraries.
But for the vote, probably either Linux or SunOS. I can do windows,
but I hate to dial in, so it may take me months to get around to
downloading.
--
Darin Johnson
da...@usa.net.delete_me
Rhywsut
what all the fuss is about? A couple of my (computer-professional) friends
say it's the greatest thing since well, sliced bread. A quick perusal of a
Linux site, however, revealed a LOT of technical info I don't get, and little
else. I guess my question is, is there any sane reason for a non-professional
but interested party like myself to look into Linux??
Oh, I use Windows95 (but am interested in getting away from Bill).
--rhywsut
John Miles
>
> Will somebody please explain Linux to me (in, say, twenty words or less), and
> what all the fuss is about? A couple of my (computer-professional) friends
> say it's the greatest thing since well, sliced bread. A quick perusal of a
> Linux site, however, revealed a LOT of technical info I don't get, and little
> else. I guess my question is, is there any sane reason for a non-professional
> but interested party like myself to look into Linux??
>
No.
Make no mistake, the Unix priesthood has been smarting ever since
Microsoft took over the desktop. At one time, the epicene gnomes of
Unix held sway over legions of quavering users like yourself -- mere
mortal men and women who were utterly unable to accomplish anything in
the workplace without groveling before a suspender-clad guru, and
perhaps sacrificing a goat or two. Desperate prayers would be offered,
to be answered by the guru's invocation of various arcane commands if
the supplicant's humility and faith were deemed adequate. At last the
machine would cooperate and life would go on... but you never forgot who
was the real boss.
Now, Linux can be thought of as a cult within a cult -- a small
congregation of disenfranchised Unix zealots who maintain that a worthy
operating system is an end unto itself, rather than a means of running
applications. Totemic worship of the OS is the One True Path; worldly
concerns such as getting useful work done and playing cool games must
follow far behind. It is of no consequence that a Linux user might
suffer for lack of anything to actually _do_ with his OS. When life
gets too boring for a Linux devotee, he can always achieve a sense of
transcendent well-being by recompiling his own kernel. Such grace is
sufficient for him.
But perhaps not for the rest of us.
Windows 9x represents the Linux advocate's ultimate heresy -- the idea
and embodiment of an imperfect operating system, albeit one which normal
people can actually use for entertainment and productive work. The
Linux advocates will fight Windows where they find it, and for good
reason. After all, people aren't supposed to actually _use_ their
computers for anything, are they?!
At least not without sacrificing a goat or two first.
-- jm
------------------------------------------------------
Note: My E-mail address has been altered to avoid spam
------------------------------------------------------
Darin Johnson
> Will somebody please explain Linux to me (in, say, twenty words or less), and
> what all the fuss is about?
It's just a free version of UNIX. Ie, source code and everything.
Runs on PC's (even old doorstop 386's), Macs, Suns, Alphas, etc.
Now the next question is "what's UNIX"? It's an OS.
Personally, if you only want to get away from Bill, then Linux isn't
for you; if you want to make an anti-Microsoft statement, you may soon
become disillusioned with Linux when they find that Linux doesn't have
the same goals. If you want to be anti-Microsoft, then get an iMac.
If you don't know UNIX, you probably don't want to bother unless
you're technical and are curious.
--
Darin Johnson
da...@usa.net.delete_me
Edan
and NT. Unix at work. I'll occasionally use MacOS also.
Drone
'tufty' Stapleton) wrote:
> [2] Sorry, it had to turn into a platform war at some point.
We all knew it, and we were all avoiding it. This could have been a first.
(sigh)
> _______
> | ----- |
> ||MacOS||
> || NOW ||
> | ----- |
> | -+-.|
> |洵洵洵洱
> -------
(throwing up hands) Yes, yes, me too.
Drone.
Doeadeer3
>
> I'm old-fashioned, I use Dos.
Clarification, I have Windows, but I use Dos for IF Playing, Programming and
Programming IF. (Some one wrote me wondering about my weird system. :-) )
Doe :-) So, no, I'm not THAT weird.
Doe doea...@aol.com (formerly known as FemaleDeer)
****************************************************************************
"In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane." Mark Twain
Adam J. Thornton
Darin Johnson <da...@usa.net.removethis> wrote:
>Personally, if you only want to get away from Bill, then Linux isn't
>for you; if you want to make an anti-Microsoft statement, you may soon
>become disillusioned with Linux when they find that Linux doesn't have
>the same goals. If you want to be anti-Microsoft, then get an iMac.
>If you don't know UNIX, you probably don't want to bother unless
>you're technical and are curious.
If you do know Unix, you either hate it or love it, in all likelihood. If
you love it, you understand why you want to run it at home.
Remember: Unix *is* user-friendly. It's just not promiscuous.
Adam
--
ad...@princeton.edu
"There's a border to somewhere waiting, and a tank full of time." - J. Steinman
Alan Conroy
Oh, alright, I only use it at work, and not much then...
- Alan Conroy
I don't think much of our profession, but, contrasted
with respectability, it is comparatively honest. No,
Frederic, I shall live and die a Pirate King.
-- The Pirate King
pke...@hotmail.com
>By gui, do you mean a widget set, with buttons and textboxes, etc?
Well, it would have used version 6 of the z-machine, had classes for
buttons, windows, text boxes, etc. And it would have had a nice desktop
system with icons for external files. But, like I said, I couldn't think
of any real use for it so I never even bothered to start codeing :-)
Patrick
graham...@hotmail.com
Evin C Robertson <ec...@andrew.cmu.edu> wrote:
> Excerpts from netnews.rec.arts.int-fiction: 3-Sep-98 Re: [POLL] - What
> OS do YOU.. by Dan Kn...@brain.mics.net
> > I use primarily MacOS. I find it very easy to program in. I also like
> > Windows and think that it's very well-done (DLLs let Microsoft empower
> > other programmers to make better programs), but I get the Mac free from my
> > school...
> >
> > Unix is my OS-of-choice, however, and I have to say that I find Linux
> > suffers quite a lot from having just sort of conglomerated - there's no
> > overall design at all.
>
> Um, I hope you're being sarcastic about every one of those points, as
> I've found quite the opposite.
I'm reminded how M$ DLL's are a poor attempt at shared libraries, which the
Amiga (and most Unix's?) have truly mastered.
- GLYPH
-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
http://www.dejanews.com/rg_mkgrp.xp Create Your Own Free Member Forum
Jonadab the Unsightly One
> >Please help me in developing my game - by posting the name of your OS -
It
> >would also be really interesting to know this for other reasons.
John Francis <jfra...@dungeon.engr.sgi.com> wrote in article
> OS? Irrelevant, really; I generally play games that run under the
> TADS or Inform run-time systems. That's because nothing else, much,
> runs on an Irix box, and I don't run random executables on my home PCs.
Actually, I'd like to echo this. If at all possible, make it run on either
the Z-machine or a TADS runtime. Then OS ceases to be an issue.
Of course, if it's mostly a graphical game, that might not be as good
an idea, but that's another matter anyway.
--
All my usenet posts are General Public License.
Dyslexic email address: ten.thgirb@badanoj
Jonadab the Unsightly One
>
> BTW, anyone ever consider writting a GUI for the z-machine? It's
> possable, but I never got around to even starting it. Or finding a use
> for one.
Z-machine aside, finding a legitimate use for a GUI (that is,
one for which you couldn't just as well use a command-based
system) is, IMO, rather difficult.
OTOH, finding a use for a command-based system, where you
couldn't just as well use a GUI, is not as hard, IMO.
But I'd like to see a GUI for the z-machine, just for hack value.
Pulldown menus, windowing, blorb sounds when you close
windows and stuff, ...
Bryan Scattergood
> Please help me in developing my game - by posting the name of your OS - It
> would also be really interesting to know this for other reasons.
OS? Singular? Hmm. The desktop has
1. Windows NT4 to run VC++5
2. Windows 95 for DirectX games
3. PCDOS7 for earlier games
4. Win3.1 (just in case)
5. FreeBSD for Emacs, LaTeX, g++, Gofer
The Linux partition got deleted about a year ago. I'm planning to try BeOS
just as soon as they support my SCSI devices.
The laptop just has Win95 for email, and FreeBSD(PAO) for most everything
else. The palmtops run EPOC16 and EPOC32. Oh, and there are a couple of
elderly RISCOS 3.1 machines as well.
Does this help?
Bryan
Jonadab the Unsightly One
> Rhywsut wrote:
> >
> > Will somebody please explain Linux to me (in, say, twenty words or
less), and
> > what all the fuss is about? A couple of my (computer-professional)
friends
> > say it's the greatest thing since well, sliced bread. A quick perusal
of a
> > Linux site, however, revealed a LOT of technical info I don't get, and
little
> > else. I guess my question is, is there any sane reason for a
non-professional
> > but interested party like myself to look into Linux??
> >
>
> No.
It depends, actually.
If you like to tinker with things, and if the thought of getting about half
of your
applications as source code and compiling them yourself doesn't scare you,
then Linux may be for you.
If I just scared you off with that second condition then you should
probably stick with something else.
> Make no mistake, the Unix priesthood has been smarting ever since
[...]
> But perhaps not for the rest of us.
An interesting perspective. Yes, you would need to be a bit of
a programmer to really like a Unix system, Linux included.
> Windows 9x represents the Linux advocate's ultimate heresy -- the idea
> and embodiment of an imperfect operating system, albeit one which normal
> people can actually use for entertainment and productive work. The
> Linux advocates will fight Windows where they find it, and for good
> reason. After all, people aren't supposed to actually _use_ their
> computers for anything, are they?!
Get real. Many of them use their computers as internet sites.
There are any number of people who use Linux for real work
and Windoze to play games <FLAMEPROOFSUIT>(the best of
which were written for DOS, IMO)</FLAMEPROOFSUIT>.
There are also people who use Windows at work and Linux at home.
Linux is the new OS in the PC universe, and it is still extending its
influence. It will not likely displace Windows any time soon in the
general public, but it is likely to *eventually* be easier to get apps for
Linux, since programmers (especially those more likely to distribute
their work cheaply or for free) tend to gravitate that direction.
I use Windows '95, but I have to boot to DOS not infrequently to do
certain things. Linux users do not have this problem. And no,
they don't suffer nearly as much from lack of applications
as everyone seems to think. However, they often have to use
a compiler to get an application working. It just depends
which bothers you more -- rebooting a lot, or compiling a lot.
("a lot" is relative in both cases.)
I sort of split the middle, so once I get enough free time I'll probably
end up using both indefinitely.
<FLAMEPROOFSUIT>
But I still use DOS for games.
</FLAMEPROOFSUIT>
> At least not without sacrificing a goat or two first.
I prefer to wave a dead chicken comp entry...
Magnus Olsson
John Miles <jmi...@pop.removethistomailme.net> wrote:
>Rhywsut wrote:
>>
>> Will somebody please explain Linux to me (in, say, twenty words or less)
>Make no mistake, the Unix priesthood has been smarting ever since
>Microsoft took over the desktop. At one time, the epicene gnomes of
>Unix held sway over legions of quavering users like yourself -- mere
>mortal men and women who were utterly unable to accomplish anything in
>the workplace without groveling before a suspender-clad guru, and
>perhaps sacrificing a goat or two. Desperate prayers would be offered,
>to be answered by the guru's invocation of various arcane commands if
>the supplicant's humility and faith were deemed adequate.
(...)
>Now, Linux can be thought of as a cult within a cult -- a small
>congregation of disenfranchised Unix zealots
(...)
>Totemic worship of the OS
(...)
>achieve a sense of
>transcendent well-being by recompiling his own kernel. Such grace is
>sufficient for him.
Wow - and I always thought that the term "religious war" as applied
to "my OS is better than yours" should be taken metaphorically.
It seems I was wrong, at least about the "religious" part (I'm awaiting
the use of armed force with trepidation).
What with the huge C.S. Lewis debate going in in our sister newsgroup
(r.g.i-f), I think we're in for an interesting autumn.
--
Magnus Olsson (m...@df.lth.se, zeb...@pobox.com)
------ http://www.pobox.com/~zebulon ------
Alan Trewartha
<URL:mailto:some...@sable.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
> acorn risc os 3.7
>
<me too mode> me too! :-) :-) </me too mode>
And about time too.
plus at work I use MacOs :-), and all that PC guff (NT 95 3.1) :-(
Now why on earth are we all doing this? Aren't we all using generic
development thingies (yer Inform and yer other, you know, TRADS wotsit)?
--
Mail to alant instead of no.spam
Stephen Granade
> Now why on earth are we all doing this? Aren't we all using generic
> development thingies (yer Inform and yer other, you know, TRADS wotsit)?
Not everyone, and not all tools will run on all platforms. F'r instance,
not all platforms have v6-capable interpreters; HTML TADS runs only under
Windows*; no one has ported Hugo to the Mac yet.
Stephen
* well, and (to a certain degree) under Wine.
--
Stephen Granade | Interested in adventure games?
sgra...@phy.duke.edu | Check out
Duke University, Physics Dept | http://interactfiction.miningco.com
Peter Wright
> John Miles <jmi...@pop.removethistomailme.net> wrote in article
>> Rhywsut wrote:
>> >
>> > Will somebody please explain Linux to me (in, say, twenty words or less),
*grin* You're optimistic, aren't you? :)
>> > and what all the fuss is about? A couple of my (computer-professional)
>> > friends say it's the greatest thing since well, sliced bread. A quick
>> > perusal of a Linux site, however, revealed a LOT of technical info I
>> > don't get, and little else. I guess my question is, is there any sane
>> > reason for a non-professional but interested party like myself to look
>> > into Linux??
>>
>> No.
> It depends, actually.
If you have:
(a) a couple of spare weekends
(b) a couple of hundred spare megabytes on your hard drive
(c) a recent RedHat (or SuSE, Debian, Slackware, I mention RedHat first only
because I think it does have the most friendly install procedure) Linux CD
(d) a willingness to try out and play with something new
then I would recommend you have a go. I think once you get a better idea of
what is possible, you might find reason(s) for continuing to use it. Or not.
I try not to be an OS bigot, but I do spend the vast majority of my computer
time using Linux, and I really like it.
You can get a few of the pretty-picture-type reasons for Linux use at
www.kde.org, www.enlightenment.org, www.afterstep.org ... there you can find
nice screenshots of things you can do with Linux (or any other half-decent
UNIX-like OS, for that matter).
> If you like to tinker with things, and if the thought of getting about half
> of your applications as source code and compiling them yourself doesn't
> scare you, then Linux may be for you.
> If I just scared you off with that second condition then you should
> probably stick with something else.
*shrug* You don't have to compile things if you don't want to. Linux is all
about freedom of choice.
Hmm, I'm starting to sound like an advocate here. Okay, time out! *waves hands
frantically to ward off the anti-advocacy hordes* I'm just trying to encourage
people to at least _try_ out Linux (or Free|Net|Open BSD). You may not like
it, but that's perfectly okay.
I won't say any more, I too feel that we probably shouldn't go too far down
the OS, um, "discussion" path in raif. Might distract us from more serious
things, like IF... :-)
>> At least not without sacrificing a goat or two first.
> I prefer to wave a dead chicken comp entry...
Moo. I mean, Me too....
Pete the Occasionally Serious.
John Elliott
DRDOS 7.02
MSDOS 7.10
Rosanne 1.12 (ever hear of it? I thought not)
CP/M 3.1
+3DOS 1.0
WinNT 4 SP3
TenthStone
>In article <tvybtow...@cn1.connectnet.com>,
>Darin Johnson <da...@usa.net.removethis> wrote:
>>Personally, if you only want to get away from Bill, then Linux isn't
>>for you; if you want to make an anti-Microsoft statement, you may soon
>>become disillusioned with Linux when they find that Linux doesn't have
>>the same goals. If you want to be anti-Microsoft, then get an iMac.
>>If you don't know UNIX, you probably don't want to bother unless
>>you're technical and are curious.
>
>If you do know Unix, you either hate it or love it, in all likelihood. If
>you love it, you understand why you want to run it at home.
>
>Remember: Unix *is* user-friendly. It's just not promiscuous.
Uh... hmm.
I've always held that user-friendly is really a mis-nomer. It should read
new-user-friendly. I think almost anything qualifies as user-friendly for
some people, notably the designers; there may be friendlier OS's in
the cosmos, but the first can still be user-friendly. An OS which
requires you to, oh, say, make every command in BASIC could be very
useful to BASIC masters, albeit substantially less useful to the saner
population (to inform: I do consider myself a BASIC master, and I hate
every second of it).
But new-user-friendly means... generally, not having to memorize a command
set in order to use the OS. An incredibly advanced IF parser might qualify
as a user-friendly OS (in fact, I think it will: couple it with speech technology.
It seems to me that these speech-recognition companies might do worse than
to talk with Mike Roberts instead of going through two-word parsers all over
again. It's amazing how often one can find someone else who has already had
the same problems; all one need do is ask).
Is there even a move-file command in most shells? I can't seem to find one; I'm
gradually admitting to myself that I'll just have to copy (fc? I can't remember)
and then delete (?).
-----------
The inperturbable TenthStone
tenth...@hotmail.com mcc...@erols.com mcc...@gsgis.k12.va.us
TenthStone
>Please help me in developing my game - by posting the name of your OS - It
>would also be really interesting to know this for other reasons.
>
>Oh and by the way lets try to keep this thread on-topic for at least 10mins.
I think it may because it attracts a maturer audience, but raif rarely has any
OS fights -- despite the enormous range of platforms being used. Or, perhaps
that range is why: it's not a two-way fight, and most of us have enough
experience with multiple OS's that we can recognise the faults in each.
As for me, I run my applications in Windows 3.11 and the rest of the time
avoid it. It never crashes on me anymore, except an annoying bug such that
for about half of the sessions in which I've loaded Netscape, Windows won't
exit properly and I'll have to reboot the computer. I have a Linux (zsh) account
which I reguarly telnet/dial into, and all my IF time is spent in pleasant, sunny
MS-DOS 6.2 -- quite possibly one of the better OS's of all time. Not that I don't
enjoy Linux, but I could wish commands be better parsed ("cd.." should work,
damn it). That's probably just my shell, though I don't know enough minutia about
Linux to have a clue.
Erik Max Francis
> Is there even a move-file command in most shells? I can't seem to
> find one; I'm
> gradually admitting to myself that I'll just have to copy (fc? I
> can't remember)
> and then delete (?).
It's mv. Rename is the same.
--
Erik Max Francis / email m...@alcyone.com / whois mf303 / icq 16063900
Alcyone Systems / irc maxxon (efnet) / finger m...@sade.alcyone.com
San Jose, CA / languages En, Eo / web http://www.alcyone.com/max/
USA / icbm 37 20 07 N 121 53 38 W / &tSftDotIotE
\
/ Sanity is a cozy lie.
/ Susan Sontag
Erik Max Francis
> I have a Linux (zsh) account
> which I reguarly telnet/dial into, and all my IF time is spent in
> pleasant, sunny
> MS-DOS 6.2 -- quite possibly one of the better OS's of all time.
I suspect that if you learned more about Linux, you would prefer it to
MS-DOS.
> Not that I don't
> enjoy Linux, but I could wish commands be better parsed ("cd.." should
> work,
> damn it). That's probably just my shell, though I don't know enough
> minutia about
> Linux to have a clue.
In Linux (and Unix in general), things are much more literal. Commands
and arguments are separated by whitespace, so "cd.." is not "cd .." but
rather a separate command called "cd.." of which none exists.
If you want to make one, just type
function cd.. () { cd .. }
Allen Garvin
Gee, trying to run all the different OS's for PC's? You forgot VM/AT,
which IBM put out in the mid-80's (and also about a dozen unixes, but
who cares about those).
--
Allen Garvin I think I'll
--------------------------------------------- Let the mystery be
eare...@faeryland.tamu-commerce.edu
http://faeryland.tamu-commerce.edu/~earendil Iris Dement
John Elliott
>Not that I don't enjoy Linux, but I could wish commands be better parsed
>("cd.." should work, damn it).
"cd.." is a perfectly valid filename in Linux - the shell thinks you're
looking for a program of that name.
alias cd..='cd ..'
lets you use cd.. as in DOS.
The fact that almost anything is a valid filename in Linux leads to one of
the most amusing bugs I've ever seen in the MS Knowledge base. But that's
another tale and will be told another time.
------------- http://www.seasip.demon.co.uk/index.html --------------------
John Elliott |BLOODNOK: "But why have you got such a long face?"
|SEAGOON: "Heavy dentures, Sir!" - The Goon Show
:-------------------------------------------------------------------------)
John Elliott
> John Elliott <j...@seasip.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
> Linux 2.0.35
> DRDOS 7.02
> MSDOS 7.10
> Rosanne 1.12 (ever hear of it? I thought not)
> CP/M 3.1
> +3DOS 1.0
> WinNT 4 SP3
>
>Gee, trying to run all the different OS's for PC's?
Nope. CP/M and +3DOS are 8-bit OSs that I run under emulation, and Rosanne
is an 8-bit OS that I run on real 8-bit hardware.
Allen Garvin
Not that I don't enjoy Linux, but I could wish commands be better
parsed ("cd.." should work, damn it). That's probably just my shell,
though I don't know enough minutia about Linux to have a clue.
The reason that works under DOS is because "CD" is built into the
COMMAND.COM shell, not that DOS parses commands better. If there were
a command "cd.exe" instead, then "cd.." would not work. You can make
it work with zsh by adding a shell alias (adding the line
alias cd..="cd .."
to your .zprofile).
Al Staff
Al Staffieri Jr.
Adam J. Thornton
Allen Garvin <eare...@faeryland.TAMU-Commerce.edu> wrote:
>Gee, trying to run all the different OS's for PC's? You forgot VM/AT,
>which IBM put out in the mid-80's (and also about a dozen unixes, but
>who cares about those).
And VM/AT really ran on the (68K?) based daughtercard microcoded 370 (sort
of) inside the AT, didn't it?
Trevor Barrie
wrote:
>My machine is a double-boot setup with both Linux and Win98, but I
>almost exclusively use Linux.
Similar situation here. I use Debian GNU/Linux 2.0, but have a Win95
partition that I use for playing commercial games.
>In over 6 months, it only crashed once on
>me, when I set the sound cards irq/dma to wrong values.
In the time I've been using Linux (most be getting close to a year now), the
closest I've come to a crash is having my screen occasionally die when I
switched to X. I've been meaning to piece together my old 286 to use as a
dumb terminal to log into for stuff like that, but since it hasn't happened
since I upgraded to 2.0 I haven't bothered.
Trevor Barrie
<jmi...@pop.removethistomailme.net> wrote:
>Make no mistake, the Unix priesthood has been smarting ever since
>Microsoft took over the desktop. At one time, the epicene gnomes of
>Unix held sway over legions of quavering users like yourself -- mere
>mortal men and women who were utterly unable to accomplish anything in
>the workplace without groveling before a suspender-clad guru, and
>perhaps sacrificing a goat or two.
To be sure, Windows is more egalitarian than Unix. With Unix, only the
people with sufficient know-how know what's going on with the computer;
with Windows, the system hides enough information that _nobody_ knows
what's going on, no matter how much technical expertise they possess.
>It is of no consequence that a Linux user might
>suffer for lack of anything to actually _do_ with his OS.
Correct. If this were in fact _true_ it might be of some consequence,
but it's not so it isn't.
Darin Johnson
> If you do know Unix, you either hate it or love it, in all likelihood. If
> you love it, you understand why you want to run it at home.
I don't think this is necessarily true. If you go to a place where
everyone runs UNIX, you will find a whole range of attitudes towards
it, with plenty of people being in the neutral category. There are
also plenty of facets to like/dislike; it's not unheard of to have
someone who dislikes using UNIX, but who loves programming it.
--
Darin Johnson
da...@usa.net.delete_me
Erik Max Francis
> No, I still consider it to be parsed better, even if it is an
> achitectural choice. I would
> much rather have the ability to leave out the whitespace than to have
> the choice to
> modify cd without recompiling.
You're really just looking for a different context. The _goal_ of Unix
shells is that parsing is very simple, and words are separated by
whitespace; and in a command, the first word is the command, and the
remaining words are arguments.
> And I know it can be changed, at least for "cd..". What about "cd/"
> Or "cd/etc"?
> Although it's but a trivial thing, still...
This is an important distinction, because `cd/etc' _cannot_ mean `cd
/etc'; it means "run the program called etc in the subdirect cd off the
current working directory."
This is the issue; you are talking about a form of "parsing" that is
incompatible with the mechanism by which Unixes execute shells.
You're asking for context-sensitive parsing, which is just silly for a
shell.
> I'm not ignorant about it.
Oh, I don't think that you are.
> Extending
> filenames to
> 15 (right?) characters would be nice, but it's not a large enough
> issue to
> fritter away the sub-20 megs of hard disk space I've got left.
Linux ext2 filesystems can have very, very long filenames.
And hard drives are ridiculously cheap, so it's a little hard to make
arguments about capacity limitations, _even_ if you're not well-to-do.
:-)
> I'm
> still not
> impressed with the unity of the community (you yourself gave me a hint
> for csh when I explicitly mentioned zsh).
No, I gave you a hint for zsh. I exclusively use zsh. zsh has csh-like
functions:
max@kamali:~% echo $SHELL
/bin/zsh
max@kamali:~% function cd.. () { cd .. }
max@kamali:~% cd..
max@kamali:/% cd
Using aliases is a simpler (but equivalent) solution, but I actually
wasn't quite sure whether or not zsh allowed dots in aliases, so I
thought I'd go the zsh functions route.
I routinely curse termcap.
> Well over half the Linux community that I've noticed (not an
> accusation; people
> here are generally better than this) would use punchcards rather than
> a
> Microsoft product
That's not true. I have a Windows 95 machine for playing new,
commercial games. :-)
> That is why I prefer DOS. The per-terminal learning time is 5
> minutes. I don't
> have to worry about Ms. X's "modification" of some crucial system
> command.
> In four taps I know exactly what the OS situation is ("ver"); in
> eight more
> I know largely what the deal with the memory is ("mem/c/p" -- no
> whitespace!);
> in five I can get a general idea of the disk layout ("tree" -- where
> available).
There, are of course, essentially equivalent Linux commands to all of
these. With any command-line operating system, you're going to have to
learn the commands to get around. In Unix the commands seem a little
strange to some, but then they're often strange in DOS, too.
It just seems to me that you'd like Unix shells to be less interested in
whitespace as the primary benefit of DOS over Linux is a pretty silly
one, particularly since optional whitespace is _not_ what you want in
Unix.
> I'm sure I'll get to enjoy the OS far
> more when I've
> learned it better.
That's what I was saying. It will grow on you.
> Not so much more literal, but that no commands are built into the
> shell. When I
> wanted to learn the basic commands, I searched the first-level
> directories until I
> chanced upon /bin, whereupon I printed out the directory.
Not true. Those commands are provided for really retarded shells, but
most modern shells (csh, zsh, ksh, etc.). See:
max@kamali:~% which cd
cd: shell built-in command
Those commands are there so that _any_ shell will be able to cd in
_some_ way. That certainly isn't a bad thing.
Adam J. Thornton
TenthStone <mcc...@erols.com> wrote:
>ad...@princeton.edu (Adam J. Thornton) caused this to appear in our collective minds on 4 Sep 1998 04:29:43 GMT:
It appears that you are not among those it has chosen to make friends with.
Don't be sad; they're a pretty small group.
>Is there even a move-file command in most shells? I can't seem to find one; I'm
>gradually admitting to myself that I'll just have to copy (fc? I can't remember)
>and then delete (?).
Not in the shell, no.
However, it is a standard system utility. mv is what you're looking for.
Copy is cp.
And remember, cc, dd, cd, and dc are *all* legitimate commands. Although
on my system, cc and dc are in /usr/bin, dd in /bin, and cd is a shell
internal.
Heiko Nock
John Miles <jmi...@pop.removethistomailme.net> wrote:
>> Will somebody please explain Linux to me (in, say, twenty words or less),
>It is of no consequence that a Linux user might suffer for lack of anything
>he can always achieve a sense of transcendent well-being by recompiling his
>own kernel. Such grace is sufficient for him.
No, you got it all wrong. Mine is bigger than yours.
Now could you please get a clue and troll alt.test or whatever where
people are *really* interested in your mindless babbling ?
Thanks for your cooperation and have a nice day.
--
Ciao/2, Heiko.....
Julian Fleetwood
>ro000524 wrote:
>
>> My machine is a double-boot setup with both Linux and Win98, but I
>> on
>> me, when I set the sound cards irq/dma to wrong values.
>
>pretty much 24 hours a day (one is a laptop), and the only times I've
>ever seen any problems is with bad memory or when occasionally a SCSI
>device will freak out (usually from a minor crash) and scare the bus
>into shutting down. Both of these, of course, are hardware problems
>that would kill pretty much any operating system.
(Going even more off topic here)
I've been seriously considering installing Linux, however I know virtually
nothing about it. I really have two questions:
1. Which is the best distribution (Red Hat, Slackware, etc)?
2. How do I get it.
Cheers!
--
Julian Fleetwood (http://surf.to/free4all)
IF: http://www.tip.net.au/~mfleetwo/if/index.htm
CBG: http://www.tip.net.au/~mfleetwo/cbg/index.htm
G!>GCS d-- s+:- a16 C+(++) p? L E-W++ N++ o K- w++ O M+ !V PS PE Y+ G e h!
PGP- t+ X+++ R(+) tv b+(++) DI+ D++ r y?
TenthStone
eare...@faeryland.tamu-commerce.edu (Allen Garvin) caused this to appear in our collective minds on 4 Sep 98 18:38:23 GMT:
> TenthStone <mcc...@erols.com> wrote:
>
> Not that I don't enjoy Linux, but I could wish commands be better
> parsed ("cd.." should work, damn it). That's probably just my shell,
> though I don't know enough minutia about Linux to have a clue.
>
>The reason that works under DOS is because "CD" is built into the
>COMMAND.COM shell, not that DOS parses commands better. If there were
>a command "cd.exe" instead, then "cd.." would not work. You can make
>it work with zsh by adding a shell alias (adding the line
>
> alias cd..="cd .."
>
>to your .zprofile).
No, I still consider it to be parsed better, even if it is an achitectural choice. I would
much rather have the ability to leave out the whitespace than to have the choice to
modify cd without recompiling.
And I know it can be changed, at least for "cd..". What about "cd/"? Or "cd/etc"?
Although it's but a trivial thing, still...
Erik Max Francis wrote:
>TenthStone wrote:
>> I have a Linux (zsh) account
>> which I reguarly telnet/dial into, and all my IF time is spent in
>> pleasant, sunny
>> MS-DOS 6.2 -- quite possibly one of the better OS's of all time.
>I suspect that if you learned more about Linux, you would prefer it to
>MS-DOS.
I'm not ignorant about it. I know a great deal of the history, and I recognise
the power of the Unix rights system -- although I could wish it improved.
But the power of Unix/Linux is still in a networking environment, one I
don't have. I don't need to exclude people outside of my group from reading my
files when I'm the only person using the computer. Extending filenames to
15 (right?) characters would be nice, but it's not a large enough issue to
fritter away the sub-20 megs of hard disk space I've got left. I'm still not
impressed with the unity of the community (you yourself gave me a hint
for csh when I explicitly mentioned zsh). I routinely curse termcap.
Well over half the Linux community that I've noticed (not an accusation; people
here are generally better than this) would use punchcards rather than a
Microsoft product. And, my ego is contrary to the fact that I can't just sit down to
a terminal and be able to have some notion of what the * I'm doing.
That is why I prefer DOS. The per-terminal learning time is 5 minutes. I don't
have to worry about Ms. X's "modification" of some crucial system command.
In four taps I know exactly what the OS situation is ("ver"); in eight more
I know largely what the deal with the memory is ("mem/c/p" -- no whitespace!);
in five I can get a general idea of the disk layout ("tree" -- where available).
There are good points to Linux -- many, in fact. And for any one network, only
one shell is likely to be used. I'm sure I'll get to enjoy the OS far more when I've
learned it better.
And besides, some of the greatest humour on the internet can be found advocating
Linux, Unix, or some common program such as Ed.
>> Not that I don't enjoy Linux, but I could wish commands be better parsed
>> ("cd.." should work, damn it). That's probably just my shell, though I don't
>> know enough minutia about Linux to have a clue.
>In Linux (and Unix in general), things are much more literal. Commands
>and arguments are separated by whitespace, so "cd.." is not "cd .." but
>rather a separate command called "cd.." of which none exists.
Not so much more literal, but that no commands are built into the shell. When I
wanted to learn the basic commands, I searched the first-level directories until I
chanced upon /bin, whereupon I printed out the directory.
-----------
Trevor Barrie
>>The reason that works under DOS is because "CD" is built into the
>>COMMAND.COM shell, not that DOS parses commands better. If there were
>>a command "cd.exe" instead, then "cd.." would not work. You can make
>>it work with zsh by adding a shell alias (adding the line
>>
>> alias cd..="cd .."
>>
>>to your .zprofile).
>
>No, I still consider it to be parsed better, even if it is an achitectural
>choice. I would much rather have the ability to leave out the whitespace
>than to have the choice to modify cd without recompiling.
I just don't see the advantage. Besides, it seems the only way you could
do this would be to restrict the legal filenames unnecessarily.
>And I know it can be changed, at least for "cd..". What about "cd/"? Or
>"cd/etc"?
If you define "cd/etc" to mean "cd /etc", what happens when you want to
execute a script named "etc" in the directory "cd"?
>I'm not ignorant about it. I know a great deal of the history, and I
>recognise the power of the Unix rights system -- although I could wish
>it improved. But the power of Unix/Linux is still in a networking
>environment, one I don't have. I don't need to exclude people outside
>of my group from reading my files when I'm the only person using the
>computer.
Even on a single-user system, restricting rights to files is extremely
useful for making sure that you can't accidentally mess up your system
(either through a simple error or through something more malicious like
a virus).
>Extending filenames to 15 (right?) characters
255.
>I routinely curse termcap.
I don't think I've ever used it. (Somebody told me it was "officially
obselete".)
>That is why I prefer DOS. The per-terminal learning time is 5 minutes.
>I don't have to worry about Ms. X's "modification" of some crucial system
>command.
What can't be modified under DOS?
>In four taps I know exactly what the OS situation is ("ver"); in eight more
>I know largely what the deal with the memory is ("mem/c/p" -- no whitespace!);
On Linux, "free" gives total memory usage; "ps amx" will give you the gorey
details.
>in five I can get a general idea of the disk layout ("tree" -- where
>available).
Well, the Linux "tree" command will do this too, where available.
>>In Linux (and Unix in general), things are much more literal. Commands
>>and arguments are separated by whitespace, so "cd.." is not "cd .." but
>>rather a separate command called "cd.." of which none exists.
>
>Not so much more literal, but that no commands are built into the shell.
Lots of stuff is built into the shell; try "man builtins". "cd", by its
very nature, has to be handled by the shell and not by an external
program.
Andrew Pontious
<sp...@globalnet.co.uk> wrote:
>Please help me in developing my game - by posting the name of your OS - It
>would also be really interesting to know this for other reasons.
Hm, only a few others mentioned it, so I'll chip in with MacOS 8.1 on my
home box. Gonna get 8.5 when it comes out! I code my IF games exclusively
on MacOS.
I also have MkLinux installed, but don't use it much *because*...
I use Unix all day at work by employing my individual Windows NT box (w/
32 Mb. of RAM--it crawls) as a dumb terminal (exactly appropriate) to a
Solaris box, where I do all my coding. Don't play games at work, though
(too busy surfing).
I, too, am interested in your reasons. What game are you coding? What
other reasons?
I've enjoyed this thread because of its comparative *lack* of a flamewar.
And it's interesting to see what everybody has. I've love to know what the
heck Rosanne is! :)
-- Andrew Pontious
Remove SPAM to email
graham...@hotmail.com
> eare...@faeryland.tamu-commerce.edu (Allen Garvin) caused this to appear in
our collective minds on 4 Sep 98 18:38:23 GMT:
>
> > TenthStone <mcc...@erols.com> wrote:
> >
> > Not that I don't enjoy Linux, but I could wish commands be better
> > parsed ("cd.." should work, damn it). That's probably just my shell,
> > though I don't know enough minutia about Linux to have a clue.
> >
> >The reason that works under DOS is because "CD" is built into the
> >COMMAND.COM shell, not that DOS parses commands better. If there were
> >a command "cd.exe" instead, then "cd.." would not work. You can make
> >it work with zsh by adding a shell alias (adding the line
> >
> > alias cd..="cd .."
> >
> >to your .zprofile).
>
> No, I still consider it to be parsed better, even if it is an achitectural
choice. I would
> much rather have the ability to leave out the whitespace than to have the
choice to
> modify cd without recompiling.
Okay, now that we're talking about parsing, which is suprisingly appropriate
for this newsgroup, I'd just like to point out how primitive and crappy the
standard DOS commands are.
DOS:
> cd ..
AMIGA:
> /
DOS:
> c:\bob\
ERROR >
AMIGA:
> hd1:bob/
hd1:bob/ >
and many more examples such as crappy fake piping and etc. Anyway, I just get
the impression when using Amigas (and most Unix machines, since AmigaDos is a
derivative of Unix) that the shell and commands were actually planned out.
A friend of mine had this to say about Linux / Unix: "The mentality that most
companies have is that you release an operating system, and then you release
upgrades and bug fixes, occaisionally having to replace the whole thing. The
mentality with Linux is that you get it right the first time."
And as for having to recompile, you can always just download an already-
compiled version and copy over a few files. I'd rather do that than deal with
M$. But that's just me.
- GLYPH
-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
http://www.dejanews.com/rg_mkgrp.xp Create Your Own Free Member Forum
Erik Max Francis
> I use Unix all day at work by employing my individual Windows NT box
> (w/
> 32 Mb. of RAM--it crawls) as a dumb terminal (exactly appropriate) to
> a
> Solaris box, where I do all my coding. Don't play games at work,
> though
> (too busy surfing).
I hope you're not using the standard Windows telnet client. That thing
is awful.
--
Erik Max Francis / email m...@alcyone.com / whois mf303 / icq 16063900
Alcyone Systems / irc maxxon (efnet) / finger m...@sade.alcyone.com
San Jose, CA / languages En, Eo / web http://www.alcyone.com/max/
USA / icbm 37 20 07 N 121 53 38 W / &tSftDotIotE
\
/ The more violent the love, the more violent the anger.
/ _Burmese Proverbs_ (tr. Hla Pe)
Allelomorph Petrofsky
> TenthStone <mcc...@erols.com> wrote:
>
> Not that I don't enjoy Linux, but I could wish commands be better
> parsed ("cd.." should work, damn it). That's probably just my shell,
> though I don't know enough minutia about Linux to have a clue.
>
> The reason that works under DOS is because "CD" is built into the
> COMMAND.COM shell, not that DOS parses commands better.
But cd is also built into unix shells (in fact, it *must* be, unlike
in dos[1]). The reason unix shells don't parse "cd.." the way the dos
shell does is just that most people would consider it an annoying
inconsistency rather than a feature.
-al
[1] In dos, a program can change the system-wide current directory,
but in unix each process has its own current directory and a program
can only alter its own current directory and set the initial directory
of its children. So for cd to have the desired effect (setting the
initial directory of subsequent children of the shell) it must be done
by the shell itself and not by a program run from the shell.
okbl...@usa.net
>>
OS/2 Warp 4
Darin Johnson
> You're asking for context-sensitive parsing, which is just silly for a
> shell.
A lot of non-UNIX shells would do some sort of more complex parsing
that took the command into account. I wouldn't call them all silly.
For instance, by known about a command lets you know if you should
expand wildcards or leave them alone, so you can do "copy *.c *.backup".
It's not necessarily consistent, but it can be useful.
(the Lisp Machine shells were some of the best ever, and they did
this sort of command sensitive parsing)
> > Extending
> > filenames to
> > 15 (right?) characters would be nice, but it's not a large enough
> > issue to
> > fritter away the sub-20 megs of hard disk space I've got left.
>
> Linux ext2 filesystems can have very, very long filenames.
An important point, is that other OS's do not implement filenames the
same way as DOS. In DOS, just adding the *capability* of longer file
names causes more space to be taken up, because a fixed size was
reserved for filenames. But you can have a system that allows
arbitrarily long filenames, without wasting space if you only use
short filenames.
> And hard drives are ridiculously cheap, so it's a little hard to make
> arguments about capacity limitations, _even_ if you're not well-to-do.
> :-)
But they're still a pain to upgrade (especially if you've got to
reinstall Windows - gack). The cheapness factor applies most to new
computers, or to adding extra drives.
--
Darin Johnson
da...@usa.net.delete_me