[TriLUG] awesome article

[acoliver]

>Oh yeah.  But it is hurting his credibility, I think, when he continually
>refers to "Linux Red Hat 7.1".  Speak like Yoda he does, hmmm?

I think it helps it.  He's not experienced and yet he's able to get
everything up/running/over.  Thats the kind of testimonial you need for some
places.

>Some other observations:

>Web browser - Konqueror, included with KDE, is quite a capable browser.
>Very fast & lightweight.  He advocated downloading Opera which I have no
>experience with.  Before downloading, try what is already included.  His
>later comments on Konqueror don't match with my own experience with later
>versions of the app (early versions were pretty buggy though).

I'm into mozilla.  I don't like the popup windows so I turn them off.  power
to the lizard man.

>E-mail client - Functionally, Netscape Communicator will be the easiest for
>an Outlook Express user to move to.  But there are significant stability
>issues.

I wish I could find a good one that the spell check actually @#$@! worked
on.

>Firewall - He describes the included firewall as "capable".  IMHO it is
>superior to a lot of the commercial add-on firewalls for Windows.

it ain easy to setup if you just started though.  My wife's computer hasn't
yet been infected by anything (she's on W2k) so thats nuff said for me.  (we
have a wireless net all running through an old P200 firewall box with ip
fwd/masq)

>regarding the cost savings, they are more significant I think than what was
>quoted.  The software licenses he quoted showed upgrade costs.  For a
>start-up with new systems, the upgrade pricing isn't appropriate.  The
>software licenses will cost more.

Yeah and some of it I was like "Why would you buy that"

>Some other observations, in case anyone else here is not yet a Linux user
>and is considering such a migration.  Linux runs great on old hardware. 
>My
>fastest machine is running Windows 2000, but only because it needs the
>faster hardware.  My oldest machine that is still in full-time use is a
>Cyrix 233MHz box with 64MB RAM.  This runs Linux fine.  Star Office is a
>bit
>slow but KOffice seems to run better on it.  The very cheapest machines
>that
>you can buy today will work excellently with Linux.  I have used Pentium II
>450MHz machines with 128MB RAM in a business environment with excellent
results.

Not me man AMD Athalon 933mhz T-bird w/512M all scsi and 21".  Starting to
think about gigahertz upgrading......Then again...I never have to wait for
anything but disk io now (and rarely that) so perhps first I should think
about raid...hummm...power...yes...


>Also most Linux distributions today come with more software than you'll
>ever
>want.  Are you setting up machines for office productivity?  Most of the
>commonly used app types are already in there.  Are you setting up a
>development environment?  It's already in there (if you're working with
>Java
>you'll need to download that in many cases, but it's free).  In an MS
>environment you need to keep shelling out more and more money for these
>tools.

Complete agreement... Cept the version of star office that comes with them
all is old usually... I'm thinking of upgrading my linux box to openoffice
so I can loose the sorry desktop thing.

>If you're retrofitting older machines (3 years old or so) the best thing
>to
>do is slap a bunch of memory in there and put a modern video card in it.
>Those two things will breathe new life into old iron.  Also using a newer
>video card will make OS installation go much smoother if you have an old
>oddball video adapter.  Make sure to standardize on a video adapter with
>good linux support.

Yup since I don't play doom or quake or whatever I stick with my nice
voodoo3 (3000?  dun remember)...  Probably upgrade that before tooooo long
but I find staying cutting edge but not bleeding edge is the best idea if
you're using redhat...  Also make it install Xconfigurator since sometimes
you just need it.

>Star Office 6.0 is due out "real soon now" and should be getting rid of
>that
>proprietary desktop environment.

You can have openoffice right now.  I've been using it at work on my windows
box (having a windows box was not my choice)...  It works nice.

>The author of this article gripes about documentation, or lack thereof.

I agree with him.


> Some of the Linux documentation is inaccurate, incomplete or missing. Many
authors
> simply say "I do not have the time to write documentation", or "The
program is self-
> explanatory". Give us a break!

>Ever hear the saying "You get what you pay for?"   That's not quite true.
>For nothing, zero, zilch, nada you get a very robust evironment to work
>in.
>Most open source programmers aren't being paid for their work, and if they
>are they often aren't paid for documentation.  If you don't like the lack
>of
>documentation, stop whining and start writing.  Give something back you
>lousy freeloader.  ;-)

Right, but have you ever tried being the guy who needs the documentation and
WRITING the documentation when the developers ignore you as an insolent
user?  Yes many aren't paid but they're working for a cause in many cases
(or for career reasons)...its not too impressive when it needs the docs and
doesn't have it.  

Thats being said..  I'm not a freeloader and my opensource project is
providing pretty solid docs (both design and user--user not yet because it
will fall out of the design docs and implimentation later).  I have a gripe
with a project or two about this.  One of which is apache's cocoon  -- which
has dramatically improved its docs but they still are missing quite a bit --
I plan to (once I have the requisite knowledge) write this tutorial of "here
is the stereotypical cocoon 2 app" similar to what struts provides.  All
that being said, I still feel justified in saying that one of the key things
that holds opensource back is lack of quality documentation!


>I do agree with him on Gnome.  I know it's a matter of personal taste but
>I
>really don't see how people can prefer Gnome over the other fine WM's and
>desktop environments out there.  KDE is a great blend of Windows and CDE,
>so
>if you're coming from Solaris (or any other UNIX that uses CDE) or Windows
>environments you'll be right at home.

Get used to it..  Sun/HP are dumping CDE in favor of gnome.  Next, I don't
care for the level of windows emulation in KDE's interface...  Gnome has a
much sounder/nicer architecture and the corba backending means that in the
future you'll have a much nicer competitor to ole 2.  

Next, everyone I know who uses KDE bitches about how unstable java is on
linux for running gui stuff.  I run Netbeans, JBuilder (though not really
any more), poseidon uml, and many other apps with NOO problems.  KDE+java
guis = bad news.

>"Those who are willing to sacrifice essential liberties for a little
>order,
>will lose both and deserve neither." - Benjamin Franklin

complete agreement on that!

-Andy