I started using Linux two years ago to keep my trusty Toshiba 3400 notebook
in use. The hard disk died recently. . . clack, clack clack was all it said
to me. I put a new second hand drive in and now, when I get time, will put
Linux back in too. I built my desk bound box from various parts purchased
separately and put Linux on it too! Why? Simply cause I don't earn enough to
buy a pre-built computer complete with installed OS.
Linux is a Unix like posix compliant OS and having first used Unix as a
graphic designer I was fond of the Unix way of doing things. Then came Macs
and Quark. Oh, how those old Mac SE's seemed so clumsy after text based
graphic design.
Now back with something Unix like, I have discovered Latex. Am most impressed
by the typography, after years of fiddling with the mess Quark made of letter
spacing, kerning, et al. Also, real text editors! There was something odd
about using MS Word to produce ASCII text (yes, save as.)
Linux is the kernel. It can be compiled for 64 bit chips, like Alpha,
Macintosh and Motorola Power PC chips, Intel 386 including Pentiums and
Intels latest 64 bit chips. Linux can run parrallel processors, up to 64, I
think, from memory. It also runs as servers including Internet and in
graphics arts and printing to move those massive graphic files designers
produce on Mac to the platemaker and printing press computers. BSD would
probably be just as good. Both are multi user multi process systems and true
(industrial strength) operating systems. It is just that I found Linux first,
due to the hype.
Silicon Graphics has dropped its Unix operating system for Linux and their X
server works great on Linux. IBM has plans to replace its Unix system with
Linux when the code matures some more.The other software which goes into
making an OS is GNU software compiled for Linux. The free X server,
XFree86, I use, was a pain to get right if you have a video chip like my S3
Trio. (Prepare to hack the config file, if needed.) My printer, a Cannon BJC,
was easy; my sound card was a very cheap one (ALS 4000) so I had to wait for
a driver from ALSA. Basically Linux and GNU software which makes up the
system is surprizingly high quality, after pulling up with the bugs in a lot
of commerical software. However, being open source, some is released as alpha
and is so buggy you can't use it, except for de-bugging, of course.
Installation is time consuming, for a full system like the SuSE 7.1
professional, I decided to purchase as one of the cheaper full distributions.
For under $100 I got more software then I could possibly learn to use,
including Star Office, which I avoid, except to read MS Word files. GIMP is
as good as Photoshop, with the added advantage of handling scripts, although
I have yet to work out a way to do colour seps for printing. I find Lyx
great, a graphical front end for Latex, as I keep forgetting a lot of the
Latex code. SuSE comes complete with its own config files which if you don't
like you can change and did have a small bug which slowed down the GUI
shutdown but this was easily fixed by hacking a line in the init config file.
I currently use the KDE desktop, which is not too bad, for GUI work. Still a
bit buggy, but nothing like the twice daily crashes on Windows 95 and 98, and
even Mac. Basically, Linux won't crash, unless you do something stupid, even
if buggy application code is used. KDE isn't the only desktop GUI. Take your
choice. CDE is also available for Linux, along with the SGI X server, at a
reasonable cost.
Basically, everything I can do using a GUI I can do using a text based
prompt, except DOS looks primitive by comparison to Unix things like pipes
and redirection. (Of course writing shell scripts is done at a shell prompt
in either X or without X. I prefer bash, the Bourne again shell from GNU and
Richard Stallman.) But then all I really want to do is write and a good text
editor beat word processors, anyday. All those lovely text utilities work the
Unix way, grep, wc, ispell, and the rest. Linux and BSD takes a little more
to learn then Mac once did, but then I had to learn something about
computers, anyway.
After being pissed off at the clumsiness of the old Mac OS after Unix, I am
now pissed off Mac has gone Unix and I can't afford to purchase a new Mac!
Chris Jones.
On Saturday 25 August 2001 20:02, you wrote:
> Multics was mainframe. Unix was/is mini.
>
> Linux seems to be Unix for PCs, which is why I stick to MSDOS
> augmented by Unix command on my PC. Sadly I am
> forced to move to Windows, but I want to get Windows98 with
> its MSDOS icon. Then after that Linux should be ready for me.
> Cos MSDOS is phased out by Bill Gates.
>
>
>
> Sadly/ adlyA
>
> Douglas Clark, Bath, England mailto: [log in to unmask]
> Lynx: Poetry from Bath ..........
> http://www.bath.ac.uk/~exxdgdc/lynx.html
--
i live on the edge of the aussie outback
and go bush beyond email access
without knowing in advance
i don't ignore yr post
simply wait and i will reply
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