From: Evenbit on
On Aug 28, 2:51 am, "Jim Carlock" <anonym...(a)127.0.0.1> wrote:
>
> How do you re-enable the Linux root? Surely you're not going to make us
> look for it, are you? <g>

Well he *did* say "Advanced Linux users" which might be interpreted to
imply folks who are likely to discover the needed skill on their
own. :)

Nathan.

From: SpooK on
On Aug 28, 1:04 pm, CodeMonk <jas...(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
> SpooK wrote:
>
> > corresponding dynamic library. However, with the existence of static
> > libraries, it becomes clear that supporting the object file method is
> > better for establishing a consistency in development.
>
> I'd have to say that hit the nail on the head :) BTW - Who is Mr. Mass?
>
> - Scott

A friend of Mr. Gravity :)

From: Evenbit on
On Aug 28, 3:51 am, "Jim Carlock" <anonym...(a)127.0.0.1> wrote:
>
> Is there anything like ActiveX on a Linux system, where the OS recognizes
> a data source and can convert from one data source to another transparently?

I believe that ActiveX-style functionality has more to do with tool-
chain implementation than OS features. What the OS provides would be
best described as the 'skeleton' or 'grid-iron' facilities ( which any
serious modern OS contains ) while the developer tools provide the
'meat' which builds on this. No matter what the marketing hype,
Microsoft does not have any 'magic hoola-hoop' to hold over its
competitors.

> Type libraries and objects? That's the ONLY thing Windows might have that
> is possibly holding Linux back (for instance, can you drag a picture to a pic-
> editing program?).

I just tried dragging a desktop icon representing text ( an HLA source
in this instance ) to an open window of OOo's word processor. It
worked! So, I can safely testify that Linux supports "drag-and-drop"
functionality. You really should try it for yourself though:

http://www.knoppix.org/
http://www.puppylinux.org/user/viewpage.php?page_id=1

>
> All the talk about the KDE and Gnome reminds me of an old Windows
> competitive OS... GEOS was the name I think. America Online bought the
> company out shortly after I stopped beta testing AOL (and the original AIM)
> for DOS. Or was it GeoWorks? Lotus 123 was owned by the Lotus company,
> dBase was owned by Ashton-Tate.

Yes, niche marketing! That is a good analogy for describing the
current state of affairs of the Linux distro and application
landscape.

> And I owned a 286-12MHz that out-
> performed 486DX systems (all because the video card worked as fast as the
> cheap Packard Bell 486 computers I compared it against).

Yes, there was a time when one needed to make good sub-system ( video,
HD, RAM, NIC, etc. ) choices to maintain optimum performance
benefits. Not so much the issue anymore as the quality tech trickles
to the low-end. Recently, though, Vista's "Aero Glass" option trys
to make this an issue again so that video vendors might get a boost of
high-margin niche money.

>
> Those were the days of BBS (Tomcat was a common BBS at the time) and the
> days of Excalibur, Delphi and CompuServe. Then along came the Internet...
>

Always a good idea to start with a 'prototype' or two or three before
unleashing the real thing. :)

> Perhaps I've gone too much off topic here. :-) It's just that all the talk here
> reminded me of GEOS. I think GeoWorks was something to compete with
> Microsoft Works (I never used it, but I did notice that America Online used
> some GEOS software in the making of some of their software at one point).
>

Looking at history is a great help for "seeing the big picture" of
things. But it can also lead to a 'myopic' viewpoint since we tend to
only remember 'certain' items and events that involved 'our'
experience. Don't forget to keep up with the "stepping out of the
box" struggle.

Nathan.

From: Jim Carlock on
"Evenbit" wrote...
: Looking at history is a great help for "seeing the big picture" of
: things. But it can also lead to a 'myopic' viewpoint since we tend
: to only remember 'certain' items and events that involved 'our'
: experience. Don't forget to keep up with the "stepping out of the
: box" struggle.

<g> I'm stuck in the box at the moment. But I've got an old system
I'm ready to throw Linux onto. It's got 3 or 4 hard disk drives in it,
a Syquest External drive on top, and an external BackPack CD writer.

The external drives used to work on Windows 9x, but when Win2K
came along, Microsoft dropped support for hooking disk drives up
to parallel ports. I've not had any success at getting the drives to work
on Win2K or later.

And I need to start working with Linux... so here goes.

Anyone able to provide a download link, a version recommendation
for an older AMD K-350MHz with serial ports, parallel ports, USB
ports, 2 external (working!) parallel port drives. The system has a few
hard disk drives in it partitioned into FAT32 right at the moment with
Win98 SE installed.

Everyone else here seems to have made the dive and I have to break
out of the fear and do it too!

Any suggestions? Ubuntu?

--
Jim Carlock
North Carolina Swimming Pool Builders
http://www.aquaticcreationsnc.com/


From: SpooK on
On Aug 28, 6:04 pm, "Jim Carlock" <anonym...(a)127.0.0.1> wrote:
> "Evenbit" wrote...
>
> : Looking at history is a great help for "seeing the big picture" of
> : things. But it can also lead to a 'myopic' viewpoint since we tend
> : to only remember 'certain' items and events that involved 'our'
> : experience. Don't forget to keep up with the "stepping out of the
> : box" struggle.
>
> <g> I'm stuck in the box at the moment. But I've got an old system
> I'm ready to throw Linux onto. It's got 3 or 4 hard disk drives in it,
> a Syquest External drive on top, and an external BackPack CD writer.
>
> The external drives used to work on Windows 9x, but when Win2K
> came along, Microsoft dropped support for hooking disk drives up
> to parallel ports. I've not had any success at getting the drives to work
> on Win2K or later.
>
> And I need to start working with Linux... so here goes.
>
> Anyone able to provide a download link, a version recommendation
> for an older AMD K-350MHz with serial ports, parallel ports, USB
> ports, 2 external (working!) parallel port drives. The system has a few
> hard disk drives in it partitioned into FAT32 right at the moment with
> Win98 SE installed.
>
> Everyone else here seems to have made the dive and I have to break
> out of the fear and do it too!
>
> Any suggestions? Ubuntu?
>
> --
> Jim Carlock
> North Carolina Swimming Pool Buildershttp://www.aquaticcreationsnc.com/

Depends how much RAM you have. If you plan on using a graphical
desktop on top of X11, I would suggest at least 128MB of RAM... some
sites say 256MB these days... and getting Ubuntu ----->
https://help.ubuntu.com/7.04/windows/C/

If you plan on sticking to the command line (e.g. BASH) then I would
probably recommend downloading the *Minimal CD* from Gentoo, reading
the documentation on how things work, installing and build the system
up from there -----> http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml

Other than that, there are many drivers for Linux and 350MHz AMD
system should be considered "legacy" enough to be completely covered.

With the amount of geeks using Linux, I would be impressed if you
couldn't get your parallel-port external HD working... especially with
sites like this -----> http://www.torque.net/linux-pp.html

Others might recommend Debian, Red Hat, etc... I've even used Mandrake
as my first distro... but I've seen the most acceptance from former
Windows users in using Ubuntu.

PS: I came across a SyQuest 1GB SparQ drive, nearly 9-10 years ago...
it used the weirdest disks I have ever seen!!!