Where my mind was 2000-02-29...
Đ 2000 Per Johansson All rights reserved
2000-02-29
My Linux-distribution functions just fine, just got it to use 32-bit color in 1024x768 @ 100Hz under XFree86 3.3.5. Great looking. I also installed a much better FTP-program to transfer my files, at first I used the FTP function in StarOffice but it ainīt particularly better than the FTP abilities of MS Office. Then I found "gftp" at "Freshmeat". It functions very similar to Ipswitch WSFTP LE, and functions well. I also found a dedicated HTML-editor, "asWedit" which I installed.
I have problems though, apart from soundcard, printer and scanner not functioning yet. My Netscape 4.7 Linux installation works just fine under a Linux user profile both on the web and as a mail-program and news-reader. But, and this must be a Netscape problem, I was foolish enough to try the "Roaming access" feature logged in as "root". I shouldnīt have done that. Now, when I work as root and try to start Netscape I only get to the roaming access log in screen (luck I can still use Netscape logged in as user in Linux). And since I havenīt set it up properly, I of course donīt have a valid password and canīt come any further in to the program. It just stops with the log-in screen ! Naturally, I donīt have a clue of all the eventual places where Netscape has put this "start with roaming access"-option. Obviously it isnīt in Netscape itself, since I uninstalled and reinstalled it just to discover that it still defaulted to this option. Really bad programming to not permit an option to leave this mood =0 Anyone have a clue of which file/files to be deleted/edited to abort the "roaming access"-option. Please tell me. Well, now I really see why it wasnīt a success...< /FONT >
My dual-boot Windows 98 installation works really smoth though. It was a while since I had an error message ;-) Considering I have about 2,5 Gigs of programs installed at the moment, itīs amazing.
Have fun /Per
2000-02-22
Wow,
Iīm high on computing right now !
As I told the world in my latest guestbook entry, am
I out surfing the web using Linux nowadays. Not only that.
This, my latest site-update, is entirely made using Linux. Not only have
I got my damned machine connected, but I have also used it to FTP my home-page
account. I downloaded this page and edited it using StarOffice(an amazingly capable office-suite which happens to run under
Linux).
I also added a new page with last weeks main speech, entirely made in
Linux. In fact, StarOffice has much better web-functionality than MS Office
2000 Standard thus you have to upgrade to the expensive Office 2000 Premium
which incorporates Front Page 2000 to surpass StarOffice.
StarOffice is free, except for the download and the effect of eventual local connecting rates. As you read this of course, I also succeeded to FTP my work back to my home-page account. Super.
I
wouldnīt have managed to do all
this a year ago, but since then, Linux have become much friendlier to
use.
In fact, the distribution I currently use is even easier to install than
Windows 98. I know that, since I had to reinstall everything after trying
to install the latest version of Sun:s Java VM (1.2.2) and the visual
programming environment Inprise Jbuilder 3.
Those
installations required me to change manually in the environment
scripts. I shouldnīt have done that without more reading. I managed
to lock out almost all command-functionality even from the bash-shell
(Linux counterpart to DOS).
So I had to reinstall. But then again, it was swift. Of course
thereīs still many rough edges, but for example: I have a complete professional
web-server (Apache 1.3.9) running locally all the time without the computer
even noticing it !
Try
run Personal Web Server under Windows 98 any length of time and you
got your PC locked as Fort Knox. And my Linux distribution supports, and
compile to executables, numerous programming languages as default.
With Windows you donīt even get Visual Basic installed as default (costs
an awful lot of money). And VBA only functions when MS Office is installed.
In particular for web-development, does a Linux distribution make sense
on the desktop. No problem to test whether ones Perl-scripts function
locally, as you use the same web-server locally in your machine as most
ISP:s use commercially. Take that Gates.
Thereīs
really bad things also.
I still havenīt managed to get my soundcard to function. Thereīs no supported
drivers for it, and the ALSA-drivers of esoteric enthusiast make take
it as granted that any potential user also have extensive programming
skills. Takes a lot of reading, and
even some compiling of the OS Kernel to mabe get sound from the box.
I guess Linus Torvalds never was any multimedia fan, and probably is totally tone-deaf. On the good side, visually, is that you also get GIMP for free in most distributions. GIMP is an professional image-editing program that has all the functionality of Adobe Photoshop 5.5 and even some more. And the quality is also equal. Harder to use though, but so is most things under Linux. Windows is really fantastically user friendly, except that it often crashes before you saved your work... Windows 2000, as Iīve written before, is a good mix of user friendliness and robustness. But it has mabe even lousier hardware support than Linux as it is mostly made for dry business accounting (no enthusiast feel at all there). And Windows 2000 is very expensive, so one might as well start to write ones own device drivers and games under Linux....
SeeYa /Per
2000-01-15