Excellent article about Linux

On 30/12/2018 06.10, nospam wrote:
In article , Carlos E. R.
wrote:

As I said, product activation alone is enough to
keep me away from Microsoft products aside from any other considerations.

then you won't be using computers anymore, since nearly all software
today has activation in some form due to rampant piracy.

Well, no, that's not totally true. I know you don't like Linux, but as
the thread has Linux on the subject line, and I'm replying on a Linux
group, I feel entitled to say that there is no activation needed to use
or update Linux :-P

i like linux for what it's good at, servers. i have six servers, all
running linux.

linux is not good for a desktop os. mac and windows are vastly more
capable, with a much wider selection of software, and generally much,
much better quality.

I do everything I need desktop wise on Linux, and do not feel the need
to use "pay" things. And usually, of very good quality - but perhaps not
so much good "looks".

I consider this a personal choice or taste. Each person chooses what he
likes, and I have no objection at all. I never try to convince people to
use Linux, but of course I get fumed up at the lack of at least
understanding from manufacturers.

I use Windows when _forced_ because some gadget I purchased requires it.


Also, I bought an Android tablet some time ago that required no
activation or subscription. Yes, it runs Android, but needs no google ID
to get updates, albeit not from Google Play.

that's the exception, not the rule, and it would be surprising and also
undesirable if there was *no* activation at all.

Why? That device does not need activation. It gets the updates and the
applications.


one key advantage of being linked to a google or apple id is that a
stolen device can be remotely wiped and/or deactivated, leaving the
thief with nothing more than something to part out.

Considering that I paid something like 50€ for it... :-p

--
Cheers, Carlos.

In article , Nomen Nescio
wrote:

Apple : the company that constantly tells me of things I never knew I
didn’t want to buy off them.

Aw c'mon. You know you want one of those cutting edge iPhones
without the headphone jack for $750.

plenty of android phones have a digital headphone jack instead of the
obsolete and redundant analog headphone jack, including the google
pixel 2/2xl & 3/3xl, moto z, z3 oneplus 6t, sony xperia, essential and
numerous phones from htc. oppo, le'eco, huawei and others. samsung has
announced they will be moving to a digital headphone jack in the
future.

and apple was also not the first to drop the analog headphone jack. the
very first android phone, the t-mobile g1 back in 2008, had a digital
headphone jack.

https://www.engadget.com/2008/09/23/...-has-no-3-5mm-
headphone-jack/

On 2018-12-30, Nomen Nescio wrote:
In article
Wolf K wrote:

On 2018-12-30 05:39, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 30/12/2018 05:10, nospam wrote:
some people are stuck in the past and don't want to change. worse, they
base that on incorrect information about how things work.

Some people are stuck in 'progress' and need to change all the time
needlessly. worse, they base that on incorrect information about how
things work.


neomania: the belief that anything new is better than anything old.

democrat: a mindless mentally handicapped person who believes
rules and laws don't apply to them - but do apply to everyone
else, continually meddling with things that don't need fixing.

****! Donald trump is a Democrat? how did that happen?

--
When I tried casting out nines I made a hash of it.

On 30/12/2018 23:41, Nomen Nescio wrote:
In article
Wolf K wrote:

On 2018-12-30 05:39, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 30/12/2018 05:10, nospam wrote:
some people are stuck in the past and don't want to change. worse, they
base that on incorrect information about how things work.

Some people are stuck in 'progress' and need to change all the time
needlessly. worse, they base that on incorrect information about how
things work.


neomania: the belief that anything new is better than anything old.

democrat: a mindless mentally handicapped person who believes
rules and laws don't apply to them - but do apply to everyone
else, continually meddling with things that don't need fixing.

Ah. You dont mean a democrat, you mean a Democrat. A supporter of the US
Democratic party. Otherwise known as a Liberal. Both names being the
exact opposite of their actual policies.

democrats are peope who support democracy, not work out how to
circumvent it.

liberals are people who believe in as much individual freedom as
reasonably possible, not a massive state bureaucarcy that denies it as
far as possible.

Parliamentary democracy is something the English invented as being
slightly better than regicide, a dictatorship and a bloody civil war.

The ability to sack the exceutive when their natural tendency to becomne
am oligarchic self legalising protection racket exceeded proper bounds.


--
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's
too dark to read.

Groucho Marx

On 31/12/2018 05:23, Jasen Betts wrote:
On 2018-12-30, Nomen Nescio wrote:
In article
Wolf K wrote:

On 2018-12-30 05:39, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 30/12/2018 05:10, nospam wrote:
some people are stuck in the past and don't want to change. worse, they
base that on incorrect information about how things work.

Some people are stuck in 'progress' and need to change all the time
needlessly. worse, they base that on incorrect information about how
things work.


neomania: the belief that anything new is better than anything old.

democrat: a mindless mentally handicapped person who believes
rules and laws don't apply to them - but do apply to everyone
else, continually meddling with things that don't need fixing.

****! Donald trump is a Democrat? how did that happen?

No, Donald Trump is a democrat. Someone who is actually trying to
implement what the peoiple who voted for him, voted for him to do.

You may not like it, but that is what he does.

Remeber Being a Democrat or a Liberal is about as undemocratic or
illiberal as any citizen of the (East) German Democratic Republic was.

A (defunct) nation on which the modernm Left bases its systems of
government and population control.



--
"Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They
always run out of other people's money. It's quite a characteristic of them"

Margaret Thatcher

On 30/12/2018 23:51, Nomen Nescio wrote:
In article
The Natural Philosopher wrote:

On 30/12/2018 01:04, Roger Blake wrote:
I have no need or desire for any of the things you describe.

Apple : the company that constantly tells me of things I never knew I
didn’t want to buy off them.

Aw c'mon. You know you want one of those cutting edge iPhones
without the headphone jack for $750.

No, I bloody well do NOT.

My $300 android piece of wombat turd does all I need from a 'smart' phone.


--
Gun Control: The law that ensures that only criminals have guns.

On Sat, 29 Dec 2018 14:00:38 -0000 (UTC), Roger Blake
wrote:

On 2018-12-29, Paul wrote:
Help is available with activation issues.

Microsoft support was worse than useless.

Also, I reject the very idea that needing 'permission from Microsoft'
(which is what this amounts to) to use one's computer is acceptable in
the first place. Basically with Windows 10 your PC is a terminal on
Microsoft's network which they can do with as they please and decide
at any time to deactivate. I'm not willing to put up with that on my
own equipment.

Well said.

Anyone that has had to deal with M$ to get "activated" with software
they are already "licensed" for, is never going to buy the idea that
they are trying to make it easy. They are in the $ales business not
the Easy business.

On 12/31/2018 10:36 AM, Wolf K wrote:
[lots of people wrote lots of stuff]

mostly bull**** or in some cases donkey ****.



Why is it that every time a pro-/anti Linux post appears, the thread
deviates into one or another delusion?


If I want Linux I go to a Linux group. these idiots are too stupid to
realize they are in the wrong group. :-)

On Mon, 31 Dec 2018 11:36:26 -0500, Wolf K
wrote:

[lots of people wrote lots of stuff]

Why is it that every time a pro-/anti Linux post appears, the thread
deviates into one or another delusion?

It is far easier to pirate M$ software than it is to keep a legitimate
copy working.

In article Roger Blake
wrote:

On 2018-12-29, nospam wrote:
your loss. they're very capable devices that can do all sorts of things
that were once considered impossible.

I don't see it as a loss. Nothing they provide is worth the tracking and
surveillance aspects. There is nothing a smartphone can do that I need
or want.

the entire concept is ludicrous. it's tinfoil hat material.

As in Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty Four" it may not be listening all the
time, but you don't know when or where it might be. At a minimum it has
to be listening for keywords to activate the AI functions and you don't
really know when or where it may be doing more. Devices such as Alexa
and Google Home don't even have the battery concern. Then of course there
is the GPS function that tracks everywhere you go. (How else is Siri
going to recommend restaurants that are near you?)

You might want to look up a guy named Ed Snowden if you believe that
being concerned about mass surveillance is merely "tinfoil hat material."

the cloud is much more than 'just a collection of servers'.

It is not. I've been working in technology for over 40 years and the
internet for over 35 years. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a
duck... guess what, it's a duck.

it's more reliable than anything you could possibly do with your own
system, unless you have a similar budget as they do, which is extremely
unlikely.

Nonsense. It is not difficult to implement one's own effective backup
regimen. If you think no one has ever lost anything in "thuh cloud"
you're delusionary. Start with the people who lost their stuff with
due to a bug in the Windows 10 1809 update.

you weren't streaming music or video in the 1970s, locally or the cloud.

That is irrelevent. From an architectural standpoint it is the same
type of client-server concept. You have a local device whose limitaions
require computing power and storage at a remote location. The actual
application does not change the fundamental concept, nor does it change
simply because you are using a smartphone with "thuh cloud" instead of
a terminal connecting to a remote mainframe.

missing the point entirely.

I would say you do not even have a point.

nothing about the cloud prevents that.

When processing and storage is taking place on someone else's servers
(which once again is all that "thuh cloud" really is), then you effectively
do not have control. You really have no idea where your data is being
stored, who will have access to it under what conditions, or even if
you will have access to it in the future.

Many thanks for a plausible presentation of obvious facts. We verge on
the loss of privacy in each and every respect of our poor lives. It's
not only about China. Ubiquitous surveillance is a global phenomenon.
Reality will definitely catch up with these plaything-addicted dreamers.

On 30/12/2018 14.00, Nomen Nescio wrote:
In article
Peter Kozlov wrote:

On 2018-12-28, Roger Blake wrote:
On 2018-12-28, Anonymous wrote:
It's systemd. VOMIT!!! DRY HEAVES!!!

Although I dislike systemd, I'll take it over Microsoft's activation hell,
which I am currently embroiled in on a friend's computer that needed to
be reloaded. MS's promise that the Windows 10 "digital license" would be
honored if the OS needed to be reinstalled turns out to be just another
Big Lie.

If you've ever used Office 365 you'll see a good license routine. If
they could do that with Windows they'd have a winner. Adobe has a method
where if you install their suite and you already have it activated
elsewhere, you can tell the current install to de-activate older installs
and have the newer take the place of the older.

It's evolving for the better but the pace of this evolution is slow. A
huge advantage for Linux is you're free to install it and distribute it.
A corporate dream come true.

It takes 1000% more work to make it approximately half as
productive as a Mac or Windows PC.

Maybe you are a less than able human? :-P


--
Cheers, Carlos.

On 1/9/19 5:43 PM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 30/12/2018 14.00, Nomen Nescio wrote:
In article
Peter Kozlov wrote:

On 2018-12-28, Roger Blake wrote:
On 2018-12-28, Anonymous wrote:
It's systemd. VOMIT!!! DRY HEAVES!!!

Although I dislike systemd, I'll take it over Microsoft's activation hell,
which I am currently embroiled in on a friend's computer that needed to
be reloaded. MS's promise that the Windows 10 "digital license" would be
honored if the OS needed to be reinstalled turns out to be just another
Big Lie.

If you've ever used Office 365 you'll see a good license routine. If
they could do that with Windows they'd have a winner. Adobe has a method
where if you install their suite and you already have it activated
elsewhere, you can tell the current install to de-activate older installs
and have the newer take the place of the older.

It's evolving for the better but the pace of this evolution is slow. A
huge advantage for Linux is you're free to install it and distribute it.
A corporate dream come true.

It takes 1000% more work to make it approximately half as
productive as a Mac or Windows PC.

Maybe you are a less than able human? :-P


Well if trolls read in the groups that they post to this
would be a reasonable comment. However he is not as bright as
a 65 year old woman with some problems who took up Linux at that
age and is now 81 yoa with the same problems worsened by age
and time. Oh yes I am talking about myself, rather than others
and maybe it is just that he is not used to intellectual effort
which seems to frighten a lot of boys.

But whenever I encounter Windows and I do at large intervals
find myself dealing with my own copy of same or someone else's
Windows installation and it takes me 200% more effort to get
even the preparation for the installation of a dual-boot system
as it does to install Linux to a naked disk.

Of course he does not say how he uses Windows or MacIntosh,
what sort of work he produces with it or lies about producing.

bliss

--
bliss dash SF 4 ever at dslextreme dot com

Bobbie Sellers wrote:
On 1/9/19 5:43 PM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 30/12/2018 14.00, Nomen Nescio wrote:
[...]
It takes 1000% more work to make it approximately half as
productive as a Mac or Windows PC.

Maybe you are a less than able human? :-P


[...]
But whenever I encounter Windows and I do at large intervals
find myself dealing with my own copy of same or someone else's
Windows installation and it takes me 200% more effort to get
even the preparation for the installation of a dual-boot system
as it does to install Linux to a naked disk.

Makes sense - you do have to actually /prepare/ the system if you're
gonna be dual-booting.

It's gotten easier with GPT partitioning, but if their computer is still
using MBR, it's a right pain.

And it's nice that you have the _choice_ to dual-boot with *nix
installers. Fairly certain to this day, Win installation media has one
option - "Blow it all away and give me the entire drive".


--
|_|O|_| Registered Linux user #585947
|_|_|O| Github: https://github.com/dpurgert
|O|O|O| PGP: 05CA 9A50 3F2E 1335 4DC5 4AEE 8E11 DDF3 1279 A281

Dan Purgert wrote:
Bobbie Sellers wrote:
On 1/9/19 5:43 PM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 30/12/2018 14.00, Nomen Nescio wrote:
[...]
It takes 1000% more work to make it approximately half as
productive as a Mac or Windows PC.
Maybe you are a less than able human? :-P


[...]
But whenever I encounter Windows and I do at large intervals
find myself dealing with my own copy of same or someone else's
Windows installation and it takes me 200% more effort to get
even the preparation for the installation of a dual-boot system
as it does to install Linux to a naked disk.

Makes sense - you do have to actually /prepare/ the system if you're
gonna be dual-booting.

It's gotten easier with GPT partitioning, but if their computer is still
using MBR, it's a right pain.

And it's nice that you have the _choice_ to dual-boot with *nix
installers. Fairly certain to this day, Win installation media has one
option - "Blow it all away and give me the entire drive".

You would be surprised how tolerant an MBR partitioning
strategy can be with multiple OSes.

Once a couple OSes are installed, you can switch to
Extended/Logical for the rest. For the second or third
Windows OS, it's not a problem to put them up there.
You want a Primary partition for the \boot of the Windows,
but there's a lot of flexibility otherwise.

Win10 has the annoying habit of making the "fourth partition"
on an MBR setup into Extended/Logical. To overcome the bad
habits of Disk Manager, using the command line diskpart.exe
gives control and allows four Primaries if that's what you want.

Windows 10 can even be booted on physical hardware, out of a .vhd file.
When I tested that for chuckles, it went into a boot loop and had
to be powered off :-) This allows (in theory), an infinite pool
of images of the OS to be booted. Once they get it working
that is... I expect the boot menu screen has some limit as
to how many entries can be present.

Windows has a "custom" screen for partitioning and setup.
Have a look the next time you use an installer disc.

Windows Upgrade Installs no longer damage GRUB! You can
install 1809 upgrade on your dual boot Linux/Windows machine
and the GRUB remains intact. You'll be shocked if/when you
see one of those. Windows initial installs still have
bad table manners (as you would expect). But every time
Windows 10 upgrades itself, you no longer have to worry
about getting out your GRUB repair tools when all hell
breaks loose.

If you triple boot W7/W8/W10, and W7 crashes with an error,
enter the computer BIOS screen and set the OS to "All OSes"
rather than "Windows". There's a signing/key problem of some
sort, which puts Windows 7 in about the same situation
as someone booting Linux. This applies to x64 UEFI/GPT setups...
It took me quite a while to figure that out. That it was
an issue that could be fixed. For MBR, there are improved
odds you won't see that sort of issue. On MBR, the excess
Windows can be put in Logicals.

Paul

On 10/01/2019 12.23, Dan Purgert wrote:
Bobbie Sellers wrote:
On 1/9/19 5:43 PM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 30/12/2018 14.00, Nomen Nescio wrote:
[...]
It takes 1000% more work to make it approximately half as
productive as a Mac or Windows PC.

Maybe you are a less than able human? :-P


[...]
But whenever I encounter Windows and I do at large intervals
find myself dealing with my own copy of same or someone else's
Windows installation and it takes me 200% more effort to get
even the preparation for the installation of a dual-boot system
as it does to install Linux to a naked disk.

Makes sense - you do have to actually /prepare/ the system if you're
gonna be dual-booting.

It's gotten easier with GPT partitioning, but if their computer is still
using MBR, it's a right pain.

True, but this is because manufacturers (not Microsoft) make it harder
by using all four primary partitions, instead of a primary and an
extended, then as many logicals as wanted. It is not a fault not of
Microsoft nor of Linux.


And it's nice that you have the _choice_ to dual-boot with *nix
installers. Fairly certain to this day, Win installation media has one
option - "Blow it all away and give me the entire drive".

No, not true. I have installed Windows with Microsoft media taking only
part of the disk, and it was trivial to do so.

By default, the Linux installs I know also take the whole new disk for
Linux.

--
Cheers, Carlos.