Choosing an operating system 2011 - revisiting the question

Post by **spot** » Fri Apr 15, 2011 3:55 am

This is, I suppose, another Linux vs Microsoft thread. I'm hoping we can all step back a pace and not express a preference. What would be more useful is observations and reasons.

There is one absolute fact: whatever you're used to is easier than something you've no experience of. If you go to any year in the last quarter century you can see X is better than Y discussions which are based on "I can get more work done more quickly in X", the reason being that Y is unfamiliar. Every time Microsoft Office is upgraded there are howls of "I preferred it as it was" for just the same reason.

It's a lousy reason. Yes there's a learning curve, that's what life's for. It's a problem that is never going to go away. Maybe it's learning the next Microsoft release, maybe it's learning a different system entirely (such as Free Office from being used to Microsoft Office, for example). I think we need to accept the necessary step upward as a given and not express it as X is better than Y. If X is worse than Y it will be because of its function, not the fact that you already know something else.

Sticking with what you know, on the other hand, may well make a lot of sense. Using the same as you're obliged to use in your work environment is a reasonable pressure too.

I've started the thread because I spent the last week using Windows 7 Ultimate. I have the advantage of having used it for a couple of months when it was a Release Candidate, so I've a good idea what they were aiming for. Familiarity is not an issue. I'll throw in observations but as an OP I've laid out what I have in mind, it's time other people joined in or I'll end up writing an essay.

Post by **Bryn Mawr** » Fri Apr 15, 2011 4:32 am

I was always a big fan of RiscOs for functional reasons - OS in ROM so it was very quick to boot and very secure (I don't think that there was every a virus on a RiscOs machine, the vulnerability just was not there to exploit) and it was very light on resource usage, the code was extremely compact (for example, I wrote a complete VSAM filing system, KSDS, RRDS & sequential with the utilities to create and manipulate the files in less than 8K of code) and quick (1 clock cycle per instruction with pipelining) so, effectively, the only memory requirements were to hold the data you were working on.

For exactly the same reasons, I don't like Microsoft. The code is buggy with vulnerabilities all over the place, it is bloatware needing a hardware upgrade with each new release of the OS and it's inefficient. The only thing it has going for it is the vast level of investment in the development of applications to run on it - I only regret that so many of those applications are malware.

I currently use Ububntu - fewer vulnerabilities and tighter code and applications are available to do everything I've wanted to do since I started using it. I'm not as familiar with Ubuntu as I am with Windows (I use it continuously at work) so it sometimes takes me longer to configure some aspects of the system but application usage is, by and large, identical.

Post by **spot** » Fri Apr 15, 2011 6:07 am

The security issue is an easy one to tackle. I wouldn't dream of using a Microsoft computer without being logged in with Administrator rights, chiefly because I've no idea what happens if I don't have them but I've heard tales of woe from those who tried without.

Desktop computers running a Microsoft operating system in a commercial setting are tuned down for security reasons by means of profiles. I've not heard yet of any domestic user employing profiles for any reason at all. If anyone here does perhaps they'd like to chip in.

So, can one run a Microsoft operating system conveniently from a user account with no admin permissions? Does anyone here do that?

I'm not even sure whether removing admin rights stops a user from writing or deleting files inside the /windows directory structure or modifying the registry.

On the other side, I wouldn't dream of using a Linux computer logged in with root access, chiefly because I know exactly what the consequences are. There are two areas of the hard drive I can directly modify as a Linux user without root or special permissions, my home directory (that's My Documents) and, usually, a scratchspace called /tmp. The only programs I run with root access are utilities, not user programs, and to do it I enter a password immediately beforehand.

Does the ability of a normal Microsoft user to modify system areas not bother anyone using a Microsoft system? If not, why not?

Post by **Bryn Mawr** » Fri Apr 15, 2011 7:16 pm

spot;1357749 wrote: The security issue is an easy one to tackle. I wouldn't dream of using a Microsoft computer without being logged in with Administrator rights, chiefly because I've no idea what happens if I don't have them but I've heard tales of woe from those who tried without.

Desktop computers running a Microsoft operating system in a commercial setting are tuned down for security reasons by means of profiles. I've not heard yet of any domestic user employing profiles for any reason at all. If anyone here does perhaps they'd like to chip in.

So, can one run a Microsoft operating system conveniently from a user account with no admin permissions? Does anyone here do that?

I'm not even sure whether removing admin rights stops a user from writing or deleting files inside the /windows directory structure or modifying the registry.

On the other side, I wouldn't dream of using a Linux computer logged in with root access, chiefly because I know exactly what the consequences are. There are two areas of the hard drive I can directly modify as a Linux user without root or special permissions, my home directory (that's My Documents) and, usually, a scratchspace called /tmp. The only programs I run with root access are utilities, not user programs, and to do it I enter a password immediately beforehand.

Does the ability of a normal Microsoft user to modify system areas not bother anyone using a Microsoft system? If not, why not?

I understand that Windows7 is designed (a first for Microsoft?) to run users as users rather than as administrators - if so it is an advance but still, apparently, leave a lot of vulnerabilities to exploit.

Post by **spot** » Sat Apr 23, 2011 5:13 pm

On a brief aside I note that a thoroughly blasphemous release of Slackware can be expected around dawn tomorrow. The first release candidate came out on Ash Wednesday, the final was sealed shut at dusk on Easter Friday and ought to be released to the world on Easter Sunday to peals of bells and loud Hosannahs after forty days' testing.

Ahso! · Post by **Ahso!** » Sun Apr 24, 2011 2:18 pm

Windows 7 Ultimate is nice looking and seems to run smooth. It's just too bad it's so vulnerable to attacks and abused by software development companies.

I had the itch to upgrade my Ubuntu to 11.04 and boy is it nice. Perhaps I'm feeling that way because it's new, I dunno, but I am enjoying playing with it.

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Post by **spot** » Sun Apr 24, 2011 3:31 pm

I bought a new computer on eBay a couple of weeks ago. It has a single-core 2400MHz 64-bit processor. I've been migrating a few tasks over to it, wondering whether I'll use it as my desktop or pass it on.

The very first thing I did was put in a fast-enough SATA-1 hard drive off my shelf. It writes an average continuous 57MB/s to the whole surface. I know that because I ran the disk's secure-erase before adding anything on top. 500GB, 146 minutes, every byte scrubbed. The sanitization paper and utility at CMRR are well worth understanding, I recommend bookmarking the page.

Then I layered some data onto it. A clean partition table with 99MB off the front solely to boot from, and the remainder to be encrypted. Then a key manager onto the encrypt partition called LUKS which asks for one key (or an enabled USB key-stick) at boot time and gives access until sleep, hibernate or power off, then LVM logical volume management to install virtual partitions into that encrypted space. If you have a command file set up to do that it takes three minutes, including the logical partition formatting.

What puzzles me is that in the Microsoft world, the equivalent function provided with the operating system (BitLocker) "is available only in the Enterprise and Ultimate editions of Windows Vista and Windows 7". What are the Home users meant to deploy? Do they not count? There is at least one free open source package which encrypts a Microsoft installation, DiskCryptor, so in terms of Microsoft / Linux being able to effectively encrypt your computer (which really means "and the swap and hibernate space") they'll both do it.

I'd be unhappy storing my files on a computer that didn't password-protect my files to this extent. Carla's break-in this week just highlights why it's important.

CARLA · Post by **CARLA** » Sun Apr 24, 2011 4:14 pm

There is no way any user in the work environment can be any thing but an administrator on any windows operating system. If they aren't they can't access or use any software ie: ADP payroll online, MASS500 accounting systems or just about any online database software used in an organization. If they aren't admins they can't use certain function of OFFICE, can't access any servers for data storage. I'm constantly asked by staff why they can't do certain application I immediately look and their user accounts on the machine and bingo it has changed to user, or debugger once i make them an admin again they are good to go. Mapping and permissions is the safety measure I use for staff.

I limit their access to certain areas and applications with permissions you don't have it you can't get to the data or use the software for that application.

Post by **spot** » Sun Apr 24, 2011 4:24 pm

CARLA;1358085 wrote: There is no way any user in the work environment can be any thing but an administrator on any windows operating system. If they aren't they can't access or use any software ie ADP

And yet that's why anyone can sit down at any Microsoft keyboard and sabotage the system just by deleting random files from /windows. Unless someone's gone to the expense of implementing profiles. I'm getting to the point with Microsoft that I'd give users a one-time clean virtual desktop each time they power on, straight from the server, and let them screw it to their heart's content. Another day, another fresh desktop. I've certainly had my fill of every single user desktop telling a different story.

Do people still think, in general, that Linux is the hard way to run a PC and Microsoft is the easy way? Because if they do I'm completely puzzled why they still think it. Yes they may well have invested a lot of time in learning how to make a Microsoft machine do what they need, but that's a very different statement.

Post by **spot** » Sun Apr 24, 2011 4:49 pm

I've found there's one program I've not discovered an adequate alternative for, and that's mp3tag for bulk-filing music. There are linux taggers but they don't do as comprehensive a job with as few keystrokes, and easytag just takes so long to get anything done. There's a package which will sit on a Linux desktop and run any Microsoft executable, it's called wine. I have mp3tag on my desktop screen, I double-click it and it runs. It seems to be as fast on Linux under wine as it is on a Microsoft system.

I've attached a screen capture of it running, though it looks just like it would with a Microsoft operating system. Rather annoyingly I can't run Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 under wine but then, I couldn't run it on XP either. I need to run Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 to test website code I write, so it's frustrating. All the more so since Microsoft Internet Explorer is the package which displays my code oddly, nine times out of ten, so I really do need a testbed eventually. I'm not going to buy a copy of Windows 7 just to run browser tests though.

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Wandrin · Post by **Wandrin** » Sun Apr 24, 2011 9:09 pm

I'm an old Unix guy (multiple flavors). When I recently upgraded equipment, I ended up choosing MacBook Pros because I could get a one time discount on a hardware and software purchase. The underlying OS is BSD with X, so most of the linux window manager systems run well. I need to run Win7 for a couple of clients, so I do that through VMware. Both laptops can dual boot into Ubuntu and Ubuntu can also run under VMware. My server is an older Lenovo laptop with external drives. My firewall is an old Toshiba laptop running Debian.

It makes for an interesting experience, since on the same screen I can have app windows open from Win7 and OS-X side by side and cut/paste between them. I usually have a terminal window open with a bash shell prompt.

Post by **spot** » Mon Apr 25, 2011 4:17 am

That's the one final amazement once you actually sit there and do it, copy/pasting from within one operating system into another. The world's divided into those who think it's what Windows does, and those who think it's the computing equivalent of reaching orbit.

Is that "old Unix guy" as in used to put RSTS/E on his Résumé and knows what an acoustic coupler sounds like? I went round the Science Museum in Kensington the other month and it was odd how many of the exhibits I'd used on a regular basis. Though not, unlike Werner von Braun, the V2. I was delighted to see a Lovibond Colorimeter, for instance, and a spiral slide rule.

Wandrin · Post by **Wandrin** » Mon Apr 25, 2011 7:22 am

Don't even get me started about how many exhibits at the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley seemed familiar... I know well the sound of an acoustic coupler, an ASR-33 as a "terminal", and had an ARPAnet login for the days before it became the Internet. I started on PDP-11s and was overjoyed when BSD improved Unix. I wrote device drivers for PDPs and loved the first Sun workstation. Thankfully, I was young enough to miss punched cards.

I watched one of the guys at the Computer History Museum try to explain to a group of visitors how cut/paste, the mouse, etc. all came from a prototype made my Xerox PARC, that senior management decided not to market. There were so many innovations developed there that never made it to market. It must have been very frustrating for the developers. I could easily see why they were so eager to let Apple use them so the world could see.

And yes, there are still many who think that Microsoft actually invented almost everything related to the UI.

CARLA · Post by **CARLA** » Mon Apr 25, 2011 7:36 am

I didn't my worst nightmare punch the code into the card stack them in the bin to run it. It was so loud it had to be in an area that no one could hear in the boiler room of the Hospital I worked in.

I was young enough to miss punched cards.

Post by **spot** » Mon Apr 25, 2011 7:52 am

Wandrin;1358110 wrote: Thankfully, I was young enough to miss punched cards.Ah.

There's two of us on here who started on 5-hole paper tape and graduated to Hollerith cards. The other one claims to have used valves. Neither of us had the advantage of a glass tty for some years though, just a paper teletype log. Moving onto DEC gear was quite a revelation after the IBM / NCR / Honeywell / Burroughs big metal. I didn't see any emails until the 80s though, any data transmission I did was simple peer stuff before then.

The last device driver I wrote was for a daisywheel printer... a something 630 that took two people to lift safely - a nasty brute, the only plastic involved was the wheelhead. And the driver had to fit into 256 bytes and allow justified proportional spacing. And I squeezed in a bold-print option too, it went "bang; are we bolding? microspace(2), bang". They don't do that with truetype.

Wandrin · Post by **Wandrin** » Mon Apr 25, 2011 7:53 am

CARLA;1358112 wrote: I didn't my worst nightmare punch the code into the card stack them in the bin to run it. It was so loud it had to be in an area that no one could hear in the boiler room of the Hospital I worked in.

Did you ever drop a tray of cards and have them scatter? I saw that a few times and still remember the look of horror on the face of the person holding the tray. Since I worked with minicomputers (huge as they were), punched tape was used instead of cards.

Post by **spot** » Mon Apr 25, 2011 7:56 am

CARLA;1358112 wrote: I didn't my worst nightmare punch the code into the card stack them in the bin to run it. It was so loud it had to be in an area that no one could hear in the boiler room of the Hospital I worked in.

Did you have a stand-alone sorter?

I had a sorter. With a handle which you pulled out and wound to select the sort column and pushed in to lock, and did one pass of the deck for each character in the key.

CARLA · Post by **CARLA** » Mon Apr 25, 2011 7:59 am

Yes I forgot about it those were the days how far we've come.

Did you have a stand-alone sorter?

I had a sorter. With a handle which you pulled out and wound to select the sort column and pushed in to lock, and did one pass of the deck for each character in the key.

Wandrin · Post by **Wandrin** » Mon Apr 25, 2011 8:27 am

spot;1358115 wrote: Ah.

The last device driver I wrote was for a daisywheel printer... a something 630 that took two people to lift safely - a nasty brute, the only plastic involved was the wheelhead. And the driver had to fit into 256 bytes and allow justified proportional spacing. And I squeezed in a bold-print option too, it went "bang; are we bolding? microspace(2), bang". They don't do that with truetype.

Aha! The Diablo 630 printer! Suddenly I feel older. I remember only too well having to write drivers that would fit in tiny ROM space.

Post by **spot** » Mon Apr 25, 2011 9:20 am

Wandrin;1358119 wrote: Aha! The Diablo 630 printer! Suddenly I feel older. I remember only too well having to write drivers that would fit in tiny ROM space.

I was a lousy systems programmer for the first couple of years I was being paid to program and then I picked up some essentials. I'd been trying to work out how to improve but the place I worked was... it's odd thinking back but quite seriously, they thought what they did defined good practice and everyone aspired to do things that way. To an extent they had a point, I spent decades afterwards fitting into the house style wherever I went on the grounds that something innovative would just cost more to maintain once I was gone. Where they were wrong was not using courses or bringing in fresh blood or even, from what I saw, buying the occasional book.

I thought, initially, that equipping myself with every opcode and knowing all the hardware addressing modes was essential to being a systems programmer. And so it is, yes, but it's a distraction from discovering good programming. What I ended with instead was an uncanny ability to make spaghetti do whatever I wanted it to do. I had absolutely no idea whatever about structure. I thought structure involved deciding whether I was a top-down or a bottom-up.

Then I read a book over Christmas 1974, Michael Jackson's Principles of Program Design. Nothing to do with assembly language at all. He handed me two essential tools. Every application, he wrote, is built from four elements: operation, sequence, conditional and iterative. That one was like a light switching on, I hadn't had the least notion it was so. The other was how to derive a data structure and invert it so it matched another incompatible one with which it had to interact. There are lots of ways of implementing that juncture besides Michael Jackson's approach, but being able to express the structures was the other leap. I went from writing spaghetti which needed testing in order to massage it into working code, to writing programs which needed testing to demonstrate their correctness.

CARLA · Post by **CARLA** » Mon Apr 25, 2011 9:57 am

Oh yeah!! I did it once my whole life passed before me.

Did you ever drop a tray of cards and have them scatter? I saw that a few times and still remember the look of horror on the face of the person holding the tray. Since I worked with minicomputers (huge as they were), punched tape was used instead of cards.

Post by **spot** » Mon Apr 25, 2011 3:05 pm

Hey, Wandrin. I've used a CRAM deck. Not many people can say that. It was NCR's answer to random storage before the Winchester, and the entire concept is enough to make the hairs crawl on your neck.

Wandrin · Post by **Wandrin** » Mon Apr 25, 2011 4:04 pm

spot;1358151 wrote: Hey, Wandrin. I've used a CRAM deck. Not many people can say that. It was NCR's answer to random storage before the Winchester, and the entire concept is enough to make the hairs crawl on your neck.

Wow! I can't say that I have met very many people (outside the computer history museums) that have had that experience. I bow before your advanced age and wisdom... Several years back, while going through a few old boxes in storage, I ran across a few 8" floppies that were marked "Important - do not erase". I actually took them to a museum to see what was on them. Alas, it was just some assembler code for an 8008 project I did.

Post by **spot** » Mon Apr 25, 2011 4:29 pm

"Important - do not erase" is, if I may say so, a singularly horrid label.

The last time I had a machine which took 8" floppies was in an office in Petticoat Lane. Which, I noted earlier this year while walking past it, has since been knocked down and replaced, so the hardware's definitely gone. The disks, on the other hand, properly labeled "Mechanical Copyright Dick James v3" are in the bottom section of my filing cabinet along with five reels of 9-track tape labeled "Universe 1" and two mothballed 5¼" drives for the next time I need to read my box of 5¼" floppies. And, I'm pleased to observe, a small stack of unused Hollerith cards because they fit my inside suit pocket and they're great for taking impromptu notes on at design meetings.

Looking around, I've just noticed six unopened boxes of 1000 sheet two-part continuous stationery, production dated February 1982. I keep wondering what to do with those but throwing them out just isn't on. They were left over from when I bought a Laserjet 4 and retired the MX100.

The Laserjet's still running fine.

Post by **Bryn Mawr** » Mon Apr 25, 2011 4:32 pm

Wandrin;1358165 wrote: Wow! I can't say that I have met very many people (outside the computer history museums) that have had that experience. I bow before your advanced age and wisdom... Several years back, while going through a few old boxes in storage, I ran across a few 8" floppies that were marked "Important - do not erase". I actually took them to a museum to see what was on them. Alas, it was just some assembler code for an 8008 project I did.

My office used to be in ICL's museum (lack of space anywhere else on site) and some of the exhibits were awesome - like an early disk platter from a juke box drive. Aluminium, four feet in diameter and three eights thick it held 100KB!

They had one on their very early systems there and I asked the curator whether he ever ran it up - not enough power in the sub-station came the reply.

Wandrin · Post by **Wandrin** » Mon Apr 25, 2011 5:44 pm

spot;1358169 wrote: "Important - do not erase" is, if I may say so, a singularly horrid label.

I agree. What can I say? I was a youngin.

It is almost comical to realize that all of the source code and notes I wrote in the first decade or two fits comfortably on a micro-sd memory stick that will fit in my phone.

CARLA · Post by **CARLA** » Tue Apr 26, 2011 4:37 pm

This was my invironment for much of the 70's boy am I old or what.. :yh_rotfl

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Post by **spot** » Tue Apr 26, 2011 4:55 pm

I hope you dressed up for it.

Does that mean you know OS-MVS? Does //RECLIB1 DD DSN= make you nostalgic? I'm sure there are deviant throwback code-shops where it's still valid.

//PNTSS2 DD SYSOUT=*,DCB=(DSORG=PS,RECFM=V,BLKSIZE=136)

Post by **Bryn Mawr** » Tue Apr 26, 2011 4:56 pm

CARLA;1358217 wrote: This was my invironment for much of the 70's boy am I old or what.. :yh_rotfl

The first computer I programmed was a Stantec Zebra and the first I was paid to program was a Honeywell 200 - not a disk or a keyboard between them, wonderful days :-

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Post by **spot** » Tue Apr 26, 2011 5:02 pm

If you swap three of these six tape units for CRAM then this is the same configuration I ran my first shifts on. I could, if pressed, describe what a screamer was. I reckon it's where my tinnitus came from.

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Wandrin · Post by **Wandrin** » Tue Apr 26, 2011 5:51 pm

CARLA;1358217 wrote: This was my invironment for much of the 70's boy am I old or what.. :yh_rotfl

Wow! I bow before the learned elder. :yh_worshp

Post by **Bryn Mawr** » Wed Apr 27, 2011 10:23 am

spot;1358220 wrote: I hope you dressed up for it.

Does that mean you know OS-MVS? Does //RECLIB1 DD DSN= make you nostalgic? I'm sure there are deviant throwback code-shops where it's still valid.

//PNTSS2 DD SYSOUT=*,DCB=(DSORG=PS,RECFM=V,BLKSIZE=136)

Excuse me, never you mind "still valid", I'm still writing the stuff every time I want to dig deeper than the parameterised JCB will take me.

Post by **spot** » Wed Apr 27, 2011 10:27 am

Bryn Mawr;1358264 wrote: Excuse me, never you mind "still valid", I'm still writing the stuff every time I want to dig deeper than the parameterised JCB will take me.

I did mention deviant throwback code-shops, yes.

Post by **Bryn Mawr** » Wed Apr 27, 2011 10:46 am

spot;1358265 wrote: I did mention deviant throwback code-shops, yes.

Ratbag >:^P

Wandrin · Post by **Wandrin** » Wed Apr 27, 2011 4:49 pm

Ooooo. Fiesty elders.

Post by **spot** » Wed Apr 27, 2011 5:21 pm

Wandrin;1358292 wrote: Ooooo. Fiesty elders.

I sort of set that one up for him to walk into, it was unfair.

Wandrin · Post by **Wandrin** » Wed Apr 27, 2011 8:34 pm

spot;1358295 wrote: I sort of set that one up for him to walk into, it was unfair.

But I'm sure that you had fun doing it....

Post by **Bryn Mawr** » Thu Apr 28, 2011 8:42 am

Wandrin;1358310 wrote: But I'm sure that you had fun doing it....

You have to give him his moment every now and again

Post by **spot** » Thu May 05, 2011 6:01 pm

spot;1358169 wrote: Looking around, I've just noticed six unopened boxes of 1000 sheet two-part continuous stationery, production dated February 1982. I keep wondering what to do with those but throwing them out just isn't on. They were left over from when I bought a Laserjet 4 and retired the MX100.

The Laserjet's still running fine.

And, what's more, today I upgraded it. All these years I hung it on one of an assortment of PCs by way of the parallel port but no longer. I mentioned to my lad that back in the old days it had networking potential and he didn't believe me. One purchase off eBay and it now has a 1995-vintage 10Base-T JetDirect card and as penance I got him to fit it and configure it with a static IP address. How do you get to the Admin page, he asked. Push that Menu button eight times and see what you can find, I told him. He's still shaking his head at what he went through but the printer's networked. For $12 including delivery, too.

I distinctly remember that the 2MB memory can upgrade to 16MB, so long as I can find the right double-sided SIMMs...

Wandrin · Post by **Wandrin** » Fri May 06, 2011 11:57 am

Cool find... You can find some great bargains in the time between something being considered "old" and being considered a "collector's item" or antique.

I've been surprised at how seldomly I actually need to print anything anymore.

Post by **spot** » Fri May 06, 2011 2:06 pm

Wandrin;1358915 wrote: I've been surprised at how seldomly I actually need to print anything anymore.I sent a letter this week. Revamping the printer was a response to a daughter wanting to hand in several dozen pages of essays. She ended up with several hundred pages of printed precedents on the grounds that she was taught to learn by highlighter.

Wandrin · Post by **Wandrin** » Fri May 06, 2011 4:06 pm

spot;1358933 wrote: I sent a letter this week. Revamping the printer was a response to a daughter wanting to hand in several dozen pages of essays. She ended up with several hundred pages of printed precedents on the grounds that she was taught to learn by highlighter.

At the rate with which schools/colleges are adopting the iPad, I expect that "highlighter" will soon be an app. It makes sense. A friend's daughter had a little over $500US in textbook expenses for a single semester and half of those were used. Since the resale value of textbooks usually approaches zero within 2 years, the savings would add up, not to mention the benefits of being able to do boolean searches within a book. Some of the note taking apps for tablets and laptops are beautiful, combining diagrams, hierarchal notes, audio, video, and web captures, all indexed. Hmmm. Maybe it's time for me to continue my never ending education...

Post by **spot** » Fri May 06, 2011 5:18 pm

I'll put to you a technical niggle that has been bothering me all week. I have a file design which I must turn into a website. It knows of operator roles, calendars, it has accounts and transactions and (though I dislike balances) balances. The file design's pretty well understood and agreed. The timetable's flexible.

I don't want to just plough in with my weapon of choice (Javascript/php/MySQL) and bludgeon it into existence because it'll end up with disadvantages. Those involve re-inventing swathes of code in idiosyncratic fashion and stopping anyone else from modifying it with impunity. It's time I upped my game and used a development framework instead of living in the past. Anyway, I spent the day reading up Symfony2.

In some ways, yes. Pervasive levels at which authentication can be assumed, templated rendering, it's all seductive from that sense. The downside is that I can't believe anyone ever gets sufficiently familiar with the syntax to be able to code it rather than copy/paste and modify. There's no language to it, there's just arbitrary API calls. I want code that provides a recital of the function being fulfilled so that it can be read like a novel.

I don't want to say no to using it. I already said no to fluffing this site into existence with ten times the effort in Drupal. Programming shouldn't involve the demeaning use of a mouse, it's essentially a literary pursuit. It is decidedly not a mammoth setting of screen options.

So, the question. Am I going to end up looking at Symfony2-style code as equally readable, once I've learned it by doing it? Is my reluctance simply one of insufficient exposure? I'm not sure it is. I'm equally not sure that disliking the final expression is a good enough reason to stay clear of it though. I'm going to have to code some minor test screens and hope my perception alters I suppose.

Anyway - is it something on which you have an opinion?

Wandrin · Post by **Wandrin** » Fri May 06, 2011 6:37 pm

I do very little programming for the web, although some of what I have been hearing about HTML 5 app stores for Firefox apps sounds interesting. I played a little with Ruby on Rails and thought it had some promise, but I'm the wrong one to ask.

Post by **spot** » Fri Sep 16, 2011 8:10 am

Reading - the way one does - I found the Microsoft/Linux debate summed up in an perfect essay on using the Internet.

AOL si teh best ISP too use but DONT USE AOL BECUASE ITS FOR FAGOTS!!! JERRY uses AOL and his parants wont even let him watch HBO! So dont watch HBO or else it turns off yuor Lunix and then goodbye Linus Torvolvos! I use Platinum AOL which si liek AOL but si a exclusive club liek the NWA or BALACK PANTHERS. besides Mircosoft si bettar its intarnet ready and if yuo use lunix and want to cruise on the instrumation Suparhighway then yuo have too do all kinds of stuped sLunix crap liek:

INSTALL RED HATe LOOOOOOOOOONIX

RUN COMMAND E PROMPY CONMFIG SET -R -Q -SKF /DEV AAD -3827

CONNECT TO A PINGY BOX

SETUP A FIREWHALE

RUN FREEWARE CLIANT SUBJECT OF DISK IN "VOM LIBRARY CUSTOM" -x -d -er -f -ggr /hd -eu /ldk /wiw -99ie

delete evarything and install micorsoft Windows ME because good luck tryeing too do anything in Lunix because Lunix was built for peopal who weigh ovar 500 pounds and collact Star Warps toys and draw Lunix penguins all day

Bruv · Post by **Bruv** » Fri Sep 16, 2011 9:53 am

And Bill Gates is a MONONOPOLISH

This kid could be a dyslexic genius you know

Post by **Bryn Mawr** » Sun Feb 05, 2012 4:50 pm

He might also be right

I've just spent the past four hours trying to install RedHat ES 5.7 so that I can install a trial version of some software I'm evaluating.

Two hours in I had RedHat running on my laptop - I have just, just, managed to download the package and I have yet to install it.

Why do they make everything so painful?

OK, whinge over - back to the grindstone

Post by **spot** » Wed Jul 08, 2020 8:33 pm

It all still looks antique but it's upgraded...

Post by **Bryn Mawr** » Wed Jul 08, 2020 9:41 pm

spot wrote: ↑Wed Jul 08, 2020 8:33 pm It all still looks antique but it's upgraded...

Thanks for the reminder, I have two laptops running Mint I’ll need to update.

Post by **LarsMac** » Thu Jul 09, 2020 8:00 am

Thanks for the reminder.
I have 2 laptops running Windows 10, and they are working fine, so far, but I have three others than need OS upgrades.
I really don't want to spend the money to install more Windoze
Hopefully, we will be fully relocated by end of the month, and I will have time to explore OS options, again.

I'm considering Linux options, and the only thing that might be off the table is Red Hat. I tried installing it once some years ago, and hated the experience, very much.
RH also was a severe pain in my workday, trying to troubleshoot storage networking problems, for which their "support" people were obnoxious and uncooperative.