See also: last week's Back page page.

Linux links of the week

LinuxWare seems to be a strange combination of Linux news and personal ads. "The ultimate chat and Linux resource for geeks and nerds looking for chat, internet relationships, love and of course Linux. The only place on the Web that may change your life forever." Hmm... (Thanks to Cheah Ling).

Letters to the editor

To: editor@lwn.net
Subject: Who cares whether Pascal has a goto?
Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1999 13:28:53 +0000
From: Paul Dunne <paul@dunne.ie.eu.org>

I have just read the long, boring and irrelevant exchange in
your letters column about whether Pascal has or has not a goto
statement, and if so, what it's good for.  Oh, boy, what tedium!
Please, can Linux Weekly News stick to what it's good at -- being
a weekly report on *Linux* news?  The most recent letters column
was just like Usenet in all the bad senses of that comparison.
Better to have no letters at all than irrelevant ones.

--
Paul Dunne <paul@dunne.ie.eu.org>
http://www.cix.co.uk/~dunnp

Date: Sat, 20 Feb 1999 03:50:14 -0500
From: "Joel D. Elkins" <jde@binarts.com>
To: editor@lwn.net
Subject: . and ..

I think that Linus advocates removal of "." and ".." processing from
ext2fs, leaving handling for these cases in the VFS code. In any case,
userland semantics will not change. Your 2/18/1999 "Kernel" article
was misleading in that regard.

Yours,
Joel Elkins

Date: Wed, 24 Feb 1999 13:23:27 +0100 (MET)
From: James Ewing <jamewi@rsv.se>
To: lwn@lwn.net
Subject: Swedish Linux paper - bad press for Linux

Hi LWN,

You guys posted a link to a paper in Swedish comparing Linux 2.2 and
NT 4.0. Just to let you know, the end conclusion wasn't at all
favorable for Linux.

The link was in the paragraph -

"The Swedish paper Datateknik has put out a lengthy "white paper" on
Linux that is said to be an interesting read. It's available in PDF
format (in Swedish, of course) from this directory. (Thanks to Mattias
Sandström). "

And linked to http://www.datateknik.se/WhitePaper/WP_linux.pdf.

In the paper the evaluation result was (in Swedish) -

"Allvariga fel i drivrutinera för maskinvaran samt brister i
RADI-installationen gör det testade Linux distributionen olämplig att
använda på Compaq maskiner. NT är ett avsevärt säkrare val och är 
dessutom mycket lättare att konfigurera.
	System: 512 Mbytes interminne, 4x4 Gbyte
	skivminne. Intel Pentium II 400 MHz. Mandrake
	Linux 5.2. Microsoft NT Enterprise server 4SP3.

	Betyg Linux: 1
	Betyg NT:    5"

Translsted to English is - 

"Serious errors in the hardware drivers and shortcomings in the RAID
installation make the Linux distribution tested unsuitable for use on
Compaq machines. NT is an incomparably more secure choice and is
moreover much easier to configure.

	System: 512 Mbytes internal memory, 4x4 Gbyte 
	disk memory. Intel Pentium II 400 MHz. Mandrake
	Linux 5.2. Microsoft NT Enterprise server 4SP3.

	Linux rating: 1
	NT rating:    3" 

-- Note: the rating system is five point scale where 1 is the lowest
and 5 the highest.

This is hardly a favorable review of Linux and could just as easily
been written by Microsoft.

Sincerely,

Jim Ewing
Ewing Data AB
Stockholm, Sweden
jim@ewingdata.com

    

Date: Tue, 23 Feb 1999 01:58:12 -0600 (EST)
From: Dave Finton <surazal@nerp.net>
To: editor@lwn.net
Subject: You asked for it ;^)


I am only doing this because if I read one more letter to the editor
concerning goto's and pascal, I just might run away screaming.  ;^)

Ah, Microsoft's stock slumped about 10% this month.  This was
attributed to two causes.  One, the antitrust trial (which I enjoy
reading about over a few beers).  Two, IBM's endorsement of Linux by
announcing it will preload it on some of its servers.

The funny thing was that soon after I read a couple of articles about
MS stock and the IBM announcement, I ran across a recent article from
some editor or another in one of the mainstream rags saying that he
doubted Linux would make a dent in Microsoft's armor.  Whoops.  It
already did earlier this week.  It reminded me of an article I read in
Segfault.org titled "Linux gains enterprise-level support, but what
about support?"  Now that is FUD gone horribly wrong (or right,
depending on which side of the fence you're sitting on).

I'd also like to comment on the so-called rift open source is facing
in light of Bruce Perens' leaving of the OSI.  All I can say is, What
Rift?  Neither Bruce, RMS, nor ESR have any bearing whatsoever on the
work I do (which includes support for client-based Linux machines).  I
respect Bruce's opinions, but he can join the Preservation Society for
Pink Fluffy Rabbits for all I care.  I respect the free software/Open
Source leaders' opinions, and more importantly I respect their
*differences*.  I think that our favorite ideological movement would
be a lot weaker if they all agreed with each other.  Their
disagreements take us into new and exciting directions.

There, that should be enough to keep the "goto" letters at bay.

                          - Dave Finton

---------------------------------------------------------
| If an infinite number of monkeys typed randomly at    |
|   an infinite number of typewriters for an infinite   |
|   amount of time, they would eventually type out      |
|   this sentencdfjg sd84wUUlksaWQE~kd ::.              |
| ----------------------------------------------------- |
|      Name:      Dave Finton                           |
|      E-mail:    surazal@nerp.net                      |
|      Web Page:  http://surazal.nerp.net/              |
---------------------------------------------------------

Date: Tue, 23 Feb 1999 09:33:13 +0100 (MET)
From: Maurizio de Cecco <Maurizio.de.Cecco@ircam.fr>
To: editor@lwn.net
Subject: Beware of the Desktop trap ...


I am alone in the world, or there are others that think that User
Interface enginering stop in 84 when the first Mac came out ?

OK, menus, button, scrollbars, all the goodies, all the bell and
whistles; but, while my GNU-emacs have all of this, i never use any of
them ...

Why ?

Everybody know why: if you use a program for 14 years, you don't need
menus anymore; you have the key bindings in your blood; and in
general, while the Mouse/Menu/Icon stuff is very good for learning to
use a program, it is not what you really want to use your everyday
professional tool for years and years.

Not that GUI are not good, expecially when the thing you are doing are
intrinsecally graphic or visual; but their developement stopped the
developement of alternative, efficent, text based UI.

Anybody remember the symbolics command language ? 

Shells are not necessarly for experts, after all ...


Maurizio

PS: ops, i forgot: all this to say: there is more than KDE and Gnome
to make Linux final-user-friendly ...