FC5 Pukes on my machine

[Paul King]

On 8 May 2006 at 11:31, Giles Orr spaketh these wourdes:

> Hi Folks.
> 
> My first post, been reading the list for about a week.  Long time
> Linux user, just back in Toronto after many years away.  Very happy to
> find such an active and knowledgeable mailing list, and I expect to be
> at the meeting tomorrow night.  In response to Paul King:
> 
> On 5/8/06, Paul King <pking123-rieW9WUcm8FFJ04o6PK0Fg at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> > I think soon I will be moving to Debian anyway. It seems as
> > though (and I hadn't noticed until now) RedHat now wants me to purchase
> > "entitlements" if I want updates to the OS.  [SNIP] ... I get the feeling
> > now that Fedora has now become a one-time download of an experimental
> > and possibly broken set of RPMs, and if you want bug fixes and the like,
> > then you have to purchase "entitlements" from RedHat.
> 
> I hope this will help shed light on both my own Linux use and Paul's
> plans to switch distros.  I started using Linux in 1994, and the only
> realistic choice at the time was Slack.  (Anyone remember Yggdrasil? 

That was my first distro. I don't have the CD anymore. Mine was a live CD with 
install packages on the side. TransAmeritech distributed Slackware, that was my 
second distro.

> They were pretty much bowing out at the time.)  I tried Redhat 4.2

I was leery and held out until I got a RedHat 6 CD I purchased at a TLUG meeting. 
And this was only after trying out SuSE 5.1 (I still have those CDs). RH6 was 
solid, but SuSE was better.

> when it came out, wasn't happy with it.  Then came RH 5.0, and I
> switched primarily because of package management - amazing, you could
> install binary packages, not source, and the system made sure there
> weren't any conflicts!  Four years later, having developed a major
> distaste for "RPM dependency hell" and upset at RH's partial
> abandonment of the community when they switched to Fedora, I bailed
> once again in the name of package management, going over to Debian.  I
> told friends then, and will say it again now, Debian is a monster to
> install, but once you get it running there really isn't anything

I agree, and at one time I would have (and have in the past) gone through the 
several tries it would take to "get it right", I don't have the amount of time on 
my hands that I used to have. I am quite busy teaching Chemistry, and I need the 
computer now as a utility. I have said in an earlier post, that Linux has ceased 
to become a hobby for me and has become more of a necessity. If I can't figure 
out how to hook up a network printer without wading through scads of 
documentation and hours of reading and tinkering, then at this juncture I would 
say that such a system is pretty useless to me. And I say that as a person with 
quite a few years of honed ninja computer skills under my belt.

> easier to maintain and upgrade.  But about 18 months ago I discovered
> Ubuntu, and I highly recommend it.  It combines the power and
> manageability of Debian with the user-friendliness Debian has always
> so desperately needed.
> 
> A few notes about myself: I'm a CLI junky - I use aptitude's command
> line to install packages, prefer fluxbox (but change WMs fairly
> regularly and remain a big fan of CTWM), burn CDs with cdrecord, edit

I like to use FVWM2, and use it when I boot into WIndows (Cygwin). I don't find 
TWM attractive, although it was the first one I ever used, and until I stopped 
using Slack, it was my favourite WM. Part of the reason was that I found a way to 
create multicoloured dropdown menus -- even menus that automatically graded the 
colour simply by picking a first and last colour. I can't remember what was it 
about CTWM that was different from TWM; but I don't think it had much more (I 
could be wrong).

There are a ton of things you can do and configure under feeble that simply can't 
be done under TWM. This is especially true with toolbars which swallow 
applications (clocks, xterms, you name it). You can configure the .fvwm2rc script 
to behave as a .xsessions file also.

> with vim (not ed - I'm not THAT hardcore), and just generally avoid

I use Elvis (a popular vi clone). Won't use VIM; won't use BSD's vi either. Elvis 
has both a GUI mode and a console mode. You can configure it to decide which one 
is more sensible (GUI if you are in an xterm and console if you are already in a 
console). I know EMACS, but use it seldom. Elvis already has syntax highlighting 
for just about all languages, so I don't need EMACS for that. It also has HTML-
based help. Elvis's browser is just another edit window, implementing the web-
based presentation similar to Lynx.

> GUI programs other than Firefox and Jpilot.  I'm also the author of
> the "Bashprompt HOWTO."

I read it, and I will thus thank you for teaching me about them. I added a few 
modifications: Check out my webpage on BASH prompts: 
http://alimentarus.net/tty_tut.html

Regards

Paul King

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