Augury and reading chicken bones for profit... (wasPun-ditry...)

[John Esak]

On Fri, Jul 23, 2004, John Esak wrote:
> ....
> >When and if Linux systems ever write strong enough underpinnings and
> >foundations for their software that such as screen readers could work...
> >maybe then I'll start looking more closely at it. On the whole,
> I still view
> >Linux as a toy for developers and a hell of an OS for small
> control system
> >chips.
>
> John:
>
> You have some unusual requirements vis-a-vis user interface (e.g.  your
> ``looking'' at something doesn't involve much use of your eyes).
>
> I wouldn't be surprised to find that there are good tools to meet your
> requirements under Mac OS X as the default installation has features that
> generate audio output of whatever is under the mouse cursor, have auto-
> zooming under the cursor, and other accessibility features.
>
> As for Linux being a ``toy'', I've been installing Linux in mission-
> critical applications since September 1997, and have been using it
> exclusively for ISP systems since 1998.  I don't consider systems that
> support 10s of thousands of e-mail accounts, web services, etc.  on a
> single server, to be toys.
>
> Bill

Bill,
I'm afraid that you particularly make my point more strongly than any
example out there. Sure, you have done all the things you say with Linux
since 1997... that is obvious... and all done well, I might add. However,
Bill, you are without doubt one of the most savvy developers in the
country... you know more about "all this stuff" and I use that term even
more loosley and precisely than it sounds....  than just about anyone I
know. You can keep the Linux stuff updated, fixed, pathed, on a daily and
more likely minute by minute basis than 99% of the people  out there... let
alone other developers out there.  Of course I was minimizing the scope of
Linux by calling it a toy... but the whole concept of what I meant was  that
Linux is _still_ a "system" for developers. There is no business user I know
who could successfully run a Linux system over the past 5 years.  Yet, I
know dozens of business owners running SCO with no in-house or even on-call
consultant. Your stuff works at your place and at your customers' because
_you_ maintain it and assure that it stays that way. I have many people
running SCO for years (decade about) now that have not called me, contacted
me, or needed me in _any_ way for all that time. They make their backups and
the system keeps on chugging.  The only thing I ever did for them is patch
them through y2k. Now, you mentioned '97, I'm talking since '89, '90 when
Linux was not ready for prime time. I tried putting up some folks on Red
Hat... years ago, right around 2000. It was an impossibility. No good RAID
stuff, difficult networking, lots of hardware conflicts and zero-support.
So, as little as 4 years ago, there still wasn't for me, a relative idiot
when it comes to O/S knowledge, but still smarter than the average business
user, a manageable ready-to-go Linux flavor to choose for a say small 15
user system. I could not keep a Linux afloat... not that is, unless I wanted
to spend LOTS of my time compiling modules... not from Linux, but from GNU
and everywhere else, just to do what I _needed_ to do. Compiling modules and
"making" executables is not something the average businessman is _ever_
going to do. You only do it because it is your life, your work, your
expertise. Even the latest SCO install, while it did not require much of
anything extra after it was put up, took a few hours of fiddling with to
make right. Had it been a Linux install, even SuSE I would guess, that few
hours would be more like a few days...

I know Linux isn't a toy, I was being facetious a little... but it is still
an "item" for developers just yet, not end-users. Perhaps, I am wrong and
the latest and greatest will function without problem. However, Jim just
downloaded the version Ken Brody mentioned. After running the install for
quite a while and doing lots of things, the progress just stopped with
"Error 139" and fizzled out. Now Jim as we know is a smart guy, but where in
the hell is he going to get the answer to what Error 139 is?  From someone
like you, or this list... I'm doubting there is somewhere he could actually
"call" to get such an answer.  Unfortunately, this is true of SCO, also...
nobody at the company itself to call with an install or after sale
question... It is all still developer-based.  So I am wrong. I apologize...
both Linux _and_ SCO are developer toys. :-)

Don't have any alternative to say is better... just saying what I feel is
still the current state of the art. If one wants a good multi-user system,
one still needs a consultant close at hand... and I don't think SuSE is
going to change that one bit. But, honestly, I didn't mean to insult Linux
or any of the amazing stuff you've done with it.

John