OT: cosmo, HTML GUi editors, graphics, games, computers, etc. (was Re: More on fP 6.0 features)

[Bill Campbell]

On Wed, Oct 27, 2004, Fairlight wrote:
>On Wed, Oct 27, 2004 at 12:50:03AM -0400, Bill Vermillion, the prominent pundit,
>witicized:
...
>> I think I mentioned that too.  A friend of mine who retired with a
>> big wad of money after 4 years of 24x7 on call when Verio bought
>> out the ISP he was head tech at once told me that he'd never
>> put an SGI or and SCO system on the 'net.
>
>Yup, those were the two.  I'd trust SCO systems on the net--either behind a
>firewall or if they were decently secured by one of the few people I trust
>to do the job correctly.  The folks that did the SGI's I'm thinking of
>across town were not the types that inspired confidence, based on some of
>the practices I heard went on.

I've put a few OpenServer systems on the 'Net without having any security
problems (although I found a few such as the release of OpenServer that had
777 permissions on ``/'' and every other directory on the system -- SCO
recalled that one very quickly :-).  At this point I doubt that there are
many crackers that know enough about OpenServer to succesfully attack them
in any case, other than perhaps DDoS.

...
>> That machaine was running a 120MHz Pentium with 128MB of RAM.
>> It ran faster than the SGI.   But the FreeBSD's of that era
>> were exceptionally lean.
>
>You know, I have that problem with linux nowadays.  1.2, 2.0, 2.2...they
>were all fast.  They got to 2.4, and I went from being able to boot linux
>three times in the time it would take to boot Win95 -once-...to the point
>where linux actually takes 20-30 seconds longer to load on the same exact
>P166--not just identical, the -same- system.  I dunno what they did to the
>2.4 kernels, but I'm not pleased with it in the least.  I hope 2.6 fares
>better, and they finally worked out the memory management.

I think the vast majority of the time required booting current Linux
systems is taken analysing hardware and setting up drivers.  Earlier
systems usually required building specialized kernels, and weren't nearly
as easy to use for the technically clueless.

>The days when you could claim to run linux from a single floppy on a 386
>with 4MB of RAM are long gone, IMHO.  I don't think it's technically
>possible.  Used to be, and it was handy.  But there are tradeoffs.  I

People are still building tiny Linux systems.  The LRP (Linux Router
Project) has evolved into another name, but there are still pretty tiny
Linux systems around, particularly if one counts things like the NetGear
and LinkSys commodity router boxen.

>wouldn't go back all that far, but I'd -like- to see the speed of 2.2
>brought back.  I'm almost certain the decrease resides in the memory
>management.  It's the most likely suspect.  Unless ReiserFS is slower than
>ext2, but I wouldn't expect it to be.  Hmmm.  Well, I'm running ancient
>crud here anyway, except my wife's machine.  On spanking new machines,
>nobody notices one way or another--but I think they'd scream even faster
>on those dual and quad Xeon 2.4GHz hyperthreaded systems if they had a 2.2
>kernel. :)
>
>Linux just isn't near as lean anymore either.  FreeBSD is not alone in that
>respect, I'm afraid.

To paraphrase my old ``Speed Costs Money...'', Flexibility and ease of use
costs time...

Bill
--
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