Cortex M3/M4 with bootloader ROM

AFAIK (i.e. last time I heard or paid any notice) MS won't issue security updates for XP after next April. Consequence: little until the punters current machine dies -- except that there will be more machines that can be co-opted into botnets.

OK, that makes a lot more sense. I am not sure I believe that Gentoo has more ebuilds than there are Debian packages, especially when you include additional repositories (like Ubuntu PPA's) which usually work fine, but I am not going to argue without researching for statistics.

There are, of course, other ways in which Gentoo might suit better - such as the more "bleeding edge" versions of software. Debian stable and Redhat (as distinct from Fedora) are often slow at getting updated packages.

I've started pulling down the individual "updates" so that I can reapply them manually. And, kept track of the install log for a typical autoupdate in case there were some prequisites in the order by which updates need to be installed.

A Dell machine "without OS" (i.e., COA but nothing actually *on* the disk) is $10-20 here. Regardless of whether it's a workstation,

1 or 2U server or a real BEHEMOTH! Laptops tend to be more "precious" (which is fine for me as I prefer to work on a full size keyboard and often need lots of peripherals that make a laptop lose its smallness/portability)

IME, they don't need to talk to it, *ever*. I have (Dell) machines that have never directly been on the 'net and they neither nag me to "activate" nor "quit running" due to lack of activation.

Note that you need Dell media ("Reinstallation CD") as retail media will nag you just like every other non-Dell.

Of course, the preponderance of (desktop) machines out there seems to fall between IBM, Dell & HP. The "oddballs" have a much smaller market (Acer/eMachines, etc.) including the "build your own" sorts.

This, however, can be a major ordeal as A requires B and C. But, B requires P and Q while C requires M and N. And each of these requires...

When I build a new *BSD system, I research the release histories of the various "packages" (not always the correct term) available to decide which "bug sets" I am willing to live with. *Then*, the next step is to figure out which order to build each package (including the dependencies that I probably didn't explicitly think of when forming my initial "package list"). With a fair bit of planning, I can eliminate the need for the build of A to deviate into the fetch/build of B (and P and Q) and C (and M and N). It's just easier for me to keep track of where in the process the machine happens to be, currently in the event that I have to SIGKILL/SIGINT it.

[the last being necessary if I notice some error/warning that needs further clarification (inspection of sources) to appease me. folks who create packages should be required to create patchsets that "fix" all warnings/errors!]

Or, that requires a specific version of a .so -- perhaps not the "most current". Helps when your system allows multiple versions of a single .so in the "library" and uses symlinks to sort out which is "current" (so you can build against a particular

*older* version if the newest is found to be problematic).

IME, biggest problem with "packages" is the folks who undertake their maintenance/packaging aften don't understand the actual app. Their criteria for success is: "Hooray! It built with no errors (from the compiler/linkage editor)". Even packages that have test suites available in their basic distribution don't always get built (by the packager) *or* understood!

Of course, those that have *no* formal test suites leave you at the mercy of the packager: "What do I know about the quality of this binary compared to the intended quality from its original author??"

My favorites are Debian and Ubuntu in that order. The main feature I like about the former is the package management system. It's far superior to that used in RHeL et al.

I mean: apt-get update apt-get upgrade

That's all it takes to keep your system up to date.

And if you want an app:

apt-get install mysql

It gets all the dependencies necessary too.

Have you found a source for legit XP "retail" licenses? I really could use one...the OEM license is not supposed to be run in a virtual machine. Natch, that;'s what I need it for!

Bill M

I never said Linux "forced" unaligned partitions - the simple fact that Linux tools permit them is what made them (semi)incompatible with non-Linux tools.

Linux tools make only minimal effort to inform a user that a partition is not aligned and may be a problem for another OS. They do nothing to help the user in sizing a partition so it will be aligned.

VMware also runs *on* Linux hosts 8-)

VirtualBox does a good job for some guest OSes (and it gets better every time I look at it), but so far VMware works more smoothly, handles more devices and can run a wider selection of guests OSes without problems.

YMMV, George

Don't forget

apt-get moo

--

John Devereux

On Wed, 09 Oct 2013 08:14:15 -0700 mike wrote in Message id: :

They don't "self activate" whatever that means, they just don't require activation.

For the record, Microsoft has already stated that they will issue a patch when they shut down the XP activation servers.

I know you didn't, I did. That's what pissed me off so badly about Ubuntu. I carefully partitioned the disc on cylinder boundaries, and told the installer to use the existing partitions. Then it went away and did its own thing, all to save a quarter or half of a cylinder. It did the same thing on the text-mode install procedure.

Brain-dead, arrogant, or both.

I don't want training wheels, I want it to do as it's bloody well told, and it doesn't.

Of course. But that won't preserve an existing installation.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC 
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 

160 North State Road #203 
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 

hobbs at electrooptical dot net 
http://electrooptical.net

That's what yum is all about, package management. I think it's significantly better than apt-get.

You can do "sudo yum upgrade", which does the same thing as your sequence.

The thing I really like about yum is "whatprovides", i.e. "go look through the entire package database and find which one provides the obscure library that my poorly-packaged program needs." That's saved me a lot of time over the years.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC 
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 

160 North State Road #203 
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 

hobbs at electrooptical dot net 
http://electrooptical.net

VMware Converter creates VM images from existing installations. Note that I have only used it on Windows and have *not* tried it on a Linux box, but I have been told it is pretty straightforward with most systems.

Whether it is worthwhile depends on the devices involved. Obviously there is no point if you depend on some bus card device that can't be transported to a newer host. But VMware has no problem with USB, serial, parallel and most SCSI devices - it even handles many of the partial SCSI implementations typical of printers and scanners.

George

That's interesting. You and I seem to be having an interated failure to communicate on some of the other issues, though. It's hard enough future-proofing one's computing installations without having the tools decide that they won't cooperate.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC 
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 

160 North State Road #203 
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 USA 
+1 845 480 2058 

hobbs at electrooptical dot net 
http://electrooptical.net

I forgot to mention the Infineon XMC4000, no "recommendation" since I don't use/know it, but as far as I see, it has a serial bootloader in ROM.

Oliver

--
Oliver Betz, Munich 
despammed.com is broken, use Reply-To:

On a sunny day (Thu, 10 Oct 2013 23:36:01 -0400) it happened Phil Hobbs wrote in :

mm is anybody stopping you from writing a version of fdisk that does stick to your concept of how partitions should be divided?

Linux has always been, at least for me, 'if it does not exist write it'. or sometimes 'I cannot be bothered to learn this ..i*t' so I will write my own app.

Old Dutch saying (and I am sure it is universal): One should not look a given horse in the mouth.

And 'I want Linux to be compatible with Microsoft ' is NOT on MY list of priorities.

As to 'future proof', not one new kernel I tried had the same bugs as the previous ones. And the driver API changes, video4linux, the DVB driver, OSS , Alsa, etc etc, changes every year or moon phase or sunspot, have not figured out when exactly .. Meaning you have to rewrite your apps every time in many cases, including all scripts (command line flags change...). Now YOU did chose Linux, so get used to it.

All that, mind you, I ONLY run Linux, except for an old win98 but that seems to not understand the new graphics card, so its screen is now so messed up... should delete it.. but has my scanner driver.... Not that I use the scanner, I use the camera... Anyways future proof what year did you have in mind? In the computer world 6 month is already an unknown,

6 years ? 60? Maybe we all have a chip implant by then, and only need to _think_ to partition our brains.

In other words, if one has any complaints about Linux, it's proof positive that one is a lazy asshole. And here I thought that the communication failure was accidental.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC 
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 

160 North State Road #203 
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 

hobbs at electrooptical dot net 
http://electrooptical.net

On a sunny day (Fri, 11 Oct 2013 10:20:22 -0400) it happened Phil Hobbs wrote in :

The communication failure was possibly the channel that told you Linux does everything, and you believed it.

BTW if you dont want some scripts to call some routine (program) (say fdisk), rename the orignal mv fdisk not_today_fdisk , make a small script called fdisk that returns OK (exit 0), and see what happens (if anything). I do things like that sometimes to 'stay in control', you can make it log to with 'echo'. Sometimes it helps, and sometimes it does not, modifying the source a bit does the same. Yes it is hard work, I spend a full day programming asm, it is hard work too, especially if you want zero errors. Maybe it will erase all your disks, YMMV ;-)

I have used openSuse for quite a while. If you want better EDA tools fedora may be best. *buntu make me uncomfortable about security. Maybe it is time to try Debian or a derivative again. I prefer package (dependency) manager style Linuxes currently, though i can and will at need install from source.

?-)

I have Debian in my home desktop and NAS, Sabayon in my personal laptop. I picked Sabayon for the laptop to get new stuff quickly since it's a rolling distribution. So small weekly updates instead of a huge one twice a year like Fedora or never like Mint...

For chip design work (at work) I've usually used RHEL or CentOS since that's what the tools officially support.