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Is there still a place for electronics techs?

I'm retired; Frozen-Bubble addict, but am getting RSI, and have to be really careful. FB's Level 70 is wicked! Split seconds count.

Been wondering about Compiz Fusion.

+WINE

Invariably? Guess that answers a very important question, which is, What proportion of MS Win apps run without probs. under WINE? From what you say, it looks very promising.

For Linux and similar (such as FreeBSD), Puppy Linux seems very good for old but good hardware; don't let the whimsical name put you off. DamnSmall Linux is another, and PC Linux OS MiniMe is worth a look.

By all means, be aware of Distrowatch! It's simply superb.

I've been very disappointed so often with Linux distros that *almost work* that I'm not bothering to try to learn why openSUSE sound doesn't work. I'm abandoning it, sooner, I hope (and it's one of the better ones.)

I'm putting my heart and soul into PCLinuxOS, which a friend says is really appreciated by serious users who don't want to struggle to get stuff working. PCLOS for short, it calls itself the "distro hopper- stopper", referring to people who hope that Yet Another Distro will work. Imho, PCLOS has the best likelihood of Creating Happiness. It has taken a lot from Mandriva, which has some uncommonly-nice tools.

Staying up too late, I got careless and wiped my partition table. That killed that HD,in a sense. Was dual-booting... Tried the recovery disc for XP, and -- no driver for Ethernet (nor Much Else). Had hidden away my drivers disc, I know not where, for reasons better not burdening s.e.r. folks with. Took a spare HD, and have been using nothing but Linux, this time, for keeps.

Nevertheless, I do think Linux has too many geeks with retarded emotional development who enjoy -- take pride in -- having arcane knowledge and dismiss the many who could use some help. ("Read the [man] page!") Of course, there are many mature types who actually do help; let's be fair.

At least, Linux is getting away from text so ugly that the cat decided not to drag it in. There's hope, and there's Ubuntu.

(Should have checked Jeff's links earlier. Good Stuff, indeed!)

Regards,

--
Nicabod =+= Waltham, Mass.
Reply to
Nicholas Bodley
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Almost none. Or all of them, depending upon what you want. Many games won't run due to graphics or copy protection issues, but there is a commerical version of Wine oriented twoard games. There also is a commerical version of Wine orriented twoard office applications.

Ubuntu is pretty good for a workstation, but it has long term stability problems. This week my 9.04 server stayed up a whole 3 days before starting to randomly fail. When it first came out it would not work 24 hours and the optical drive support was broken.

If you don't understand why it doesn't work, you don't understand the whole Linux/open source model. RHEL is stable because people put money into keeping it that way. SUSE is stable because Novell puts money into keeping it that way.

OpenSUSE is not because unpaid experimenters put their effort into making it the latest and greatest, with stability and function second.

Geoff.

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Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm@mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM
Reply to
Geoffrey S. Mendelson

Actually a jeweler's loupe can be quite inexpensive and there is a published marking code for a large variety of surface mount components. Surface mount soldering and desoldering operations require some skill development and practice on junk boards will help. It is bad form not to use brand new parts in customer equipment but if unavailable, or speed is of the essence, some used parts are easily put into service. I generally use parts from the junk box for personal projects and protos. It saves on shipping costs, gas, time and minimum order restrictions.

Reply to
JB

FWIW (another data point, perhaps), I was pleased to discover that openSUSE 11.1 *was* able to enumerate and use my laptop's sound system. Even more surprised when the laptop's "smartbuttons" for volume control and muting worked. And flat-out astounded that the button to en-/disable the WiFi was functional.

May give that a try after I catch my breath from hopping over to openSUSE after mostly using RH/Fedora distros.

--
Rich Webb     Norfolk, VA
Reply to
Rich Webb

I'd like to put in my vote for Ubuntu. I've used a lot of distros, & it's been the least hassle of the lot. The install was painless, & the only hassle I had with it was getting the best resolution out of my oddball multi-screen video card.

--
    W
  . | ,. w ,   "Some people are alive only because
   \\|/  \\|/     it is illegal to kill them."    Perna condita delenda est
---^----^---------------------------------------------------------------
Reply to
Bob Larter
[quoting nb]

(Topic was disappointment with openSUSE, about a month ago.)

Geoff,

I apologize for not checking sooner; still getting [re]accustomed to USENET after a long hiatus.

[GSM]

Good point, and no offense taken. I have probably fallen into a modest trap of thinking that certain distros. really should work on any more-or- less-ordinary hardware. I'm aware than Novell supports (shucks, owns, afaik) SUSE, but expected that sound on an recent MSI motherboard should work; it didn't.

is stable because Novell puts money into keeping it that way.

Indeed, so. open SUSE is stable enough, although on a few occasions, I have fixed problems by restarting. (SIN!) :) In the past, I have purchased paid Linux distros, although I haven't necessarily asked for help (my bad).

I do wonder whether the Linux community has failed to make clear its open source model; I'm no newbie to Linux*, although some questions I could ask are of newbie category. Nevertheless, I might have been using Linux intermittently for years without understanding what you're referring to. First distro I tried was Xdenu; ran Debian as command-line-only for a while on a 16 MHz 386 many years ago.

[Embedded P.S.: I do recall seriously thinking of purchasing OpenSUSE (or simply SUSE?) for maybe $60, for the assurance that SUSE would see to it that everything worked. At the time, though, I had good reasons for not purchasing it.

In openSUSE's favor, it seems, are:

1) If one stays with repositories implicitly (explicitly?) recommended by it, then apps are likely to work, or at least not cause grief. That seems true of several modern responsible, well-supported distros.

2) Security updates are "pushed" -- I get lower-right rise-up (they don't pop :) ) notices of updates, which leads me to believe that as soon as a fix is considered safe to propagate, it's sent out.

As I see matters, both of these items are benevolent spinoffs from the paid distro.

Kind thanks to you!

--
Nicabod =+= Waltham, Mass.
Reply to
Nicholas Bodley

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