The Vent and Rant Thread

[Katsunami]

With regard to stupidity: I think the internet just exposes us to more people who actually don't know what they're doing.

Today I saw some people lamenting the fact that Linux _still_ isn't one of the top dog operating systems on desktops and laptops. "Everybody is denying the numbers", one said. "Linux runs on EVERYTHING but desktops and laptops, from phones to supercomputers!"

The one thing this guy forgets is:

- A phone runs Android. Yes, it has the Linux kernel under the hood, but nobody knows. For all intents and purposes, the OS is Android, not Linux.
- A supercomputer doesn't run an off-the-shelf Linux most of the time. The builders of the supercomputer for a distro such as Debian, Red Had/CentOS or whatever, strip it, rebuild it to their specifications, and write their own drivers. Maybe they even start from scratch, from the source code. Yes, the OS is Linux, but it's a specific version for that computer.

And the most important point:

- Linux isn't used on desktops or laptops by the average person not because of the fact that it's a bad OS (it isn't), but because it doesn't run the software the users want to run, or doesn't support the hardware users want to use.

Yes, that's not Linux's fault, but still. People use an operating system for the applications it runs and the hardware that is supported, not for the sake of running a particular OS. You first choose your applications, then you choose your hardware, and THEN you choose an operating system that supports both, and on a desktop and laptop, it often ISN'T Linux.

In short: people having an entire discussion about computers and operating systems without knowing what using a computer is really about: GETTING SHIT DONE.

[DMcCunney]

One of the things I just got finished doing was to install the Win10 Creator's Update on my desktop. I got tired of waiting to be told it was available and forced it. It worked fine, though it took a long time. There was an initial heavy burst of activity as the software was downloaded and the upgrade process started, then hours where nothing appeared to be happening. It did finally tell me it was done, and several reboots would be required to complete installation.

One side effect of the Update was that Microsof't's new browser, Edge, started working. It failed to run under the profile I normally use, but since I run Firefox as production browser, I didn't much care. Since it did now work, I decided to poke at it a bit.

It's fast to invoke, and seems to comply with current web standards and be reasonably secure. It even has an extension capability, though little I actually want is currently available.

One thing that got added in recent builds is the ability to read ePub files in Edge. There's only one small problem. Edge has no current way to open files in the local file system. On other browsers, you can use file:// to navigate the local file system in the browser, but Edge doesn't support it. (I'm told the Edge developers are looking into doing that. Various developer comments indicate not being able to open local files in Edge rules out any use in development.)

I was bewildered. I can understand security constraints where you don't want the browser to write to the local file system, since what it was writing might be malicious, but not reading it?

Well, yes, Microsoft is heavy into cloud services these days, and folks there might have an optimistic notion that users will store everything on the cloud and nothing locally. But since we don't all have broadband fast enough to make effective use of the cloud like that, let alone whether we can afford cloud services at the level required, I expect to be dead and gone before this will be close to true.

I do wonder what the Edge team is thinking.
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Dennis

[wodin]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

...
Well, yes, Microsoft is heavy into cloud services these days, and folks there might have an optimistic notion that users will store everything on the cloud and nothing locally...
Dennis

Or perhaps to encourage them store everything on the cloud.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by wodin

Or perhaps to encourage them store everything on the cloud.

Yes, but there are limits to how fast that can occur.

And MS's idea of the customer these days is the Enterprise, which is increasingly moving to cloud storage.

Home users aren't the customer. The customer is the one who actually pays you money for what you provide. For Windows, that's the OEMs who pay MS a license fee to pre-install Windows on PCs they sell, and corporate users who pay for support contracts. It isn't us.
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Dennis

[wodin]

Ahem!

I pay for every OS and application I have on multiple computers. It might be peanuts to M$ but it's a considerable amount of money for me.

[Katsunami]

Pffff... Windows 10...

On my desktop (which has the Creator's Update), the "Manage" option is gone in the This PC shortcut I made in the start menu. My laptop, which also runs Creator's Update, still has this option. Don't know if 'something' is wrong on the desktop (everything seems to work, including some almost 20 year old Windows 98-era games), or if it's just the latest feature removed by some update or another.

Sometimes I wonder what Microsoft is thinking. If they strip some more features, we'll end up with Windows 3.1 with regard to manageability.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by wodin

Ahem!

I pay for every OS and application I have on multiple computers. It might be peanuts to M$ but it's a considerable amount of money for me.

I was referring specifically to Windows. Applications are another matter.

The vast majority of users historically did not directly purchase Windows. It came pre-installed on PCs they bought, and the price of the machine included the cost per machine for the Windows license the PC vendor got from Microsoft to let them bundle it.

The vast majority of users got a new version of Windows because they bought a new machine that came with a new version of Windows. Very few upgraded in place, and purchased a new version of Windows to do so.

If you are one who did, you are one of a very small fraction of Windows users worldwide.

When your installed base for your software is billions of machines, what any individual user might want won't even be on your radar screen, even if they did actually purchase it.

This has been true for as long as Windows has owned the desktop.
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Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Pffff... Windows 10...

On my desktop (which has the Creator's Update), the "Manage" option is gone in the This PC shortcut I made in the start menu. My laptop, which also runs Creator's Update, still has this option. Don't know if 'something' is wrong on the desktop (everything seems to work, including some almost 20 year old Windows 98-era games), or if it's just the latest feature removed by some update or another.

It's here on my desktop. This PC is a desktop icon, and Manage is selectable from it.

You can also reach the same functions from Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Computer Management.

Is that not available on your laptop?

Sometimes I wonder what Microsoft is thinking. If they strip some more features, we'll end up with Windows 3.1 with regard to manageability.

I was quite adept at managing Win3.1. You just had to know what to tweak in Win.ini and System.ini.
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Dennis

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I was referring specifically to Windows. Applications are another matter.

The vast majority of users historically did not directly purchase Windows. It came pre-installed on PCs they bought, and the price of the machine included the cost per machine for the Windows license the PC vendor got from Microsoft to let them bundle it.

The vast majority of users got a new version of Windows because they bought a new machine that came with a new version of Windows. Very few upgraded in place, and purchased a new version of Windows to do so.

If you are one who did, you are one of a very small fraction of Windows users worldwide.

Me, too. FWIW. (We build our own desktops, here, so...) And, of course, like everyone else, all my Office apps, as well.

When your installed base for your software is billions of machines, what any individual user might want won't even be on your radar screen, even if they did actually purchase it.

This has been true for as long as Windows has owned the desktop.
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Dennis

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

It's here on my desktop. This PC is a desktop icon, and Manage is selectable from it.

You can also reach the same functions from Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Computer Management.

Is that not available on your laptop?

You can reach the function by right-clicking the Start-button and choosing Computer Management. I've been doing it from the This PC shortcut however, since a very long time. While I can just change that habit of course, I'm adverse to having options taken away that have been there for like... 15 (?) years.

I was quite adept at managing Win3.1. You just had to know what to tweak in Win.ini and System.ini.

Call me crazy, but I liked it when Windows, and programs, had their own ini-files in their folders. Easy to back up before you change anything, able to be changed with any text editor, even outside the OS or application, and if something went REALLY wrong you could often just delete the ini-file and the program would make a new one with the defaults. (Don't know if Windows did.)

When writing backend systems for websites or applications, I often put the main, very important settings into a file called "settings.ini.php". It contains stuff like (in PHP):

define("SETTING_NAME", "ValueX");

And if that's not possible or it needs to be easier (I have one system where the users need to set the settings, and then upload the file, as there is no management backend), I create a file reader/writer to make a file containing:

SETTING_NAME = ValueX

This file mostly contains the minimum settings needed to get the site/application running and enable the management system (if any). If the application doesn't start because of a wrong setting, it can be changed with a text editor; a lot easier than having to jack around in the site/app's database. Normally I also provide the fallback mentioned earlier: if you delete "settings.ini.php", the site/application will write a default one, so it will at least start, and you can configure it from scratch.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

You can reach the function by right-clicking the Start-button and choosing Computer Management. I've been doing it from the This PC shortcut however, since a very long time. While I can just change that habit of course, I'm adverse to having options taken away that have been there for like... 15 (?) years.

You can't recreate the shortcut? No idea why it disappeared from the laptop, but you ought to be able to put it back.

Call me crazy, but I liked it when Windows, and programs, had their own ini-files in their folders. Easy to back up before you change anything, able to be changed with any text editor, even outside the OS or application, and if something went REALLY wrong you could often just delete the ini-file and the program would make a new one with the defaults. (Don't know if Windows did.)

Many programs still do have their own ini files or the equivalent.

Backup and restore were easy enough. The trick was remembering where they all were.

Lots of folks were unhappy about the Windows Registry, where everything got stored in a hierarchal database that requires a special tool to view and manipulate. The nice thing about ini files is that they were plain text and could be diddled by your editor of choice.

One thing I'm looking at here is putting at least some of that stuff up under a Software Configuration Management system. Won't work for the registry, which is a binary blob (four, in fact, one for each hive), but will work fine for text based config files.

Lots of things these days make use of SQLite, a public domain SQL compliant DBMS implemented as a single library. For example, Firefox stores bookmarks and history in a places.sqlite DBMS, and uses SQLite elsewhere, too.

The folks who make SQLite have an SCM called Fossil. It looks like it might be quite applicable.

A first target would be Firefox's prefs.js, since I do a lot of browser fiddling.
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Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Me, too. FWIW. (We build our own desktops, here, so...) And, of course, like everyone else, all my Office apps, as well.

Office apps would be things you bought. Whether you bought Windows would depend on where you got the machine. If you built your own, you would need a retail version of Windows to run on it.

I got cured of building my own. It reached the point where maintenance became an increasing bother, with several fails I had to recover from. These days, I get off the shelf systems. My current desktop is a refurb HP small form factor machine. It's an ex-corporate system disposed of when it came off lease. Because it's a refurb, it got wiped of former content, and was resold with Windows, Chrome, and a current Java runtime, and that was it. Those are all things I'd have anyway. No trialware or bloatware that I'd have to tediously remove.

The hardware isn't the latest and fastest, but was more than adequate for what I do, since I'm not a hard core gamer and not doing heavy development. It was also expandable. It came with 8GB RAM but can be expanded to 32GB, and has slots to add stuff. One addition will be a PCI USB3 adapter, since it was USB2. That wasn't a limitation previously, since most of what do doesn't need USB3, but some off what I plan to do does.

And the box cost me $250, which was a nice price, thank you.

Next step will be configuring a new additional machine. A neighbor in my area is a chap I met when he was walking his dogs, Rory and Pudding. Rory thinks I'm the Best Thing Evar! because I rub her belly and let her try to lick my face off. He's an independent developer, working mostly in Java, and we've spent time talking tech.

The last time we spoke, he mentioned having a Dell All-In-One system with a failed HD that he couldn't use, and did I want it? Free hardware? Sure.

I picked it up and plugged it in. It boots and runs diagnostics, but thinks the HD has problems. Well, I knew that. A replacement HD is easy enough.

The issue is space. I don't have room for two 23 inch monitors where the computers live, so I would want to connect my existing KB, mouse, and monitor to is via a KVM switch. Fortunately, it has an HDMI Out port so I don't have to use its monitor. It can live sideways on its side on the shelf under the computer desk where other systems live.

Once up, it gets Linux installed and I have another machine I can use.
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Dennis

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

You can't recreate the shortcut? No idea why it disappeared from the laptop, but you ought to be able to put it back.

Oh, the shortcuts are there, both on the desktop and the laptop, and I can remove and recreate them. The desktop however, is missing the RightClick -> More -> Manage option, which the laptop still has. (The "More" menu in itself is useless also, because the right-click menu is only three options long, including itself.)

Many programs still do have their own ini files or the equivalent.

Backup and restore were easy enough. The trick was remembering where they all were.

Lots of folks were unhappy about the Windows Registry, where everything got stored in a hierarchal database that requires a special tool to view and manipulate. The nice thing about ini files is that they were plain text and could be diddled by your editor of choice.

Yeah, you know... Linux has (had?) /etc (editable text config), of which the community was very proud. Then the Gnome developers, in collaboration with Red Hat went and created dconf, which is basically a Registry for Gnome and X.org.

The Linux community also prides itself on a totally modular bootup sequence, which can be changed, enhanced, and customized just by using a text editor... and then, Red Hat again (and the poisonous archdevil in the open source community, Lennart Poettering) went and created systemd.

Lots of things these days make use of SQLite, a public domain SQL compliant DBMS implemented as a single library. For example, Firefox stores bookmarks and history in a places.sqlite DBMS, and uses SQLite elsewhere, too.

Yes. It's easier than implementing one's own text-based ini-file reader/writer, or using a library te handle ini-files. There are some open source programs that can read/write SQLite databases, so if you keep to one table with settings and values, it's doable.

[Katsunami]

I've probably mentioned before that I still play Baldur's Gate (1) once in a while. I've finished it in 1999, and in 2001, and then tried to play it for 5 years using different mods and always got stuck somewhere because of some game-breaking bug. Between 2006 and 2015, I've restarted BG1 several times, installing only the minimal mods needed (FixPack, Unfinished Business, one to up the resolution to 800x600, and an alternative GUI to match). However, I always got distracted somehow, forgot what I was doing, and then restarted.

My latest attempt was started in 2015, when I decided to replay my old RPG's once more, from start to finish, before shelving them... probably forever, as some of them are getting very hard to run, and harder to look at, with 640x480 and 800x600 resolutions.

I wrote down every quest I encountered and ticked it off when finished, because the BG1 journal is not searchable; it's basically just a scroll. I did everything there was to do before going to Cloackwood, except for the Firewine Ruins. Started them... got stuck in the middle of 5 million kobolds, got bored of fighting myself through the maze, and... now it's 2017. Two years later.

Yesterday I decided to pick up the game at that point, installed it (to get all the registry entries and stuff), removed the folder, and replaced it with my old one so I'm 100% sure the mods are exactly as I left them. (Mixing mods and savegames is a very BAD idea.)

BG1 is getting hard to run; there are several mods to work around DirectX issues, and I spent all evening trying to figure out why the game wouldn't run without graphical glitches, stutters, and characters getting stuck. It did, on the laptop? On the computer before it? It's got exactly the same install...... no... wait.

I remembered that GOG.com has incorporated some of graphics-fixing mods at one time or another to fix these issues, and one of them was an installation of a setting called "ForceDirectDrawEmulation", which can be done using a mod (they used that in the past), or by installing a database with the Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit. They also used that in some installers of the Inifinity Engine games, such as Planescape Torment.

On Windows 10, I found out two years ago, ForceDirectDrawEmulation doesn't work anymore, neither as a mod, nor as a setting in the ACTK, so I removed it, and replaced it with a different mod. (Strangely enough, enabling one of the software rendering options in BG1 also fixes the problems, something that works on Windows 10, but not on Windows 7. Also, on Windows 10, all compatibility settings for the executable can be disabled.)

So, I loaded the ACTK, and there it was: a GOG.com-created database, setting ForceDirectDrawEmulation, which was probably messing up the game. I removed it, re-instated the mod I had been using on the laptop, and now the game seems to run as it should. At least, I've wandered around a few maps, and up until now, I saw no glitches. It _seems_ the game runs... but last time, I got stuck in at a game-crashing spot in Cloackwood Forest, and couldn't finish it. I hope I can get through and finish the game once more, for the third time, almost 20 years after release, so I can finish up Icewind Dale 1 (at 80% now), and Jade Empire (also around 80%) and get some of my gaming past done forever.

Oh, and the rant? Yeah. How would someone who HASN'T jacked around with these Infinity Engine games for 20 years know where to look to get it to run? At around 2007 these games got problems, when MS and nVidia/AMD/Intel started dropping old DirectX stuff from the drivers, and there is a heap of tips online on how to get it to run, but that is information up to 10 years old, and out of date. On Windows 10, _ALL_ compatibility options need to be disabled, _ALL_ ACTK settings need to be removed (for BG1), and only one mod, or switching to software rendering works to get the game to run. Nobody but a hard core fan from the old days, or a determined "I want to play the old version" player would be able to discover this on his own.

Now, let's see if I can fight my way out of Firewine, and then finally continue the game's story. *IF* I ever play it again (probably in a Win98 or XP virtual machine by that time), I'll probably skip that 'story'. There's nothing there except millions of Kobolds and an Ogre Mage that has some loot I don't need at this point.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Yeah, you know... Linux has (had?) /etc (editable text config), of which the community was very proud. Then the Gnome developers, in collaboration with Red Hat went and created dconf, which is basically a Registry for Gnome and X.org.

I can sort of understand doing it. And X.org is a PITA to manage, and likely to go away in favor of Wayland

Many years ago, I attended a talk at a local Unix Users Group. (Unix user's group. Linux wasn't even a gleam in Linus Torvald's eye at the time.) The speaker was Peter Weinberger, the W in awk. He talked about the need to replace X-Windows. Asked "What will that be?" he said "I don't know. That's your problem! We got you to where we are now. It's up to you to take the next steps."

It's finally occurring.

The Linux community also prides itself on a totally modular bootup sequence, which can be changed, enhanced, and customized just by using a text editor... and then, Red Hat again (and the poisonous archdevil in the open source community, Lennart Poettering) went and created systemd.

There is a lot of unhappiness about systemd, and various distros that swear blind it will never be included.

And I've already seen one Linux distro that dispenses with easily edited shell scripts and text config files and does everything in Python.

Yes. It's easier than implementing one's own text-based ini-file reader/writer, or using a library the handle ini-files.

There are a few ini file reader/editor apps out there.

There are some open source programs that can read/write SQLite databases, so if you keep to one table with settings and values, it's doable.

If you are comfortable at a command line, you can just to it in SQLite with SQL statements.

The Fossil devs point at a third-party GUI written in Qt called Fuel if you want a GUI.

For the sort of thing I want to do, a single table suffices.
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Dennis