Reading your Linux journal over the holidays gave me the push I needed to finally install the thing myself (RedHat 5.1). I’ve never used Linux or Unix before although I am a bit familiar with things from NT TCP/IP stuff, as well as ftp, etc.

Anyway, I’m happy to say things went a lot smoother for me. I did a dual boot on my Win95 station and got Linux up and running in 90 minutes including Internet connectivity. I’ve now used Netscape from Linux (XWindows) as well as Lynx and managed to get myself stuck in the AfterStep windows manager until I finally removed it from the wm_config file. I’m finding XWindows a bit frustrating to use. I have a number of Linux books and they give great instructions on how to get XWindows running but not on how to USE the bloody thing. It certainly does not seem an intuitive interface by any means.

I do have a few questions that perhaps your readers could answer:

1) When I was installing Linux (RedHat 5.1) on a 2GB drive I created a 800MB root partition, a 100MB swap partition and a 800MB usr partition. Two install attempts in a row died 1/3 through with the message "insufficient space on device". I managed to get Linux installed by deleting those and creating a single root partition of 900MB and a boot partition of 100MB. Go figure. Anyone have any insights to this? I’d like to use more of my available disk space.

2) When in XWindows you can change to other Window Managers but then how do you change back without editing the wm_config file?

3) In XWindows a number of dialog boxes are opening up at the top of the screen and are cut off so that I cannot get to the title bar (and thus cannot move or close them). I cannot scroll the window (desktop) up anymore to get to them.

4) After seeing all the recommendations for KDE I thought I’d try it. I downloaded all the files in RPMs format and went to install them through the GUI RPM. All went well until the end when I got the message I needed a "ncurses.so.3.0" file (or something like that). Where can I get that file and how do I install it?

Regarding the issue of getting something DONE with Linux here is what I have to say: Linux does not run Dreamweaver, Homesite, Visual InterDev, Photoshop, Illustrator, FireWorks, Quark XPress, PageMaker, or Outlook98. Obviously there are some equivalents but none come close to the features and ease of use of the above applications. In addition, I lose almost all interoperability with my colleagues and business partners as they ARE using those applications. As a result, I cannot get any real work done in Linux. Of course I knew that going in and what I want from Linux is to use it as a file server, web server, and firewall box. For those needs it looks like it will be wonderful indeed but those claiming Linux can be a replacement for Windows95/98/NT and Mac are really kidding themselves. Linux has a LONG way to go before it will compete as even a possible mainstream desktop OS for even 30% of the users out there.

Book recommendations: I’ll second all the O’Reilly recommendations although I did not find "Running Linux" any more useful than many of the other books. "No BS Linux" is a good book and "Learn Linux in 24 hours" from Sam’s Pub was a handy companion to the RedHat manual during installation. The "Linux for Dummies Quick Reference" is also very handy as a small guide to commands as you hack away at the console. I looked at the huge "Inside RedHat Linux" from Sam’s Pub. this weekend. It seemed rather useless. It covers about everything but in very shallow detail.

Good luck with your progress and thank you for taking the time to put up the Linux journal.

Kit Case [kitcase@netutah.com]

Dear Dr. Pournelle,

Airbags, 4X4s. Glad to hear that you survived the rollover. I have a friend that used to be a paramedic in Hurricane (pronounced "hurriken") Utah. It’s about 2 hours north of Vegas and right where people going from LA to Denver or Salt Lake City, or the other way, fall asleep. He has told me that he has never had to call the coroner for anyone who had an airbag, used a seatbelt, or (if they were riding) wore a helmet. Needless to say (but I’m saying it) he has airbags in his vehicles, always wears a seatbelt, and wears a helmet when riding.

Southern Utah is definitely 4X4 country, especially in the winter, and people I know drive all sorts. The most common are pickup trucks (the 4 door "cowboy cadillac" type is popular) followed by Bronco’s and Blazer’s. Also, for the serious LDS families that come in Platoon size, the Suburban is well regarded.

Hope this helps,

Remember what I said about Microsoft's new web site? Check it out! Now you can't do much of anything without IE4. Visit it in IE4 and then in Netscape. Nothing works right in Netscape! But the Netscape version does have a big icon in the upper left that says "Download Internet Explorer Today!". Lovely, huh?

Herschel Adler

Burnside Kenneth W [kw.burnside@hosp.wisc.edu]

Eric: You asked us to name one competitor who went up against Microsoft and made "no mistakes". (See mail17.)

Stac Electronics fits the bill pretty nicely.

Back in late ‘80s, Stac had a hardware-assisted drive compression technology that pretty much ran the tables, for Windows 3.0 and 3.1. It was the Product of the Year for BYTE and PC Magazine and several others.

Shortly after these accolades, DOS 5 started shipping with Doublespace, a drive compression utility that was eerily similar. Stac went to court, citing patent infringement and reverse engineering of their product. Calling up the DoubleSpace source code in court showed that there were still blocks of comments that said "Copyright © 1987,1990, Stac Electronics".

Microsoft settled out of court, but not before dragging the case on to the point that Stac Electronics had effectively gone belly-up.

Of course, a true Microsoft apologist could say that Stac’s mistake was letting a copy of their source code leave the building.

People seem to forget one important thing, Stac won the case. They got a big settlement and royalties that more than compensated for any legal costs and lost sales. Stac demonstrated that when the facts were clear and a real legal complaint could be heard rather than whining, Microsoft loses.

People also forgot one other thing, Stac signed a lousy contract. If that doesn’t fall under major screw-ups, I don’t know what does. They didn’t just let the source code out by accident while discussing technical issues with buddies from Redmond. They formed a business agreement that involved that source code. There is no question that somebody in Microsoft pulled a fast one. Who knew in the higher echelons is another issue. I doubt the top guys would have gone about it so clumsily after what happened with Kildall’s copyright notices in PC-DOS 1.0.

This is not apologia. It is a critical issue of the case. If Stac had been on their toes there would never have been a conflict. Whether or not someone actually said "You screwed up, you trusted us," is unimportant. In business you must always assume it could come to that. Gasping out an "Et tu, Brute" is cold comfort for forgoing tense negotiations. You could be entering a partnership with your oldest friend in all the world but if you don’t assume he may turn on you or vice versa, you are a fool and deserve whatever evil fate comes your way. (Gary Kildall’s divorce comes to mind.)

Let us also not forget that drive compression was a small market at best and doomed by the rapid drop in storage prices just over the horizon when the case was pending. Also, after the idea had sunk in and others came up with their own compression schemes, numerous competitors were vying for shares of that market. Stac probably came out of the debacle with more money than if they had done a slow fade into commodified obscurity. (Not to mention that nearly everybody I’ve ever known who used drive compression ended up regretting it. Compressed folders make much more sense for desktop systems.) The hardware assisted version of the product didn’t enter into the case since it was for low-end systems. Once it made more economic sense to get a 386 and enjoy its benefits for everything that board was hurled into obsolescence. It does have a legacy in the ISDN stuff.

Stac did not go belly up. They got smart and realized that the retail market is for people who enjoy abuse from distributors, retailers, and end users all at once. Instead they went into the business of licensing their current and future patents. They have a strong standard in the ISDN field. Collecting royalties from people who do the legwork while you get to stay in the lab doing what you do best or just enjoying the money strikes me as preferable.

Remember the Bernard Baruch line about the stock market crash? "I have always thought that if in 1929 we had all continuously repeated ‘two and two still make four,’ much of the evil might have been averted." This is what people always forgot when dealing with Microsoft. They don’t have any special magical powers. They don’t even have a legion of flying monkeys.

The best example to learn from is the one Microsoft itself created. Remember when IBM was considered utterly invulnerable and was held in much the same regard Microsft is today? Remember who overcame their awe and started the revolution that forever changed the industry landscape? Microsoft did it with tough negotiation and pursuing assets IBM undervalued. Even Microsoft got complacent, though. IBM took to treating them as a vassal rather than a partner. Look what happened when the vassal lost its illusions.

Chuck Wingo

Cwingo@atlcom.net

Dear Jerry,

He’s right, cookies can be quite useful. If I gave the impression I think all of them are nuisances, than I didn’t express myself clearly, and I apologize. His example of Amazon was appropriate, as I have four Amazon cookies on my hard drive right now, along with those from three or four other sites I buy from. My point was that they’re there because I was alerted that they were going to be set, and then gave my permission. And as a bonus, by using a general filter, I’m no longer bothered by alerts about cookies from these sites, as I’ve set my system to always accept them.

There are other cookies that are not on my drive because I chose not to allow them, and I’m no longer bothered by those alerts, either. In short, I use a filter because I want to keep some control over what’s on my drive, without having to respond to alerts on every new page. Occasionally I’ll change my mind. If I do, all I have to do is navigate back to the beginning of a site and change my filter.

By the way, the site that did politely ask me to allow their cookie did so right in the site, not through e-mail. I declined the cookie, and when I attempted to go the next page in the site I got a page explaining their need for the cookie, and asking me to allow it. I hit the back button, changed my filter, and was off to the races. Not having read their source I can’t say for sure how they did it, but I can think of at least two ways, neither of which involves more that a few minutes of coding, and a willingness to be polite. Which is all I ask.

Thanks for you time, and your site.

" After a few adventures find that the CPU is bad. ..So I have to return the CPU. Fry’s does that, I fear, packaging returned stuff and reselling it. Why? Do they think it fixed itself on the shelf? Or that the people they hire would be competent to know if anything works or not?"

It has to do with the returns procedure in force at all major retailers. You walk up to the counter at Fry’s with defective product, or material you wish to return. You tell them it is either defective or does not work in your computer. The Fry’s employee checks the packaging to make sure all disks, CD, warranty cards, product, etc is in the box. They give you a refund and your outta there. The box goes into the back where it is re shrinked, and has that blue "quality" sticker attached. If you tell them it is defective, they chuck it into another box and get an RMA from the vendor.

Dear Jerry

Firstly, I must tell you that I was a loyal reader of your monthly Chaos Manor in BYTE. I miss a lot the BYTE Magazine, mostly because of it’s original perspective and it’s strong technical articles about everything in computing, from real-time kernels to web-enabled OLAP databases... ;)

Stupidly enough, BYTE Spain, which have never translated your column (as far as I remember), now it’s the "Spanish Edition of Windows Magazine", and that’s really disgusting to me!. And worse, the American edition of the "New" BYTE (if exists, I’m not sure) it’s not available in Spain for now.

I want to comment something about your SP4 adventures because I recently read them at your web site.

You said that IE 4.1 was missing after the setup. As far as I know (I’m at the SP3-level yet) the SP4 comes with IE 4.01 SP1, not IE 4.1!! But, as usual, Windows isn’t able of identificate the IE version correctly, so in "My PC" always appears "4.0". You should check the revision number: It should read "4.72.3110.8" or newer, since I have the Spanish IE and could be a bit older than the English one... :(

R.P. Nettelhorst [rpnettelhorst@earthlink.net]

I found this comment by one of your correspondents interesting:

Remember what I said about Microsoft's new web site? Check it out! Now you can't do much of anything without IE4. Visit it in IE4 and then in Netscape. Nothing works right in Netscape! But the Netscape version does have a big icon in the upper left that says "Download Internet Explorer Today!". Lovely, huh?

Herschel Adler

Herschel Adler [hadler@bigplanet.com]

Sincerely,

R.P. Nettelhorst

Bo Leuf [bleuf@algonet.se]

Jerry,

When I started using images on web pages, life seemed rather easy, since the defacto standard early became gif and jpeg format. Of course gif was not really that simple, there being two basic versions, and later variants such as transparent and animated. But, hey, eventually the main browsers could display any version with no problems. All we had to do was either have gif or jpeg to begin with, or use some conversion program. Any broken image icons on a webpage generally just meant an invalid path reference or wrong case in names.

Later, this autumn, I got the ACDSEE32 image browser (highly recommended) and found to my surprise that the "broken" images all rendered very nicely. This rather confirmed that we had new jpeg versions here, saved from Mac.

The gist of the reply was that there were two new browser-unsupported jpeg formats around this year—a CMYK JPEG image and an AppleDouble encoded version. The CMYK version will be sort of supported in the new 3.51 release of Opera "being the only web browser in doing so". It was noted that as yet the CMYK to RGB conversion was a bit crude.

He had however been unable to decompress the AppleDouble one.

This coincides with my own observation that the number of "broken" image icons on certain websites (Mac-made pages?) were on the rise.

Tom Myers tvmyers@iquest.net

Dear Jerry,

Yes, by all means get the SB Live board into Roberta’s machine. I have the value edition in mine, and wow! The setup program installs a thunderclap .wav file as the Windows startup sound,and the first time it playrd my six year old son looked up at the ceiling and then at me and asked "is that the computer?". It is the best sound I have ever heard from a computer, period. I am using Altec Lansing ACS 48 speakers, and they are wonderful as well. The only thing that bothers me about the SB Live is that I now have DOS drivers loaded in autoexec.bat, even though I use no DOS programs. Even if I rem them out, they reappear when I reboot. I guess there may be some entry in the registry I could change, but I really hate mucking around in there. It wouldn’t matter except I’m losing an IRQ for nothing. At any rate I am sure you will be pleased by the sound quality you will get from the SB Live, but don’t forget a good mike and good speakers.

By the way, I read somewhere that the Durango’s ride isn’t as good as the Explorer. It sure looks great though. Does it mean anything that your two alternatives, the Mercedes and the Dodge, are now products of the same company?

Take care of that leg.

Cheers

I take objection to Eric Pobirs’ response with regards to Stac Electronic, and your follow-up to it. Not a disputation of the facts—we’re all pretty much in agreement that Stac got into a legal dispute with Microsoft, Microsoft was clearly in the wrong, and Stac got paid out.

What I dispute is the historical perspective on the nature of drive technology. Certainly, from our perspective 7 years down the line, it’s clear that hard drive sizes would suddenly start to obey Moore’s law. (MR heads, one of the major keys to getting hard drives over 300 MB in the PC form factor, didn’t really come out of the labs until ‘93). At the time of the trial, it was NOT abundantly clear that this would happen.

Eric has indulged in the fallacy of perfect hindsight—that what is evident now was evident then.

Which leaves us with the following situation: Microsoft settled out of court. Had it gone to settlement, I strongly suspect that there would’ve been strong scrutiny on any drive compression technology they implemented, for either DOS or Windows. Had it gone to judgement, Stac would’ve starved, as a company, and been eliminated as a competitor, Microsoft could’ve bought their technology, and won that way. Settling out of court is less bad PR, which is worth the extra financial burden of the settlement.

As it was, Doublespace was part of DOS, and part of Windows, and there’s virtually no way to sell a drive compression utility that can compete with what you get for "free" with your computer/OS.

As near as I can tell, Stac took the money and got out of the business, because they didn’t see a way they could compete. The market still existed at the time of the settlement, and the fact that it would vanish in two years is more or less moot.

And now a question for yourself, and Mr. Pobirs: