Baslinux mailing list

[Day Brown <daybrown AT hypertech.net>]

Well, waitaminit. If you got, BL, then you must have dos, and
CDROAST.zip or whatever is around. So, rather than go thru all the
rigamarole to config linux for it, why not just burn the disk with dos? 

And it seems like there is a way for BL to park a copy of whatever you
want printed in a directory where dos can access it.

What'd be nice, is if you could multitask *between* the operating
systems. Dos LFN & LTOOLS already offer access to the ext2, but maybe a
SWAP that would persist during the drop to dos would be cute.

I've used HP up to the 630C, and they all ran right out of the box,
knowing what to do with the print scrn button, and working fine with,
or- *without* all the wonderful font drivers. 

Most of the time, what I want the hard copy for, is to run down the list
of Linux commands to set something up correctly. I dont care about the
font. I love the 'print screen' button in dos. does it work with bash? I
know it dont with html.

I really liked the HP 630C, but it died. before that, I didnt care for
the Canon, and the Lexmark was awful. But every time a printer dies, I
go back out to the shed and bring back in the IBM PROPRINTER II, spray
the dried out ribbon with WD-40, and am back in business with 9 pin dot
matrix pin feed.

I'd use it with Linux, but the distros I've seen didnt have a driver for
it any more, and when I downloaded a driver, I found out that the
.extension was not something that my archive administrator knew what to
do with. Kinda like the problem mentioned with .RPM, which we see now
comes in two forms. As if we need yet another archive format besides gz,
bz, bz2, tgz, deb, tar and the Goddess only knows what else your
particular system cant cope with.

I remember this with dos; first there was .arc, then there was .pak, and
.zoo, .lzh, and I dunno what all, before .zip consolidated the market.
RAR dont really make that much smaller archives, but, unlike pkzip/unzip
or xf86config, it has an ANSI color scrollbar menu system that's a lot
easier to use. tgz would do well to pay attention to that kind of user
interface.

I sympathize with the newbies. I've been reading computer documentation
for 35 years, and the vast majority of Linux documentation sux. And
there is so damn much of it. I remember the first time I asked for man
on a 486; got tired of waiting, went to get coffee. I could just as well
have gone to Starbucks before the poor drive quit clunking.

I have some hope that BL can simplify the interface enough for newbies.
There are some distros that are easy to install, but there seems to be a
synergy of planned obselescence at work between the hardware OEMs and
the distro outfits... which make more money selling newer setups. 

Debian seemed to have a really good idea with apt-get, but now I find
their servers are down, so it is totally useless. Then too, there is the
risk of someone being able to redirect upgrade requests, which gives
them access to *your* computer.

Downloading and installing dos cdburners or printer drivers is lots
easier than Linux. If it aint .zip, then its .rar, and often an SFX,
self extracting. I have a Tekram uw scsi card, which came with a dos
driver... but the scsi card would *work in dos without it*. Most distros
dont have a driver for it.

But BL bypasses all these user problems by letting them still use dos,
and hopefully, with xwin and browser, use Linux for it's really good at-
surfing.