Another rant

[Xen]

Ken D'Ambrosio schreef op 17-11-2017 2:59:
> On 2017-11-16 19:51, Colin Watson wrote:
>> On Thu, Nov 16, 2017 at 06:36:45PM +0100, Xen wrote:
>>> You'd hope stuff would improve or that your life would become more 
>>> solid.
>>> 
>>> But during the 2000s Linux distros were pretty calm and well 
>>> maintained.
>>> 
>>> Now everyone rushes to the next big thing and doesn't actually finish 
>>> what
>>> they start....
>> 
>> Perspective is a great thing.  I recall people saying much the same 
>> kind
>> of thing in the 2000s ...
> 
> I remember, 'back in '95 or so, reading through the xf86config file,
> and corresponding HOWTO, praying to God I wasn't about to smoke my
> monitor.
> I remember how the audio HOWTO ended with, "And if you're still having
> trouble, fire up Emacs, and type 'M-x doctor'."  Which fired up an
> ELIZA clone.  Helpful, that.
> I remember when the networking HOWTO for the 3c503 offered to pay $5,
> cash, for anyone willing to send in the EPROMs off the card, because
> the module maintainer hated the cards so much.

Yet all of the Ubuntu wiki documention on the technical user wiki 
derives from Ubuntu 9, 10, and sometimes 12.

That's 2009.

The OpenSUSE wiki was something you could have a user page in and easily 
add to. That's no longer the case for a long time.

For instance, if it wasn't for older wikis, I would never have gotten my 
scanner running,

because today this information is not being added.



> All things being equal, I'm pretty content with Linux these days.
> Still some bumps here and there -- but any time I start to get
> frustrated, I remember just how much fun it is to remove viruses from
> Windows.

Never had to.

One time for my little brother.

I have never had a virus in 20 years of use.

The last virus I had was in MS-DOS, or Windows 95.

And the MS-DOS one was probably due to a friend who liked to collect 
them.

I haven't run a virus scanner (persistently) since Windows 98.

And the online runs I have sometimes done always came up false.

My amount of hours in Linux spent in frustration is about 3000x that of 
Windows.

And I have been using Windows for far longer (in hours) in the past.

Today I tried to discover how to use dar -- yeah it is crappy software.

I spent at least 10-15 minutes trying to remember how to unpack an 
archive.

It required dar --sequential-read -x - < input.dar

Otherwise it complains about missing "slices" and this is a program the 
(French) author has put considerable time into, but it's a mess.



Maybe you will say I have not spent frustrated time in Windows because I 
have not tried to develop for the platform or do advanced things.

And Microsoft did create a Windows 10 that was as unfinished as anything 
Linux puts out as they can be said to be doing the same thing now.

Features, robustness is not important.


> (NOTE: I'm not one of those nearsighted linux fanbois who
> think we *can't* get viruses or worms; we can.  But even if we do,
> there are mechanisms that can help get behind the scenes -- 'strace',
> 'lastcomm', 'find / -type f -executable -mtime -1 -size +1c', etc.)

Yup it's just that most people would never know how to use it.

As far as I know I can't even verify the integrity of all packages on my 
system without writing some difficult custom script or hunting for it 
online.

We have something called "stealth" but you first have to set it up using 
preferably a secondary computer and it doesn't hook into apt.

We have something else called "tiger" which seems pretty awesome but of 
course it requires more time and energy configuring it.

I mean it seems something you would do for a server, and a good one at 
that.

But as usual something like that is not configured by default and I 
can't run some command NOW to verify the integrity of my packages, now 
can I?

It's something a distribution like Ubuntu could have done in an instant.

Easy.

Easy to make.

So you laud security tools but in general they are absent.

And it requires a doctorate in Linux to be able to start using them.

It's great that the potential exists.

But it is not being implemented for ordinary people.


Just my $2 worth...