Is there still a place for electronics techs?

[Nicholas Bodley]

On Wed, 15 Jul 2009 13:18:33 -0700, JeffM wrote:

Sounds like you do all your gaming at work.

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.

Ah. The M$-centric view.
It's NOT the *hardware* that's the problem. The problem is the "modern"
software --specifically the useless eye candy.

Been wondering about Compiz Fusion.

There is a zero-cost solution, however: Invariably, those folks with the
"broken" apps found that they ran just fine under WINE (in turn, under
Linux).
http://google.com/search?q=site:slashdot.org+intitle:Vista+apps+broken
+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!
<http://distrowatch.com/> 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.

 

[JB]

Used to be that discards were a nice source of parts. These days, if you
salvage surface-mount parts from a modern circuit board, you might not
know which type of component they are, because they are too tiny to mark
economically, and requiring a good microscope to read markings isn't
practical. I've come across component identifiers that decide which type
a given SMD is, and then measure it, but those are rather out of hobbyist
range (although, imho, not too costly for what they do.)

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.

 

[Rich Webb]

On Tue, 21 Jul 2009 08:52:08 -0500, Nicholas Bodley
<n_bod_ley@speakeasy.net> wrote:

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.)

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.

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.

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

 

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

Nicholas Bodley wrote:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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

 

[Bob Larter]

Nicholas Bodley wrote:

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.

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
---^----^---------------------------------------------------------------

 

[Nicholas Bodley]

On Tue, 21 Jul 2009 14:29:04 +0000, Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:

[quoting nb]

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.)

(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]

If you don't understand why it doesn't work, you don't understand the
whole Linux/open source model.

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.

RHEL is stable because people put money into keeping it that way. SUSE
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.

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

Geoff.

[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.