Look, until I see proof, I'm not believing in Yugoslavia.

[dolari]

My birthday was a nice little quiet affair. After years and years of my mothers Mega-Parties with a billion kids over, I enjoy low key quiet times. I had an excellent lunch, a great dinner, cake and ice cream, and a few little presents here and there. It was nice of NASA to launch Discovery for me.

What did I do in the remaining couple of days? Install Linux on my computer. Four times. This has probably been the longest I've gone without switching OSes, only because XP was so...non-pissing me off. However, MS has pissed me off, so I'm running Fedora Core 4 at the recommendation of Darque.

Linux has come a long way from the Uber Crappy version I had back in Red Hat 5.2. As of now, everything on my machine is working except my scanner, where, before I'd lost a LOT of functionality. My scanner isn't working, and the TV program isn't working the way it should, but it'll keep me good till I get pissed off at it and jump back to MS.

One thing I have to say about Windows, though...it never asks me to rewrite win.com. :)

Comments

[salamanders.livejournal.com]

Crap I missed it, oh well. HAPPY belated BIRTHDAY!!! and ha ha I now know what you sound like thanks it Emily's videos :D *HUGS*

[kisai.livejournal.com]

win.com is not the kernel.

io.sys in Dos 1.0->Windows ME is the kernel to DOS (command.com = bash/sh)
In Windows there is kern386.exe
In Windows NT/2K/XP there is ntkernel.exe or something.

Anyways. In linux, the equivilent to windows is buying Mandrake or Redhat/Fedora Core, Debian or something where everything is precompiled and all drivers are already compiled as modules so that you never have to compile the kernel.

In the other direction, there is Gentoo Linux and FreeBSD where everything must be compiled. This would be fine-tuning for your exact system. So people who compile their stuff may make the applications themselves run faster, use more/less memory, etc however is the trade off a good one compared to the time taken to download and compile? Processors are fast enough these days that you can compile from source, but the tradeoff is only good for things that are performance tuned (databases,servers, games.) You might get 1-15% improvement in execution time by compiling for a AMD AthlonXP instead of i686 (Pentium Pro) or lose 15% by using the binary version of i386 that is stock. There are also problems with both.

Binaries (Windows DLLs/RPM's on Linux) get out of sync and you get DLL hell.
Versus Source, where everything is compiled to work with what was available on the system at the time of compile. This can also backfire if you overwrite something.

[jenndolari.livejournal.com]

I stand corrected.

"At least Windows never asked me to rewrite NTOSKRNL.386." :)

When I FIRST tried Linux back in the late 90s, I tried FreeBSD, and compiled it all myself and ended sitting on the floor, tears in my eyes, with code splattered around the room. It was also making fun of me.

Eventually, I got RedHat 5.2 for $5 at a Walmart, and installed it. It was REALLY primitive, but the RPM system really worked and it was nice to have PINE and LYNX again for giggles.

My problem in compiling code myself is screwing things up royally. I quit using Red Hat 6.2 after I completely scramble the kernel while trying to get BTTV to work with my TV Card. No RPM version back then, so I compiled everything myself, found an error which said to mess with this settig and that, and ended up with a dead OS.

So I'm very fine with Fedora Core 4, and rpmfind.net. I've already had to fiddle with some code to get my scanner to work (no dice), but at least I haven't hrashed the system at all. Give me a few more months playing with this and then I might have enough confidence to start compiling everything myself.

[kisai.livejournal.com]

Gentoo stuff, there is the gentoo Wiki and portage system which does all the compiling stuff for you. Mandrake/Redhat RPM's will usually work except for bleeding edge processor-specific stuff.