From: Digestifier To: Linux-Misc@senator-bedfellow.mit.edu Reply-To: Linux-Misc@senator-bedfellow.mit.edu Date: Fri, 16 Sep 94 05:13:22 EDT Subject: Linux-Misc Digest #768 Linux-Misc Digest #768, Volume #2 Fri, 16 Sep 94 05:13:22 EDT Contents: Re: Horrific bug in DOOM! (MS-DOS lives!) (Shawn L. Baird) Mail Order Linux Workstation Vendors (E. Robert Tisdale) Re: Linux vs NeXTSTEP (Derrik Walker II) Re: OS/2 fan wants to try Linux.. What do I need ?? (A. Rohde) Re: Go for Linux available! (Christopher Wiles) Re: Word Processor for Linux? (Mike Stancliff) Linux X DOOM performance (explanation) (David Taylor) Re: Have you bought from Fintronics? (Steven Pritchard) Re: Horrific bug in DOOM! (Stephen David Wray) [Q] Any video processing tools for Linux ? (Andreas Busse) Re: Word Processor for Linux? (Philip Brown) AFTERMATH: Floppy Problems (Robert Spier) Re: CorelDRAW for Unix (Thomas Davis) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: scarrow@netcom.com (Shawn L. Baird) Subject: Re: Horrific bug in DOOM! (MS-DOS lives!) Date: Wed, 14 Sep 1994 17:42:37 GMT mark@taylor.infi.net (Mark A. Davis) writes: >My point, originally, is that the word DOS has nothing to do with >Microsoft... neither does the word "windows". The proper names for those >products always have been, and still are MS-DOS and MS-Windows! Microsoft Yes, but so what? Proper names are not neccesarily common names. The fact is that anything which bothers to call itself a "disk operating system" is most likely an obsolete design anyway. >could not, cannot, and will not be able to register common, generic >English words to their exclusive use. That would be like trying to Yet come companies have become so definite that their names have become the common term for the product. It's not proper to call a kleenex a kleenex, but it certainly is common. The fact is that regardless of the proper name of things, people are going to occasionally use a different common term. DOS is one of these things, so is Windows (or Windoze if you prefer). [ ... cute example removed ... ] >(Now substitute "windows", above in context of MS-Windows, X-Windows, >Amiga Windows, windows on your car, windows as an abstract concept of GUI, etc) Here we talk of proper names and you don't even use the correct ones above. X is called simply that, and MIT, I believe it is, has long grumbled about people calling it X-Windows. X Windowing System might be acceptable, I seem to recall that their objection is to the X being directly tied to the plural form of window. I've never heard of the Amiga environment being called Amiga Windows, either. I believe the proper name is still Intuition (and Workbench which represents sort of an AmigaDOS frontend, but is not really the windowing system proper). Most people don't seem to be getting confused as to what is what, so why worry? ------------------------------ From: edwin@maui.cs.ucla.edu (E. Robert Tisdale) Subject: Mail Order Linux Workstation Vendors Date: Thu, 15 Sep 94 05:03:05 GMT I have been keeping a list of "Mail Order Linux Workstation Vendors" which I post from time to time in this and other newsgroups. All of the vendors listed below will install Linux on the machines that they sell but provide varying amounts of support for it. I have not dealt with any of these vendors except 20/20 Technologies so I cannot recommend them to you. Both SW Technology and Fintronic USA, Inc. are listed in the Distribution-HOWTO and 20/20 Technologies should also appear there soon. Three vendors (20/20 Technologies, SW Technology and Fintronic USA, Inc.) sell Pentium based workstations which run Linux and the X Window System. In order to get a feel for the prices these vendors were charging, I asked each vendor to give me a quote for the following configuration: * 66MHz P5 CPU with heatsink & cooling fan (Intel Pentium or equivalent) * PCI system board with 256kbyte 15ns cache upgradeable to 512kbyte, three busmaster PCI slots and five 16bit ISA slots (ASUS I-P5MP3 or equivalent) (Intel Mercury II chipset or equivalent) * 16Mbyte 70ns system memory, expandable to 192Mbyte * PCI video card with 1Mbyte RAM (Orchid Kelvin 64 or equivalent) * 15" 0.27mm dot pitch 1280x1024 non-interlaced color monitor (Viewsonic or equivalent) * 32bit busmaster PCI Fast SCSI II adaptor (NCR53C810 or equivalent) * 1080Mbyte 10ms fast SCSI II hard drive with 512kbyte buffer (Fujitsu M2694ES or equivalent) * Double Speed CDROM Drive (Sony CDU33A or equivalent) * 1.44Mbyte Floppy Disk Drive (Teac or equivalent) * 2 high speed serial ports with 16550A UART, 1 parallel port * Minitower case with 250Watt power supply, FCC class B * 3 button X compatible serial mouse * 101 key keyboard * Linux, X and LILO installed and configured properly. Latest publicly released Linux kernel, full distribution of Linux utilities. DOSemulator and X windows configured to fit the hardware for optimal performance. Manual for the system, the system components and "Linux, Installation and Getting Started Guide" Two year parts and labor warranty, 30 day money back guarantee. Enjoy, Bob Tisdale (edwin@cs.ucla.edu) SW Technology 251 West Renner Suite 229 Richardson, TX 75080 Tel: (214) 907-0871 Fax: (214) 907-9339 Net: swt@netcom.com Price: $2769 Contact: Marvin Wu 20/20 Technologies 1786 Westwood Boulevard West Los Angeles, CA 90024 Tel: (310) 441-8855 (800) 486-2020 Fax: (310) 441-8869 Net: ahou@netcom.com Price: $3199 Contact: Gary Johnson Fintronic USA, Inc. 1360 Willow Rd., Suite 205 Menlo Park, CA 94025 Tel: (415) 325-4474 Fax: (415) 325-4908 Net: linux-sales@fintronic.com URL: http://www.fintronic.com/linux/catalog.html Price: $4122 (90MHz P54) Contact: James Vera ------------------------------ From: dwalker@omega.csuohio.edu (Derrik Walker II) Subject: Re: Linux vs NeXTSTEP Date: Wed, 14 Sep 1994 05:00:33 GMT S. Hosseini (saied@lando.wustl.edu) wrote: : Hi Linuxers, : I know there are lots of Linuxers with high performance PC's, so : there is a good chance that some of them have thought about : installing NeXTSTEP, or have had experience with : it and now converted to Linux, or maybe currently working with both : OS's on the same platorm. : I want to ask the following: : Given the same high performance PC platform, : 1. Which is cheaper to get? : (Answer is easy) Linux, of course. This is one of : the main advantages of Linux. Otherwise I wouldn't be using it. Educational users can get a butt-kicking deal. About $300.00 for the OS and the Developement environment. But it is not still free. : 2. Which one is easier to install and has less problem with existing : PC hardware? Next Step is easier to install, if you have the right hardware. It is extreamly pickiy about hardware. You can get the Compatabillity guide from ftp.next.com. : 3. Which one has more choice of application software? Well, with an x package like coexist, NS can run ns, unix, and x software. It runs unix software fine. I have compiled several apps for it with little or no problems. You just can't run x out of the box. : 4. Which one is faster (for the same task) ? Depends on what compiler was used. gcc is better than cc. Os stuff Linux is better. But then again, Linux isn't wrap-aound post script. : 5. Which one has a capability that the other doesn't have? NS has this awsome environment for development. It makes borlands look silly. It is completly object orinted. Also the GUI is the easiest. It makes the Mac look complicated. FVWM on linux isn't as easy to set upo and run. Nad configureing it takes some hacking. : 6. Which one has better future? (this is a question for discussion : and not for a definite answer.) Well, NS is growing strong in the buisness world, because of the ease of use and application building. Linux is growing popular with college students and hackers. I use both along with Macsa, pcs, and several UNIX's. I can tell you from experince that NS is a far beter OS. But it has a high price. It is in the perfomance catogory as NT and requires a lot of system to run. I have seen it run on as little as a Dell 486dx2-50 w/ jaws video and 16m ram. It was way slower than our NeXTStaion Turbo (a 25Mgz 040 w/ 32 megs). We now have a 486dx2-66 w/16 megs. It's a duel boot with NS and linux. NS is a lot more relaible, but slower. Linux is a lot faster, but less realiable. I am moving to Linux soon (from a mac) and hope to run NS in the future. I use both regularly so feel free to email me with any spacific questions you may have. I hope I have helped -Derrik =============================================================================== Derrik Walker II Student of Computer Sciences Cleveland State University Automation Assistant, Law Library d.k.walker85@csuohio.edu dwalker@omega.csuohio.edu =============================================================================== http://pclab19.law.csuohio.edu:8099/html/dwalker/home.html ------------------------------ From: exp109@modcomp.physik.uni-kiel.de (A. Rohde) Subject: Re: OS/2 fan wants to try Linux.. What do I need ?? Date: 15 Sep 1994 14:11:23 GMT In article <354l6i$kdg@owl.nstn.ns.ca>, Jim@JChisholm.Phys.Dal.Ca (Jim Chisholm) writes: |> Hi folks.. |> I'm a long time advocate of OS/2 and I am curious about Linux.. |> |> 1)will it run on a386DX40 8M ? yes |> 2)how much HD is required ? 100MB are sufficient if you don't install everything |> 3)does it require it's own partition or can it live alongside DOS and OS/2 in |> the same partition ? Can run on a DOS partition (UMSDOS) although I never tried this |> 4)can it be booted from DOS or does it require it's own boot manager ? You can use OS/2's bootmanager in conjunction with lilo (LInuxLOader) |> 5)what are the files required to get me up and running ? Get the Slackware distribution from a near FTP site ( ~50 Disk, you don't need all) |> 6)where can I get these ? a mirror of sunsite.unc.edu. There is a list of mirrors at sunsite.unc.edu in /pub/Linux |> 7)no flames please about not having read the FAQs, I don't know which farqing |> faqs to read !! You SHOULD read the DOCS, that come with Slackware BEFORE doing anything (just before getting all 50 disks via ftp) Axel ------------------------------ From: a0017097@wsuaix.csc.wsu.edu (Christopher Wiles) Subject: Re: Go for Linux available! Date: Wed, 14 Sep 1994 19:28:31 GMT rph@netcom.com (Randy Hootman) writes: : I have xgoban and wally up and running under Linux. If you are a go : player and interested, you can anonymous ftp from: : : ftp.netcom.com /pub/rph/xgoban-wally.tgz .. but permissions are such that one cannot enter /pub/rph ... -- Chris a0017097@wsuaix.csc.wsu.edu wileyc@halcyon.com wileyc@quark.chs.wa.com "... but I want to use all eight comm ports SIMULTANEOUSLY!" PGP 2.6 public key available by finger for the clinically paranoid. ------------------------------ From: stanclif@cris.com (Mike Stancliff) Subject: Re: Word Processor for Linux? Date: 14 Sep 1994 23:03:40 -0400 In article , awasser@mtkgc.com (Adam Wasserman) wrote: ...stuff deleted... > > If linux had 1) a good word processor, 2) Quicken, and 3) ran my dos/windows > multi-media toys, I'd wipe dos/windows off my disk completely. Assistance > appreciated! > Amen!! Hallelujah! I don't even need my multi-media toys... Now, if I were only a better programmer... ------------------------------ From: ddt@idcube.idsoftware.com (David Taylor) Subject: Linux X DOOM performance (explanation) Date: 16 Sep 1994 01:51:36 -0500 For those of you curious about the different performances under DOS and Linux, here's some explanation. What you may think of as the obvious culprit, X Windows, is not the only problem. X really doesn't slow things down much if you're in single-pixel mode, not running anything else requiring X services while the game is running, and have enough RAM to keep its active footprint in memory. Nor is context switching for the X server or sound server code a nasty hit as this is done quite rarely in the scope of things. The Linux version has no assembly. This affects the texture-mapping speed quite a bit. First, there's the obvious speed payoff of doing anything in the inner loop of an algorithm in assembly. Second, in DOS, the routines render directly to the frame buffer using a mode which ISA cards suffer only their bus speed and not the width. That's probably quite a large chunk of the performance hit as there is no end-of-rendering screen slam for this. The hit from sound is experienced in both DOS and Linux, but the hit under DOS is much smaller. This is for several reasons. Once again, the DOS inner-loop is in assembly. Also, the DOS version mixes channels at a time instead of samples at a time. This is a lot faster. The Linux sound code was almost straight from the SGI code (where something processing an 11kHz sound stream is completely inconsequential to system resources). So what you're playing with is a completely C game in X with very hastily-written sound code for the SGI. It's basically a tribute to what you get nowadays with -O from modern C compilers. Not bad. =-ddt-> ------------------------------ From: spritcha@nyx10.cs.du.edu (Steven Pritchard) Subject: Re: Have you bought from Fintronics? Date: 15 Sep 1994 23:50:20 -0600 jarreau@vuse.vanderbilt.edu (Michael P. Jarreau) writes: >I am preparing to buy a PC with linux built in from a company called >Fintronics (Melno Park, CA, USA). >Can you tell me anything about the company? They had a somewhat flattering write-up in last month's BYTE. It is probably still on the stands. Check it out. Steve -- spritcha@nyx10.cs.du.edu | Steven sjpritch@siucvmb.siu.edu | Pritchard GCS/M/S d? p+ c++(++++) l++ u+(-) e+ m+(---) s/+ !n h--- f+ g+ w@ t++ r- y? ------------------------------ From: swra01@cs19.cs.aukuni.ac.nz (Stephen David Wray) Subject: Re: Horrific bug in DOOM! Date: 15 Sep 1994 05:38:08 GMT > > > The original name for the glorified boot loader now known as MS-DOS > > > was QDOS, which stood for Quick and Dirty Operating System. Note that > > > the letter Q has since been dropped. Bizzarre -- here, QDOS is a brand of underpants... Hmm... maybe theres a connection... ------------------------------ From: andy@resi.waldorf-gmbh.de (Andreas Busse) Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.development Subject: [Q] Any video processing tools for Linux ? Date: 15 Sep 1994 15:23:49 GMT Hi everybody, I wonder if there are any video processing tools available for Linux, either free or commercial. Any hints are welcome, but please mail me. TIA, Andy =============================================================================== Waldorf Electronics GmbH | Phone: +49 (0)2636-80294 R&D Department | Fax: +49 (0)2636-80188 Neustrasse 9-12, 53498 Waldorf, Germany | email: andy@waldorf-gmbh.de =============================================================================== ------------------------------ From: philb@cats.ucsc.edu (Philip Brown) Subject: Re: Word Processor for Linux? Date: 16 Sep 1994 06:04:05 GMT In article <35b3ks$l5i@dunx1.ocs.drexel.edu>, wrote: >Has no one tried ez from the AUIS package (auis63LO-wp.tgz)? I realize >it's only 1/8th of the whole AUIS system, but Linux Journal even ran an >article on it. So I got frustrated with this thread and d/l it from >sunsite. It looks like a fancy word processor. Ghostview ran into >problems when I tried to preview the sample document -- could this >be the reason no one talks about ez when the Word Processing/Spreadsheat >thread comes up? Actrually, you just didn't know the tricks of the trade. You can view just about anything you create in ez by doing ezprint -t file.ez | groff -ept >file.ps and THEN using ghostview on it. There are two problems with why ez isn't talked about much: 1) Development on it is done by a very small number of people, and it has fallen out of favour at its own college development site. 2) It can be a pain to set up, and there is no easy (ahem) way to just compile the editor. It is part of the humungeous package of AUIS, and thus will be forever buried in obscurity. (To fix this, there should be a separate release of JUST the editor. But given the attitudes and priorities of the developers, I doubt this will ever happen) -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Philip Brown, author of "kdrill", and "xmandel" philb@cats.ucsc.edu philb@soda.csua.berkeley.edu ------------------------------ From: rspier@cloud9.net (Robert Spier) Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.help Subject: AFTERMATH: Floppy Problems Date: 15 Sep 1994 06:03:16 GMT Has anyone experience floppy drive problems after removing all traces of Linux and lilo from a hd via FDISK and format? I don't think it's possible to have a problem caused by that still, but the guy who's incharge of the computers insists that it's caused by something left over. Help! [reply via email if possible] -- -Robert [rspier@cloud9.net] ICBM: 40 55' 40" N 73 45' 08" W "What fools those mortals be.." http://www.cloud9.net/~rspier || finger for more info ------------------------------ From: tdavis@beeble.synergy.net (Thomas Davis) Subject: Re: CorelDRAW for Unix Date: 16 Sep 1994 06:03:57 GMT Mark A. Davis (mark@taylor.infi.net) wrote: : mwikholm@at8.abo.fi (Mats 'MaDsen' Wikholm) writes: : >In article <3559b7$177@case.cyberspace.com> pmt@cyberspace.net (philip m. thompson) writes: : >> : Personally, I have not heard any definate confirmations on running SCO : CorelDRAW under Linux ICBS; but there is a very good chance that it will... : You can always buy it and try it! Many good vendors will allow returns : if it does not work on your equipment (just don't tell them you are running : it on unsupported Linux!) I've got the Corel 3 for Unix demo CDROM, and yes, it has on it the CorelDRAW for SCO & Univel on it. Last time I tried it, the SCO version worked great, the Univel version didn't (missing shared libraries of some sort). Even the license manager worked (for SCO). Call Corel and ask for the demo CDROM. -- Thomas Davis | Internet: tdavis@beeble.synergy.net Freelance Systems Consultant | Davis Systems | Snail Mail: 8803 Webster Plaza (402) 346-7687 | Omaha, NE 68114 ------------------------------ ** FOR YOUR REFERENCE ** The service address, to which questions about the list itself and requests to be added to or deleted from it should be directed, is: Internet: Linux-Misc-Request@NEWS-DIGESTS.MIT.EDU You can send mail to the entire list (and comp.os.linux.misc) via: Internet: Linux-Misc@NEWS-DIGESTS.MIT.EDU Linux may be obtained via one of these FTP sites: nic.funet.fi pub/OS/Linux tsx-11.mit.edu pub/linux sunsite.unc.edu pub/Linux End of Linux-Misc Digest ******************************