Re: [TCLUG:8028] Musings...

[Neal Tovsen <ntovsen@piper.hamline.edu>]

There's so much that comes to mind after reading this, but none of it
really does any justice.

All I want to say is that I plan on saving this message, and that you
should submit it for publishing somewhere (Linux Journal, perhaps?). The
vast majority of the media has pigeon-holed Linux as a "Gen-X" thing,
only to be used for the purpose of thwarting the Microsoft dynasty. Bob,
yours is a perspective that is not often shared. I'm excited to be in the
position I am in (not to date myself, but I was only born before Altair),
but at the same time I envy your experience and wisdom.

Neal

On Mon, 30 Aug 1999, Bob Nolte wrote:

> Not to date myself, but I was born before ENIAC. I started sorting tab 
> cards in 1961, and started managing my first computer system in 1968. I 
> make some pretty good money now, scraping up the shards of broken Windows 
> installs. NT is better, but it seems to be putting on weight. M$ can't seem 
> to remember to dance with the girl that brung them, the small business and 
> individual user.
> 
> Now, I'm spending quite a bit of time trying to escape the bondage of drive 
> letters. Novel had part of it right, then because it did not want to make 
> it's own desktop GUI, bowed to the DOS idol. Reacquainting myself with the 
> concept of root seems like deja vu. I never used Unix, but most older OSs 
> mounted and unmounted volumes.
> 
> About a year ago I got a copy of RH5.0 and loaded it on an old 486/80 made 
> up of leftover parts (a 1gb hard drive with Netware partition still on it, 
> a Panasonic 1x CD with host adapter board, an old network card, 16mb of 
> RAM). I figured that if I were going to try something new I might as well 
> put it to the acid test.
> 
> With nothing to lose, I tossed the CD in the drive and put in the RH boot 
> disk. Guess what! It found my CD and loaded. The only problem I had was an 
> IRQ conflict with the NIC. Fixed this and loaded again and all was well. 
> But that's when the musings started.
> 
> Just like the person who loads Windows for the first time, I had managed to 
> get the thing up and running without hardly knowing what I was doing. All 
> dressed up and no idea of where to go next, I suddenly developed an 
> increased empathy for the problems that my clients face. I found myself as 
> ignorant of Linux as most people are using DOS and Windows. A few weeks 
> spending evenings at the VoTech in a Unix intro course began to remove some 
> of the mystery. Having gone from RPG, to RPGII, to Databus, to DOS, to 
> Windows, to Lastastic, to Netware, and then to NT, I asked myself, "Why am 
> I doing this?"  Well, at my age it should keep my brain working, so onward.
> 
> About 2 month ago I got the time to really get serious about Linux. This 
> was encouraged by a dog and pony show put on by Microsoft on Windows 2000. 
> I got on the phone and ordered a new K6 450 system from Penguin. It arrives 
> next week. In the meantime I decided to upgrade the old 486 to RH6, but 
> this time I took a lot more time looking at what was going on. I'm anxious 
> to see a really well dressed up version of Linux when the new system gets 
> here. Interestingly, I've never seen a Linux desktop out there in the wild 
> when I'm doing my thing in the business world. We might want to think about 
> taking a nice spiffy box to a shopping mall where people could walk by and 
> see it on a Saturday. I digress.
> 
> VOCABULARY. Just like a little kid, I get an idea about something I want to 
> do but don't know the word for it. I've got a whole pile of Linux books. 
> Say I want to find a file but don't know where it is. In DOS I'd go Dir 
> filename /s. After paging through several books, I decide to try the FIND 
> command. This seems strange, since FIND in DOS looks inside of files. I try 
> FIND in Linux, but forget to use the -name thingy. Oh yeah, I gotta 
> remember that GREP is kinda like FIND in DOS. My Linux vocabulary is coming 
> online at about the same speed that learning English did when I was 2 years 
> old.
> 
> STRUCTURE.  I spend a good part of each day telling people to click START | 
> SETTINGS | CONTROL PANEL...  Linux has it's own obscure (at least to me) 
> way of tucking away the good stuff just like Windows. Problem is I'm on 
> this treasure hunt looking for them and understanding them. An example. 
> I've been running the Apache web server on my NT server for quite a while. 
> Works great and doesn't weigh as much as IIS. Now I'm setting up Apache on 
> the old 486 last weekend. The NT version even uses httpd.conf, but I spent 
> about an hour looking over the Linux Apache structure, finding the file and 
> changing it so the thing would start. When I was a kid we took about 6 feet 
> of string and tied it into a loop. Then we strung it between all 10 fingers 
> in a certain way. By manipulating your fingers and the string you could 
> make all kinds of patterns. The game was called Cat's Cradle. Mess up by 
> moving a finger wrong and the whole string became a mess. Now I'm sitting 
> here with all these .conf files on all 10 of my fingers. Feels the same, 
> but my Linux dexterity is still lacking. Guess it just takes time.
> 
> UTILITY. Now, when I get this whole thing configured what am I going to do 
> with it? A few weeks ago I D/Ld Star Office for Windows. It loaded alright 
> on the NT workstation but performed an illegal action in the first 10 
> minutes while I was trying to import a M$ file. I just uninstalled it. I'll 
> give it another try when the Penguin box arrives and I get the time. My 
> point is that, like it or not, 90% of the world out there has learned Word 
> and Excel. If my workstation desktop ever makes it to Linux, I've got to 
> have an almost completely cognate bridge between these programs and 
> whatever office suite I'm using or Bill G has to port his stuff to Linux 
> (when pigs fly!). From what little I've seen, nothing does a real great job 
> of taking in my Excel spreadsheet (which is full of macros and databases). 
> It's almost as tough with Word. In the early 90's lawyers used to file 
> documents in WordPerfect. Now they file them in Word. Ever try to move a 
> complex document back and forth between WordPerfect and Word? And this was 
> within the same OS. If anyone can open my eyes to something that shows 
> promise in this regard I'll really appreciate it. In the meantime I remain 
> pessimistic with regard to the Linux desktop in the business world.
> 
> SERVERS. Now we're talking! Linux seems to have a real opportunity here. 
> Samba works great for me. Apache has found a way to make a web server for 
> NT which is only 3mb to download. Try that with IIS. I have hope that I can 
> implement Linux servers in small offices. My biggest problem is that (1)I 
> want to make money supporting it, and (2)I don't know enough about Linux 
> yet to feel comfortable. Linux would probably run as a server on some of 
> the older PCs that small businesses are discarding because they're not 
> speedy enough for M$ latest toys. We're talkin 5-20 people sharing files 
> and printers here. Toss in a DSL line and handle http, mail, etc. Don't 
> need PCAnywhere, just telnet to manage it.
> 
> LOOKING FORWARD, AND BACK.
> 
> Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
>    The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
> Beware the Jujub bird, and shun
>    The frumious Bandersnatch!
> 
> Well, a bit of whimsy by Lewis Carroll so that we all keep our sense of 
> humor. I hope that the Linux community can learn to quietly advocate the 
> intrinsic value of Linux. Car dealers learned a long time ago that you 
> can't sell cars by knocking the other manufacturers. Too many Linux 
> aficionados sound a lot like a backslider that just got religion. Winston 
> Churchill said that, "A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't 
> change the subject." Let's not make the mistake of banging away needlessly 
> on Microsoft. It doesn't make us look that good. Let's stay positive. It 
> should be OK to mention a Microsoft system in the company of Linux people 
> without having to listen to a long harrang from someone. I think Microsoft 
> is plenty scared about the way things are going right now, but too smart to 
> let anyone find that out. In the meantime, we're better occupied with 
> trying to figure out what would come next if Microsoft takes a tumble. If 
> Microsoft went bye bye tomorrow, the world would still be running on its 
> stuff. Let's plan ahead. There's no sense in getting into a pissing contest 
> with a skunk, and it's a big skunk. The government isn't going to knock 
> Microsoft off it's stride, anymore than it did Standard Oil or AT&T, but 
> they certainly have its attention.
> 
> We've enjoyed quite a few years of domestic prosperity, largely thanks to 
> the explosion in the information processing segment of our economy. 
> Consider this. If Fuji, or Nintendo, or some other foreign corporation were 
> to decide that there was a market opening for a competing office suite or 
> desktop OS, what would happen to jobs in the US and our balance of 
> payments? Were this company, say Nintendo, to decide to be a bully or try 
> to keep it's source code secret, what would our US Justice Department be 
> able to do? We'd just have our government people over in Japan whining 
> about this along with the other trade problems.
> 
> This has been the longest thing that I've written in years. I hope my 
> family doesn't get a copy of it and wonder why my e-mail to them is so 
> short. Sorry for the lengthy epistle, but some things were on my mind. I'm 
> wondering if anyone else has some similar or differing perspectives on any 
> of this. Anyway, I'd had my head into puters for so many days I just had to 
> sit back and reflect a bit. Hope I'm still welcome aboard ship.
> 
> Bob Nolte
> 
> 
> 
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			Neal Tovsen