I chided CO.Linux a bit for having no posts for
a long time - said things were better here. BUT ...
maybe not.

On 11/9/21 21:21, 166p1 wrote:
> I chided CO.Linux a bit for having no posts for
> a long time - said things were better here. BUT ...
> maybe not.
>

Maybe we are all finding answer via the search
engines or on Forums.

Yourself just concluded a long series of
definitely miscellaneous posts involving Linux
at least peripherally.
Who knew? and something about Lock Screens.

bliss - uses a Pretty Cool Linux Operating System aka pclinuxos

--
bliss dash SF 4 ever at dslextreme dot com

On 11/10/21 12:38 AM, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
> On 11/9/21 21:21, 166p1 wrote:
>> I chided CO.Linux a bit for having no posts for
>> a long time - said things were better here. BUT ...
>> maybe not.
>>
>
>     Maybe we are all finding answer via the search
> engines or on Forums.

They are good these days, BUT - you can't really
*explain* a problem to them and they can't walk
you through to an answer very well either.

>     Yourself just concluded a long series of
> definitely miscellaneous posts involving Linux
> at least peripherally.
> Who knew? and something about Lock Screens.
>
> bliss - uses a Pretty Cool Linux Operating System aka pclinuxos

Unfortunately, still a fairly common - and vexing -
problem. Lots of reasons it can happen, and again
it takes a certain amount of give and take to
hopefully find a solution beyond "wipe the install
and start over" (the MS favorite "solution" - great
if you've got nothing but built-in MS software in
there ...).

I had a similar annoying issue recently on an MX
with LXDE and XFCE in there - the screen brightness
would go very dark partway through boot and none
of the GUI controls would "stick". Finally had to
kind of brute-force it by re-writing an obscure
lowish-level config file every time during boot,
replacing the defective default being set
*somewhere*.

The underlying system is still fairly simple, but
the GUI stuff is huge now, convoluted, lots of
interactions.

On 11/10/21 17:46, 166p1 wrote:
> On 11/10/21 12:38 AM, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
>> On 11/9/21 21:21, 166p1 wrote:
>>> I chided CO.Linux a bit for having no posts for
>>> a long time - said things were better here. BUT ...
>>> maybe not.
>>>
>>
>>      Maybe we are all finding answer via the search
>> engines or on Forums.
>
>
>   They are good these days, BUT - you can't really
>   *explain* a problem to them and they can't walk
>   you through to an answer very well either.
>
>
>>      Yourself just concluded a long series of
>> definitely miscellaneous posts involving Linux
>> at least peripherally.
>> Who knew? and something about Lock Screens.
>>
>> bliss - uses a Pretty Cool Linux Operating System aka pclinuxos
>
>   Unfortunately, still a fairly common - and vexing -
>   problem. Lots of reasons it can happen, and again
>   it takes a certain amount of give and take to
>   hopefully find a solution beyond "wipe the install
>   and start over" (the MS favorite "solution" - great
>   if you've got nothing but built-in MS software in
>   there ...).
>
>   I had a similar annoying issue recently on an MX
>   with LXDE and XFCE in there - the screen brightness
>   would go very dark partway through boot and none
>   of the GUI controls would "stick". Finally had to
>   kind of brute-force it by re-writing an obscure
>   lowish-level config file every time during boot,
>   replacing the defective default being set
>   *somewhere*.
>
>   The underlying system is still fairly simple, but
>   the GUI stuff is huge now, convoluted, lots of
>   interactions.

Yes but without the GUI er, Desktop Environment people
such as myself would have to really work hard to learn to use
Linux. I am 84.25 yoa and not really capable of that effort
except on a piece-meal solve a particular problem.

My LUG is reduced to Monthly jit.si meeting. Sunday
at our Meeting a chap from BC-LUG had a problem in which
he had done mis-configuring on the fly and ended up with a
non-working system. One of our nearby experts showed him
how to repair his system in about half the time he intended
to spend working on that. We are in San Francisco by the
way and he was coming in from B.C, CA. Another of our
experts called in from Massachusetts where he is with
family presently. That time of year.

Personally being totally inexpert and barely
capable of copy and paste I turn our a monthly column
of more or less Linux news for the Champaign-Urbana
Computer Users Group, CUCUG. The man who asked me
to do this is a member of our sadly diminished
Team Amiga mailing list.

I am very good at asking for help as long as
I can keep the Latitude E7450 online. It comes from
having an overly large vocabulary, i think.

Don't let the eroding base of the Usenet
Community (whatever I mean by that), get you down.
Look for posts in whatever interests you and either
learn or help others learn about the simplicity
underlying GNU/Linux/KDE/Gnome/etc. and the workers
who turn out the updates for the sometimes complicated
Desktop Environments.

And on PCLinuxOS I am up to 5.14.17 and hoping
to see 5.2.x before I give up on typing.

bliss - “Nearly any fool can use a GNU/Linux computer. Many do.”
After all here I am...

--
bliss dash SF 4 ever at dslextreme dot com

On 11/10/21 9:42 PM, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
> On 11/10/21 17:46, 166p1 wrote:
>> On 11/10/21 12:38 AM, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
>>> On 11/9/21 21:21, 166p1 wrote:
>>>> I chided CO.Linux a bit for having no posts for
>>>> a long time - said things were better here. BUT ...
>>>> maybe not.
>>>>
>>>
>>>      Maybe we are all finding answer via the search
>>> engines or on Forums.
>>
>>
>>    They are good these days, BUT - you can't really
>>    *explain* a problem to them and they can't walk
>>    you through to an answer very well either.
>>
>>
>>>      Yourself just concluded a long series of
>>> definitely miscellaneous posts involving Linux
>>> at least peripherally.
>>> Who knew? and something about Lock Screens.
>>>
>>> bliss - uses a Pretty Cool Linux Operating System aka pclinuxos
>>
>>    Unfortunately, still a fairly common - and vexing -
>>    problem. Lots of reasons it can happen, and again
>>    it takes a certain amount of give and take to
>>    hopefully find a solution beyond "wipe the install
>>    and start over" (the MS favorite "solution" - great
>>    if you've got nothing but built-in MS software in
>>    there ...).
>>
>>    I had a similar annoying issue recently on an MX
>>    with LXDE and XFCE in there - the screen brightness
>>    would go very dark partway through boot and none
>>    of the GUI controls would "stick". Finally had to
>>    kind of brute-force it by re-writing an obscure
>>    lowish-level config file every time during boot,
>>    replacing the defective default being set
>>    *somewhere*.
>>
>>    The underlying system is still fairly simple, but
>>    the GUI stuff is huge now, convoluted, lots of
>>    interactions.
>
>     Yes but without the GUI er, Desktop Environment people
> such as myself would have to really work hard to learn to use
> Linux. I am 84.25 yoa and not really capable of that effort
> except on a piece-meal solve a particular problem.

I'm not going to take away your GUI ... indeed I've
been putting them on servers for a long time now
because they're so handy. Decent GUI tools can
accomplish in minutes what would take hours to do
in tweaking dozens of config files with a text
editor (or 'vi' if you're REALLY a retro masochist).

But, if I need to edit one or two files, I'm as
likely to use 'nano' on the commmand line as
'leafpad' or whatever in a GUI.

My point here is that GUIs are *complicated*
collections of software - I doubt there's ANY
ONE PERSON now that totally understands
something like KDE, or maybe even LXDE, much
less the 'X' or Wayland underneath. Too complex,
too many contantly-moving sub-apps. People become
specialists. Maybe they talk to each other,
maybe they don't.

I always put 'X' and LXDE on servers ... 'X' is
old and somebody knows how to fix it and LXDE
is the minimum "nice" GUI. Still hate LxQt ...
the supposed replacement ....

>     My LUG is reduced to Monthly jit.si meeting.  Sunday
> at our Meeting a chap from BC-LUG had a problem in which
> he had done mis-configuring on the fly and ended up with a
> non-working system. One of our nearby experts showed him
> how to repair his system in about half the time he intended
> to spend working on that.  We are in San Francisco by the
> way and he was coming in from B.C, CA.  Another of our
> experts called in from Massachusetts where he is with
> family presently.  That time of year.
>
>     Personally being totally inexpert and barely
> capable of copy and paste I turn our a monthly column
> of more or less Linux news for the Champaign-Urbana
> Computer Users Group, CUCUG. The man who asked me
> to do this is a member of our sadly diminished
> Team Amiga mailing list.
>
>        I am very good at asking for help as long as
> I can keep the Latitude E7450 online.  It comes from
> having an overly large vocabulary, i think.
>
>     Don't let the eroding base of the Usenet
> Community (whatever I mean by that), get you down.
> Look for posts in whatever interests you and either
> learn or help others learn about the simplicity
> underlying GNU/Linux/KDE/Gnome/etc. and the  workers
> who turn out the updates for the sometimes complicated
> Desktop Environments.
>
>     And on PCLinuxOS I am up to 5.14.17 and hoping
> to see 5.2.x before I give up on typing.

As I said, "help pages" can be great - IF you have
a common sort of problem. If it's something WEIRD,
something requiring explainations in both directions,
then forums, including usenet, are the only good way.
You can get half a dozen specialists/semi-specialists
in on the issue.

As for PCLinuxOS ... it's a pretty good distro for
people who mostly used Winders.

However, if you're doing banking-type stuff, you
are far safer using Linux than Winders. Winders
is just TOO easy to break into, and its huge
market share (and spite against MS) make it
the biggest target for hackers by a wide margin.

I just loved the MS fix for security issues - it
was called Vista. It was basically a poost Win-7
beta system, but the big security improvement was
to MAKE IT YOUR FAULT when you got hacked. It was
unusable UNLESS you turned off almost all the security
stuff.

Even SE-Linux is more civil than Vista (though not
by all THAT much :-)

> bliss - “Nearly any fool can use a GNU/Linux computer. Many do.”
>         After all here I am...
>

On 11/11/21 17:22, 166p1 wrote:
> On 11/10/21 9:42 PM, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
>> On 11/10/21 17:46, 166p1 wrote:
>>> On 11/10/21 12:38 AM, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
>>>> On 11/9/21 21:21, 166p1 wrote:
>>>>> I chided CO.Linux a bit for having no posts for
>>>>> a long time - said things were better here. BUT ...
>>>>> maybe not.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>      Maybe we are all finding answer via the search
>>>> engines or on Forums.
>>>
>>>
>>>    They are good these days, BUT - you can't really
>>>    *explain* a problem to them and they can't walk
>>>    you through to an answer very well either.
>>>
>>>
>>>>      Yourself just concluded a long series of
>>>> definitely miscellaneous posts involving Linux
>>>> at least peripherally.
>>>> Who knew? and something about Lock Screens.
>>>>
>>>> bliss - uses a Pretty Cool Linux Operating System aka pclinuxos
>>>
>>>    Unfortunately, still a fairly common - and vexing -
>>>    problem. Lots of reasons it can happen, and again
>>>    it takes a certain amount of give and take to
>>>    hopefully find a solution beyond "wipe the install
>>>    and start over" (the MS favorite "solution" - great
>>>    if you've got nothing but built-in MS software in
>>>    there ...).
>>>
>>>    I had a similar annoying issue recently on an MX
>>>    with LXDE and XFCE in there - the screen brightness
>>>    would go very dark partway through boot and none
>>>    of the GUI controls would "stick". Finally had to
>>>    kind of brute-force it by re-writing an obscure
>>>    lowish-level config file every time during boot,
>>>    replacing the defective default being set
>>>    *somewhere*.
>>>
>>>    The underlying system is still fairly simple, but
>>>    the GUI stuff is huge now, convoluted, lots of
>>>    interactions.
>>
>>      Yes but without the GUI er, Desktop Environment people
>> such as myself would have to really work hard to learn to use
>> Linux. I am 84.25 yoa and not really capable of that effort
>> except on a piece-meal solve a particular problem.
>
>
>   I'm not going to take away your GUI ... indeed I've
>   been putting them on servers for a long time now
>   because they're so handy. Decent GUI tools can
>   accomplish in minutes what would take hours to do
>   in tweaking dozens of config files with a text
>   editor (or 'vi' if you're REALLY a retro masochist).
>
>   But, if I need to edit one or two files, I'm as
>   likely to use 'nano' on the commmand line as
>   'leafpad' or whatever in a GUI.
>
>   My point here is that GUIs are *complicated*
>   collections of software - I doubt there's ANY
>   ONE PERSON now that totally understands
>   something like KDE, or maybe even LXDE, much
>   less the 'X' or Wayland underneath. Too complex,
>   too many contantly-moving sub-apps. People become
>   specialists. Maybe they talk to each other,
>   maybe they don't.
>
>   I always put 'X' and LXDE on servers ... 'X' is
>   old and somebody knows how to fix it and LXDE
>   is the minimum "nice" GUI. Still hate LxQt ...
>   the supposed replacement ....
>
>>      My LUG is reduced to Monthly jit.si meeting.  Sunday
>> at our Meeting a chap from BC-LUG had a problem in which
>> he had done mis-configuring on the fly and ended up with a
>> non-working system. One of our nearby experts showed him
>> how to repair his system in about half the time he intended
>> to spend working on that.  We are in San Francisco by the
>> way and he was coming in from B.C, CA.  Another of our
>> experts called in from Massachusetts where he is with
>> family presently.  That time of year.
>>
>>      Personally being totally inexpert and barely
>> capable of copy and paste I turn our a monthly column
>> of more or less Linux news for the Champaign-Urbana
>> Computer Users Group, CUCUG. The man who asked me
>> to do this is a member of our sadly diminished
>> Team Amiga mailing list.
>>
>>         I am very good at asking for help as long as
>> I can keep the Latitude E7450 online.  It comes from
>> having an overly large vocabulary, i think.
>>
>>      Don't let the eroding base of the Usenet
>> Community (whatever I mean by that), get you down.
>> Look for posts in whatever interests you and either
>> learn or help others learn about the simplicity
>> underlying GNU/Linux/KDE/Gnome/etc. and the  workers
>> who turn out the updates for the sometimes complicated
>> Desktop Environments.
>>
>>      And on PCLinuxOS I am up to 5.14.17 and hoping
>> to see 5.2.x before I give up on typing.

At 5.15.1 now.

>
>
>   As I said, "help pages" can be great - IF you have
>   a common sort of problem. If it's something WEIRD,
>   something requiring explainations in both directions,
>   then forums, including usenet, are the only good way.
>   You can get half a dozen specialists/semi-specialists
>   in on the issue.
>
>   As for PCLinuxOS ... it's a pretty good distro for
>   people who mostly used Winders.

Well I mostly used AmigaOS 1.3-3.9 while the A2000
continued to work. I tried out XP on a laptop and swiched
to Mandriva Linux before I could be seriously damaged.

But KDE helps me make it look like the Amiga Workbench.

Now a great many Linux distribution start out looking
line XP which some Windows users remember fondly. It only
makes a load of sense to have a familiar interface in
front of the new user. Not nearly so scary as my multiple
menu--multiple task bar Amiga imitation.

>
>   However, if you're doing banking-type stuff, you
>   are far safer using Linux than Winders. Winders
>   is just TOO easy to break into, and its huge
>   market share (and spite against MS) make it
>   the biggest target for hackers by a wide margin.
>
>   I just loved the MS fix for security issues - it
>   was called Vista. It was basically a poost Win-7
>   beta system, but the big security improvement was
>   to MAKE IT YOUR FAULT when you got hacked. It was
>   unusable UNLESS you turned off almost all the security
>   stuff.

Windows 11 even forces you to use Edge.
<https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/12/huawei_euler_os_foss/?td=keepreading-btm>
I had that on one of the few new machines I bought
in the last 17 years. It had none of the endearingly naive
qualities of XP. I should have erased it but I wanted to
learn about GPT and UEFI. At one point I had about 6 different
but not that much Linux distributions installed on a 6420,

>
>   Even SE-Linux is more civil than Vista (though not
>   by all THAT much  :-)

I settle for Linux with built-in firewall. It
seems to work. I mean I get about 5 phishing calls per day on
my landline. If they could hack in they would not waste time
on calling.

bliss - “Nearly any fool can use a GNU/Linux computer. Many do.”
After all here I am...

--
bliss dash SF 4 ever at dslextreme dot com

On Wed, 10 Nov 2021 18:42:36 -0800, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
>
> On 11/10/21 17:46, 166p1 wrote:
>> On 11/10/21 12:38 AM, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
>
>>   Unfortunately, still a fairly common - and vexing -
>>   problem. Lots of reasons it can happen, and again
>>   it takes a certain amount of give and take to
>>   hopefully find a solution beyond "wipe the install
>>   and start over" (the MS favorite "solution" - great
>>   if you've got nothing but built-in MS software in
>>   there ...).
>>   I had a similar annoying issue recently on an MX
>>   with LXDE and XFCE in there - the screen brightness
>>   would go very dark partway through boot and none
>>   of the GUI controls would "stick". Finally had to
>>   kind of brute-force it by re-writing an obscure
>>   lowish-level config file every time during boot,
>>   replacing the defective default being set
>>   *somewhere*.
>>   The underlying system is still fairly simple, but
>>   the GUI stuff is huge now, convoluted, lots of
>>   interactions.
>
> Yes but without the GUI er, Desktop Environment people
> such as myself would have to really work hard to learn to use
> Linux. I am 84.25 yoa and not really capable of that effort
> except on a piece-meal solve a particular problem.

In my opinion that does not depend on age but prior computer experience.

OK, I was in my 30s when I was "forced" to start on the bare command line
in Linux due to hardware constrains (400 MB free on my "massive 1300 MB
(that is MEGA folks, not GIGA) hard disk after the Windows 95
installation). Today I am happy about that I had to deal with the
Linux-command line right from the start.
--
Andreas

Le 12-11-2021, 166p1 <z24ba6.net> a écrit :
> GUI tools can accomplish in minutes what would take hours to do in
> tweaking dozens of config files with a text editor

Do you have an example of task better handled by a GUI than by a text
editor or by the command line?

> (or 'vi' if you're REALLY a retro masochist).

It's not retro, the neovide's cursor is the cursor of the futur. On day
every text editor will ended imitate it.

--
Si vous avez du temps à perdre :
https://scarpet42.gitlab.io

On 12/11/2021 16:12, Stéphane CARPENTIER wrote:
> Le 12-11-2021, 166p1 <z24ba6.net> a écrit :
>> GUI tools can accomplish in minutes what would take hours to do in
>> tweaking dozens of config files with a text editor
>
> Do you have an example of task better handled by a GUI than by a text
> editor or by the command line?

Well 3D CAD is a bit hard on a command line. In fact even 2D cad is.
Heck even code editing benefits from highlighting and section collapsing
I use whichever works better, frankly.

In general since my GUI don't run as root, I do rootish things in a root
console

But the heavy lifting is done in a GUI

i,.e. source editing - than use a terminal to run 'make' and a 'sudo
make install' to get the binaries in place.

>
>> (or 'vi' if you're REALLY a retro masochist).
>
> It's not retro, the neovide's cursor is the cursor of the futur. On day
> every text editor will ended imitate it.
>

--
The lifetime of any political organisation is about three years before
its been subverted by the people it tried to warn you about.

Anon.

On 2021-11-12, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:

> On 12/11/2021 16:12, Stéphane CARPENTIER wrote:
>
>> Le 12-11-2021, 166p1 <z24ba6.net> a écrit :
>>
>>> GUI tools can accomplish in minutes what would take hours to do in
>>> tweaking dozens of config files with a text editor
>>
>> Do you have an example of task better handled by a GUI than by a text
>> editor or by the command line?
>
> Well 3D CAD is a bit hard on a command line. In fact even 2D cad is.
> Heck even code editing benefits from highlighting and section collapsing
> I use whichever works better, frankly.

Exactly. And some tasks can be done well with either a CLI or a GUI.
Some people prefer one, some prefer the other.

> In general since my GUI don't run as root, I do rootish things in a root
> console
>
> But the heavy lifting is done in a GUI
>
> i,.e. source editing - than use a terminal to run 'make' and a 'sudo
> make install' to get the binaries in place.

You say "po-tay-to", I say "po-tah-to". The important point is that
people should have the freedom to choose whether they want to use a
CLI or a GUI. And it's not a one-time choice - sometimes you might
want to do the same task one way or the other.

The problem comes when GUI proponents try to discourage CLIs.
And a poorly-designed CLI is not an argument for GUIs (any
more than a poorly-designed GUI is an argument for CLIs).

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Life is perverse.
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | It can be beautiful -
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | but it won't.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | -- Lily Tomlin

On 11/11/21 11:38 PM, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
> On 11/11/21 17:22, 166p1 wrote:
>> On 11/10/21 9:42 PM, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
>>> On 11/10/21 17:46, 166p1 wrote:
>>>> On 11/10/21 12:38 AM, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
>>>>> On 11/9/21 21:21, 166p1 wrote:
>>>>>> I chided CO.Linux a bit for having no posts for
>>>>>> a long time - said things were better here. BUT ...
>>>>>> maybe not.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>      Maybe we are all finding answer via the search
>>>>> engines or on Forums.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>    They are good these days, BUT - you can't really
>>>>    *explain* a problem to them and they can't walk
>>>>    you through to an answer very well either.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>      Yourself just concluded a long series of
>>>>> definitely miscellaneous posts involving Linux
>>>>> at least peripherally.
>>>>> Who knew? and something about Lock Screens.
>>>>>
>>>>> bliss - uses a Pretty Cool Linux Operating System aka pclinuxos
>>>>
>>>>    Unfortunately, still a fairly common - and vexing -
>>>>    problem. Lots of reasons it can happen, and again
>>>>    it takes a certain amount of give and take to
>>>>    hopefully find a solution beyond "wipe the install
>>>>    and start over" (the MS favorite "solution" - great
>>>>    if you've got nothing but built-in MS software in
>>>>    there ...).
>>>>
>>>>    I had a similar annoying issue recently on an MX
>>>>    with LXDE and XFCE in there - the screen brightness
>>>>    would go very dark partway through boot and none
>>>>    of the GUI controls would "stick". Finally had to
>>>>    kind of brute-force it by re-writing an obscure
>>>>    lowish-level config file every time during boot,
>>>>    replacing the defective default being set
>>>>    *somewhere*.
>>>>
>>>>    The underlying system is still fairly simple, but
>>>>    the GUI stuff is huge now, convoluted, lots of
>>>>    interactions.
>>>
>>>      Yes but without the GUI er, Desktop Environment people
>>> such as myself would have to really work hard to learn to use
>>> Linux. I am 84.25 yoa and not really capable of that effort
>>> except on a piece-meal solve a particular problem.
>>
>>
>>    I'm not going to take away your GUI ... indeed I've
>>    been putting them on servers for a long time now
>>    because they're so handy. Decent GUI tools can
>>    accomplish in minutes what would take hours to do
>>    in tweaking dozens of config files with a text
>>    editor (or 'vi' if you're REALLY a retro masochist).
>>
>>    But, if I need to edit one or two files, I'm as
>>    likely to use 'nano' on the commmand line as
>>    'leafpad' or whatever in a GUI.
>>
>>    My point here is that GUIs are *complicated*
>>    collections of software - I doubt there's ANY
>>    ONE PERSON now that totally understands
>>    something like KDE, or maybe even LXDE, much
>>    less the 'X' or Wayland underneath. Too complex,
>>    too many contantly-moving sub-apps. People become
>>    specialists. Maybe they talk to each other,
>>    maybe they don't.
>>
>>    I always put 'X' and LXDE on servers ... 'X' is
>>    old and somebody knows how to fix it and LXDE
>>    is the minimum "nice" GUI. Still hate LxQt ...
>>    the supposed replacement ....
>>
>>>      My LUG is reduced to Monthly jit.si meeting.  Sunday
>>> at our Meeting a chap from BC-LUG had a problem in which
>>> he had done mis-configuring on the fly and ended up with a
>>> non-working system. One of our nearby experts showed him
>>> how to repair his system in about half the time he intended
>>> to spend working on that.  We are in San Francisco by the
>>> way and he was coming in from B.C, CA.  Another of our
>>> experts called in from Massachusetts where he is with
>>> family presently.  That time of year.
>>>
>>>      Personally being totally inexpert and barely
>>> capable of copy and paste I turn our a monthly column
>>> of more or less Linux news for the Champaign-Urbana
>>> Computer Users Group, CUCUG. The man who asked me
>>> to do this is a member of our sadly diminished
>>> Team Amiga mailing list.
>>>
>>>         I am very good at asking for help as long as
>>> I can keep the Latitude E7450 online.  It comes from
>>> having an overly large vocabulary, i think.
>>>
>>>      Don't let the eroding base of the Usenet
>>> Community (whatever I mean by that), get you down.
>>> Look for posts in whatever interests you and either
>>> learn or help others learn about the simplicity
>>> underlying GNU/Linux/KDE/Gnome/etc. and the  workers
>>> who turn out the updates for the sometimes complicated
>>> Desktop Environments.
>>>
>>>      And on PCLinuxOS I am up to 5.14.17 and hoping
>>> to see 5.2.x before I give up on typing.
>
>     At 5.15.1 now.

Avoid point.zero distros :-)

>>
>>    As I said, "help pages" can be great - IF you have
>>    a common sort of problem. If it's something WEIRD,
>>    something requiring explainations in both directions,
>>    then forums, including usenet, are the only good way.
>>    You can get half a dozen specialists/semi-specialists
>>    in on the issue.
>>
>>    As for PCLinuxOS ... it's a pretty good distro for
>>    people who mostly used Winders.
>
>     Well I mostly used AmigaOS 1.3-3.9 while the A2000
> continued to work.  I tried out XP on a laptop and swiched
> to Mandriva Linux before I could be seriously damaged.
>
>     But KDE helps me make it look like the Amiga Workbench.

Bought and Amiga-1000 ... had to give 'em TWO checks
from different accounts to cover the price. DUMPED
the thing a few months later because of all the
damned "Guru Meditation" errors.

>     Now a great many Linux distribution start out looking
> line XP which some Windows users remember fondly.  It only
> makes a load of sense to have a familiar interface in
> front of the new user.  Not nearly so scary as my multiple
> menu--multiple task bar Amiga imitation.
>
>>
>>    However, if you're doing banking-type stuff, you
>>    are far safer using Linux than Winders. Winders
>>    is just TOO easy to break into, and its huge
>>    market share (and spite against MS) make it
>>    the biggest target for hackers by a wide margin.
>>
>>    I just loved the MS fix for security issues - it
>>    was called Vista. It was basically a poost Win-7
>>    beta system, but the big security improvement was
>>    to MAKE IT YOUR FAULT when you got hacked. It was
>>    unusable UNLESS you turned off almost all the security
>>    stuff.
>
>     Windows 11 even forces you to use Edge.
> <https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/12/huawei_euler_os_foss/?td=keepreading-btm>

"Forces" ? Can't install Chrome or FFox ??? Somehow
I doubt that. There would be lawsuits - anti-trust
actions.

Now IE ... that's WAY out of date and you shouldn't
use it under any circumstances - indeed you shouldn't
have used it under any circumstances even when it
was current ....

>     I had that on one of the few new machines I bought
> in the last 17 years. It had none of the endearingly naive
> qualities of XP.  I should have erased it but I wanted to
> learn about GPT and UEFI. At one point I had about 6 different
> but not that much Linux distributions installed on a 6420,

I preferred Win-2K actually. Still have it on a VM.
XP was too "busy" for my likes :-)

The more 'eye candy' the less I like it.

>>
>>    Even SE-Linux is more civil than Vista (though not
>>    by all THAT much  :-)
>
>      I settle for Linux with built-in firewall.

On 11/12/21 20:45, 166p1 wrote:
> On 11/11/21 11:38 PM, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
>> On 11/11/21 17:22, 166p1 wrote:
>>> On 11/10/21 9:42 PM, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
>>>> On 11/10/21 17:46, 166p1 wrote:
>>>>> On 11/10/21 12:38 AM, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
>>>>>> On 11/9/21 21:21, 166p1 wrote:
>>>>>>> I chided CO.Linux a bit for having no posts for
>>>>>>> a long time - said things were better here. BUT ...
>>>>>>> maybe not.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>      Maybe we are all finding answer via the search
>>>>>> engines or on Forums.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>    They are good these days, BUT - you can't really
>>>>>    *explain* a problem to them and they can't walk
>>>>>    you through to an answer very well either.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>      Yourself just concluded a long series of
>>>>>> definitely miscellaneous posts involving Linux
>>>>>> at least peripherally.
>>>>>> Who knew? and something about Lock Screens.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> bliss - uses a Pretty Cool Linux Operating System aka pclinuxos
>>>>>
>>>>>    Unfortunately, still a fairly common - and vexing -
>>>>>    problem. Lots of reasons it can happen, and again
>>>>>    it takes a certain amount of give and take to
>>>>>    hopefully find a solution beyond "wipe the install
>>>>>    and start over" (the MS favorite "solution" - great
>>>>>    if you've got nothing but built-in MS software in
>>>>>    there ...).
>>>>>
>>>>>    I had a similar annoying issue recently on an MX
>>>>>    with LXDE and XFCE in there - the screen brightness
>>>>>    would go very dark partway through boot and none
>>>>>    of the GUI controls would "stick". Finally had to
>>>>>    kind of brute-force it by re-writing an obscure
>>>>>    lowish-level config file every time during boot,
>>>>>    replacing the defective default being set
>>>>>    *somewhere*.
>>>>>
>>>>>    The underlying system is still fairly simple, but
>>>>>    the GUI stuff is huge now, convoluted, lots of
>>>>>    interactions.
>>>>
>>>>      Yes but without the GUI er, Desktop Environment people
>>>> such as myself would have to really work hard to learn to use
>>>> Linux. I am 84.25 yoa and not really capable of that effort
>>>> except on a piece-meal solve a particular problem.
>>>
>>>
>>>    I'm not going to take away your GUI ... indeed I've
>>>    been putting them on servers for a long time now
>>>    because they're so handy. Decent GUI tools can
>>>    accomplish in minutes what would take hours to do
>>>    in tweaking dozens of config files with a text
>>>    editor (or 'vi' if you're REALLY a retro masochist).
>>>
>>>    But, if I need to edit one or two files, I'm as
>>>    likely to use 'nano' on the commmand line as
>>>    'leafpad' or whatever in a GUI.
>>>
>>>    My point here is that GUIs are *complicated*
>>>    collections of software - I doubt there's ANY
>>>    ONE PERSON now that totally understands
>>>    something like KDE, or maybe even LXDE, much
>>>    less the 'X' or Wayland underneath. Too complex,
>>>    too many contantly-moving sub-apps. People become
>>>    specialists. Maybe they talk to each other,
>>>    maybe they don't.
>>>
>>>    I always put 'X' and LXDE on servers ... 'X' is
>>>    old and somebody knows how to fix it and LXDE
>>>    is the minimum "nice" GUI. Still hate LxQt ...
>>>    the supposed replacement ....
>>>
>>>>      My LUG is reduced to Monthly jit.si meeting.  Sunday
>>>> at our Meeting a chap from BC-LUG had a problem in which
>>>> he had done mis-configuring on the fly and ended up with a
>>>> non-working system. One of our nearby experts showed him
>>>> how to repair his system in about half the time he intended
>>>> to spend working on that.  We are in San Francisco by the
>>>> way and he was coming in from B.C, CA.  Another of our
>>>> experts called in from Massachusetts where he is with
>>>> family presently.  That time of year.
>>>>
>>>>      Personally being totally inexpert and barely
>>>> capable of copy and paste I turn our a monthly column
>>>> of more or less Linux news for the Champaign-Urbana
>>>> Computer Users Group, CUCUG. The man who asked me
>>>> to do this is a member of our sadly diminished
>>>> Team Amiga mailing list.
>>>>
>>>>         I am very good at asking for help as long as
>>>> I can keep the Latitude E7450 online.  It comes from
>>>> having an overly large vocabulary, i think.
>>>>
>>>>      Don't let the eroding base of the Usenet
>>>> Community (whatever I mean by that), get you down.
>>>> Look for posts in whatever interests you and either
>>>> learn or help others learn about the simplicity
>>>> underlying GNU/Linux/KDE/Gnome/etc. and the  workers
>>>> who turn out the updates for the sometimes complicated
>>>> Desktop Environments.
>>>>
>>>>      And on PCLinuxOS I am up to 5.14.17 and hoping
>>>> to see 5.2.x before I give up on typing.
>>
>>      At 5.15.1 now.
>
>
>   Avoid point.zero distros  :-)

In other words don't be an early adopter. Let
the young folk find out what is wrong with it.

>
>
>>>
>>>    As I said, "help pages" can be great - IF you have
>>>    a common sort of problem. If it's something WEIRD,
>>>    something requiring explainations in both directions,
>>>    then forums, including usenet, are the only good way.
>>>    You can get half a dozen specialists/semi-specialists
>>>    in on the issue.
>>>
>>>    As for PCLinuxOS ... it's a pretty good distro for
>>>    people who mostly used Winders.
>>
>>      Well I mostly used AmigaOS 1.3-3.9 while the A2000
>> continued to work.  I tried out XP on a laptop and swiched
>> to Mandriva Linux before I could be seriously damaged.
>>
>>      But KDE helps me make it look like the Amiga Workbench.
>
>
>   Bought an Amiga-1000 ... had to give 'em TWO checks
>   from different accounts to cover the price. DUMPED
>   the thing a few months later because of all the
>   damned "Guru Meditation" errors.

Well did you get the 256 KB expansion? No you are an
early adopter and doubtless could spare the expense. But
early adopters frequently have more problems than anyone
else.
I bought my Amiga 1000 after years of longing to
have one when the A2000 had come out and the A1000 were
being traded in. I paid $100 and got keyboard adapter
to use with a Amiga 2000 keyboard. I got a Sp9rit 1000
memory board and broke the 68000 chip(molded) and had
a lovely time finding the best Amiga hardware man who had
to hide the fact that he was repairing Amigas on the side
he managed to fix in and installed a Machined 68000 chip.
Later on I got a Zorro Exapansion box and got a GVP SCSI
card with space 8 Gigabytes of memory adn eventually filled
it up with ill-matched memory which I later replaced with
a matched set of simms. The first hard drive I bought
at a computer show was about 100 megabytes and was invisivle
to the SCSI. So i blew $346 on a New 100 Megabyte Drive.
And I was off to the races. But when I moved up to the
A2000 I had a lot more trouble.
And I spent a lot more on it over the years I
used it. It died as I was getting familiar with Linux.

>
>
>>      Now a great many Linux distribution start out looking
>> line XP which some Windows users remember fondly.  It only
>> makes a load of sense to have a familiar interface in
>> front of the new user.  Not nearly so scary as my multiple
>> menu--multiple task bar Amiga imitation.
>>
>>>
>>>    However, if you're doing banking-type stuff, you
>>>    are far safer using Linux than Winders. Winders
>>>    is just TOO easy to break into, and its huge
>>>    market share (and spite against MS) make it
>>>    the biggest target for hackers by a wide margin.
>>>
>>>    I just loved the MS fix for security issues - it
>>>    was called Vista. It was basically a poost Win-7
>>>    beta system, but the big security improvement was
>>>    to MAKE IT YOUR FAULT when you got hacked. It was
>>>    unusable UNLESS you turned off almost all the security
>>>    stuff.
>>
>>      Windows 11 even forces you to use Edge.
>> <https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/12/huawei_euler_os_foss/?td=keepreading-btm>
>
>
>
>   "Forces" ? Can't install Chrome or FFox ??? Somehow
>   I doubt that. There would be lawsuits - anti-trust
>   actions.
>
>   Now IE ... that's WAY out of date and you shouldn't
>   use it under any circumstances - indeed you shouldn't
>   have used it under any circumstances even when it
>   was current ....
>
>
>>      I had that(Vista) on one of the few new machines I bought
>> in the last 17 years. It had none of the endearingly naive
>> qualities of XP.  I should have erased it but I wanted to
>> learn about GPT and UEFI. At one point I had about 6 different
>> but not that much Linux distributions installed on a 6420,
>
>
>   I preferred Win-2K actually. Still have it on a VM.
>   XP was too "busy" for my likes  :-)
>
>
>   The more 'eye candy' the less I like it.

Click here to read the complete article

On 13/11/2021 04:45, 166p1 wrote:
>>
>>      Windows 11 even forces you to use Edge.
>> <https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/12/huawei_euler_os_foss/?td=keepreading-btm>
>
>
>
>   "Forces" ? Can't install Chrome or FFox ??? Somehow
>   I doubt that. There would be lawsuits - anti-trust
>   actions.

My bank account share trading section at one time *forced* me to not use
Linux. Dunno how they did it, but every time I tried *any* browser on
Linux to access a part of it, including setting the ID string to say I
was in fact on Windows, they would tell me my browser was out of date.
In the end I used Firefox on XP in a virtual machine, until they fixed
ONE instance of the bug enough to provide ONE route that didn't trigger
the warning.

After 5 years their utter lack of support and communication trying to
transfer some shares into the share trading account forced me to leave
them entirely.

The bigger the organisation the more contempt they treat their customers
with, AFAICT.

--
"Strange as it seems, no amount of learning can cure stupidity, and
higher education positively fortifies it."

- Stephen Vizinczey

Le 12-11-2021, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> a écrit :
> On 12/11/2021 16:12, Stéphane CARPENTIER wrote:
>> Le 12-11-2021, 166p1 <z24ba6.net> a écrit :
>>> GUI tools can accomplish in minutes what would take hours to do in
>>> tweaking dozens of config files with a text editor
>>
>> Do you have an example of task better handled by a GUI than by a text
>> editor or by the command line?
>
> Well 3D CAD is a bit hard on a command line. In fact even 2D cad is.
> Heck even code editing benefits from highlighting and section collapsing
> I use whichever works better, frankly.

It's about to change config files, so the purpose is not to use an
application but to configure it. Nobody claims it's easier to change a
config file to use an application than to launch it.

> In general since my GUI don't run as root, I do rootish things in a root
> console
>
> But the heavy lifting is done in a GUI

That's what it's about. So, you prefer to use a GUI, it's your choice, I
have nothing against that.

But the claim is something you can do in minutes with the GUI would take
hours on the command line or with editing config files. So I want
examples for the claim. Not example for something unrelated.

> i,.e. source editing - than use a terminal to run 'make' and a 'sudo
> make install' to get the binaries in place.

The GUI is unrelated with the need to use a terminal to run make and
make install. You can run it inside your text editor.

--
Si vous avez du temps à perdre :
https://scarpet42.gitlab.io

Le 12-11-2021, Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> a écrit :
> On 2021-11-12, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>
>> On 12/11/2021 16:12, Stéphane CARPENTIER wrote:
>>
>>> Le 12-11-2021, 166p1 <z24ba6.net> a écrit :
>>>
>>>> GUI tools can accomplish in minutes what would take hours to do in
>>>> tweaking dozens of config files with a text editor
>>>
>>> Do you have an example of task better handled by a GUI than by a text
>>> editor or by the command line?
>>
>> Well 3D CAD is a bit hard on a command line. In fact even 2D cad is.
>> Heck even code editing benefits from highlighting and section collapsing
>> I use whichever works better, frankly.
>
> Exactly.

No. It's obvious, some things are easier to do with the GUI than with
the CLI. But the purpose of editing config files is not to use an
application, but to configure it. It's unrelated with the claim. Of
course, nobody is saying some games can be done by editing confing files
instead of using their GUI.

> And some tasks can be done well with either a CLI or a GUI.
> Some people prefer one, some prefer the other.

The claim is not about the choice. You choose what you prefer, I have
nothing against it. The claim is it can be something like 60 times
faster to use the GUI than to edit config files. So for this claim, I
want examples.

> You say "po-tay-to", I say "po-tah-to". The important point is that
> people should have the freedom to choose whether they want to use a
> CLI or a GUI. And it's not a one-time choice - sometimes you might
> want to do the same task one way or the other.

It's not the sentence to which I was responding. He wasn't speaking og
choice but of huge efficiency.

> The problem comes when GUI proponents try to discourage CLIs.
> And a poorly-designed CLI is not an argument for GUIs (any
> more than a poorly-designed GUI is an argument for CLIs).

The problem mostly is that CLI need to be learned. When GUI can be
discovered. So it looks easier for the beginner who is to lazy to learn.

--
Si vous avez du temps à perdre :
https://scarpet42.gitlab.io

On 13/11/2021 10:56, Stéphane CARPENTIER wrote:
> But the claim is something you can do in minutes with the GUI would take
> hours on the command line or with editing config files. So I want
> examples for the claim. Not example for something unrelated.

Well some of the more complex files that exist are easier to edit on a
GUI editor.

I go to geany for big files with long lines - but its no big deal

I just don't buy the religious purity of the command line. That's where
I started, I am comfortable there, but I am also comfortable with a well
designed text editor like Geany.

--
“People believe certain stories because everyone important tells them,
and people tell those stories because everyone important believes them.
Indeed, when a conventional wisdom is at its fullest strength, one’s
agreement with that conventional wisdom becomes almost a litmus test of
one’s suitability to be taken seriously.”

Paul Krugman

On 13/11/2021 11:06, Stéphane CARPENTIER wrote:
> The claim is it can be something like 60 times
> faster to use the GUI than to edit config files. So for this claim, I
> want examples.

Well lets take a GUI desktop.

Clicking and dragging an icon is a lot faster than finding the config
file and editing it :-)

And many well designed GUI configurators that are just click boxes are
also quicker than editing the underlying text files.

One that comes to mind is the disk partitioner on this Mint setup.

I would always use that in preference to fdisk or whatever its called.

Obviously GUI for its own sake is a travesty. A part of the 'designed to
sell, but not to work' Apple and Microsoft philosophy along with the
creeping featurism of 'we don't fix bugs: We add features' of today's
software developers.

--
Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the
gospel of envy.

Its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.

Winston Churchill

Le 13-11-2021, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> a écrit :
> On 13/11/2021 11:06, Stéphane CARPENTIER wrote:
>> The claim is it can be something like 60 times
>> faster to use the GUI than to edit config files. So for this claim, I
>> want examples.
>
> Well lets take a GUI desktop.

OK.

> Clicking and dragging an icon is a lot faster than finding the config
> file and editing it :-)

It depends. And it certainly doesn't takes hours. So it's not a good
example whatever.

On my computer I have no icon on my desktop, so finding an icon is not
so fast. There are not so many config files I edit, so I have shortcuts
and opening them is very fast.

But even without a shortcut, I know very well how to find them. So it's
not a good example of something which would takes hours. Which was the
first claim for which I'm asking an example.

> And many well designed GUI configurators that are just click boxes are
> also quicker than editing the underlying text files.

Once again, the claim was simple, I want a simple example of the claim.
Or the claim was garbage. I want an example of something which would
takes me hours to do in editing config files when it would takes minutes
minutes on GUI.

Your example doesn't takes minutes on GUI but seconds and doesn't takes
hours on command lines but seconds. So it's unrelated.

> One that comes to mind is the disk partitioner on this Mint setup.
>
> I would always use that in preference to fdisk or whatever its called.

I don't care about your preferences. You do like you want.

For my part, either I don't use a partitionner because my hard drive is
already formated, or I use it often because I want to create Virtual
machines and as fdisk and gparted can be scripted, once the script is
written (which is easy), the partitioning part using the script is
faster than what you can hope with a graphical partitionner. So it's not
a good example of something which takes minutes on GUI and hours on
command line.

> Obviously GUI for its own sake is a travesty.

There are a lot of reasons to use a GUI, even if you prefer a terminal,
the GUI helps you manage several terminals opened at the same time.
Browsing internet is nicer with a GUI than with links too. I have
nothing against GUI, I'm only asking only for ONE example of a claim
which looks false to me. So either he proves his claim with one example
or I'll know it was false.

--
Si vous avez du temps à perdre :
https://scarpet42.gitlab.io

On 2021-11-13, 166p1 <z24ba6.net> wrote:

> On 11/11/21 11:38 PM, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
>
>>     Windows 11 even forces you to use Edge.
>> <https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/12/huawei_euler_os_foss/?td=keepreading-btm>
>
> "Forces" ? Can't install Chrome or FFox ??? Somehow
> I doubt that. There would be lawsuits - anti-trust
> actions.

Besides, they don't have to force you - they've delegated
that task to web page designers. People around me know
when I've hit such a page because I start muttering about
"digital racism" when my browser is discriminated against.

> Now IE ... that's WAY out of date and you shouldn't
> use it under any circumstances - indeed you shouldn't
> have used it under any circumstances even when it
> was current ....

Ah yes, "Internet Exploder"...

>>     I had that on one of the few new machines I bought
>> in the last 17 years. It had none of the endearingly naive
>> qualities of XP.  I should have erased it but I wanted to
>> learn about GPT and UEFI. At one point I had about 6 different
>> but not that much Linux distributions installed on a 6420,
>
> I preferred Win-2K actually. Still have it on a VM.
> XP was too "busy" for my likes :-)

Yes, but 2K's drivers weren't nearly as good.

> The more 'eye candy' the less I like it.

For those times when I have to use Windows, I run XP under
VirtualBox. If you go into the appearance settings and
select "Classic" you can get rid of the Fisher-Price look.

IMHO Windows' usability peaked somewhere between 2000 and XP
and has been going downhill ever since.

>>      I settle for Linux with built-in firewall.
>
> Good choice. Works fine for anything but a net-facing
> router or web server.
>
>> It seems to work.  I mean I get about 5 phishing calls
>> per day on my landline.  If they could hack in they would
>> not waste time on calling.
>
> Every so often I get fake "MS Tech" calls - saying
> my Winders has a horrible flaw they need to fix.
> I like to go along with them for a little while ...
> keep 'em tied up ....
>
> Because I *have no* Winders box :-)
>
> "Uh ... tell me ... where DO you find this product
> number thing you're talking about ... "

I occasionally get calls claiming that they've hacked my
webcam and caught me reading porn sites, and demanding
several hundred euros in ransom. My machine doesn't
even have a webcam...

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Life is perverse.
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | It can be beautiful -
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | but it won't.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | -- Lily Tomlin

On 11/13/21 11:51, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
> On 2021-11-13, 166p1 <z24ba6.net> wrote:
>
>> On 11/11/21 11:38 PM, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
>>
>>>     Windows 11 even forces you to use Edge.
>>> <https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/12/huawei_euler_os_foss/?td=keepreading-btm>
>>
>> "Forces" ? Can't install Chrome or FFox ??? Somehow
>> I doubt that. There would be lawsuits - anti-trust
>> actions.
>
> Besides, they don't have to force you - they've delegated
> that task to web page designers. People around me know
> when I've hit such a page because I start muttering about
> "digital racism" when my browser is discriminated against.
>
>> Now IE ... that's WAY out of date and you shouldn't
>> use it under any circumstances - indeed you shouldn't
>> have used it under any circumstances even when it
>> was current ....
>
> Ah yes, "Internet Exploder"...
>
>>>     I had that on one of the few new machines I bought
>>> in the last 17 years. It had none of the endearingly naive
>>> qualities of XP.  I should have erased it but I wanted to
>>> learn about GPT and UEFI. At one point I had about 6 different
>>> but not that much Linux distributions installed on a 6420,
>>
>> I preferred Win-2K actually. Still have it on a VM.
>> XP was too "busy" for my likes :-)
>
> Yes, but 2K's drivers weren't nearly as good.
>
>> The more 'eye candy' the less I like it.
>
> For those times when I have to use Windows, I run XP under
> VirtualBox. If you go into the appearance settings and
> select "Classic" you can get rid of the Fisher-Price look.
>
> IMHO Windows' usability peaked somewhere between 2000 and XP
> and has been going downhill ever since.
>
>>>      I settle for Linux with built-in firewall.
>>
>> Good choice. Works fine for anything but a net-facing
>> router or web server.
>>
>>> It seems to work.  I mean I get about 5 phishing calls
>>> per day on my landline.  If they could hack in they would
>>> not waste time on calling.
>>
>> Every so often I get fake "MS Tech" calls - saying
>> my Winders has a horrible flaw they need to fix.
>> I like to go along with them for a little while ...
>> keep 'em tied up ....
>>
>> Because I *have no* Winders box :-)
>>
>> "Uh ... tell me ... where DO you find this product
>> number thing you're talking about ... "
>
> I occasionally get calls claiming that they've hacked my
> webcam and caught me reading porn sites, and demanding
> several hundred euros in ransom. My machine doesn't
> even have a webcam...
>
` If we continue in this vein we should change the subject
to "Horrible communications we get".

I get email every so often threatening to expose my
choice of porn to my friends and the world with video taken
by my Web camera of my reaction to such. My reaction of course
is to close any windows or tabs showing anything my mother, a
terrible prudish woman, would NOT want me to see. Actually I was
30 in the 1960s and had alread participated in things that some
folks would find the description of pornographic. So porn has
little attraction for me because it won't bring back my ill-spent
youth.
Also I have not repaired the camera on the machine
I was using at the time. But a lot of people apparently do
use the computer for erotic stimulation so a piece of nonsense
like this sent out to lot of people might be worth the effort
for the sort of people who think only of sex and money.

bliss-brought to you by the power and ease of PCLinuxOS and a minor case
of Hypergraphia

--
bliss dash SF 4 ever at dslextreme dot com

Interesting.

On Wednesday, November 10, 2021 at 12:39:04 AM UTC-5, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
> On 11/9/21 21:21, 166p1 wrote:
> > I chided CO.Linux a bit for having no posts for
> > a long time - said things were better here. BUT ...
> > maybe not.
> >
> Maybe we are all finding answer via the search
> engines or on Forums.
>
> Yourself just concluded a long series of
> definitely miscellaneous posts involving Linux
> at least peripherally.
> Who knew? and something about Lock Screens.
>
> bliss - uses a Pretty Cool Linux Operating System aka pclinuxos
>
> --
> bliss dash SF 4 ever at dslextreme dot com

with <slrnsovljh.4uv.sc@scarpet42p.localdomain> Stéphane CARPENTIER wrote:
> Le 13-11-2021, The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> a écrit :
>> On 13/11/2021 11:06, Stéphane CARPENTIER wrote:

>>> The claim is it can be something like 60 times faster to use the GUI
>>> than to edit config files. So for this claim, I want examples.
>> Well lets take a GUI desktop.
> OK.
>> Clicking and dragging an icon is a lot faster than finding the config
>> file and editing it :-)
> It depends. And it certainly doesn't takes hours. So it's not a good
> example whatever.

As I understand your disagreement, you are talking about different
configs.

You (sc@...) are talking about configs as understood on this side of The
GUI Wall -- more-or-less convoluted (sets of) text files for servers,
bots, clients (placing editors in this category too) etc. Those configs
are edited once (mostly, prominent exception would be killfile (whatever
actual name)) and then forgotten until upstream brakes something. Such
breaks are followed by run through configs, pushing the thing into
working shape, and forgotten again. Cycle Of Life, if I may.

You (tnp@...) are talking about what on that other side of The GUI Wall
can be achieved with applying menus and dialogs (with assorted buttons,
lists, and whatnot) only. Thus, incoming newsflash, nobody here applies
ls(1) by editing configs. Or cat(1). Or grep(1). This list goes on
and on then reaches awk, perl, and python or whatever. Some of these
things don't even have config (those things keep their configurations in
the environment).

*CUT*

--
Torvalds' goal for Linux is very simple: World Domination
Stallman's goal for GNU is even simpler: Freedom

Several times lately I've been handed a "suspicious"
mail - SAYS there's been like a $30,000 transaction
to the company - but it's a tad vague on what the
transaction was about, to who, from who. It urges
you to click a link for "details". Oh, they sent it
to five or six people, not just the accountant.

When you look at the address it LOOKS like it comes
from the USA. However when you look at the full mail
headers you can see every server it passed through
on the way. Only one, goddamned DigitalOcean, has
a US presence ... all the rest went back to RIPE
(europe) which is a convenient channel for Russians.
DO apparently gives them a way to create a little
pivot point so the mail will seem to be from a US
source. The link was to a dot address, that isn't
registered to anybody according to ARIN or its
euro counterparts.

Another one that's come up a few times has a link
supposedly to DocuSign or one of those similar
sites. However it wasn't a site - it was a link
to a Excel spreadsheet with a big PICTURE that
looked like a DocuSign web page.

Running it in LibreOffice, in a BSD virtual machine,
the message comes up that there are a bunch of macros
that probably won't run correctly. Looking at THEM
you see code that looks likely to download a software
package. So - very high prob - malware or ransomware.

They're SNEAKY these days !

Alas, unprepared, MOST people will just click on
the links - and will be running Winders and Office.
So, they get WHACKED and wonder why it happened.

Either/or on your Winders and Linux, DO install
VirtualBox and install a good Linux or BSD to it.
Iffy e-mails - open them in THERE, well-isolated
from your real system and a non-Winders environment.
It's quick, and it's about the only safe way to
do things these days.

And as for Apple - snob-elite closed-box crap IMHO.
I do have an Apple-II ... but haven't run it in
like 25 years. Probably still works though.

On 11/14/21 20:09, 166p1 wrote:
> Several times lately I've been handed a "suspicious"
> mail - SAYS there's been like a $30,000 transaction
> to the company - but it's a tad vague on what the
> transaction was about, to who, from who. It urges
> you to click a link for "details". Oh, they sent it
> to five or six people, not just the accountant.

Phishing for the information WE must not give
them or to get US to pull down a document that will
load malware.
I get pseudo-notices from my email provider
or from my ISP that are nothing but phishing attempts.
i already mentioned the calls for other stuff I do
not use.
>
> When you look at the address it LOOKS like it comes
> from the USA. However when you look at the full mail
> headers you can see every server it passed through
> on the way. Only one, goddamned DigitalOcean, has
> a US presence ... all the rest went back to RIPE
> (europe) which is a convenient channel for Russians.
> DO apparently gives them a way to create a little
> pivot point so the mail will seem to be from a US
> source. The link was to a dot address, that isn't
> registered to anybody according to ARIN or its
> euro counterparts.
>
> Another one that's come up a few times has a link
> supposedly to DocuSign or one of those similar
> sites. However it wasn't a site - it was a link
> to a Excel spreadsheet with a big PICTURE that
> looked like a DocuSign web page.
>
> Running it in LibreOffice, in a BSD virtual machine,
> the message comes up that there are a bunch of macros
> that probably won't run correctly. Looking at THEM
> you see code that looks likely to download a software
> package. So - very high prob - malware or ransomware.
>
> They're SNEAKY these days !

They (the con men) have been sneaky for a long
long time.
>
> Alas, unprepared, MOST people will just click on
> the links - and will be running Winders and Office.
> So, they get WHACKED and wonder why it happened.
>
> Either/or on your Winders and Linux, DO install
> VirtualBox and install a good Linux or BSD to it.
> Iffy e-mails - open them in THERE, well-isolated
> from your real system and a non-Winders environment.
> It's quick, and it's about the only safe way to
> do things these days.

A good thought. But the people who fall prey to
the swindles and malware reject the idea of trying to go
beyond webmail and browsing, Too scary to think they
might be able to learn to do NEW things.

>
> And as for Apple - snob-elite closed-box crap IMHO.
> I do have an Apple-II ... but haven't run it in
> like 25 years. Probably still works though.

Well a person who buys an Mac or an Ipad/phone
etc, can probably afford it and the difficulties s/he
might have with it. i never could afford an Apple which
is why I started with a Commodore 64 on sale for a
manageable $199.99 in the 1980s.

Hey that Apple II if running might be worth a
bit to collectors. Turn it into cash. Save storage
space.

bliss - brought to you by the power and ease of PCLinuxOS
and a minor case of hypergraphia

--
bliss dash SF 4 ever at dslextreme dot com

On Sun, 14 Nov 2021 21:08:43 -0800, Bobbie Sellers wrote:
>
> On 11/14/21 20:09, 166p1 wrote:
>
>> And as for Apple - snob-elite closed-box crap IMHO.
>> I do have an Apple-II ... but haven't run it in
>> like 25 years. Probably still works though.
>
> Well a person who buys an Mac or an Ipad/phone
> etc, can probably afford it and the difficulties s/he
> might have with it. i never could afford an Apple which
> is why I started with a Commodore 64 on sale for a
> manageable $199.99 in the 1980s.

Started with a C64 in 1984 when it became affordable. Seems it
outperformed the Apple 2 while the C64 cost a fraction. Amazing in my
opinion many people chose the Apple over the much cheaper and "better"
C64.

Btw. got your mail ad replied, but it's stuck in the mail queue of my
ISP, still trying to deliver. But I'm afraid it will eventually (in some
12 hours from ow) bounce.
--
Andreas