I don’t have one. It’s impossible to form a opinion on a set of hardware and software that I’ve never used and have no intention on using.

EDIT:
(Thread in question is here: )

(I’m presuming the commenter here is the Mr.Bisquit from there, based on the second comment)

Yeah, You’re scared, especially when it comes that someone needs to search out an answer from you.

Scared of what? I didn’t post in that topic because it quickly devolved into you being a douche to anybody who posted:

7. A line is a set of points. (from the thread)

What is that? You know exactly what he meant, you were just being a giant douche, and the fact is by that point I realized that your question was probably just some sort of loaded trollbait in an attempt to allow yourself to express just how much of an elitist douche you were. Your additional responses that were designed to illicit a response from me “he’s afraid” afraid of what? what the hell is there to be afraid of!? That doesn’t even make any sense.

Actually- I think I know what that is reference to- the fact that I didn’t approve the first comment in the few days since the second was made. Actually, I only noticed the new pending comments today, when I went to write a new blog post. In that context, I do apologize for the delay, and can certainly understand the conclusion you came to (that I was maliciously censoring your comments) I wasn’t though, they are automatically moderated that way. I do have a question- if you ever return-

Why are you so fixated on me, anyways? I mean you posed a question specifically for me on CH and now you’re basically stalking me on my blog…. Why?

 

 

This is going to be much more difficult than it was to convince you to use a Linux distribution.

I was using GNU/Linux long before you were a known entity to me. You haven’t really convinced me of a whole lot, except that there is a hell of a lot of polarization and fanaticism on the xxxBSD side of the fence then I had original suspected. I mean, a good portion of Operating System/platform evangelists are self-righteous blowhards, but you have really raised the bar.

>>Makes me wonder about a programmer who mentions assembly
>>and C then clams up when it comes to “new” territory.

clams up? what the hell are you talking about? I didn’t respond to that particular thread because your question was clearly loaded, and second, because, as I noted here, I don’t have a “take” on it because I haven’t used it. I try to make a habit of not forming too strong of an opinion about something if I haven’t used it, but you aren’t making it very easy. I doubly wouldn’t know about running it on the specified hardware because I haven’t USED a PowerPC, nor a SPARC, and have barely even used FreeBSD on x86. I don’t have a powerPC. I don’t have a SPARC, and buying one or both kinds just because you’ve asked my opinion on running a specific OS on them would be pretty silly.

you use freeBSD. Good for you, really, I’m sure it’s a fine OS, clearly it suits your needs. I don’t use FreeBSD. Get over it. I already have it in a VM; I just haven’t done much after the initial install (like doing the appropriate googles to find out how to turn the basic # prompt with a relatively minimal set of commands into a usable desktop environment. But I will do it when I please. Some douchebag being- well, a insistent douchebag throwing not-so-subtle insults and insinuations my way is not going to help, because if that is what I’d be destined to become as a freeBSD user, I want no fucking part of it.

I suppose, as has been said frequently about many things, it’s not Free/OpenBSD I have a problem with, but some of it’s users. Same with Linux; hell, same with windows, or mac. It’s the evangelist assholes who seem to feel they have some sort of inner track to knowledge, that the OS they use is better, despite the fact that their measurement of what was better is using their own predefined yardstick that just happens to only cover the strong points of what they are evangelizing. They also all have a glaring weakness. You tell them a problem with their OS of choice, and they say it’s your fault. This isn’t specific to any OS at all of course. The fact is though, they all have problems. Evangelists of all kinds seem to think that pretending there aren’t any problems- or that those problems are minor- is a good thing. It’s not.

For example, as it stands now- you simply NEED to learn how to use BASH or whatever the included shell is with almost any Linux distro and with all the BSD’s I’ve tried; for the “simpler” Linux’s, like Ubuntu or Mint, people will often still need to use to the console to fix otherwise simple issues- like the package manager somehow getting into some weird inconsistent state and refusing to open; sure, it suggests what command needs to be issued, but in that case there are two problems:

1. why can’t the GUI program invoke the suggested command itself?
2. The command doesn’t always work

For ages, running that command on my laptop would effectively hang that terminal until I forced it closed. Now this brings me to another point; I ended up just using the –help of the various package management tools (dpkg, apt-get) and found that apt-get had a “check” option, and was able to invoke that and discover that one of my python libraries was corrupt (or, “inconsistent” I guess), I then (using more inference) decided to simply remove, and then reinstall that package, which fixed my package manager issues. hurrah!

I’m not saying that was bad by any stretch, but implying that everybody is willing to go through that to get their computer working properly is utter nonsense. Some people think their computer is broken when the desktop background is wrong and they don’t know how to change it. Yes, they can learn how to change it, but the thing is, a lot of people don’t give a flying fuck about computers. This is something we more nerdy types, regardless of occupation, seem to forget. If Secretaries had the capability to learn about stuff like the command line, they wouldn’t be secretaries.

Basically, the adeptitude that many Linux and FreeBSD versions demand of their users is akin to demanding that everybody learn the specifics of architecture, wiring, roofing, insulation, beam installation, and so forth when they buy a house. Now, it’s true, that a fair number of people that purchase a home do in fact fix it themselves, and no doubt learn in the process; but there are others, who, again- are either too busy or simply don’t give a fuck and hire people to do it. They don’t want to learn about plumbing or wiring or roofing. They just want a house, just as some people don’t want to learn about files, streams, ports, hardware ports and Addresses, IRQs, DMAs, NMI’s, Compilers, command lines, or the details of memory. They just want a computer. Now, some on “the other side of the fence” from them, (including myself) may balk at such a concept “An easy to use computer, how absurd!” After all, in many ways the very “general purpose”-ness of a computer simply doesn’t lend itself to being “easy to use”; but it seems that should be what we are striving for. No Operating System ever created meets this lofty goal of being completely intuitive. My opinion in that context is that Mac Classic (Pre OSX, that is) was the closest to that. And, really, creating a completely intuitive interface is thought impossible; that doesn’t mean we should just give up on it. There are people in this world who aren’t interested in computers; They don’t want to have to learn arcane commands to get their shit done. They just want to get their shit done. They don’t want to have to learn how to write a script to automate that task. This is not something that should be shrugged off as “well obviously they are an idiot” because get this, Computer’s aren’t the fucking world, even though the world seems to run on computers,and almost any occupation will involving interfacing with computers in some way or another. what we need is some fucking work on making those interfaces easy to use. not just flexible. In that sense, my “Take” on FreeBSD, which you’ve forced out of me through sheer willpower apparently, despite my misgivings that I haven’t even really tried it much, is that it makes absolutely no attempt to be easy to use and trades off at every point better flexibility and security for ease of use. The security concern is understandable, but if you are going to make something flexible, either make it flexible and easy to use, don’t attempt to call it a mainstream OS for everyday people, or don’t bother.

 

EDIT 2:

Welcome back 😀

 

Why can’t the GUI application post the command?

1) All options are not available on the GUI but are available on the command line. The GUI is merely a front end to a command.
2) Every person that develops such an application is not aware of all of the options.
3.) Every command is not possible in every situation.
4) It may be assumed by the developer that the individual wants some control.

 

Specifically, I was speaking for the case of the Synaptic Package manager, which complains when started occasionally and suggests that the user run “dpkg –configure -a” Basically, why does it have to do this- could it not run that command itself? It basically acts as a front end for dpkg, from what I can tell. But, when it is suggesting to run that command- why can’t it do it? The only reason I’ve found for it is that it only fixes the problem 90% of the time, the other 10% of the time you have to figure it out yourself, all the while having the package manager suggest you run that same command each time it doesn’t work. The people developing it are clearly aware of the options they suggest, because they are- well, suggesting it. Response 3 makes sense in the more  general case, but I was speaking (specifically) about the dpkg error from the package manager that basically told the user to run a given command to try to fix it- the thing is, the problem can be resolved entirely programmatically without user intervention- just by shelling out and performing two dpkg commands. #4 is a moot point, really- performing the tasks you are using the GUI to do manually defeats the purpose of said GUI. If a user wanted “more control”, they probably wouldn’t be using the GUI tool to begin with.

The choice of shell is up to the individual. In any Unix-like environment, one needs to know the command and its options.

But Why? Why do you need to know commands and their options to use the relevant GUI tool? Isn’t the point of the GUI tool to make it so you don’t have to use the command itself?

Shell programming is useless if you do not understand what you are doing.

Of course it is. I never say anything about shell programming though…

Nobody is fixated on you.

And yet, here you are, again.

A question was asked on one site and the answer was given on another.

The answer was given on another because by the time I saw the thread it had already turned into you saying it was “an open public challenge” or some other nonsense like that. A open challenge to… do what? At that point I felt it was some sort of flamebait or something so I didn’t bother to post there, also, because I didn’t really have an answer since I don’t have any non x86/x64 systems. The idea that asking somebodies opinion on something was a “challenge” still irked me though, so I posted this entry. (because by that time, the thread in question had been locked), if the thread was still open at the time I probably would have put this there instead. (in retrospect I probably could have created yet another thread).

It would have been easier and more direct to give the answer of “It doesn’t interest me at this time,” and have it end at that.

And what obligation am I under to answer any questions at all? None. And the I got from the thread that you seemed to feel I owed you something was another reason I abstained from posting at the time. I may very well have misread you in that instance.

 

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