I realize LBO isn't the place for this sort of announcement, but here goes nada. If you don't want to read computer babble, hit delete now.
My kid gave me the latest release of FreeBSD for Christmas--well technically he didn't give me anything, he clicked a few menus on Walnut Creek CDROM's webpage, charged it to my ex-wife's credit card (ha, ha) and they sent it to me through the mail, but anyway. So, it took exactly twenty-five minutes to upgrade from 2.2.8 to 3.3 off the CD's. The system is almost automatic. You click a few menus, re-select the mount points, and hit 'commit', and then 'yes', for 'are you sure?'
What does this mean? It means the entire OS (kernel) and all of the several hundred applications were checked, if necessary upgraded, including the entire /etc directory which contains all the configuration files. So right after re-booting, everything worked: the shells of course, and mail, printer, modem, network connections, ftp, telnet, rlogin, and most of X-windows.
If there are any sys ads or unix freaks out there, think about this for a minute. The /bin, /sbin, /sys, /src directories, all the documentation, device drivers in /dev, the loadable modules, network system, the protocols, the permissions, blah, blah, blah--they all got checked, upgraded if necessary with ELF binaries, libraries, and sources, and then re-compiled, and re-installed, with no mistakes. That is pretty awesome.
Some of the X-window applications had to be upgraded manually, ie. go to the 'packages' directory on the CD's and type 'pkg_add ------' for the particular applications. For example, gimp, lyx, gv had newer versions out. There were about eight of these which took another half hour of piddling around and fussing with clickable icons and changing colors and options from the defaults. But I use a very plain-jane X desktop, so the fussing was minimal.
The numerous hours, days, weeks, and years of fucking around with evil billwitch and his m-suck, year in and year out are still fresh in my memory. I must have blown off weeks over installing fonts and re-writing the names manually in some dumb ass file of Win 3.1 (whatever the name was). And then there were the mysteries of the stupid reg.edit database bullshit in Win95, trying to find things in there to get rid of without killing the system--chasing down the stupid MSN-Network icon to kill it, must have consumed more than a week. Back Orifice, Out House, and Exploder--what gems. Bill is such an asshole.
And he is sure not alone. Adobe used to ship Illustrator broken, and for a mere $49.95 extra you had to buy the upgrade that fixed it a few months later--anybody remember that one--somewhere in the 3.5 to 4.0 era.
I tried downloading and installing WordPerfect for linux a couple of months ago and had dejavu all over again. After going through all the bullshit on the website I got it and installed it and it came up in its window and looked okay. Then I went to print. Well, naturally the print drivers were missing or broken or needed some kind of fiddling around--just like they used to back in 3.0-5.1 days--as if postscript printers were some rare, new fangled thing. Jesus. So, I went to the /usr/ports and typed 'make deinstall, make clean' and that was the end of Corel's ass.
I bit my lip and bought a couple of books on TeX and LaTeX. So, now if I want nice looking output, I click on Lyx and write it in a GUI, or mark up the text with TeX off the command line. A few lines of code at the top of the page and boom out comes a letter or whatever. I sure wish I had known TeX when I was trying to write and format articles for my science buddy. Try putting an equation in a footnote in Word or WordPerfect or Quark for that matter--then repagenate and see what happens.
That's enough computer babble. Say, Max, if you're reading this, how did the move to linex go? You announced a couple of months ago you were going to try it out. Let's hear how it went or didn't (off-list if you want.)
Chuck Grimes