Iggy, what do you use for cad or parts drawing? I know you said
you've about completely converted to Ubuntu. I'm considering dumping
windows when I retire, and I'll need to replace my vector graphics
program anyway, since it's on the work computer. I'll also need a new
laptop.

The only other reason I might keep a windows machine would be flight
and r/c simulators, and possibly personal finances.

Pete Keillor

On 2009-02-03, Pete Keillor wrote:
Iggy, what do you use for cad or parts drawing? I know you said
you've about completely converted to Ubuntu. I'm considering dumping
windows when I retire, and I'll need to replace my vector graphics
program anyway, since it's on the work computer. I'll also need a new
laptop.

The only other reason I might keep a windows machine would be flight
and r/c simulators, and possibly personal finances.

Pete Keillor

Pete, I do not personally make any CAD drawings. I am going to
investigate it a little. I know that there is BRLCAD for Linux
available, I tried it a while ago and found to be powerful. I am
looking at CYCAS right now. Seems to work, not that I know
anything. Cycas is a free (of charge) program, with some use
limitations, but you can upgrade for a ful license for 48 euros.

BRLCAD is completely free software.
--
Due to extreme spam originating from Google Groups, and their inattention
to spammers, I and many others block all articles originating
from Google Groups. If you want your postings to be seen by
more readers you will need to find a different means of
posting on Usenet.
http://improve-usenet.org/

Pete Keillor wrote:
Iggy, what do you use for cad or parts drawing? I know you said
you've about completely converted to Ubuntu. I'm considering dumping
windows when I retire, and I'll need to replace my vector graphics
program anyway, since it's on the work computer. I'll also need a new
laptop.

The only other reason I might keep a windows machine would be flight
and r/c simulators, and possibly personal finances.

Pete Keillor


That's the only reason I've stayed with Windoze - CAD.

Ignoramus14358 wrote:
On 2009-02-03, Pete Keillor wrote:
Iggy, what do you use for cad or parts drawing? I know you said
you've about completely converted to Ubuntu. I'm considering dumping
windows when I retire, and I'll need to replace my vector graphics
program anyway, since it's on the work computer. I'll also need a new
laptop.

The only other reason I might keep a windows machine would be flight
and r/c simulators, and possibly personal finances.

Pete Keillor

Pete, I do not personally make any CAD drawings. I am going to
investigate it a little. I know that there is BRLCAD for Linux
available, I tried it a while ago and found to be powerful. I am
looking at CYCAS right now. Seems to work, not that I know
anything. Cycas is a free (of charge) program, with some use
limitations, but you can upgrade for a ful license for 48 euros.

BRLCAD is completely free software.

BRLCAD also completely sucks.

But that's just my humble opinion.

On Feb 3, 5:53*am, Pete Keillor wrote:
Iggy, what do you use for cad or parts drawing? *I know you said
you've about completely converted to Ubuntu. *I'm considering dumping
windows when I retire, and I'll need to replace my vector graphics
program anyway, since it's on the work computer. *I'll also need a new
laptop.

The only other reason I might keep a windows machine would be flight
and r/c simulators, and possibly personal finances.

Pete Keillor

This subject has been on my mind for quite a while.

I use Ubuntu 8.04 and have had some success by installing WINE. This
allows me to use IntelliCAD , from http://www.cadopia.com/ (similar to
AutoCAD).

It doesn't work perfectly but it is a lot better than nothing.

Hope this helps.

Lewis.

*****

On Tue, 03 Feb 2009 06:53:47 -0500, Pete Keillor wrote:

Iggy, what do you use for cad or parts drawing? I know you said you've
about completely converted to Ubuntu. I'm considering dumping windows
when I retire, and I'll need to replace my vector graphics program
anyway, since it's on the work computer. I'll also need a new laptop.

The only other reason I might keep a windows machine would be flight and
r/c simulators, and possibly personal finances.

Pete Keillor

Pete, I'm running Ubuntu Hardy and found a 2D/3D drafting programme
called Medusa4 PL, quite free for the personal version (watermark beneath
the drawing on the printout stating this)

http://www.cad-schroer.com/index.php...oducts-MEDUSA-
M4Personal&scr=1.1

or:

http://tinyurl.com/clevnv

haven't had it for long, but it seems pretty good for me.
Mike in BC

cavelamb wrote:
Ignoramus14358 wrote:

BRLCAD is completely free software.

BRLCAD also completely sucks.

But that's just my humble opinion.

So, Richard, what exactly about it sucks?

Just curious,

Stuart

Stuart Wheaton wrote:

cavelamb wrote:
Ignoramus14358 wrote:

BRLCAD is completely free software.

BRLCAD also completely sucks.

But that's just my humble opinion.

So, Richard, what exactly about it sucks?

Just curious,

Stuart

I expect that like most things Linux, it is inconsistent, poorly
documented, minimally supported, and probably rather amateurish in many
ways.

Pete C. wrote:
Stuart Wheaton wrote:

cavelamb wrote:

Ignoramus14358 wrote:

BRLCAD is completely free software.

BRLCAD also completely sucks.

But that's just my humble opinion.

So, Richard, what exactly about it sucks?

Just curious,

Stuart


I expect that like most things Linux, it is inconsistent, poorly
documented, minimally supported, and probably rather amateurish in many
ways.

I would say as a Windows software developer that some of those comments
can be leveled at MS Windows software and documentation as well. I have
an MSDN susbscription and for many things these days google is a better
source of documentation than the MSDN help and I'm not the only one to
think so, a fellow programmer spoke to some MS developers that said the
same.

Stuart Wheaton wrote:
cavelamb wrote:
Ignoramus14358 wrote:

BRLCAD is completely free software.

BRLCAD also completely sucks.

But that's just my humble opinion.

So, Richard, what exactly about it sucks?

Just curious,

Stuart


Heavy on the solid modeling but weak on intuitive drafting.

Lots of analysis features (that I'll never use).

My impression is that it's a great system for programmers
by programmers.

From Wiki:

Although BRL-CAD can be used for a variety of engineering and graphics
applications, the package's primary purpose continues to be the support of
ballistic and electromagnetic analyses. In keeping with the Unix philosophy of
developing independent tools to perform single, specific tasks and then linking
the tools together in a package, BRL-CAD is basically a collection of libraries,
tools, and utilities that work together to create, raytrace, and interrogate
geometry and manipulate files and data


But then I'm pretty spoiled, Stuart.
I was using Autocad (under DOS) when I discovered Design CAD.
Acad went into the bit bucket immediately, and Ive never regretted the choice.

The difference is that DC was designed by draftsmen to primarily do drafting.
Yes, it also does solid rendering, ray tracing, shadows and smoke and mirrors
(V18 on).

As usual, YMMV...


Richard

Pete C. wrote:
Stuart Wheaton wrote:
cavelamb wrote:
Ignoramus14358 wrote:
BRLCAD is completely free software.
BRLCAD also completely sucks.

But that's just my humble opinion.
So, Richard, what exactly about it sucks?

Just curious,

Stuart

I expect that like most things Linux, it is inconsistent, poorly
documented, minimally supported, and probably rather amateurish in many
ways.


I try not to, too often, call another man's dog ugly...

Well, for relatively simple work, there's xdraft:

http://xdraft.sourceforge.net

Still a work in progress, but I've done some useful work with it.

Still waiting for a Linux version of Sketchup, myself.

--
-Ed Falk,
http://thespamdiaries.blogspot.com/

"Pete C." fired this volley in news:4988c526$0
:

BRLCAD also completely sucks.

But that's just my humble opinion.

So, Richard, what exactly about it sucks?

Just curious,

Stuart

I expect that like most things Linux, it is inconsistent, poorly
documented, minimally supported, and probably rather amateurish in
many
ways.



None of that really addresses BRLCAD's condition.

BRLCAD was written BY command-line programmers FOR command-line
programmers. It's a command-driven 3D CAD system that requires that
the user define objects with a list of parameters. It doesn't (didn't
at my last use) have an "intuitive" GUI interface. You cannot just
"draw" objects in it; you must _define_ them with a string of
operands.

Now... there are some benefits to that, like being able to ably
structure the order in which polygons are define, etc. But there are
quite capable post-processors in GUI-driven CAD systems that will re-
order your drawings in order to make "machine sense". So, the
inability to simply _draw_ a 3D object in BRLCAD makes it difficult to
use and completely un-intuitive to the visually-oriented user.

After all, it was developed by the military, FOR the military. What
about them has ever made much sense? (ex-Navy river-rat)

LLoyd

On Tue, 3 Feb 2009 23:49:48 +0000 (UTC), the infamous
(Edward A. Falk) scrawled the following:

Well, for relatively simple work, there's xdraft:

http://xdraft.sourceforge.net

Still a work in progress, but I've done some useful work with it.

Still waiting for a Linux version of Sketchup, myself.

If I might alliterate, won't Wine work?

--
Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what
to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.
-- George S. Patton

On 2009-02-03, Pete C. wrote:

Stuart Wheaton wrote:

cavelamb wrote:
Ignoramus14358 wrote:

BRLCAD is completely free software.

BRLCAD also completely sucks.

But that's just my humble opinion.

So, Richard, what exactly about it sucks?

Just curious,

Stuart

I expect that like most things Linux, it is inconsistent, poorly
documented, minimally supported, and probably rather amateurish in many
ways.

Actually -- it was developed by the U.S. Army Balistics Research
Lab (the "BRL" of "BRLCAD"), and it was tailored for what *they* needed
it to do. It may be very good for their tasks, and a bit awkward for
the HSM. Think of it as being like using a drawing program aimed at
architectural work (.e.g. dimensions in feet and inches) and trying to
use it to design a wris****ch. :-) And one developed for architectural
work would probably not have good features for doing circles and
fillets.

They used it on more industrial unix boxen -- Suns, SGIs and the
like back when they were developing it, not on linux. And in those days
you had to register to download the source. The place where I worked
(U.S. Army Night Vision Labs) used it for some things -- but not in the
branch where I was working, so I don't have personal experience with it.

Since it was developed using taxpayer money, and it has no truly
classified parts, it pretty much had to be released free eventually,
just like EMC (which was developed by the NIST).

Enjoy,
DoN.

P.S. I probably won't see just what cavelamb does not like about
it as I killfiled him some time ago as contributing too much
to the political spam and such and not enough to the
metalworking part of things.

IRRC -- he goes in cycles, but I decided that the good side of
the cycles was not good enough to put up with the bad side. :-)

--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

David Billington wrote:

Pete C. wrote:
Stuart Wheaton wrote:

cavelamb wrote:

Ignoramus14358 wrote:

BRLCAD is completely free software.

BRLCAD also completely sucks.

But that's just my humble opinion.

So, Richard, what exactly about it sucks?

Just curious,

Stuart


I expect that like most things Linux, it is inconsistent, poorly
documented, minimally supported, and probably rather amateurish in many
ways.

I would say as a Windows software developer that some of those comments
can be leveled at MS Windows software and documentation as well. I have
an MSDN susbscription and for many things these days google is a better
source of documentation than the MSDN help and I'm not the only one to
think so, a fellow programmer spoke to some MS developers that said the
same.

MS "documentation" is about as marginal as it gets, but at least it's
consistent.

cavelamb wrote:

Pete C. wrote:
Stuart Wheaton wrote:
cavelamb wrote:
Ignoramus14358 wrote:
BRLCAD is completely free software.
BRLCAD also completely sucks.

But that's just my humble opinion.
So, Richard, what exactly about it sucks?

Just curious,

Stuart

I expect that like most things Linux, it is inconsistent, poorly
documented, minimally supported, and probably rather amateurish in many
ways.

I try not to, too often, call another man's dog ugly...

It seems every year or so I venture into the Linux world to investigate
something, but so far I just haven't found any attraction. The bulk of
the Linux hype I hear boils down to "It's free" and "It's not Microsoft"
and neither of those hold any particular appeal to me. I'm certainly not
a big Windoze fan, but I find it does everything I need it to do, at a
modest price, I can find the applications I need for it, and it's
reliable (at least all of my Windoze installations are).

Larry Jaques writes:

On Tue, 3 Feb 2009 23:49:48 +0000 (UTC), the infamous
(Edward A. Falk) scrawled the following:

Well, for relatively simple work, there's xdraft:

http://xdraft.sourceforge.net

Still a work in progress, but I've done some useful work with it.

Still waiting for a Linux version of Sketchup, myself.

If I might alliterate, won't Wine work?

I've never gotten wine to work for anything useful... I've only got
about two applications that require me to use Windows, and I can run
one of those in virtualbox.

"DoN. Nichols" writes:

Actually -- it was developed by the U.S. Army Balistics Research
Lab (the "BRL" of "BRLCAD"), and it was tailored for what *they* needed
it to do. It may be very good for their tasks, and a bit awkward for
the HSM. Think of it as being like using a drawing program aimed at
architectural work (.e.g. dimensions in feet and inches) and trying to
use it to design a wris****ch. :-) And one developed for architectural
work would probably not have good features for doing circles and
fillets.

Sort of like why I haven't suggested my favorite drawing tool: xfig.
The perfect tool for just about any line drawing you'd want to make
related to computers; totally hopeless for designing parts.

Lloyd E. Sponenburgh wrote:
"Pete C." fired this volley in news:4988c526$0
:

BRLCAD also completely sucks.

But that's just my humble opinion.
So, Richard, what exactly about it sucks?

Just curious,

Stuart
I expect that like most things Linux, it is inconsistent, poorly
documented, minimally supported, and probably rather amateurish in
many
ways.



None of that really addresses BRLCAD's condition.

BRLCAD was written BY command-line programmers FOR command-line
programmers. It's a command-driven 3D CAD system that requires that
the user define objects with a list of parameters. It doesn't (didn't
at my last use) have an "intuitive" GUI interface. You cannot just
"draw" objects in it; you must _define_ them with a string of
operands.

Now... there are some benefits to that, like being able to ably
structure the order in which polygons are define, etc. But there are
quite capable post-processors in GUI-driven CAD systems that will re-
order your drawings in order to make "machine sense". So, the
inability to simply _draw_ a 3D object in BRLCAD makes it difficult to
use and completely un-intuitive to the visually-oriented user.

After all, it was developed by the military, FOR the military. What
about them has ever made much sense? (ex-Navy river-rat)

LLoyd

Actually, Lloyd, I DID reply to that.
But I don't see it here, so... try again!


Stuart Wheaton wrote:
cavelamb wrote:
Ignoramus14358 wrote:

BRLCAD is completely free software.

BRLCAD also completely sucks.

But that's just my humble opinion.

So, Richard, what exactly about it sucks?

Just curious,

Stuart


Heavy on the solid modeling but weak on intuitive drafting.

Lots of analysis features (that I'll never use).

My impression is that it's a great system for programmers
by programmers.

From Wiki:

Although BRL-CAD can be used for a variety of engineering and graphics
applications, the package's primary purpose continues to be the support of
ballistic and electromagnetic analyses. In keeping with the Unix philosophy of
developing independent tools to perform single, specific tasks and then linking
the tools together in a package, BRL-CAD is basically a collection of libraries,
tools, and utilities that work together to create, raytrace, and interrogate
geometry and manipulate files and data


But then I'm pretty spoiled, Stuart.
I was using Autocad (under DOS) when I discovered Design CAD.
Acad went into the bit bucket immediately, and Ive never regretted the choice.

The difference is that DC was designed by draftsmen to primarily do drafting.
Yes, it also does solid rendering, ray tracing, shadows and smoke and mirrors
(V18 on).

As usual, YMMV...


Richard

DoN. Nichols wrote:
On 2009-02-03, Pete C. wrote:
Stuart Wheaton wrote:
cavelamb wrote:
Ignoramus14358 wrote:
BRLCAD is completely free software.
BRLCAD also completely sucks.

But that's just my humble opinion.
So, Richard, what exactly about it sucks?

Just curious,

Stuart
I expect that like most things Linux, it is inconsistent, poorly
documented, minimally supported, and probably rather amateurish in many
ways.

Actually -- it was developed by the U.S. Army Balistics Research
Lab (the "BRL" of "BRLCAD"), and it was tailored for what *they* needed
it to do. It may be very good for their tasks, and a bit awkward for
the HSM. Think of it as being like using a drawing program aimed at
architectural work (.e.g. dimensions in feet and inches) and trying to
use it to design a wris****ch. :-) And one developed for architectural
work would probably not have good features for doing circles and
fillets.

They used it on more industrial unix boxen -- Suns, SGIs and the
like back when they were developing it, not on linux. And in those days
you had to register to download the source. The place where I worked
(U.S. Army Night Vision Labs) used it for some things -- but not in the
branch where I was working, so I don't have personal experience with it.

Since it was developed using taxpayer money, and it has no truly
classified parts, it pretty much had to be released free eventually,
just like EMC (which was developed by the NIST).

Enjoy,
DoN.

P.S. I probably won't see just what cavelamb does not like about
it as I killfiled him some time ago as contributing too much
to the political spam and such and not enough to the
metalworking part of things.

IRRC -- he goes in cycles, but I decided that the good side of
the cycles was not good enough to put up with the bad side. :-)



My appologies, Don.

I'll try harder.

But then you probably won't notice

Richard

"Pete C." writes:

It seems every year or so I venture into the Linux world to investigate
something, but so far I just haven't found any attraction. The bulk of
the Linux hype I hear boils down to "It's free" and "It's not Microsoft"
and neither of those hold any particular appeal to me. I'm certainly not
a big Windoze fan, but I find it does everything I need it to do, at a
modest price, I can find the applications I need for it, and it's
reliable (at least all of my Windoze installations are).

Windows 7 will have 6 different editions. The Starter Edition, for
those $400 notebooks, will be limited to three applications at one
time.
Considering that 25% of the computers being sold are notebooks,
That sucks royally, IMHO.

In this case, it not "free as in beer", but "Free as in Speech"
in that Linux does not purposely cripple your computer.

On 2009-02-04, Pete C. wrote:
It seems every year or so I venture into the Linux world to investigate
something, but so far I just haven't found any attraction. The bulk of
the Linux hype I hear boils down to "It's free" and "It's not Microsoft"
and neither of those hold any particular appeal to me. I'm certainly not
a big Windoze fan, but I find it does everything I need it to do, at a
modest price, I can find the applications I need for it, and it's
reliable (at least all of my Windoze installations are).

It may depend on what you are trying to do with Linux (or Windows).

I am typing this from a Linux laptop.

I run Linux at home and we are switching to Linux at work for certain
applications (all application backend stuff and some computer
programmers). The more we switch, the more other things that run under
Windows look like they could be a candidate for switching. We went
from using about 100 Windows servers to run our apps, to just over 30
Linux server, because we could load up Linux quite a bit more. It is a
stronger platform.

There are some things that work very well under Linux, some things
that work not so well. The same applies to Windows.

What works well under Linux is OS reliability, document editing, web
browsing, databases, all server stuff, networking, and, lately I would
say media playing. Linux is also extremely friendly to automation of
common tasks via scripts (such as automated backups and a myriad of
other things). It is also a very strong platform for servers.

Where it is not so strong is "specialized applications" like those
drag and drop specialized programs like accounting, CAD etc. BRLCAD is
a good example, everything that I have seen about it suggests that it
is very powerful (I tried it) but it is not easy to get started
with. My feeling is that if I had to use it ona professional basis, it
would be actually very fine after a steep learning curve.

The strength of Windows is that it usually comes preinstalled by the
PC manufacturer, so they iron out all hardware glitches, and it is
easy to use for simple things. Also, its strong point is a lot of
"apps" that could be easy to use, but cost money. The weaknesses are
bad security (viruses and other malware), difficulty in automation,
and lower performance.

So to each person, the choice may be different due to their
priorities.

One thing to keep in mind, however, is that non-free software serves
their creators, not you. So authors of non-free software do their
utmost to limit your choices, even if it is not in your interests.

To anyone interested in Linux, I would say the best approach is to get
some cheap older PC and set Linux up on that, in parallel with
windows, and then make some effort to make it do exactly what you
want. This is a low stress approach.

I recently gave a Linux PC to my friend, who had no personal computer
before (only a shared family Windows PC), and he is very happy with
it. So is my sister. I am going to set up a computer for my parents
now also.

--
Due to extreme spam originating from Google Groups, and their inattention
to spammers, I and many others block all articles originating
from Google Groups. If you want your postings to be seen by
more readers you will need to find a different means of
posting on Usenet.
http://improve-usenet.org/

Ignoramus28897 wrote:

On 2009-02-04, Pete C. wrote:
It seems every year or so I venture into the Linux world to investigate
something, but so far I just haven't found any attraction. The bulk of
the Linux hype I hear boils down to "It's free" and "It's not Microsoft"
and neither of those hold any particular appeal to me. I'm certainly not
a big Windoze fan, but I find it does everything I need it to do, at a
modest price, I can find the applications I need for it, and it's
reliable (at least all of my Windoze installations are).

It may depend on what you are trying to do with Linux (or Windows).

I am typing this from a Linux laptop.

I run Linux at home and we are switching to Linux at work for certain
applications (all application backend stuff and some computer
programmers). The more we switch, the more other things that run under
Windows look like they could be a candidate for switching. We went
from using about 100 Windows servers to run our apps, to just over 30
Linux server, because we could load up Linux quite a bit more. It is a
stronger platform.

There are some things that work very well under Linux, some things
that work not so well. The same applies to Windows.

What works well under Linux is OS reliability, document editing, web
browsing, databases, all server stuff, networking, and, lately I would
say media playing. Linux is also extremely friendly to automation of
common tasks via scripts (such as automated backups and a myriad of
other things). It is also a very strong platform for servers.

That's an argument for *not* using Windoze as a server in the Enterprise
space, not an argument for using Linux. There are a number of OSs that
are far better suited to the Enterprise server space than either Windoze
or Linux.


Where it is not so strong is "specialized applications" like those
drag and drop specialized programs like accounting, CAD etc. BRLCAD is
a good example, everything that I have seen about it suggests that it
is very powerful (I tried it) but it is not easy to get started
with. My feeling is that if I had to use it ona professional basis, it
would be actually very fine after a steep learning curve.

The strength of Windows is that it usually comes preinstalled by the
PC manufacturer, so they iron out all hardware glitches, and it is
easy to use for simple things. Also, its strong point is a lot of
"apps" that could be easy to use, but cost money. The weaknesses are
bad security (viruses and other malware), difficulty in automation,
and lower performance.

So to each person, the choice may be different due to their
priorities.

One thing to keep in mind, however, is that non-free software serves
their creators, not you. So authors of non-free software do their
utmost to limit your choices, even if it is not in your interests.

To anyone interested in Linux, I would say the best approach is to get
some cheap older PC and set Linux up on that, in parallel with
windows, and then make some effort to make it do exactly what you
want. This is a low stress approach.

That is exactly what I have done on a number of occasions, two otherwise
identical machines side by side in a "shootout" for the same
application, and in each case the Windoze machine has won the shootout.


I recently gave a Linux PC to my friend, who had no personal computer
before (only a shared family Windows PC), and he is very happy with
it. So is my sister. I am going to set up a computer for my parents
now also.

--
Due to extreme spam originating from Google Groups, and their inattention
to spammers, I and many others block all articles originating
from Google Groups. If you want your postings to be seen by
more readers you will need to find a different means of
posting on Usenet.
http://improve-usenet.org/

On 2009-02-04, Pete C. wrote:

Ignoramus28897 wrote:

On 2009-02-04, Pete C. wrote:
It seems every year or so I venture into the Linux world to investigate
something, but so far I just haven't found any attraction. The bulk of
the Linux hype I hear boils down to "It's free" and "It's not Microsoft"
and neither of those hold any particular appeal to me. I'm certainly not
a big Windoze fan, but I find it does everything I need it to do, at a
modest price, I can find the applications I need for it, and it's
reliable (at least all of my Windoze installations are).

It may depend on what you are trying to do with Linux (or Windows).

I am typing this from a Linux laptop.

I run Linux at home and we are switching to Linux at work for certain
applications (all application backend stuff and some computer
programmers). The more we switch, the more other things that run under
Windows look like they could be a candidate for switching. We went
from using about 100 Windows servers to run our apps, to just over 30
Linux server, because we could load up Linux quite a bit more. It is a
stronger platform.

There are some things that work very well under Linux, some things
that work not so well. The same applies to Windows.

What works well under Linux is OS reliability, document editing, web
browsing, databases, all server stuff, networking, and, lately I would
say media playing. Linux is also extremely friendly to automation of
common tasks via scripts (such as automated backups and a myriad of
other things). It is also a very strong platform for servers.

That's an argument for *not* using Windoze as a server in the Enterprise
space, not an argument for using Linux. There are a number of OSs that
are far better suited to the Enterprise server space than either Windoze
or Linux.

Well, I am open minded. So tell mw what I do not know.

For the enterprise, I considered Linux (which I used extensively for
the last 13 years since 1995), and FreeBSD. The choice was fairly
obvious. FreeBSD is rock solid stable, but there is less support and I
was not as well versed.

Looking for a proper distro, I rejected both debian as well as
Fedora. Ubuntu server gives me everything that I look for and is every
easy to maintain. We have several dozens of servers and I manage all
of them by means of scripts. I made a practice to never log on to them
individually one by one to do anything. Everything is done via
scripted commands.

This way, the incremental "cost of ownership", as far as personnel and
administrative costs go, is zero. If they add 500 more servers,
administering them will not be any more work.

We also found them to be highly reliable, as in, none ever crashed or
misbehaved beyond out own mistakes.

So, this is a decent platform.


Where it is not so strong is "specialized applications" like those
drag and drop specialized programs like accounting, CAD etc. BRLCAD is
a good example, everything that I have seen about it suggests that it
is very powerful (I tried it) but it is not easy to get started
with. My feeling is that if I had to use it ona professional basis, it
would be actually very fine after a steep learning curve.

The strength of Windows is that it usually comes preinstalled by the
PC manufacturer, so they iron out all hardware glitches, and it is
easy to use for simple things. Also, its strong point is a lot of
"apps" that could be easy to use, but cost money. The weaknesses are
bad security (viruses and other malware), difficulty in automation,
and lower performance.

So to each person, the choice may be different due to their
priorities.

One thing to keep in mind, however, is that non-free software serves
their creators, not you. So authors of non-free software do their
utmost to limit your choices, even if it is not in your interests.

To anyone interested in Linux, I would say the best approach is to get
some cheap older PC and set Linux up on that, in parallel with
windows, and then make some effort to make it do exactly what you
want. This is a low stress approach.

That is exactly what I have done on a number of occasions, two otherwise
identical machines side by side in a "shootout" for the same
application, and in each case the Windoze machine has won the shootout.

I understand. I think that what it means for Linux people is that we
should make it better, instead of frothing at the mouth.

i


I recently gave a Linux PC to my friend, who had no personal computer
before (only a shared family Windows PC), and he is very happy with
it. So is my sister. I am going to set up a computer for my parents
now also.


--
Due to extreme spam originating from Google Groups, and their inattention
to spammers, I and many others block all articles originating
from Google Groups. If you want your postings to be seen by
more readers you will need to find a different means of
posting on Usenet.
http://improve-usenet.org/

Ignoramus28897 wrote:
On 2009-02-04, Pete C. wrote:

Ignoramus28897 wrote:

On 2009-02-04, Pete C. wrote:

It seems every year or so I venture into the Linux world to investigate
something, but so far I just haven't found any attraction. The bulk of
the Linux hype I hear boils down to "It's free" and "It's not Microsoft"
and neither of those hold any particular appeal to me. I'm certainly not
a big Windoze fan, but I find it does everything I need it to do, at a
modest price, I can find the applications I need for it, and it's
reliable (at least all of my Windoze installations are).

It may depend on what you are trying to do with Linux (or Windows).

I am typing this from a Linux laptop.

I run Linux at home and we are switching to Linux at work for certain
applications (all application backend stuff and some computer
programmers). The more we switch, the more other things that run under
Windows look like they could be a candidate for switching. We went
from using about 100 Windows servers to run our apps, to just over 30
Linux server, because we could load up Linux quite a bit more. It is a
stronger platform.

There are some things that work very well under Linux, some things
that work not so well. The same applies to Windows.

What works well under Linux is OS reliability, document editing, web
browsing, databases, all server stuff, networking, and, lately I would
say media playing. Linux is also extremely friendly to automation of
common tasks via scripts (such as automated backups and a myriad of
other things). It is also a very strong platform for servers.

That's an argument for *not* using Windoze as a server in the Enterprise
space, not an argument for using Linux. There are a number of OSs that
are far better suited to the Enterprise server space than either Windoze
or Linux.


Well, I am open minded. So tell mw what I do not know.

For the enterprise, I considered Linux (which I used extensively for
the last 13 years since 1995), and FreeBSD. The choice was fairly
obvious. FreeBSD is rock solid stable, but there is less support and I
was not as well versed.

Looking for a proper distro, I rejected both debian as well as
Fedora. Ubuntu server gives me everything that I look for and is every
easy to maintain. We have several dozens of servers and I manage all
of them by means of scripts. I made a practice to never log on to them
individually one by one to do anything. Everything is done via
scripted commands.

This way, the incremental "cost of ownership", as far as personnel and
administrative costs go, is zero. If they add 500 more servers,
administering them will not be any more work.

We also found them to be highly reliable, as in, none ever crashed or
misbehaved beyond out own mistakes.

So, this is a decent platform.


Where it is not so strong is "specialized applications" like those
drag and drop specialized programs like accounting, CAD etc. BRLCAD is
a good example, everything that I have seen about it suggests that it
is very powerful (I tried it) but it is not easy to get started
with. My feeling is that if I had to use it ona professional basis, it
would be actually very fine after a steep learning curve.

The strength of Windows is that it usually comes preinstalled by the
PC manufacturer, so they iron out all hardware glitches, and it is
easy to use for simple things. Also, its strong point is a lot of
"apps" that could be easy to use, but cost money. The weaknesses are
bad security (viruses and other malware), difficulty in automation,
and lower performance.

So to each person, the choice may be different due to their
priorities.

One thing to keep in mind, however, is that non-free software serves
their creators, not you. So authors of non-free software do their
utmost to limit your choices, even if it is not in your interests.

To anyone interested in Linux, I would say the best approach is to get
some cheap older PC and set Linux up on that, in parallel with
windows, and then make some effort to make it do exactly what you
want. This is a low stress approach.

That is exactly what I have done on a number of occasions, two otherwise
identical machines side by side in a "shootout" for the same
application, and in each case the Windoze machine has won the shootout.


I understand. I think that what it means for Linux people is that we
should make it better, instead of frothing at the mouth.

i


I recently gave a Linux PC to my friend, who had no personal computer
before (only a shared family Windows PC), and he is very happy with
it. So is my sister. I am going to set up a computer for my parents
now also.




Iggy

What filing system do you chose to use. I've been using XFS for
about 5 or 6 years now and find it really stable. I am currently using
Mandriva 2006, does Ubuntu do XFS. I know Redhat didn't but haven't
looked recently to see what they now support.

Ignoramus28897 wrote:

On 2009-02-04, Pete C. wrote:

Ignoramus28897 wrote:

On 2009-02-04, Pete C. wrote:
It seems every year or so I venture into the Linux world to investigate
something, but so far I just haven't found any attraction. The bulk of
the Linux hype I hear boils down to "It's free" and "It's not Microsoft"
and neither of those hold any particular appeal to me. I'm certainly not
a big Windoze fan, but I find it does everything I need it to do, at a
modest price, I can find the applications I need for it, and it's
reliable (at least all of my Windoze installations are).

It may depend on what you are trying to do with Linux (or Windows).

I am typing this from a Linux laptop.

I run Linux at home and we are switching to Linux at work for certain
applications (all application backend stuff and some computer
programmers). The more we switch, the more other things that run under
Windows look like they could be a candidate for switching. We went
from using about 100 Windows servers to run our apps, to just over 30
Linux server, because we could load up Linux quite a bit more. It is a
stronger platform.

There are some things that work very well under Linux, some things
that work not so well. The same applies to Windows.

What works well under Linux is OS reliability, document editing, web
browsing, databases, all server stuff, networking, and, lately I would
say media playing. Linux is also extremely friendly to automation of
common tasks via scripts (such as automated backups and a myriad of
other things). It is also a very strong platform for servers.

That's an argument for *not* using Windoze as a server in the Enterprise
space, not an argument for using Linux. There are a number of OSs that
are far better suited to the Enterprise server space than either Windoze
or Linux.

Well, I am open minded. So tell mw what I do not know.

For the enterprise, I considered Linux (which I used extensively for
the last 13 years since 1995), and FreeBSD. The choice was fairly
obvious. FreeBSD is rock solid stable, but there is less support and I
was not as well versed.

Looking for a proper distro, I rejected both debian as well as
Fedora. Ubuntu server gives me everything that I look for and is every
easy to maintain. We have several dozens of servers and I manage all
of them by means of scripts. I made a practice to never log on to them
individually one by one to do anything. Everything is done via
scripted commands.

This way, the incremental "cost of ownership", as far as personnel and
administrative costs go, is zero. If they add 500 more servers,
administering them will not be any more work.

We also found them to be highly reliable, as in, none ever crashed or
misbehaved beyond out own mistakes.

So, this is a decent platform.

For enterprise class OSes try ones such as: AIX, OpenVMS, Solaris, HPUX,
etc., all OSes with mission critical level support, something that both
Windoze and Linux lack.

Where I work we have many 10s of thousands of servers (no joke), and
among those we have like a dozen Linux systems that were an experiment
in their viability in the enterprise space. That experiment was some
years ago and there has been no expansion in the Linux space, even
though the company is very big on cutting costs.



Where it is not so strong is "specialized applications" like those
drag and drop specialized programs like accounting, CAD etc. BRLCAD is
a good example, everything that I have seen about it suggests that it
is very powerful (I tried it) but it is not easy to get started
with. My feeling is that if I had to use it ona professional basis, it
would be actually very fine after a steep learning curve.

The strength of Windows is that it usually comes preinstalled by the
PC manufacturer, so they iron out all hardware glitches, and it is
easy to use for simple things. Also, its strong point is a lot of
"apps" that could be easy to use, but cost money. The weaknesses are
bad security (viruses and other malware), difficulty in automation,
and lower performance.

So to each person, the choice may be different due to their
priorities.

One thing to keep in mind, however, is that non-free software serves
their creators, not you. So authors of non-free software do their
utmost to limit your choices, even if it is not in your interests.

To anyone interested in Linux, I would say the best approach is to get
some cheap older PC and set Linux up on that, in parallel with
windows, and then make some effort to make it do exactly what you
want. This is a low stress approach.

That is exactly what I have done on a number of occasions, two otherwise
identical machines side by side in a "shootout" for the same
application, and in each case the Windoze machine has won the shootout.

I understand. I think that what it means for Linux people is that we
should make it better, instead of frothing at the mouth.

Perhaps one of these days it will win one on my shootouts.



I recently gave a Linux PC to my friend, who had no personal computer
before (only a shared family Windows PC), and he is very happy with
it. So is my sister. I am going to set up a computer for my parents
now also.


--
Due to extreme spam originating from Google Groups, and their inattention
to spammers, I and many others block all articles originating
from Google Groups. If you want your postings to be seen by
more readers you will need to find a different means of
posting on Usenet.
http://improve-usenet.org/

On 2009-02-05, Pete C. wrote:

Ignoramus28897 wrote:

On 2009-02-04, Pete C. wrote:

Ignoramus28897 wrote:

On 2009-02-04, Pete C. wrote:
It seems every year or so I venture into the Linux world to investigate
something, but so far I just haven't found any attraction. The bulk of
the Linux hype I hear boils down to "It's free" and "It's not Microsoft"
and neither of those hold any particular appeal to me. I'm certainly not
a big Windoze fan, but I find it does everything I need it to do, at a
modest price, I can find the applications I need for it, and it's
reliable (at least all of my Windoze installations are).

It may depend on what you are trying to do with Linux (or Windows).

I am typing this from a Linux laptop.

I run Linux at home and we are switching to Linux at work for certain
applications (all application backend stuff and some computer
programmers). The more we switch, the more other things that run under
Windows look like they could be a candidate for switching. We went
from using about 100 Windows servers to run our apps, to just over 30
Linux server, because we could load up Linux quite a bit more. It is a
stronger platform.

There are some things that work very well under Linux, some things
that work not so well. The same applies to Windows.

What works well under Linux is OS reliability, document editing, web
browsing, databases, all server stuff, networking, and, lately I would
say media playing. Linux is also extremely friendly to automation of
common tasks via scripts (such as automated backups and a myriad of
other things). It is also a very strong platform for servers.

That's an argument for *not* using Windoze as a server in the Enterprise
space, not an argument for using Linux. There are a number of OSs that
are far better suited to the Enterprise server space than either Windoze
or Linux.

Well, I am open minded. So tell mw what I do not know.

For the enterprise, I considered Linux (which I used extensively for
the last 13 years since 1995), and FreeBSD. The choice was fairly
obvious. FreeBSD is rock solid stable, but there is less support and I
was not as well versed.

Looking for a proper distro, I rejected both debian as well as
Fedora. Ubuntu server gives me everything that I look for and is every
easy to maintain. We have several dozens of servers and I manage all
of them by means of scripts. I made a practice to never log on to them
individually one by one to do anything. Everything is done via
scripted commands.

This way, the incremental "cost of ownership", as far as personnel and
administrative costs go, is zero. If they add 500 more servers,
administering them will not be any more work.

We also found them to be highly reliable, as in, none ever crashed or
misbehaved beyond out own mistakes.

So, this is a decent platform.

For enterprise class OSes try ones such as: AIX, OpenVMS, Solaris, HPUX,
etc., all OSes with mission critical level support, something that both
Windoze and Linux lack.

I heard a lot of that "mission critical" talk. I do not think that it
is worth the exorbitant amount of money, given that Linux already
gives us the reliability. We have enough scripts written for quick
failover.


Where I work we have many 10s of thousands of servers (no joke), and
among those we have like a dozen Linux systems that were an experiment
in their viability in the enterprise space. That experiment was some
years ago and there has been no expansion in the Linux space, even
though the company is very big on cutting costs.

Depending on what you do exactly, which you obviously do not have to
state here, you could save a "very large" amount of money. Google can
do it.

If 30+ servers have not crashed in 6 months, that tells me that their
reliability is decent. I reboot them every week, automatically of
course, just in case.



Where it is not so strong is "specialized applications" like those
drag and drop specialized programs like accounting, CAD etc. BRLCAD is
a good example, everything that I have seen about it suggests that it
is very powerful (I tried it) but it is not easy to get started
with. My feeling is that if I had to use it ona professional basis, it
would be actually very fine after a steep learning curve.

The strength of Windows is that it usually comes preinstalled by the
PC manufacturer, so they iron out all hardware glitches, and it is
easy to use for simple things. Also, its strong point is a lot of
"apps" that could be easy to use, but cost money. The weaknesses are
bad security (viruses and other malware), difficulty in automation,
and lower performance.

So to each person, the choice may be different due to their
priorities.

One thing to keep in mind, however, is that non-free software serves
their creators, not you. So authors of non-free software do their
utmost to limit your choices, even if it is not in your interests.

To anyone interested in Linux, I would say the best approach is to get
some cheap older PC and set Linux up on that, in parallel with
windows, and then make some effort to make it do exactly what you
want. This is a low stress approach.

That is exactly what I have done on a number of occasions, two otherwise
identical machines side by side in a "shootout" for the same
application, and in each case the Windoze machine has won the shootout.

I understand. I think that what it means for Linux people is that we
should make it better, instead of frothing at the mouth.

Perhaps one of these days it will win one on my shootouts.

If you want to try Ubuntu, I can help you set it up.

igor



I recently gave a Linux PC to my friend, who had no personal computer
before (only a shared family Windows PC), and he is very happy with
it. So is my sister. I am going to set up a computer for my parents
now also.



--
Due to extreme spam originating from Google Groups, and their inattention
to spammers, I and many others block all articles originating
from Google Groups. If you want your postings to be seen by
more readers you will need to find a different means of
posting on Usenet.
http://improve-usenet.org/

Ignoramus3187 wrote:

On 2009-02-05, Pete C. wrote:

Ignoramus28897 wrote:

On 2009-02-04, Pete C. wrote:

Ignoramus28897 wrote:

On 2009-02-04, Pete C. wrote:
It seems every year or so I venture into the Linux world to investigate
something, but so far I just haven't found any attraction. The bulk of
the Linux hype I hear boils down to "It's free" and "It's not Microsoft"
and neither of those hold any particular appeal to me. I'm certainly not
a big Windoze fan, but I find it does everything I need it to do, at a
modest price, I can find the applications I need for it, and it's
reliable (at least all of my Windoze installations are).

It may depend on what you are trying to do with Linux (or Windows).

I am typing this from a Linux laptop.

I run Linux at home and we are switching to Linux at work for certain
applications (all application backend stuff and some computer
programmers). The more we switch, the more other things that run under
Windows look like they could be a candidate for switching. We went
from using about 100 Windows servers to run our apps, to just over 30
Linux server, because we could load up Linux quite a bit more. It is a
stronger platform.

There are some things that work very well under Linux, some things
that work not so well. The same applies to Windows.

What works well under Linux is OS reliability, document editing, web
browsing, databases, all server stuff, networking, and, lately I would
say media playing. Linux is also extremely friendly to automation of
common tasks via scripts (such as automated backups and a myriad of
other things). It is also a very strong platform for servers.

That's an argument for *not* using Windoze as a server in the Enterprise
space, not an argument for using Linux. There are a number of OSs that
are far better suited to the Enterprise server space than either Windoze
or Linux.

Well, I am open minded. So tell mw what I do not know.

For the enterprise, I considered Linux (which I used extensively for
the last 13 years since 1995), and FreeBSD. The choice was fairly
obvious. FreeBSD is rock solid stable, but there is less support and I
was not as well versed.

Looking for a proper distro, I rejected both debian as well as
Fedora. Ubuntu server gives me everything that I look for and is every
easy to maintain. We have several dozens of servers and I manage all
of them by means of scripts. I made a practice to never log on to them
individually one by one to do anything. Everything is done via
scripted commands.

This way, the incremental "cost of ownership", as far as personnel and
administrative costs go, is zero. If they add 500 more servers,
administering them will not be any more work.

We also found them to be highly reliable, as in, none ever crashed or
misbehaved beyond out own mistakes.

So, this is a decent platform.

For enterprise class OSes try ones such as: AIX, OpenVMS, Solaris, HPUX,
etc., all OSes with mission critical level support, something that both
Windoze and Linux lack.

I heard a lot of that "mission critical" talk. I do not think that it
is worth the exorbitant amount of money, given that Linux already
gives us the reliability. We have enough scripts written for quick
failover.

Mission critical service includes such things as on site spare parts
inventory, guaranteed on-site response and system repair times, etc. All
critical systems already have multiple levels of redundancy to ensure
rapid service recovery in the event of a system loss or even a site
loss. Mission critical service isn't to ensure uninterupted service,
proper systems design ensures that, mission critical service ensures a
minimum exposure to reduced redundancy.


Where I work we have many 10s of thousands of servers (no joke), and
among those we have like a dozen Linux systems that were an experiment
in their viability in the enterprise space. That experiment was some
years ago and there has been no expansion in the Linux space, even
though the company is very big on cutting costs.

Depending on what you do exactly, which you obviously do not have to
state here, you could save a "very large" amount of money. Google can
do it.

If 30+ servers have not crashed in 6 months, that tells me that their
reliability is decent. I reboot them every week, automatically of
course, just in case.

We work to "five nines" i.e. 99.999% availability standards, so not
crashing in six months isn't enough to meet that standard. My systems
regularly run years without a crash, and do not require weekly reboots
either. The reboots during routine maintenance every few months are
plenty. The bulk of failures are transparent such as a failure of a disk
that is mirrored and automatically replaced with a hot spare so the
replacement of the failed disk is at our leisure.




Where it is not so strong is "specialized applications" like those
drag and drop specialized programs like accounting, CAD etc. BRLCAD is
a good example, everything that I have seen about it suggests that it
is very powerful (I tried it) but it is not easy to get started
with. My feeling is that if I had to use it ona professional basis, it
would be actually very fine after a steep learning curve.

The strength of Windows is that it usually comes preinstalled by the
PC manufacturer, so they iron out all hardware glitches, and it is
easy to use for simple things. Also, its strong point is a lot of
"apps" that could be easy to use, but cost money. The weaknesses are
bad security (viruses and other malware), difficulty in automation,
and lower performance.

So to each person, the choice may be different due to their
priorities.

One thing to keep in mind, however, is that non-free software serves
their creators, not you. So authors of non-free software do their
utmost to limit your choices, even if it is not in your interests.

To anyone interested in Linux, I would say the best approach is to get
some cheap older PC and set Linux up on that, in parallel with
windows, and then make some effort to make it do exactly what you
want. This is a low stress approach.

That is exactly what I have done on a number of occasions, two otherwise
identical machines side by side in a "shootout" for the same
application, and in each case the Windoze machine has won the shootout.

I understand. I think that what it means for Linux people is that we
should make it better, instead of frothing at the mouth.

Perhaps one of these days it will win one on my shootouts.

If you want to try Ubuntu, I can help you set it up.

I'd need to find an application for it.

The last big shootout I did was with Linux/EMC vs. Windoze/Mach3 and
Mach3 won. That was before EMC2 was out, so perhaps EMC2 would have done
better in the shootout. In either case, I settled on Mach3 and it
continues to do everything I need and given my HSM needs, one control PC
can control multiple machines.

My home web/mail/storage server is also running Windoze, and given it's
4.5 years of continuous service without a crash and without being
compromised, it seems to be meeting the requirements just fine as well.
I am considering replacing the old Dell desktop it runs on with a little
Shuttle mini PC as I expect it would pay for itself in power savings in
about a year, as well as being a higher performance system.


igor



I recently gave a Linux PC to my friend, who had no personal computer
before (only a shared family Windows PC), and he is very happy with
it. So is my sister. I am going to set up a computer for my parents
now also.



--
Due to extreme spam originating from Google Groups, and their inattention
to spammers, I and many others block all articles originating
from Google Groups. If you want your postings to be seen by
more readers you will need to find a different means of
posting on Usenet.
http://improve-usenet.org/

On 2009-02-05, Pete C. wrote:
I heard a lot of that "mission critical" talk. I do not think that it
is worth the exorbitant amount of money, given that Linux already
gives us the reliability. We have enough scripts written for quick
failover.

Mission critical service includes such things as on site spare parts
inventory, guaranteed on-site response and system repair times, etc.

We have spare parts on site too, and computers available to take over,
I do not see what is the big deal about "parts". We have several
people who are proficient with screwdrivers and can replace said
parts when necessary.

Google runs its service using very crappy computers that are
the polar opposite of "mission critical". It does just fine due to
software based failover.

This was my objective as well, to be relatively reliable, without
paying too much money to "enterprise vendors".

All critical systems already have multiple levels of redundancy to
ensure rapid service recovery in the event of a system loss or even
a site loss. Mission critical service isn't to ensure uninterupted
service, proper systems design ensures that, mission critical
service ensures a minimum exposure to reduced redundancy.

Yep.


Where I work we have many 10s of thousands of servers (no joke), and
among those we have like a dozen Linux systems that were an experiment
in their viability in the enterprise space. That experiment was some
years ago and there has been no expansion in the Linux space, even
though the company is very big on cutting costs.

Depending on what you do exactly, which you obviously do not have to
state here, you could save a "very large" amount of money. Google can
do it.

If 30+ servers have not crashed in 6 months, that tells me that their
reliability is decent. I reboot them every week, automatically of
course, just in case.

We work to "five nines" i.e. 99.999% availability standards, so not
crashing in six months isn't enough to meet that standard. My systems
regularly run years without a crash, and do not require weekly reboots
either. The reboots during routine maintenance every few months are
plenty. The bulk of failures are transparent such as a failure of a disk
that is mirrored and automatically replaced with a hot spare so the
replacement of the failed disk is at our leisure.

You must be paying a lot of money for this.

There is two approaches to having reliability, one with expensive
hardware, and the other with failovers. The latter is cheaper, and is
good enough for us.

The last big trouble we had, was from a failed circuit breaker. (one
lug loosened and heated)

Perhaps one of these days it will win one on my shootouts.

If you want to try Ubuntu, I can help you set it up.

I'd need to find an application for it.

The last big shootout I did was with Linux/EMC vs. Windoze/Mach3 and
Mach3 won. That was before EMC2 was out, so perhaps EMC2 would have done
better in the shootout. In either case, I settled on Mach3 and it
continues to do everything I need and given my HSM needs, one control PC
can control multiple machines.

My home web/mail/storage server is also running Windoze, and given it's
4.5 years of continuous service without a crash and without being
compromised, it seems to be meeting the requirements just fine as well.
I am considering replacing the old Dell desktop it runs on with a little
Shuttle mini PC as I expect it would pay for itself in power savings in
about a year, as well as being a higher performance system.

--
Due to extreme spam originating from Google Groups, and their inattention
to spammers, I and many others block all articles originating
from Google Groups. If you want your postings to be seen by
more readers you will need to find a different means of
posting on Usenet.
http://improve-usenet.org/

Ignoramus3187 wrote:

On 2009-02-05, Pete C. wrote:
I heard a lot of that "mission critical" talk. I do not think that it
is worth the exorbitant amount of money, given that Linux already
gives us the reliability. We have enough scripts written for quick
failover.

Mission critical service includes such things as on site spare parts
inventory, guaranteed on-site response and system repair times, etc.

We have spare parts on site too, and computers available to take over,
I do not see what is the big deal about "parts". We have several
people who are proficient with screwdrivers and can replace said
parts when necessary.

Google runs its service using very crappy computers that are
the polar opposite of "mission critical". It does just fine due to
software based failover.

This was my objective as well, to be relatively reliable, without
paying too much money to "enterprise vendors".

Different enterprises have different standards for reliability,
different costs associated with failures and different regulatory
requirements (or no regulatory requirements).


All critical systems already have multiple levels of redundancy to
ensure rapid service recovery in the event of a system loss or even
a site loss. Mission critical service isn't to ensure uninterupted
service, proper systems design ensures that, mission critical
service ensures a minimum exposure to reduced redundancy.

Yep.


Where I work we have many 10s of thousands of servers (no joke), and
among those we have like a dozen Linux systems that were an experiment
in their viability in the enterprise space. That experiment was some
years ago and there has been no expansion in the Linux space, even
though the company is very big on cutting costs.

Depending on what you do exactly, which you obviously do not have to
state here, you could save a "very large" amount of money. Google can
do it.

If 30+ servers have not crashed in 6 months, that tells me that their
reliability is decent. I reboot them every week, automatically of
course, just in case.

We work to "five nines" i.e. 99.999% availability standards, so not
crashing in six months isn't enough to meet that standard. My systems
regularly run years without a crash, and do not require weekly reboots
either. The reboots during routine maintenance every few months are
plenty. The bulk of failures are transparent such as a failure of a disk
that is mirrored and automatically replaced with a hot spare so the
replacement of the failed disk is at our leisure.

You must be paying a lot of money for this.

Yep. I hear the power bill alone for just one DC is around $250k/mo and
there are a lot more than one.


There is two approaches to having reliability, one with expensive
hardware, and the other with failovers. The latter is cheaper, and is
good enough for us.

The last big trouble we had, was from a failed circuit breaker. (one
lug loosened and heated)

Redundant power supplies in systems and storage, redundant PDUs,
redundant static transfer switches, redundant UPSes, redundant
generators. Redundant network connections, redundant storage
connections, redundant mirrored and hot spares disks, physically
separate fallback sites, etc.

On my personal stuff at home I have several UPSes, a couple generators,
a couple spare cable modems, routers, network switches, dialup for
additional backup, etc.


Perhaps one of these days it will win one on my shootouts.

If you want to try Ubuntu, I can help you set it up.

I'd need to find an application for it.

The last big shootout I did was with Linux/EMC vs. Windoze/Mach3 and
Mach3 won. That was before EMC2 was out, so perhaps EMC2 would have done
better in the shootout. In either case, I settled on Mach3 and it
continues to do everything I need and given my HSM needs, one control PC
can control multiple machines.

My home web/mail/storage server is also running Windoze, and given it's
4.5 years of continuous service without a crash and without being
compromised, it seems to be meeting the requirements just fine as well.
I am considering replacing the old Dell desktop it runs on with a little
Shuttle mini PC as I expect it would pay for itself in power savings in
about a year, as well as being a higher performance system.

--
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On 2009-02-04, David Billington wrote:
Iggy

What filing system do you chose to use. I've been using XFS for
about 5 or 6 years now and find it really stable. I am currently using
Mandriva 2006, does Ubuntu do XFS. I know Redhat didn't but haven't
looked recently to see what they now support.

I use ext3 only, it never let me down. I have no experience with XFS.

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On 2009-02-04, Joe Pfeiffer wrote:
"DoN. Nichols" writes:

Actually -- it was developed by the U.S. Army Balistics Research
Lab (the "BRL" of "BRLCAD"), and it was tailored for what *they* needed
it to do. It may be very good for their tasks, and a bit awkward for
the HSM. Think of it as being like using a drawing program aimed at
architectural work (.e.g. dimensions in feet and inches) and trying to
use it to design a wris****ch. :-) And one developed for architectural
work would probably not have good features for doing circles and
fillets.

Sort of like why I haven't suggested my favorite drawing tool: xfig.
The perfect tool for just about any line drawing you'd want to make
related to computers; totally hopeless for designing parts.

Yes -- it is fun for sketching as well, but for dimensioned
drawings it is a real pain.

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

On 2009-02-04, Ignoramus28897 wrote:

[ ... ]

There are some things that work very well under Linux, some things
that work not so well. The same applies to Windows.

[ ... ]

The strength of Windows is that it usually comes preinstalled by the
PC manufacturer, so they iron out all hardware glitches, and it is
easy to use for simple things. Also, its strong point is a lot of
"apps" that could be easy to use, but cost money. The weaknesses are
bad security (viruses and other malware), difficulty in automation,
and lower performance.

And one of the reasons for the difficulty in automation
(scripting and the like) is what the users normally consider one of tis
strengths -- the ability to easily embed spaces in file names (from a
GUI level -- though not so from a command-line level). This tends to
break scripting and command-line operation on Windows, just as it does
on unix systems. (This is ignoring for the moment the difference in
scripting capability in the absence of the embedded-spaces filenames.)

So to each person, the choice may be different due to their
priorities.

Agreed.

One thing to keep in mind, however, is that non-free software serves
their creators, not you. So authors of non-free software do their
utmost to limit your choices, even if it is not in your interests.

While the open source software, if you want (and are willing to
invest the time learning to program in C and/or C++) you can add features
to existing programs. I did this to add the ability to calculate times
in hours, minutes and seconds to a spreadsheet calculator called "sc".
I needed this capability when juggling performance cut lengths to
arrange them to fit equally on the two sides of a 60-minute cassette
tape. All I did was to add a modulo operator so I could deal with the
60 minutes/hour and 60 seconds/minute calculations.

Or -- if you are a bit more patient, you can suggest the feature
(with reasons why you think that it will benefit other users) to the
maintainers of the package, and if there is enough interest, *they* may
add the feature between times of dealing quickly with reported bugs or
security holes.

To anyone interested in Linux, I would say the best approach is to get
some cheap older PC and set Linux up on that, in parallel with
windows, and then make some effort to make it do exactly what you
want. This is a low stress approach.

Agreed. Don't dive in depending on it all to work and you to
understand it immediately. Give yourself something which you can use to
continue things which you *need* to work, and as you learn to do things
easily on the linux side, move that task over to the linux machine.
When you find that you are doing everything on linux you can retire the
windows machine and install linux on it to benefit from the faster
machine.

Be warned, however, that so far the vendors of things like
income tax software only support Windows and Mac (OS-X these days), so if
you depend on such programs, at least keep dual-boot capability.

Also -- some later acquisition may force you to a need for
either Windows or Mac's OS-X. An example is the TomTom GPS navigators.
While it should be perfectly possible to download the updated software
and install it from unix, they *insist* that it be downloaded and
installed by their own programs, which are only available for Windows and
Macs. (I don't know whether other GPS vendors are similar, since I only
need one GPS. :-)

I recently gave a Linux PC to my friend, who had no personal computer
before (only a shared family Windows PC), and he is very happy with
it. So is my sister. I am going to set up a computer for my parents
now also.

Great!

Enjoy,
DoN.

--
Email: | Voice (all times): (703) 938-4564
(too) near Washington D.C. | http://www.d-and-d.com/dnichols/DoN.html
--- Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero ---

On 6 Feb 2009 05:04:45 GMT, "DoN. Nichols"
wrote:

On 2009-02-04, Ignoramus28897 wrote:

[ ... ]

There are some things that work very well under Linux, some things
that work not so well. The same applies to Windows.

[ ... ]

The strength of Windows is that it usually comes preinstalled by the
PC manufacturer, so they iron out all hardware glitches, and it is
easy to use for simple things. Also, its strong point is a lot of
"apps" that could be easy to use, but cost money. The weaknesses are
bad security (viruses and other malware), difficulty in automation,
and lower performance.

And one of the reasons for the difficulty in automation
(scripting and the like) is what the users normally consider one of tis
strengths -- the ability to easily embed spaces in file names (from a
GUI level -- though not so from a command-line level). This tends to
break scripting and command-line operation on Windows, just as it does
on unix systems. (This is ignoring for the moment the difference in
scripting capability in the absence of the embedded-spaces filenames.)

So to each person, the choice may be different due to their
priorities.

Agreed.

One thing to keep in mind, however, is that non-free software serves
their creators, not you. So authors of non-free software do their
utmost to limit your choices, even if it is not in your interests.

While the open source software, if you want (and are willing to
invest the time learning to program in C and/or C++) you can add features
to existing programs. I did this to add the ability to calculate times
in hours, minutes and seconds to a spreadsheet calculator called "sc".
I needed this capability when juggling performance cut lengths to
arrange them to fit equally on the two sides of a 60-minute cassette
tape. All I did was to add a modulo operator so I could deal with the
60 minutes/hour and 60 seconds/minute calculations.

Or -- if you are a bit more patient, you can suggest the feature
(with reasons why you think that it will benefit other users) to the
maintainers of the package, and if there is enough interest, *they* may
add the feature between times of dealing quickly with reported bugs or
security holes.

To anyone interested in Linux, I would say the best approach is to get
some cheap older PC and set Linux up on that, in parallel with
windows, and then make some effort to make it do exactly what you
want. This is a low stress approach.

Agreed. Don't dive in depending on it all to work and you to
understand it immediately. Give yourself something which you can use to
continue things which you *need* to work, and as you learn to do things
easily on the linux side, move that task over to the linux machine.
When you find that you are doing everything on linux you can retire the
windows machine and install linux on it to benefit from the faster
machine.

Be warned, however, that so far the vendors of things like
income tax software only support Windows and Mac (OS-X these days), so if
you depend on such programs, at least keep dual-boot capability.

Also -- some later acquisition may force you to a need for
either Windows or Mac's OS-X. An example is the TomTom GPS navigators.
While it should be perfectly possible to download the updated software
and install it from unix, they *insist* that it be downloaded and
installed by their own programs, which are only available for Windows and
Macs. (I don't know whether other GPS vendors are similar, since I only
need one GPS. :-)

I recently gave a Linux PC to my friend, who had no personal computer
before (only a shared family Windows PC), and he is very happy with
it. So is my sister. I am going to set up a computer for my parents
now also.

Great!

Enjoy,
DoN.

Thanks, everybody. I've decided that the new laptop will be Windows,
primarily because of applications that aren't available in Linux.
Also, I'll probably have to pick a Windows CAD package, although I'm
going to try the ones available in Linux first.

Pete Keillor

On 2009-02-06, Pete Keillor wrote:
Thanks, everybody. I've decided that the new laptop will be Windows,
primarily because of applications that aren't available in Linux.
Also, I'll probably have to pick a Windows CAD package, although I'm
going to try the ones available in Linux first.

I would not recommend that anyone gets a Linux laptop as a first Linux
computer. But if someone gives you a free computer, for a desktop, you
can try Linux on it.

--
Due to extreme spam originating from Google Groups, and their inattention
to spammers, I and many others block all articles originating
from Google Groups. If you want your postings to be seen by
more readers you will need to find a different means of
posting on Usenet.
http://improve-usenet.org/

On Fri, 06 Feb 2009 06:24:23 -0600, Ignoramus7868
wrote:

On 2009-02-06, Pete Keillor wrote:
Thanks, everybody. I've decided that the new laptop will be Windows,
primarily because of applications that aren't available in Linux.
Also, I'll probably have to pick a Windows CAD package, although I'm
going to try the ones available in Linux first.

I would not recommend that anyone gets a Linux laptop as a first Linux
computer. But if someone gives you a free computer, for a desktop, you
can try Linux on it.

Oh, I've got a Ubuntu box running, playing with EMC2. I've also set
up an old cheap laptop for my middle son who finally started college.
It does everything he needs, including wireless, etc. I even found a
decent project management package. He's majoring in construction
management. What I haven't found is a CAD package I liked, hence the
question. For a laptop, which I'd also use while travelling, I'd want
to be able to use the DeLorme mapping products as well. Google Earth
is fine when I have internet access, but that's not always the case.

Pete Keillor

Pete Keillor wrote:

Thanks, everybody. I've decided that the new laptop will be Windows,
primarily because of applications that aren't available in Linux.
Also, I'll probably have to pick a Windows CAD package, although I'm
going to try the ones available in Linux first.

Pete Keillor

FWIW, I use TurboCAD for my CAD work on Windoze. I'm certainly no CAD
wiz, since I do only occasional CAD work, but TurboCAD has handled
everything I've needed to do and seems to have plenty of power /
features I still haven't tapped. One time when I ran into a problem, I
got good responses quickly on the TurboCAD user forum, so there is
support available beyond pay options.

Pete Keillor wrote:
Iggy, what do you use for cad or parts drawing? I know you said
you've about completely converted to Ubuntu. I'm considering dumping
windows when I retire, and I'll need to replace my vector graphics
program anyway, since it's on the work computer. I'll also need a new
laptop.

The only other reason I might keep a windows machine would be flight
and r/c simulators, and possibly personal finances.

I've been dabbling with 2D Qcad (http://www.ribbonsoft.com), and
Flightgear's flight simulator. Just so's you know...

Also beat my bank in a mortgage dispute using Gnumeric. :-)


--

lid wrote:

Pete Keillor wrote:
Iggy, what do you use for cad or parts drawing? I know you said
you've about completely converted to Ubuntu. I'm considering
dumping windows when I retire, and I'll need to replace my vector
graphics
program anyway, since it's on the work computer. I'll also need a
new laptop.

The only other reason I might keep a windows machine would be
flight and r/c simulators, and possibly personal finances.

I've been dabbling with 2D Qcad (http://www.ribbonsoft.com), and
Flightgear's flight simulator. Just so's you know...

Also beat my bank in a mortgage dispute using Gnumeric. :-)


--

I did some computer work for a took making shop a few years back where
the software they used for the drawings for the prototypes they made
was QCAD. It seemed to meet their needs fine.