[extropy-chat] when will computers improve?

[Alan Eliasen]

Eugen Leitl wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 19, 2003 at 10:00:34PM -0700, Alan Eliasen wrote:
> 
>>   In Win2K, the shell is actually called cmd.exe.  It's a bit more
>>advanced than command.com; you can have (brain-dead, but better than
>>nothing) file completion and some other features.
> 
> Get cygwin, and your pain will go away. 

   Actually, Cygwin is on the APE.  But it's one of the larger causes of
my pain, when you look at its portability issues.  :)  One of the
biggest problems is the way they do symbolic links--they actually set
the "system" file attribute on each file that's a symbolic link and the
operating system has to see that and act appropriately.  Admittedly,
it's half a Windows problem, but their solution doesn't work for anyone
but themselves.

   Needless to say, there ain't no "system" bit on a CD.  To make this
run off a read-only medium, I have to selectively fix thousands of
symbolic links by actually copying the file (if I fix too many, it's
just wasted space as the same program might be called by 10 names.)

   The fact that the cygwin1.dll file isn't well-versioned and
poorly-licensed makes it difficult to coexist with multiple versions of
cygwin or redistribute anything linked with cygwin.

   It also stinks that mountpoints are crammed into the registry (why?)
and aren't on a per-process basis; it makes it impossible to have
different processes using different versions of cygwin or even different
mount points.  It makes it hard to have two versions of the APE running
well at the same time.  (Actually, everything works *but* cygwin.)

   Cygwin corrupts environment variables, too, (notably any paths) so
you can't switch into a bash shell and switch back out to cmd.exe
without that whole session geting hosed.

   But I'll admit, cygwin is outstanding when you're trying to compile
and run a UN*X-only application under windows.  I'm sure you've seen all
of these problems.

> I'd rather prefer support offered by the Debian team, than you, no offence.
> And I do carry a very useful system around everywhere I go: my iBook.

   Good, because I don't offer support, other than the fact that I'm a
nice guy and I'll answer questions if I can.  :)  I prefer the Debian
team too.  They're smarter than me.

   I certainly prefer Linux to running Windows; it's just that I also
choose to ship product for Windows, and some of the tools I have only
run under Windows, (e.g. packagers for some handheld devices) and most
of my work has made me have to touch Windows at least half the time.
And occasionally I have to drive around and steal cars and shoot people
in Grand Theft Auto III.  :)

-- 
  Alan Eliasen                 | "You cannot reason a person out of a
  eliasen at mindspring.com       |  position he did not reason himself
  http://futureboy.homeip.net/ |  into in the first place."
                               |     --Jonathan Swift