[Off Topic] Re: Linux security

[Alan McKinnon]

On Thursday 04 May 2006 10:37, Daniel Carrera wrote:
> The difference is that day-to-day affairs are simpler under Windows
> for
>
> > the most part.
>
> The things *I* do day-to-day are easier under Linux.

Me too. I can't understand how anyone can get a Windows machine to 
work at all. I was on a Windows box the other day and couldn't find a 
DVD player in the menus so of course I did what any sane Gentoo'er 
would do:

emerge --ask --verbose mplayer

Blow me down with a feather! It didn't work! Even told me that emerge 
wasn't a valid command. So I thought maybe XP was a binary distro - 
seeing as only total geeks do the compile everything from source 
thing - so figuring that Microsoft has repos everywhere I tried this:

apt-get install mplayer

Also didn't work! Maybe my sources.list was faulty:

vim /etc/sources/list

I didn't even bother paying attention to the errors, as this was 
obviously an RPM based machine

rpm -ivh ~/downloads/mplayer

I was still puzzling my way through this and had just decided that 
maybe the OS wanted me to manually download the package before 
installing it. I figured that finding it on the intarweb would be 
easier than compiling mplayer (it's like main.cf - once is enough for 
anyone) when the janitor came by and helpfully found a WinDVD install 
disc for me. He popped it in the drive, performed some Mystic 
Incantation(tm) involving a lot of hand-waving while holding a small 
fist-sized object in his hand (IIRC he called it a "mouse" - funny 
name for a piece of hardware....) and to cut a long story short 
somehow I got to watch the DVD. The one part I still don't understand 
is that halfway through the process he insisted I had to switch the 
machine OFF and back ON again. He couldn't explain why and said that 
once he'd asked the manufacturers why this was and they couldn't tell 
him either. Oh well. At least the movie on the DVD was worth 
watching.

-- 
If only you and dead people understand hex, 
how many people understand hex?

Alan McKinnon
alan at linuxholdings dot co dot za
+27 82, double three seven, one nine three five