Part 2 of: printer moved to new location= CUPS cannot find its drivers anymore

[Liam Proven]

On Tue, 8 Feb 2022 at 19:16, Ralf Mardorf via ubuntu-users
<ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com> wrote:
>
> IMO the main problem of Linux is hype and cancel culture and the free
> as in beer approach.

Um. I wouldn't point to any of those myself, but hey.

>  Linux isn't conservative enough and does migrate
> from one thing to another, before such a replacement is matured.

Sometimes, yes, true.

> You
> will not find this approach when using FreeBSD.

So I have heard, but IMHO FreeBSD is still way too hard.

> People get banned from
> Linux mailing list way to often for no valid reasons, hence no good user
> feedback is possible at all.

Ah, ISWYM now.

> OTOH while FreeBSD is way more reliable for many domains, some domains
> are even more behind the times, than those domains are already behind
> the times on Linux.

Where do you think it's ahead? Technically, I mean?

Behind: yes, but that is the price of stability.

Also, we forget at our peril that proprietary UNIXes did some great
stuff and were far ahead in some ways.

As were research UNIXes.

> Actually for some domains you need proprietary
> solutions, IOW Apple operating systems based on FreeBSD.

Only very tenuously and distantly. Its kernel isn't.

But yes, it's ahead.

> OTOH proprietary solutions became completely unusable for some other
> domains and it became impossible to customize and really program a
> computer by a user or even by professional developer to the user's
> needs, due to restrictions enforced by the underlying operating system.

True.

> It's a dilemma, we reached the zenith of the very first era of computer
> culture. There's the need of a collapse, followed by a realignment.

Yes and no.

> It's a dilemma, we reached the zenith of the very first era of computer
> culture.

No no. We're at about the 5th or 6th.

> There's the need of a collapse, followed by a realignment.

Definitely agreed.

1st generation: mainframes.

Tech that they invented that has been reinvented: virtualisation;
intelligent peripherals.

2nd gen: minicomputers

Tech that they invented: interactive OSes, glass terminals,
interpreted languages, interactive apps.
(Much of this fed back to mainframes, but that's irrelevant: it didn't
affect anything else.)

3rd gen: 1st gen, 1970s microcomputers
Mostly Intel 8080 and Zilog Z80; CP/M as the standard OS (copied from
DEC minicomputer OSes).

4th gen: 1980s micros.
An explosion of 8-bit and 16-bit designs. Vast diversity and innovation.
DOS as the dominant business OS.
Survivors that are active: very few. Macintosh, in a form unrelated to
1980s Macs; the x86 PC; ARM.

5th gen: 1990s and 32-bit micros.
x86 sweeps everything else away.
All DOS apps rewritten for Windows, or disappear & are replaced.
Painfully, x86 OSes acquire the features of the best 1980s machines:
decent GUIs, solid multitasking, networking as standard.

The next gen grew out seamlessly from the one before, so I wouldn't
call if a 6th gen.

5.5th gen: 21st century, fully 32-bit and then 64-bit computing

The 1990s OSes all finally die off, replaced by just 2: Windows NT,
and several forms of UNIX.

For a while, 16-bit apps (and some 32-bit ones) run inside VMs on
newer, largely-unrelated OSes.

Direct hardware access goes away; the OS mediates that. DOS and
classic MacOS apps no longer work and die away and nobody much misses
them.

Everyone gets the internet. Everyone gets multiple CPU cores, but the
new-gen OSes handle that. Everyone gets 64-bit machines, but the new
OSes handle that and just run 32-bit code in VMs where needed.

And that's where we are. The last big advances were Linux (1991) and
Windows NT (1993). Apple macOS is NeXTstep which is older than both
(1st demo: 1987, years before Windows 3 or OS/2 2.0).

NT is a modern re-implementation of VMS, a 1970s  DEC minicomputer OS.

Linux is a modern UNIX, a remake of a 1970s DEC minicomputer OS.

("UNIX" has not meant "based on AT&T code" since 1993 when Novell
bought UNIX from AT&T and donated the trademark to the Open Group.
Since then, UNIX means "passes the Open Group compatibility testing."
2 or 3 Linux distros have passed the tests. Today, Linux™ is a UNIX™.
It's over. Let it go. It is a legally-established fact.)

We haven't moved on, because we have got 50 years of legacy
compatibility baggage weighing us down.

But we already threw away everything and started over at least 5
times. We can do it again. It will hurt because we have a lot of
legacy cruft now, going back to the 1990s. More than 30 years. More
than any previous generation of computers. But we could.

-- 
Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
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