On Friday, 20 September 2013 at 14:34:26 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> Stop right there. When the graphics driver crashes, no window can be displayed...

It restarts the driver or loads a simple, generic driver to work temporarily if that's impossible.

> Windows is also unusable without a graphics mode to begin with.

Not necessarily true, the newer professional/server versions can work without a gui or headless, and any version can run with a minimal graphics mode (such as with a generic VESA driver - safe mode) or even command line off a recovery disk.

Am 20.09.2013 16:05, schrieb JN:
> On Friday, 20 September 2013 at 12:16:39 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
>> Uh... you do realize that this is because Linux actually *lets* you fix
>> things? If something like this happened on Windows, the only real
>> solution is to nuke the system from orbit and start from ground zero
>> again (i.e. reinstall). One can hardly expect that repairing a broken
>> car engine should require no thought.
>
> When was the last time you used Windows? Since Vista, if a graphics
> driver crashes, I usually get a black screen for few seconds, then a
> nice window saying "The GPU driver has crashed, windows has restarted
> it". If it really breaks, it's a matter of going into Safe Mode and
> installing the driver again. But overall, Windows is almost uncrashable
> as long as you don't have a defective device.
>
> On Linux? hah, bad driver will lock you out of the system, installations
> regularly break. Closing the system? Oh let me just flash random
> gibberish that looks like memory corruption, then some log messages
> where it's "FATAL ERROR" every third line. No thanks, I prefer my stable
> system.

I have a better one that happened to me this year.

For religious reasons the distribution developers (Ubuntu) push an half done open source version of a wireless driver, that replaces the existing binary blob from the manufacturer.

Afterwards you loose the ability to connect to routers that only talk IPv4.

--
Paulo

On Fri, Sep 20, 2013 at 04:24:21PM +0200, Adam D. Ruppe wrote: [...]
> one of the reasons I haven't played many new games this century is that they had already achieved gaming perfection in the 90's and I'd just prefer to replay them!)

I dunno, I find that my good memories of those old games are quite tainted by nostalgia. I remember firing up dosbox recently and playing through some of my old favorite games, and discovering to my chagrin that they are actually *not* as fun as I remember them, and they had many annoyances that have been eliminated in modern games. Of course, they weren't *that* bad -- I still had fun playing them -- but the playing experience doesn't quite measure up to what my memory tells me. Which makes me wonder if perhaps *all* my good memories of the good ole days are fabricated by nostalgia, and not by real gaming perfection.

Of course, it's also true that many modern-day games are rather weak on the gameplay side in spite of the heavy eye-candy and multimedia sfx. I find that my favorite modern-day games are either very thought-heavy puzzles, or remakes of old school games that retain the good parts of the old game mechanics while improving on the annoyances that used to plague those old games. A good example of the latter is the Gurk series. While not perfect, it's also a joy to boil the gameplay down to the bare essentials so that you're focusing on actually *playing*, rather than drowning in a multipedia theatre of snazzy 3D effects and surround sound and doing more movie-watching than actually playing. But of course, Gurk is pretty nostalgic too, so maybe my perceptions are also being colored by that. Hmm. :-/


> Anywho, FF1, the graphics are beautiful and the music, needless to say, legendary. It really amazes me how much magic they did with a random noise channel and three beeps.
[...]

The most creative source of sound that I remember, was an Apple II game that deliberately used the floppy drive to make a grinding sound (IIRC during takeoff in a flight sim type game).


T

-- 
Shin: (n.) A device for finding furniture in the dark.

On Thu, Sep 19, 2013 at 09:43:33PM -0400, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> On Thu, 19 Sep 2013 16:49:34 +0200
> "Adam D. Ruppe" <destructionator@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > On Wednesday, 18 September 2013 at 20:33:10 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> > > Plus, they don't include quite enough Unicode glyphs for my needs (actually, do they even support unicode at all?!).
> > 
> > not really, I don't think so anyway. They (at least on my box) have some iso 8859-1 characters, but not beyond that.
> > 
> 
> I've always felt text rendering engines should be able to automatically fallback to another font for any characters that aren't in the selected font. (Ideally with a user-configurable chain of fallbacks, similar to CSS, but selected on a per-character basis.) Because showing the right character in a mismatched font has *got* to be better than not showing the character at all and a generic "missing font" glyph.

Opera actually does this. But sometimes it can backfire, like the time when my default font didn't contain the glyph for the µ symbol, and opera used a 5-pixel-wide substitute scaled up to 18 pixels with horrible, horrible antialiasing artifacts that made it nigh unreadable.

But then again, Opera didn't exactly provide a way to specify the order of font resolution either, so that didn't help. I agree that *sane* fallback fonts (with configurable fallback order!) would be much better than just a black blob of ink (or pixels).


[...]
> > BTW I'm pretty sure Unicode has a few user defined sections that would be ideal for this. You set a bitmap for your user defined characters and then send them right out.
> 
> Unicode even has (experimental, last I checked) pages defined for a
> variety of common (and not-so-common) non-text symbols. The four
> playing card suits, methods of transportation, etc.

That's no longer experimental. Even within the BMP alone (U+0 .. U+FFFF), there are entire codepages dedicated to symbols, dingbats, etc.. Any modern Unicode font should have most of these symbols by default (though unlikely *all* -- there are *that* many of them!).

Better yet, there's the Private Use region that you can map to basically anything you want, including a range in the BMP (U+E000 .. U+F8FF) consisting of a whopping 6400 code points. Just the thing you need for custom bitmaps and other fun stuff. :)


T

-- 
Which is worse: ignorance or apathy? Who knows? Who cares? -- Erich Schubert

On Fri, 20 Sep 2013 12:24:16 -0700
"H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh@quickfur.ath.cx> wrote:
> 
> But then again, Opera didn't exactly provide a way to specify the order of font resolution either, so that didn't help. I agree that *sane* fallback fonts (with configurable fallback order!) would be much better than just a black blob of ink (or pixels).
> 

Actually, I'm thinking now, maybe font fallbacks should be specified in terms of "Font X's fallback is Font Y or otherwise Font Z". Ie, the chain of fallbacks for missing glyphs should be a property of the font itself. Obviously user-editable, *but* with sensible defaults, since that would be a *lot* of fonts/fallbacks to manually configure.

> 
> [...]
> > > BTW I'm pretty sure Unicode has a few user defined sections that would be ideal for this. You set a bitmap for your user defined characters and then send them right out.
> > 
> > Unicode even has (experimental, last I checked) pages defined for a
> > variety of common (and not-so-common) non-text symbols. The four
> > playing card suits, methods of transportation, etc.
> 
> That's no longer experimental. Even within the BMP alone (U+0 .. U+FFFF), there are entire codepages dedicated to symbols, dingbats,

Hey now, just 'cause someone wants to use non-text glyphs doesn't mean you should go calling him a dingbat! ;)

(j/k, of course)

On 20 September 2013 22:15, H. S. Teoh <hsteoh@quickfur.ath.cx> wrote:

> On Fri, Sep 20, 2013 at 04:56:29PM +1000, Manu wrote:
> > On 20 September 2013 14:23, Nick Sabalausky < SeeWebsiteToContactMe@semitwist.com> wrote:
> >
> > > On Fri, 20 Sep 2013 12:11:51 +1000
> > > Manu <turkeyman@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > On 20 September 2013 00:25, H. S. Teoh <hsteoh@quickfur.ath.cx>
> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > On Thu, Sep 19, 2013 at 03:04:44PM +0200, Wyatt wrote: [...]
> > > > > > Dolphin is pretty nice, though there are cases where Konqueror still runs circles around it. For example, if you want a horizontal split or more than one split.  Also, I don't think Dolphin has the file size view plugin, which is nice for finding hidden monsters in your ~.
> > > > >
> > > > > du ~ | sort -r -n | less
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > > This is exactly why linux is shit.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > :-)
> > >
> > > It's exactly why those not fluent in Linux believe Linux is shit ;)
> [...]
> > I don't think there's any good reason for that line to make so little sense. If the argument is that typing more characters is too hard and time consuming, I'd then raise the question as to whether typing characters into a shell is the best interface in the first place...?
>
> There is no argument here, actually. The problem is really historical -- names like 'du' or 'grep' or 'awk' meant something back in who knows when, but they no longer mean anything to us today (well, those of us not old enough *cough*). If I were to reinvent Unix today, I'd choose better names for these things. But think about it, if the above line were instead written like this:
>
>         diskUsage $HOME | sort --reverse --numeric | pager
>
> it would make so much more sense, wouldn't it? So the "nonsensical" part is really just in the poor choice of naming, not an inherent weakness of the interface.
>

I'd still argue that it is. It is how it is, and it's completely
prohibitive to casual or new users.
Where you attribute the cause is fairly irrelevant. I guess the 'inherent'
weakness is the natural tendency to abbreviate everything because too much
typing on the command line is not considered feasible.

[...]
> > I had a video card driver problem the other day. The bundled auto-update
> > app failed, and totally broke my computer.
> > I had to download kernel source, and run some scripts to compile some
> sort
> > of shim that made the video driver compatible with my kernel to get it working again... absolutely astounding.
>
> Uh... you do realize that this is because Linux actually *lets* you fix things? If something like this happened on Windows, the only real solution is to nuke the system from orbit and start from ground zero again (i.e. reinstall). One can hardly expect that repairing a broken car engine should require no thought.
>

Nothing like that has EVER happened to me in a few decades of windows.
In my experience asa linux user, these sort of problems are a daily chore.

Speaking of which, I managed to totally break my computer last night /
> this morning too.


No shit. Should I be surprised? ;)


> Well, actually, it was already broken 'cos I upgraded
> udev to a version incompatible with my kernel (custom-built, so it's my
> own fault :-P),


And it didn't pop up a dialog box saying "unable to install, incompatible with your kernel"?


> but the hardy little thing just kept going. It was
> causing subtle breakages like my printer mysteriously failing to work,
> and when I finally figured out the problem, I downloaded a new kernel
> and recompiled it.


... speechless ;)


> Only to forget that /vmlinuz was still pointing to
> the old kernel (I didn't know this until later), so when I rebooted, it
> dumped me in single-user mode with *nothing* under /dev. Since I have
> /usr linked to a different mount point, and the mount failed (it
> couldn't find /dev/sd*), I had only a barely working shell (nothing in
> /usr/bin, etc., was accessible). No internet access either (eth0
> couldn't be found -- anything requiring anything in /dev didn't work
> 'cos udev was dead).
>
> Then I figured that I needed to mknod /dev/sd* so that I can mount my main filesystem and at least begin to recover the system, but I didn't remember what major/minor numbers to use. After poking around a bit (and the whole point of this dreary tale is to make the point that even during catastrophic failure, there is *still* a way to fix things... I couldn't even begin to imagine what I'd do if Windows broke on me like this -- since the GUI wouldn't even start, there'd be no way at all to recover), I stumbled upon a lucky break: /proc/partitions lists major/minor numbers and conveniently maps them to hard drive partitions. A few mknod's later, my main FS was back up, and enough was functional that I could actually recompile the kernel.  That turned out to be unnecessary, though, because the mistake was in the /vmlinuz symlink, not in the kernel itself.
>
> Once I found that, the fix was trivial, and now I'm back in business. :-P
>

I rest my case.

The thing that a lot of people don't seem to realize is that even system
> utilities and upgrade apps are written by people, and therefore prone to stupid mistakes. Under such circumstances, what you need is the ability to get under the hood and fix things when they go wrong... not to have the hood welded shut and have only OS reinstallation as a recourse. Because of that, I'd still prefer Linux with all its quirks than Windows with all of its perfections, because on Linux I at least have a fighting chance to fix stuff that breaks (as they inevitably will, regardless of OS), whereas on Windows the only real recourse is the big red button.
>

I think the main difference is quality-assurance. Windows software is more likely to be released only after it's reasonably proven that it works.

I might also challenge the continual assertion that Windows is completely
welded shut. The internals of windows are well understood.
It's possible for someone to be just as much of a windows nerd as a linux
nerd, it's all there if you want to dig through it. Most of the stuff under
the hood in windows is also in plain-text or registry keys, all of which
are easily accessible to anyone who knows what they're doing.
The distinction is though, that windows has successfully offered an os that
WORKS, thereby relieving end-users of that burden if they're not interested.

I'm not a mechanic, and I shouldn't have to be to drive a car.

On 20 September 2013 23:47, PauloPinto <pjmlp@progtools.org> wrote:

> On Friday, 20 September 2013 at 11:35:54 UTC, Manu wrote:
>
>> On 20 September 2013 20:52, Russel Winder <russel@winder.org.uk> wrote:
>>
>>  On Fri, 2013-09-20 at 12:11 +1000, Manu wrote:
>>> > On 20 September 2013 00:25, H. S. Teoh > <hsteoh@quickfur.ath.cx>
>>> wrote:
>>> >
>>> > > On Thu, Sep 19, 2013 at 03:04:44PM +0200, Wyatt wrote: [...]
>>> > > > Dolphin is pretty nice, though there are cases where > > >
>>> Konqueror still
>>> > > > runs circles around it. For example, if you want a > > >
>>> horizontal split
>>> > > > or more than one split.  Also, I don't think Dolphin has > > > the
>>> file
>>> > > > size view plugin, which is nice for finding hidden > > > monsters
>>> in your
>>> > > > ~.
>>> > >
>>> > > du ~ | sort -r -n | less
>>> > >
>>> >
>>> > This is exactly why linux is shit.
>>>
>>> s/linux/posix compliant operating system/
>>>
>>> >
>>> > :-)
>>>
>>> But remember everything you eat has almost certainly been grown using that exact substance.
>>>
>>>
>> I think you've gotta be pretty lucky these days if everything you eat is
>> actually grown in that substance...
>> Commercial agriculture isn't what it used to be...
>>
>
> Here in Germany, there are always lot of discussions about the current state of affairs.
>

I wish the rest of us could say the same.
We're a pathetic patsy nation that just does whatever the yanks tell us to.

On Saturday, 21 September 2013 at 01:04:19 UTC, Manu wrote:
> I guess the 'inherent' weakness is the natural tendency
> to abbreviate everything because too much
> typing on the command line is not considered feasible.

eh that's what autocomplete is for.

But unix has a lot of silly abbreviations. Probably the most infamous:

to mount a drive, the command is "mount"

to unmount a drive, the command is.... "umount".

On Friday, 20 September 2013 at 19:17:45 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> I dunno, I find that my good memories of those old games are quite tainted by nostalgia.

True in some cases, but in others I find myself able to appreciate them even more now. But I avoid the taint by playing them again every few years :)

> many annoyances that have been eliminated in modern games.

Oh, modern games have their own annoyances. For example, the NES would flash or glitch. The playstation three freezes up and disconnects its own CPU with its excessive heat.

I'll take the NES though, at least it didn't have such ridiculously long load and boot times!


Gameplay wise.... eh, the new games I like tend to be similar to the old games.


> The most creative source of sound that I remember, was an Apple II game that deliberately used the floppy drive to make a grinding sound (IIRC during takeoff in a flight sim type game).


There's a youtube channel devoted to stuff like that: this guy uses old computers grinding floppy drives to create all kinds of symphonies. Pretty cool... but I prefer the beeps!

BTW another nice thing about beep tracks and other stuff is you can hack on them. This is why I live MIDI so much (and why linux pisses me off so much with its absolutely crappy support for it) - you can tweak all kinds of parameters as it plays, modify files, silence tracks, all kinds of cool things that aren't practical with digital audio.

They also loop so well, I can set a video game song playing for 30 minutes straight as real life background music and not get annoyed with it. Sometimes that works with mp3s too, but the video game ones are specifically made for infinite looping so there's no discontinuity as it goes around again.

On Saturday, 21 September 2013 at 01:05:02 UTC, Manu wrote:
> I wish the rest of us could say the same.
> We're a pathetic patsy nation that just does whatever the yanks tell us to.

But we're suckers for Aussie and English accents. We'll be so distracted by how you sound that we won't pay attention to what you say.

Yank 1: Did he just ask us to put our military under their generals?
Yank 2: Did you hear they way he said "today you will serve us"? That was awesome! This guy's great, we should do whatever he wants!