[ale] thanks to all

[aaron]

On 2009, Jul, 13, , at 10:20 PM, Sean wrote:

[snip back story of wrestling with Fedora upgrades]

> I made the mistake of asking my son what he uses to rip a CD, and  
> he sent me his
> bash script! :) It is a wrapper using cd paranoia and oggenc and he  
> told me to
> put in in my (dot)bashrc file. I didn't know I HAD a bashrc file!

LOL! (noted in "been there" sympathy, not any kind of derision)

There are a million hardware, firmware and software components under
the hood of any modern computer system. I rank anyone who knows how to
employ 1/20th of the inner workings of their system _AND_ still strives
to learn more as a "Super User".   So get yourself a T-shirt with a
big red "S" on it, dude!

> If I didn't hate Mac's so much,  I'd use one. But then again, Mac
> hardware (and software) breaks more often than I like.  So I'll stay
> where I am.

While I would not claim Mac OSeX and Apple are the be all and end all,
I can't share your pessimism here.  I've only had a few problem  
experiences
with Macs in my 7 odd years of regularly working with and maintaining
numerous OSeX systems and models.

The one serious hardware problem was not really Apple's fault -- my iMac
was apparently built with some of the big bad batch of capacitors  
that bit
just about everyone in the industry -- and the whole motherboard was
replaced under the Apple Care warranty that I had presciently purchased.

The software problems I encountered were more frustrating, where 2  
separate
10.4 system software & Quicktime updates essentially crippled the older
versions of my Apple Video Editing software. While this was annoying and
hard to excuse, the official user forums seem well monitored for  
issues and
the problems were addressed and corrected rather quickly.

> I just wish the goodly folk who write software would understand that
> most people would rather have bullet-proof reliability than the latest
> bells and whistles.

I'd agree 100% that _commercial_ developers should buy a clue about what
most of their customers really want and need.

Allowing that everyone here knows that M$ eXcrement Pile is not even  
spit
wad proof, most of the windisease XP victims are still refusing to  
suffer
the vista 7 infections under the "better the devil you know" principle.

Forced migration on the OSeX platform hasn't been too bad of late, which
I find amazing in light of Apple's core hardware switch to x86  
processors.
The basic environment has been fairly constant between the 10.4 and 10.5
OS releases, too.  Most of my Macs are at least 4 years old, so they're
PPC boxes I run with 10.4. That configuration remains supported by most
all the software, free, Free and otherwise, that I'm interested in  
running
-- only in the past month have I run across an app (for decoding a new,
bleeding edge proprietary HD media format) that currently requires an
x86 processor.  All of my systems could run 10.5 without problems, but I
don't see that offering significant advantages in stability _or_  
features,
so I've only updated one of my machines to 10.5, and I did that  
primarily
to have a test platform.

Users of GNU Linux and Free Software have much more freedom of choice,
of course. There ARE a lot of Linux distros that take a slow and steady
approach to their evolution or make reliability a top priority.  And on
the other end of the spectrum you have Fedora, a distro that is globally
notorious for being on the bleeding edge of the bleeding edge _AND_ for
being very purist about only employing unencumbered GPL compliant
components.  I'd politely suggest that anyone who chooses the latest
release of the most bleeding edge Linux distro as the core of their home
system should be very accepting and forgiving of the consequences. They
should additionally keep a large supply of bandages on hand, right next
to the hot line to the triage specialists of the ALE list. ;-)

peace
aaron