[ale] [ALE] OT Sort of

[neal at mnopltd.com]

Yesterday we mostly got a soil moisture checker/plant watering processor 
working to keep our garden bed watered when we are out of town.  It uses 
a micro:bit integrated computer.  The "program" is visually constructed 
by dragging blocks around, and it generates .... Javascript.   Once you 
pair the micro:bit to MicroSoft MakeCode, you click a button in the dang 
browser to download the code to the micro:bit.   You can simulate the 
operation from makeCode, running in the browser.

Part of me has to applaud how easy this whole eco-system has made it for 
teacher and children to pretend they are "coding", and solve real-world 
problems.

Part of me is thinking they gonna get whomped upside the head if they 
think this is the real world of computers.

We have deployed 10 Raspberry Pi JackTrip Virtual Studio boxes to 
musicians houses.  Frankly, I was delighted to just flash a microSD with 
a pre-built image, stuff it in, and it "just works".   I was also glad 
that I could SSH to the boxes to adjust and use 30 years of linux 
knowledge.

We use OctoPrint to manage the 3d printers at Decatur Makers.  I am 
similarly thrilled when we can actually click on their Update box... and 
the update actually works!  Unlike our Centos 6 server at home.   
aaaaaaaaaaaaamd then you try to update firmware on a CReality printer, 
which is an Arduino processor, and the balloon rapidly comes back down 
to earth.

Heck, we installed the latest Ubuntu 10.X on a Dell desktop 4 months 
ago, and the dang X display was bat-crap.  Here we go again - every dang 
linux install can't seem to default the X display to something that 
works.  Fortunately people on this forum pointed me in the right 
direction on boot time parameters to force it to stock VGA.

BTW, I still have the Bell Labs unix manuals at home.

regards,

Neal


On 2021-04-11 22:04, David Jackson via Ale wrote:
>> Many of us, wear white beards, know the pain.
> 
> I am so glad to have so many Linux geezers around here.  My first
> install was Slackware 3.0 in 1996 on a 386(?).  Needed a kernel
> recompile just to hear sound on the sound blaster card and get the
> CD-ROM to work.  I never did get X to work on that machine under
> Slack.  XFree86 simply couldn't support my Matrox video card.  The
> first time I saw X running (with good ol' fvwm and WindowMaker and
> Afterstep) was with Red Hat 3.0.3, which included the Metro-X server,
> which *did* support that video card.  Waaaaaaaay cool.  I gradually
> moved away from OS2 Warp after that.  Although Warp 4 was pretty
> spiffy looking.  Anyway, I used Slackware for many many years as my
> daily driver.  Imagine my surprise when I started trying Ubuntu and
> Debian in the early 2010's!  Worlds apart!
> 
> On Fri, Apr 2, 2021 at 12:32 PM Chuck Payne via Ale <ale at ale.org>
> wrote:
> 
>> Does anyone remember back in the day when you want to use Gnome you
>> had to install ICEWM?
>> 
>> Staying up late to compile WindowMaker for 4 hours with the latest
>> Xorg.
>> 
>> Or compiling Linux Kernel so you can use an audio card or graphic
>> card?
>> 
>> Or changing your shell from sh to bash.
>> 
>> Kids today don't know the pain.
>> 
>> I tried to explain to my 16 years today Linux so easy to use, but
>> there was a time you would sit and eat pizza and drink beer while
>> praying to the compiler Gods that the new kernel you compiled does
>> crap out, Or waking up to find out you were missing on a library
>> that cause you to want to scream at the sky for wasting a weekend
>> trying to compile.
>> 
>> I even fired up WindowMaker to show what we had back in the day
>> thought it was cool, that it was the Winowmager we used with Xorg
>> and the pain we had to do get X working.
>> 
>> That when KDE came along was so cool but was so heavy to use. Gnome
>> wasn't a real WindowManger because you had to install something
>> IceWM to use.
>> 
>> Hell, even the shells kids are using make life simple, have you
>> played with ZSH. So pretty and easy to use, ugh. They need to feel
>> the pain of sh and even worse tcsh.
>> 
>> Many of us, wear white beards, know the pain.
>> 
>> --
>> 
>> Terror PUP a.k.a
>> Chuck "PUP" Payne
>> -----------------------------------------
>> Discover it! Enjoy it! Share it! openSUSE Linux.
>> -----------------------------------------
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