Waxing Philosophical

[Mike Barnes]

On Wed, 29 Sep 2004 21:35:23 -0400, Davis Johnson <davis at frizzen.com> wrote:
> I beleive that you don't really know computers if all you know is one
> platform and operating system. I want to actualy know computers. Part of
> this is because I've seen plenty of folks left high and dry when one of
> the world views I listed above ended. The rest is because I want to know
> computers for my own satisfaction.

Well said. If your background is broad enough, you have a better
fighting chance when turning to something new.

> My current windmill to tilt at is simultaniously/in parallel building
> linux-from-scratch ( http://www.linuxfromscratch.org ) on i386. alpha
> and sparc32. I'm rolling my own scripts as I go. I've got ppc  and mips
> machines that need miscelanious bits of kit.

I've thought about that on several occasions. Don't think I've got the
patience for Linux from Scratch, though. :) The one I've got my eye on
as an interesting system, and which I may try building on Alpha at
some point, is Gobo Linux. Their site is at http://www.gobolinux.org/,
but it's frequently down.

> If you want to work on intel you are only one little fish in a big sea.
> Ask the wrong question in the wrong place and you either get flamed or
> ignored. I can come here and ask dumb questions and get good, respectful
> answers.

That's one of the first things I noticed about this list, actually.
The people here are great. From the first time I was trying to get
decent network performance out of a DS10 cluster, to today, it's been
great. :)

> And Alpha is cool.

Damn straight!