Final words from Thorasin

[Paul Mather]

On Sun, 14 Oct 2001, root wrote:

=> Hmm, never actually tried that one, guess I should have my guess is it
=> will run all GNU stuff?  What chances tv card, mpeg card, voodoo card
=> etc?

I dunno, but I expect so.  I mostly use computers that other people are
getting rid of (e.g., DEC 3000/300, RS/6000 Model 7006, some 486s, and a
Pentium 75), and the ones I use daily are not i86-based (and so can't
run Microsoft products), so cutting-edge hardware support is not much of
an issue with me.  Support for decrepit and obscure hardware: now that's
a problem!  (Linux support for the DEC 3000 series was abysmal last time
I looked, unlike NetBSD's.)  The Linux camp are Johnny-Come-Latelies
when it comes to cross-platform support.  If you want to get serious
about multi-platform support, take a gander at the list of NetBSD ports
(www.netbsd.org).

Of course, because Linux grabs the headlines (because they essentially
"got there first" on i86), all the big corporations have thrown their
weight behind it.  C'est la guerre!

=> What I'd really like to try is the hurd (GNU) kernel, but I think my
=> poor 133Mhz box won't cope.

Last time I ran a microkernel it was on an i286 and it was called Minix.
(IMHO, Hurd is a day late and a dollar short.  It's a bit of a joke
now.)

=> Thing about a kernel is it needs to be stable and support everything,

Plus, it needs to run on your hardware. ;-)

(NetBSD will run on both your and my hardware, but Linux will only run
on yours.  I guess that makes Linux better because it's more
exclusive...;)

=> what is bsd like about cryptography?  what I like about linux is fact
=> that I can have strong encryption on virtual file system.  So I keep my

Well, OpenSSH (the crypto subsystem used by most free OSes and
applications) is actually maintained and developed by the OpenBSD
people, who are pro-active about security ("four years without a remote
hole in the default install" runs their slogan).  See www.openbsd.org
for details.

(CFS [Cryptographic File System] is available under all the BSD's, last
I looked.)

=> ~/.netscape and ~/nsmail directories on encrypted virtual file system
=> and nobody not the cia fbi mi5 mi6 or anyone else can access those
=> places.   If G. Glitter had done that he would not have gotten busted!
=> (I don't suppot paedophilia but I do support privacy)

Let's hope you're not running one of those crypto implementations that
have the entropy-gathering bug that makes the keys trivially easy to
break...

BTW, despite appearances to the contrary, I am not anti-Linux (just
immune to the hype).  For the record, my Linux distribution of choice is
tomsrtbt, but that's mainly because I can carry it around in my
pocket...

Cheers,

Paul.

e-mail: paul at gromit.dlib.vt.edu

"Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production
 deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid."
        --- Frank Vincent Zappa