sarah31

sorry i didn't mean fior my posts to sidetrack to much inot a discussion odf helping or not helping people. to close that conversation i do help noobs but at the same time i try to get them as self reliant as possible as quickly as possible. if that means pulling off an apparent elitist attitude ( i prefer curt) then so be it. some people need to be scared straight. i know i got several kick before i got going. arch or gentoo? try both. the advantages are varying both ways but ultimately it is what you prefer. i did not like gentoo as it was very buggy at the time used it. there was a period for awhile too where the zealots were incredibly annoying and i slagged the distro alot for that. it was not a pretty scene and i still have an arch user periodically liabeling my name indirectly every so often (well actually they take aim at me by tainting new users to using the forum or my advice and all my friends there in the process). fortunately i don't care because he ends out being the bigger ass in the end because all he does is gripe gripe gripe. he even was on the dev team until he quit because he could not hack it. at that point he went on his rampage.

i know i am free to not use something but i am also free not to help people that are just too lazy to try and figure things out for themself. i was left out to dry many times. until i finally started to take initiative and actually want to learn then things changed. anyone that knows me knows that i will help anyone. but if someone takes takes takes and makes the community do all the work i have no time for. i was taught right from before i even delved into linux that if you don't want to get your hands dirty then you should stick with windows or mac os. as time has gone on i have come to the realization that the less someone knows their system and their OS the more it will cost them in time and money. the more hand holding we do the more people will demand it. the more we make things point and click the more we compromise the security of our systems .... some things in *nix are just not meant to be done without considerable risks.

i recommend the book PHP For the World Wide Web by Larry Ullman Second Edition from Peachpit press. http://www.dmcinsights.com/bk_pages/books.php?i=php i have been using it it is really helpful (and inexpensive). you could also use the php manual found at the php home site.

you would probably care if you had to create a 508 compliant site. While the sites I am working on have decent 508 compliancy it still need to clean them up a bit. why should i care about 508 compliancy? well if i want all people to access my site then i damn well want disabled people to be able to and i need 508 compliancy for that. clean code is one key to universal compliancy. (i do share your point of view too though in that i do not press really hard to make things perfect for IE. since that often forces me to break something. IE allows too much shit code. it is really frustrating.) clean code is easier to work with. imo.

using css instead of tables allows the code to be lighter and alot easier control of positioning. using css over tables also allows for a much more forward compatable code to result. while table are useful (don't get the idea that i am anti-tables) it is alot more work to get them compliant in many browsers. css cannot replace some of what tables can provide (such as the small chart on the page i provided) but using them to set up simple columns is just pointless when css does a better job of it and with less effort. i thought tables were cool until it ried to do some stuff with forms and what not. it get so hard to deal with tables and it is even more frustrating when you toy with them for hours only to find that they render poorly isn foo browser. yeah and zengarden has excellent examples of just how much you can do with simple templates and some decent graphical skills. the pages look great and render quickly. tables are great and serve useful purposes but when i can i use straight css layouts.

no tables here: http://www.comicgradinggroup.com one header file, one footer, one content page it is al css controlled (except for a few small tables that hd to be made for the sake of properly positioning them and for "the look" that was needed

i would be one of those. but i don't consider myself "elitist" i just don't want arch to become loaded with gui interfaces for simple apps such as pacman. it is not that dislike guis but the more of them that you have hiding the "dirty underbelly" of linux the more people will require help. i am a firm believer that anyone using a computer, regardless of what OS, they should know the basics of their system. i know that is a bit idealistic but if you hang out in forums enough it get very annoying to see the same questions asked over and over when at least familiarizing themselves with website docs, man, and info pages they could have had their answers. i'm as lazy as the next person but i still am able to find most of my answers on my own and this is because i know some basics and i know what is in my computer, hardware-wise.

udev is stable and functional for most people that use it. there are some problems here and there but they are very very minor at this point. the package is called udev and with a few current initscript package changes allows udev to drop right in. in my opinion though i kind of prefer devfs. i don't see the advantages one the surface. admittingly though i have not read up on the differences. ntpl is not used yet because arch still has a fair number of 2.4 kernel users and it does not support ntpl.

ah i was wondering how this could have slipped by a distro ho like you ;)

took you a loooong time to "find" this "distro"

couldn't agree more. i dunno what it is about the unix crowds but there seems to be an over abundance of people that despise any sort of large business or anything that may remotely be made to look as though it *could possibly somehow* encroach on "rights". it is really funny actually. only in the *nix world have i found somebody that actually considers copyrights "bad law". *nix users seem to have some incredibly warped sense ideology. on one hand they love the socialist nature of the open source community (which in its self is hilarious considering how bad a word liberal is in the USA) and demonize certain big business. little do they realize that what is actually spewing from their mouths/hands/heads is so much hypocritical drivel even a free diver would drown in the mire. woo....and do some people get emotional about it....ooo boy. i say if something is definitely not impeding my life and health then it is a pretty minor matter. there are definitely situations and companies in this world who are actually endangering or taking the lives of people (ie tabacco companies) or the environment. i mean really, why should i worry about Microsoft or legalizing gay marrige when neither impede how i live my life? why should i care what OS somebody uses and whether or not it contains proprietary code? nope it is all very silly. that being said though though Microsoft is no threat to my life and living how they conduct some of their business and the fearmongering and intimidation does bother me. i mean really a company that is that large that rich should not be worried to much about competition. they should also be taking a different approach to priracy rather than intimidating politicians, etc into endorsing/creating laws that can or will be a large problem in the future or actually disregard certain other existing laws (ie paladium technology flies in the the face of monopoly laws). anyway...enough ranting.

ctrl+alt+backspace that should drop you into a login screen

how will this effect xfree86 (4.4)? it won't. xfree86 is a dying stale project as it is. there have been no major changes in the functionality and performance of X for the entire thre or four years i have used linux. while x generally gets the job done it is not good enough yet to really woo the rest of the computer world over. xfree86 needs some drastic changes in order to step into the present century. if fact so do the gui toolkit developers for that matter.

download the first debian disc. install base. reboot apt-get whatever you want. of course this means you have to do some configuration of x and get your sound going but it s the easiest, fastest and best way to install debian. forget libranet, knoppix or any other gibberish.