Gnaw

I encountered an interesting message-digest of activity (very, very short) from my Weblog today…

A new comment (surprising enough as that is)…  And in plain ol’ text with only a domain.com mention (no tags).

It sailed through my Dr. Dave’s Spam Karma filter with 4pts to spare (a feat not achieved ’til now (oh, yes, and uber-small-timey-yet-refreshingly-and-affectedly-pretentious)).

Retro is the new cutting edge.

Oh, and I’m saying this (others are too, likely) right now…today’s-date-(2009-0430 @ 0258 -8GMT) right-now (just because).

::yargh!::  By all rights I should create and upload a new GPG key tonight and sign this right now, darnit!

Did I mention “uber-small-timey-yet-pretentious?”  ::snickering/laughing::

I’m JUST saying…

.

I was going through a few distros (to keep up with how they are doing/what they are doing) when it dawned on me exactly how boring and mundane (and accessible) Linux has become.  Not a one of the distros I have tried in the last five years has required me to manually configure X with any of the following information (this is not to say that some of them weren’t just a wee bit off):

• Video timing chip type and speed (or, for some chips, just the speed and a wild guess about the general chip type)
• Horizontal sync range
• Vertical sync range
• Color depth versus resolution
• Video chip/card (including video RAM)

I find all of this to be highly annoying…  I mean, anybody can just come along and install Linux now, and they don’t have to know a thing about these very important settings and where to enter them.

So, the next time someone tells you how much you have to learn about command lines just to install (much less to actually use) Linux, ask them when they last entered all this info into a text file…  That was the whole point, wasn’t it?  To make Linux accessible to the masses?  It is now accessible, and anyone who says otherwise is not just under-informed, they are willfully so.

Added much, much later…

I’m specifically talking about that info (sync ranges, etc.) for my old, VGA (9-pin video) multisync monitor (Emerson) set for page-white at 640 X 480.  FWIW and all.