If Operating Systems Ran The Airlines...

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dashx
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If Operating Systems Ran The Airlines...

Post by dashx »

UNIX Airways

Everyone brings one piece of the plane along when they come to the airport. They all go out on the runway and put the plane together piece by piece, arguing non-stop about what kind of plane they are supposed to be building.

Air DOS

Everybody pushes the airplane until it glides, then they jump on and let the plane coast until it hits the ground again. Then they push again, jump on again, and so on...

Mac Airlines

All the stewards, captains, baggage handlers, and ticket agents look and act exactly the same. Every time you ask questions about details, you are gently but firmly told that you don't need to know, don't want to know, and everything will be done for you without your ever having to know, so just shut up.

Windows Air

The terminal is pretty and colourful, with friendly stewards, easy baggage check and boarding, and a smooth take-off. After about 10 minutes in the air, the plane explodes with no warning whatsoever.

Windows NT Air

Just like Windows Air, but costs more, uses much bigger planes, and takes out all the other aircraft within a 40-mile radius when it explodes.

Windows XP Air

You turn up at the airport,which is under contract to only allow XP Air planes. All the aircraft are identical, brightly coloured and three times as big as they need to be. The signs are huge and all point the same way. Whichever way you go, someone pops up dressed in a cloak and pointed hat insisting you follow him. Your luggage and clothes are taken off you and replaced with an XP Air suit and suitcase identical to everyone around you as this is included in the exorbitant ticket cost. The aircraft will not take off until you have signed a contract. The inflight entertainment promised turns out to be the same Mickey Mouse cartoon repeated over and over again. You have to phone your travel agent before you can have a meal or drink. You are searched regularly throughout the flight. If you go to the toilet twice or more you get charged for a new ticket. No matter what destination you booked you will always end up crash landing at Whistler in Canada.

Linux Air

Disgruntled employees of all the other OS airlines decide to start their own airline. They build the planes, ticket counters, and pave the runways themselves. They charge a small fee to cover the cost of printing the ticket, but you can also download and print the ticket yourself.

When you board the plane, you are given a seat, four bolts, a wrench and a copy of the seat-HOWTO.html. Once settled, the fully adjustable seat is very comfortable, the plane leaves and arrives on time without a single problem, the in-flight meal is wonderful. You try to tell customers of the other airlines about the great trip, but all they can say is, "You had to do what with the seat?"
I don't know if this has been posted already but it certainly made me laugh....
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moocow
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Re: If Operating Systems Ran The Airlines...

Post by moocow »

Obviously written by a blinded Linus religious nerd. I just built an Ubuntu headless server with torrent and RAID. Took me a week and a quasi chewing out by my boss because it took too much time.
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Re: If Operating Systems Ran The Airlines...

Post by Hedley »



If you like putting together IKEA furniture, you're going to love Linux :wink:
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Re: If Operating Systems Ran The Airlines...

Post by moocow »

More like putting together Ikea furnitures with broken instructions and you end up spending hours on end on the Internet, from a working Mac or PC, to find out why.
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Re: If Operating Systems Ran The Airlines...

Post by Hedley »

My favorite Linux distribution:

http://tinycorelinux.com/

It kicks @ss. Not for the faint of heart, though.
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Re: If Operating Systems Ran The Airlines...

Post by 200hr Wonder »

moocow your linux fu is weak sauce. A headless linux server with RAID & Torrenting? 2 hours MAX.

Mythbuntu is my PVR and it is so much better than any of the shit that is offered by any of the cable companies.

http://www.mythbuntu.org/

I have even been able to program my PVR from my/phone internet well since i built the thing. Can stream my stuff to my phone, my laptop. Supports surround sound, removes ads, and is way easier to use than the crap the cable companies are pushing.

DMR makes shit worse!
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Re: If Operating Systems Ran The Airlines...

Post by Hedley »

DMR makes shit worse!
I think you mean DRM
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Re: If Operating Systems Ran The Airlines...

Post by Brewguy »

200hr Wonder wrote:moocow your linux fu is weak sauce
+1

Moocow, you are obviously not computer savvy enough to be put in the position of setting up such a server. Don't hack on the technology just because you can't figure it out. There is a reason why some of the largest tech companies in the world use Linux on their servers...

As for the original post - hilarious! But I think they meant to say Windows Vista Air, rather than XP ... that, or this thing has been floating around for a very long time.
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Re: If Operating Systems Ran The Airlines...

Post by iflyforpie »




I'm useless with computers. I buy an iMac every five years. I take it out of the box, plug it in, and use it.
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Geez did I say that....? Or just think it....?
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Re: If Operating Systems Ran The Airlines...

Post by sydbat »

Brewguy wrote:
200hr Wonder wrote:moocow your linux fu is weak sauce
+1

Moocow, you are obviously not computer savvy enough to be put in the position of setting up such a server. Don't hack on the technology just because you can't figure it out. There is a reason why some of the largest tech companies in the world use Linux on their servers...

As for the original post - hilarious! But I think they meant to say Windows Vista Air, rather than XP ... that, or this thing has been floating around for a very long time.
Yup. A really long time.

And to those who have no idea how computers work, please do not make FUD statements. It only shows how little you actually know.

Of course, the same goes for anyone outside of any profession who has no clue how things work, then make sweeping statements about how hard, wrong, stupid the whole thing is. I am not a pilot (but have a friend who is), so I cannot make any comments about planes and flying. I do, however, know people who do make comments and are also not in the industry. I guess it's some humans nature to always be right about things they do not know...
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Re: If Operating Systems Ran The Airlines...

Post by iflyforpie »

FUD can also be Facts Undermining Diatribe.... :D
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Re: If Operating Systems Ran The Airlines...

Post by moocow »

In hindsight, installing the ubuntu-desktop made things worst. Here's a list of problems I ran into:

1. Ubuntu GUI's network manager doesn't work too well. Kept losing DNS resolution. End up installing wicd.

2. Despite the fact that my Linsys WMP600N is supposed to be supported OOB, I end up compiling a new driver from the chip maker.

3. Ubuntu's GUI disk manager's RAID management is screwed up. RAID won't auto start and mount. End up manually editing the mdadm and fstab config files.

4. Tested multiple torrent daemon to see which one fit my requirements. End up with Deluge but still have minor bugs. Transmission that came with the GUI won't write to other drive/RAID/folders regardless of ownership settings.

5. Took a while to figure out which Remote Desktop I want to use. The default VNC required someone to log in first before remote client can connect, kind of stupid.

** Suggest admin move this to Computer forum.
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Re: If Operating Systems Ran The Airlines...

Post by Brewguy »

moocow wrote:2. Despite the fact that my Linsys WMP600N is supposed to be supported OOB, I end up compiling a new driver from the chip maker.
I feel you pain on that one. I rarely trust the list of what hardware is supposed to be supported, without doing a whole bunch of forum surfing first.

I'm also not a huge fan of Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu in general; and think their community forum pretty well sucks.

Sorry if my initial reply sounded harsh - most of the Linux bashing I see that looks like what you wrote, comes from the uninitiated. But we've all had that one pita project, where nothing seems to go right.

I agree wholeheartedly with the song iflyforpie posted - every OS does suck, in their own unique way.
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Re: If Operating Systems Ran The Airlines...

Post by 200hr Wonder »

Yeah hardware problems have caused me more than a few sleepless nights. Honestly I tend to stick to only WELL supported hardware for any linux machine. As in someone else got this running and it runs well.

Now the question I have to ask is.... Desktop GUI? Erm? Eh? Pardon? You did say headless right?

SSH is your friend, honestly time spent learning and becoming comfortable in a terminal will be paid back in spades. My router/firewall box is in the closet with just a power cable and 2 network cables coming in and out of her. Don't think I have ever had to put a monitor on for more than the point I could SSH in. emacs and vi can be very intimidating, however pico, nano, etc are way more user friendly for simpler stuff. Midnight Commander is a great little program as well for a file manager.

Being able to do everything over a SLOW connection is great. I even have an terminal on my iphone I can get a shell on my box at home should I need to do something. Move some files, free up some disk space etc.

As for your torrent problems have you tried some of the nice cmd line ones? They work quite well. Failing that there are a few decent ones with a good web interface. I recommend an https connection of course.

As for the worlds easiest and quite possibly most idiot proof torrent box I have a Linksys DS-323 2 drive RAID NAS. Little box about 4 inches x 6 inches x 12 inches with 2 1.5 TB hard drives and lo and behold a built in Bit Torrent client. Access is via Samba for a windows network. Works stupid nice and with a minor little bit of hacking it even has SSH access and most common utils like rsync and the like.

Sorry for raging on ya moocow I was just feeling a titch bitchy ;)
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Re: If Operating Systems Ran The Airlines...

Post by moocow »

Don't worry about it. Linux is a beast compare to Windows and Mac. IMO, the Ubuntu desktop GUI simply doesn't deliver when it comes to server administration. The reason I installed the desktop was to make my life easier when I configure the machine initially and subsequent software package management using Synaptic over X2Go remote desktop. Technically, I could build the entire thing using W2K8R2 but I'm running an old AMDx2 with only 2GB of ram. In regards to command line Torrent, I haven't found one that accept block lists in "ipfilter.dat" format.
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Re: If Operating Systems Ran The Airlines...

Post by 200hr Wonder »

FYI Synaptic == apt-get, in reality all GUI admin tools for Linux or just GUI front ends to really good cmd line back ends.

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade

and well your packages are up to date :D
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Re: If Operating Systems Ran The Airlines...

Post by Hedley »

Linux is a beast compare to Windows and Mac
heh heh heh ...
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Re: If Operating Systems Ran The Airlines...

Post by . ._ »

Linux does not work perfectly, but it's free (in all senses of the term) and Richard Stallman answered my email when I asked him a question once.

I love GNU/Linux.

http://www.ubuntu.com/

-istp :)
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