[geeks] Can't decide on an OS

[Jonathan Patschke]

On Fri, 27 Sep 2013, Mouse wrote:

> ...good example of what I mean, because such systems are rarely usable
> for me.  I'm not sure what "content" is, but the meanings I infer from
> the ways I've seen the word used are things I have low-to-negative
> interest in creating.

In my case, "content" is software, electronics schematics, technical
documentation, legal paperwork, music, and occasionally the odd bit of
touched-up photography.  I think, to some degree or another, I've produced
all of the above on every OS I listed.  Some are better than others.

Most operating systems targeted at "home" users or "office" users can
handle all of that reasonably well, apart from software.  Writing software
was unnecessarily hard 20 years ago because of the high cost of compilers
and the gated availability of import libraries and header files.  Now it's
unnecessarily hard because of trusted computing, code signing,
walled-garden "app" stores, etc.

If the things you create are substantively different from all of those
that I do, it's entirely possible that OS developers simply haven't heard
that there's an unmet niche.

> Excellent.  Where?  (I suck at finding things on the Web, and these

AMD have made a great deal of technical documentation available here (the
graphics processor documentation is at the bottom):
    http://developer.amd.com/resources/documentation-articles/developer-guides-manuals/

There are a lot of assumptions in the documentation that the reader has
written enough code atop AMD's (or Microsoft's) own APIs to have a good
feeling for how all the pieces fit together.  The documentation also
requires a lot more bouncing-around than, say, Intel's x86 documentation.


NVidia have not been quite as forthcoming.  They've released this thing,
which is about as useful as what you suspected they'd release:
   ftp://download.nvidia.com/open-gpu-doc/DCB/1/DCB-4.0-Specification.html

> I can fetch stuff when I know where it is, but finding it is quite
> another story.)

I've found that treating your search engine of choice like a library card
catalogue works very well.

> Yeah, the US has made that bed and is having to lie in it.  That
> wouldn't be a problem, really, except that so much of the rest of the
> world seems to consider the US indispensable.

I'm not entirely sure that eliminating the US as a market would actually
help things.  On a legal level, the international patent treaties would
mean that everything that isn't a software patent is still fair game,
provided the patent holder has done the proper paperwork up-front.  On a
more practical level, the US courts do whatever they want, regardless of
whether it's legal or not, and countries dependent upon US foreign aid (or
dependent upon not getting US military "aid") will let small
transgressions like extradition or foreign patent enforcement slide.

> Not quite - if documentation is not available, you have much better
> customer lockin for the vendor-provided software.

Maybe, but it seems like the documentation started drying up about when
the intellectual property nonsense got out of hand.

>> I'm seriously considering getting into machining.
>
> I think in my case it would be music.

I can recommend music.  I've been playing and making music for 25 years or
so, and it's still a source of challenge and joy.  This year, I'm learning
the tuba, and have apparently picked out a really challenging model on
which to learn.

> I don't know whether I could make a living at it, but it's getting to
> the point where I have to get out of the hostile system computing has
> become even if it means walking out onto the ice floe.

Why is it so hostile, from your point of view?  What is so inescapable?

-- 
Jonathan Patschke | "No matter how much the government controls...any
Elgin, TX         %  problem will be blamed on whatever small zone of
USA               |  freedom that remains."         --Sheldon Richman