[CUBE] Cube on Linux!

[J.C. Webber III]

John Allan wrote:
> I'd say a dedicated Cube Terminal [ I guess you have an LCD ] is quite a
> indulgent luxury in life but you have style!

Not sure what you mean by 'Cube Terminal'?  Is this in reference to some
thing I said in an earlier email?  The 22" Cinema Display was a
performance bonus from work for a job well done.  8^)

> 
> Oh there are a whole load of really nice user friendly senses in 9 that are
> sorely missed in X, the flavour of having a different development team in
> house now. Just simple things like single hand keystroke commands, cascading
> menus from the tops of folders, the whole windowshading thing, speed and so
> so. But I appreciate the allure of a 10.

I had an OS9 iMac on my desk at work next to my Solaris workstation for
the first year or so that I was at Apple.  But since my job was to
administer the Solaris compute farm, and engineering workstations, I had
little use for it.  I'd occasionally have to use it for Apple business,
like interfacing with HR or Finance.  But I did not enjoy the
experience.  I always had a hard time figuring out where things went
when I would install something.  And I detested the clutter of the
Desktop and the fact that it seem to arbitrarily put things around on
the desktop.  And all the crap left behind when I would install
someting.  I never knew what was safe to move or throw away.  It felt
like chaos.  And I didn't know where anything was *or* how to find it.
I've heard OS9 folks talk about how it works the way they 'think', but
I guess I don't think that way.  It never felt inituitive to me.  Been
using Unix command lines for too long, I guess.  

But I don't feel that way about OSX.  Although I think it still leaves a
bunch of unneccessary junk on the desktop when you install something, at
least now I know it's pretty safe to just throw this stuff away
(although I do usually tuck away in a Src directory any sit or dmg
packages I found that I want to make sure I hang onto for a possible
future install).

I'm constantly cleaning up my desktop.  When I'm working, the only
things on my desktop are remote mounts (Go->Server), attached disks
(CDs, iPod), and the occasional folder put there by some install
process.  When I log on (or off for that matter) the only thing on
my desktop is the Dock.  I don't even display the Hard Disk.  I can
get to it if I need it, but that's rare.

> Have you tried your see through Terminal window while watching full frame
> video behind a la Quartz Extreme? I am sure there is a better application of
> it but have not come up with any ideas yet!

A 'better application' of what?  I must be tired.  I can't quite get
on the same page as you.  Are you replying to something I said in an
earlier email?

As for window shading, yes, I like that better than shrinking to the dock.
I've been using KDE on my Solaris desktop for years and it has that
feature.  I recently found some independent developer's enhancements
for OSX that have given me this capability, along with several other
nice features.  There are some really cool apps at www.unsanity.com.
Including a window transparency feature that works on any window at
the click of the mouse.  Pretty cool.

> 
> Makes you wonder about the struggle to go get Linux up and running.
> 
> I think the problem is getting the LCD up and working enough to install and
> I have  no idea if it route sound and so on. You have never done this? No,
> it seems. Would be nice [ I have a Linux Qube as well ], but time consuming.
> I even thought buying one of those mini-PCs Shuttle Spacewalker to allow me
> to run three systems in the size of a single minitower 9" x 9" by 27" ;-)

I recently installed Mandrake9.0 into VirtualPC.  I haven't used it
much, just did it to see what it was like.  It's a bit slow, but maybe
that was before I upgraded my Cube to the PL1.2Mhz upgrade.  I'll have
to check that out again....

Later...
-- 
J.C. Webber III       
Technical Lead, Unix System Administrator
jcw at kingoblio.com (home) www.kingoblio.com