Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2000 10:21:37 +0530 From: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> To: j mckitrick <jcm@FreeBSD-uk.eu.org> Cc: Kris Kennaway <kris@FreeBSD.ORG>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Color ls Message-ID: <20000719102137.A32398@physics.iisc.ernet.in> In-Reply-To: <20000719044049.A52681@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org>; from jcm@FreeBSD-uk.eu.org on Wed, Jul 19, 2000 at 04:40:49AM %2B0100 References: <20000719041804.A52522@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> <Pine.BSF.4.21.0007182027250.56461-100000@freefall.freebsd.org> <20000719044049.A52681@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org>
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j mckitrick said on Jul 19, 2000 at 04:40:49:
> That's my point. When friends of mine who have been sysadmin's for years
> complain about how plain-vanilla and generic the basic FreeBSD install is,
> and how much work it is to get it dialed in and 'friendly', i really don't
> know what to tell them.
I don't believe they're experienced Unix sysadmins. I'm not,
my first sysadmining exposure was on linux perhaps three years ago,
but I still found freebsd's install a breeze.
> if i had trouble getting color to work on cons25 or even an xterm, i
> wouldn't be especially optimistic about something advanced, like playing
> mpegs, or even sound. I spent 2 months getting sound and my zip drive to
I'd never done sound on FreeBSD before (the machine I used before
doesn't have a sound card). I helped a friend to install it recently,
and just read some basic docs on the FreeBSD web page and turned on a
couple of kernel options, and this guy was stunned at the way it
autodetected his PCI sound card on the next bootup. He was even more
impressed that it found his ethernet card (I forget which one) which
even Red Hat 6.2 could not. Granted, not all sound/ethernet cards are
so easy, but they aren't on linux either.
But speaking of cons25: it's one of my pet peeves, because it's
incompatible with vt100. What happens is, we have an environment with
this, linux and commercial unix living together, and when you
telnet/ssh from one machine to another you get a message like "unknown
terminal type {dtterm/linux/cons25}". The quick workaround there is
to set term=vt100 in your login file, which works on all the machines
-- except the FreeBSD console.
(Yes I know about copying termcap entries, but it looked like too much
trouble since people run X most of the time anyway. No problem in
an xterm. Also I know about pcvt but couldn't get it to work properly
with X for some reason.)
> To sum it all up, i get frustrated when 'progress' is alluded to as being a
> crutch for 'lusers'. Computers are a tool to make life easier. Why the
> hell does liking colors (which help the brain organize information better)
> warrant being labeled as a luser?
I agree. I'm not fond of color-ls, but if people want it, why not;
and I found syntax-highlighting in vim to be a *huge* help. The way
people tend to flame vim on this list, because of its alleged bloat
and incompatibility with "traditional" vi (when in fact it's more
compatible than nvi, which freebsd uses) is not funny.
Rahul.
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