Reeading on Easter Morning

[yogi]

I think the term simple computers is an oxymoron.

Computers are as simple today as they were back in the 6800 days. The other things they put into the chip die is what makes a programmer's hair turn gray. Be that as it may, it takes a certain way of thinking to be comfortable with the strict logic of computers. You obviously had that discipline and could deal with the logic of programming intuitively. I guess i had some of that as well but it got hairy when I changed from interpreted code to assembly or binary. Working down on that level opens up a whole new world of possibilities and some of the concepts were not easy for me to comprehend. My granddaughter just earned her BS degree in statistics (no pun intended) and had to take a few programming classes in order to learn how to analyze databases. She was here to visit us a couple weeks ago and is lamenting about how difficult it is to find a job. Apparently a lot of places are looking for people with SQL experience. I was shocked to learn that she never had to take a class in SQL. I guess technically statistics is not about database management, but the two certainly can't live without each other in today's world.

[Kellemora]

Way back when we had the large WANG VS mainframe computer. When we needed a program upgrade or a new program installed, they said they would send their PROGRAMMER over to us. It turns out, the guy they sent knew absolutely nothing about programming at all. I showed him a printout of a code I wanted to have available in the computer. It was written in simple Basic. He said he don't know anything about writing code, he was just a Programmer. Say what? Turns out, with Wang, a Programmer was only a software Installer and nothing more, hi hi. The things we do ourselves these days, hi hi.

As you pointed out before, all of my programming knowledge was Linear. That's how my Heath/Zenith worked, it is how my programmable calculator worked, and also how the Basic programming language worked. I never got into machine language other than just playing around when I needed Peeks, Pokes, and Calls, which sometimes were tricky to figure out.
I knew nothing about REAL programming languages at all.
I tried learning some, but never could grasp it.
However, after moving from HTML to XHTML/CSS and then HTML-5, I'm learning a very little bit about object oriented as far as the CSS goes, HTML is still linear though.
And now I'm too olde to learn any other way of doing things. I just don't sink in this old headbone residing atop my shoulders.

[yogi]

A program is simply a set of instructions. A programmer, therefore, could be said to be a person who writes out those instructions. It gets complicated from there.

You might be surprised at how much you actually know about object oriented programming. Perhaps your skills aren't in machine coding per se, but you have explained clearly many times how you can take two or more objects and make them work together to produce a desired result. The combining of those objects and getting them to work together is what object oriented programing is all about. Your need to gather those objects to solve a specific problem is linear. Problem ==> Solution

I guess I'm just a purist at heart because I worked in the field and got paid for what I did. Then, again, they did ask me to retire early. Be that all as it may, I still insist that HTML and it's variants is not programming. There are no instructions in HTML because there is no logic involved. No decisions have to be made. It's all a matter of taking some text and laying it out on a web page in a specific manner. I will concede that a CSS file could look like some esoteric computer coding, but that's the only similarity. It is generally written out in a structured format that a human can easily recognize, but the browser sees it as one long string of characters. It's true that a CPU sees only one long string of data too, but the CPU is processing them as instructions and not as formatting data.

And, being the ancient age that I am, I can see how it is possible to think I am too old to learn anything new. It's not true. We are never too old. Us curmudgeons do get tired of trying and failing due to a lack of comprehension, but that does not mean we can't give the brain food for thought. You helped me learn something entirely new in fact when you were giving me inputs regarding EFI booting. I learned something new at the ripe old age of 75; or was it 74? I forget. In any case if I can do it so can you. Having the energy to do it is a different question.

[Kellemora]

Part of using HTML is also using JavaScript and other languages.
As you have pointed out many times, a computer only knows binary 0s and 1s, aka machine language.
Therefore, all other languages require an interpreter, to convert the programming language into something the computer understands. And in some case, between a programming language and the interpreter is an assembly language.
Over the years, programming languages have become many and most simplified to make them even easier.
I think a couple of programming languages are almost to the point of WYSIWYG.
But I'm sure it is heavily bloated with all kinds of programs underneath to end up with the coding the machine needs.

What irks me is no matter how many times I try to understand something like BASH, I'm failing to do so.
I've gone through many tutorials, following all the instructions step by step.
And most of what I learn is you don't have to do that, just use this already written part and plug it in, hi hi.
But they never say how to do that, hi hi.

[yogi]

HTML is markup used to render a web page. This rendering is accomplished by a browser. It all started out as text only. Then somebody wanted to make the text fancy and use different fonts. Then they decided that wasn't enough and wanted to be able to change the layout, and have columns. On top of that they wanted images embedded into the text. Today's web pages are filled with all that and a whole world of audio/visual objects. The javascript you mention, as well as other extensions, are used only to render the web page. They call upon other programs outside the browser to do some of their audio/visual tricks, but the bottom line is page layout.

That's not what computer programming is all about.

The heart of any computer is the central processing unit. And, yes, all it knows is 1's and 0's as I have indeed mentioned in passing previously. Those binary bits are crunched and processed by the CPU and then output to other hardware devices not built into the processor. Those other devices include a video generator, a sound generator, memory, bus controllers, and a billion other things that only understand binary instructions. In reality a computer onto itself cannot render a web page. The computer merely activates other hardware and software (a browser program stored in memory) which in turn will do the web page rendering. A computer cannot process HTML, but a browser is built just for that purpose.

So, what is the guy who makes webpages really doing? In essence that person is adding markup tags to text. That's it. Well javascript is not markup, you might say. True enough and a browser is not a programmable computer. But they both use other resources to accomplish their purpose. The script embedded into a webpage is just that, an embedded script. As far as the browser is concerned scripts are just another kind of markup tag that it hands off to some other part of the machine to process.


I have to sympathize with you when you say certain things just are incomprehensible. It might be a fine line that separates them, but learning is something other than comprehension. When you learn something you often acquire a related skill. Thus you might have no idea what the hell is going on in Bash, but you can execute CLI commands and get them to do what you need to do. And, I'd venture to guess you can even modify them to some extent to vary the results. Understanding how that all happens is indeed a different part of the brain.

[Kellemora]

Hmm. Lost another post.
Don't know why, I was just typing is all.
Then when I backed up, I no longer had a reply window.
Reloaded, and still didn't have one, so I'm using this reply window.
I was in the middle of typing a sentence, and poof, I was back to the log-in screen, also showing I was not logged in.
Oh well, tomorrow is another day.

[yogi]

Word on the street is Debian 10.10 is available for download. Maybe you can set up an experimental machine with that version of Debian and a browser that can access this website. I don't know if that will fix your disappearing editing window problem or not, but I can't think of anything else to suggest. If I get the urge to do some head banging, I might try to install the new Debian in a test environment. Some of it's derivatives seem to be working better these days, so maybe the Mother of All Linux is up to speed now. Then, too, I have not checked lately to see if phpBB has any new software. I'm guessing it does which is why I have not looked. LOL

[Kellemora]

Doing a CAT os-release on Debian never tells you what version extension you are on, like other Distro's.
I installed Debian 10.7 on this machine, and 10.9 on another machine, but have done the full-upgrades on both.
In fact, just last night I upgraded the Kernel on both machines.

What killed my response is definitely a key combination I apparently accidentally hit when typing.
So I don't think it is a problem at your end, or with my computer, but my fingers going off on a wild tangent, hi hi.
Could be I'm hitting the Ctrl key instead of the shift key and a combo of letters that blows me out of your entry screen.
Because of my arthritis, I tend to be hitting the backspace key a lot lately, and it could be I hit shift backspace by accident too.

I have a couple of keyboards I use rarely on other machines, where the Enter Key is an odd shape. On one it is shaped like the number 7 sorta, so uses up half of a Shift Key, on another it is shaped like a backwards L and they move the backslash and pipe key up to the numeric row of keys, making the Backspace key the size of a character key. So since I'm used to the same keyboards I've used for 20+ years, when I'm doing something on another computer where I use the backslash key a lot, I keep hitting the enter key by mistake.
I can only hope this last keyboard from my box outlives me, I don't like the feel of other ones I've used, hi hi.

[yogi]

Don't know about Debian itself, but every OS based on it has the "like Debian" entry in /etc/os-release. The version number is in there too, but it's the version of the current mutilation of Debian and not the source. I used to have a link to instructions telling how to determine the version number of a Linux install. There were about 6 different methods with that os-release file being one of them. Unfortunately, I can't find the link, which in my case is OK. I don't have Debian installed anywhere to query it.

I don't type a fast as you do, nor is the arthritis in my fingers in the same place as is yours. Therefore, in spite of my best efforts to find the keyboard shortcut that will log you out of the site I can't come up with it. I can erase all the text (ctrl+backspace) but I can't find a way to log out. Regardless, I know it's frustrating to write out a long reply and have it disappear in a flash.

[Kellemora]

All of the other OS's I've used, when I enter the command to show the version number, it does in it's entirety.
But with Debian it only shows version 10 Buster, when I know I have versions 10-7, 10-8, 10-9, etc.
Here is what I get:
$ cat /etc/os-release
PRETTY_NAME="Debian GNU/Linux 10 (buster)"
NAME="Debian GNU/Linux"
VERSION_ID="10"
VERSION="10 (buster)"
VERSION_CODENAME=buster
ID=debian
All other Distro's show the Version as VERSION_ID="19.3" on Linux MInt 19.3 that is.

I'm usually typing pretty fast when it happens and made an error I went to backspace over to correct. But I think it could be the next key I type after that too. I've never quite nailed down what the sequence that causes it is.

[yogi]

Again, I don't know how or if any of this works in Debian, but I found a few tricks here: https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/how-to-ch ... mand-line/

Screenshot from 2021-06-24 13-14-22.png (141.29 KiB) Viewed 716 times

[Kellemora]

I still don't get it with any of the other commands either.

gary@SilverYogi10:~$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Debian
Description: Debian GNU/Linux 10 (buster)
Release: 10
Codename: buster
gary@SilverYogi10:~$

gary@SilverYogi10:~$ hostnamectl
Static hostname: SilverYogi10
Icon name: computer-desktop
Chassis: desktop
Machine ID: 53032xxxxxxxxxx
Boot ID: 2ce3d2xxxxxxxxx
Operating System: Debian GNU/Linux 10 (buster)
Kernel: Linux 4.19.0-17-amd64
Architecture: x86-64
gary@SilverYogi10:~$

gary@SilverYogi10:~$ cat /proc/version
Linux version 4.19.0-17-amd64 (debian-kernel@lists.debian.org) (gcc version 8.3.0 (Debian 8.3.0-6)) #1 SMP Debian 4.19.194-1 (2021-06-10)
gary@SilverYogi10:~$

Wow, that last one is weird, I haven't used version 8 now in years, hi hi. Evident by the previous reports.
On second though, maybe I just ran full-upgrades since then instead of doing a clean install, hmm.

[yogi]

Those listings are indeed interesting. The Linux kernel listed is ... very old. LOL It was my understanding that you do not favor distribution upgrades but only do kernel updates. What I'm seeing in the above listings is that the kernel might be fully updated, but it's not the kernel the current Debian is using. I guess that's one of the "features" of Linux; you can mix and match to your heart's content. I have no vested interest in preserving what I do in Linux other than the troubleshooting tools I install. Thus I do dist-upgrades and complete reinstalls when they are available. I also only keep one backup version of the kernel in the /boot directory. Since I rarely have a need to go backward, keeping several versions of the kernel on hand is simply wasting disk space. In any case I don't know why Debian doesn't show the extended version number, but it certainly is unique in that regard.

[Kellemora]

When you do a full-upgrade on Debian, you have to go in and change the repository names to the new version name.
Albeit, it is better to do a fresh clean install, and copy the /home directory over to the new install. Plus a couple of other files I always forget which ones, if I'm moving to a new machine.
I normally create a new partition for the new distro, so I have the old install to fall back on.
I know I did that on this machine, because I can boot into the older versions, including version 8.
So I don't really know why it still shows version 8 as part of the report. Unless I only did an upgrade over it and forgot.

What I did notice that was different is the names for the repositories is different on this machine, than on a machine I did a clean new install on. Meaning the locations they point to are slightly different.
I normally pick the closest to me repository, instead of the main one which is usually super busy.

[yogi]

I get the idea of Linux repositories, but they are a pain in the petuzzi. Like everything else in Linux-land the repositories have no standardized structure. There are certain things that everybody needs and has, but each distribution is unique with its naming convention. Beyond that, there may be more than one repository that needs to be scanned for updates. I have a few Linux distros that are "based on Ubuntu" but have their own special repositories on top of that. The apt update command will list them all as will the apt dist-upgrade. In fact the dist-upgrade goes one step further and lists each individual package that is available disregarding the repository it is stored in. I suppose the idea there is to allow you to pick and choose what you want to update. To me that is way too many options, but to a fellow like yourself who wants to preserve certain configuration files I suppose that multiple choice option is a benefit. I have to plea ignorance when it comes to Debian given that I don't keep a copy of it floating around in my repository of Linux(s) On A Stick. LOL I suppose it is prudent to keep old and known to work copies of Debian when you do an update. It's great to have something to fall back on. However, the updates often have security fixes in addition to new features built into the new kernel. It may be possible for some of that to break your current configuration. Thus you are doing the right thing by keeping an archive.

[Kellemora]

Well, by using a repository, you know everything is tested to work with that Distro.
But you do have choices between Stable, Non-stable, Testing, and Stable non-free, etc.
I only use Stable repositories.
Linux Mint uses Ubuntu's repositories.
Debian uses it's own repositories.
Most small Distro's use either Debian or Ubuntu, sometimes both, but not usually.
I have no idea what you mean by no standardized structure. I've been using GNU/Linux now for many years, and the repository functions are all still exactly the same as they've always been.
With Windows, you have to go find a program by whatever vendor makes it, and hope they have one that will match your system. No central organized place for all available programs that I've ever seen.

When you do a clean install of a Debian Distro, it looks at your machine hardware, and selects which repository is best for that hardware configuration. This is one reason why there is more than one repository for the same Distro version.
It used to irk me to no end, when I would go to download a program I was used to using only to find it was not in the repository I was currently on. Then upon searching, knowing it was in the repository for my other machines at the time. I learned since all of my machines had AMD processors, I was on a different repository than when I got the Silver Yogi which is an Intel processor. The particular program made use of some feature of the processor. I could get it again for the Intel processor by downloading it from an Intel repository. It worked exactly the same, looked the same, so I have no idea what the difference really was.

[yogi]

I have no idea what you mean by no standardized structure.

I read that and immediately following I read your comments about the wide array of different repositories for different situations and different hardware.

In addition to the mish mosh of "standard" Linux packages being a hassle, their repositories tend to disappear after a feature update is released. I can't speak to what Debian does, but there is no way to go back in time on many Linux systems I've tinkered with. It's true that Microsoft did not tie you down to a specific set of programs and that finding what you needed was a scavenger hunt. While that could be a hassle, at least you could find what you needed. It's no longer necessary to go on a hunt for Windows programs because they took a cue from Linux and now have a software store from which you can get verified apps. In fact one feature of Windows 11 is that you can download Android apps from their store and run them in the native Windows mode. In Linux-land the repository is your only option. Well, not entirely. There are PPA's and I've used a few but the distro curator won't support anything outside the official repository.

AMD and Intel are about as different as Windows and Linux. The function is identical but the methods are different. That is why two different Linux repositories would be required. The packages are compiled for different processor architectures. There are some processors Linux will not support; the ARM line of processors for example. That's why you don't see Linux in smartphones, but you do see Android, iOS, and sometimes Microsoft.

[Kellemora]

Most of the major programs for Linux machines, if they are not in the repositories for one reason or another, you can go to the maker and select a version for your type of architecture. And then to make sure it gets updated you can add them to your repository list.

I thought ms said Windows 10 would be the last Windows desktop version! Did they lie?
I'm now hearing about Windows 11. Maybe their Windows 365 or whatever they called it isn't going over as big as they planned.

One thing I know for sure is this replacement for Flash called WebGL is a total foul ball all the way around. It does not play nice with HTML5 which is what it was designed for, and has serious problems with every web browser out there. Different problems on each browser. What works on one, doesn't work on another.
But on the bright side, they won the award Windows held for years. WebGL crashes more often than any other mainstream program in history!

[yogi]

When I first entered the Linux world the concept of repositories felt restrictive and confusing. Nobody but the people who load all the packages into the repositories knows what is in there. Plus, when I'm looking for a text editor, for example, it cannot be found per se in a repository. Even if I were lucky enough to know the exact name of the text editor package in advance, then I would also have to also know what dependencies are needed to install it. Being new to Linux I had no idea what I needed and the repositories were not designed to be helpful in that regard. For Windows all I did was search for text editors on Google and voila! I concede that I didn't know what I was getting that way, but at least I was able to get something.

Microsoft, as you must know, did not invent Flash nor did it support it as software. The popularity of the program left a gaping hole in the software and web page rendering community when Adobe dropped the ball. Replacements don't exist. Flash was too unique to fit into anything available off the shelf in today's world. The burden to find alternatives to the Flash Player has been placed on the developers of the apps that used it. You can hardly blame the operating system for the shortsightedness of game/webpage developers. Odd as it might seem Apple never did support Flash and it didn't seem to hurt their operating system one bit. They don't have the gaming crowd you find elsewhere, but that doesn't mean they don't offer games.

You ask a good question about Microsoft's long time declaration of Windows 10 being the last OS. They never did explain the decision to put an end of life date on Windows 10, but it's pretty obvious why they did it. You will be reading a lot of complaints, particularly from the Linux community, regarding the new hardware security requirements needed to run Windows 11. In effect the Linux crowd that did not follow through on developing a secure EFI boot version of their free and open source operating system will be locked out of running side by side with Windows in the future. I personally disabled all the secure boot options so that I could multi-boot Linux. That will not be an option going forward with Windows 11. The good news is Windows 11 is a free update for people who already have Windows 10. Of course you will need that security module in order to get it.

I can hear the wailing and gnashing of teeth already.

[Kellemora]

You must have been trying RedHat or spinoffs of them. None of their repositories had a package manager.
I think BSD was the first to come up with a package manager, followed by Debian, and then RPM.
I think Linux Mint has the best package manager, even though it uses Ubuntu derived Deb packages.
A package manager looks to see if you have all the dependencies and that they are up to date, if not it installs them along with the program.
But speaking of Windows, I remember searching high and low to find DLL files I needed for a program I downloaded to get it to work right or to get it to work at all. Finding the right DLL files used to be a nightmare. When I saved a program so I could use it on another computer, I would often save all the necessary DLL files in a separate folder just in case I needed them. Plus any other files that program may have hidden in various places on a Windows computer.

I honestly doubt I will ever have to worry about Windows again for the rest of my lifetime.
Couldn't afford it even if I did want it, hi hi.