On Tue, 13 Apr 2021 at 18:44, Kevin Bowling wrote:
>
> Linux tends to churn that amount of code in a release. I find it interesting
> how large systemd has become as well:
> https://www.theregister.com/2020/01/06/linux_2020_kernel_systemd_code/
I didn't know but I can well believe it. Virtually _any_ 30-40+ year
old code is, by modern standards, lightweight and fast.
Compared to, say, C++, Ada is a lightweight, clean language. Compared
to modern *nix, Multics itself is a sylph-like slip of a thing.
One of my personal favourites... there is a lot of word-processor
advocacy online now and the one most people praise as The Best Thing
EVAH is WordPerfect.
I used and supported WordPerfect in the late '80s & early '90s. I
never liked it that much. Fast, feature-rich, yes, but a UI one could
only love because of Stockholm Syndrome.
But I remember 5.x introducing pull-down CUA-type menus and being for
me significantly easier to use as a result. And I remember v 6,
lambasted as sluggish bloatware at the time, having a graphics-mode
GUI on DOS if you wanted.
So I found a copy and installed it on PC DOS 7.1 on a Core 2 Duo
Thinkpad. On a modern multi-gigahertz x86, it _flies_ along. It's
snappy and responsive even in graphics mode, and by modern standards
it's tiny. A dozen meg or so.
I don't use it much but it's fun to do so occasionally.
My main go-to WP on my primary laptop is MS Word 97 for Windows, under
WINE on 64-bit Ubuntu. Again, sluggish bloatware when new, but ¼
century later, lightweight and positively snappy. Does everything I
need and more, including the all-important Outline mode. Has proper
menus, not a Ribbon. Runs perfectly under WINE including being able to
install service releases to get it as current as possible. Same file
format as used up to 2003.
There are 2 features I know are missing compared to later versions.
Seriously, just 2. It has no highlighter (fake yellow marker pen you
can drag over text). Who cares? And you can't embed a table inside a
cell of another table.
That is the complete list of missing features that I know about for
the next 3 releases, then the Ribbon came in and I lost all interest.
On my Mac I use Word 2011, which is also now obsolete and out of
support. Works fine, though, and on macOS, you still have a menu bar
and can turn off the Ribbon completely.
> The rate of change to Linux literally keeps me up at night during incidents..
> but attempting to tame this for an enterprise also pays the bills.. I find it
> peculiar so many people are ok with this model of computing but the jobs are
> good for the time being.
Agreed. I'm in the same boat: documenting an enterprise Linux distro.
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