Comments on: Talkin’Trash in Linux

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 12:30:19 +0000

The thing about operating systems that bothers me most is when I am typing, and some other window comes up and blocks whatever I was doing. I'm pretty sure I've had Linux do that too.It can happen in gnome, but it is very very rare. This is the biggest and most important difference, by far, of the GUI.A close second is what the GUI thinks is a process. When you switch using Alt Tab for instance, what happens in Windows vs. Linux are entirely different.

By: qbsmd

qbsmd — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 11:21:49 +0000

“Of course, I’m the guy that thought Windows 2000 was the peak of Windows. XP to me is everyone else’s Vista.”I’ve said that before. Now, I mostly use XP with all the settings running as close to windows 2000 as possible (themes disabled, set to run at best performance). It wouldn’t be so bad if windows had a configuration file I could copy from computer to computer instead of spending 10 minutes changing all the settings on each computer I use.The thing about operating systems that bothers me most is when I am typing, and some other window comes up and blocks whatever I was doing. I’m pretty sure I’ve had Linux do that too.

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 07:20:51 +0000

I just want to be clear on two things. First, yes, some windows installs last. I have one sitting here that has not failed for three y ears. It does not doo much and has had no service pack updates and is not needed for antything other than games and iTunes, so of course it just sits there.Second, it is not UI defaults that can be changed that bother me with Windows, although yes, they do all suck. It is many things, but included are the fact that Windows IS a UI, and a poorly designed one, and little more. Under those conditions, why would I ever want to use it? Furthermore, many of the UI behaviors are not changeable defaults. The fact that some are changeable is really not relevant.Of course, I’m the guy that thought Windows 2000 was the peak of Windows. XP to me is everyone else’s Vista.

By: Christophe Thill

Christophe Thill — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 01:28:16 +0000

Also, there are unerase utilities for Linux, at least for ext3 filesystems. A bit complicated to use, perhaps. But we’re talking command line users, aren’t we? If you prefer a nice graphical interface, there’s always a way to have a trashcan (at least the graphical interfaces Gnome and KDE have it).

By: MH

MH — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 17:41:56 +0000

As has been pointed out, if you don’t like confirmations in XP, switch them off. Simple.I do prefer the bin in Ubuntu, though. I like being able to restore a deleted file to anywhere I want, and to explore folders in the bin.I made the switch to Linux a few months ago, and I’m generally loving it. That said, I don’t think XP is that bad. Vista, however… {shakes head slowly}

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 11:32:07 +0000

So when you really don’t want to throw stuff out, throw it in the trashcan instead. For instance, copy it to the trash, then delete it in place.It’s much more efficient just to move the files to the trash. You don’t waste all those cycles and disk IO copying the file.Not that I use the trash anyway…

By: StuV

StuV — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 10:24:51 +0000

So Windows sucks because you don’t like the UI defaults.Oh, and of course, you do NO customizing on Linux.Greg, I don’t know WHAT you do to your Windows installations, but I have a 9 month, 2 year, 3 year and 5 year installation at home without issues.

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 08:07:04 +0000

“Linux users don’t piss on their hands.”Tee-Shirt! tee-shirt!!!!Synapse: I would think a better solution would be to leave rm alone and use ‘delete’ instead, whereby delete by default uses rm -f. Otherwise every script you import that makes temp files to clean up internally will fail or get hinkey in some way. Wouldn’t it? (Well, not the idiot proof ones, but any that, say I wrote)

By: synapse

synapse — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 02:47:23 +0000

Our lab decided that the default of “rm” should be to ask for confirmation after one guy accidentally lost two days’ worth of rare data (after being up for two days straight to collect said data). (The incident caused other problems for the lab, too, since he locked the computer to prevent the data from being overwritten but neglected to tell the other users.) So now we all type “rm -f” without thinking…

By: cfeagans

cfeagans — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 01:01:46 +0000

It reminds me of the old OS joke:Three guys find themselves at the urinals of a restroom. The first guy finishes and heads to the sink and uses paper towel after paper towel to dry off. To the other two he says, “as a loyal Windows user, I’m accustomed to taking advantage of every available resource to get the job done.”The second guy washes up and uses the air dryer, stating: “I’m a Mac user and I always expect to conserve resources -besides, the air dryer is more efficient.”The third guy just zips up and heads for the door, saying over his shoulder, “Linux users don’t piss on their hands.”