[ILUG] Re: Is Linux a windows based operating system ??

[Padraig Finnerty]

On Fri, Jun 23, 2000 at 07:49:47AM -0500 Stephen_Reilly at dell.com wrote:
[snip]
> 
> 	I know a guy, been using Linux for several months now, init 5 on
> boot up. He's been playing games, using kdevelop, yada yada, never knew you
> could switch between VTs ?? 

Sometimes I think that people are trying to recreate Windows over Linux,
but as long as the underneath part stays, it doesn't bother me that much.  
Netscape (Linux version) is a Windows program, i.e. it has a different 
philosophy to most of the other programs I run (big, monolithic, doesn't 
integrate well with other programs).  There is a real need for a decent 
open-source browser.

The UNIX philosophy says 'each program should do one thing well'.  Netscape
is really a HTML renderer.  Caching for instance should be taken out of
it.  Squid can do caching  (I'm not sure does Mozilla do it).  Ok, most 
people will run a browser and a caching program together, but taking it 
out of the browser gives you the option of running a caching proxy server 
on a dedicated machine with a larger cache.

I have been looking recently at the requests that netscape sends to a proxy
server.  Did you know when you click on a bookmark, netscape sends a
'Pragma: no-cache' to the proxy server? (which is the same line it sends
when you hit 'reload').  This seems bizarre, as bookmarked sites are
presumably the ones you visit most, so would benefit most from caching.
The reason why it's there I think is an artefact of the Windows philosophy,
that netscape never expects to work with another caching program.  The
resulting problem is that from your proxy server's point of view (if
you're doing caching there), is that there's no way to distinguish 
between an explicit 'reload' and someone clicking on a bookmark.

This is just one example of the problems of porting, or reimplementing,
Windows programs on Linux.  I laugh at the idea that Windows is the more 
user-friendly OS.

Padraig