World: r3wp

is that really so difficult to get it right? Maybe RT could contract 
some linux developer to clear out how to properly do such things 
...

Fonts are one of the biggest messes on Linux/BSD, due to X11, really

Due to patents on truetype?

Or because of nameing, not because of look?

No, it's just a mess, with several different font systems working 
against eachother - as usual in Linux

petr: the "proper" way is to link to gtk or qt. you know, there's 
no gui standard there... the only thing you can take for granted 
on GNU/Linux is the linux kernel and the GNU utilities.

Unless of course you encounter unexpected kernel modifications or 
BusyBox or things like that :-)

yep, the main problem of doing things "properly" in Linux/BSD is 
that there is usually no standard way ;)

Q: How to know witch Distro I have in command line ? What is the 
command ?

isn't there a version string?

echo $OSTYPE display the "type" of OS using tsch shell. 

On a Mac it echoes darwin

I have /etc/SuSe-version

$0STYPE just says linux

Try uname -v

or uname -a for more info

doesn't help much

try 'ls /etc/*release

in my opinion,  'uname' is more of a standard utility  to identify 
the kernel.

Yup. There's no standard way to determine the distro beyond the kernel

kaj, which is incredibly defective IMHO :-) such as simple thing, 
so hard to do

Yep, but the way Linux distributions have evolved, it's obvious it's 
impossible and one doesn't even think about it :-/

A while ago I tried to install VMware player and it nuked my system. 
Upon investigation, it had 13,000 lines of PERL script for installation 
and configuration. The major part of that was to identify the system 
parts versions and condition...

Each mature Unix application carries around a similar configuration 
system

it's insane. which is why I'm moving away from linux as a dev system

I'm moving towards it :-)

I'm making a few mods, though. Like, redesigning the entire system 
;-)

ah, another distro basically? :-)

I love linux cause its so well designed, in order to use it, you 
have to fix everything.

Yup, but deeper than that

and now we have freedesktop.org and other standards organizations. 
I think basically it's like shoveling crap uphill. I wonder if it 
will get anywhere.

It's an improvement, but as you suspect, far from ideal

I think the Ubuntu guys are doing a good job. the problem is that 
there are 20 other organizations that are almost doing the same jobs. 
it's an incredible waste of time and effort.

I think we should take AROS and change its name.

Well, there's exchange of work. The theory in open source is that 
a certain amount of duplication of work is accepted, because there 
are many volunteers. What bothers me more is that the resulting products 
are so bad

maybe  ARIX  and say its based on linux but everything was fixed 
  ;-D

the products are bad because there is no focus or leader with strong 
visions. it happens occasionally, such as with the XGL desktop work 
done by Novell. They flat out stated that it would have sucked to 
do it among the community. Yet the community responded negatively, 
because the work was not initially shared.


sometimes I think they just can't see that the cathedral model of 
development can be much better if design is very critical. this is 
the biggest gripe I have with open source.

it sucks because those with the vision can only do so much on their 
time.  although everyone is happy to say free things are great, free 
things aren't worth any $$ and thus, you get none to feed your children 
when you work on them.

That's not how open source is financed

depends on the projects.

Exactly

Ironically, our cathedral-designed Syllable project is a full volunteer 
effort

Funding comes from companies, who all want some influence for it, 
so you get a bazaar model

what happens when 2 companies want the opposite feature?

The community decides. That's the nicest part of it, a certain fairness

how does one start up in level 3 and not level 5 ?

I can type init 3 once I'm in 5 ...

look under /etc/rc.d/rc5.d

that will be the folder for level 5 stuffs

something in /etc/inittab, but in my deb it only says
# The default runlevel.
id:2:initdefault:

seems the 2 in that line sets the level. http://www.linuxfibel.de/booten.htm
(german).

http://www.novell.com/documentation/suse91/suselinux-adminguide/html/ch13s05.html