OS wars?

[expat]

Trying to use a USB external disk drive.

Plug it into a Mac and it just works.

Plug it into a PC on XP and it finds it and it works.

Plug it into a Linux box and it doesn't find it. I look on the net and find out that I need to open a terminal as root and hunt around in /dev/messages to identify it, or /dev/sda1 or something depending what else is connected, and then if I find what I need, try to "mount" the disk.

No thanks, I have neither the time nor the inclination. I'm sure I can do it, but I have things to do and I'm just not interested in getting under the hood.

.... so am I wrong in thinking it's not simple? Or ought I to enjoy mounting disks for fun, rather than actually doing anything with my data?

[Jabberwocky]

I enjoy mounting and using my large hard drive. I have given and received a lot of pleasure this way. Perhaps you just have a small floppy ? Or may be you are putting your disk in the wrong slot ?

[PRC1964]

To change the subject slightly, why do I need to add /pae to my boot.ini file on Win 2003 to get it to recognise more than 4 Gb of RAM?

Did they think I wouldn't want to use it?

[sasguru]

I enjoy mounting and using my large hard drive. I have given and received a lot of pleasure this way. Perhaps you just have a small floppy ? Or may be you are putting your disk in the wrong slot ?

No! stop! Stop! It's too painful. I'm splitting my sides!

Dunce.

[Jabberwocky]

No! stop! Stop! It's too painful. I'm splitting my sides!

Dunce.

Get your lover boy to use more Vaseline then.

[Jabberwocky]

To change the subject slightly, why do I need to add /pae to my boot.ini file on Win 2003 to get it to recognise more than 4 Gb of RAM?

Did they think I wouldn't want to use it?

My you are a smart little chimp aren't you. I award you one top banana.

[Mordac]

To change the subject slightly, why do I need to add /pae to my boot.ini file on Win 2003 to get it to recognise more than 4 Gb of RAM?

Did they think I wouldn't want to use it?

A 32-bit processor uses 32 bits to refer to the location of each byte of memory. 2^32 = 4.2 billion, which means a memory address that's 32 bits long can only refer to 4.2 billion unique locations (i.e. 4 GB). This is the limit for each application, mind, which is where PAE (Physical Address Extension) comes in. Don't ask me to explain how that works. You do need to enable it though.

[bogeyman]

Don't ask me to explain how that works. You do need to enable it though.

Ah! the wonders of virtual storage and Dynamic Address Translation.

Nothing new here. IBM's MVS had this capability in 1982. Every task (process) has it's own 2Gb (31-bit) chunk of virtual storage that no other task could mess with (unless they were running in Supervisor State).

Amazes me how some young-uns think they invented everything.

Most problems in computing have already been solved. It's just that the newbs seem intent on reinventing them.

[expat]

Most problems in computing have already been solved. It's just that the newbs seem intent on reinventing them.

Gawd yes! And not so well either. By the 80s (or in some cases the 60s) IBM had already solved most of the problems that MS struggles with, or hasn't even tried to struggle with yet.

[OwlHoot]

Trying to use a USB external disk drive.

Plug it into a Mac and it just works.

Plug it into a PC on XP and it finds it and it works.

Plug it into a Linux box and it doesn't find it. I look on the net and find out that I need to open a terminal as root and hunt around in /dev/messages to identify it, or /dev/sda1 or something depending what else is connected, and then if I find what I need, try to "mount" the disk.

No thanks, I have neither the time nor the inclination. I'm sure I can do it, but I have things to do and I'm just not interested in getting under the hood.

.... so am I wrong in thinking it's not simple? Or ought I to enjoy mounting disks for fun, rather than actually doing anything with my data?

That's not the worst of it - A linux geek colleague using Fedora Core 2 (I think?) about a year ago managed to trash an external disk by plugging disks in and out of a USB hub - Linux got in a muddle over the drive assignments, and when he did a format it formatted the disk containing his vast collection of mp3s! His latest backup was a year ago earlier, and only contained a tiny fraction of what he lost.