Unerstand time part!!! You let me know and I will find a machine, and we will both install Gentoo
and compare notes.
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In any activity that has mission-critical aspects (I was in pharmceutical R&D), every renewal or modification of equipment including computers and software entails hugely expensive and time-consuming exercises for validation (in some fields the term is âqualificationâ), user training, and re-writing operating procedures. Computers and OS have always been a nightmare in this respect: one big and expensive laboratory instrument I operated was installed in about 1988 with Hewlett-Packardâs implementation of UCSD Pascal for control and data processing. By the time it was passed on to a university (2002), it had to be migrated to Unix, then Windows 3.11 and finally Windows 2000 (or something like that). I wonât talk about its predecessor of 1979 that had a DEC PDP8 which, with its disk drives, required very frequent maintenance and repair visits.
Continuity is also a major factor in decisions taken by the EmmabuntĂźs collective that redistributes on a large scale old computers within France and abroad. They have standardised on Debian, mainly because Ubuntu and others no longer support 32-bit Linux, which (not too well documented) is needed also for 64-bit machines that are short on RAM. I have usually been installing Mint, but it drives me crazy with constant changes including all those disputed ways of installing software. Windows has always been dreadful, and they still keep making unnecessary changes to the user interface, even within a version, requiring changes to habits and operating procedures (e.g. copy-paste is no longer available with a right-click). Those people have still not learned that not every computer user is a geek or even interested in computing.
Most of the EmmabuntĂźs site https://emmabuntus.org/a-propos/ is in French but there are a few items and links in English: https://emmabuntus.org/category/english/ with a nice handbook for beginners https://lescahiersdudebutant.arpinux.org/bullseye-en/index.html
Agree,
The less computer literate the users, the bigger the problem.
I have experienced your ânightmareâ in scientific labs.
I spent years of my life converting files to new formats.
I have been thru rewriting mission critical software in new languages.
When Unix finally came on the scene it was a breath of fresh air
Now you are telling me the current flavour of Unix, which happens to be Linux, is falling into the old upgrade traps. I tend to agree, although seeing it as a retiree is somewhat different.
If Emmabuntus does something for continuity , then it is doubly worthwhile. The charitable objective is one good thing, but if it also flattens out the upgrade steps that should give it a wider future. I think Debian is a sound base.
There is an introduction to emmabuntus here
Why dont some of us give it a try?
It could do with some discussion and constructive comment.
Regards
Neville
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I apologise for a bad error there: the site offers in fact in 15 languages. I missed that because the language button is, unconventionally perhaps, at the bottom of the screen and some of the links to other sites explicitly mention English versions. I live in France and the EmmabuntĂźs site came up in French.
A propos, we discussed the language question for ITâS FOSS a year ago. Do you think we should make It's FOSS articles available in other languages like Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian etc?
There is a firefox addon called âTranslate locally for firefoxâ
It is mentioned in the topic âLinux services tutorialâ in the first article by @Rosika
and there is some subsequent discussion.
Would this be suitable for use with the itsFOSS site?
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I checked it. Yes I can read it in English.
Thanks for correction
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There are many alternatives, but this one has the privacy advantage of not using an online translator. I tend to connect to the Reverso site, which also offers a software download. Googleâs may possibly have an advantage if it makes use of their extensive artificial intelligence facilities. However, as we discussed earlier, automatic translation can be unsafe unless you know the 2 languages involved, because it may distort or even invert an intended meaning. That may not matter for informal exchanges on social media, nor too much with the present thread. By contrast, a professional translator I know wonât even take on a serious job if the subject matter is in a specialised field he isnât familiar with.
EmmabuntĂźs donât say how they manage all those languages (apart from French to English); perhaps we could ask them.
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