[SunRescue] Q on "optimal" OS for Sun4c machines, now that Solaris 8 won't run

[Chris Drelich]

My friends, and myself, have all been computer geeks from an early age, and now
in our late teens to early twenties, we are all unix users, and mostly unix and
network admins.  We've been using computers all our lives and know how to take
one apart and put it together.  We can  even do this with computers we've never
heard of before, because we get the basic similarities, and our engineering
skills help us fill in the rest.  Most of us never went to college or went and
dropped out after a few days/semesters/years, some have been on "hiatus" for
years now.  We know our stuff, do good work, and our well paid for it. 
However, recently we have noticed that a lot of the people our age, who learned
their knowledge through college instead of life have a different view of
computers.  Sure, they can code well, and some of them even know a thing or two
about UNIX.  Open a computer in front of them, and they won't know what to do. 
Its a case of "We never learned that in college."/"Im too good for that, call
tech support/technician."  I mean, back in the real glory days of computers,
even the college educated ones could take apart a computer, sometimes better
then the life educated ones.  Today though its not the case, and this is sad. 
All companies I've been with have had the tech department divided among three
lines: Hackers(college or life educated, they can take apart a computer and
love to tinker), College Boys(college educated, they may think some computer is
neat, but for the most part the are 100% Windows at heart, at most they might
have built a computer once and brag about it a lot, they also used the manual a
lot), Others(they may or may not have college education, but if they do, its in
another field, they switched to computers after having decided what to do with
their life once before, they are in it for the money or a love similar to the
hacker.)  Either way, this current state of affairs is sad.
Chris

Dave McGuire wrote:
> 
> On July 12, Roger Walkup wrote:
> > Apple did the samething in the k-12 schools.  From my personal experience as
> > an *old* (40) student and a part time worker in one of the tech offices at
> > University of Wisconsin-Superior, the people who run the labs, maintain the
> > network, and take care of the staff/faculty offices are pretty ignorent about
> > unix of any sort and, in some cases, little better than power users of MS
> > software (eg. they know how to install a custom version of Office 2000).  The
> > computer science dept has bought *an* Ultra 10 which will be used as a server
> > for compsci classes next year.  Most of the comp sci profs are big fans of
> > NeXT, but that's dead.  A recent grad donated 4-5  classics, but they're not
> > all running yet.  Looking around on the internet, I don't see much difference
> > in other UW campuses.  It's a wasteland.
> 
>   Wow.  Is it possible that we are the last generation of people that
> will know how computers actually *work*?  No computer *science* will
> be learnt on Windows boxes, in my opinion.
> 
>          -Dave McGuire
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