[CentOS] Multiple program instances or multiple log ins? -- Thunderbird profiles ...

Tue Dec 27 22:27:35 UTC 2005
Bryan J. Smith <thebs413 at earthlink.net>

Robert Moskowitz <rgm at htt-consult.com> wrote:
> This part of the reason why the IT folks and us
> research/testing folks tend to get at loggerhead!

I like to put it in terms of "configuration management."

> Sometime in the past I used this with Netscape 7, perhaps? 

Yes, and Netscape 6.  They are all Mozilla 5-based.  Mozilla
5 being the version after 4 -- i.e., Netscape Communicator
codenamed Mozilla 4.  ;->

Mozilla is now a set of products, most well known as Firefox
(HTTP, browser) and Thunderbird (SMTP/NNTP, mail/news) and
lesser known as Sunbird (calendar) and Nvu (composer, HTML
editor) among other projects.

> I see that running multiple Thunderbirds doesn't work
> according to this article, but I wonder if this is a
windows
> centric answer, not applying to unix.

Yes, although it has worked -- to a point -- for me under
Windows.  The problem is that when you click on "mailto:" in
any Windows program, which profile does it know to sent it
to?  ;->

> And when you did, you brought the network to a standstill. 
> I 'caught' some of our unix support people doing this with
> our network sniffer.  After that we got a LOT more memory
for
> those X-terminals so that they were not always getting
> refreshes from their clients (it was always a lot of fun
with
> Xwindows and SNMP in explaining that they had the
client/server
> model reversed).

Okay, now I understand where you're coming from.  Very good.

> The concepts have not changed.  The hardware finally caught
> up.

Right.  Sorry I made an assumption there.

> Did you see that John Diebold passed away.  Now THERE was a
> man proposing solutions a decade or more before they became
> 'real'.

And now Diebold sells Windows solutions.  Why?  Because banks
think they are easier to support, not because they don't
believe Linux is better.  Sigh, I don't think John would have
allowed that.

> Maybe I should move to KDE now?  8-)

Why?  The .NET object framework is very UNIX-like in
approach.  CORBA is overkill.  KParts is underkill.

On Windows, .NET is already turning into little more than a
Java-like sandbox for Internet servers and nothing else. 
It's suffering the same fate as Win32 -- MS is poking holes
in it for compatibility.

But on Mono, now that's a future.

> The thing that killed OS/2 was the lack of TCP/IP support. 

No, 2 things killed OS/2 ...

1)  OS/2 users (myself included) were convinced that IBM
couldn't fight NT and Win32.  Unfortunately, NT/Win32's
undoing was MS' own Windows 95.  I saw this first hand in
1994 -- Gates' killed NT and Win32, and wished I wouldn't
have believed a word about NT back in 1991-1992.

2) IBM still had an informal licensing agree with Microsoft
after their 12 year agreement expired in 1993.  Microsoft
continued to leech OS/2 through Windows 95's initial release
-- the Alpha tests even used OS/2 files and code -- and IBM's
PC division gladly signed away all rights to sue in the
Windows 95 licensing agreemnt.

There were other things, like Microsoft basically stealing
Micrografx porting kit for OS/2 so Win32 GUI apps could be
written almost overnight (after adopted for the GDI), etc...

IBM should have gotten out of the PC market 12 years earlier.
 Their PC division is why IBM was basically a "free R&D
foundary" for all Microsoft code -- much like Apple in the
mid-'80s because of the applications Apple wanted from MS.

> And I won't go into the many problems this caused me. 
> Mostly becuase the scars are healed on only the memory
> of them are left.

They are core NT design problems.
NTFS is a core NT design problem.

"Cairo", "CairoFS" and "Cario Technologies" a decade ago
sounds a lot like "Longhorn", "WinFS" and "WinFX
Technologies" today.

They were vaporware, and they still are very much vaporware.



-- 
Bryan J. Smith     Professional, Technical Annoyance                      b.j.smith at ieee.org      http://thebs413.blogspot.com
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*** Speed doesn't kill, difference in speed does ***