BL> Therefore, I either write my *own* Telix equivalent in Linux;
BL> abandon the idea of the BBS (as most of you have done) and use
BL> the Internet exclusively; dual-boot back to DOS in the Linux
BL> box to pick up mail; or add another modem, and use the Windows
BL> box to pick up BBS mail.

DD> If you're picking up your mail via the Internet (as we do), why
DD> are you using Telix? 

 I don't use the internet, and in the meantime I'm stuck with Telix.
I've had another look at DOSEMU under Linux, and like all the Linux
programs I try, it *nearly* works running Telix. At present, I'm
persisting with DOSEMU.

DD> Have the modem on the Linux machine do the Internet dial up bit
DD> (dial on demand), share the internet connection to the rest of
DD> the network using IP masquerade (or NAT to Windows persons),
DD> and run your IP aware mailer on the WinBox. 

 That's the plan... *if* I persist with Linux. So far, Linux gives me
the shits. KDE (or Gnome, you name it) is about ten-times *less*
reliable than Win98, so at present I'm looking at running Linux native
without X11, and that's a whole new ballgame. I have to say that in my
20 years of running all sorts of programs, I have *never* come across
anything so buggy, and that includes Win3.0! (maybe DOS4 was worse)

 X11 has a bug that starts the hard drive doing something (it just
keeps flashing the light and whirring), but the rest of Linux keeps on
working until finally *everything* crashes after about ten minutes!
You have ten minutes to save what you can and reboot, but the worst
part is that this disc-search starts all by itself while you're not
looking! Fuck'n hell! It also has a video problem where it starts
not-painting the screen, but I haven't been able to find out what sets
that one off.

 So... I'm back to 1984 and a command line, and about a million
commands with *really funny names!

 For instance, Linux can LINK files or directories to other files and
directories, somewhat like a mini-network, and this is very handy. I
*know* it can do this, and I just spent almost a whole day trying to
find the fucking command. It's called ln... and I found it
accidentally in the DOSEMU documentation.

 Why the flying red fuck didn't they just call it - link? I thought
"ln" was a natural-logarithm function.

 Linux sux. They have literally *hundreds* of commands, most of which
duplicate others, and the documentation is designed as if someone has
set out to keep it a secret. The MAN pages (ooops! - use lower case)
have *too much* information when it's bleedin' obvious and hardly any
information when it's obscure. The whole fucking thing has been
written by amateurs and what is worse... beginners!

... [later]

 Bloody hell! DOSEMU works!

 The last time I tried running Telix, I was using the old Sportster
14400 modem. Since then, I've installed my PCI "Linux" modem with its
HAM driver, and under DOSEMU (the Linux DOS emulator) and Telix, it
just connected to John's BBS no problem at all!

 As Peter Falk said under the bearskin with Natalie Wood in THE GREAT
RACE... this is fucking terrific!

 Finally, I've found a Linux program that sort-of works in my
direction. DOSEMU is strange (with the usual ten-page configuration
file), but it works. It won't run Blue Wave for a reason I have not
yet delved (probably something crazy in Blue Wave, it was always a bit
that way), but it seems to run everything else, just like it was the
real DOS 6.

 If I'm stuck with a command line (X11 sux), I'm tempted to forget
about Linux and just use DOS! (under Linux and dosemu). It'll save me
learning a whole new raft of silly new commands, each of which seems
to involve half a page of fault-free and correct-case typing. 

Regards,
Bob
 

--- BQWK Alpha 0.5