[66] in resnet
re: questions about student impressions of resnet
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (nocturne@vnet.IBM.COM)
Thu Jul 15 10:28:55 1993
Date: Thu, 15 Jul 93 09:58:31 EDT
From: nocturne@vnet.IBM.COM
To: dbaron@MIT.EDU
Cc: resnet@Athena.MIT.EDU
I understand that having MITnet service does not equal having 'Athena'
unless you install the latest release of Athena on a supported
platform.... in my case, having "Athena" will mean that I will be
running Linux with as many parts of Athena that I like which either have
already been ported to linux, or which I will port to linux on my own.
(I've done a little porting for quiche.mit.edu -- the SIPB linux box)
The things I wish to do from where I live are all of the things I do
from any other workstation I log in on. The main things are zephyr,
email, coursework (mostly course six in my case), telnetting to a few
places off-campus (mostly MUDs in my case), and SIPB-type hacking.
I know better than to expect all features and services which are
available in public Athena clusters before I/S begins to fully support
Linux (which I forsee happening, given the likelihood that student
hackers will opt for a less-expensive linux system in place of
a machine made by either DEC or SUN (or anyone else)).... but I also
expect that most of the things I want to do (except for SIS) will
be ported either by SIPB folks or independent hackers.
Things I want to be able to do that I can't do in a public athena
cluster -- yeah, there are a lot of 'em.
I'll be able to log in without trekking to campus -- it's a 20-30
minute walk, or a 5-minute ride (usually more like 20-30 minutes if
you take saferide) from lobby seven to Epsilon Theta (in brookline).
This will make all-night tool sessions on programming problem sets
much easier -- no more calling the CP's at 5 AM to get a ride back,
no more sleeping on couches in the student center after having
worked on programming problem sets until the wee hours of the morning....
bathing while in the middle of an intense several-day-long programming
stint in the last few days before a big problem set is due will no longer
mean several hours lost to traveling time and waiting for transportation....
I'll probably provide a dialup service to some of my friends who will
only have terminals equivalent to the vt100 who want a machine faster
than the machines available from the pasta pad.
I'll probably do lots of things to learn about the guts of unix that
the average athena user never gets the opportunity to do, like
configuration and software maintainance.
I'd like to be able to run things for as long as I want, and to
run daemons for whatever I want ... (like logging a zephyr class),
to have my own discuss feed-ins from private mailing lists ....
I intend to purchase a keyboard which is less likely to induce
repetitive stress injuries like carpal tunnel syndrome than the
standard QWERTY keyboard, and use it. I've heard too many horror
stories, and I'm already feeling twinges of what I suspect might
well develop into tendonitis. This is something you can't do at just
any public workstation, although I understand it is available in the
ATIC....
How's that for a start?
any more questions?
- eric mumpower
