In the last couple of days I've been updating the PuTTY online help mechanism in anticipation of Windows Vista discontinuing the old-style Windows Help. I've prepared a new-style HTML help file, but I want to keep the option to use the old one, because (among other reasons) PuTTY still tries to work on Win95, which doesn't support new HTML help. So I hacked together an automatic detection mechanism which will use the HTML help file if it's both present and supported by the OS, and will fall back to WinHelp otherwise.
In order to make sure this really worked on Win95, I needed a Win95 machine to test it on. The PuTTY team used to have a real Win95 machine available, but currently doesn't; so lacking any other convenient options, I dug out my old Win95 install media from a dusty pile of CDs (amazingly, even the boot floppy which accompanied the CD was in full working order) and attempted to install it on a Bochs virtual machine.
It took me twenty minutes of editing configuration files and installing extra Debian packages to even start Bochs; no individual hoop I had to jump through seemed actually unreasonable, but it all added up to a lot of hassle. Eventually I had a working virtual machine and was able to run the install process – which ran very smoothly and promisingly up until the install program said ‘Setup is preparing to install files’ and then sat there beating its little drum icon for over an hour until I lost patience and killed it.
So then I tried QEMU instead, and was pleasantly surprised to find that it didn't even need a configuration file. I gave it command-line arguments pointing it at a floppy image, a hard disk image, and a CD image, and let it rip; it just worked, it ran much faster than Bochs, it installed without a hitch, and it's now cheerfully running a working Win95 system for me on which I've been able to test the help file switching mechanism and confirm that it works fine.
Somebody told me once that if you buy a medium-price hi-fi amplifier, it will come with tone controls, graphic equalisers, and no end of knobs and dials on the front so you can adjust it to exactly the sound you want, but if you buy a really expensive one it will just have a power switch and a volume control and get everything else right without having to be told. That was the feeling I got from comparing Bochs to QEMU.
(Unfortunately, it all went a bit pear-shaped when I tried to get the networking to work; I managed it in the end, but it wasn't nearly as painless as the rest of the process. I think this was mostly Win95's fault, however.)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Someone was Terry Pratchett or Neil Gaiman, in Good Omens. Crowley is the one with the amplifier.
no subject
no subject
This is what I want for GNOME over KDE!
no subject
For example, GNOME 1 let me put an icon in my taskbar (er,
gnome-panel) which popped up a menu just like the GNOME start menu, but filled with menu items of my own choice; I filled it with my favourite shortcuts, mostly PuTTYs which connected to one or another of my usual SSH servers. Very useful. Whereas GNOME 2, as far as I've been able to tell, will only let me have a "Drawer" filled with "Custom Application Launchers", which (a) has a subtly different UI from the GNOME start menu and other menu-type things (you have to click to open the Drawer and click again to close it, rather than it automatically going away once you select something from it), and (b) is apparently unwilling to put names beside the icons of the things in the Drawer, presumably on the basis that they're akin to the icon-only launchers in the taskbar itself rather than to icon-plus-text menu items. I can ask for a "Custom Menu Bar" in my taskbar, but the contents of that menu bar appears to be dictated by Debian, and none of the right-click menus seems to let me edit it or point it at a menu file in my own filespace or anything. I'm thoroughly unconvinced that this is a step forward; what was wrong with GNOME 1's willingness to let users make their own menus?(I realise you might very well be totally the wrong person to receive that rant. Sorry.)
no subject
This makes me think that someone should write a small applet to do this, and since I know it would be very easy in Python, perhaps that person is me. I need to think of a good name for it, though.
no subject
smegoralacartein the name, and "apt-cache search" turns up no uninstalled package under either name either. Where should I be looking?I'd love an applet that did that!
no subject
I'd be happy to write a general-purpose extra menu. If you're only looking for an SSH menu, this (http://www.mclean.net.nz/ruby/sshmenu/) might do just what you want, though.
no subject
The menu I want isn't actually quite composed of nothing but SSH entries – a notable exception is the slightly more complex script that connects to Monochrome. I'd adapt the applet you link to there, only I can hardly understand a word of it. (Though that may be just because I speak neither GNOME nor Ruby :-)
no subject
sshlaunchers, and can't figure out how to get it to stay open. So to launch multiple sessions, which is my usual requirement, I need to open drawer, select session, re-open drawer, lather, rinse and repeat.no subject
if you buy a really expensive one
I think the ideal is the hardest to achieve -- where it just gets it right, but when you *do* want to tweak it you can. This is a lot harder, because it has to intellegently incorporate your preferences as well, but the best of both worlds if it were possible.