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We owe RMS a huge debt because he single-handedly kickstarted the free software movement. Linus gave us Linux... but he used GNU C compiler to do it. And the Linux kernel isn't very useful unless you have a shell like GNU bash, and you need command line tools like ls, cp, mv... all GNU provided. Thank you, RMS.

But sorry, RMS, you are crazy and I hope your dearest wishes do not come true. RMS believes the only acceptable licenses are the ones he wrote; if he had the power, he would make it illegal to ship software under a proprietary licence. (How do I know this? Eric Raymond publicly challenged RMS about it and RMS did not respond, and I believe it was because ESR was right and RMS didn't want to say it out loud. Google for the words "Freedom Zero" to get the context of all this.)

Somebody asked RMS how can software writers make enough money to live. RMS said that he would be in favor of a "free software tax" to pay the salaries of people writing free software. If it was illegal to ship software under a proprietary licence then maybe you would need something like this, but I do NOT want government involved in deciding who gets to write what software for pay. The free market is better.

Only RMS could think that government paying of salaries to selected software writers is more free than people deciding what software to write and what licence to ship under.

Actually that's an important point. RMS wants to maximise freedom for the USERS even at the expense of the PROGRAMMERS. He is willing to constrain the freedom of a programmer, because he wants all software to come with source code.

The worst thing about RMS is that he doesn't care about anything else as much as his particular ideal for free software. Of all the Linux distros out there, you would think he would recommend Debian GNU/Linux, right? The only major distro that actually puts "GNU/" in their name?

http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major

But in an interview he recommended some obscure Linux called Extremadura or something like that, because he had read somewhere that they only provided GPL software.

http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2003/08/msg029 01.html

If you set up a default Debian system, you will only have free software; Debian's "main" servers have nothing RMS would not approve. But Debian has for years had a server called "nonfree" where you could get things like Netscape Navigator. If you know what you are doing, you can set your Debian system to pull packages from "nonfree", and for this crime, RMS snubbed Debian in favor of the other one. And it turned out that the onther one isn't actually freeer than Debian; RMS had heard it was so, but it wasn't, really.

It's sad that RMS can't even say something nice about Debian, the closest thing the world has seen to what RMS says he wants, because they aren't PERFECT and if they aren't PERFECT they aren't good enough for RMS.

RMS, thank you for kick-starting the free software movement. Thank you for GCC, EMACS, and the other GNU utilities. But you are crazy.

Why throw around unsupported remarks? Provide evidence. Bottom line: Java versus C++, for that set of benchmarks, Java is comparible in speed and code density, but median uses 12x more memory.

Of course they can.

A repository can be both online and offline (for example on a CD-ROM), although the former is the more common case.

Also, there are alot of non-free repositories around. Everything is 100% graphical through front-ends if you choose so. I don't get what you are trying to say...

oh if only there were a way!

They can fix their OS so it does not have holes, but they can't illegally enter a market by bundling with their monopoly and they can't enter the market separately, because then they are leveraging the holes they have left in the monopoly to double-dip on customers. Both are illegal.

MS could argue that with Windows Defender they are creating a proactive way to deal with undiscovered holes. No developer is psychic; they can't see every problem up front. Example: http://www.debian.org/security/2006/ Oh no Debian has vulnerabilities!

MS has learned that there is no one answer to security holes. They released Firewall with SP2 to take care of a wide number of security threats rather than wait for every hole to be found and patched. There are still plenty of software firewall products on the market that are better than WFW for any number of reasons. That's what will keep the market open: WD will work, but others will work better.

No OS is free of holes. Windows controls market share, so holes are more likely to be exploited. They also are trying to make a simple, easy-to-use OS, which tends to be more vulnerable. My Linux box is a lot more secure than my Windows box (or so I'm told, neither has had an intrusion since being set up), but to gain that security I have to sacrifice things like the ability to install a software package in one step.

Hell, I'm four levels deep in dependency hell trying to get something to compile and I've got at least one more package to download tonight in hopes that it'll work. That never happens with Windows; at worst I've had to installed Java or GTK so that something ported from Linux would work.

Early on in Ubuntu's beginings, I ran it as my primary desktop mainly because it was described as a better Debian than Debian. So I ran it, and was genuinely impressed, but not overly thrilled. Yes, it has many of the pluses that Debian has namely in APT, and embraces Debian social contract, and then some. But I still don't get why people are losing their minds over this. After about seven or eight months, I tried it again. Better, but still not amazing. In the meantime, I had used Xandros, and eventually moved (and settled on) PCLinuxOS. Wireless worked, the browser had every plug-in I needed, Java was pre-installed, etc. In my opinion, it's clearly a better Ubuntu than Ubuntu. What permanently turned me off, is when Ubuntu refused to include KDE based apps with their distro (this is prior to Kubuntu and Breezy Badger), and when problems started cropping up regarding Ubuntu seemingly splitting off with Debian. Regardless of what Mark Shuttleworth has to say, I agree with Ian's comments that they are not respecting the fact they are riding on the backs of Debian's work. Just my .02.

like why glibc wont have strl*()-functions which may improve security:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2002/03/msg00 309.html

It's not like the whole linux world would fall apart if there was some more
string functions which would not go ape on weird inputs.
I know strl*() isn't a magic bullet to prevent all kinds of badness, but they
really can't be worse than the same functions without bounds checking.

Still, better to bash some BSD...

I don't know about there being less choice. The last release of Debian contained 15,197 packages; unstable currently contains 17,550!

Obviously you do have to trust the Debian Developers to review the packages that they upload; this job is possible because packages may only enter Debian if they are accompanied by the complete source code of the package.

This task is also performed by the ftpmasters, who are a small group that administrate the archive itself; they ensure that the packages uploaded comply with the Debian Free Software Guidelines, and that they aren't malware, and so on.

About the security of the keys; the keys for the verification live on the system itself, so you can't redirect a query to your own site as you described. The system is described pretty well in section 7.4 of the Securing Debian Manual; but basically when a package is downloaded, it is checked against the checksums present in the repository it was downloaded from; each repository can provide a PGP key that is used to ensure that these checksums are valid.

When freshly installed, a system will already have the Debian Archive signing key installed. If you broke into ftp.uk.debian.org and replaced the package of Firefox with your own Firefox+Gator, and fudged the checksums in the Packages and Release files, the Release file would fail to verify against the Debian Archive signing key already present on the user's system.

I don't know about there being less choice. The last release of Debian contained 15,197 packages; unstable currently contains 17,550!

Obviously you do have to trust the Debian Developers to review the packages that they upload; this job is possible because packages may only enter Debian if they are accompanied by the complete source code of the package.

This task is also performed by the ftpmasters, who are a small group that administrate the archive itself; they ensure that the packages uploaded comply with the Debian Free Software Guidelines, and that they aren't malware, and so on.

About the security of the keys; the keys for the verification live on the system itself, so you can't redirect a query to your own site as you described. The system is described pretty well in section 7.4 of the Securing Debian Manual; but basically when a package is downloaded, it is checked against the checksums present in the repository it was downloaded from; each repository can provide a PGP key that is used to ensure that these checksums are valid.

When freshly installed, a system will already have the Debian Archive signing key installed. If you broke into ftp.uk.debian.org and replaced the package of Firefox with your own Firefox+Gator, and fudged the checksums in the Packages and Release files, the Release file would fail to verify against the Debian Archive signing key already present on the user's system.

debian/ubuntu systems:
1) Google all over the Internet to find solution for your problem
2) Wade through the pages of flamewars on which competing software is better (VI or Emacs, only god knows for sure)

3) Call grandson to see how to enter "app-get install Vimacs"
4) type "apt-get install Vimacs"

5) Call grandson to ask where the icon is to run Vimacs
6) Be confused as to what grandson is talking about, still wonder where the icon is, all the rest of the applications have one?

debian/ubuntu systems:
1) Google all over the Internet to find solution for your problem
2) Wade through the pages of flamewars on which competing software is better (VI or Emacs, only god knows for sure)

3) Call grandson to see how to enter "app-get install Vimacs"
4) type "apt-get install Vimacs"

5) Call grandson to ask where the icon is to run Vimacs
6) Be confused as to what grandson is talking about, still wonder where the icon is, all the rest of the applications have one?

Since you mention J2EE and by consequence Java, I suggest you have a look at this comparison chart

You draw your conclusions

At the same time we should switch to instant-runoff voting,

I was with you until this. Instant runoff voting is a deceptively bad way to count ballots. It's easy to explain to a layman, but it has severe problems if you look beneath the surface. For example, it fails the monotonicity criterion, which means that sometimes, ranking a candidate higher in an IRV election can cause him to lose, when ranking him lower would cause him to win.

There are also problems with the amount of data needed to transmit IRV ballots for central counting; it's easier to physically ship all the ballots to a central location for counting, or perform several rounds of counting at regional stations with a recount after each candidate is eliminated, than it is to count the ballots locally and decide the winner by combining all the local counts.

IMO ranked ballots are a great idea, but IRV is about the worst possible implementation of ranked voting. A Condorcet system like the one used by Debian would be more predictable, easier to count, and would do a better job of satisfying voter preferences by choosing compromise candidates.

yeah it is, just not off their site:
http://packages.debian.org/stable/utils/amanda-ser ver
http://packages.debian.org/stable/utils/amanda-cli ent

yeah it is, just not off their site:
http://packages.debian.org/stable/utils/amanda-ser ver
http://packages.debian.org/stable/utils/amanda-cli ent

Although it may be too 'simple' for your needs, I think the best Bittorrent client is 'bittorrent'. The downside is that version 4.0 and higher are not available in Debian, because they changed the license to be non-DFSG-free. Packages are available from my web site, however.

Unfortunately, the debian/ubuntu devs don't know how to build conky. File a bug report, then download and compile yourself and it should be fine. Also, I think the package at http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/conky works. You should be able to download that and use dpkg -i (though I'm not a debian user, don't quote me).

What is an one off internal system? I am not familiar with the term (probably because english is not my first language). If by that you mean changing the kernel and most other important programs, it is as easy (or hard) as any other piece of software. Depends on how well designed and maintained are both the original system and your changes. But there are two pieces of software that are very hard to change: GCC and GlibC. GCC is the most used C/C++ compiler, and GlibC implements the core libraries of the C/C++ languages. Managing uncompatible changes on both of them is very hard (do not try it at home).

It is quite easy to create your own distro. If you base it on Debian (probably also on gentoo), you can do alone a release on a week. Starting a company to get some money from it, otherwise, is as hard as getting money from the distros that are already out there, so you'll probably prefer to not create it.

The best way get into the techinical aspects of Linux is to try it yourself. You'll have problems, that you'll find the solution trough Google (the 'howto' keyword you a beginners friend) and foruns. You should chose a distro (if you aren't new here, you may know of a lot of them already, my favorite is Debian that is hard to install, but very easy to maintain), and use it for a while, then change a few times to see what is different. When you decide which distro is your favorite, go deep on it, reconfiguring everything and looking into the source of a few programs.

About the market aspects of it, well, what exactly do you intend to do? There are several different ways of applying free software. While most of them are user centered, what doesn't create a market, many are market centered. But there is nothing much different from proprietary software here, unless you are Microsoft.

What you want is called "pinning." A quick Google search came up with "Apt-Pinning for Beginners"; it refers to Debian, but substitute, say, "dapper" for "unstable" and you should be good to go. Or you can check Debian's official documentation.

Of course, that assumes that the package you want is in a repository. If it's not, then you'll have to build the package yourself.

Stop whining. If you like Java so much go use it for everything you do, but please stop insulting everyone with your claims about better "performance" than C/C++.

You mean, why don't Linux distributions litter userspace with Mono apps?


I would not be surprised to see OSS and Linux distro makers embrace Mono, C#, GTK#, and the like moreso than Microsoft pushes .NET

I think I know what your saying, but I'm running SuSE 9.2, and I haven't even the mono runtimes. On my son's Ubuntu system, no mono either. Mono gets the crap beat out of it here: http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/ As a developer, there is still no reason for me not to choose Java over .Net. Java still has more cross-platform support with runtimes for AIX/WIN32/4690/zSeries/handhelds etc.

Choice is just one reason for using Linux. Marketing hype hopefully will never rule in Tux space.

Enjoy,

I think this stems for the reason for the creation of the various products, and the re-invention that Gnome underwent for version 2.0.

The KDE project started off as a modern/nice looking replacement for CDE. The problem was that it used QT, which was only available under the a crappy license[0], the QPL, that made it impossible to distribute KDE in binary form. The GNOME project was started to provide a Free alternative to KDE.

At this point, GNOME's only reason for existing is to be a free alternative for KDE. GNOME has no overall vision or direction, so it ends up being pretty similar.

Eventually, Trolltech made QT available under the GPL as well as the non-free QPL; perhaps in response to GNOME's rising popularity.

However, the GNOME libraries were available under the much more commercial-friendly LGPL. GNOME was therefore chosen by Sun to replace their ageing CDE platform.

Sun did a lot of work on GNOME's usability and this became the project's focus. This is the point at which GNOME and KDE both have separate directions, and so they diverge. This is also the point that the GNOME/KDE disagreements really heated up. :)

Of course, this is probably very glib and facile and I'm sure I'll be corrected by someone who acutally worked on GNOME/KDE in the days of yore. :)

[0] http://www.debian.org/News/1998/19981008

So ANT is badly designed, that doesn't discount the point. I also mentioned J2EE environments vs Rails, and you'll get the same Java speed problems if you try "Hello World". Face it, Java startup is goddamn slow, and trying to deny it doesn't make the problem go away.

More importantly, they enable parts of programs you do want/need, even if not many other people do.

For example, my desktop is one of the few *ix machines in my office, and our network is primarily based around Win2k3 and Active Directory. I really, really need Kerberos support in every package that supports it, and configuring 'USE="kerberos"' solves that problem.

This exact issue drove me away from Debian way back when. It made me chose between old Kerberized OpenSSH, or a newer un-Kerberized version (as of today: ssh-krb5 3.8.1p1-10 from OpenBSD 3.5, released 2004-05-01, or ssh 1:4.2p1-7). Gentoo didn't make me choose, so that's what I went with.

Gentoo isn't for everybody, but it has some features that I'd never give up. The ability to pick and choose obscure features that most other people won't need is high on that list.

For the record:

• The code mentioned that was supposed to clear out the password from the database wasn't "a script to fix it after the fact"; it was in the same bit of code that dealt with asking the password, and had it worked as intended the password would never have ended up in cleartext in any file on disk in the first place;
• A better solution was also in place (making sure that passwords were stored in a separate database never copied to disk) but this failed to work due to a subtle cdebconf bug;
• The first user account is created after the base system is installed;
• I had a conversation with Joey Hess about this bug last night, and far from being scathing, he was somewhat relieved that Debian escaped this particular manifestation of the bug essentially by luck, and acknowledged responsibility for one of the original design decisions in base-config that meant we weren't as well-defended against this sort of error as we might have been.

I'm happy to take responsibility for the lack of testing that meant we didn't spot this earlier, but it's not quite the trivial stupid mistake that people are making it out to be.

As far as I can see, someone suggested a VAX port of debian, but there is no actual port, supported or otherwise. see http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-0201/msg01512 .html You can however use NetBSD on a VAX, apparently. http://www.netbsd.org/Ports/vax/

Nothing to see here, move along to Where this Cnet hack got his ENTIRE NON-story from

and a nice link to some reading you'll enjoy

My comment had nothing to do with the GPL 3 improvements, which I support. SO the majority of the parent is nonsense. You might enjoy high-school English papers which overuse metaphors to fill up space for a homework assignment. Congratulations, you're a Cnet reader. I think you need to re-read my comment and rethink your reaction.

As per my comment, Wikipedia is not a source for information. Anyone who quotes wikipedia as a source is a hack trying to push an agenda. I don't quote /. comments as a source and I can't support quoting wikipedia (which amoounts to a volatile communal comment). The fact that you have to defend Wikipedia's content with "a majority of other random sources I read were kinda the same" belies the SERIOUS problems. There's a very good chance that the wikipedia entry will have MISINFORMATION now that it's made the front page of /. To pull this out of the realm of philosophy, poor design is to blame when information is the most inaccurate and least available when it's most requested. That's wikipedia.

If you don't live in a country where it is legal to use patented/whatever codecs without paying royalties, you can of course still do it at your own risk, which is exactly what you did by doing it in Gentoo, so I fail to see the problem.

FWIW, Debian does include mp3 decoder software (i.e., software that can decode mp3 files to listen to) by default. It takes ca. 5 seconds to know this by googling for debian AND mp3 AND patent AND policy, which brings up this thread as the first link.
This might be too much for a newbie, but you don't qualify because you installed Gentoo. OTOH, a newbie wouldn't even have to google for it, because it works out of the box.

If you mean mp3 encoders (software to produce mp3 files), you are right that they aren't included. It takes 0.29 secs (according to Google) to look for debian AND mp3 AND encoder, which will give you lots of info and debs to download.

I still don't see how you can add MP3 support to KDE when the support has to be compiled into the KDE apps that use it

The wonders of modern software engineering! Did you ever recompile Windows Media Player because you added codecs for ogg, DivX and the 1,000,000 other file formats it can't play out of the box? Thought so.
See, while support might have to be compiled in, to my knowledge all Debian packages do and will gracefully ignore it if the mp3 library is not present. This is true for all proprietary codecs that I am aware of.

If you google for Debian AND codecs or Debian AND "unofficial repository" or Debian AND decss, or whatever, you will see many hits to repositories that you can simply add to /etc/apt/sources list (you can also use, e.g., the newbie-friendly Synaptic). Usually the google hits will include the repository of Christian Marillat or, for Ubuntu, of the Penguin Liberation Front, who provide packages for users who do not live in legally challenged countries. Then just install what you need with Synaptic or apt-get.

If you live in such a country, you can still run a Debian-based distro, Linspire, which will give you mp3 and video codecs as well as a DVD player, all completely legal even in the US, for a small fee. (There is talk about providing Linspire's Click 'n' Run Warehouse for Ubuntu users too). (Don't believe the myth that Linspire runs everything as root, it is not true). Anyway, Xandros gives you nearly the same (sans CSS'ed DVD IIRC)

At the end of the presentation, Andreas Pleschek revealed that the laptop he used for the presentation was running a pre-release of their new platform, the Open Client. It is actually a Red Hat work station with IBM's new Workplace Client, which is built in Java on top of Eclipse. Because of Eclipse, it runs on both Linux and Windows, and they have been able to reuse the C++ code in Lotus Notes for Windows to run it natively on Linux via Eclipse. Internally in IBM, for years, they have had a need to run Lotus Notes on Linux, and now they can. And they will offer it to their customers. Workplace uses Lotus Notes for mail, calendar, etc. and Firefox as their browser. For an office suite, they use OpenOffice.org.

Remember, an operating system usually needs a computer made in the same decade to function well.

Let's rewrite that sentence, shall we?
 
  YOUR operating system needs a computer made in the same decade to function well. Mine do just fine...

First: If you can't afford to buy your software, you might reconsider whether you should be calling yourself a "good business woman" - just a thought.

Second: http://www.us.debian.org/ http://centos.org/ (RedHat clone). Both tested, stable and production ready. Many others, use a search engine. I'm sure your IT Consultant can tell you how. However, if your IT Consultant told you there are no production Free/Open Source operating systems, you need to find an honest one.

But if you want want that is tested and stable, one
needs to purchase an expensive yearly maitenance fee for each computer
it is installed on.

My IT consultant put FireFox on my computer and it looks like another
switchero is in the works. With the members founding a corporation, it
looks like they will start charging for the good version and leave the
a "starter" version for the non-paying customers.

So is the business model of open-source to bait people with free
software when their software isn't as good as the commercial offerings,
and when it does become good or they get enough people on board, do
they just jack up the prices as much as possible?

Firstly, Haskell isn't strict, it's lazy. Secondly, this isn't funny.

Code written in languages with strong algebraic properties like referential transparency is ideal for doing automatic high-level transformations of code in order to increase parallelism.

As architectures get more complicated with multiple processors and multiple pipelines, we will more and more want to rely on automatic tools to search for good ways to structure code, from breaking up major processes right down to instruction level scheduling. Using high-level information about the task at hand and the components which make it up, which isn't present in lower level languages will be important in this task.

As a precursor to this, have a look at FFTW, the Fastest Fourier Transform in the West. On the surface, it appears to be written in C, but that C code is not entirely written by hand, it is machine generated by an O'Caml program with some very specific high-level knowledge of the problem (applying some mathematics to do a directed search for an implementation of an FFT of any size which is fast on the given platform). Basically, it's using high-level properties of the problem in order to obtain very fast code implementing a solution. The more information available to a compiler, the better.

Haskell itself already provides higher level information about the overall structure of a computation, leaving more of the details to the compiler than say, your average C++ or Java program. The implementations aren't totally killer yet, but there's a *lot* of untapped potential there.

(Even now, GHC is placing first and second on the computer language shootout with default settings.)

Haskell itself isn't quite ideal for high-level machine transformation of code, but I'd contend that it's certainly a practical starting point, and it's certainly my favourite programming language to actually get things done in.

  - Cale

Firstly, Haskell isn't strict, it's lazy. Secondly, this isn't funny.

Code written in languages with strong algebraic properties like referential transparency is ideal for doing automatic high-level transformations of code in order to increase parallelism.

As architectures get more complicated with multiple processors and multiple pipelines, we will more and more want to rely on automatic tools to search for good ways to structure code, from breaking up major processes right down to instruction level scheduling. Using high-level information about the task at hand and the components which make it up, which isn't present in lower level languages will be important in this task.

As a precursor to this, have a look at FFTW, the Fastest Fourier Transform in the West. On the surface, it appears to be written in C, but that C code is not entirely written by hand, it is machine generated by an O'Caml program with some very specific high-level knowledge of the problem (applying some mathematics to do a directed search for an implementation of an FFT of any size which is fast on the given platform). Basically, it's using high-level properties of the problem in order to obtain very fast code implementing a solution. The more information available to a compiler, the better.

Haskell itself already provides higher level information about the overall structure of a computation, leaving more of the details to the compiler than say, your average C++ or Java program. The implementations aren't totally killer yet, but there's a *lot* of untapped potential there.

(Even now, GHC is placing first and second on the computer language shootout with default settings.)

Haskell itself isn't quite ideal for high-level machine transformation of code, but I'd contend that it's certainly a practical starting point, and it's certainly my favourite programming language to actually get things done in.

  - Cale

mpg321 & lame (mp3 encoder) are available from universe

Doesn't look like Ubuntu is particularly worried by the mp3 patents

This is probably partly because Debian has never been particularly worried by the mp3 patents - see the (many) discussions on the issues in debian-legal for example.

Does their patented lock run Knockd? http://packages.debian.org/unstable/net/knockd

Hum, finally a good comment on this. You know, you have quite a few alternatives in x86/amd64 operating systems, even from the Great Satan itself!

Hi Debian-Edu/Skolelinux perfectly fits your needs. Skolelinux provides a full network solution for your school. You have a main server where your user data is stored. Then you can install a LTSP-Server to use so called Thin-Clients. These Thin-Clients are old machines. All applications are running on the LTSP. Additionally you can installed so called workstations :) All the needed profiles are available from one CD. Maybe you want to test a bit and see how it works. Visit http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/ and download http://ftp.skolelinux.no/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu_ sarge-i386-current.iso Have fun with testing and enjoying Debian-Edu ;) Greetings Steffen

Here you go.

There are plenty of other companies that sell Linux an (sic) no-OS machines.

http://www.addonshop.com/
http://www.emperorlinux.com/
http://www.ibexpc.com/
http://www.koobox.com/
http://www.linare.com/
http://www.linspire.com/
http://www.linuxcertified.com/
http://www.linuxsyscorp.com/
http://www.microtelpc.com/
http://www.outpost.com/
http://shoprcubed.com/
http://www.sub300.com/
http://www.systemax.com/divisions.htm
http://www.walmart.com/
http://tuxmobil.org/reseller.html
http://www.us.debian.org/distrib/pre-installed
http://www.linux.org/vendor/system/index.html
http://tuxmobil.org/ (general information)

Slashdot's lameness filter is actually pretty... well... lame. Defeating it is usually as easy as adding more text. You know, like this sentence. :-)

There are plenty of other companies that sell Linux an no-OS machines. http://www.addonshop.com/ http://www.emperorlinux.com/ http://www.ibexpc.com/ http://www.koobox.com/ http://www.linare.com/ http://www.linspire.com/ http://www.linuxcertified.com/ http://www.linuxsyscorp.com/ http://www.microtelpc.com/ http://www.outpost.com/ http://shoprcubed.com/ http://www.sub300.com/ http://www.systemax.com/divisions.htm http://www.walmart.com/ http://tuxmobil.org/reseller.html http://www.us.debian.org/distrib/pre-installed http://www.linux.org/vendor/system/index.html http://tuxmobil.org/ (general information)

I would also take Gentoo over RedHat/Fedora any day of the week. ;) And I understand that some people don't like the way Debian does things. What it comes down to is that *for me* Debian is the right compromise between number of packages, frequency of updates (I use "unstable" on my desktop and "stable" on production servers) and freedom to set my machine up the way I want. Yes, Gentoo gives you slightly more package selection and flexibility in setting up some things. And for some people "the Debian way" is a deal breaker.

It seems like emerge has the ability to easily mix source and binary packages. What I think would be really nice to see is a repository of binary packages for most of the core of the operating system, with the ability to easily force some packages to be compiled from source. For example it would be neat to install one's entire system from binaries; kernel, X11, gnome, mplayer, firefox, etc, then go back and set an override somewhere so that mplayer gets rebuilt from source to take advantage of all the nifty features of your processor. I'm not even saying that *all* packages need to be available as binaries. Heck, you could do a Debian style popularity contest and just keep the most popular packages around as binaries. I've always lived by the "Don't optimize all your code, just optimize the 10% that's being run 90% of the time." In my case I'd like to recompile a couple packages to select a certain non-default feature or enable a certain optimization, but it's not worth devoting the resources (disk space, CPU time, disk I/O) to compile every program I use from source.

While I'm making my wishlist, a program to log which libraries/programs are using the most CPU time, would be cool too. "Oh, I downloaded the binary package for libfoo, and it's pretty CPU intensive and a lot of programs link against it. Maybe I'll recompile it with some optimizations turned on." And, yes I've heard of "top" but I want something that sits in the background and will print out a nice report every so often. Once someone does all that, I'll drop Debian in a heartbeat, but for now it's the OS that annoys me the least.

So, uh, where do I find the OOo2 Debian packages? Alien didn't work well on the RPMs.

The jury's still out on ATI's drivers...I had to modularize my kernel before I could load the fgrlx kernel module. I haven't been home to test it yet.

You simply can't install modern distributions on the first system. And if it would be possible it would look totally stupid. You can not even install a textmode-only system with anything else than Slackware (very slow) and Basic Linux (very basic).

Debian installs to text-only quite nicely. I believe the BSDs do as well.

http://www.addonshop.com/ http://www.emperorlinux.com/ http://www.ibexpc.com/ http://www.koobox.com/ http://www.linare.com/ http://www.linspire.com/ http://www.linuxcertified.com/ http://www.linuxsyscorp.com/ http://www.microtelpc.com/ http://www.outpost.com/ http://shoprcubed.com/ http://www.sub300.com/ http://www.systemax.com/divisions.htm http://www.walmart.com/ http://tuxmobil.org/reseller.html http://www.us.debian.org/distrib/pre-installed http://www.linux.org/vendor/system/index.html http://tuxmobil.org/ (general information) No OS (Sabio made by Quanta, like Dell-latitudes) http://www.avadirect.com/ http://www.asimobile.com/ http://www.powernotebooks.com/

I've just successfully installed Debian sid in my Thinkpad 560 (Pentium 100, ~900MiB HD, 80MiB RAM) through a PLIP cable. With some work I managed to get everything I wanted (X, Emacs, Ruby, and text processing tools (fonts, dictionaries, input methods) for three languages) in less than 400MiB. I'll cut and paste my notes below.

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Always install and remove software using aptitude install and aptitude remove instead of apt-get. Aptitude keeps a log of what packages are desired by the user and what were installed just to fill dependencies, and remove the later whenever possible. This helped me to remove a lot of perl and library cruft. Be sure to add Aptitude::Recommends-Important "false"; to /etc/apt/apt.conf.

Install localepurge.

To run X you need xfonts-base. xfonts-base need xutils, which contains some font handling tools. xutils also contains that stupid imake thing which nobody uses, and that depends on cpp. Thus my system wants to install cpp in order to have fonts! I forced the installation of xutils without cpp, which broke imake. As if I cared. Imake should be in a separate package.

Grok the X package dependencies. With a careful selection of only the necessary ones you can reduce disk usage a lot. Don't install any "task" packages.

Don't install, use or get near anything with xft in it.

Depending on your tastes, it's possible to not install a full perl distribution and save tens of megabytes. As an user of the "stow" perl program, I was glad to find xstow, a stow rewrite in C++.

A good and fast X terminal emulator with proper i18n is rxvt-unicode, which I've been using for a long time and heartfully recommend. But don't install the perl-enabled weirdly-patched debian version, compile your own and configure it to your taste.

Compile a reduced kernel as soon as possible, remove the generic one and purge anything related to initrds. My initrdless kernel boots up more than 2x faster than linux-2.6-486 with yaird. Remember to not enable the trident framebuffer. Oh, and don't confuse yaird with yard like I did =)

It depends how old your system is. I believe that Debian Woody is still getting patches, but Potato is not; it was released August 14th, 2000. Security updates were discontinued as of June 30th, 2003, or about just under 3 years. Windows 2000 was released right around the same time, and it still gets a few security fixes now and then, though it hit its "end of life" period 4 years after its release. Red Hat 7 was released September 25, 2000 and hit its end of life in mid-2002. Neither product is receiving official security updates, though I'm sure a few kind souls may have backported some important patches. I guess you can manually patch your system over the years by compiling the source yourself, but how many people are really going to do that rather than follow the upgrade path? So yes, you can run an old version of Linux and keep it secure, but it will not be officially supported any longer than Windows and it will put an extra burden on you.

Sally has no choice but to pay for another copy of Windows,

• freebsd
• openbsd
• netbsd
• gnu-darwin
• ReactOS
• SuSe
• Fedora
• Debian
• Gentoo

-- Your comment has too few characters per line (currently 8.2).

swap /dev/hda3 /dev/random swap,cipher=blowfish-cbc-essiv:sha256
home /dev/hda2 none verify,cipher=blowfish-cbc-essiv:sha256

Perl itself is slow.... I keep seeing statements like this, and I wonder what they mean.

Perl is a script language that is compiled on the fly, before processing starts: there is no Perl interpreter. My understanding is that the resulting code runs at the same speed as an executable from a C compiler: that it is in fact an executable from a specialized C compiler.

Arg, I meant to say it isn't in "Debian Stable", and it wasn't in Debian Testing the last time I checked.

Although, it's hard to research this when the http://packages.debian.org/ is sick.