Slashdot Mirror

(redundant, but concise)

Most of your out of the box solutions will do well for you. If you're under budget constraints, or just want the reliability of an "appliance" (after it's all configured and running) any of the downloadable *nixes will do you well. Debian (my pref), Fedora, or *BSD, for example, include postfix for the SMTP portion, a selection of IMAP and POP3 services to choose from, various web-mail interfaces, etc... right out of the box (or I guess ISO).

If it were me (and it has been), I'd go with Debian/postfix/courierIMAP, then once running, add things such as Webmin for easy browser-based management. Then add something like squirell mail to get the oohs and ahs from the users. From here, you can choose from a multiple of providers for an e-mail "Store-n-forward" service to get and hold your mail if you have an outage. If ~they~ have an outage, you're the primary MX so you won't notice. If you're both out... well, that's a bigger problem.

The safety net here is that if your storage provider of choice decided that they don't want to be a company anymore, you change providers, the users are not involved. If you have catastrophic failure, your mail is being held (and may be accessible) until you put "something" online to start your service again. You will also be able to setup and run your local e-mail, then shop for the outside provider.

Debian-Lex is an internal project to develop Debian into an operating system that is particularly well fit for the requirements for legal offices. The goal of Debian-Lex is a complete system for all tasks in legal practice which is built completely on free software.

I subscribed to the debian lex mailing list a while ago out of curiosity. I can't say I know much more having subscribed, but perhaps there are some subscribers there with other specific ideas or answers to your question. No guarantees. Oh, IANAL.

Debian-lex Project Page

A link to the mailing list archive-- with a couple of messages from this month!-- can be found among other bits of info there.

Mandrake 9? I wouldn't expect that to be online very long before getting owned by a script. Have you looked at your logs lately?

Here's a quarter, kid; get a real operating system. Personally my favorite is OpenBSD, with Debian GNU/Linux at a distant second.

However... Anything that uses RPM, I cannot approve of.

If they really wanted to challenge webapps, they could allow non-Microsoft applications access to the deployment mechanism. That way you could have a single OS which auto-updates every application on-demand, which would be worth its weight in gold^Wcode.

Like this?

i suggest : www.debian.org

try the netinstall disk.

http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/3.1_r0a/i386/i so-cd/debian-31r0a-i386-netinst.iso

Here's a few you might have heard of:

1. Mac OS X (duh)
2. FreeBSD
3. NetBSD
4. OpenBSD
5. Yellow Dog
6. Fedora (RHL)
7. Debian
8. Gentoo

9. MS Windows

Time to enlighten some, blow the minds of others, & perhaps get a few fanatics on my case here that love C/C++, but, you'll find this read INFORMATIVE (especially those of you that code BOTH Win32 &/or Linux environs)...

Get ready, put on "mental seatbelts" folks, here we go:

A 'side note to the ALLEGED superiority of C++' & some facts about a language NOT included in those tests I saw here @ this URL posted here:

http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/benchmark.php?te st=all=java&lang2=gpp&sort=fullcpu

Delphi beat the hell out of MSVC++ in 4 of 6 tests performed in "Visual Basic Programmer's Journal" issue October 1997 entitled 'Inside the VB 5 Compiler Engine'...

ESPECIALLY IN MATH & STRINGS WORK - Which EVERY program, does, & here by HUGE margins.

Delphi lost 1 test of 6 to VB5 (ActiveX Form Loads) which even beat them both here (MSVC++ & Delphi) because it's MASSIVELY optimized for that. 5 of 6 to Delphi here vs. VB (with its 'watered down' C++ compiler engine that doesn't optimize loops e.g. vs. the 'real deal', MSVC++ from Microsoft).

Delphi lost 2 tests of 6 to MSVC++ in Graphics Methods. By a PUNY margin, of like .020 of a second here, & in TextBox Form Loads by another PUNY margin of .057 seconds. 4 of 6 to Delphi here.

The others were purely & largely won by Borland Delphi. By FAR larger margins than those, like 3x that in Strings vs. MSVC++ (300% faster), & 2x that in Math vs. MSVC++ (200% faster).

Where it won, it did so by HUGE margins/orders of magnitude, in programs created for like purposes with all 3 languages & fully compiler optimized.

VERY IMPORTANT THING TO NOTE? This test??

Was done in a COMPETING LANGUAGE'S publication no less - oh, they tried to "downplay" it of course, mentioning only 1 line about it in a 4 page article, but the charts?

Couldn't fool 'em... 10 tests were these:

1.) String Processing Suite
2.) Math Suite
3.) DataBase Suite
4.) TextBox Form Load
5.) Graphics Methods (rotating bitmap)
6.) ActiveX Form loads

(It's not in the benchmark comparison someone put up above, so I thought I would extoll it's virtues here...)

Why mention it?

Well... for you Linux freaks to know about it is why!

Why? Because it gets a HELL OF A LOT BETTER FOR 1 VERY GOOD REASON:

You write ONCE in Delphi on Win32?

You have INSTANT PORTING (& the fastest language short of straight C or ASM) to Linux via Kylix (Delphi for Linux)...

Additionally - Delphi does a good 99% of what C/C++ do natively or via the API's for the platform they're on (does not do multiple inheritance for instance, but I really do not see many practical applications for it, more of an oddity than anything in most projects & not required imo either).

* :)

As far as applications? The only thing I know of that Delphi doesn't produce (in the version I use @ least, 7.0) that MSVC++ does? Is drivers, because the MS DDK is centered in ASM/C/C++.

All else it can do... & there's probably a toolkit for Delphi to do THAT too, that I am NOT aware of.

Thought that might intrigue a few folks here with that factoid(s)...

Try a old/new thing, if you're into writing for BOTH platforms... one that kicks alot of ass!

APK

P.S.=> Incidentally? That 1997 test?? Same results happened @ "Jakes Efficiency Programming Contests" later in 2000 AGAIN, Delphi knocking the tar out of MSVC++, on a project for searching for repeated strings in a HUGE file... 3 types of tests:

1.) Compiler optimized only

2.) Compiler & hand optimized

3.) Inline ASM & all of #2 as well...

Delphi swept the floor with MSVC++... small wonder why Bill Gates hired away it's designer from Borland back in 1996 iirc, in Mr. Anders Hejlsberg?

apk

By default, those benchmarks are biased against certain languages simply because not all languages had programs done for all types of speed tests. For example, if you give 0 to the weight of those tests/algorithms that were not done on Java (10 in total), you will see that it actually outperforms C++. Depending on the weight you give certain tests, you will be able to put almost any language into a favorable light.

You can see, however, that the language "D", is number one most of the time because it had programs made for it for all of the tests.

"If the original was written in C++, you'll probably have comparable speed."

Riiight.

C++ is considerably faster than Java according to the Computer Language Shootout Benchmarks

I was a former ubuntu hoary user but I switched to SUSE as the free dvd came out. To me, SUSE is one year ahead of the other distros, due to YAST.

you've tried the rest. now try http://debian.org/.

Suse ahead of Debian. Curious.

Before continuing to recommend Autopackage, you might want to read this post by Joey Hess from the Debian Project, where he calls it "Worst. Package. Format. Ever" and ponders if it was designed by monkeys (and he, the maintainer of Alien, does know a bit about package formats).

If you're interested, you might also want to read this post and the comments there.

http://yast4debian.alioth.debian.org/

Apt and Yum seem to be the main software update mechanisms in use at the moment on Linux, but both seem to require you to download the entire application or library that you're updating.

My situation means that I'm stuck with a dialup connection for much of the time. I use Debian (etch/testing).

The most frustrating thing that I find with apt is that it's necessary to re-download the entire package list simply to find out what packages have been updated. If you like to subscribe to two sections (eg. I get both testing and unstable for a few packages that I want more recent), that's a good 45 minutes of downloading new package lists just to have the lists up-to-date... it's very offputting if I really only want to update a 200k package. And if you let them go stale for a few days before actually downloading/installing any updated packages, there's a more and more significant chance that some packages will have been updated further with the listed files having disappeared from the repository... requiring yet another apt-get update to find out what the filenames for the new versions are. (Often it's easier to just go to http://packages.debian.org/ and download them directly, but this defeats the purpose of actually having apt.)

A straightforward solution to this would be to support and provide diffs for package lists. Even if they were only left on the servers for a few days, it'd be easy enough to make sure I updated every few days. I note that this has actually been listed as a feature request since January 2002 , but has unfortunately not been implemented (although it looks like there's now a patch being developed, which is promising). Using something like rsync (eg. via apt-rsync is also an option. It requires the mirror site to support rsync, though, which many don't. Also if lots of people suddenly used rsync to update package lists, I think those mirrors that do support it would stop very quickly, simply due to the CPU load that rsync puts on the server.

Diffs for actual package updates would be great, but I don't find the lack of them to be anywhere near as annoying as not having diffs for package lists, simply because I don't usually care about updating the majority of packages to be most up-to-date. Package lists, however, have to be updated frequently, irrespective of the size of the package actually wanted.

Just thinking about it now, it'd be nice if apt could more clearly indicate which packages need to be updated for an upstream release, versus those where the package maintainer has simply made a minor adjustment somewhere. eg. If I have openoffice.org 1.1.2-7 installed, then I really don't care about downloading 40-50MB to "upgrade" to openoffice.org 1.1.2-9, but I might care if it was going to 1.1.4-3, because that's a much more significant jump. That's something I can cope without for now, though.

Apt and Yum seem to be the main software update mechanisms in use at the moment on Linux, but both seem to require you to download the entire application or library that you're updating.

My situation means that I'm stuck with a dialup connection for much of the time. I use Debian (etch/testing).

The most frustrating thing that I find with apt is that it's necessary to re-download the entire package list simply to find out what packages have been updated. If you like to subscribe to two sections (eg. I get both testing and unstable for a few packages that I want more recent), that's a good 45 minutes of downloading new package lists just to have the lists up-to-date... it's very offputting if I really only want to update a 200k package. And if you let them go stale for a few days before actually downloading/installing any updated packages, there's a more and more significant chance that some packages will have been updated further with the listed files having disappeared from the repository... requiring yet another apt-get update to find out what the filenames for the new versions are. (Often it's easier to just go to http://packages.debian.org/ and download them directly, but this defeats the purpose of actually having apt.)

A straightforward solution to this would be to support and provide diffs for package lists. Even if they were only left on the servers for a few days, it'd be easy enough to make sure I updated every few days. I note that this has actually been listed as a feature request since January 2002 , but has unfortunately not been implemented (although it looks like there's now a patch being developed, which is promising). Using something like rsync (eg. via apt-rsync is also an option. It requires the mirror site to support rsync, though, which many don't. Also if lots of people suddenly used rsync to update package lists, I think those mirrors that do support it would stop very quickly, simply due to the CPU load that rsync puts on the server.

Diffs for actual package updates would be great, but I don't find the lack of them to be anywhere near as annoying as not having diffs for package lists, simply because I don't usually care about updating the majority of packages to be most up-to-date. Package lists, however, have to be updated frequently, irrespective of the size of the package actually wanted.

Just thinking about it now, it'd be nice if apt could more clearly indicate which packages need to be updated for an upstream release, versus those where the package maintainer has simply made a minor adjustment somewhere. eg. If I have openoffice.org 1.1.2-7 installed, then I really don't care about downloading 40-50MB to "upgrade" to openoffice.org 1.1.2-9, but I might care if it was going to 1.1.4-3, because that's a much more significant jump. That's something I can cope without for now, though.

Expect Vista to deliver in a big way. Not through "150 new features" like every release of Mac OS X, but through a general improvement in security, stability, and performance

Sorry, I've got security, stability and performance out of 5 year old hardware and Debian. What else have you got?

Licences explicitly forbidding SCO to include and redistribute them would no longer be free according to our OSI and DFSG guidelines. We might not like them using our code, but that's one of the freedoms we have granted our users, and to restrict that would take away that freedom, and would mean that GNU/Linux distributions such as Debian could no longer redistribute it.

http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php

5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups

The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons.

and

http://www.debian.org/social_contract

5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups

The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons.

6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor

The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.

You're kidding, right?

The number of innovative open source games out there is astounding. I'll put the Debian 'Games/' package section up against any handheld out there (sure, the GB beats it for quantity, but quality?).

Debian runs on CHRP systems, so the E20 would make a pretty good Debian Linux system.

FWIW, it looks like the shootout shows O'Caml besting CMUCL on speed, memory, and lines of code.

Actually, Sarge made it not necessary but i think they are keeping it around for people using older versions, like woody or potato.

If it's necessary i'm sure it could be used to host otherwise "patent-threatened" stuff there until such time the situation solves itself in the USA.

No, I did not RTFA, but the blurb alone left me with some thoughts:

"The company, which was formerly known as Lindows, has gotten a lot of press for including their OS with pre-bundled computers."

That's not entirely true, as there are other Linux-based operating systems that also do this. Linspire has gotten press attention because it bundles their OS with major vendors' computers. You can walk into Wal-Mart today and buy a computer with Linspire pre-installed. This makes it unique.

I don't see what's so great about a voice-dictated setup process, either. To me, that just presents accessibility issues, and I'd personally be annoyed by it if there wasn't such a thing as a volume knob.

This is just me, though; I've never been a fan of holding the user's hand, no matter what the level of experience. I believe Carl Sagan once said something about the problems inherent in overly abstracting technology from the user.

Thanks for proving that Debian (where P is around 15.000) cannot possibly exist.

Thanks for putting words in my mouth. I didn't prove that Debian can't exist, I proved that it's nearly impossible to prevent packaging errors. With 15,000 packages, the number of possible configurations is 2.817E4515. That's a STAGGERING number for so few packages!

Making a system work with that many packages is actually straightforward: define stable interfaces. Debian has quite a number of them, collectively called "Debian Policy".

Debian Policy only defines how an application should be packaged. It does not fix any potential errors that may occur. For example, if a dependency package is missing (say, because it's considered old and was removed) how does the user resolve that dependency?

Wrong. All you have to is adhere to the FHS and install into /usr/local and /var/local.

What's wrong is assuming that /usr/local is the right place to put software. According to the FHS, Mozilla and FireFox should go in /opt. Can you name a distro that does this? And because no distros do this, many systems cannot launch FireFox and Mozilla simultaneously. Oops.

Better yet, you can a .deb yourself. What else do you want?

Something that an average user can actually *DO*. My wife would have my head on a platter for dinner if I told her to create her own DEB file for software! Good God, man! What are you thinking with?

What I want (and what Linux needs) are software distribution methods that are open, easy to use, fully support commercial software, and don't require a degree in computer science. Something like this, maybe?

Quick, remind me... Linux NEEDS commercial software to do what exactly?

Obtain general market acceptance on the Desktop! Was that fast enough?

Are you really sure that NEEDS to be done?

If the Linux community wants that acceptance, then yes. I keep hearing an affirmative on that, but then people say really dumb things like "users can just edit their system config files."

Better do more coding and less talking.

No worries. I have the code in the pipeline. All this talking is working well for recruitment. Want to join?

I installed KDE on my Gentoo workstation a few months ago and then connected to my work VPN and got to coding. After my carpal tunnel started to hurt, I went to my rec. room to lift weights for a while.
When I came back and noticed what was on my monitor I was in shock. I saw gay porn on my screen - and I was still on the VPN!!
I googled around for similar experiences and found http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2005/06/msg 00036.html where a Debian developer calls another person who had the same thing happen "stupid". I'm never going to use KDE again - not while I need to stay employed.

How many people do you think would like to run Windows or Linux on a cool looking mac?

These already all run on current (ie PPC) Macs:

http://www.yellowdoglinux.com/
http://debian.org/
http://www.ubuntulinux.org/
http://www.gentoo.org/ ...and probably more, with even more distros likely working once the move to Intel is completed.

I also seem to recall that Apple mentioned that Windows would run on the Intel-based Macs.

Link goes to "We Be Hackin'" by Erinn Clark (loosely based on Ice Cube's "We Be Clubbin'). http://lists.debian.org/debian-women/2005/04/msg00 006.html

This would only be the case if your car starts to indiscriminately shoot people if you refrain to do the 3'000 mile oil change.

Windows can do that after 12 minutes on the net, if the mighty Microsoft update computer decides that your copy is not legit.

Methinks I rather stay with Debian, since their social contract proghibits shooting people.

This would only be the case if your car starts to indiscriminately shoot people if you refrain to do the 3'000 mile oil change.

Windows can do that after 12 minutes on the net, if the mighty Microsoft update computer decides that your copy is not legit.

Methinks I rather stay with Debian, since their social contract proghibits shooting people.

No, no. The grandparent's sig is only talking about the kernel. No sane person would use anything except Debian as their user-space environment...

Of all the distros, Debian definitely has the best looking geek chicks on board.

Google: "Debian bittorrent", [I'm feeling lucky]

Downloading Debian CD images with BitTorrent

There is other medical FOSS out there - GnuMed http://www.gnumed.org/ and OSCAR McMaster http://www.oscarhome.org/ (or http://www.goemr.com/ if you're in the USA) are two that come to mind off the top of my head.

Debian-med has a fairly big list -- http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-med/

Euspirit http://www.euspirit.org/ had a huge list... but the site seems to have evaporated.

I wrote a lengthy article about that FOSS in medicine-- it can be found here: http://www.utmj.org/issues/82.3/Technology_Review_ _82-3-202.pdf

Grandparent said it, he (as well as many) support the Free Software philisophy, it's not the same thing as OpenSource (which is more a label aimed at entreprises).

Each and every free software activist want the opening of ALL source code, no matter if they're actually wanting to have a look at it. As one of many, I don't see any area where I woudln't free my code, but unlike some, I can understand that resources may be non-free (e.g, in a videogame, while the engine should be free, say dual licenced GPL / and commercial licence for the company to make some money, like MySQL, I understand that graphics and creation, music, could be non-free). It doesn't mean music, art in general shouldn't be free but it always depends on your business model.

So to say, Free software isn't about the ability of the user to fix a bug. It's not about users at all, in fact. It's about the software itself, and its freedom. This is why we talk about philosophy when it comes to free software, since it is a movement of idea, whereas opensource is a business model that uses free software (and which was at first aimed at advertising free software).

Programming languages are not about being free. They're about being standards (good) or not (bad). People in the free software community want these languages *implementations* (ie compilers, libraries) to be free because some Linux distro (eg Debian) refuse to have non-free packages (at least in the main branch). See the Debian Social Contract.

OSS projects are normally looking for machines to do work on. Debian has a page:

http://www.us.debian.org/donations

As a side note, ESR lives in the philly area I believe, maybe he could help you.

And in case YOU don't know anything about the subject, here's the tip:

There are precompiled Debian apps for more than just x86.

One way to keep specific versions of packages without affecting the rest of the system is to use apt-pinning. That allows you to use packages from one version without actually having to change your entire system to that same version.

Who gets to define warez? I've just been in an argument with a BSA employee who claimed that any software that's not been purchased (i.e. obtained without payment) is warez. By this definition, http://www.debian.org/ is a warez server.

> Why couldn't they contact the blender, audacity, vlc or csound maintainers for instance?

You mean, like in this email in April:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-release/2005/04/msg 00153.html
or that one in July?
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005 /07/msg00001.html

(Debian Developers are expected to read both of these lists)

> Why couldn't they contact the blender, audacity, vlc or csound maintainers for instance?

You mean, like in this email in April:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-release/2005/04/msg 00153.html
or that one in July?
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005 /07/msg00001.html

(Debian Developers are expected to read both of these lists)

Posted by Steve in the Debian section on Wed 13 Jul 2005 at 17:10

Debian has now made the transition to the X.org installation of the X11 Window system. If you're running sid/etch you should be able to upgrade now.

The transition had previously been on hold until Sarge was released - as it was judged too major a change to add to the release at the last minute.

Now Sarge is out Debian development continues and one of the most anticipated changes is upon us. (Other changes are also occurring such as the C++ ABI upgrade).

Before starting the upgrade to X.org it's important to do two things:

• Switch to a console as a paranoid safety measure. If something goes wrong, or X gets restarted you don't want to leave your upgrade in an inconsistent state.
• Take a backup of /etc/X11 in case you experience problems.

The backup can be something as simple as running:

cp -R /etc/X11 /etc/X11-old

The upgrade will attempt to automatically migrate your XFree86 configuration file to /etc/X11/xorg.conf, and in my case worked perfectly. Still better safe than sorry!

Once you've done those two things you should be ready to proceed. As always the first thing to do is update your list of available packages:

apt-get update

If you wish you can use aptitude instead, I know that I should promote that more.

With that out of the way the installation is started by running:

apt-get install xserver-xorg

This gave me the following output:

The following extra packages will be installed: libxau6 libxdmcp6 lsb-base x11-common xfree86-common xserver-common Suggested packages: configlet-frontends libglide2 Recommended packages: mdetect xresprobe The following packages will be REMOVED: xserver-xfree86 The following NEW packages will be installed: libxau6 libxdmcp6 lsb-base x11-common xserver-xorg The following packages will be upgraded: xfree86-common xserver-common 2 upgraded, 5 newly installed, 1 to remove and 14 not upgraded. Need to get 7437kB of archives.

As you can see the xserver-xfree86 package is scheduled for removal, as the two conflict.

After downloading the packages from the network you'll be asked which server you wish to run by default by debconf. Choose the xserver-org - as the other server will be removed.

That was literally all I had to do. There were several messages displayed about migrating the server's configuration which appeared to be completely successful:

xserver-xorg config warning: migrating xserver-xfree86 templates to xserver-xorg.

Other diagnostic messages also seemed to indicate the upgrade was occuring without any problems:

Adding system startup for /etc/init.d/x11-common ... /etc/rcS.d/S70x11-common -> ../init.d/x11-common update-rc.d: /etc/init.d/xfree86-common exists during rc.d purge (continuing) Removing any system startup links for /etc/init.d/xfree86-common ... /etc/rcS.d/S70xfree86-common

At this point the upgrade was complete, and the only thing left to do was to stop the currently running old installation of xserver-xfree86. The quick way to do this would be to simply reboot, although I wanted to do it manually to make sure it worked as expected.

I use the IceWM window manager with the gnome display manager handling the logins - so to stop X I ran:

/etc/init.d/gdm stop

This step will differ if you're using KDE, in which case you'll need to use "/etc/init.d/kdm stop". If you're using another login manager such as wdm,

Posted by Steve in the Debian section on Wed 13 Jul 2005 at 17:10

Debian has now made the transition to the X.org installation of the X11 Window system. If you're running sid/etch you should be able to upgrade now.

The transition had previously been on hold until Sarge was released - as it was judged too major a change to add to the release at the last minute.

Now Sarge is out Debian development continues and one of the most anticipated changes is upon us. (Other changes are also occurring such as the C++ ABI upgrade).

Before starting the upgrade to X.org it's important to do two things:

• Switch to a console as a paranoid safety measure. If something goes wrong, or X gets restarted you don't want to leave your upgrade in an inconsistent state.
• Take a backup of /etc/X11 in case you experience problems.

The backup can be something as simple as running:

cp -R /etc/X11 /etc/X11-old

The upgrade will attempt to automatically migrate your XFree86 configuration file to /etc/X11/xorg.conf, and in my case worked perfectly. Still better safe than sorry!

Once you've done those two things you should be ready to proceed. As always the first thing to do is update your list of available packages:

apt-get update

If you wish you can use aptitude instead, I know that I should promote that more.

With that out of the way the installation is started by running:

apt-get install xserver-xorg

This gave me the following output:

The following extra packages will be installed: libxau6 libxdmcp6 lsb-base x11-common xfree86-common xserver-common Suggested packages: configlet-frontends libglide2 Recommended packages: mdetect xresprobe The following packages will be REMOVED: xserver-xfree86 The following NEW packages will be installed: libxau6 libxdmcp6 lsb-base x11-common xserver-xorg The following packages will be upgraded: xfree86-common xserver-common 2 upgraded, 5 newly installed, 1 to remove and 14 not upgraded. Need to get 7437kB of archives.

As you can see the xserver-xfree86 package is scheduled for removal, as the two conflict.

After downloading the packages from the network you'll be asked which server you wish to run by default by debconf. Choose the xserver-org - as the other server will be removed.

That was literally all I had to do. There were several messages displayed about migrating the server's configuration which appeared to be completely successful:

xserver-xorg config warning: migrating xserver-xfree86 templates to xserver-xorg.

Other diagnostic messages also seemed to indicate the upgrade was occuring without any problems:

Adding system startup for /etc/init.d/x11-common ... /etc/rcS.d/S70x11-common -> ../init.d/x11-common update-rc.d: /etc/init.d/xfree86-common exists during rc.d purge (continuing) Removing any system startup links for /etc/init.d/xfree86-common ... /etc/rcS.d/S70xfree86-common

At this point the upgrade was complete, and the only thing left to do was to stop the currently running old installation of xserver-xfree86. The quick way to do this would be to simply reboot, although I wanted to do it manually to make sure it worked as expected.

I use the IceWM window manager with the gnome display manager handling the logins - so to stop X I ran:

/etc/init.d/gdm stop

This step will differ if you're using KDE, in which case you'll need to use "/etc/init.d/kdm stop". If you're using another login manager such as wdm,

Take a look at the jump in the number of release-critical bugs! Is this all related to X.org or is there some other major change in the works?

After all of the package breakage is sorted out and it's been at least 14 days, then these packages will find their way into testing ('etch') if there are no critical bugs. You can check the status of this in the "excuses file" located on Debian's FTP site.

We love Debian too, right?

http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2005 /06/msg00016.html

This is to say nothing of how so many companies love using your boot-time to copy things into memory so that their load time appears fast. I'm looking right at Adobe, here. Microsoft is doing those companies a favor by requiring hardware good enough that their somewhat evil deceptions of speed are forgivable.

On the other hand, the learning curve for various linux distributions has changed in the last few years. Get yourself another hard drive, nothing fancy, even 20 gigs would be way more than enough. An old 8gig drive, even a 4gig, is sufficient. Swap out the hard drive, and install Debian. Instructions for getting the installation data are here, and instructions for installation are here.

There's only three tricky steps. First, you have to partition the drive correctly. For simplicity, make around 5% of the drive the swap space. Second, during the install process, you have to tell it what network card you have. This means loading the module for the right card. Generally, you can just try each module, and if it autodetects correctly and the name isn't obviously the wrong card, you're good. Third, when you are asked for packages to install, pick the simple method and choose the x-windows install. You will need to know what graphics card you have for this.

If all of that works, congratulations, you have one of the most powerful OSes on your machine now. Use 'aptitude' to pick more packages to install. For someone familiar with Windows, KDE might be a good idea. OpenOffice.org is a good alternative to MS Office.

The beauty of this is, if you screw up, fine. You've got some old harddrive screwed up. You didn't have to back up, and you didn't lose anything, because your windows installation is ready and waiting on your first hard drive. It was not even connected to the computer, so there's no chance of hurting it.

Of course, I'm paranoid, so I would say that you should make backups regularly as a matter of course.

I wouldn't throw all that Windows stuff out, as some of it can be useful, and the games are fun, of course. On the other hand, I dual boot, and I only use the Windows side for games. One of these days, I'm going to see if Guild Wars will work with WINE.

I wish we could get to other planets. Currently I'm following Richard Branson's funding for commercial space flight. But if you want to make the best use of your hardware, and not get screwed by software companies demanding more from you, try Debian. Now to find a spare hard drive to demonstrate for some friends...

This is to say nothing of how so many companies love using your boot-time to copy things into memory so that their load time appears fast. I'm looking right at Adobe, here. Microsoft is doing those companies a favor by requiring hardware good enough that their somewhat evil deceptions of speed are forgivable.

On the other hand, the learning curve for various linux distributions has changed in the last few years. Get yourself another hard drive, nothing fancy, even 20 gigs would be way more than enough. An old 8gig drive, even a 4gig, is sufficient. Swap out the hard drive, and install Debian. Instructions for getting the installation data are here, and instructions for installation are here.

There's only three tricky steps. First, you have to partition the drive correctly. For simplicity, make around 5% of the drive the swap space. Second, during the install process, you have to tell it what network card you have. This means loading the module for the right card. Generally, you can just try each module, and if it autodetects correctly and the name isn't obviously the wrong card, you're good. Third, when you are asked for packages to install, pick the simple method and choose the x-windows install. You will need to know what graphics card you have for this.

If all of that works, congratulations, you have one of the most powerful OSes on your machine now. Use 'aptitude' to pick more packages to install. For someone familiar with Windows, KDE might be a good idea. OpenOffice.org is a good alternative to MS Office.

The beauty of this is, if you screw up, fine. You've got some old harddrive screwed up. You didn't have to back up, and you didn't lose anything, because your windows installation is ready and waiting on your first hard drive. It was not even connected to the computer, so there's no chance of hurting it.

Of course, I'm paranoid, so I would say that you should make backups regularly as a matter of course.

I wouldn't throw all that Windows stuff out, as some of it can be useful, and the games are fun, of course. On the other hand, I dual boot, and I only use the Windows side for games. One of these days, I'm going to see if Guild Wars will work with WINE.

I wish we could get to other planets. Currently I'm following Richard Branson's funding for commercial space flight. But if you want to make the best use of your hardware, and not get screwed by software companies demanding more from you, try Debian. Now to find a spare hard drive to demonstrate for some friends...

While I don't use a Dvorak board, it would be pretty trivial to map whatever the corresponding keys for hjkl in your .vimrc. A quick google brings up this, and I'm sure doing it by yourself wouldn't be bad at all.

It could well have been the recently revealed XML-RPC exploit which Drupal appears to have been vulnerable to.

Debian released an updated Drupal security package today. I'm sure other distributions have also done so, or are about to.

Zlib is not that complex, sorry.

Look ... the reason people use "C" is that it produces small, fast code. Period. If you're writing a library routine that going to get called billions of times a day, it needs to be fast. If you write it in Lisp, it's too slow.

Here's why you should use C and not Lisp. This is form the "shootout" benchmarking programming languages. C wins across the board pretty much all the time against all other languages. Imagine if your computer was twice as slow as it is now. That'd what'd be like if your word process, operating system, browser, etc. weren't written in C. You'd buy another system if it ran twice as fast. This is why systems and serious applications are written in "C" not lisp or Java or perl or whatever.

http://lists.debian.org/debian-amd64/2005/07/msg00 100.html

Still waiting for the AMD64 security packages to show up a security.debian.org and not have to use the "sarge-proposed-updates" that Brandon warns against.

Regarding format, though, I still believe DEB's win for flexibility, accessibility, and a simple, straight-forward design. Baroque is hardly the word to describe the "./debian" maintainer scripts directory. What does one find in "./debian"? control, changelog, copyright, README.Debian, rules (the build Makefile), and optionally the prerm, postrm, preinst, postinst scripts. Whatever else a maintainer puts in that directory that is useful for the build process is entirely subjective to the helper tools they might use (like debhelper).

DEB's are simply two tarballs archived together, data.tar.gz, which contains the package files themselves, and control.tar.gz, which contains the maintainer scripts. If you did not have dpkg installed on your system, but wished to extract the files and information from a DEB, you would simply use the tools ar and tar. To do the same with an RPM is to open up a hex editor to find the end of the RPM header, then use dd to cut it off and output the remaining tarball. (RPM format) How many people know or want to know how to do that?

The other flexiblity that DEB's have that RPM's don't (didn't?) is that maintainer scripts can be written in any language the maintainer wishes, as long as the interpretor is installed at the time the script runs. If you're maintaining a Perl package, it's reasonable to assume that Perl can be installed as a (pre-)dependency and used to run the maintainer scripts.

Debconf, for example, is one of those optional helper tools the maintainer is encouraged to use when questions must be asked of the user/administrator at installation time. Gone are the days when DEB's could not be installed unattended. Using Debconf allows the maintainer to provide those questions, and allows the user to view them using one of multiple interfaces, or to ignore them completely. Additionally, po-debconf makes it trivial to add multilingual support for those questions.

There is plenty of documentation, utilities, and helper tools to create a Debian package, and on-line resources such as IRC, email lists, and forums. An interesting thread to read dates back from 1996, titled "Why the .deb format?". Also, take a gander at this FAQ.

Really, comparing RPM's to DEB's is like comparing apples to oranges. RPM maintainers may baulk at the "debian/" directory and maintainer scripts, but I personally baulk at having to learn yet another spec file format for RPM's and being restricted to using librpm or a hex editor to access the data contained within the package.