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http://packages.gentoo.org/search/?sstring=firefox According to that, it's not available. Where did you get your package?

That would only work if you've added www-client/mozilla-firefox ~x66 to your package.keywords file or use sudo ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" emerge firefox As it's not yet in the stable branch. Also right now the most recent testing is 1.5_rc1-r1 .

Most Open Source/Free Software/Linux folks seem to think that the last option is _clearly_ the best choice. I'm not so sure. Last I checked, NWN or Doom3 or Heretic II were not included in any RPM/DPKG repository, at least not any configured by default on any of the mainstream distributions.

It is the best choice. If you prefer to mindlessly click "Next" 5-10 times every time you want to install something and then again if you ever want to update it, when you could simply issue a single command or tick a single box and select install, and then have *all* updates handled for you, then I sincerely hope you have nothing to do with any important software development.

From portage:

* games-rpg/nwn
Latest version available: 1.66
Latest version installed: [ Not Installed ]
Size of downloaded files: 2,420,283 kB
Homepage: http://nwn.bioware.com/downloads/linuxclient.html
Description: Neverwinter Nights
License: NWN-EULA

* games-fps/doom3
Latest version available: 1.3.1302
Latest version installed: [ Not Installed ]
Size of downloaded files: 16,802 kB
Homepage: http://www.doom3.com/
Description: Doom III - 3rd installment of the classic id 3D first-person shooter
License: DOOM3

Or maybe you'd prefer the web listings.

Any other questions?

Most Open Source/Free Software/Linux folks seem to think that the last option is _clearly_ the best choice. I'm not so sure. Last I checked, NWN or Doom3 or Heretic II were not included in any RPM/DPKG repository, at least not any configured by default on any of the mainstream distributions.

It is the best choice. If you prefer to mindlessly click "Next" 5-10 times every time you want to install something and then again if you ever want to update it, when you could simply issue a single command or tick a single box and select install, and then have *all* updates handled for you, then I sincerely hope you have nothing to do with any important software development.

From portage:

* games-rpg/nwn
Latest version available: 1.66
Latest version installed: [ Not Installed ]
Size of downloaded files: 2,420,283 kB
Homepage: http://nwn.bioware.com/downloads/linuxclient.html
Description: Neverwinter Nights
License: NWN-EULA

* games-fps/doom3
Latest version available: 1.3.1302
Latest version installed: [ Not Installed ]
Size of downloaded files: 16,802 kB
Homepage: http://www.doom3.com/
Description: Doom III - 3rd installment of the classic id 3D first-person shooter
License: DOOM3

Or maybe you'd prefer the web listings.

Any other questions?

Try Gentoo Portage http://www.gentoo.org

http://www.gentoo-portage.com/s?search=nwn

See NWN with data and server right there.

http://www.gentoo-portage.com/s?search=doom3 for doom3

And Portage put games into catagories.

Like: games-fps, games-rpg, games-puzzle. etc.

AND the best part, to install. emerge nwn
It will download any and all deps for you!

"but as soon as ReactOS can run everything I need, I'll switch for sure!"

I said the same thing not but eight months ago. Then, about two months ago, I installed a Linux distro on my home desktop. I've installed plenty of them before, but they never stuck. Even the one I'm using right now (Gentoo) has been on this system at least half-a-dozen times. However, this time it stuck.

"And why's that?", you may ask. Well, over the past few years I've been migrating to Open Source Software! Replacing Microsoft Office with Open Office, replacing Photoshop with The GIMP, and of course replacing Internet Explorer with Firefox.

Anyway, once I got comforatible with the administration aspects of a Unix-like system, the software all fell into place. Most of the programs I use now on my NIX system are the same programs I used to use on my Windows install. And the best part is, if you enjoy fidling with stuff and don't mind recompiling loads of code, a Gentoo system (or just about any other non-bloated NIX distro) is at least twice as fast as a Win system.

Anyway, just saying Mac guy, if you want to take the plunge, go ahead and do it. You'll be pleasently supprised.

That's my $0.02.
QBRADQ

You can always use Gentoo and don't depend on this kind of choices by the distro maker, remember: it's all about choices.

Since January Gentoo has started the Gentoo/OpenSolaris, began porting its portage package tree on Solaris, calling it Portaris. Something similar was done with FreeBSD creating the Gentoo/FreeBSD project in August 2004.

Since January Gentoo has started the Gentoo/OpenSolaris, began porting its portage package tree on Solaris, calling it Portaris. Something similar was done with FreeBSD creating the Gentoo/FreeBSD project in August 2004.

I also ran NetBSD on a Qube2, until a thunderstorm fried it. But Gentoo does run on it too. http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-343667.html

WPA support seems to very between distributions - for example, Mandrake didn't support it at all when I was using it! I currently use Gentoo, which means I don't get given a GUI for this sort of thing, but I do get reasonably decent documentation.

Oh, and unfortunately getting ndiswrapper working seems to be a matter of luck (it worked for me with the Netgear WG111, quite reliably, but YMMV). Apparently, it doesn't like certain experimental kernel patches, among other things. It's really a bit of a hack anyway; native drivers are better if you can get them (not too often, sadly).

Did you notice that the site is running on Gentoo? Any competent admin would avoid such distro like a plague and install *BSD.

This happens over and over and over again— with some users, I'm afraid to upgrade their software because their "world" sadly depends on the cargo cult execution of gestures to get their work done. Too many applications change how they look and feel with every upgrade that many users go off the rails whenever that happens. At least with an application, you can kind of avoid it, but when it's Windows— aw man, why not just fix the SECURITY HOLES instead of changing the UI? Please, Microsoft?

Screw it [sic; I'm being polite.], I'll keep my Mac OS X for clients and Gentoo Linux for servers and any web service that doesn't suck (Gmail, Basecamp, etc.), thank you very much.

Microsoft's days are over the moment Google decides to market an operating system that includes GFS for redundant data-storage and their MapReduce for batch processing. These things are big contributors to how its even possible for Google to exist. Simplicity trumps mediocrity.

Check out "passive noob"'s comments on OO start up times

This is crazy. I did a little experiment. JRE(Blackdown) on, CPU in powersave mode (800Mhz): 211 Seconds to start JRE(Blackdown) on, CPU in performance mode (1800Mhz): 99 Seconds to start JRE off, 800Mhz: 4 seconds. JRE off, 1800Mhz: 2 seconds.

I know Java fans don't like this, but Java is too slow for competitive apps. This is why it is restricted pretty much to serving as a learning tool and for interfacing with database packages.

Yes. Point your web browser here:

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-246098-postda ys-0-postorder-asc-start-0.html?sid=8b7707c9b98f82 504047ca1a6888802d

It's mostly up to date. . . There was a recent hotfix that broke things, but the work around is posted in the discussion.

Works fine for me (with the fixes). I run at 1920x1200 with a little slow-down compared with XP, but not so much that it matters.

WoW has been working on and off lately, sometimes new patches break things, things usually get fixed again pretty quickly though, you might find this thread useful.

http://www.gentoo.org/images/poster.jpg

It already was... :)

Sure it does!

You mean, people like OpenBSD, or perhaps Debian, or Gentoo or ....
When you avoid screwing up your design the first time round, it does help that you need to do less work.

This will almost certainly lock Linux/BSD users out of online banking, and probably will lock out Mac users too.

Banks could much more portably just start requiring signed client certificates. For windows users they could be stored on a USB keyfob instead of the HDD for slightly better security. Users of other systems could set it up that way if they wanted, but implementastion on FreeBSD or whathaveyou would be left to the client.

It is a good idea for host login, though. CF the article in the November 2005 issue in Linux Journal, and this thread on the gentoo forums (and my journal post from yesterday too).

RPM (and RedHat, by extension) used to be notorious for circular dependencies issues.

The solution is simple: Don't install any RPMs that aren't from your vendor. Compile everything else from source or create your own package. The advantage that Debian has was that there were just so many packages already pre-compiled and packaged. Gentoo seems to get around the problem by compiling at installation therefore being able to customize for what is on the system.

I'm not using RedHat anymore, but I still consider RPM to be the best packaging format because it keeps a lot of useful metadata about the files. For example, I can run rpm -V perl to test the perl package for problems. It'll verify the size, MD5 checksum, permissions, type, owner and group of each file in the package and let me know if anything is out of place. Having this function has saved my ass once. I haven't found anything like that in Debian yet. According to Gentoo's docs, "Portage will not check if the package you want to remove is required by another package." I wouldn't even call that package management.

The following applies to the Thinkpad R51, but you might find some use for it:

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=205355

2)Gentoo had the same bug in their ready-for-the-world live gaming CDs (and hadn't tracked it down).

No. Gentoo did not have any such bug, but only because Gentoo did not release those CD images. It was Daniel Robbins under another commercial venture, called Gentoo Games, where he was leveraging the Gentoo name to turn a profit for himself. These were not a part of the community distribution, and even the distribution developers were not told about it until the release date. We found out about it when it hit the front page of Gentoo's website just like everyone else. Also remember that Daniel, through this venture, violated Id Software's copyright on Enemy Territory by distributing it in a modified form, without permission of Id Software. Gentoo Games also provided no support for these discs, and tried to dump the support on the Gentoo Linux developers. Needless to say, Gentoo Games died a very quick and uneventful death.

What some open source zealots, and the vast majority of open source "consumers" don't recognize is that programmers need to eat to. Until these "consumers" stop taking advantage of open source, and start paying... Open source will stay in Microsoft's (and other big corporations) shadow, and very likely even shrink.

Nessus is not the first, and not the last. Even Hans Reiser has this problem:
See here... Hans Reiser: Doing GPL work is doing charity work [...] That should be and could be changed, but for now it is so. I have done my share of charity, and I would not have a problem doing proprietary work. I think people should keep their lives in balance, and that includes balancing charity work and better paid work. ... It is not an easy life, I am $200k or more in debt and drive a 1989 CRX Si.

Here is another: Mute file sharing. Not sure how long this experiment will last.

And one more: Daniel Robbins founded Gentoo linux, went bankrupt, got job at Microsoft

Either help these programmers feed themselves and their families, or expect other big and large profile projects to disappear and become pay-for-play.

I love open source, and contribute money to many projects -- but open source will just prove to be a fad that will start to wear thin on programmers as they get into debt and can't feed their families. The business case for open source software longterm survival is weak, unforunately.

m

dispatch-conf is not something mentioned in standard documentation.
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/2005.1/handb ook-x86.xml?full=1#book_part3_chap4
It is documented - in the handbook right next to etc-update - thats pretty much as standard as it can get.

As long as it's telling you to run etc-update, my comment isn't outdated.
Are you also still using nano, because it is the editor used in the documentation?

I think the difference is that you get an answer from a developer.. while on the Forum or on #gentoo @ freenode you will get an answer from a nobody.. because very few developers frequent them nowadays.. since there are way too many looser in there.

Actually, the business is geared towards smaller outfits. Maybe not one without an admin, but perhaps one with only a single admin and older computers. In fact, at their presentation at the Gentoo Developer Conference after LWE:SF, they specifically mentioned older machines in their presentation. You can view their entire presentation online at http://devconference.gentoo.org/ (warning, streaming video). They were last in the afternoon session.

So how does this differ from http://forums.gentoo.org/ and irc://irc.freenode.net/gentoo (I don't think /. wants me to linkify it...)?

The difference with professional support is normally that they have to fix it because you pay them.

There are two tips I can give for anyone installing Gentoo:
First, read the handbook. Following it step by step, one should not encounter any errors.
Second, Gentoo forums is the best place to look if you do encounter any errors.

No costs whatsoever (except time and the money you pay to your ISP)

I have a Hardened Gentoo Linux system (http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/hardened/primer.xml ) that already incorporates similar technologies. It uses the PaX kernel patch for randomly arranging the memory layout of applications. It also compiles in stack smashing protection into every program.

Gentoo has a coreutils patchset that includes several extras like the progress bar for cp. They're at http://dev.gentoo.org/~vapier/dist/

The one Gentoo is currently using for 5.2.1 is coreutils-5.2.1-patches-1.0.tar.bz2. The patch file for just the progress bar is patch/generic/001_all_coreutils-gen-progress-bar.p atch within the archive.

Gentoo patches coreutils to add that feature.

Do they have applied a discount for all the P2P users getting legit content from :

http://www.jamendo.com/
or
http://www.archive.org/audio/collection.php?collec tion=opensource_audio
or
http://www.legaltorrents.com/
or
http://bt.etree.org/
or
http://torrents.gentoo.org/
or
http://www.debian.org/CD/torrent-cd/
or ....

See a list of legitimate content at the end of this page :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent

Odd, I believe X to be one of the greatest strength of Unix ; yes, its used in other OSes besides Linux - does the presence of X in Solaris, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Irix, and so on make them impossible to use? Millions of X users beg to differ.

To fix something, you need to quantify its brokenness first, something you have not done well at:

X is not supposed to look good, nor is it supposed to be ugly, or have any sort of 'look' at all. Perhaps you are thinking of window managers, desktop environments or similar. Many of which are reasonably attractive, caveat emptor.

Nor do I believe X is slow. What are you comparing it to? I get superior OpenGL performance under X in linux compared to the same hardware running windows with the equivalent version video drivers. X must be doing something right, but it could well be the linux kernel doing a lot better than the windows one at managing the hardware, admittedly.

Complaints about compiling code, fighting with drivers, software dependancies, and so on are not really weakness in X, merely a lack of experience in handling code. But not to worry, most *nix distributions are nice enough to ship binary builds of X that are both fast and include all the nice font rendering and antialiasing you might ever care for. Of course, you have the freedom to compile the lot by hand if you really want to, but it is by no means necessary. If your distribution of choice is not being cooperative, then investigate better alternatives.

Granted, nothing is ever 100% easy, but you sound like you are picking the hardest way forward and hence getting unneccessarily frustrated. If X was broken, then like everything else under linux ( driver support, schedulers, scalability, journaled filesystems etc all of which are better now than they have ever been and are still improving ), it _would_ be fixed.

The power of open source in security really struck me when I read this article the other day: Securing an Unpatchable Webserver. The author's client had a mission-critical web application so tightly coupled to IIS 3.0 that IIS couldn't be upgraded without an expensive rewrite.

Microsoft refused to patch an exploitable hole in 3.0 and insisted on the client upgrading to 4.0 to fix the problem. Long story short, the author modifies open source app "snort" to filter out the exploit and the hogwash IPS is born. All along I'm thinking that if they had been using apache in the first place and ran into a similar problem where an upgrade would break their app, they could have patched just the security hole themselves without affecting any functionality.

I have done this myself when a kernel upgrade broke an application but fixed a security hole. I maintained my own linux kernel for a while with just security patches until the (closed source) app that broke released an upgrade. It took some extra work, but it was the most stable kernel I have ever had.

Open source has the additional advantage of being able to be recompiled to enable more proactive and effective security measures. It is a lot of work initially, but you can eliminate practically all exploits before anyone even knows they exist. You still want to patch because an attempted exploit can kill the server, but at least it won't let an attacker in and you'll know when there is an unpatched exploit in the wild.

said this before...

Dan Kaminsky is actually the dude who came up with the Stripwire idea. ... LAST YEAR.

Tom

Granted I don't use Airport Express (which as far as I know still doesn't work)

If anyone is desperate for Airport Express to work, you can run a Mac-On-Linux session, and tunnel the linux networking via MOL, which uses the broadcom chipsetted Airport Express natively. It's a big ugly cumbersome workaround... but it works until those in the know can get a Linux native driver together.

See the gentoo forums for more into.

And Gentoo is beaten fast and hard by FreeBSD.

Same with Gentoo: Firefox packages

Source based component upgrade is the path to madness (well, it is cool and usefull, but for an end-user, it is madness). You newly build IRC client will need some upgraded version of libxml, which may have an incompatibility with the Nvu HTML composer. After a few upgrades, you end up in dependency hell. Your binaries starts to randomly segfault, and you end up re-installing the whole OS.

Maybe if you're using something that isn't designed to resolve those dependencies...hell, my understanding of RPM is that it has a hard-enough time keeping dependencies in binary packages straightened out. If you're using a distro that's designed for source-based upgrades, it'll pull in any updated dependencies automagically and build them before building a new version of Firefox (or whatever).

First, to all you Slashdotters out there - I'm not trying to feed the trolls - this post looks legit to me - I'm just trying to help someone navigate what I'm sure you realize is very confusing - the Open Source world.

I'm posting anonymously because this isn't really the proper place to discuss this (don't ask me what the proper forum is - it probably isn't on Slashdot, although you might try the Ask Slashdot section), so this will very likely get modded down. Also, let me say from the beginning that I am still learning Linux myself, but I know several people who are bona fide experts, and am fairly familiar with the basics of the open source community. A full primer on open source and Linux is far beyond the scope of this post - I suggest spending some time with Google and perhaps Wikipedia for more in-depth information. Your IT consultant may also be a good resource since he or she installed Firefox on your computer.

First, let me say that - in my opinion, others would disagree - Linux is going to be more complicated for a non-technical user than Windows. My experience has been that Linux is more complicated and harder to install and operate. I would venture to say that to run Linux, you will need an expert of some sort - either you must become an expert yourself, or you must get an expert to help you. You can do this by hiring an expert, or by purchasing support for the version of Linux you use. Be sure, however, not to confuse software with support. There is such a thing as software that you don't have to pay for. You will probably always have to pay for support for that software, no matter what operating system you use. Everyone has their own opinion on what operating systems require the most support (my personal opinion is that Linux requires more support than Windows); many people will agree that if you want to minimize the the amount of support that you need, you would be well advised to look at Apple's OS X.

I'm not familiar with Redhat's business plan, but I do know that they cannot (legally) charge for the portion of Linux that is licensed under a legal contract called the GPL (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gpl/, http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html). I think (but don't quote me) that what they charge for is their add-ons to the core Linux operating system and for support of the operating system. Novell does a similar thing with SUSE Linux - although I know for a fact that you can download SUSE Linux for free - remember, that's just the actual software you get for free, no support is included (http://www.novell.com/products/linuxprofessional/ downloads/suse_linux/index.html). The bottom line is that you can get good, stable, production-ready versions of Linux that are totally free, and not maintained by any commercial entity. Some of the best known are Debian (http://www.debian.org/), Ubuntu - a derivitave of Debian (http://www.ubuntulinux.org/), and Gentoo (http://www.gentoo.org/). As for the "source" (or source code) of Linux or any other Open Source software, this is not something that will do you any good unless you are an advanced user. A discussion of what source code is goes far beyond a Slashdot post - suffice it to say that it isn't something you need to worry about at this point, and that you will need to become much more experienced with Linux before it will help you at all. Suffice it to say that source code is helpful because if a programmer has the source code to a piece of software, he or she can modify that software and make whatever changes he or she wishes. This is why open source software can be modified by anyone, whereas with commercial software, the source code is almost always a heavily guarded

Hmm... you're right, and I can't find much information about it.

Here's what Gentoo says about it, but there really isn't much detail:
Are 32bit applications supported? Is it through emulation or native?

Yes, 32bit applications are fully supported by the CPU, and are executed natively. A standard x86 OS can be installed on an amd64 processor, and can execute 32bit applications from a 64bit operating system if it is capable of mapping the 32bit syscalls to the kernel's 64bit interfaces (such as Linux is capable of doing if you enable it in the kernel). Please see the below section on 32bit support for further information. Please also note there is no performance penalty for running 32bit apps on an amd64 class processor, and will always be faster than the athlonxp line of processors running 32bit code (please note this is different than ia64 itanium processors!)

That's from here http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/base/amd64/technotes /index.xml?part=1&chap=2

I think if we want to know more about it we have to go stare at the kernel source, and I know that'll confuse me ;-)

I'm wondering how it compares in complexity to WoW64

Not if you use a source-based distro. A friend of mine recently assembled an Athlon64 system using Gentoo and he's in love with the performance.

Hmmm... I'm surprised Suse doesn't have 64-bit compilations of those popular apps. In any case, if that is your problem - that you need a great many applications/deps that have no compilations for that distro (thus you need to compile them yourself - and so a lot of hunting). If that is the case I strongly recommend Gentoo Linux - http://gentoo.org/

Still I'm surprised they don't have 64-bit versions of popular packages like kdevelop. Perhaps you could try Ubuntu instead of Gentoo.

- Vista Source Edition: Compile your own! Comes with GCC 4.0
http://www.gentoo.org/

Actually, ESR was quite clever in his response. Microsoft is making an attempt to "infect" the open source community by hiring OSS people - http://www.gentoo.org/news/20050613-drobbins.xml. ESR has effectively turned their effort into a publicity problem. And Microsoft handed it to him on a silver platter. Nicely done!

But they are Linux ports! As to there being none, you didn't look very hard.

Well, we can arrange that for you...but only if you really, really want us to ;)

I take your point, but it seems to depend on context. The major Linux distros, for example, seem to be seeling pretty well from my local PC store at around 30-40 pounds (I'm in the UK), which is a pretty significant fraction of the asking price for Windows XP Home.

Said distros are sold that price for price of the support and documentation that come with them (support you don't have when you buy WXP Home), and sometimes for price of paid softwares bundled in the package, not for the distro itself.

I guess it's all about convenience. Whereas things like Firefox or OpenOffice.org can usually just be downloaded from the project's web site, it's harder to find a "pre-fab" version of SUSE Linux for example.

Ah yeah, really hard, I mean you have to click on links to Novell from suse.de, really really hard walli walli walli

and everyone clearly knows that one can't find any freely downloadable distro on teh intarweb