Slashdot Mirror

http://forums.gentoo.org/

But once you've installed MacOS X, be sure to put Gentoo Portage on it to make it usable!

Hah! I counter your zealotry with my own!

portage also works on Free and Open BSD I believe...

http://www.gentoo.org/

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Please show your support for Ceren in this poll of Geek Babes!

Is it any wonder people think Linux users are a bunch of flaming homosexuals when its fronted by obviously gay losers like these?! BSD has a mascot who leaves us in no doubt that this is the OS for real men! If Linux had more hot chicks and gorgeous babes then maybe it would be able to compete with BSD! Hell this girl should be a model!

Linux is a joke as long as it continues to lack sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she excite you? I know this little hottie puts me in need of a cold shower! This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. As you can see, no man can resist this sexy little minx. Don't you wish the guy in this pic was you? Are you telling me you wouldn't like to get your hands on this ass?! Wouldn't this just make your Christmas?! Yes doctor, this uber babe definitely gets my pulse racing! Oh how I envy the lucky girl in this shot! Linux has nothing that can possibly compete. Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin or a gay looking goat! Wouldn't this be more liklely to influence your choice of OS?

With sexy chicks like the lovely Ceren you could have people queuing up to buy open source products. Could you really refuse to buy a copy of BSD if she told you to? Personally I know I would give my right arm to get this close to such a divine beauty!

Don't be a fag! Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

$Id: ceren.html,v 9.0 2004/08/01 16:01:34 ceren_rocks Exp $

That was my idea initially.

Portaris

If only we did the same with bsd's.

You mean like this ?

Using distc to utilize multiple computers during the compiling process

Excuse me. Its distcc.

Something interesting to look out for, or just more hype from a developer often criticized even by Gentoo people for not looking before he leaps?

No, I don't think so. There's been a installer for Solaris avalible from this self same developer for some time. As this is just an incremental update rather than inventing a whole new wheel I don't think anyone can be seriously worried about him pulling this off.

With Linux you could (if you were really paranoid) do encrypt root http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=191052 and swap http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=279472

With Linux you could (if you were really paranoid) do encrypt root http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=191052 and swap http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=279472

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Please show your support for Ceren in this poll of Geek Babes!

Is it any wonder people think Linux users are a bunch of flaming homosexuals when its fronted by obviously gay losers like these?! BSD has a mascot who leaves us in no doubt that this is the OS for real men! If Linux had more hot chicks and gorgeous babes then maybe it would be able to compete with BSD! Hell this girl should be a model!

Linux is a joke as long as it continues to lack sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she excite you? I know this little hottie puts me in need of a cold shower! This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. As you can see, no man can resist this sexy little minx. Don't you wish the guy in this pic was you? Are you telling me you wouldn't like to get your hands on this ass?! Wouldn't this just make your Christmas?! Yes doctor, this uber babe definitely gets my pulse racing! Oh how I envy the lucky girl in this shot! Linux has nothing that can possibly compete. Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin or a gay looking goat! Wouldn't this be more liklely to influence your choice of OS?

With sexy chicks like the lovely Ceren you could have people queuing up to buy open source products. Could you really refuse to buy a copy of BSD if she told you to? Personally I know I would give my right arm to get this close to such a divine beauty!

Don't be a fag! Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

$Id: ceren.html,v 9.0 2004/08/01 16:01:34 ceren_rocks Exp $

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Please show your support for Ceren in this poll of Geek Babes!

Is it any wonder people think Linux users are a bunch of flaming homosexuals when its fronted by obviously gay losers like these?! BSD has a mascot who leaves us in no doubt that this is the OS for real men! If Linux had more hot chicks and gorgeous babes then maybe it would be able to compete with BSD! Hell this girl should be a model!

Linux is a joke as long as it continues to lack sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she excite you? I know this little hottie puts me in need of a cold shower! This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. As you can see, no man can resist this sexy little minx. Don't you wish the guy in this pic was you? Are you telling me you wouldn't like to get your hands on this ass?! Wouldn't this just make your Christmas?! Yes doctor, this uber babe definitely gets my pulse racing! Oh how I envy the lucky girl in this shot! Linux has nothing that can possibly compete. Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin or a gay looking goat! Wouldn't this be more liklely to influence your choice of OS?

With sexy chicks like the lovely Ceren you could have people queuing up to buy open source products. Could you really refuse to buy a copy of BSD if she told you to? Personally I know I would give my right arm to get this close to such a divine beauty!

Don't be a fag! Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

$Id: ceren.html,v 9.0 2004/08/01 16:01:34 ceren_rocks Exp $

Hey, we're back to this again. Another Mac-related story, another "why don't they port it to my favorite irrelevancy" whine.

Your opinion. The point is that there is at least SOME market for OSX on other architectures (including myself), and that we can recognize good (OSX) and bad (PPC) things when we see them. Feel free to turn a blind eye to how much PPC sucks compared to AMD64, but don't blame us for your ignorance.

You have a very curious definition of "price/performance value." You seem to think that something you get for free that desperately, desperately sucks is better than something wonderful sold for a reasonable price. I think there's a "division by zero" error in your arithmetic somewhere.

I believe he was aggregating the cost of hardware+software. But FWIW, I paid for it, and am glad to have done so.

Um. You see the irony, right? "[Brand] invented [Brand], so [Brand] and I call [Brand] [Brand]."

Way to prove the point.

I'm addressing this last because it is the least relevant issue... look dude, it's just an architecture name. Our operating system happens to call it AMD64, so that is what I choose to call it as well. I actually just read up on the subject and it seems Linus has established "x86-64" as the official kernel name. EMT64 and ia-32e of course are names that _ONLY_ Intel uses, for purely PR reasons.

I do not have brand loyalty to AMD either but I too am definately a fan of the new architecture.

Hey, we're back to this again. Another Mac-related story, another "why don't they port it to my favorite irrelevancy" whine.

Your opinion. The point is that there is at least SOME market for OSX on other architectures (including myself), and that we can recognize good (OSX) and bad (PPC) things when we see them. Feel free to turn a blind eye to how much PPC sucks compared to AMD64, but don't blame us for your ignorance.

You have a very curious definition of "price/performance value." You seem to think that something you get for free that desperately, desperately sucks is better than something wonderful sold for a reasonable price. I think there's a "division by zero" error in your arithmetic somewhere.

I believe he was aggregating the cost of hardware+software. But FWIW, I paid for it, and am glad to have done so.

Um. You see the irony, right? "[Brand] invented [Brand], so [Brand] and I call [Brand] [Brand]."

Way to prove the point.

I'm addressing this last because it is the least relevant issue... look dude, it's just an architecture name. Our operating system happens to call it AMD64, so that is what I choose to call it as well. I actually just read up on the subject and it seems Linus has established "x86-64" as the official kernel name. EMT64 and ia-32e of course are names that _ONLY_ Intel uses, for purely PR reasons.

I do not have brand loyalty to AMD either but I too am definately a fan of the new architecture.

Yup...you can put Gentoo on it...works pretty good...dual book.

It works good for the G3's...I think the newer Powerbooks, especially with airport extreme on them aren't fully supported yet...at least it was iffy a few month ago...

Andrew Cowie makes a pretty darn good argument for using Gentoo in a production environment:

So how does Gentoo stack up in production environments? Here's another surprise for you from the source-based distribution: Portage can be told to build binary packages. This allows you to have one machine over in the corner doing all the compilation work. Then, the packages can be shared and used by all your target machines, instead of them having to build the packages themselves. You might be tempted to say "isn't that what the other Linux distributions do?" The difference is selecting the right mix of packages is a site decision, and the newer version problem definitely is a site burden to deal with. Gentoo gives local systems teams the tools to deal with solving these version issues themselves.

Are there any good WMs which don't have any gtk+ or Qt dependencies?

FVWM

May require some tweaking to look nice. :)

On the plus side, its small, its fast, its common, and its the most tweakable WM outside of sawfish.

Gentoo philosophy

It's a bitch to set up, but there are tons of people willing and able to help on the forums and IRC.

And some enterprising Gentoo users found a way to run Linux on an RS6000. Not supported by IBM, of course.

I might have missed something here but I really don't understand all the fuzz about Linux nowadays. I thought I did back in the days when I had no first hand experience about any Unix variants. After I got familiar with GNU/Linux I realized how messy it was, having to be all the time ready to build a new kernel and reboot. Repeat for every single machine. Shame on the admin that dared to go for a vacation. Anyone who has heard about Murphy must realize those are the most likely days for a brand new vulnerability to be released.

As I sought for alternative I heard that BSDs can do the same things as GNU/Linuxes but without all the hassle. Since no media had ever mentioned a word about them, I though they were only for 24 / 7 hackers and not have the least bit of user-friendliness. But as soon as I heard that FreeBSD is easier to install than Gentoo I gave it a try.

Now, a year later, security hasn't been a reason for even a single boot for the server I set up. This is the first BSD server I've installed and I succeeded in first try. Meanwhile I hear all the time my fellow Linux admins having to suppress their normal use while compiling a new kernel and swearing a lot when having to do this at short notice, which does happen many times a year. Quite a lot of them have now switched to some BSD or are looking forward to switching.

For what I've heard from NetBSD admins, it's quite about the same as FreeBSD but without a menu-based installer and a better alternative for ports, pkgsrc. Luckily pkgsrc is a multi-platform software, being available as source but also as pre-built binaries for many BSD and GNU/Linux distros, including FreeBSD, Debian, OpenBSD, Slackware, Solaris, Darwin and so on.

Since I've found ports being sometimes a bit clumsy and I don't like its principle of "all software being updated as soon as possible" as much as pkgsrc's "software being updated after testing giving updates for many programs at a time", my next Unix variant of choice could be NetBSD or FreeBSD with pkgsrc installed instead of ports.

The big question is, what better do GNU/Linuxes really offer than BSDs? And which of these things could have already been achieved with a larger user and developer base, ie. if all the hype wasn't just about Linux?

He displayed a genuine interest in linux, and I encouraged him to try gentoo (myself already using a ports based "distro"). And later seeing his frustrations, I realized my mistake. I think one of the most important things if you want to get someone on the linux/unix train is documentation. Which is almost there in gentoo, but not quite. The other is: a clear system layout. Debian comes close to it (I might try sarge when it comes out, just to keep my linux skills honed - not long ago I couldn't make usb flash drive work in SuSE, and I felt really embarrassed), but I still didn't know what mplayer.conf does in /etc (or .operarc for that matter).

So my recent method of getting people trying out linux (or freebsd) is to give them a book. I would say: don't touch anything on your computer. Read this or that, and if you are still interested, and enjoyed your reading (because you'll have to do a lot of reading later as well), than you can go on following installation instruction. One important note: never give docs in electronic format. It is easier to grasp the basic concepts if in book form, and (strange as it may sound) without sitting in the front of a puter. And then I would recommend a kind of distro you mentioned: it might be gentoo or debian or slackware, it doesn't really matter (as long as it's not rh or mandrake)

Anyway, for nostalgia's sake, I dug up some of my friend's posts on gentooforums. Note the growing use-flag paranoia (and I refer back to the above post in a post below, just for recursivity's sake. :)

He displayed a genuine interest in linux, and I encouraged him to try gentoo (myself already using a ports based "distro"). And later seeing his frustrations, I realized my mistake. I think one of the most important things if you want to get someone on the linux/unix train is documentation. Which is almost there in gentoo, but not quite. The other is: a clear system layout. Debian comes close to it (I might try sarge when it comes out, just to keep my linux skills honed - not long ago I couldn't make usb flash drive work in SuSE, and I felt really embarrassed), but I still didn't know what mplayer.conf does in /etc (or .operarc for that matter).

So my recent method of getting people trying out linux (or freebsd) is to give them a book. I would say: don't touch anything on your computer. Read this or that, and if you are still interested, and enjoyed your reading (because you'll have to do a lot of reading later as well), than you can go on following installation instruction. One important note: never give docs in electronic format. It is easier to grasp the basic concepts if in book form, and (strange as it may sound) without sitting in the front of a puter. And then I would recommend a kind of distro you mentioned: it might be gentoo or debian or slackware, it doesn't really matter (as long as it's not rh or mandrake)

Anyway, for nostalgia's sake, I dug up some of my friend's posts on gentooforums. Note the growing use-flag paranoia (and I refer back to the above post in a post below, just for recursivity's sake. :)

If you want to put a little more effort into installing a Linux distribution you should try Gentoo. You have to configure much of it yourself but it has bleeding-edge updates (things hit the Portage tree in testing branch almost as soon as the upstream software developers release an update and on most major architectures get moved to stable soon thereafter) and it's generally rock-solid. The only downside is the compilation time because it's a source-based distribution. Gentoo.org

Someone posted that the installer didn't work on his stock debian wine earlier

Only because he didn't install the Installer. It, and most things work fine once you do that. Transgaming/Cedega can go f*&# themselves.

Let me add to this.

In the open source world, DOCUMENTATION IS EVERYTHING.

Think of it this way... in order for an OSS project to be successful it either needs corporate funding OR good documentation in order for the non-academic types to use it and learn to hack it.

In this regard, I consider most of the official GNU projects, perl, and many others to be failures.

PHP has amazingly good documentation. I was able to easily learn PHP only having a basic knowledge of C++ beforehand using only the docs on php.net. They're easy to navigate, pleasant to look at, and readable by NORMAL HUMANS. Now, from what I understand, PHP didn't start out as being much of a superior language to perl, python, asp, and many others... The fact is that php got good because it got popular. Php gor popular because it was easy to use and the docs were top-notch.

Now move on to Gentoo (no. I'm not a gentoo fanboy and do not have any systems currently running it). By all means, the installation process for gentoo is ASTONISHINGLY complicated and difficult --- without proper documentation. The official installation documentation is excellent. It's no wordier than it needs to be, and should be understandable by anyone with a decent amount of experience with windows or mac os. Gentoo's large userbase can easily be credited to its excellent (centralized) documentation and community. In my experience, when I ran into a problem with gentoo, I could find a solution easier than I could with RedHat because the documentation was all in one place, easy to understand, and logically organized. By all means, if gentoo's docs sucked, the project wouldn't exist anymore. Everyone would be scared off. My only gripe was that when I installed it, they gave no warning that it would take about a week on my ancient celron-466. live and learn.

OS X got tons of little freeware/shareware/oss apps once apple got its act together and started offering decent documentation on cocoa. the number of small independent software companies developing for apple has exploded over the past few years thanks to this.

As annoying as it is, the M$ office assistant is actually a nice thing to have. It gives short, concise answers to everyday questions with word and excel. Great for people who don't have much computer knowledge. Although most people like them, I don't like microsoft's developer docs...

now all mozilla needs is decent XUL / devloper documentation. Last time i checked a few months ago, it was virtually non-existant which is a pity, because I think XUL could really take off as an entirely separate entity from mozilla. XUL + Javascript could finally fufill Sun's original dreams for Java to create applications which were small, lightweight, and portable. XUL is to HTML as Applications are to Web Pages (XUL:HTML :: Apps:WebSites) if you catch the drift.

To get an idea of the power of XUL, check out the Mozilla Amazon Browser which is in all ways a faster and easier method for browsing amazon.

Also think of the bandwidth savings! Web applications would no longer have to serve entire pages for each request processed.

*cough* Gentoo *cough*

This HOWTO will have you browsing the web anonymously in a few minutes. (No jokes about "Not unless you have to emerge X and Firefox first!")

It also explains how to get Gaim and other SOCKS enabled network clients to use tor.

He could have used any of those, or all three. I don't see what he's complaining about. If you have a decent package management suite, it runs the checksums for you.

Portage 2.1 to adopt RPM format for LSB compliance

In what will likely prove to be a controversial decision, Portage 2.1 will adopt the RPM format for all packages moving forward. The use of ebuilds will be deprecated in favor of the defacto RPM standard. The primary driver for this decision was to ensure compliance with the Linux Standard Base specification, which mandates RPM support for package management.

The developers have been hard at work to make this migration as easy as possible. Already a proof-of-concept ebuild2rpm script is in place and being tested by a pilot group of developers. Unfortunately, because of the architectural differences between the two formats, some features will not be supported once Gentoo moves to RPM. USE variables are one such feature; sandbox security is another. However, the added benefit brought about by full LSB compliance should far outweigh the loss of these two minor features.

Additionally, because of LSB's required library support, the xfree86 package will move to become part of the base Gentoo Linux system, rather than an optional addition. Users interested in learning more about the Linux Standard Base should read the LSB FAQ or the full LSB 1.3 specification.

Note: This is an April Fool's joke.

The differences between Linux distros are what make Linux a vibrant community and drive innovation. I hope the LSB project fails miserably to remove those differences.

A single web site with all the programs I want to download sounds ideal.

Looking for computer programs? This is your web site, provided that Linux supports your hardware. If not, Windows ports of many Free apps exist.

Or are you looking for TV programs? In that case, trust me, you don't want to be programmed by your TV.

Set up an IMAP server.

Get a cheap PC, Courier IMAP, fetchmail, and postfix. Follow the directions on either the main Gentoo install pages or the email howto in the Gentoo forums. (The forums are down right now, so the only link I have is to the end of the current discussion: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?p=1884811#1 884811)

I was able to do this, so it can't be that complicated.

Not sure if this will help, but there is a way to set up a "Compose" or "multi_key" in X, that can get you some of these characters. To get you started:
Gentoo tips and tricks.

I second this. Taking experiences I've had...

To install and use FreeBSD without knowing anything was not a big problem. If I didn't know how to do something, I had the handbook (like the the other poster said, excellent) and many other well-written documents. Here is one example of the sort of document which is common:

http://www.schlacter.net/public/FreeBSD-STABLE_and _IPFILTER.html

When I installed Gentoo and tried to use it, it was not nearly as obvious what to do when I wanted. Again, compare these two:

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/index.xml
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/h andbook/

One is an excellent, structured document.

The first link under Gentoo's "other documentation" is "check out our source code using CVS!" - why the hell would anyone want to look at source code if real documentation existed?

Anyway, yes, there are other linux distributions than Gentoo. That actually intensifies the problem, since (for example) setting up NFS is a different procedure on Fedora Core, Gentoo, etc. etc., with different defaults, .....

The "chaos" development model isn't totally bad. It allows Linux to evolve extremely quickly. But at the end of the day, I want a computer which is easy to use. Figuring out how to use it is part of that.

And don't even get me started on binary compatibility. Under BSD you can run binaries compiled years ago, unmodified, using compatibility libraries. Why no linux distributions do this is beyond me, but it's another example of programmers saying "It's not that hard to work around, so it's not broken. We only change core libraries every couple years anyway, you shouldn't use two-year old software that you can't recompile"

End rant.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Please show your support for Ceren in this poll of Geek Babes!

Is it any wonder people think Linux users are a bunch of flaming homosexuals when its fronted by obviously gay losers like these?! BSD has a mascot who leaves us in no doubt that this is the OS for real men! If Linux had more hot chicks and gorgeous babes then maybe it would be able to compete with BSD! Hell this girl should be a model!

Linux is a joke as long as it continues to lack sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she excite you? I know this little hottie puts me in need of a cold shower! This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. As you can see, no man can resist this sexy little minx. Don't you wish the guy in this pic was you? Are you telling me you wouldn't like to get your hands on this ass?! Wouldn't this just make your Christmas?! Yes doctor, this uber babe definitely gets my pulse racing! Oh how I envy the lucky girl in this shot! Linux has nothing that can possibly compete. Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin or a gay looking goat! Wouldn't this be more liklely to influence your choice of OS?

With sexy chicks like the lovely Ceren you could have people queuing up to buy open source products. Could you really refuse to buy a copy of BSD if she told you to? Personally I know I would give my right arm to get this close to such a divine beauty!

Don't be a fag! Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

$Id: ceren.html,v 9.0 2004/08/01 16:01:34 ceren_rocks Exp $

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Please show your support for Ceren in this poll of Geek Babes!

Is it any wonder people think Linux users are a bunch of flaming homosexuals when its fronted by obviously gay losers like these?! BSD has a mascot who leaves us in no doubt that this is the OS for real men! If Linux had more hot chicks and gorgeous babes then maybe it would be able to compete with BSD! Hell this girl should be a model!

Linux is a joke as long as it continues to lack sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she excite you? I know this little hottie puts me in need of a cold shower! This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. As you can see, no man can resist this sexy little minx. Don't you wish the guy in this pic was you? Are you telling me you wouldn't like to get your hands on this ass?! Wouldn't this just make your Christmas?! Yes doctor, this uber babe definitely gets my pulse racing! Oh how I envy the lucky girl in this shot! Linux has nothing that can possibly compete. Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin or a gay looking goat! Wouldn't this be more liklely to influence your choice of OS?

With sexy chicks like the lovely Ceren you could have people queuing up to buy open source products. Could you really refuse to buy a copy of BSD if she told you to? Personally I know I would give my right arm to get this close to such a divine beauty!

Don't be a fag! Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

$Id: ceren.html,v 9.0 2004/08/01 16:01:34 ceren_rocks Exp $

Granted, I made this patch just for you: Go here for the patch

You can see the charts that I created for parallel startup here in comment #19. You can find there other things I have done to improve gentoo boot time. and an ebuild for bootchart. Enjoy.

Granted, I made this patch just for you: Go here for the patch

You can see the charts that I created for parallel startup here in comment #19. You can find there other things I have done to improve gentoo boot time. and an ebuild for bootchart. Enjoy.

Gentoo has RC_PARALLEL_STARTUP, but is not very parallel. At any given time, there is only one task running or two tasks and a busy wait. I have written a trully parallel startup patch for gentoo. Go here for the patch

You can see the charts that I created comparing RC_PARALLEL_STARTUP to my parallel startup here in comment #19. You can find there other things I have done to improve gentoo boot time. and an ebuild for bootchart.

Gentoo has RC_PARALLEL_STARTUP, but is not very parallel. At any given time, there is only one task running or two tasks and a busy wait. I have written a trully parallel startup patch for gentoo. Go here for the patch

You can see the charts that I created comparing RC_PARALLEL_STARTUP to my parallel startup here in comment #19. You can find there other things I have done to improve gentoo boot time. and an ebuild for bootchart.

No. RC_PARALLEL_STARTUP is not very parallel. At any given time, there is only one task running or two tasks and a busy wait. I have written a trully parallel startup patch for gentoo. Go here for the patch

You can see the charts that I created comparing RC_PARALLEL_STARTUP to my parallel startup here in comment #19. You can find there other things I have done to improve gentoo boot time. and an ebuild for bootchart.

No. RC_PARALLEL_STARTUP is not very parallel. At any given time, there is only one task running or two tasks and a busy wait. I have written a trully parallel startup patch for gentoo. Go here for the patch

You can see the charts that I created comparing RC_PARALLEL_STARTUP to my parallel startup here in comment #19. You can find there other things I have done to improve gentoo boot time. and an ebuild for bootchart.

I already did this and some other things. go here for the patch

I also ported bootchart to gentoo

If you want to see some charts and other things I have done to improve gentoo boot time, and look for comment #19

I already did this and some other things. go here for the patch

I also ported bootchart to gentoo

If you want to see some charts and other things I have done to improve gentoo boot time, and look for comment #19

I already did this and some other things. go here for the patch

I also ported bootchart to gentoo

If you want to see some charts and other things I have done to improve gentoo boot time, and look for comment #19

Before you hype SDL too much for hardware acceleration, you should check out this thread.

I'm looking at trying THIS Install ...

I'm reading up now on the net-boot procedure and setup as that is new to me, and my Indy's doing have any floppy/CD with them...

The Internet (specifically WWW) in its current form did not exist before advertising. To think that the Internet today can continue without ads based on some magical elf business model is simply absurd. Everyone says "Well they'll just have to find a new business model," but no one has any suggestions.

How the *%^& did this get modded as insightful?

The internet was born before advertising, and it was pretty bloody useful too, probably more useful than the cluttered space it has become.

Almost every large company on the web is selling something - that's how they make their money. If they're not selling something, then they use the web to place pre- or post-sales information: specs, drivers, downloads and so on. Using the web is much cheaper than manning a telephone helpline and sending out paper copies.

OK, There are some useful places on the web that may be funded by ad. revenue - places like Google, Google Groups and Yahoo Groups. To be honest, I'd pay a _small_ fee for search engines and archives (I'd pay a *lot* for a Cable TV service without adverts too, by the way.)

But personally, I think that the web is too clutered with far too many crappy blogs, geocities pages, band fan pages, lyrics pages, guitar tabs pages, and so on. If these people had to pay for their web space, there would be a dramatic reduction in this crappy content.

People who want to be heard, like Gentoo, Wikipedia and Apache already fund their rather large bandwidth and hosting needs through donations and such like.

Gentoo has already considered this problem as it affects the Portage system (two months ago, no less). Portage distfiles are only validated by md5 sums (no gpg signing yet, though it's being worked on) so this could be a serious problem at some point.

Check the bug reports for ebuild requests.

And no, I've yet to figure out the logic there, myself. :)

Here's some linkage to an RC1 ebuild:
http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=73096