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Linux advocate- Hello, I'm from RedHat Inc.
Law maker- Who?

Linux advocate- Hello, I'm from the Linux Industry Consortium. Our members include IBM, HP, Sun and RedHat.
Law maker- Hello. Pleased to meet you. Would you like a coffee?

Such a group would be able to excert pressure in other areas. For example, whilst Andre Hedrik's effort in the IDE standards committee are greatly appreciated, he has himself said that his influence is limited since he is just a lone consultant and can't officialy represent Linux.

I agree that creating such a body is going to produce numerous problems such as keeping it small enough to be responsive whilst not excluding people who feel they should be represented, and defining its role closely enough to prevent it from influencing things like kernel development. I also accept that we already have groups like FSF and Linux International, but if RedHat are having to go and lobby lawmakers then these groups clearly don't have the required clout. Obviously they could be members of the "Linux Industry Consortium" (I am sure we could find a better name).

From the cronjobs reporting to the Linux Counter:

2.4 - 110 out of 422, 26.1%
2.4.4 - 2 out of 422, 0.5%

Watch this space.

Great ... now half of America will stop and think ... Linux? Is that some kind of new Microsoft software? I am still surprised that some people don't know that you can have a PC with a non-M$ OS on it

Go and see the summary counts on the Linux counter and you will notice that Linux is not very widespread in the US (no. 24) as compared to, say, the Scandinavian countries (nos. 1-6).

// Klaus
--

Great ... now half of America will stop and think ... Linux? Is that some kind of new Microsoft software? I am still surprised that some people don't know that you can have a PC with a non-M$ OS on it

Go and see the summary counts on the Linux counter and you will notice that Linux is not very widespread in the US (no. 24) as compared to, say, the Scandinavian countries (nos. 1-6).

// Klaus
--

Huh? Check this Linux Counter Estimate first next time.

Looks like they're referring to the Linux Counter project:Here's his record.
Regards,

Looks like they're referring to the Linux Counter project:Here's his record.
Regards,

It's interesting to see how there's a lot of speculation aroud Linux, with not a lot of basis in fact. For instance, could anyone tell me how many people actively contribute to the parts that Mr. DeRaadt mentioned? His guess is as good as any.

More interesting are the fairly outlandish estimations. Look at the Linux Counter 162,506 users registered, and a guess of sixteen million Linux users total. Where are they all hiding? Only 1% have registered? What makes you say that?

It's the same in a lot of the open source world; speculation gets you nowhere. Let's look at what we can quantitvely measure, such as downloads and registered users, and end the guessing games.

Numbers of developers are meaningless: all that matters is the total quality of the development process.

As Treasurer of the Bucknell University ACM (Association for Computing Machinery), myself and the other officers help to persuade industry, faculty, and students computer experts or evangelists to (of OOP, OSS, Linux, etc) come to Bucknell to give a presentation. In the past year or so, we've had guests like Dan Quinlan of Transmeta, speaking on the Linux Standards Base, Ralph Droms (inventor of DHCP), a faculty member at Bucknell, John 'Maddog' Hall (Linux International executive director) on the Flexibility of the Linux OS, and many others. Currently, Eric S. Raymond has added us to his mailing list and will probably come Spring semester to talk about his ideals and beliefs when it comes to software.

What are our methods of obtaining guests? First, it helps to have some connections with someone related to the person you'd like a have speak at your school. Second, being at a top-notch college like Bucknell University tends to give some incentive, perhaps, for people to visit. Finally, persistance does pay off occassionally; if there's someone you really want, make sure you remind them via email or vmail every so often that you'd be absolutely delighted to have them grace you with their presence ;-D

Good luck!

As Treasurer of the Bucknell University ACM (Association for Computing Machinery), myself and the other officers help to persuade industry, faculty, and students computer experts or evangelists to (of OOP, OSS, Linux, etc) come to Bucknell to give a presentation. In the past year or so, we've had guests like Dan Quinlan of Transmeta, speaking on the Linux Standards Base, Ralph Droms (inventor of DHCP), a faculty member at Bucknell, John 'Maddog' Hall (Linux International executive director) on the Flexibility of the Linux OS, and many others. Currently, Eric S. Raymond has added us to his mailing list and will probably come Spring semester to talk about his ideals and beliefs when it comes to software.

What are our methods of obtaining guests? First, it helps to have some connections with someone related to the person you'd like a have speak at your school. Second, being at a top-notch college like Bucknell University tends to give some incentive, perhaps, for people to visit. Finally, persistance does pay off occassionally; if there's someone you really want, make sure you remind them via email or vmail every so often that you'd be absolutely delighted to have them grace you with their presence ;-D

Good luck!

"(In defense of Linus Torvalds, he wasn't trying to build a consumer OS, he was trying to create a freely available Unix-like kernel in the spirit....)"

Well, hello!

A whole heck of a lot of people have been critiqueing (sp?) Linux as though it set out from the start intending to become a world-dominant, Micro$oft killer OS.

And then they slam Linux 'cause they think it's doing a poor job of it.

But nothing of the sort is even faintly true.

Read this -- if you've read it before, read it again; if you've never read it, read it and then spend some time thinking about what it means in terms of the underlying core (kernel?) of Linux.

Linux came from a place entirely different than that which most recent supporters and critics of Linux think it did: it's only relatively recently, and as a complete digression to the original purpose, that "world domination" (even if Linus himself uses the phrase..) and IPO's and all the recent shit that's been going down have been artifically overlayed atop the real soul of Linux as an OS. Most of the recent shit that's been going down is utterly irrelevant to the way most of us use Linux, I'd bet...

So: Lewis.

He's a Mac fanatic.

Fine. I have no problem with that.

But he's comparing apples and oranges.

"Interestingly, the number one problems with Linux, from a consumer perspective, are that it doesn't have a standardised UI; its tools are simply too difficult to use and configure, and it requires far too much upfront learning to get up to speed.

Who ever said it was going to have a standardized UI? Many would say that that's exactly contrary to what the concept is: you don't have to take what comes out of the box.

"The last is the most telling: the Linux model moves the cost of learning from the developer to the user."

Again, Hello! Earth to Lewis! That's the way it's really been all along! You have to be willing to learn something, and to think, to use Linux.

And no matter what the marketing droids do, that will continue to be Linux's greatest strength.

t_t_b
--
I think not; therefore I ain't

According to the Linux Counter, Korea has registered 4.529 Linux Users - this in spite of them having to go to an English-language site to register.
And unlike the US, registrations are growing by more than 100% per year. (the US showed only 33% growth last year. Not much!)

According to the Linux counter Slackware is used by 28% of the Linux users.
Slackware asks to register in one of start-up e-mails, but it is still a big market share.

At this point there are 76148 machines registered; one of these could increase this number by 50%!

I didn't know that trolls were allowed to post on ZDnet....it's fascinating. I think this opens up whole new vistas for /.-tters. Now all they have to do is let OOG put a column there, and their journey to the dark side is complete....oh wait....OOG has something intelligent to say, most of the time....that would be out of character...

On to the article....
It's a dot-com-all hype and speculation and no fundamentals
Define "fundamental" You mean something like a stupid "mission statement"? Clearly the GNU's Not That! Do you mean it has no vision? Clearly Linus doesn't, and hasn't known what he was doing for a while. Somehow 143,445 registered users (and roughly 14 million unregistered ones) are running on said "hype". (Come on, people! Slashdot http://counter.li.org!) But anyway.

The most important part of the browser is not it's unique blue interface. It's AOLS's obvious attempt to tie the browser to a bunch of for-profit proprietary services
Since when is product-placement and advertising the most important part of *anything*? Clearly, such advertising belongs to the mysterious "fundamentals" that we've already mentioned.

...which may have tired of paying programmers to produce stuff that doesn't matter much anymore
Hmm....so Netscape doesn't "matter much anymore"? And what, pray tell, matters now? The Internet Explorer. Last time I checked, it crashed if you attempted to look up the word "stability" on dictionary.com. You mean Mozilla still has bugs? So does every *released* Microsoft product. But this was already mentioned.

....they're very much down to earth right now. This means that they'll quickly have to expand beyond valuations centered on Linux.
Uhm...the stock market took a dive not too long ago? Have you heard? But beyond that, just because the company's market value isn't over 200, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's doing something wrong. That may actually *be* the company's market price, instead of being horribly out of proportion to the company's actual worth, e.g. amazon.com. Furthermore, Linux is an OS - Not a specific type of service (e.g. making microwaves). The point of buying other companies may be to increase the base of programs that work on Linux. Or just good-ol' market capitalism. Most large corporations own subsidiaries that have nothing to do with their primary fields. (Specifics escape me at the moment, but I know that one conglomerate owns a tire company, oilfields, a car line, perfume, software, etc. This is done to prevent the conglomerate's failure through being *too specific*)

...open source is not geared to create but to critique. It's best at tearing apart the establishment because it consists of underappreciated programmers who suddenly have a vote. Read: Open Source is not geared to create but to critique (us). It's best at tearing apart the establishment (I got passed up for promotion to VP because I didn't see Linux's potential) because it consists of underappreciated programmers who suddenly have a vote (But not to worry, we'll have them back chained to their desks with whips cracking soon)
Basically, John is reliving IBM's heroic past as the Evil Empire. He's pissed cause Microsoft stole the title. Otherwise, the comment is so purely assinine that it doesn't merit further bashing.

Put up some goods or your establishment will be ripped apart, too [like ours was]
See, what'd I tell you? John must be forgetting the heady days of OS/2's success. Wait...what success?

Are you an open-source advocate or do you just not care? Let me know in the talkback below
Actually, the whole thing is more like a flame than a troll - the troll is clever and catches suckers. A flame is just stupid, powerless bashing, and this one more so, because it begs a responce.
Personally, if I was one of the execs at IBM, I'd fire this guy. For being an uninformed, partisaned bigot, who's become an embarassment to the company. Or simply for being a stupid ass, it doesn't matter which.


error - sigfault. Witticism dumped.

I do not belive that mainframes will die anytime soon. I actually hope and predict that they will be around for a long time.
I have said for 18 years now that we must use the right technology for each system. As much as that may hurt some /.-ers, the right thing is not always Linux. (don't get me wrong, I am a registred Linux user Linux Counter)
Mainframes and their OS is extremely good at processing enormous volumes of data and transactions. They are real bad at interactive processing and should not do that. Linux is one flavour of the very good Unix system that is excellent for servers and power workstations. With the introduction of Linux, Unix will be accessible to the "common user", there is a bit left but it will be there Real Soon Now (tm).
I have seen to many projects becoming disasters because of using the wrong technologies. Let's stop the bickering and try to collectively use computer technology wisely.

I think you missed the point. There are computers in Africa, believe it or not. It's not entirely unpopulated. S. Africa for example. They feel the same pressures over there regarding this issue, I would imagine. Enough to create the need for open source, apparently.

I would agree. &nbsp South Africa is considered by the WTO and most of the world as being a fully industrized (not developing) country (eg., they have nuclear power, nuclear weapons, etc.), no different than most European countries.&nbsp I would expect that majority of the use of Linux would occur there first and spread via the OAU to major cities in places like Zimbawe, Egypt, Ghana, Nigeria, and Senegal, Ethiopia,and Kenya. &nbsp For example, TUCOWS (a major Linux distributor), has locations in South Africa, Zimbawe, Ivory Coast, Mozambique, Kenya, and Egypt. &nbsp And if you go to this link, you will note that there are *9* South African Linux Users groups listed and here you will see that there are 4 LUGs in Egypt. &nbsp There are Linux references (link and "counter") for Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Togo, et. al. &nbsp I also expect that they are also already big users of the *BSDs right now.

Note that with many of those countries, you have 2 classes - the very wealthy, who have access to everything including the net, and the poor. &nbsp The continent is not what Hollywood or the National Geographic has portrayed it as being. &nbsp Once the colonial puppets are finally booted out and the continent stablizes a bit, you'll have a near 1 billion person potential market there, and a number of large businesses have already considered this fact and are opening up shop there.

I think you missed the point. There are computers in Africa, believe it or not. It's not entirely unpopulated. S. Africa for example. They feel the same pressures over there regarding this issue, I would imagine. Enough to create the need for open source, apparently.

I would agree. &nbsp South Africa is considered by the WTO and most of the world as being a fully industrized (not developing) country (eg., they have nuclear power, nuclear weapons, etc.), no different than most European countries.&nbsp I would expect that majority of the use of Linux would occur there first and spread via the OAU to major cities in places like Zimbawe, Egypt, Ghana, Nigeria, and Senegal, Ethiopia,and Kenya. &nbsp For example, TUCOWS (a major Linux distributor), has locations in South Africa, Zimbawe, Ivory Coast, Mozambique, Kenya, and Egypt. &nbsp And if you go to this link, you will note that there are *9* South African Linux Users groups listed and here you will see that there are 4 LUGs in Egypt. &nbsp There are Linux references (link and "counter") for Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Togo, et. al. &nbsp I also expect that they are also already big users of the *BSDs right now.

Note that with many of those countries, you have 2 classes - the very wealthy, who have access to everything including the net, and the poor. &nbsp The continent is not what Hollywood or the National Geographic has portrayed it as being. &nbsp Once the colonial puppets are finally booted out and the continent stablizes a bit, you'll have a near 1 billion person potential market there, and a number of large businesses have already considered this fact and are opening up shop there.

I think you missed the point. There are computers in Africa, believe it or not. It's not entirely unpopulated. S. Africa for example. They feel the same pressures over there regarding this issue, I would imagine. Enough to create the need for open source, apparently.

I would agree. &nbsp South Africa is considered by the WTO and most of the world as being a fully industrized (not developing) country (eg., they have nuclear power, nuclear weapons, etc.), no different than most European countries.&nbsp I would expect that majority of the use of Linux would occur there first and spread via the OAU to major cities in places like Zimbawe, Egypt, Ghana, Nigeria, and Senegal, Ethiopia,and Kenya. &nbsp For example, TUCOWS (a major Linux distributor), has locations in South Africa, Zimbawe, Ivory Coast, Mozambique, Kenya, and Egypt. &nbsp And if you go to this link, you will note that there are *9* South African Linux Users groups listed and here you will see that there are 4 LUGs in Egypt. &nbsp There are Linux references (link and "counter") for Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, Togo, et. al. &nbsp I also expect that they are also already big users of the *BSDs right now.

Note that with many of those countries, you have 2 classes - the very wealthy, who have access to everything including the net, and the poor. &nbsp The continent is not what Hollywood or the National Geographic has portrayed it as being. &nbsp Once the colonial puppets are finally booted out and the continent stablizes a bit, you'll have a near 1 billion person potential market there, and a number of large businesses have already considered this fact and are opening up shop there.

• Linux Internationalisation Initiative
• Linux i18n Project, which is at least loosely affiliated with Mandrake since one of their employees is the contact for the project
• Free Mulitilingual Platforms
• Gnome and KDE have also both been actively pursuing internationalization

Strictly speaking, 10 years is impossible though. Linus started working on The Thing in the spring of 1991, and first publicly announced something on July 5, 1991. See http://li.org/li/linuxhistory.shtml for more details.

--

Shortly after I had installed my SLS Linux ("Soft Landing
System"), I found a place where someone was
counting people running Linux.

Those numbers I found at this place called Linux Counter
gave me confidence and showed me, that I was not
alone.

From time to time I came back to look at the
numbers and the charts and the rising curves made
me laugh and fuled my wildest dreams about an
operating system that (n)ever was....

Harald T. Alvestrand is my unsung hero.
His Linux Counter provides an silent yet important
service for Linuxers since 1992 over all these years now.

He stands IMHO for all those other unsung heros,
who love the idea behind "free" software and have
contributed their share to its success.

Im therefore nominating this guy behind
the Linux Counter for /.s Unsung Hero Award.

The Linux Counter was only briefly affected by the change of the millenium, seeing a slowdown in traffic between the hours of 05:00 GMT and 10:00 GMT.
See the traffic statistics for details.
Geeks are a faithful bunch.....

The Linux Counter was only briefly affected by the change of the millenium, seeing a slowdown in traffic between the hours of 05:00 GMT and 10:00 GMT.
See the traffic statistics for details.
Geeks are a faithful bunch.....

The short story on the nickname is here.

• LinuxOne's GPL violation status:
• • They acknowledge the requirement to provide a written offer in the README on the CDROM
  • They acknowledge the problem when contacted by phone
  • They have failed to follow through on providing the source code on their FTP site
• Caldera has distributed OpenLinux Demo CDs without source code or a written offer of source code.
• • The CDROM README file does no discuss the availablity of the source code at all
  • Caldera refuses to respond to email on the subject
  • Caldera refuses to address the problem when contacted by phone stating a policy of requiring software authors to contact the Caldera contact assigned to them at the time Caldera choose to redistribute their software (however, Caldera has not assigned contacts to GPL authors, only to companies authoring commerical licensed software). They have refused to acknowledge that there is any problem.
• Linux Systems Labs in their product titles implies that entire CDs are covered by the GPL when in actuality the CD conatins several packages that are not covered by the GPL (this act is described as a GPL violation by the Free Software Foundation)
• Linux Central when a binary only CD is ordered does not supply any written offer of source code availablity
• Cheap Bytes when a binary only CD is ordered does not supply any written offer of source code availablity
• IBM has been in violation of the LGPL for over 400 days since the time they have distributed unsupported ADSM for Linux. To date, they still have not made the object files for ADSM available for accomplishing relinking against modified versions of the LGPL material. There is every reason to believe that IBM will remain in violation of the LGPL throughout the entire 1999 year.

Linux International been heavily involved in helping to protect Linux, yes? I recall that being a major point of maddog's talk at AUUG'99.

The two-days-later surge would have been easily explained if he had looked at a referer log.

It's the time when the story hits the top of the "older stories" list.

Harald, counter.li.org slashdot victim/beneficary

I can only offer you a lowest estimate of the yearly growth - according to the "linux-counter" it is more than 60%. All other estimates give much higher growth rates.

My best guess is that less than 1% and more than 0.5% of the linux users register with the "linux counter"- that would be 12-24 Milions of the linux users today. You can download my graph showing the linux-counter growth together with RH-estimates here

Well, I know absolute numbers proof nothing (I mean, look at the /. polls *grin*), but I do find it interesting that Linux seems to be a largely Europaen affair.
You can't really compare those numbers, but take a look at these stats instead, they're corrected for population size. (There are countries the size of L.A. in Europe.. :-)

Slashdot is VERY good at finding out where the bugs are - this was a kernel bug, I think.

i just installed linux the other day on an old 486 to crash around with, then i read this article, how apropriate. Anyways, speaking of slashdot finding the bugs, the graphs are kinda creepy following the posting of the article, exponetial(sp?) growth almost :)


--- installing slack with floppies which have a 50% fail rate != fun

It just occurred to me to check out my own registration; I was number 109251 when I registered on 24th February this year. According to the pretty graph, 110000 was reached in (approximately) July/august.
And if linux is taking off geometically as the graph here would seem to suggest, then there should have been considerably more than 10,000 in the last six months.
IANA statistician, but something looks dodgy. I'm not implying that microsoftian tactics were used, but it does seem a little sloppy; elucidation would be appreciated from anyone who's involved.

Point of fact: Sun has been a member of Linux International for at least 3 years (probably longer, but I remember them being a member then), so to characterize them as a "Johnny-come-lately" is debatable.

Now, Sun's latest acts of releasing Solaris source and Star Office source do probably qualify as open source(tm) bandwagon...


--

Star Office should be viewed as an 'intermediate' step - a usable, temporary solution until a more suitable true, GPL'ed Office suite is available.
There are some good starting points AbiWord and Gnumeric spring to mind. Thing is, it doesn't seem that most folk need all that software anyway - it seems they've been 'convinced' that they need it.
Yes, it is too early to speculate what (if any) changes Sun will make to Star's availability/terms of use, so we should wait and see. However, at a minimum (for me to use it on my home linux box anyway), the licensing must be compliant with the Open Source Definition. Sun doesn't like Linux - their membership in Linux International seems to be just to sell hardware. They want you to use Solaris, and pay them for their compilers and development licenses.

Of the 60 machines that are auto-updating the Linux Counter, more than half (37) currently run 2.0 kernels.

http://counter.li.org/scripts/ for the script. The info isn't visible yet, unfortunately.

The world is slowing down.

As a registered member of the community, I thought I'd take a few shots at the MS "challenge."

First, in the sloppy writing department:

The Linux community has asked Mindcraft:

• To configure and tune the servers themselves.
• To be present to ensure that the tests weren't rigged.

...

Well, uh, no: the consesnus is that when Mindcraft configures and tunes the servers (or not, as the case may be...), things go badly for Linux. Feelings on the second point seem to be the same.

What MS mean to write, of course, is that Linux people want to configure, tune, and be present. I'm sure that the sloppy writing isn't intended to muddle the issue, since it's sort of clarified a paragraph or two down.

Looking at their comparison chart, I note that they claim Windows has turned in the "best" scores on some benchmarks, while also noting that no Linux results exist. Winner by default, I guess?

On Linux, it's "easy to gain root access...". But, they say, on NT:

System services run in a secure context providing higher levels of security for multi-user services

Does that mean that this exploit no longer works?

Here's a nearly incomprehensible complaint about Linux:

Low degree of integration increases costs and technical risk

Melissa shows what costs and technical risks come with "integrating" stuff to the extent that MS wants to, but I'm not entirely sure what they mean by the word in this context.

In the damning faint praise department, MS graciously admits that there are "hundreds" of applications available for Linux. Call me crazy, but Unix is, er, "several years" old -- I'm pretty sure there are more than hundreds of useful programs available (whether they're "applications" or not is not terribly relevant, if you ask me). Even if there are only hundreds, well, a comparison of quality, rather than quantity, would be more telling, I think.

Another Linux failing, they say:

No formalized field training

I'm sure I don't know what that means. Organizations like The Learning Tree have Linux courses, and there have been a couple of certification programs announced (if inchoate).

More Linux evil:

Need highly trained system administrators - usually require developer-level skills

Or, you could just give the job to some random person and let him/her peruse the manuals. Things wouldn't turn out any worse than they would if the person were told to run NT instead. The fact is that a Gooey WimpyWYG PointyClick screen doesn't change the fact that administering a computer well (let alone a network) requires skill, intelligence, dedication, and plenty of learning. No "Wizard" will get around this fact.

Administrators are required to re-link and reload kernel to add features to OS.

Uh, well, maybe. But you do have to "install service packs" on NT, which comes to the same thing in the end -- downtime while the admin does something that, if it doesn't work, will result in Bad Things happening until it gets straightened out.

Most configuration settings require editing of text-based files

Oddly enough, they forget the corresponding item on the NT side: "Most config. settings require editing of binary files." Or, rather, one (the Registry), and if you screw it over, God help you. At least the OS keeps a couple of backups by default.

Here's one of their Big Awesome NT Features:

Scriptable administration for automated local and remote management

Unix is Home of the Script. That's all I have to say about that.

NT feature:

OS services and applications designed to integrated and work together

Melissa. Not all rosy.

Linux liability:

End users forced to integrate...

Nope, I'd say MS is the master of forcing people to integrate. (Yes, that was an out-of-context quotation followed by a cheap shot).

NT feature:

Over $2 Billion in R&D spending by Microsoft...

And you know who's paying for that -- look at the prices of their OS and applications (particularly the proposed prices for the various Office 2000 flavours).

And then they sum up. It's crapola in the best tradition of election campaigns, such as the one I'm currently enduring here in Ontario. Some highlights:

Although the Linux community is focusing on the messenger and not the message...

Well, when you notice that the messenger is full of shit, you don't tend to pay much heed to what's being said, now do you? The test was flawed (arguably fatally), so there's little point considering the results.

Now it's time for the Linux community to demonstrate the real performance and scalability capabilities of Linux, or withdraw their criticisms of the initial Mindcraft report.

No, Beavis, it's not. Even if no Linux person steps forward with brilliant test results in response to this "challenge," the fact remains that the original tests (and thus the original report) deserve the criticism they've received. This statement is about as valid as an assertion that since we have trouble treating cancer, we musn't go around saying how bad it is.

Well, according to The Linux Counter Slackware is used by the most poeple.

We all know the call to arms that got the Linux
ball roleing, but have you all read this set of
postings in the erly days of Linux ?

I.e. Linus had a .plan and asked to be fingerd.
( Get your mind out of the gutter AC :).

It's all here