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https://www.linux-foundation.org/en/2007ClientSurvey link to the survey?

For those who would like to take the survey, here's a link. https://www.linux-foundation.org/en/2007ClientSurvey ---Alex

Current results

The results say the current number of respondents is 10941 (and counting). Where did the figure of 20,000 come from?

Current results

The results say the current number of respondents is 10941 (and counting). Where did the figure of 20,000 come from?

Wrong link. http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/Main_Page is the correct one

Update the link in the original front page post.

http://www.linuxfoundation.org/ is NOT http://www.linux-foundation.org/

The first is just a traffic collector page.

The Linux Foundation mentioned in the story is at
http://www.linux-foundation.org/

Thats where you will find the article/survey.

Update the link in the original front page post.

http://www.linuxfoundation.org/ is NOT http://www.linux-foundation.org/

The first is just a traffic collector page.

The Linux Foundation mentioned in the story is at
http://www.linux-foundation.org/

Thats where you will find the article/survey.

> True, but the routers and repeaters on the backbone have buses don't they?

The 750hp 2.4L V8 engine in an F1 car produces about 3-4x the amount of power of a production car engine of the same displacement, but you don't see even high-end mfrs like Porsche putting that sort of thing in street cars (for reasons I hope I don't need to explain).

The data plane in high-end routers have custom-designed switch fabrics, which technically are not buses and operate in a different (more scalable) fashion. The wiki article is actually on fibre channel, but the concept is the same. Cost alone precludes use of such components in PC hardware, not to mention various other factors.

That said, PCI Express is pretty damn nice when you start talking performance vs. cost (both per $ and per watt) when the number of high-bandwidth devices on the bus is low, and the existing plethora of 8 & 16 lane devices & motherboards and the potential to scale to 32 lanes (64gbit/sec) in the future mean that the bus in a modern COTS PC is not the bottleneck in high-performance networking on such hardware. The two things that are:

  - The ability of the operating system & host processor to handle the load offered by the networking stack at such speeds. Mitigated by techniques such as TOE and interrupt mitigation & hardware polling. Done in hardware, getting cheaper, widespread implementation in common NICs not there or crappy (ahem, Realtek).

  - The bandwidth to the user's machine, which is what TFA is about...

See the compatibility list. Some are fully supported (like Brother) and some not at all (like QMS). I had no problems with the Canon ink jet that I had. I use Epson now.

The driver availability problem could very well be overstated when it applies to kernel space drivers.

Indeed it could. And if then if that's what they'd communicate, I'm perfectly fine with it. But instead, they talk is of "drivers", and then whenever someone says "look at all the user space problems" they add "yes, but we don't do that and don't want to". Again, it's their right not to want to, but then they should (learn) to communicate that accurately and clearly from the start without extrapolating claims to areas they don't cover anyway. Communication skills are important, even for geeky kernel insiders (like I once was).

And how do you know they don't? (the kernel developers that is)Another advantage of open source is that the coders can go where they are needed. So if there isn't any kernel drivers needed right now, they can go do something else instead of sitting around waiting for something to do. Like perhaps http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/OpenPrinting [linux-foundation.org]

Thanks for making my exact point! :-)

I don't know what he is basing this crap on, like that Linus thinks Linux shouldn't go mainstream. Linus works for the Linux foundation that "promotes, protects and standardizes Linux by providing unified resources and services needed for open source to successfully compete with closed platforms."

Next article, please.

Yes, of course, "everyone" knows it is true. I'd like, just once, even one example of this.

Yes and I would like, just once, an example of the common myth that water is wet.

Yet, I am loathe to let you wallow in your ignorance, so I've done a quick search for you. I follow gnome development only from a distance, so I'm sure I've missed a lot here.

The menu editor, removed somewhere in the 2.x cycle, not replaced until years later: http://www.linux.com/articles/57088
Sawfish replaced with Metacity, losing tons of features/configurability. http://mail.gnome.org/archives/usability/2002-December/msg00069.html
Galeon 1.2 replaced with Galeon 1.3, losing features, and then later replaced with Epiphany, losing more features.
http://wouterverhelst.livejournal.com/46098.html
xscreensaver replaced with gnome screensaver, which has no options at all https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-screensaver/+bug/22007

And an example where important features are intentionally not implemented for usability reasons:
https://lists.linux-foundation.org/pipermail/desktop_architects/2005-December/001587.html

There are many more, this list was just the product of a quick google search

I'd be willing to pay double the Windows version for a native version of SimCity 4 (or even SimCity3 or SimCity2k). No, Wine emulation doesn't count.

I'd also consider something like that once I was confident that the vendor's packaging of the game would work nicely on my system. eg. If it was hard-coded to look for certain libraries in a place that didn't match my distribution, it could cause a lot of problems.

I think this is part of the difficulty for any vendor who doesn't want to open source their code and leave things up to the distro vendors to package. Even with things like the Linux Standard Base, there are so many different configurations out there and ways that things could go wrong, and which could be a nightmare to support. Some kind of free trial to guarantee that a full version would work would be useful.

https://www.linux-foundation.org/images/6/6e/Dam4_ google.pdf

The shitty looking fonts on the web page are due to poor scaling of the original images that are linked from Phoronix:

http://www.phoronix.net/image.php?id=751&image=goo gle_new_preview

where the fonts still look good.

In other words, trying to feed my family using the skills I was born with.
Nothing personal, but I like paying rent every month and my life would not be possible without paid software.

I make a living writing software for small businesses. They pay me for my time, but they generally don't care what I do with the software once I'm done. In fact, they like the idea of GPL-ing it, because then they get the advantage of improvements from the community.

Don't you see they only want to leverage linux as a way to upsell expensive hardware and AIX?

Whatever their reasons, IBM has found a way in which they can make a profit, while employing people full-time to work on Linux.

Not only that, but do you ever wonder who pays Linus' rent? He's a millionaire by now... But here, take a look. If there was no money to be made in open source, why are these companies literally giving money to the main Linux developers?

I have to eat and tech support sucks.

Even in a business model based around supporting an open source project, there's plenty of room for developers and innovation.

People telling me I'm unethical or "antisocial" are borderline evil and are a much worse threat to humankind than any jackasses at the RIAA.

So it's worse to tell you something insulting about yourself than to sue your ass into oblivion for no reason? That's not unethical, that's just stupid.

I actually don't have any problem with your ethics, except the part where you apparently can't or won't read my post. I did address every single issue you had, and you proceeded to ignore that and rehash the same arguments... except, oh, "tech support sucks" may have been a reference to support-driven business models.

http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/Specifications

The next version of LSB is supposed to define much more desktop functionality, and even an installation interface (hopefully this would include package names as well). I wouldn't say that LSB has to take everything (or even most things) from all major distros. The distros seem happy these days to adhere to LSB as long as it defines a core functionality that does not overreach or grow too fast.

But while distros are adhering to the LSB standard, application developers and users are oblivious to the standard. It is not being marketed to them, though it should be. Instead they keep talking of this imaginary "Linux" OS when they should be referring to "LSB".

The 6 mo. distro cycle is indeed destructive as you say. Even with Ubuntu which settles on an LTS version every couple years, the intermediary versions end up pulling the tech-savvy power users away from the non-techies still plodding away with LTS; this diminishes the former group's ability to assist the latter group. Either that, or the Joe Users end up constantly harrangued by the techies to keep upgrading their OS.

The hottest new doodads are very nice to have around... IF they are merely add-ons. In OS X I can replace my samba with the very latest version, but the fact that all new OS X 10.4 installs start off with the same basic version of samba is extremely important to platform stability. Eventually, Apple will incorporate the major new samba release into a future OS X upgrade.

The anarchy you speak of is a grave concern. The trick will be to convince a large enough group of people that LSB-compliant stuff is the defacto starting point... the thing you reach for and work on before you try anything else. We will also need to be tolerant of elite techies who want to do things their own way, as long as they do not advertise their wares as LSB. Think of it as 'standards etiquette': Everyone has freedom to do whatever except where it comes to false claims. People just need to be made aware of LSB and learn to ask for it in their OS and apps (i.e. when writing letters to Adobe) in order for that dynamic to take effect.

I just dont see what the LF does for the community.

Well, they formed from the merger of the OSDL and the Free Standards Group. So they do everything those two thing groups did, including pay Linus to hack on the kernel.

Looking at their about pahge, they also provide legal services, work to promote standards, and provide a neutral forum for debate. The also run sites like LinuxPrinting.org (as it used to be called).

How much of that is truly useful is perhaps open to question. One of the legal services for instance is protecting the Linux trademark, which hasn't proved the most popular activity in the open source milieu. I've also seen concerns voiced about the joining procedure (you buy your way in) and the fact that the board seemed overly staffed with corporate types, with actual developers being a bit thin on the ground.

I think the big trouble is that everyone knew who the OSDL were. This new entity is going to take a bit of getting used to. That said, they seem to be doing good things, so more power to 'em.

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> How does one go about creating proprietary software that runs on Linux (the kernel) without "violating the GPL?"

Not every software in the GNU Linux system is under the GPL. Several software components (glibc, GTK, ...) can be used to create proprietary software.

The Linux Standard Base (LSB) build environment contains only libraries with "no strings attached" that permit proprietary licenses:
http://www.linux-foundation.org/futures/criteria/i ndex.html#license

Now for every library that you add to this environment, you have to make sure that its license permits linking against your code. Also, the code build in this environment will be (or should be) portable to every Linux distribution that supports LSB.

The kernel rewrites can be a problem. I'm overdue to look through the IBM Linux Performance Tuning Redbook (July, 2007 version) again. Grovel through 168 pages of PDF. Compare to my current production kernels, compare to notes from the previous Redbook version, sort through my last round of production performance metrics. Test any changes, and fold into the configuration management system. Gack. The manhours do stack up, but luckily, I can do it in my copious free time.
http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/redpapers/pdfs/redp428 5.pdf

I'm hoping that the LSB 3.0 will make life easier in future, regarding the ABI stability issue. They're claiming six years, going forward. But Sun have always done an excellent job there. Perhaps the best job amongst the commercial Unix vendors. They beat the stuffing out of HP-UX, but I've little experience with AIX, so I really can't claim they're best. But they're definitely someone to beat.
http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/Application_Com patibility

I don't know that I'd recommend switching any workloads to OpenSolaris if and when they release on GPL, as there are costs for hardware, support contracts, and staff to consider. So that would have to be determined on a client-by-client basis. But take a very serious look at it? Oh, yeah.

While I haven't personally used it, Carrier Grade Linux (CGL) seems to be along those lines. They're aiming for and expecting to get 6-nines (99.9999%) availability from COTS hardware. This isn't a small project, but one that hopes to put cheap, reliable servers in the hands of phone companies, said companies being notoriously fanatical about uptime.

I'm here to tell you, it ain't that easy - packaging is the least of the issues. Have you tried to build a binary that "just works" on a system other than the one you're sitting at? No console apps, please. Let's talk about X11. Hell, let's talk about GTK or Qt! Have you investigated symbol versioning? Hope you've got a nice five-year-old glibc to compile against... Or you could use the LSB SDK and try and do it that way. Have fun - it's still very much under development. The people behind it are great and very helpful... but (especially if you're using C++ instead of just straight C) I almost guarantee you'll run into problems. I love Linux, don't get me wrong. But the rule everyone seems to keep forgetting here is: "All hardware sucks, all software sucks". I've spent quite a lot of time recently trying to accomplish a "distro-agnostic" binary... and I wish you luck, sir. :)

... is one with each other. Some sort of mutual defense agreement.

That's already been done, more or less, with the Linux Foundation and the Open Invention Network. Groups like Red Hat and IBM are members of both; Novell, somewhat ironically, is even a member of OIN.

Up until now I was expecting that when Dell rolls out their PCs with Linux pre-loaded later this month, the price for the same system with Windows would only be about $30 more. And for that little difference, I thought, of course you might as well buy Windows just-in-case, and dual boot linux.

But if paying Microsoft means that I would be contributing to the death-by-lawsuit of free software, forget it. I'll buy the Ubuntu-only pre-load from Dell, and donate the difference to the Software Freedom Law Center or the The Linux Foundation's Linux Legal Defense Fund.

Microsoft should compete with free software on the merits, not on the threat of their legal department or the FUD of their marketing department.

Being on the fence about using Linux and never really being sure what version, what build and what revision I should go for (hundreds of choices make it intimidating for newcomers to the Linux world), I've always been curious what would have happened if there was a board to approve the general direction, additions and revisions so that be it a platform or a programming language, the tangents wouldn't stray too far from the main group.

You can check http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/OpenPrinting/Da tabase/SuggestedPrinters/ for recommendations. I personally use a Samsung and really like it. They included CUPS tools on the CD that came with the printer. Sorry, I don't recall the model number off hand.

I suggested that if Linux wants to become more mainstream and convert average users that it might want to make that transition more seamless than what it currently is by making its initial interface with the user

How close to Windows do you mean? My point was actually not so much that user-friendliness is something that I have a problem with, but more that if we don't insist on the interface being identical to Windows, it might be possible to find an interface design that is actually even easier to use than Windows' has been. KDE has introduced a few interesting innovations in that regard, but they've only been able to do so by being unafraid to deviate from the Windows model somewhat.

the opposite occurs when you can't get Linux to set standards for what the desktop experience will be like, but it leaves it to distros and unregulated projects.

That is UNIX design philosophy. It has existed for a long time, and it exists for a valid reason. There's an explanation of that particular issue here if you're interested. The linked article is written by Jim Gettys, one of the principle designers of the X Window system, on which the Linux desktop is of course based.

Also, standards do exist, but nobody really adheres to that particular one anywayz because it incorporates a couple of fairly silly ideas. It also, now that I look at it, fairly egregiously violates the Single UNIX Specification.

the guerrilla war against the Borg known as Microsoft is and has been at a stalemate for a number of years.

Fear of Microsoft is used as a motivation for far too many things where Linux is concerned, IMHO. As Linus once said, fear and/or hatred are never motivations that produce good programming work.

Microsoft as a company are going to die purely due to their own missteps...it'll happen as naturally as the sun rising. That is not something which Linux users or developers need to continue to worry about, and we shouldn't.

It's a shame you didn't check your facts, because he did.

Here's the link: (it was posted a bit earlier)
http://lists.linux-foundation.org/pipermail/deskto p_architects/2007-February/thread.html

Basically, Linus wants to have fine grained control over what the mouse buttons do.

Sounds like a simple request, but he doesn't reveal it until *after* he submits a patch and in that same email goes on to rant about how no-one listens to him and how GNOME developers make excuses instead of just doing whatever he wants. In a later email he comments that he sent the patches to a developer's only email address (that he admits may or may not have been able to see his patches) because he doesn't like bugzilla and says that the patches must be accepted or GNOME developers are a bunch of hypocrites even though an API freeze is in effect for about a month ( http://live.gnome.org/TwoPointSeventeen ).

Personally, I find it a bit interesting that Linus has repeatedly flamed (or sidelined) people on the Linux kernel mailing list for acting like he is now, not following the kernel submission procedure, assuming that freezes don't count, and assuming that if the core architects of the Linux kernel think that a feature (done in a certain way) is a bad idea then they must be a bunch of hypocrites.

I personally don't know if the patches are any good or in keeping with GNOME's design or need changes or .... But I do think that Linus needs to chill and let the GNOME core developers run the way they want to and accept or postpone (if there's a freeze) or reject his patches as they deem appropriate. If Linus want to contribute to GNOME (I hope he does), he has to do it by GNOME's rules or fork, or pass it on to someone who *is* willing to play by GNOME's rules (I'd be surprised if there weren't are more than a few developers and distros who would be willing to work as intermediary between Linus and GNOME). That's the way open source works.

It's not unreasonable to expect this. GNOME core developers don't go on the Linux kernel thread and whine and submit attitude patches to Linus, 'tho if they did, they would (and should) be flamed. Linus has said repeatedly on the kernel mailing lists that submitters must either follow the kernel rules, or fork (e.g. if you don't like the license), or pass on your patches to someone who is willing to do things that kernel developer's way (none of Reiser's patches would have gone if it weren't for this later option).

Are there problems with the GNOME way of doing things? Sure. Linus brought up a good point about the ease of submitting patches. But all projects have issues. There was a time, not too long ago, when the submission process for the Linux kernel was "send Linus your patches and if he doesn't respond then keep resending them because the patches might have gotten lost". But the issues won't get better if you complain to the wrong people.

Just my 2 cents worth.

For some bizzare reason it's very difficult to see the story properly. Here's a direct link to the foot of the thread.

http://lists.linux-foundation.org/pipermail/deskto p_architects/2007-February/001119.html

The very original mail from Linus is really old:

http://lists.osdl.org/pipermail/desktop_architects /2005-December/000390.html

Anyway, Linus' argument is quite simple. Gnome does not have a reasonable development path. It doesn't try to teach you how to do more, just tries to be easy. This makes it a trap, which anybody can learn, but nobody easily learns from and won't let you develop further. (learning curve is shallow at the beginning then very steep, where KDE is steep at the beginning then shallow). More importantly, he's arguing that the Gnome developers are hiding behind ease of use as an excuse to avoid introducing functionality which is needed for advanced users. They should be adding the functionality, but hiding it instead of just failing to add it.

His patch is in this email

http://lists.linux-foundation.org/pipermail/deskto p_architects/2007-February/001129.html

note, it's downloads as a .bin file, but it's actualy a .tgz. His patch makes the title bar just another area of the gnome window so that it can be configured easily and consistently with the rest of the mouse actions.

My opinion: I thought this was another stupid Linus spout off flamewar. Actually he's not being too unreasonable for once. Since Gnome is trying to be the interface for beginners, it would be really nice if they saw their job as trying to educate users in possibilities. His patch is reasonably clean/sensible but it does add more code. At my count 604 lines added compared to 210 subtracted. For a person who argues against feature spew that leaves too many prisoners to argue that a rejection is totally unreasonable. He should have found a way to reduce the number of lines of code whilst introducing his feature.

For some bizzare reason it's very difficult to see the story properly. Here's a direct link to the foot of the thread.

http://lists.linux-foundation.org/pipermail/deskto p_architects/2007-February/001119.html

The very original mail from Linus is really old:

http://lists.osdl.org/pipermail/desktop_architects /2005-December/000390.html

Anyway, Linus' argument is quite simple. Gnome does not have a reasonable development path. It doesn't try to teach you how to do more, just tries to be easy. This makes it a trap, which anybody can learn, but nobody easily learns from and won't let you develop further. (learning curve is shallow at the beginning then very steep, where KDE is steep at the beginning then shallow). More importantly, he's arguing that the Gnome developers are hiding behind ease of use as an excuse to avoid introducing functionality which is needed for advanced users. They should be adding the functionality, but hiding it instead of just failing to add it.

His patch is in this email

http://lists.linux-foundation.org/pipermail/deskto p_architects/2007-February/001129.html

note, it's downloads as a .bin file, but it's actualy a .tgz. His patch makes the title bar just another area of the gnome window so that it can be configured easily and consistently with the rest of the mouse actions.

My opinion: I thought this was another stupid Linus spout off flamewar. Actually he's not being too unreasonable for once. Since Gnome is trying to be the interface for beginners, it would be really nice if they saw their job as trying to educate users in possibilities. His patch is reasonably clean/sensible but it does add more code. At my count 604 lines added compared to 210 subtracted. For a person who argues against feature spew that leaves too many prisoners to argue that a rejection is totally unreasonable. He should have found a way to reduce the number of lines of code whilst introducing his feature.

I sent them to the gnomecc list (the changes to let control center enable
it were bigger than the changes to the metacity ones, but more
importantly, control-center actually had a mailing list address in its
README).

The metacity patches I also sent to maintainers that I tried to google
for, because there isn't even any submission address in the sources that I
could find.

Of course, the gnomecc mailing list is "by members only", so I don't know
if the patches ever got accepted by the moderator.

Quite frankly, I think it's interesting how (a) no developer contacts were
listed and (b) the one that did list it doesn't even accept email from
outside. ...

(and maybe give hints
to them that if you have a README file that says "REPORTING BUGS AND
SUBMITTING PATCHES", it might be good to actually give an email to send
things to, instead of saying "Send me mail" with no email address actually
ever mentioned!)

Even just bump for the response

http://lists.linux-foundation.org/pipermail/deskto p_architects/2007-February/001129.html