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They can publish the modifications (and I believe they already do)

OP claimed they did not need to release the modifications source at all

but they do not have to release source code of the binary blob that is embedded in the code.

Not neciscarily according to the guy whos name is on the kernel.
http://yarchive.net/comp/linux/gpl_modules.html/
http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Kernel/proprietary-kernel-modules.html/

A bit like Nvidia has a part open code that is perfectly readable, and a part that contains the binary blob (that is completely unreadable).

Nvidia releases a driver, not a modified kernel. Said binary blob has to be very careful which parts of hte kernel it twiddles

Here is the solution to the systemd infection.

ftp://linuxmafia.com/kb/Debian...

You can solve your systemd infection here

ftp://linuxmafia.com/kb/Debian...

Sorry to nitpick, but I think the plural of "virus" is "viruses".

There is no logic to this. Very broadly, in English the plural form often comes from the etymology of the original root, be it either latin or greek.

There's a good rant here about this.

However, how about the plural of "forum"? Here are some comments. So do we use "forums" or "fora". While the technically correct latin form is "fora" I just can't get my head around it, and prefer to say "forums".

Anyway, off topic, sorry...

Typically, a Windows process running in the 2003 operating system environment can access up to 2GB of address space. This memory is split between actual physical memory and virtual memory. Basically, the more processes that are running on the system, the more memory will be committed to reach the full 2GB address space.

When memory consumption approaches the 2GB limit, the paging process increases and performance begins to degrade.

Linux:
2GB Filesize limit

Q: Is there any way around the 2GB file-size limit in Linux? Are there any stable patches to fix it?
A: Short answer: In a practical sense, no. The 2GB limit is deeply embedded in the versions of Linux for 32-bit CPUs:

Even if most hardware and software these days do not have these concerns, why break things for some systems?

However, if I reach that limit I'm pretty sure I can pick it up like every other programming or markup language that I've needed.

Unfortunately, this is only sort of true. The basic syntax is easily learnable and readable -- certainly easier than mentally parsing most regular expressions.

But, oh god, does CSS have a ton of implicit modes. Are your sizes content box or border box? Is this div we're positioning being displayed as a block, inline, or inline-block element? Is there a float active? Has it been cleared? Did we duplicate the appropriate styles with -webkit- and -ms-? Why is it working in Firefox but not Chrome? ...

Layouts that would be a simple command in Tk (button .foo; pack .foo -expand both -fill 1) end up being head scratchers.

The purists then snootily point out, "Well, your problem is you're trying to build a GUI from a markup language." Fine, then: Give me a freaking proper GUI toolkit already. I'm reminded of Jamie Zawinski's quote (though he was referring to XWindows): Using these toolkits is like trying to make a bookshelf out of mashed potatoes.

What's a "virii?" The plural of virus is viruses. Even if it took the latin form (and it certainly doesn't), it would be viri, not virii.

Mod parent up, he is spot on. The english plural is viruses and that's it.

The word virus has no attested plural form in latin. One could argue that if the word had a plural form, it would be "vira", though, since it's neutral.

http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/fa...

Your source links to a Wikipedia page that says the "plural of virus is viruses". Virii is not generally accepted. The word virus has no plural in latin. Here's some further discussion here.

Not all words ending in -us are plural with an -ii suffix. See genus (plural genera) for an example.

I keep hearing from random posters on various sites that RHEL # was forked from Fedora( core) #. Has there EVER been an official statement like that? I know fedora is a testbed, but I've never seen any evidence of a fork. I find it more likely that they take a stable kernel, and build around it stable releases of the important packages that are known to work well together.

All right; it's a fair statement that "forked from" is an oversimplification. "Based on" might be more accurate.
RHEL 2.1 was based on Red Hat Linux 7.2
RHEL 3 was based on Red Hat Linux 9
RHEL 4 was based on Fedora Core 3
RHEL 5 was based on Fedora Core 6
RHEL 6 was based on Fedora "12 & 13"
I'm not sure you can find the above in so many words in Red Hat's own writings. I think you can if you search hard enough, but I can't give specific sources at this point.

Some of us would say that RHEL 6 was a huge struggle to bring out. The fact is that it wasn't as much drawn from a single Fedora release as 4 and 5 were, and it was grossly delayed.

Fedora was started in 2003 with a mission specifically to be the cooker for RHEL.

Most binary kernel modules are assumed to be 'not derived works' ... just 'cause nobody wants to argue about every little thing.
This assumption nature of derived was later refined and codified by the use of EXPORT which defines the Kernel ABI which can reasonably be presumed is common to to non-Linux kernels and GPL_EXPORT which defines a 'GPL ONLY' Kernel ABI which one would call specific to Linux. The presumption is then that a kernel module using a GPL_EXPORT feature is being *written for* Linux and not being *ported to* Linux.

In other words by DMA-BUF implies that NVIDIA is writing a driver *for* and not porting an existing driver (from Darwin or Solaris for example).

Here is a discussion of a similar situation http://lwn.net/Articles/73121/
Here one of Linus original statements on kernel modules: http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Kernel/proprietary-kernel-modules.html
And here is a more recent one: https://lkml.org/lkml/2003/12/3/228

My (hypothetical) opinion is that if NVIDIA where to show their driver on OSX and that the use of DMA-BUF was an insignificant architectural change then the would likely prevail as a non-derived work should they choose to go forward. If however the use of DMA-BUF would be a signficant architectural change then the non-derived argument would be not be easy to make.

Well, to be perfectly honest, Linus has explicitly stated that it is ok, no matter what the GPL says. Even though he doesn't have copyright on the entire kernel code, nobody who is doing mainline kernel development seems to be arguing with him. Legally, it's probably a grey area.

It's akin to an office suite because -- except for BIND, which is monolithic -- you have two distinct programs with different functions: The authoritative and recursive program. Just like you have a word processor and spreadsheet in an office suite.

Rick Moen explains it quite well.

Sigh. I give up. Yes, I was technically being a little inaccurate, and yes, there are a zillion ways I could have explained that entire mess better, such as linking to Rick's excellent explanation of different DNS server types.

It frustrates and annoys me that you are being so dang pedantic about the issue. I think it would do you well to think about why it is that you annoy a lot of people.

Since this is about BIND, let me start the inevitable thread about the BIND alternatives.

BIND is the swiss army knife of DNS servers. It has a lot of features and can do pretty much everything. It's also a big binary and sometimes difficult to configure. CVE

Unbound and NSD are a suite of DNS servers from the same people. One (NSD) puts your web page on the Internet; the other (Unbound) looks for web pages on the Internet. NSD CVE Unbound CVE

PowerDNS (which like Unbound/NSD, is two separate programs) has a lot of flexibility with connecting to databases or what not to resolve a DNS name. Used by Wikimedia, among others. CVE

MaraDNS. I think it's the best one, but my opinion is a little biased. It was once a single program, now two separate programs (like Unbound/BSD and PowerDNS) Easy-to-configure; tiny binary suitable for embedded systems. CVE

DjbDNS. Great tiny two-program DNS suite. Hasn't been updated since 2001 and yes, it has security problems (I'm already taking bets that a follow-up to this post will pretend DjbDNS is magically perfectly secure). Zinq is a currently maintained unofficial fork.

There are many many other DNS servers, both open source and non-open source. Rick Moen has a great list of the open-source ones

Just curious... why BSD rather than placing the code into the public domain?

IANAL, and I have seen some squabbles on the Internet that suggest that it is not possible to relinquish code into the public domain. There are some very large projects using BSD-style licenses which don't raise these sorts of legal concerns. Given that both fill the same role from a layman's perspective, it makes sense to take the path that has more consensus from a legal perspective.

About two years ago I built a VM with Windows 3.11 to try and see if I could use it productively at my place of work. Software that would run on 3.11 was insanely difficult to find, but I did get IE 5.5 and some version of Netscape running. IE actually displayed Wikipedia more or less normally, but couldn't test much because I could only view one or two pages before it crashed. Netscape was more stable but didn't appear to support any CSS so while I was able to view web pages they didn't look anywhere near what they were designed to. And then it crashed too.

Ultimately my quest failed due to lack of an SSH client and extreme instability. Apparently my brain had blocked out how terrible Windows was before XP.

SSHDDOS should work, but it needs a packet driver loaded. Otherwise, try these:
http://linuxmafia.com/ssh/win16.html (almost all dead links, but they might be in archive.org)

On Monday February 14, @01:35AM. XPeter said:
> You fuckers need to stop with the horrible MS virus jokes, it's old and untrue.
> if Linux or OSX had 90% of the market, they'd be much worse off than Windows

XPeter
the idea that other operating systems are just as vulnerable as Windows, and would be as equally compromised if they were just "more popular" is incorrect. The problem comes down to an architectural design choice. Because Windows inherited its design from earlier versions of Windows, the ability for a subverted process to be used to gain an illegal privilege escalation is much easier on Windows than it is on many other operating systems, for example, Linux, UNIX, and BSD.

Here is an excellent article you can read about the differences :
http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/index.php?page=virus

It was written by Rick Moen and does a good job of explaining all aspects of the issue, including what the status of "Linux virii** in the wild" are.
This article is fairly comprehensive and is pretty short considering how much ground gets covered. Unlike many Computer science texts, Its very readable and clear in straight forward English. Clear, concise and readable writing is just one of Rick's talents.

Rick has a collection of excellent articles on this and many other issues. Take a look and have yourself a good read.

**Note- Rick hates the word virii. Exactly why isn't quite clear. Part of the reason seems to be that although the word "virii" was clearly Latin and/or Greek inspired/influenced, it was never actually a Latin or a Greek word. And there seems to this notion floating around that unless a word was originally a word in Latin, that it can't become an English word. Thats completely untrue, of course. For example "google"*** was never a word in any language and is now a commonly used verb in English and other languages as well. Latin, being a dead language, cannot change, but English, can and does, and has new words added to it with great frequency. So I stick it in there once in a while just to gently needle him****. :-) [ My gosh, I hope he doesn't get infected with any virii, while I'm needling him. :-) ]

*** google, as a verb, nominated for word of the year in 2002, was also selected as the most useful verb of the year 2002. Sadly "google" wasn't added to large dictionaries (Oxford (OED), Merriam-Webster (MW) ) until 2006, years behind the actual date of usage adoption. Dictionaries are typically years or sometimes decades behind current usage. MW does note the first usage as a verb in 2001, five years before MW added it. Today linguists use Google's(TM) search engine, as well as others to determine when a word has come into usage.

**** All Linguistics texts, as well as many Linguistics books written about language formation and even those written specifically about English, agree that the only authoritative rule for whether something is a word or not, is usage. If multiple people use the same sound for the same meaning, then it is a word. Isn't that just bootyliscious?******

***** The motivation here is basic jealousy.... :-)

****** bootylicious: MW added in 2001/2, OED added in 2003

As I recall, Linus has pretty strong opinions on why it's a Good Thing that kernel development isn't "so easy a caveman could do it".

In before everyone else: there is no such word as 'virii'.

Yes, because pedantry and slavish worship of Tom Christiansen is more important than providing a search-engine friendly way to distinguish between biological viruses and computer virii .

When did computer geeks become completely incapable of basic logic?

We spelled it byte and not bite for goddamned reason, you know.

I'll get modded flamebait, I suppose. Here's a translation for people who can't understand that a separate concept is best delineated by a separate word.

Marklar, because marklar and marklar marklar of Marklar is more marklar than providing a marklar marklar marklar to distinguish between marklar and marklar .

Going through a proxy (crowded, busy, high traffic, concentrated) makes hack attacks that much more difficult. From the defense standpoint, proxies may be known (lists of know proxies are widely available), detectable (reverse operations), or identifiable via patterns (large volumes of traffic or attack from a single or narrow IP band not otherwise known).

You do highlight the point, however, that patterns of behavior are what are critical. You want to see who's coming in, from what IP ranges, whether or not they're suddendly having a great deal of trouble with their passwords, etc.

I've had more than a little success identifying sources of abuse via CIDR block or ASN using the Routeviews reverse IP-to-BGP Router Data lookup (the txt record is the CIDR block and ASN of an IP). Not just in spam, as indicated in the linked paper, but for apache logs, aggregating ranges of IPs to a single identifiable source.

Sure, someone using a widely distributed botnet across multiple ASNs isn't going to turn up in that analysis (or rather, it will be more weakly distributed), but in that case, you're going to want to find other patterns of behavior to track.

The whole community is misunderstanding the argument about Linux kernel modules. First off, Mark Jaquith's assertion that Linux doesn't allow non-GPL kernel modules is just plain wrong. In Linus' own emails, he presents several lines of reasoning why he feels binary-only kernel modules don't violate the GPL.

Essentially, the kernel module interface is a "library" interface to the kernel, and kernel modules are considered to be under the GNU Library license. In fact, due to the way kernel modules work, you automatically do it according to the LGPL, so this isn't explicitly stated anywhere, but that's the way you should think about this.

and (what appears to be a separate justification)

The reason I accept binary-only modules at all is that, in many cases, you have, for example, a device driver that is not written for Linux at all, but, for example, works on SCO Unix or other operating systems, and the manufacturer suddenly wakes up and notices that Linux has a larger audience than the other groups. And as a result he wants to port that driver to Linux.

But because that driver was obviously not derived from Linux (it had a life of its own regardless of any Linux development), I didn't feel that I had the moral right to require that it be put under the GPL, so the binary-only module interface allows those kinds of modules to exist and work with Linux.

(though in 2001, he says these modules are mainly historical.)

The kernel tainting feature has partially to do with licensing and partially not.

To clarify the ambiguous legal ground on which non-GPL (particularly proprietary) modules lie. A strict reading of the GPL prohibits loading proprietary modules into the kernel. While Linus has consistently stated that proprietary modules are allowed (i.e. he has granted an explicit exemption), it is not clear that he is able to speak for all developers who have contributed to the Linux kernel. While many think Linus' edict means that all contributed code falls under this exemption granted by Linus, not everyone agrees that this is a legally sound argument. The new EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL directive makes the licence conditions explicit, and thus removes the legal ambiguity.

But moreover, many kernel developers feel it's a waste of time to support code that interacts in such close quarters with binary-only modules that the kernel devs can't debug. Therefore, tainting serves a technical purpose as well as a legal purpose: letting developers refuse to support strange bugs caused by binary-only modules.

Linus does leave us with a final note, however:

Final note: the Linux interpretation is not a "normal" case. I wouldn't use it as a guide-line to anything else, especially not in user mode.

The final upshot really is that Linus's interpretation is what assures you he won't sue you. You'd need to look at relevant copyright case law to understand what would happen if you were sued about a derivative work such as a WordPress theme. That's a different ballgame entirely, and Linus' interpretations don't apply to that.

As a grammar pedant myself, I lovingly craft a carefully formed response and kindly request that you stop being so pretentious and go with what the dictionary says.

Main Entry: virus
Pronunciation: \v-rs\
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural viruses

You might like this: http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/plural-of-virus.html

I agree that common sense helps to aviod several viruses.

But 'Linux dont have viruses because it's not as popular as Windows' is a myth.

Example, Apache is far more popular then Microsoft IIS, yet Apache has near-zero viruses.
Also fun is that running Windows-programs in Wine is much safer then running them
in Windows.
Linux security model has fundamental differences from all Windows versions.
Windows simply wasnt made from the ground-up with proper security in mind. And now
Windows has grown in size that a re-write is impossible.

Even when/if Linux becomes 100% popular and all the worlds criminals etc tries
to create malware for Linux, they wont succeed in building one that spreads. Each
machine must be infected one by one, manually by each user. These users must be
dumb enough to manually infect themselfs *while* smart enough to know how to do so.
Any automatic spread will be extremly rare and extremly short-lived, if it ever
happens at all.
There will never be a need for running anti-malware to protect Linux.

There's some material on the subject, here's a good one,
http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/index.php?page=virus#virus

Here's a challange to try to write a Linux virus,
http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/skoll/anti-virus.php

I agree that common sense helps to aviod several viruses.

But 'Linux dont have viruses because it's not as popular as Windows' is a myth.

Example, Apache is far more popular then Microsoft IIS, yet Apache has near-zero viruses.
Also fun is that running Windows-programs in Wine is much safer then running them
in Windows.
Linux security model has fundamental differences from all Windows versions.
Windows simply wasnt made from the ground-up with proper security in mind. And now
Windows has grown in size that a re-write is impossible.

Even when/if Linux becomes 100% popular and all the worlds criminals etc tries
to create malware for Linux, they wont succeed in building one that spreads. Each
machine must be infected one by one, manually by each user. These users must be
dumb enough to manually infect themselfs *while* smart enough to know how to do so.
Any automatic spread will be extremly rare and extremly short-lived, if it ever
happens at all.
There will never be a need for running anti-malware to protect Linux.

There's some material on the subject, here's a good one,
http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/index.php?page=virus#virus

Here's a challange to try to write a Linux virus,
http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/skoll/anti-virus.php

Again, most of your post is irrelevant to the topic in discussion, but I'll respond to the relevant parts

I notice you didn't link to the discussion, and I know why,because I have already read it.

Actually it was because I was time constrained and on a device with limited bandwidth (phone) some people do work at work.. sometimes :) don't jump to conclusions

While not exactly the thread I was meaning, this (notably c.2.2) contains part of what I meant.

Still am rather short on time, but the gist of it was more or less a stable ABI greatly limits what the kernel developers can do, i.e. if the most efficient way to do something breaks it, or they need to implement extra functionality that would break it, they can't. Linus doesn't want his hands tied

On a tangent to the link I mentioned (well.. slightly related I guess) is the following Any device driver that was written specifically for linux is by default under the GPL license when distributed, while linus wouldn't enforce this on things he does not consider derived works, you can bet your ass the FSF would if linux specific binary blobs became common, so even with a stable ABI, source would have to be provided anyway.

This isn't really a problem because vendors who do write linux drivers tend to provide source anyway.. that gets into mainline in time. If they have to release source anyway (in 99% of cases) why have a limiting stable ABI?

"Linux is free if your time is worthless"

Silly question, how long does it take you to install office, visual studio 2008, photoshop (or gimp, or whatever) a bittorrent client, a decent cd burning program.. the list goes on. Windows is FAR from complete out of the box, and it doesn't even have a nice repository like system to install things, overall install time is ridiculous to get a functional system for people that actually want to do things besides ms paint.

My experience (SOE engineering) in corporate environments - is that whenever we argue that the applications that the SOE have to support should be brought into the modern day are over-ruled by the client. The client prefers to listen to their developers (read AB**E/B*S) who, apparently have the "bigger picture".

Which, at the very least, should make the shareholders question the value of ITIL training and Security models.

In several instances I can trace the verbatim refutations of management to "word for word" requoting of "supportive" emails sent to the clients developers.

The developers are not actual employees of the client (read government departments) but rather, coders for hire employed by Sph*r**n (formerly Computer Training *nst*tute, formerly etc etc).

When we (the support, administrators, and engineers) argue that the SLAs are unsupportable (I used the words "nailing snot to the wall" in one memo) we are told that "the experts don't agree", "that's what the client wants", "if we don't do it we'll lose the contract"

Damn Moens Law of Bicycles.

Maybe slashdot would do well to affiliate itself with a site with regular tech support forums and point such questions that way...or maybe the editors could just pick a forum and point people to it. Arstechnica and Anandtech both have forums with lots of archived threads on all sorts of technical issues and questions, for example. Doubtless there are others.

Someone submitting such a basic question should be pointed to "How to ask questions the smart way" and google. Theyd do well to learn how to do things on their own a little bit.

http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Essays/winolj.html/

Rick Moen . . .

INOLJ-OOW2.0C (Is Not On LiveJournal Or Other Web 2.0 Cults)

It's worth the read.

My dear Derleth, something you need to know about me: I am a system administrator.

I have administred/used/installed/maintained: SuSE, Mandrake (now Mandriva), Red Hat, Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, Slackware, NetBSD, OpenBSD and FreeBSD machines. And I have probably forgotten a couple in the list above (Caldera comes to mind - waaaay before it became SCO).

So, yeah, I have used RPM and .deb based Linux distributions, thank you very much. And, yes, as you guessed, I started way back in 1995, when Slackware was pretty much the only game in town. Debian did not really exist yet and Red Hat was just crappy in those days. Slackware was - and still is - stable and coherent compared to pretty much all other distributions.

And that's just the free UN*X. I have also administered/installed and maintained HP-UX, AIX, Solaris, and Tru64 machines.

Except for the *BSDs and Slackware, frankly, most of them suck. Big time. Which is why I am typing this past 1:00am on a (very early) Sunday morning after spending an entire day installing AIX 5.3 TL8 SP6 servers in a production environment.

Give me Slackware anytime, please. Red Hat is a mess after two upgrades, Debian packages are maintained by a bunch of clueless hippies and n00bies, SuSE just plain sucks (yast meets smit, smit meets yast), Ubuntu is for point-and-click losers. And don't get me started on so-called "professional" UN*X such as AIX, please.

For instance, here is one reason Slackware is superior to all of these lame pieces of fluff: except maybe for Debian, it is the ONLY Linux distribution that won't install an X11 server by default. Here is a hint: you don't need a freaking X11 GUI on a production machine!!

(By the way, never ever mention the name "Gentoo" in front of me unless you really want to get a good ol' whack from my handy clue bat(tm).)

Anyhow, I am sorry if this sounded trollish - don't get me wrong, Red Hat and Debian and Ubuntu and [insert fave distro here] are perfectly acceptable, heck even Solaris or HP-UX are not that bad, but when it comes to simplicity and stability , Slackware is still the best Linux out there.

Slackware sucks. But, as far as I am concerned, it sucks a little bit less than all the others.

I actually have a HighPoint RocketRAID 2300 controller in my system now.

This is not a hardware RAID controller; it's a SATA controller with a software RAID implementation.

If you bought a computer with Windows on it and you don't feel like dicking around with drivers then don't install Linux. Or another version of Windows. Or turn it into a hackintosh. When I bought my last three computers I looked into what they were and made sure they run with Linux. Just like if I wanted OS X I'd by a Mac and not bother screwing around with trying to pirate (arrr!) it onto a regular PC.

It's not that hard to pick what you need to work with what you want. And I don't care what OS your talking about, installing it yourself without the right starting point is a huge PITA. I think Linux does remarkably well actually compared to the BS that are OEM install disks. Try taking an off the shelf, pre SP XP disk and putting it on a computer with SATA drives. Or try Media Centre (from 2005). Oh you don't have a *floppy* disk with drivers on it? Sorry you're SOL buddy.

Really the discussion is pointless, here is all you need to know.

You have my sympathy, but your final line prompted me to develop a similar need.

It's VIRUSES, not virii! There is no such bloody word as virii, in any language.

See http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/plural-of-virus.html for more information. Who knows, maybe if you stop using virii your relatives will begin to develop a clue - karma works in strange ways.

You may be right that many Linux hackers don't care about their end users (or at least their obscure problems), but take companies like Redhat help to fill in the gaps. I use Fedora on a regular basis and love it. They (and all the other companies in this space) definitely fill in the gaps that a purely enthusiast OS wouldn't.

> like development

What exactly are you implying? If you're saying there aren't any good development tools, I'd say there are better developer tools on Linux than any other OS-specific tools, period.

IDE's are an issue, you have alternatives:
http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Devtools/ides.html
As a 90% Java/10% C developer, I find eclipse better than anything else out there. Even their C development tools are beginning to rock.
What exactly is lacking?

> reading email
Last time I checked, this was a non-issue with all modern OS's, or do macs give you the extra reach around? What exactly is lacking?

> writing documents

OpenOffice 3.0 has all but replaced even my Windows Office installations. Once again, talking about absolute non-issues for all modern OS's.. keep trolling. What exactly is lacking?

> scanning documents
I can't say for sure since I never scan documents, but I'm sure this is also taken care of. What exactly is lacking?

> VOIP
*shrugs* I dunno, I don't use VOIP, but I know there's Skype and at least one other SIP dialer. What exactly is lacking?

> Linux sucks
Thanks for playing.

Hahahahahaha... look it up, it is viruses. Virii is not a word.

Yes..

Sorry to sound pedantic, but in case you weren't aware, the plural of "virus" is actually "viruses":

http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/plural-of-virus.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plural_of_virus

          -dZ.

Check out the Moaning Goat Meter at http://linuxmafia.com/mgm/index.html.

"(...) Virii only makes you look like a pretentious fuckwit and is piss-poor Latin grammar.

http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/plural-of-virus.html

Now write it out 100 times. If it's not done by sunrise, I'll cut your balls off."

You make pretty convincing pretentious fuckwit yourself.

http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/plural-of-virus.html

Wait, are you implying that the correct name for Nintendo's gaming console is Wuses?

)get rid of the viruses (virii?)

Viruses is the correct plural. Virii only makes you look like a pretentious fuckwit and is piss-poor Latin grammar.

http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/plural-of-virus.html

Now write it out 100 times. If it's not done by sunrise, I'll cut your balls off.

You were right, he was a bit condescending, but he's right, the correct plural of virus is viruses. Even if it were to follow the rules it would be viri, not virii. You don't want to get caught using genitive singulars for the plurals when you've started out with a nominative

There have been smaller webservers made. Just a few
http://www.webservusb.com/
https://research.sun.com/spotlight/2004-12-20_vgupta.html
http://linuxmafia.com/wearables/
http://d116.com/ace/
http://tzywen.com/photos/smallservers/sfarm2.jpg

This after 3 seconds of typing in the search "smallest web server" in google and waiting for 0.11 seconds. So what does this one make it so special?

More posts that should be put in a distro-specific forum, instead of the slashdot front page. Im all for helping people, but some need to help themselves.

I never had any serious, regular problem, in the last year and a half, with Debian Etch or Any Ubuntu release since 6.10 (when i first used it) with flash. The oddball crash happens, but its nothing normal or that I can re-create (in epiphany browser or firefox)

With that, I link to "How to ask questions the smart way" or "christ, can you search first, then ask in the apporopriate place?" :

Clickity

Please understand I have nothing again helping anyone....but people should help themselves first. The flashplayer performance is horrible, but the OP lists no specifics to help him with his problem. Theres no distro name, no kernel or browser type or version given, no way anyone can help him.

The post is just a bitch and moan. This is slashdot, news for nerds, etc. There have been useful, interesting "Ask Slashdot" posts, but this is not one of them.

Redhat 6/7? How long ago was that? See the following release dates I think you will find Redhat has improved since 1999/2000.

Professional Redhat releases RHEL2.1 (26 Mar 02), RH3 (22 Oct 03) through RHEL3.U9, RH4 (15 Feb 05) through RHEL4.U6 and now RHEL5 (14 Mar 07) through RHEL5.U2 although the above link does provide more information.

If people want a Linux distribution that has full software support they either go to Redhat or Novel (SuSE). There are firms that will provide support but the Redhat followed by Novel have the lion's share of the market.

A kernel debugger is a program you can run from one computer, generally via a serial patch cable or some such, that lets you step through the kernel code running on another computer. It's like a normal debugger, but remote.

Linux has had kernel debuggers for years, but Linus never wanted it in mainline, so it was always a patch, and sometimes didn't work on the latest kernel. Now, it's part of the kernel (I don't see any links to why Linus changed his mind, but you might be able to find something on LKML if you look).

Anyway, I think this is good news. I understand why Linus never wanted a debugger in the kernel, but I disagree with him on two points. First, even developers who have a good understanding of the code can get work done faster if they use a debugger. Using a debugger does not automatically relegate you to someone who doesn't have a good understanding of things, as Linus would have you believe (i.e. there's a difference between needing a debugger and being more productive with a debugger).

Second, there are a lot of people these days who just fix bugs, or just want to debug their own tiny kernel patch. I.e. people who don't have a full understanding of the system but who need to get something done. It's good that these people are now first-class citizens. They likely will never write a new kernel subsystem, but maybe they'll fix a few bugs and make life better for the rest of us.

so is google. im not against people looking for help, but i would think ask slashdot could limit itself to unusual problems. ssh/x forwarding/screen is pretty elementary stuff.

what a ridiculous thing to put on the front page. any number of forums or HOWTOs probably provide all the information the submitter is looking for, so id like him to read this.it looks long, but its a quick read.

How to ask questions the smart way

/ill take the karma hit, if the subby will do his own research from now on

The fact that I disagree aside, you might be interested in this. It's Linus Torvalds explaining why /usr/src/linux actually shouldn't contain the sources of the kernel that is running, but the sources that glibc is linked against.

Who is John Novak?

Oh wait, alt.shrugged chronicles the death of Usenet, not NASA.

There are structural reasons that Linux will be less vulnerable than Windows even if it has larger marketshare. I say less vulnerable because there's still password problems. Unfortunately, there's no even vaguely mainstream capability OS.