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"December 3, 2003" (Their patent on licensing the FAT file system)

I recently had the pleasant opportunity to debate with the local technical manager of Microsoft, about legislation mandating open standards use by governements. Their argument was that they now publish their xml specs for office documents.

While this is true, often-used features (by companies) like macro's aren't 'open', and they have applied for patents on xml documents. This makes it legally dangerous to implement import and export filters.
Luckily software is not yet patentable in Europe, but Microsoft and the BSA are lobbying very hard to make this possible.

Two of his arguments made me laugh in his face (while he was a nice guy, it's hard to stay friendly and serious when he blatantly lies in your face):

* 'We are not litigious'. My response: Lindows will be glad to hear this. His response: silence
* 'We are only patenting this things out of self defense, to avoid Eolas-like situations.' My response: then why don't you define a patent policy like Redhat, then why do you state you want to get more revenue from your patents?. Without a patent policy like Redhat's, I think it's irresponsible for governements to rely on proprietary formats as long as this software patents are hanging like a cloud above our heads.

(just my 0,02 off course)

I've been using RedHat for a while now, so I'm probably biased.

Personally, SuSE didn't seem quite so "Finished" to me. The installer wasn't as nice, and getting some third-party apps was significantly harder for me than it was under RedHat.

All in all, it's a nice distro, but it has some significant room for improvement.

--
Nigritude and Ultramarine

Doesn't kudzu do something to that effect?

a technology with little corporate backing, no mainstream supporters, and not built into any native OS distributions... is there anyone that crazy?

order yours today

GNAA DOMINATES TROLLYMPICS GNAA DOMINATES TROLLYMPICS
Horatio Brunswick - Gnaa, Nigeria.
Speaking to a hushed crowd from the heights of a ceremonial golden minaret hastily erected on the main lawn of the lush GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) estate this morning, chief GNAA spokesman l0de triumphantly announced near-total victory for the Gay Nigger Association of America in the 103rd Trollympics.

"Citizens, never before have you been trolled so hard. You have lost, as none have lost, and as none may ever lose again. Today was truly the nicest day. Doom awaits you all."

A deafening roar of cheering and celebratory gunfire met the announcement, followed by a rare smile from enigmatically taciturn l0de, which has been interpreted by Top Gay Nigger Analists as owing as much to his own two medal haul as his customarily heroic intake of fortified wine. Following the smile, increased cumsumer confidence drove the GNIA (Gay Nigger Incestual Average) over the 15,000 mark, once thought to be unattainable. L0de then read the names of the medal winning trolls, (Which have been reproduced here, sans incomprehensible slurs and racial epithets) and delivered his already-infamous "skeet heard round the world" keynote address, finishing with a scream of "LAST MEASURE" and plummeting nearly 70 feet from the minaret into the crowd below. His current whereabouts are unknown.

GOLD MEDALISTS OF THE 103rd WORLD TROLLYMPIAD

RKZ, GNAA, Silver, Popup blocker breaking
Bare, GNAA, Gold, Ban Evade
Bare GNAA, Gold, DiKKy 4 hour flood
Rolloffle, GNAA, Gold, 100 Minute Proxy Whore
JesuitX, GNAA, Golden Goatse, AOL tech support mental breakdown (Punjabi Circuit). New world record
JesuitX, GNAA, Golden Goatse, Trolling Song or Anthem
Goat-see, GNAA, Golden Goatse, Popup blocker breaking
Penisbird + Rollofflle, GNAA, Golden Goatse, 3000 comment tandem crapflood
DiKKy, GNAA|ITL, Gold, 500 meter OMGWTF
DiKKy, GNAA|ITL, Golden Goatse, 5 minute channel jupe
Toil, GNAA|ITL, Gold, 500 Momfuck server delink
L0de, GNAA|T4C|LRH, Golden Goatse, Troll Radio Show
L0de, GNAA|T4C|LRH, Gold, Metatroll
Sarojin, T4C, Bronze Boner, CUMFUSING FRIST POST
Peccavi, T4C, Bronze Boner, 100m FYAD FYAD LOL
Feerit, T4C, Silver, Badabababa Junktouch
Klerck, T4C, Golden Goatse, 400 foot wide page
QPT, Non-affliated, Gold, 5 day forum ghost-town
QPT, Non-affliated, Gold, G-line
Impi, Non-affliated, (medal confiscated with highest honors), OMG WALLHAX NOOB

About GNAA:
GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) is the first organization which
gathers GAY NIGGERS from all over America and abroad for one common goal - being GAY NIGGERS.

Are you GAY ?
Are you a NIGGER ?
Are you a GAY NIGGER ?

If you answered "Yes" to all of the above questions, then GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) might be exactly what you've been looking for!
Join GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) today, and enjoy all the benefits of being a full-time GNAA member.
GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF

Dear reader the GNOME armageddon has started,

First of all I want to clarify that this text was meant to be a source of information otherwise i wouldn't have spent so much time into writing it.
Belive me it took me a couple of days writing this text in a foreign language.
Even if you don't care at all for GNOME, you may find some interesting information within this text that you like to read. please try to understand my points even if it's hard sometimes, otherwise you wake up one day and feel the need to switch to a different operating system.

On the following lines i'm trying to give you a little insight of the GNOME community. the things that are going on in the back, the information that could be worth talking and thinking about.

Many of us like the GNOME desktop and some of us were following it since the beginning. GNOME is a promising project because it's mostly written in C, easy to use, configurable and therefore fits perfectly into the philosophy of *NIX, only to name some of its advantages.

Unfortunately these advantages changed with the recently new released version of GNOME. The core development team somehow got the idea of targeting GNOME to a complete different direction of users, the so called corporate desktop user.
In other words they're targeting people that aren't familiar or experienced with desktop environments. usually business oriented people who are willing to pay money for getting GNOME on their computers.

Having this new target in mind, the core development team mostly under contract by companies like RedHat,Ximian and Sun decided to simplify the desktop as much as even possible by removing all its flexibility in favor of an easy clean simple interface to not confuse their new possible customers. So far the idea of a clean easy to use desktop is honourable.

Some of the new ideas, features and implementations such asgconf, an evil Windows Registry-like system, new ordering of buttons and dialogs, the removal of 90%-95% of all visible preferences from the control center and applications, the new direction that GNOME leads and the attitude of the core development team made a lot of users really unhappy. These are only a couple of examples and the list can easily be expanded but for now this is enough. Now let me try to get deeper into these aspects.

You may imagine that users got really frustrated because their beloved GNOME desktop matured into something they didn't want. During the time, the frustration of a not less amount of people increased. more, more and more emails arrived on the GNOME mailinglists where users tried to explain their concerns, frustrations and the leading target of GNOME.

But the core development team of GNOME don't give a damn about what their users are thinking or wanting and most of the time they come up with their standard purl. The reply they give is mostly the same -- users should either go and 'file a bug' at BugZilla or the user mails are being turned so far that at the end they sound like being trolls or the user feedback is simply not wanted. whatever happens the answers aren't really satisfying for the user. even constructive feedback isn't appreciated.

If you gonna think about this for a minute then things gonna harden that they are directing into the commercial area. The core development team actually don't care for the complainin

I believe Red Hat actually does that already

I tried for a couple hours to get it working, with a custom-built Wolk kernel, RedHat 9, and a Shuttle SN41G2 XPC. While I was finally able to get ACPI working like it should, I never did manage to get suspend to ram working.

...It would be funny if it weren't so painfully fucking accurate.

Welcome to 2004. Here's the rundown, incase you fell asleep:

o VA now pimps SourceForge as a tool to help companies ship jobs overseas. Go ahead, count the number of times you see the word "outsourcing" on their page. Thats right -- That lovely free hosting space your project has? Salesmen inside VA now point to projects like yours and go "See? It works! Now you can fire your employees, and replace them with this handy-dandy website!" They're making an example out of you. Wise up.

o Red Hat isn't interested in talking to you, looking at you, or hearing from you. Be sure to read the fine print at the bottom of the page..the part that reads "The Fedora Project is not a supported product of Red Hat, Inc."....Those friendly folks at Red Hat just want you to keep the mill wheel turning, cranking out those security fixes and updates for them to sell. It's real simple. You grow the grain, cut it, and haul it all to the mill, where they'll bag it, and sell it, and let you go hungry. Now, in 2004, rather than being part of the business model, you are a distraction to the business model -- Sorry! No more Red Hat for you! (Fun Fact: They were making money off their end-user desktop distribution -- just not enough to justify listening to your noisy and distracting comments.)

Yaaay! Open source is GRRRREAT!

..will the last one out please turn off the lights?

Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag

Often it can be more time consuming to patch Linux, too - find and download RPM, potentially requiring you to find and download dependencies, etc., and installing, while in Windows, for most users, it's "click on Windows update button.

With Red Hat Enterprise 3, 'up2date -u' will get you most patches, unless it is Audacity or something most people never use.

Under Red Hat Linux 9, try typing:

env LANG="C" acroread file.pdf

The issue is that Red Hat changed the default locale setting to "UTF-8" which acroread apparently can't deal with. This issue has been documented since Red Hat Linux 8.0 (search for "acroread"): Red Hat 8.0 Release Notes.

First, you have to obtai

Could one not consider XAML just a re-implementation of the XML-based UI builder that the Mozilla guys developed?

Can anyone explain to me why a web browser would care about filesystems?

When will I be able to run Avalon on my Red Hat 9 machine?

Perhaps these guys would be better served by using Free systems for the functionality provided by XAML and Avalon. I happen to like the Mozilla system and Gnome works great for me. :)

i happened to come across these fantastic spyware removal sites. if you download their software you are guaranteed 100 per cent no more spyware
Debian
Mandrake
Linspire
Fedora
Mepis
Xandros
Suse
Slackware
Gentoo

First, you have to obtain a copy of

Cool stuff like this is indeed coming. Jim has been kicking major ass. Check out this post for some of the new features.

Are there any linux-run hospitals?

The Breach Candy Hospital in Bombay, India runs on Redhat Linux, according to this page on Redhat India's website.

Upgrade your mission critical systems. Morons. ;)

None of IE is in the kernel and that link says nothing to that effect. What is does say is that IIS has some kernel level optimizations, which is exactly the same thing tux in Linux does.

I'm currently a moderator, but no-one has clarified the BS on this thread. Moderators, please moderate accordingly.

-Jon

Like these people! Bastards.

• Abiword - Word processor, supports .doc, .rtf, GPL.
• Open Office - Whole Office suite, including a database frontend and BASIC macro language.
• Perl - Scripting language
• Python - Scripting language
• Cygwin - UNIX emulator. Can create Windows programs, reliant on a cygwin1.dll.
• MinGW - Port of some of the UNIX utilities (BASH, gcc, vi...) to Windows.
• djgpp - UNIX emulator for DOS.
• Mozilla, Firefox, Thunderbird - Web browser, e-mail client, IRC client, lots more.
• Filezilla - FTP client.
• xchat - IRC client.
• putty, pscp, psftp and others - Telnet/SSH clients.
• Gaim - Client for IRC/Yahoo/MSN/ICQ/AIM and more.
• gzip - Compression (usually better than .zip).
• tar - Extracts/Makes tar archives.
• bzip2 - Totally ace compression (usually better than gzip).
• Info-ZIP - Support for .zip. Good free substitute for Winzip.
• 7-zip - Support for multiple compression formats.
• frhed - Hex editor
• Ext2fs - Several programs for doing Ext2 under Windows.
• Antiword - Converts documents out of the proprietary .doc format.
• MySQL - RDBMS.
• Apache - Web/Proxy server
• sendmail - Mail server
• squid - Proxy server
• freeamp - Audio player
• winlame - MP3 encoder
• cd-ex - MP3/OGG encoder?
• gimp - Very detailed graphics program.
• imagemagick - Graphic manipulation. Provides the 'convert' utility under UNIX.
• freeciv - Civilisation clone.
• gnuplot - Plotting package.
• TightVNC - A fork of VNC, with enhancements.
• RealVNC - The original VNC.
• rdesktop - Access Windows Terminal Services and Remote Desktops.
• Nmap - Well known port scanner.
• John the Ripper - Password cracker. Does NT and MD5.

The price listed for the "extension pack" is $3500/yr for 50 machines:

3500 / 50 = $70 per machine per year

70 / 12 = $5.80 per machine per month

So that's about $6/mo ($70/year) for a year of software updates plus 30 days phone support and a year of web support with escalation.

Compare that to the old RH9 plan where $60/year got you a year of software updates and no (iirc) support.

In other words, the support stuff is built in to the $5/mo figure quoted. But there are other
levels of support that can also be purchased.

Are you sure about this? I don't think the submitter knew what he was talking about. The press release actually said:

Szulik said Red Hat Desktop is less expensive to administer and more secure than Microsoft's offerings. It will cost on average about $5 a month per machine, with additional support services available, he said. (emphasis mine)

It sound so me that the $5/mo is just their estimate on how much it would take to administer a linux desktop, and does not include any purchase or support costs.

Take a look at the prices given for this new desktop. That is a hell of a lot more than $5/mo. The cheapest option is the Extention Pack (50 seats/ no extra administration tools), which comes out to $70 per seat, and you only get 30 days of telephone support with any of them.

And this is where your fud blows up in your face. For the base price of a MS OS (98+) you get an online KB for free, windows update for free, support from hundreds of vendors and there KB's for free. What do you get from Red Hat, a single point of contact for support or RTFM from people in the community? If I were to purchase a desktop OS purely on the idea of support MS products would be top of my list due to the fact they actually might be around for awhile.

And this is where your fud blows up in your face. For the base price of a MS OS (98+) you get an online KB for free, windows update for free, support from hundreds of vendors and there KB's for free. What do you get from Red Hat, a single point of contact for support or RTFM from people in the community? If I were to purchase a desktop OS purely on the idea of support MS products would be top of my list due to the fact they actually might be around for awhile.

1. A downloadable ISO version of your enterprise server software,
Check

that I can work with but get no support on. I should be able to load this on as many machines as I want to.
Check, and check.

If I EVER need support on these systems OR want to use up2date on them, then I should have to pay.
The upgrade from Fedora to Redhat Enterprise should be quite smooth if you choose to pay for support. But why do you insist that you should have to pay to use up2date, when you can use it for free with Fedora?

2. A desktop version of your software, that is also a free download or a boxed set. Not Fedora!!! This should also have the ability to load on as many computers as I would want to. Again this version would have no support or up2date functionality unless I pay you.
Again, why do you insist that you should have no up2date funtionality unless you pay for it? Do you really not like getting things for free? Does it feel more valuable to you if you paid for it?

This version, unlike Fedora would actually have vendor support from companies like Oracle, Borland, IBM, etc.
Sounds great, but unfortunately, Redhat doesn't get to decide what other software vendors choose to support, that is up to them. There is nothing preventing these companies from supporting their software on Fedora.

I would have NEVER done that before you "tweaked" your licencing.
Tweaked? The GPL is still the GPL as far as I know...

So why not Fedora?

Contrary to what the article says, Red Hat Desktop includes non-open-source software (Adobe, Flash, Realplayer, etc). The actual Red Hat press release is here, though it's basically marketspeak...

That wasn't their press release, that was AP. Read their press release here

Their pricing structure doesn't incluse *any* end-user support - they're positioning themselves at Tier 2 and 3. They'll respond to calls from your helpdesk, but not from end users - at least that's what RedHat says.

I'm actually enjoying this discussion - it's nice to be able to kick things around without a buncha finger-pointing ;-)

(31000 users / 50 users per extension pack license) = 620 licenses required.

(620 * $3500 price per extension pack) / 31000 users = $70 per user

MS enterprise licensing costs less than half that.

Support: RedHat is still only providing Tier 2 and 3 support - my organization would still have to field all Tier 1 questions. From RedHat:

"Red Hat Desktop users will receive their day-to-day support from your company's Help Desk. To assist your Help Desk staff your Red Hat Desktop annual subscription entitles them to unlimited Help Desk Escalation Support, so that they have continuous access to Red Hat support resources." [boldface mine]

Or.. for the cut-n-paste challenged:
http://www.redhat.com/about/presscenter/

it will only be available for the i386 architecture. :(

The information page for Red Hat Desktop mentions that it is "attractive for use in small and medium business environments". Two sentences later, it states, "Red Hat Desktop supports single CPU systems".

So no small or medium business environments have dual-CPU workstations? It seems odd that Redhat wouldn't try to cater to that potential environment.

Additionally, Red Hat Desktop is only available in Proxy (10 system) or Satellite (50 system) deployments, which means that if you're a small business looking to set up 35 machines, you're going to have to buy either 4 Proxy packs or 1 Satellite pack. Either way, you're overpaying. Proxy packs are $2500, and Satellites are $13500; not exactly cheap. This means you're paying between $250 and $270 per machine, per year.

And of course, this isn't to be confused with the Fedora desktop, which is meant for end-users, and isn't supported by Redhat. Argh. I wish Redhat would officially support home users, but I guess that's not where the potential money is.

The information page for Red Hat Desktop mentions that it is "attractive for use in small and medium business environments". Two sentences later, it states, "Red Hat Desktop supports single CPU systems".

So no small or medium business environments have dual-CPU workstations? It seems odd that Redhat wouldn't try to cater to that potential environment.

Additionally, Red Hat Desktop is only available in Proxy (10 system) or Satellite (50 system) deployments, which means that if you're a small business looking to set up 35 machines, you're going to have to buy either 4 Proxy packs or 1 Satellite pack. Either way, you're overpaying. Proxy packs are $2500, and Satellites are $13500; not exactly cheap. This means you're paying between $250 and $270 per machine, per year.

And of course, this isn't to be confused with the Fedora desktop, which is meant for end-users, and isn't supported by Redhat. Argh. I wish Redhat would officially support home users, but I guess that's not where the potential money is.

This one has pictures.

• www.redhat.com
• www.debian.org
• www.slackware.org
• www.freebsd.org
• www.openbsd.org

First, you have to obtain a copy of

First, you have to obtain a copy of

Not really. However, I did think that the picture could really have benefited from the "Auto Levels" or "Auto Contrast" features of photoshop.

No CDs? Why not Net Install?

I've held a couple of small-scale linux "Installfests" in the past, and the availability of CDs (and CD-Rom drives, in some cases) can certainly be an issue.

I found that many computers support Network Booting, which RedHat supports easily. While not every machine supports it, doing net installs on the machines that do frees up CD-ROM drives and CDs for the ones that don't.

Yes, because no-one is going to make things if other people can just take a copy without paying.

http://fedora.redhat.com
http://www.gentoo.org
http://www.debian.org
http://www.linux-mandrake.com
http://www.slackware.com

First, you have to obtain a copy of

First, you have to obtai

First, you have to obtain a copy of

First, you have to obtain a copy of

There will be no Fedora Core 2 Test 4. The next release will be Fedora Core 2. :-) You can see their release-schedule by clikcing here.

Is that a valid complaint? What distro slaps a big sticker with "GPL INSIDE!!" on their covers? I just searched Suse's main product page. No mention of GPL there. You can find it on their Support page though, but it is obvious that the license is NOT a major selling point in Suse's eyes.

Why should Sun be any different?

On Redhat's page for RHEL Features and Benefits there is no mention of the GPL. Again, Redhat does not see fit to aggressively market the GPL.

Why should Sun be any different?

On IBM's Linux page, again, no overt mention of the GPL.

Why should Sun be any different?

GNAA DOMINATES TROLLYMPICS
Horatio Brunswick - Gnaa, Nigeria.

To keep this post on topic, GNAA would like to mention that lycos is the most worthless search engine ever. Does anyone even use it anymore? Why the fuck would anyone pay money for a shitty web portal? google remains premier GNAA-supported-and-approved search engine.

Speaking to a hushed crowd from the heights of a ceremonial golden minaret hastily erected on the main lawn of the lush GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) estate this morning, chief GNAA spokesman l0de triumphantly announced near-total victory for the Gay Nigger Association of America in the 103rd Trollympics.

"Citizens, never before have you been trolled so hard. You have lost, as none have lost, and as none may ever lose again. Today was truly the nicest day. Doom awaits you all."

A deafening roar of cheering and celebratory gunfire met the announcement, followed by a rare smile from enigmatically taciturn l0de, which has been interpreted by Top Gay Nigger Analysts as owing as much to his own two medal haul as his customarily heroic intake of fortified wine. Following the smile, increased cumsumer confidence drove the GNIA (Gay Nigger Incestual Average) over the 15,000 mark, once thought to be unattainable. L0de then read the names of the medal winning trolls, (Which have been reproduced here, sans incomprehensible slurs and racial epithets) and delivered his already-infamous "skeet heard round the world" keynote address, finishing with a scream of "LAST MEASURE" and plummeting nearly 70 feet from the minaret into the crowd below. His current whereabouts are unknown.

GOLD MEDALISTS OF THE 103rd WORLD TROLLYMPIAD

RKZ, GNAA, Silver, Popup blocker breaking
Bare, GNAA, Gold, Ban Evade
Bare GNAA, Gold, DiKKy 4 hour flood
Rolloffle, GNAA, Gold, 100 Minute Proxy Whore
JesuitX, GNAA, Golden Goatse, AOL tech support mental breakdown (Punjabi Circuit). New world record
JesuitX, GNAA, Golden Goatse, Trolling Song or Anthem
Goat-see, GNAA, Golden Goatse, Popup blocker breaking
Penisbird + Rollofflle, GNAA, Golden Goatse, 3000 comment tandem crapflood
DiKKy, GNAA|ITL, Gold, 500 meter OMGWTF
DiKKy, GNAA|ITL, Golden Goatse, 5 minute channel jupe
Toil, GNAA|ITL, Gold, 500 Momfuck server delink
L0de, GNAA|T4C|LRH, Golden Goatse, Troll Radio Show
L0de, GNAA|T4C|LRH, Gold, Metatroll
Sarojin, T4C, Bronze Boner, CUMFUSING FRIST POST
Peccavi, T4C, Bronze Boner, 100m FYAD FYAD LOL
Feerit, T4C, Silver, Badabababa Junktouch
Klerck, T4C, Golden Goatse, 400 foot wide page
QPT, Non-affliated, Gold, 5 day forum ghost-town
QPT, Non-affliated, Gold, G-line
Impi, Non-affliated, (medal confiscated with highest honors), OMG WALLHAX NOOB

About GNAA:
GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) is the first organization which
gathers GAY NIGGERS from all over America and abroad for one common goal - being GAY NIGGERS.

Are you GAY ?
Are you a NIGGER ?
Are you a GAY NIGGER ?

If you answered "Yes" to all of the above questions, then GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) might be exactly what you've been looking for!
Join GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) today, and enjoy all the benefits of being a full-time GNAA member.
GNAA (GAY NIGGER AS

First, you have to obtain a copy of GAY