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This Subscription Agreement (the "Agreement") is between Red Hat, Inc. ("Red Hat") and any purchaser or user ("Customer") of Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS (or Red Hat Linux Advanced Server), Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES or Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS (collectively, "Red Hat Enterprise Linux" or "the Software"). BY USING OR PURCHASING RED HAT ENTERPRISE LINUX, CUSTOMER SIGNIFIES ITS ASSENT TO THIS AGREEMENT.

Mentioning Red Hat, here is their public take on the whole SCO circus.

I'm not at all sure if Linux could pass, since it has, eg, a rename(2) system call in place of unlink.

I'm not at all sure what prompted that. Of course GNU/Linux systems support the unlink system call. You can see the GNU C library implementation of unlink and the Open Group specification of unlink. As GNU/Linux attempts to be compatible with Unix, it would be ridiculous for it to not provide unlink.

To be able to use the UNIX brand, a system must be certified to comply with the Single UNIX Specification (SUS). The SUS typically states what the interface and behavior must be, but not the exact implementation. From the above-mentioned documentation, the unlink system call seems to be compliant with the specification.

The real issue with GNU/Linux systems is certification. Even if they do provide a working implementation of SUS, each release must be certified by The Open Group as compliant. This is reportedly quite a lengthy, expensive process.

That said, there are probably aspects of a GNU/Linux system that do not conform to SUS, such as the varying threading implementations. Lately, however, Red Hat has been encouraging the use of NPTL, an implementation of POSIX Threads, so it is conceivable that someone might try to certify a particular GNU/Linux distribution as UNIX some time in the near future.

I'm not at all sure if Linux could pass, since it has, eg, a rename(2) system call in place of unlink.

I'm not at all sure what prompted that. Of course GNU/Linux systems support the unlink system call. You can see the GNU C library implementation of unlink and the Open Group specification of unlink. As GNU/Linux attempts to be compatible with Unix, it would be ridiculous for it to not provide unlink.

To be able to use the UNIX brand, a system must be certified to comply with the Single UNIX Specification (SUS). The SUS typically states what the interface and behavior must be, but not the exact implementation. From the above-mentioned documentation, the unlink system call seems to be compliant with the specification.

The real issue with GNU/Linux systems is certification. Even if they do provide a working implementation of SUS, each release must be certified by The Open Group as compliant. This is reportedly quite a lengthy, expensive process.

That said, there are probably aspects of a GNU/Linux system that do not conform to SUS, such as the varying threading implementations. Lately, however, Red Hat has been encouraging the use of NPTL, an implementation of POSIX Threads, so it is conceivable that someone might try to certify a particular GNU/Linux distribution as UNIX some time in the near future.

> ... funny; studies have shown there were more than 7x more bug fixes/patches for Linux last year than for Windows.

And that's precisely the problem I was referring to.

You don't evaluate a system's security by the number of fixes it has; you evaluate it by the number of things that need fixes.

> I know my Linux box at work has 3 or 4 updates every day.

Could you be bothered to list the 93 to 124 updates you got during the past month? I subscribe to my distro's update announcement list, and I don't think I average even 3 or 4 announcements per week, even if you count updates for all the applictations in the distro, including stuff I haven't got installed and stuff that doesn't apply to the OS version or hardware platform that I'm running on.

For example, if I count correctly there have been a total of 115 updates for Red Hat 7.3 in the past 13 months, an average of only about 2 per week, including both security fixes and non-security bugfixes, and including all the applications in the distribution as well as the operating system.

RH9 has a higher rate to date, being a recent major release, but if I count correctly it is still less than one per day, including both security fixes and non-security bug fixes, and including all the applications in the distribution as well as the operating system.

After filtering out the stuff that doesn't actually apply to me (special hardware, uninstalled software), I would guess that on average I actually apply about two updates per month.

By clicking this link:
http://updates.redhat.com/enterprise/2.1AS/en/os/S RPMS/

You're welcome. :P

RedHat has an HCL for their distro. I highly doubt much (if any) of it is RedHat specific. Kernel modules are kernel modules afterall, they care not the distro.

It's not entirely clear what you mean by "configuring different pieces of software for particular applications." Chances are good whatever you did was documented somewhere in the application's docs, forums, etc. Why not just use them as they were intended?

If you managed to combine all this data in one monolithic database I'm not sure I would use it. How can you keep it updated? Users only notify you of errors with stuff they use, the lesser known tweaks could sit broken for ages without you knowing. Above that, you would need some very slick search and navigation tools for this thing.

On the other hand, a distro-specific "best practices" guide would be very handy. One supported by the community and frequently updated. I have my own personal checklist of things to do after installing RH8, I bet if you and I combined lists we'd both benefit. Now multiply that by the number of cluefull RH8 users out there. You'd have a hell of a list but one hell of an OS when you were done.

I read all the mod 5 posts. One thing missing is the licensing and related costs/accounting/restrictions.

Advanced server follows microsoft style licensing, and bsa style auditing.

Don't take my word for it. Read the Red Hat licensing on Red Hat's site. Here's one clause, and here's the entire eula (don't know if the links are still good, copied from an old mailing list post, you may have to adjust the link a bit).

A while back, there was a discussion by one of the online tech news sites, concerning licensing for red hat advanced server. I'm sorry to say I didn't save it, as this discussion came up in a mailing list recently. But when I pointed the people on the mailing list to Red Hat's docs on licensing, they were a little surprised to say the least.

Basically, you can't copy advanced server to more than one server. You can't update the additional server, unless it is a legitimately licensed copy on the additional server. You can't exchange email with other companies discussing workarounds or what's part of Redhat's patching of advanced server (or just not with someone else who doesn't have a licensed and paid for copy(?)). Some of this is taken from the licensing wording itself, and some is taken from the discussions and observation from the online tech news site. And I if I remember correctly, they used an example of two or more companies that were exchanging info on this and were forced to stop.

Red Hat's revenue model for advanced server follows microsoft's/bsa's revenue model, and allows for audits ala bsa style, to make sure you aren't running any unlicensed copies of advanced server.

Why this never gets mentioned in articles touting linux, I'll never know. Maybe the authors aren't aware of how restrictive the advanced server licensing is. This throws out the window (no pun intended) the argument of not incurring licensing mainetenance costs, or management of the licenses. Totally destroys it.

Not dumping on gnu/linux. I run suse, and will be switching to debian due to the pain in the ass of upgrading, and the damn rpm dependency bullshit.

Why was the salesman touting advanced server? And dumping on the "consumer" version? If you could freely copy the consumer version to all of your servers without paying for the individual copies, and just pay for a maintenance contract, or if you had to pay for each server, for a very expensive license, and were prohibited from copying to additional servers without paying, which would you choose?

And with all these observations, I still believe microsoft is a screaming sell, and Red Hat is a screaming buy.

See what happened to VA Software last week? They surged on butterball ballmer's statements on linux, even though VA Software doesn't even have anything to do with linux anymore. The investors were just trying to find any stock even remotely related to linux, and buying. Wait and see the downdraft/updraft between microsoft and Red Hat when investors and analysts finally admit that microsoft will be shrinking, not growing, going forward. butterball's comments, and gate's comments earlier are simply preparing investors for the coming implosion. And the investors and analysts have their head in the sand. And are blind to what's happening outside the US.

I read all the mod 5 posts. One thing missing is the licensing and related costs/accounting/restrictions.

Advanced server follows microsoft style licensing, and bsa style auditing.

Don't take my word for it. Read the Red Hat licensing on Red Hat's site. Here's one clause, and here's the entire eula (don't know if the links are still good, copied from an old mailing list post, you may have to adjust the link a bit).

A while back, there was a discussion by one of the online tech news sites, concerning licensing for red hat advanced server. I'm sorry to say I didn't save it, as this discussion came up in a mailing list recently. But when I pointed the people on the mailing list to Red Hat's docs on licensing, they were a little surprised to say the least.

Basically, you can't copy advanced server to more than one server. You can't update the additional server, unless it is a legitimately licensed copy on the additional server. You can't exchange email with other companies discussing workarounds or what's part of Redhat's patching of advanced server (or just not with someone else who doesn't have a licensed and paid for copy(?)). Some of this is taken from the licensing wording itself, and some is taken from the discussions and observation from the online tech news site. And I if I remember correctly, they used an example of two or more companies that were exchanging info on this and were forced to stop.

Red Hat's revenue model for advanced server follows microsoft's/bsa's revenue model, and allows for audits ala bsa style, to make sure you aren't running any unlicensed copies of advanced server.

Why this never gets mentioned in articles touting linux, I'll never know. Maybe the authors aren't aware of how restrictive the advanced server licensing is. This throws out the window (no pun intended) the argument of not incurring licensing mainetenance costs, or management of the licenses. Totally destroys it.

Not dumping on gnu/linux. I run suse, and will be switching to debian due to the pain in the ass of upgrading, and the damn rpm dependency bullshit.

Why was the salesman touting advanced server? And dumping on the "consumer" version? If you could freely copy the consumer version to all of your servers without paying for the individual copies, and just pay for a maintenance contract, or if you had to pay for each server, for a very expensive license, and were prohibited from copying to additional servers without paying, which would you choose?

And with all these observations, I still believe microsoft is a screaming sell, and Red Hat is a screaming buy.

See what happened to VA Software last week? They surged on butterball ballmer's statements on linux, even though VA Software doesn't even have anything to do with linux anymore. The investors were just trying to find any stock even remotely related to linux, and buying. Wait and see the downdraft/updraft between microsoft and Red Hat when investors and analysts finally admit that microsoft will be shrinking, not growing, going forward. butterball's comments, and gate's comments earlier are simply preparing investors for the coming implosion. And the investors and analysts have their head in the sand. And are blind to what's happening outside the US.

RedHat STILL provides 686 SMP and BigMem kernels for all versions of RedHat. (See https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2003-187.html)

There are a plethora of 'enhancements' in AS 2.1 ( which I guess is now Red Hat EL-AS ) that Oracle can take advantage of. You may want to give this whitepaper a read for some in depth look at some of the "Performance, Reliability, and Manageability Encnhancements on Red Hat Linux AS 2.1" I'm not a big time Oracle person, but my understanding is that many of these enhancements are only applicable on larger systems (by larger I mean 2+ CPU/>2Gb RAM).
Here is a feature chart comparing EL-AS, EL-WS, and EL-ES. As you can see you there are differing levels of support for things like ia64, large amounts of RAM, and >2 CPUs. This definately isn't at 'salesmen screwing with you' type of thing. There are definately some things to consider when deciding between going with AS or not. I would have some concerns about this becuase you are asking slashdot about this when there is a decent amount of data on redhat.com explaining the differences between their different OS releases. If, as you claim, you have in house people with the skillsets to manage you linux systems you might not even need redhat at all, just roll your own that meets your needs. If, on the other hand, you require and OS that is certified by your other software vendors then your purchasing decision will be swayed by that requirement, and most likely swayed towards the AS/EL-?? line of products (or suse or ).
Bleah.
Enough rambling and spelling mistakes for this post.

You've nailed the options.

From a planning standpoint, this is hideous. In my organization, a computer tends to keep the same OS over the life of the hardware. I don't have the slightest inclination to upgrade an OS just because something newer is out. For example, we ran SunOS 4.1.3 until 2000 because there was no advantage to Solaris on that hardware.

As for support contracts, sure we have all our Sun equipment covered; it would be irresponsible if we didn't have the harware protected and some recourse for software bugs. However, Sun's software support is very reasonable for universities. When I spoke to RH last, the cost for one 4-CPU system was comparable to the entire campus's Sun software support contract.

I haven't decided how to handle the changes in the RH product line. On one hand, I do like the default interfaces for RH. I've played with several other distros, but RH seems to work best for my user base (they're not hackers by any means). Further, I have zero interest in upgrading systems every 12 months. However, I don't see a reason to pay more than a few thousand dollars per year when all I want/expect is access to security patches. Phone support means nothing to me and I know that SMP configurations don't require much.

Even Microsoft provides more than one year of patches on a "consumer OS."

For commercial Linux distributors to survive, their bills need to be paid but this support plan is awful. I'm willing to pay for service, but don't charge me for things I don't want because you think it's good for me.

I was told that RH's "Enterprise" workstation product only comes with an additional year of security fixes and support, coming in at 2 years. We really need something on the order of 3-5 years.

You were told wrong:

Stability - 12-18 month release cycle and five years of support for every version.

In other words, they will be supporting 3 or 4 releases at a time.

Maybe it's just me, but recently RedHat released a kernel upgrade to 2.4.18 that fixed the ptrace vulnerability. But then within 12 hours released another kernel upgrade to 2.4.20. Nothing is wrong with this, except that the 2.4.20 kernel does not seem to be QA tested at all. It includes the early ptrace patch which had a bug where processes that switched user ids did not have their /proc//environ and /proc//cmdline files readable, even by root. This resulted in ps reporting that all these processes were swapped out, and ptrace not working on suid processes. This is a VERY obvious bug that should have been found in QA testing right away. There are corrected ptrace patches that fix this problem on several kernel lists.

However, while that bug is really just a minor annoyance, there seem to be other serious problems. I tried deploying it on several machines, and 3 out of 4 had severe stability problems. Only my dell workstation has worked with it. The other machines were Dell servers using serverworks chipsets. All of them couldn't stay up for more than 20 minutes, and they also wrote tons of errors to the syslog.

Late last week redhat finally released the new enterprise kernel source, 2.4.9-e.24. I compiled that and have been running it perfectly on all those same servers that had problems with the mainline 7.2 update. (We have always run the enterprise kernels on non-enterprise versions of redhat).

To me, this looks like RH skipped some major QA testing when releasing the 2.4.20 kernel just to get the fix out asap. So for me, I'll stick with the enterprise kernels, and in the future I am going to install redhat enterprise versions from the start.

And I'll also be sticking with supported redhat products, as compiling from source for over 50 servers is not fun. When redhat doesn't release an update in a timely manner, like the recent OpenSSL delay, then I'll spend the time to build my own RPMs, but I'd rather install redhat's tested RPMs.

So to make this someone more on topic, to answer your question, go with the baseline if you don't mind either installed a new OS every year, or rolling your own updates. If you want enterprise level support, and to reduce your load in administering several similar boxes, go with redhat enterprise. I think it's worth the money.

Nicodemus

Maybe it's just me, but recently RedHat released a kernel upgrade to 2.4.18 that fixed the ptrace vulnerability. But then within 12 hours released another kernel upgrade to 2.4.20. Nothing is wrong with this, except that the 2.4.20 kernel does not seem to be QA tested at all. It includes the early ptrace patch which had a bug where processes that switched user ids did not have their /proc//environ and /proc//cmdline files readable, even by root. This resulted in ps reporting that all these processes were swapped out, and ptrace not working on suid processes. This is a VERY obvious bug that should have been found in QA testing right away. There are corrected ptrace patches that fix this problem on several kernel lists.

However, while that bug is really just a minor annoyance, there seem to be other serious problems. I tried deploying it on several machines, and 3 out of 4 had severe stability problems. Only my dell workstation has worked with it. The other machines were Dell servers using serverworks chipsets. All of them couldn't stay up for more than 20 minutes, and they also wrote tons of errors to the syslog.

Late last week redhat finally released the new enterprise kernel source, 2.4.9-e.24. I compiled that and have been running it perfectly on all those same servers that had problems with the mainline 7.2 update. (We have always run the enterprise kernels on non-enterprise versions of redhat).

To me, this looks like RH skipped some major QA testing when releasing the 2.4.20 kernel just to get the fix out asap. So for me, I'll stick with the enterprise kernels, and in the future I am going to install redhat enterprise versions from the start.

And I'll also be sticking with supported redhat products, as compiling from source for over 50 servers is not fun. When redhat doesn't release an update in a timely manner, like the recent OpenSSL delay, then I'll spend the time to build my own RPMs, but I'd rather install redhat's tested RPMs.

So to make this someone more on topic, to answer your question, go with the baseline if you don't mind either installed a new OS every year, or rolling your own updates. If you want enterprise level support, and to reduce your load in administering several similar boxes, go with redhat enterprise. I think it's worth the money.

Nicodemus

The Product Family Comparison table on the following pages detail the differences between the Red Hat Linux and Red Hat Enterprise Linux product families. The most important differences are as follows:

Product Focus: Red Hat Linux products are designed for the Open Source movement and home/personal user. These low-cost products feature the latest technologies and provide a means for them to be exposed to the general public for extensive testing. Meanwhile Red Hat Enterprise Linux products provide fully matured and stable technologies that are specifically targeted for commercial usage.

Product Release Cycle: Red Hat Linux products are released every 4-6 months. This is necessary to keep up to date with the latest Open Source code, but is too rapid for both commercial IT deployments and for our ISV and OEM parters to keep up with. Red Hat Enterprise Linux products are released on a 12-18 month schedule, giving time for customers to plan and execute upgrades and Red Hat's partners to certify and sell their products.

Product Support: Red Hat Enterprise Linux products are provided with a full year of support services, renewable for up to five years. This includes upgrades, unlimited-incident remedial support and access to errata/patches and updates. These support services are a vital requirement for any commercial IT deployment. Meanwhile, the rapidly changing Red Hat Linux products are provided with 30-60 days of support, and a maximum of one year of errata/patch availability (from initial product release).

Product Certifications: As noted above, the 4-6 monthly release cycle of the Red Hat Linux products proved to be too rapid for Red Hat's ISV and OEM partners, so commercial customers were often unable to obtain certified solutions from vendors. The slower release cycle of Red Hat Enterprise Linux products enables ISVs and OEMs to provide fully certified hardware and software solutions.

Benchmarks: Prior to the availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux products there were very few audited performance benchmarks available for Linux. The rapid release cycle of consumer-focused products makes benchmarking impractical. Red Hat Enterprise Linux products have multiple audited benchmark results, including several world records.

The Product Family Comparison table on the following pages detail the differences between the Red Hat Linux and Red Hat Enterprise Linux product families. The most important differences are as follows:

Product Focus: Red Hat Linux products are designed for the Open Source movement and home/personal user. These low-cost products feature the latest technologies and provide a means for them to be exposed to the general public for extensive testing. Meanwhile Red Hat Enterprise Linux products provide fully matured and stable technologies that are specifically targeted for commercial usage.

Product Release Cycle: Red Hat Linux products are released every 4-6 months. This is necessary to keep up to date with the latest Open Source code, but is too rapid for both commercial IT deployments and for our ISV and OEM parters to keep up with. Red Hat Enterprise Linux products are released on a 12-18 month schedule, giving time for customers to plan and execute upgrades and Red Hat's partners to certify and sell their products.

Product Support: Red Hat Enterprise Linux products are provided with a full year of support services, renewable for up to five years. This includes upgrades, unlimited-incident remedial support and access to errata/patches and updates. These support services are a vital requirement for any commercial IT deployment. Meanwhile, the rapidly changing Red Hat Linux products are provided with 30-60 days of support, and a maximum of one year of errata/patch availability (from initial product release).

Product Certifications: As noted above, the 4-6 monthly release cycle of the Red Hat Linux products proved to be too rapid for Red Hat's ISV and OEM partners, so commercial customers were often unable to obtain certified solutions from vendors. The slower release cycle of Red Hat Enterprise Linux products enables ISVs and OEMs to provide fully certified hardware and software solutions.

Benchmarks: Prior to the availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux products there were very few audited performance benchmarks available for Linux. The rapid release cycle of consumer-focused products makes benchmarking impractical. Red Hat Enterprise Linux products have multiple audited benchmark results, including several world records.

I think there's more to it than just some support and a 5 year lifetime... Enterprise addition will support many things that the other versions do not: 2 CPU's & massive amounts of memory for example

PHP is 4 times faster than Java technology 'JSP' (Java server pages).

This tallies because compiled "C" program is 4 times faster than Java.

Moreover, PHP is getting the object oriented features of Java language.

The real usefulness of Java is 'Java applets' which run on client browsers but on the server side you simply use PHP.

PHP is a very lightening fast object oriented scripting language. PHP is 100% written in "C" and there is no virtual machine as in Java. Nothing can beat "C" language ("C" is a language which never dies!!)

(Java is just another language. The PHP project needs millions of Java programmers who can add the Java's language features like inner classes, static, private, protected and others to PHP. PHP already has some of java' features).
Java programmers will really "LOVE" PHP as PHP class is identical to Java's class keyword.

Read the benchmars of Java JSP and PHP. PHP tops in the speed!!

Read the doc here and mirrors at [1], [2], [3], [4].

Not entirely accurate. Sure, they'll remove it from the current version, but there's a shitload of archives of those versions that have already been "sold" to the general public.

They can always say that the old stuff is the key, but what they really want to do is more evil than most people have seen: by forcing people to leave the code in, when the case is over in two years they can claim damages up to the time the case is decided rather than now, when we can remove it.

They're keeping it a secret to increase damages. It'll take a second lawsuit to undo those damages and prove this is what they were up to, but by then they'll have taken the money and declared bankruptcy and be unable to pay it back, so it won't matter.

SCO is a SCam.

All of these tools address different aspects of numerical computing. A mixture of languages and tools will generally produce the best results.

I've been experimenting with a number of scientific programming packages, ranging from traditional languages like Fortran 95 to new developments like SciPy. Of the "new" approaches, I like SciPy the best, given its support for MPI and ease of linking to traditional languages.

Support for NUMA and SMP architectures is severely lacking in most "free" packages. This may, in some respects, be due to the lack of parallel support on gcc (although there is an effort underway (gomp) to add OpenMP support to gcc).

Parallelism is important to any large-scale numerical application -- and PDL, as yet, does not appear to support SMP, NUMA, or cluster architectures. I know there are attempts at adding parallel support to Perl, but haven't seen much activity with them.

GSL does not implement any parallel algorithms; according to this post by Brian Gough (), GSL is not designed to support parallelism.

Click here to download a patch which will solve all of these problems.

"Quick, get your patch here"

Crap. It broke my machine. I can't play GTA anymore!

Quick, get your patch here

I'm so sick of people complaining that Microsoft's OS software is so expensive. I spent $150 for the OEM copy of Windows XP Pro that I own. How so, you say? Well, you can buy it here. If you're interested in XP Home, you can get it here for $90. For comparison, since I am also a Mac OS X user and a SUSE/Redhat user as well, you can buy Mac OS X (Jaguar) for about $120 here (I paid $130 when it came out). Furthermore, my copy of SUSE 8.1 Pro Edition cost $80 here and my copy of Redhat 9.0 Pro cost $150 here. The non-Pro editions of SUSE and Redhat are cheaper, of course, but come with less packages and less support. The bottom line: if you're going to spend money for your OS, you will probably spend an average of $80-$150 per release depending on your needs, regardless of the OS vendor. Otherwise, you can continue being an unsupportive hyprocrite freeloader and spend $0 by using your favorite P2P app and get whatever OS you want.

I agree very much with Randolpho's post. Ditch PHP if you really want an elegent architecture. If you really need to stick with PHP, try out Midgard. Otherwise, you really ought to at least look at the alternatives. Zope and OpenACS are probably the best open source web application systems/environments/architectures, whatever you want to call it. I prefer OpenACS (there's just something about using a system that was built primarily by highly intelligent MIT and CalTech alumni...).

OpenACS is based on AOLServer (probably the best, and first application-oriented web server out there, which was GPL'd by AOL thanks to Phil Greenspun's nagging. it's multi-threaded, it has database pooling, a healthy set of modules/plugins, and a wonderful community.), Tcl (you'll get used to it, really ;), and either Oracle or PostgreSQL. Thought it was designed for use with Oracle, and was ported to PostgreSQL, the architecture in OpenACS permits you to easily swap in support for other databases. Though, you'd have an extremely tough time getting it to work in MySQL as it relies on numerous high-end and complex relational databases features, most of which MySQL does not support.

OpenACS is highly modular, built entirely out of smaller packages, with its own package management system. There is a core package, the ACS Kernel, ACS Tcl (which contains most of the utility code, etc.), and there are various packages built on top of that which provide both specific application functionality, but also services that other packages can use. The documentation is built into the code and is available online in every OpenACS installation. Higher up packages include web page creation, bulletin board systems, blogging, content management, etc. You can "mount" these packages at various locations in the site map for your web site / application. E.g., you could mount an instance of the bulletin board at mysite.com/forum, and add a second one at mysite.com/techsupport. You can create subsites, such as mysite.com/internal/. There is an extensive and incredibly powerful permissions system so you can completely control access to every part of your system. There is also a built-in templating system which provides a simple separation between logic and display code, as well as theming capabilities.

I'm sure there's a lot that I've neglected to mention here. But I think you can get the point. OpenACS is a very mature platform that's be in development and production for many years now (hell, take a look at what Ars Digita was able to accomplish, they were making millions selling this system, and they gave the code away for free under the GPL). Don't take my word for it, go to the website and read about it. The only drawback to it that I see is that it does have a high learning curve. It took me a few months of reading and experimenting with it to really understand how the system works, but it's definitely worth it. There are a few hosting providers out there (Acorn Hosting and Zill.net) that offer affordable hosting packages, but it's also easy to setup your own server. OpenACS also has the ability to run multiple server boxes in a load balanced environment, so if you need to scale out, you can. Oh yeah, this is also a descendant of the same ACS system that RedHat's Enterprise Applications are descended from (RedHat got that technology when they bought the remains of ArsDigita.

[Redhat] can't raise the price of their distro with impunity

Are you sure about that?

So, Apple is going to get indie labels. Good for them. Matador and SubPop are relatively large anyway, and they don't do much to help the artist financially.

emusic is fine and well, presuming you can bet they have enough music you'll like to justify a subscription. Most folks can't.

Lulu.com started by Bob Young formerly of RedHat actually empowers the artist. The artist gets to decide what distribution format to sell in, set their own price, and set their own royalty. The artist also gets to decide if they want to use the Founder's Copyright or any other license instead of traditional copyright.

It's putting the artist back in control of their work, something Apple hasn't considered. Apple just does the same thing as Sam Goody's or Tower, only over the internet. Big deal. The only nice thing they've got with it is the iTunes integration.

Yo Bill! Here is my "patch".

PATCH THIS"

Thank you for your reasoned input to this debate. I have some points on your points...

In order to avoid being hypocritical here, my compelling arguments against the generalisation quoted above start with:
* Little or no open source software has been through the same level of testing and validation as military spec requires.

This is probably true. However, it is a process the military goes through for all software, so presumably it could be followed for OSS. I am not personally familiar with the process and what it entails (though some ac's seem to be saying they are) but it is obvious it is something the military and the OSS proponents would have to work out together. I do not think it is impossible or a show-stopper, but I agree it would need to be done.

* Little or no open source software has the support behind it that can be offered by the big commercial groups in terms of 24/7 fixing of problems in their own products, closed source or otherwise.

Are you really sure about this? IBM provides 24/7 and onsite support for Linux and open source products with the same sort of contracts they provide for their closed-source products. RedHat likewise provides 24/7 support for Linux. No this isn't support by going to #redhat on irc. It is real live tech support. In the case of IBM, as I was saying you can get IGS to come in and set up your entire implementation and then support it (by staying there and running things), if you pay the big bucks.

* Little or no open source software is as widely used and understood as the major closed source equivalents, which has implications for training and TCO.

Government employees have to be trained to use Windows and the applications they will be using, too. Granted, with Windows there is the fact most of these employees will have Windows running at home and therefore will be somewhat familiar with its use. But there are any number of custom apps they will have to be trained on in any case, so training is assumed. Linux may or may not require some additional training. This is part of your TCO assessment, yes.

But in the City of Largo, FL, no training was required when they switched to Linux because employees were only supposed to start their applications, and it was clear how they were started (doubleclicking on desktop icons or clicking on the menu icon) and the applications did not change.

Applications changing will be the greatest problem and cause of TCO skyrocketing. BUt this must be weighed in the face of similar problems stemming from mandatory upgrades to Windows which likewise break these applications. If these were open-sourced applications (even running on Windows) they could be modified. I think it is crazy when businesses use custom applications and do not retain rights to the source for internal use, because in every situation like that I have come across the application has become a ticking time bomb no matter the platform.

I think it is important to understand TCO and what it really means. Microsoft has a bad habit of trumpeting TCO and not including everything in the Total. Perhaps they use the same dictionary for their marketing documents that our Congress uses to understand the Constitution.

With Linux, there are retraining and support costs. With Windows there are support and licensing costs, and additionally the costs of dealing with an organization which threatens you with audits and suits if you do not buy enough software to suit them. There are costs associated with closed source and open source in themselves as a model. Closed source software gives you no source to work with if you have problems so you must rely on the company to provide you with fixes. This may or may not matter (some orgs will be in the same boat with open source bec

I'll respond to both your posts:

Imagine if all the major computer makers had come up with different kinds of floppy disk in the early 90's, all incompatible with each other? Sounds pretty idiotic in retrospect, right?
As an owner of a EZ-Drive 135, a SyJet, and a 2.5" floppy drive, I can tell you that the early 90's did have lots of different incompatible floppies. Bernolulis, 2.8MB floppies, SuperDrives, Jaz, Zip, and PocketZip drives have all pretty much dried up. We just have to wait for the next shakeout in solid state media.

I can't agree on your points for FAT; it's terrible for small removable media!
* It's simple, so there is no easy way to tell if the media has been corrupted when rudely removed. It has no journaling capability & little redundancy. It'll be unreliable until chkdsk'ed & I doubt any portable devices are going to implement chkdsk.
* It's not appropriate for FLASH-based systems because it doesn't use a wear-evening algorithm. If you save lots of tiny files on it, you'll wear out the part of memory that holds the FAT and/or main directory, rendering the device useless.
* Long file name support is a kludge. It works ok, but it's tricky to get right. Insert it in a non-long-filename aware OS and the long names can get zapped. (I helped a friend implement a FAT filesystem, so I've seen a bit of this)

I agree with two assertions - it's universal (partly because MS refused to support other file systems), and it's reasonably efficient... but there are better alternatives like JFFS... I just wish they were more widely adopted.

All the system-config utilities he mentions are available in redhat packages ( in fact I wonder if this author isn't just confused as to what parts of his desktop came from whom )

Are you sure that he isn't talking about the GNOME System Tools? RedHat doesn't include the GST, but Ximian Desktop does. The GST programs are readily available from the Control Center and My Computer, so this quote suggests he was using the GST:

"Clicking on "My Computer" brings up icons for various types of configuration chores, from printers to Samba to fonts"

GST and redhat-config tools both have similar functionality, but GST runs on a variety of platforms, and is much more mature then Redhat's tools: Better GUI, and the redhat-config tools have some major bugs like
corrupting /etc/shadow.

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 as gconf, 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 complaining home user -- it's more

You haven't used Rad Hat in a while have you? The new "Blue Curve" way of doing things has addressed these type of issues.

Some screenshots are here.

I've never heard of JBoss before, but it seems it will turn almost any J2SE into a J2EE. But where do I get my J2SE (a Java 2 Standard Edition, runtime environment, libraries, and compiler) so that it works correctly?

Right now, on my GNU/Linux system with a PowerPC CPU (a Macintosh), I'm running Blackdown Java (J2SE) 1.3.

Anonymous Coward wrote: It is real, effective, efficient and fit my need ;) In my case

1. Java is sometimes not real. Programs using the GUI (JFC/Swing) are not working. I can't get the latest version of Java 1.4, because its not ported to PowerPC.
2. Java is sometimes not effective. Java is my preferred programming language, and usually effective. It would help if I could use collections with generics, but once Java 1.5 is out providing this, it probably won't be ported to my platform.
3. Java is sometimes not efficient. Interpreted Java bytecodes are fast enough for me, but my platform does not provide JIT or HotSpot acceleration.

I am watching potential sources of ports (Blackdown, GNU Classpath, GCJ, and Jikes RVM) for emerging Java 1.4 or 1.5 that actually works. Until then I won't have working Java.

Anonymous Coward wrote: What MS fears the most is Linux + Java. Because it is a more powerfull that they can even provide. However in my case, working Java is an incentive for me to switch to an x86 computer with Microsoft Windows, in order to run Windows + Java.

gnu scientific library

and

gnu plot

Absolutely killer apps !!!

How can BSD be dying when it has a mascot like this?! Linux needs to get its act together if it's going to compete with the kind of hot chicks and gorgeous babes that BSD has to offer!

You just can't take Linux seriously when its fronted by losers like these. You Linux groupies need to find some sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she make you hard? I know this little hottie floats my boat! This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. As you can see, no man can resist this sexy little cock teaser. Even this old bearded Unix guru is apparently unable to take his eyes off her!

With sexy chicks like the lovely Ceren you will have people queuing up to buy open source products. Look! This guy can't get in there fast enough with her in the doorway! Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin! Don't you wish you could get one of these? Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

Open source alternatives are not necessarily free.
A price could still be charged for the software (albiet less than microsoft) and the company could offer enhanced support at an added cost. Microsoft giving away its software means it is cheaper than even the open source alternatives and if it is available, orginizations may not even begin to research alternatives.

Its not free vs free, its free(but used to be expensive) vs free (in concept, but lower in cost), that is why microsoft would be undercutting the open source alternatives

I don't see why open source software must be cheaper than Microsoft software...one example:

Red Hat Linux Workstation

Windows XP Professional

In the U.S. flooding a market with a product at well below cost, if you are a monopoly, is called "dumping" and is quite illegal.

Your basic copy of Red Hat Linux costs $39.95-$149.95. Your basic copy of Windows XP costs $99 - $299. It's a market whenever someone uses the product, no matter what they eventually pay for it. And Red Hat gives away free copies because they have to. Microsoft gives away free copies because...?

How can BSD be dying when it has a mascot like this?! Linux needs to get its act together if it's going to compete with the kind of hot chicks and gorgeous babes that BSD has to offer!

You just can't take Linux seriously when its fronted by losers like these. You Linux groupies need to find some sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she make you hard? I know this little hottie floats my boat! This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. As you can see, no man can resist this sexy little cock teaser. Even this old bearded Unix guru is apparently unable to take his eyes off her!

With sexy chicks like the lovely Ceren you will have people queuing up to buy open source products. Look! This guy can't get in there fast enough with her in the doorway! Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin! Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

lindows is offensive. lindows is hurting linux. it markets its distro as a 'cheap offbrand' alternative to windows, while at the same time making it available only for money.

put your money where your mouth is, michael. if you have any respect for gnu/linux, the open source movement, or the intelligence of your customers, then I expect I'll see a download link on the lindows.com front page tomorrow afternoon. -c

I wonder whether the RHUG people will be able to build Jazilla using gcj and so create a native binary package. Then we could see whether it is faster or slower than Mozilla.

How can BSD be dying when it has a mascot like this?! Linux needs to get its act together if it's going to compete with the kind of hot chicks and gorgeous babes that BSD has to offer!

You just can't take Linux seriously when its fronted by losers like these. You Linux groupies need to find some sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she make you hard? I know this little hottie floats my boat! This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. As you can see, no man can resist this sexy little cock teaser. Even this old bearded Unix guru is apparently unable to take his eyes off her!

With sexy chicks like the lovely Ceren you will have people queuing up to buy open source products. Look! This guy can't get in there fast enough with her in the doorway! Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin! Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

Or maybe they're running eCOS on a synthetic Linux target system (itself embedded, of course) ;^}

i386/Linux Synthetic Target Setup

When building for the synthetic Linux target, the resulting binaries are native Linux applications with the HAL providing suitable bindings between the eCos kernel and the Linux kernel.

Note: Please be aware that the current implementation of the Linux synthetic target does not allow thread-aware debugging.

These Linux applications cannot be run on a Windows system. However, it is possible to write a similar HAL emulation for the Windows kernel if such a testing target is desired.

--TRR

quite right. here's the faq that answers that particular issue. but on the other hand, eCos DOES support many linux APIs

• Debian
• Red Hat

Both with very smart updaters, apt-get, deselct and up2date, and even graphical clients! It's simply amazing!

You can work for the Borg if you want, but why bother? They were supposed to make life easy for you but have only made it more difficult than it has to be.

My synopsis of all of this is that M$ wants to use windows updater to reduce their larger customers TCO. To get there, they are making thier slaves look bad so they will be fired. Releasing "patches" every two weeks so their slaves have to run all over the place? HA! As the NTBugtraq noticed, none of these patches has done anything for actual security. It all stinks of making someone's life hell before shit canning them. Combined with talk of making the admin extinct, can this be far off? It will never work because M$ has not fixed the problems that require all the extra administration and they never will. It's nuts and it will only get worse.

Still think those alternatives above are silly?

Things linked to from the article are the use of SCO shared libraries and IBCS2 to:

Run Progress 8 under Linux
and Run versions of WordPerfect under Linux

Never mind that you might have been converting your machine from SCO Unixware to Linux and had a bona fide copy and wanted to run certain software, these articles are clear signs of "theft" dontchaknow...

You simply do not necessarily need to work directly with BLAS (and LAPACK for that matter) to enjoy the fruits of excellent optimization!

What I find annoying is that material about other products seems to get kicked off quickly from the front pages of many sites and some even disappear. This is unfortunate because information is essential in making informed decisions. Microsoft products have been unable to survive in a free market nor compete on technical merits, and then there are the image problems, security issues, fines.

The market has already changed and Microsoft has not. RedHat, Mandrake, Suse, and OS X are all far easier to install, use and maintain. And these are more secure. In other words, they are for all practical purposes, drop in replacements for most home and many business desktops, minus the games. For games, there's Playstation and Gamecube. The market has already said what it has to say about xbox

The U.S. economy is hurting so badly that deflation is now a danger. Ballmer, Allchin, and Gates' insistence on trying to keep a dead company afloat is just causing further harm. Enough all ready, if the executives haven't exercised their options by now, tough. Businesses and agencies now realize that by going with the better (i.e. non-Microsoft) systems, not only do they gain more flexibility, but can spend their time working rather than repair.

How can BSD be dying when it has a mascot like this?! Linux needs to get its act together if it's going to compete with the kind of hot chicks and gorgeous babes that BSD has to offer!

You just can't take Linux seriously when its fronted by losers like these. You Linux groupies need to find some sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she make you hard? I know this little hottie floats my boat! This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. As you can see, no man can resist this sexy little cock teaser. Even this old bearded Unix guru is apparently unable to take his eyes off her!

Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!