Domain: sourceforge.net
Stories and comments across the archive that link to sourceforge.net.
Comments · 31,462
-
Debian has patched X-serverYup, he was the first one to really do this. Later, the linuxconsole project has elaborated on it, and the Ruby kernel patches and patches for Xfree86 4.3.0 have been created that does this a lot more elegantly.
I run it myself. My girlfriend and I have a small appartment, and I'm stuck to the computer almost all the time, and she needs to use it too. We simply didn't have space (or money...) for a second computer, so I'm using a local multiuser setup.
I think it was rather hard to set up, and I had a lot of trouble along the way. I still have some problems, but it may be due to faulty hardware (a Tangtop Generic USBPS2, anybody know those?) For most setups, you need to patch the X server as well as the kernel. The kernel patch is straightforward, but I had some trouble with the X patch.
It has improved a lot in Debian, because now Debian Sarge and Sid ships with the patched X server. Have a look at the isolatedevice option if you run these releases. That's all you need...
I have also run 2.4 with backstreet Ruby up to a few days ago. Now, there's 2.6.7 with the real Ruby patches. It works great!
I'll recommend this setup! For many, I think it is better than a thin client solution.
-
Re:Hastily implemented hacksIn that case, why does the page I posted a link to list SAX as a deprecated API of Java 1.4.2, and SAX2 as its replacement?
You're kidding right? This change happened more than 4 years ago, and since SAX is a cross-platform API, other languages were affected too.
The SAX API evolved to include Namespace support for version 2. At the same time, some classes were deprecated in favor of newer classes. IIRC, the community asked for this, so it wasn't like it suddenly changed overnight. In this case, only the following classes from the entire SAX API were deprecated:
- org.xml.sax.Parser
- org.xml.sax.DocumentHandler
- org.xml.sax.AttributeList
- org.xml.sax.HandlerBase
- org.xml.sax.helpers.ParserFactory
- org.xml.sax.helpers.AttributeListImpl
Again, SAX is not a Sun API. Sun updated their implementation to match the SAX specification, as did other implementors (like Microsoft). If you have issues with SAX1 deprecation, please contact the author.
-
Re:Hastily implemented hacksIn that case, why does the page I posted a link to list SAX as a deprecated API of Java 1.4.2, and SAX2 as its replacement?
You're kidding right? This change happened more than 4 years ago, and since SAX is a cross-platform API, other languages were affected too.
The SAX API evolved to include Namespace support for version 2. At the same time, some classes were deprecated in favor of newer classes. IIRC, the community asked for this, so it wasn't like it suddenly changed overnight. In this case, only the following classes from the entire SAX API were deprecated:
- org.xml.sax.Parser
- org.xml.sax.DocumentHandler
- org.xml.sax.AttributeList
- org.xml.sax.HandlerBase
- org.xml.sax.helpers.ParserFactory
- org.xml.sax.helpers.AttributeListImpl
Again, SAX is not a Sun API. Sun updated their implementation to match the SAX specification, as did other implementors (like Microsoft). If you have issues with SAX1 deprecation, please contact the author.
-
Re:Multi-headed Computer
Sounds sort of like Synergy, but for one computer.
-
Re:I think mac users are spoiled.
Ironically, there are at least two legal solutions. First, if your Mac came with Graphic Converter it can play full screen - at least it does in Slide Show mode; not sure how to do it otherwise.
More importantly, MPlayerOSX is an OS X wrapper for MPlayer that handles full screen, plus the bonus of WMV files. My only gripe with it is that though it has a playlist it won't play through them. (At least 6.5 doesn't; I hadn't realized there was a 7.0 until researching this link.) Makes queuing up Red vs. Blue a pain. -
Re:What about ATI?
No, ATI was a "full supporter" of Linux for many years. Mostly, they gave the specs for their cards to the XFree86 NDA mail list, and the XFree86/DRI/etc developers produced top notch linux drivers for ATI cards. The old joke use to be you could tell how bad ATI's own (windows) drivers were by running the same card that performed poorly in windows and seeing how much ass it kicked in Linux. There were a few cards ATI developed open source drivers for in addition to giving the spec. Then for various reasons, ATI stopped providing specs for their cards and started releasing binary only drivers. ATI provided specs for all cards up to the Radeon 9200. It should be noted the Radeon 9100 (which is a rereleased Radeon 8500) is faster than a Radeon 9200 and is to the best of my knowledge the best graphics card fully supported by open source drivers to date. DRI's ATI Radeon details
-
libferris && RDF
Hi,
A bit of a shameless plug, but none the less: I think that folks who
liked the ideas in Edd's article might also be interested in my
project, libferris.
Ferris allows metadata to be extracted from files and presented through
a uniform interface. It supports inference on metadata and has the
ability to index that metadata in many ways (eg. Berkeley db, odbc
LDAP). Note that the metadata index can be used to index anything
libferris can mount (XML, ODBC, RDF, LDAP, http, ftp...)
A cool thing related to Edd's piece is that you can read an inferred
attribute "as-rdf" to obtain all the metadata that libferris knows
about for a file as a single RDF/XML file. -
Re:I wish I was spoiled
-
Float's Mobile Agent
float's mobile agent makes remote controlling one's Windows computer with your mobile phone pretty well.
It's covered by the GPL so anyone is open to porting it to other platforms/languages.
PS: I use it with my Bluetooth enabled Sony Ericsson T610.
-
Re:I wish I was spoiled
For image apps, have you tried gThumb? You can advance the slideshow with space.
-
They're TNT2, and hardware GLX is supported...
Just here to let you know, this 4-user setup defined in this forum's topic is using four nVidia TNT2 graphics accelerators! These are better than GeForce graphics accelerators for driver-related reasons. Way back in the maturation of XFree86, with version 3.3.6, it is possible then and a throughout the 3.x XFree86 branch to configure XFree86Config to "Load """ Utah-GLX's nvidia driver to attain hardware-accelerated openGL. This is a completly different driver approach than DRI's openGL SAL. Utah-GLX provides X Server modules rather than its various competitors providing a
/usr/lib/libGL.so.* and any non-standard patch cludged into the X Server. DRI project's openGL acceleration architecture at the moment may also allow mutliple local X Servers, albeit that of the various non-XFree86 such as the capable technology at DirectFB project (which allows accelerated openGL without a X Server; directly using the DRI without an X Server).
Backtracking to Utah-GLX's driver (project page here, this will allow many complex openGL-phile programs to run at the same time given its architecture. I, however, doubt that older XFree86 3.3.6 will scale to this feat; I simply don't know. Yet, the Utah-GLX driver system has been ported to XFree86-4.x; it is a openGL GLX driver package in the form of dynamically loaded X Server modules/extensions and can be manipulated into and without the X Server without having to restart the X Server. It's somwhat parallel to the DRI driver, to provide an alternative, but it is not being maintaned anymore; Utah-GLX is dead and someone needs to commandeer!
I am using three Athlon Thunderbid 700MHz computers with a total 9 nVidia TNT2 adaptors total (three per computer), S-Video composite output to NTSC televisions, and quad-bonded 100BaseTX ZNYX LAN adaptors for verry low-latency threaded shared openGL rendering; I use as Chromium 3D videowalls, by using XFree86 4.3 and Utah-GLX's nVidia openGLX driver.
And yes, Quake3 looks hot! -
Re:Hastily implemented hacksThen there's the SAX parser, which was replaced with a totally different API...
Oh for the love of...
- SAX isn't Sun's API.
- It wasn't replaced, Sun added JAXP.
- SAX is not deprecated.
- It's still in the JDK.
-
Re:Spoiled? Uh huh.
...I know some of stuff is harder to cipher, but even a literate monkey...There are literate monkeys now? Where have I been?
At least you were honest enough to add the word "total".
:P Then again, why be a zealot of a second rate OS? The OS X zealot I understand... but Linux?? *grin*While I agree with you to some extent, I also disagree. The point that the parent was trying to make was that installing software on OS X with Installer.app is worlds easier than on Linux. No, it's not tough to download and rpm --install or even build from source... I do this all day on Solaris (mind, sans rpm, but meh) and it's second nature for most of us. The point is that double-click, click to confirm is still easier and less time consuming. On the topic of dependecies, yes it's no sweat to go and fetch them, but once again, while your fetching your dependencies, I'm already using my app on OS X.
The other issue comes from the overall expectation and the difference between Linux and OS X in that regard. On OS X, if you double-click an application icon and it doesn't run, there is generally something wrong with the application. On the other hand, how many of us have struggled with some command line tool that has ambiguous switches or had to ln -s some libraries because there is a version mismatch with some of your
.so's? Not tough, but certainly not nearly as convenient. On Linux, this is often not considered to be a problem. I guess the difference is in targets markets... OS X apps are almost always targetted at people who quite simply have no interest in Googling for the correct answer. There's nothing wrong with wanting to... it's just a different type of end user.Of course, Fink on OS X makes all of this moot for *NIX applications, but I digress. Actually, most of the reason why I use OS X is because my professional life has me reaching for bash$ to solve half my problems and my overwhelming laziness has me longing to just double-click on something the rest of the time.
I also think a lot of problems the parent is complaining about come from the ever increasing number of "flavors" of Linux floating around. What are they up to now, 100 or more? On one hand this is great, because it's a distribution for almost every need. On the other hand, it makes support and releasing applications in binary format a hassle sometimes. OS X solves this problem by being the one and only OS X. If it says it works with 10.3, 999/1000 times it'll run on your copy of 10.3. Then again, often if it says it works on Linux, it's referring to Red Hat. This would be fine, but sometimes even if you have Red Hat, an application that was built for a slightly older version still requires some tweaking. Once again.. no biggy.. but it's more than zero effort.
Before someone mods me down for the Linux comment... be sure to check this link.
-
Re:Guide for something like this?The project is the Linuxconsole project on Sourceforge. See Link to Linuxconsole project.
Svetoslav Slavtchev has written a HOWTO that is part of the LDP. Link to the HOWTO.
These days you might as well use the 2.6 kernel for new setups, but if you really want to use 2.4 or are modifying an older system, the Backstreet Ruby patch is a backport for 2.4. Link to Aivil's Backstreet Ruby mirror
-
Re:Totally offtopic, but...
It all seems such a distant past now..
But still a necessary one! I was looking for a simple program that could do ssh with ANSI color, scrollback, and zmodem (handy for transferring through those pesky firewalls). I couldn't find one, so I started to write my own BBS-era client that could work on today's Internet.
I was a Qmodem 5.x user, hence my project is being made to resemble that interface.
-
KeepassAll my passwords are generated through KeePass. They are 21 characters in length, from A-Z|a-z|0-9. I have the options to introduce other characters into the keyspace, but I wish anyone best of luck in cracking a 132 bit address space
:)Anyway, time to change up to SHA1
;) -
Re:Here's the problem.
If the banks TRULY supported those apps, they would be keyed on unique transaction numbers.
But both the banks and the software supports unique transaction id's. See? Says so here, too. (You gotta search for "FITID" word doc.) Gnucash supports them, too.
It's only if you use the old QIF format that you don't get unique transaction IDs. Which is, of course, why MS Money only imports OFX and doesn't export OFX. It only exports QIF. So that if you've got your data in MS Money and you try to import it into some other program (gnucash or quicken) you'll have to deal with duplicates.
-
Re: Question about Java
I'd just embed python.
Just kidding. :-)
Actually, the Java solution to this problem looks a lot different. Given the need to execute unknown code, usually an interface is used and the objects are made to implement it. Then the object will always have method foo and you can pass your data that way.
Granted, that's a lot more work. There's not a lot of Java code that is shorter than it's Python equivalent.... -
Re:C/C++, not java
Eclipse, yes. I love eclipse, I really do. I use it for all my C/C++ projects, as well as my Java projects. Course, still use good 'ol emacs for little things, perl scripts and lisp programming. Emacs is great, don't get me wrong, its amazing, can do things that eclipse probally won't ever be able to do (play games, read email, et cetera), but doesn't need to either. Both are great programs, but as a developer's tool Eclipse is definitely more intuitive and it also draws converts from VC++ too.
As far as other Java programs, can also include apps written by hackers for their own need. Just some guys that want a quick-to-write app to do something, like visually organize music or whatever. Sure the program is slower than if you wrote it in c++, but you don't care, you just want a quick little app to use, you're not releasing it commercially, et cetera, and the speed increase between c/++ and java is decreasing, plus the time to develop is typically much shorter for java than a c/++ app, thanks, no doubt, in part to garbage collection, which the newer algorithms used are becoming so efficient that garbage collectors average case is nearly as good as the most run-of-the-mill memory management techniques in non-GC langauges (and much better when poorly coded memory management is implemented, of course).
Now, as far as plans with replacing vi with a Java clone, check this out. -
Re:C/C++, not java
I personally use a couple of Java client applications on my Linux desktop..
Azureus and LimeWire are both written in Java.
And that about "Swing does not fit in the X11 word" is just a lie. Swing works fine in X11 under Linux. You should really try some of these things out before posting whatever you pull out of your ass. -
Some hard numbersJust looking at sourceforge for a moment, I see that it has 13785 projects in C, 13922 projects in C++, and 12588 in Java. That places the three languages at roughly the same level.
No other languages come even close to these numbers, although I still have some hope for the future of Euler. Actually I don't, just kidding
;-) -
Corrected SourceForge link - language statistics
Corrected link:
SourceForge Projects by Programming Language
From the page:
- C (13785 projects)
- C++ (13922 projects)
- Java (12588 projects)
That's very interesting. Even though I'm a Java supporter, I was surprised to see so many Open Source Java projects. -
How many projects?
Just have a look at the projects hosted on sf.
There are 12588 projects in Java. Right behind the 13922 in C++ and the 13785 in C.
So I guess, Java IS used a lot. -
Re:GPL IT PLZ
-
Re:Pre-emptive analysis?
There were and are several projects in Germany that develope traffic models in conjunction with models simulating the route choices of people depending on their lifestyles. The problem is that there are people that do not believe that people can be simulated by cellular automata and reject those simulation. But there are also city planers who use those models when planning new structures like stadiums, airports and others that need road connections.
There is a sourceforge project thatsimulates multimodal traffic with cellular automata. Also have a look at this link for more information about traffic simulation. -
Re:Secure IMs
Gaim supports encryption too, via a plug-in.
You can get it here.
-
Fish Fillets!Get the the extremely good Fish Fillets game which is available over here. Download straight to your laptop and install.
Note: Linux port-in-making has only 8 levels while the Windows version (does not work in wine) has over 70.
Note: Extremely hard puzzle game, more for the adults than the children
;-). -
gcompris
I was expecting this to have been posted already, didn't see it anywhere though
... didn't look at the age range (did you mention one?) but this is good stuff for primary ages (under 11).
They also mention: http://childsplay.sourceforge.net/
Plus, I'd make sure they have KStars, it's awesome and the Ugandans are likely to be very familiar with alot of constellations (I'm assuming light polution there is low).
-
Re:He wasnt talking about the tray
get gaim, uses one tabbed, IM-sized window for all your conversations
-
Re:From the no-shit-sherlock dept.
Go ahead - throw your vote away!
(Don't blame me - I voted for Kodos.)
What's CCW? Cwedence Cwearwatew Wevival?
-
Here's a must- haveGive 'em Maxima!!! That'll keep the little buggers busy for a while. And in 10 years they'll all be rocket scientists!
Hey, don't they say math is the universal language?
-
What level are the kids at?
Depending on the grade level of the kids, go with something like number crunchers.
Childsplay
OFSET ... and of course good old tux typing
Tux Typing
and that was just in 5 minutes on Source Forge -
What level are the kids at?
Depending on the grade level of the kids, go with something like number crunchers.
Childsplay
OFSET ... and of course good old tux typing
Tux Typing
and that was just in 5 minutes on Source Forge -
What level are the kids at?
Depending on the grade level of the kids, go with something like number crunchers.
Childsplay
OFSET ... and of course good old tux typing
Tux Typing
and that was just in 5 minutes on Source Forge -
Informative IE Links - IE Bashing Extraordinaire
This browser warning page thoroughly trashes MSIE, but every phrase is linked to a news article that uses the exact same verbiage in order to demonstrate that it isn't just anti MS FUD - It's the honest truth. It's designed and maintained for webmasters to deliver to the IE-using visitors to their webpages. You can read the source code for some more information about that. In case you're curious, here's a paste of the text and links that it has - This should prove quite effective with anyone you're trying to convince to stop using IE:
Warning!Your web browser - a version of Microsoft Internet Explorer - may not function properly on this website, and could have a large number of problems that allow hackers to hijack it with viruses. These viruses could be used by criminals to secretly take over your computer, download child-pornography, or to commit acts of terrorism and fraud. You may automatically update it now with Microsoft's available patches, however, there is a possibility that a necessary patch will not be available due to Microsoft's somewhat sluggish development schedule.
The US Department of Homeland Security strongly suggests that you stop using Internet Explorer immediately.
There are several standards-compliant web browsers that you may use instead of Internet Explorer. Please install one of them as a replacement.
If you suspect that your computer is already being used for criminal activity, it is critical that you seek help from a computer professional in your local area. You may also try one of the free web-based virus scanners that are available.
-
Informative IE Links - IE Bashing Extraordinaire
This browser warning page thoroughly trashes MSIE, but every phrase is linked to a news article that uses the exact same verbiage in order to demonstrate that it isn't just anti MS FUD - It's the honest truth. It's designed and maintained for webmasters to deliver to the IE-using visitors to their webpages. You can read the source code for some more information about that. In case you're curious, here's a paste of the text and links that it has - This should prove quite effective with anyone you're trying to convince to stop using IE:
Warning!Your web browser - a version of Microsoft Internet Explorer - may not function properly on this website, and could have a large number of problems that allow hackers to hijack it with viruses. These viruses could be used by criminals to secretly take over your computer, download child-pornography, or to commit acts of terrorism and fraud. You may automatically update it now with Microsoft's available patches, however, there is a possibility that a necessary patch will not be available due to Microsoft's somewhat sluggish development schedule.
The US Department of Homeland Security strongly suggests that you stop using Internet Explorer immediately.
There are several standards-compliant web browsers that you may use instead of Internet Explorer. Please install one of them as a replacement.
If you suspect that your computer is already being used for criminal activity, it is critical that you seek help from a computer professional in your local area. You may also try one of the free web-based virus scanners that are available.
-
Re:All right!!!
if you weren't large enough to have a spare server then you can run MBSAFU
it's also free -
100K downloads a day...
...whew. That's as much as the most popular SourceForge project.
And I thought my charts spiked after I started mirroring CVS... crikey. -
UnxUtils.
> looking for a command prompt?
If you're looking for a command prompt on Windows XP, I suggest Start->Run then type "cmd.exe". I recommend it over "command.com" any day.
> Download Microsoft Unix tools for Windows. You'll get a better integrated variation on cygwin
I personally use UnxUtils, it's free and the source is available. It's less invasive than cygwin, just extract the files and add that directory to your path. (I use c:\usr\local\wbin.) The typical DOS environment is still there but now you can use Unix commands to your heart's content: ls, diff, md5sum, touch, etc.
-
Re:An important difference"Can you ssh into your windows machine and restart the webserver with one simple command? Can you totally modify the way your computer runs by writing shell scripts or modifying existing ones?"
Yes, you can. This is a huge misconception about Windows. I SSH into my work computer regularly (I'm in IT support). It has an SSH server installed. Through this, from home, I can double-click an icon on my desktop, enter a password, and it'll restart our apache servers. It's not difficult to do at all.
Scripting in windows is another great feat. Windows has a scripting host built in, which offers incredible functionality. It can use COM objects, which essentially allow your scripts to interface with most software you install on your computer (from Office, IE, iTunes, whatever), all within a script. PHP also runs on Windows, and that lets you write scripts. I've been using linux for years, and Windows for longer, and I have no problem getting Windows to do exactly what I want. Linux is definitely no more adaptable.
-
Re:An important difference
And the thing is, it seems they reserved bits for these in NTFS.
-
Re:Ooh! Selective comparison...
There are still a few new-ish unsupported devices (the Centrino wireless cards are an example), but the windows compatibility layer takes care of that.
There exist working Linux drivers for the Centrino Wireless. I use them all the time and they work without problems.
-
Re:Safe to upgrade yet?
Yep... you're right... no large enterprise systems would be run on PHP...
Be careful what you imply... the PHP core IS thread-safe... the only unknown is the large number of external libraries which PHP uses... The issues are not seen in non-threaded implementations... Forked processes do not hit the thread-safety issues, so any library is safe there...
I'm not sure what you mean by "Also, you can thread sessions all reads and writes lock the session from any further reads or writes until the operation is completed." or how it relates to the issue at hand... -
Having just gone through this...
There are a couple of good tools out there that will make most cards work, albeit in a gimpy Windows-esque fashion, without a few advanced features.
Linuxant and Ndiswrapper
It's still better to have actual linux drivers, but these probrams make it possible to use the Windows drivers in many circumstances (You have to pay for Linuxant, and Ndiswrapper works damn near perfectly as far as I can tell, so I recommend it.)
-
Re:An important differenceSure - try this search (GNU Fortran)... You can get G95 (for FORTRAN 95) or G77 (for FORTRAN 77), which is in the main GCC tree. Note that FORTRAN 95 support is incomplete; There is no complete open source compiler for FORTRAN 90 nor is there one for FORTRAN 95; from the project pages, though, it seems it probably has most of what you want. There are two frontends for F95: G95 and GFortran. G95 seems the most complete, but then I suppose that's what you get when you quote real results!
HTH
The vandy monster
:) -
Yes, you *can* program sh#t in bare MSWin
you can't program sh*t on a windows install without buying separate software.
You're wrong. If that isn't a sheeyite programming language, I don't know what is.
On a more serious note, all that you've listed is but a download away, plus trhere are convenient ISOs available of some things.
The real advantages for Linux lie in several areas:
- TECHNICAL - things that are difficult-to-impossible for MS-Windows without "special equipment". Stuff like Xnest and User Mode Linux, which are boons for testing end-user and kiosk style applications, or the so-called Backstreet Ruby console project, which allows multiple independent users on one piece of hardware (e.g. two users on a multihead Radeon card). Stuff like "Terminal Services" and DAVfs being intrinsic to the system.
- POLITICAL - things like the absence of spyware, a licence agreement which says "if you break it you own both pieces" rather than one which says "your computer is now My Computer", being invented everywhere rather than in [insert name of favourite foreign imperialist infidel country here] - if The Boss drives a Citroën, start with "Where does it come from? France, Finland, Australia, [blah blah long list of places blah]. Oh, and did I mention France?" You can update piecemeal, or more or less at your own speed; since you have all of the pieces, a sizeable organisation could easily afford to settle on a distro and maintain it themselves ad infinitum by updating versions or patching at their discretion.
- FINANCIAL - Pretty dang obvious. Pay per user, per cpu, per port, or just for the support you need? Hmmm... let me think, this is a toughie...
- ANYTHING BUT MICROSOFT - sad but true. Probably 10% of conversions have this as their primary justification.
- CUSTOMISABLE - dislike a feature? Don't just disable it (only to have a user figure out a bypass later), get out your handy-dandy software saw and lop that horrid thing right off!
- TECHNICAL - things that are difficult-to-impossible for MS-Windows without "special equipment". Stuff like Xnest and User Mode Linux, which are boons for testing end-user and kiosk style applications, or the so-called Backstreet Ruby console project, which allows multiple independent users on one piece of hardware (e.g. two users on a multihead Radeon card). Stuff like "Terminal Services" and DAVfs being intrinsic to the system.
-
Yes, you *can* program sh#t in bare MSWin
you can't program sh*t on a windows install without buying separate software.
You're wrong. If that isn't a sheeyite programming language, I don't know what is.
On a more serious note, all that you've listed is but a download away, plus trhere are convenient ISOs available of some things.
The real advantages for Linux lie in several areas:
- TECHNICAL - things that are difficult-to-impossible for MS-Windows without "special equipment". Stuff like Xnest and User Mode Linux, which are boons for testing end-user and kiosk style applications, or the so-called Backstreet Ruby console project, which allows multiple independent users on one piece of hardware (e.g. two users on a multihead Radeon card). Stuff like "Terminal Services" and DAVfs being intrinsic to the system.
- POLITICAL - things like the absence of spyware, a licence agreement which says "if you break it you own both pieces" rather than one which says "your computer is now My Computer", being invented everywhere rather than in [insert name of favourite foreign imperialist infidel country here] - if The Boss drives a Citroën, start with "Where does it come from? France, Finland, Australia, [blah blah long list of places blah]. Oh, and did I mention France?" You can update piecemeal, or more or less at your own speed; since you have all of the pieces, a sizeable organisation could easily afford to settle on a distro and maintain it themselves ad infinitum by updating versions or patching at their discretion.
- FINANCIAL - Pretty dang obvious. Pay per user, per cpu, per port, or just for the support you need? Hmmm... let me think, this is a toughie...
- ANYTHING BUT MICROSOFT - sad but true. Probably 10% of conversions have this as their primary justification.
- CUSTOMISABLE - dislike a feature? Don't just disable it (only to have a user figure out a bypass later), get out your handy-dandy software saw and lop that horrid thing right off!
- TECHNICAL - things that are difficult-to-impossible for MS-Windows without "special equipment". Stuff like Xnest and User Mode Linux, which are boons for testing end-user and kiosk style applications, or the so-called Backstreet Ruby console project, which allows multiple independent users on one piece of hardware (e.g. two users on a multihead Radeon card). Stuff like "Terminal Services" and DAVfs being intrinsic to the system.
-
Yes, you *can* program sh#t in bare MSWin
you can't program sh*t on a windows install without buying separate software.
You're wrong. If that isn't a sheeyite programming language, I don't know what is.
On a more serious note, all that you've listed is but a download away, plus trhere are convenient ISOs available of some things.
The real advantages for Linux lie in several areas:
- TECHNICAL - things that are difficult-to-impossible for MS-Windows without "special equipment". Stuff like Xnest and User Mode Linux, which are boons for testing end-user and kiosk style applications, or the so-called Backstreet Ruby console project, which allows multiple independent users on one piece of hardware (e.g. two users on a multihead Radeon card). Stuff like "Terminal Services" and DAVfs being intrinsic to the system.
- POLITICAL - things like the absence of spyware, a licence agreement which says "if you break it you own both pieces" rather than one which says "your computer is now My Computer", being invented everywhere rather than in [insert name of favourite foreign imperialist infidel country here] - if The Boss drives a Citroën, start with "Where does it come from? France, Finland, Australia, [blah blah long list of places blah]. Oh, and did I mention France?" You can update piecemeal, or more or less at your own speed; since you have all of the pieces, a sizeable organisation could easily afford to settle on a distro and maintain it themselves ad infinitum by updating versions or patching at their discretion.
- FINANCIAL - Pretty dang obvious. Pay per user, per cpu, per port, or just for the support you need? Hmmm... let me think, this is a toughie...
- ANYTHING BUT MICROSOFT - sad but true. Probably 10% of conversions have this as their primary justification.
- CUSTOMISABLE - dislike a feature? Don't just disable it (only to have a user figure out a bypass later), get out your handy-dandy software saw and lop that horrid thing right off!
- TECHNICAL - things that are difficult-to-impossible for MS-Windows without "special equipment". Stuff like Xnest and User Mode Linux, which are boons for testing end-user and kiosk style applications, or the so-called Backstreet Ruby console project, which allows multiple independent users on one piece of hardware (e.g. two users on a multihead Radeon card). Stuff like "Terminal Services" and DAVfs being intrinsic to the system.
-
Re:The Difference
then you obviously don't use your workstation and laptop hard enough. I can use DC++ (file sharing program) connect to two hundred or so servers, get several dozen 600+Meg downloads going. come back to my Windows XP Pro computer that is running DC++ and doing absolutely nothing else(p4 1.8ghz, 512M ram, gig ethernet to an OC3) and it will have rebooted sometime durning the night, every time. I don't run DC++ and its fine. I think XP can't handle all the network load for that length of time.
there is also another bug in XP with a shell script that prints 5 tab spaces that will crash XP every time. maybe another slashdotter can point me in the right direction to a link that explains this/has the code because I'm having trouble locating it on google, but I did run it once and crash my XP Pro box, so its out there somewhere. -
Re:"The answer to that is yes"This is more of a VmWare type thing. Win4Lin doesn't emulate the hardware, it emulates DOS.
I thought Win4Lin did emulate hardware. From their site they say that Win4Lin "provides a complete virtual PC environment for the Windows operating systems." Elsewhere it says that they provide a virtual network card. I may be wrong, however, since as I said I have never run the program.
Something comparable would be more like if FreeDOS could be made to run in userspace on Linux and then used it to run Win98.
DOSEMU sounds like what you are describing, and I know people have been successful running Windows 3.1 on it. No Windows 95 and above, though.
The real selling point about Win4Lin over VmWare is that, like WINE, it uses your local filesystem so there no disk image file. Now, I think (think) that the latest VmWare allows this too but I haven't tried it.
Yes, this is a convenient feature. Maybe the QEMU guys can implement it eventually. Right now it is still a fairly new program.