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What exactly does he mean when he says personal and professional?

You're probably saying already, that doesnt make sense. Let me ellaborate.

RedHat/Mandrake are both very similar. Often, one user of one hates the other. RedHat people will say 'RedHat is more powerful and stable' and Mandrake people will say 'Mandrakes easier and less buggy'. As you can see, these statements conflict. Overall however, there very similar, and either one is fine. They're both based on RPM, and they both can be used for virtually anything.

Then there's the Slackware/Debian crowd. They tend to stick together, but they have differant views none the less. They take pride in their 'elite feeling', in that only people with 'skill' can use and know these distributions. They're typically harder for the novice, yet easier for the seasoned Linux user. Debian has arguably the best package management, and Slackware has probably the most loyal user base ever formed. These are top choices for someone experienced in Linux. Additionally, their is Progney, a commercial debian-based distribution that makes using Debian easier, and provides commercial support. This is quickly becoming a good alternative.

Finally, there's the SuSE and other crowd. They are less known and used, and usually appeal to a specific crowd. SuSE for instance, is very popular among non-US users. These are also generally good, especially if you have really specific needs.

Now, which crowd is right? None. Which is the best? None. It depends on what you want, what crowd you fit in. If you're very technical, You fall into the Slackware/Debian crowd. If you like what's popular, easy, and commercial, you'll like hanging out with the RedHat/Mandrake folks. And if you like something very specific, or a close community, you'll like SuSE or something else.

But what is right for you? That's up to you. Research all of them, Try a few, Play with them. It's like shopping for a car. Some like Chevy, Some like Ford, and some are fine with a Honda. And some just dont care.

What I use depends on the target machine. If it's a server, I'll go with either RedHat or Debian. If it's a workstation, RedHat. Firewall, I use OpenBSD or Debian. But like I said in the beginning, my opinion, or anyone else's, means nothing. Good luck.

You're probably saying already, that doesnt make sense. Let me ellaborate.

RedHat/Mandrake are both very similar. Often, one user of one hates the other. RedHat people will say 'RedHat is more powerful and stable' and Mandrake people will say 'Mandrakes easier and less buggy'. As you can see, these statements conflict. Overall however, there very similar, and either one is fine. They're both based on RPM, and they both can be used for virtually anything.

Then there's the Slackware/Debian crowd. They tend to stick together, but they have differant views none the less. They take pride in their 'elite feeling', in that only people with 'skill' can use and know these distributions. They're typically harder for the novice, yet easier for the seasoned Linux user. Debian has arguably the best package management, and Slackware has probably the most loyal user base ever formed. These are top choices for someone experienced in Linux. Additionally, their is Progney, a commercial debian-based distribution that makes using Debian easier, and provides commercial support. This is quickly becoming a good alternative.

Finally, there's the SuSE and other crowd. They are less known and used, and usually appeal to a specific crowd. SuSE for instance, is very popular among non-US users. These are also generally good, especially if you have really specific needs.

Now, which crowd is right? None. Which is the best? None. It depends on what you want, what crowd you fit in. If you're very technical, You fall into the Slackware/Debian crowd. If you like what's popular, easy, and commercial, you'll like hanging out with the RedHat/Mandrake folks. And if you like something very specific, or a close community, you'll like SuSE or something else.

But what is right for you? That's up to you. Research all of them, Try a few, Play with them. It's like shopping for a car. Some like Chevy, Some like Ford, and some are fine with a Honda. And some just dont care.

What I use depends on the target machine. If it's a server, I'll go with either RedHat or Debian. If it's a workstation, RedHat. Firewall, I use OpenBSD or Debian. But like I said in the beginning, my opinion, or anyone else's, means nothing. Good luck.

actualy i called oracle about one month ago and they told me they dont support RH only suse
So maybe you should check before you flame

Presumably this means that SuSe will now concentrate on actually making money rather than just making a distro.

Tim

SuSE has been doing this for some time now...

--

Ryan, Linux on the iSeries is alive and well. See http://ibm.com/servers/eserver/iseries/linux/. If you have supported hardware you can even install a beta from one of our partners tonight! http://www.suse.com/us/suse/news/PressReleases/iSe ries.html

Sadly though I suspect what you're wanting is linux for the older IMPI AS/400s (the ones in the ugly white boxes) ... umm, I just don't see that ever happening, for a number of political and technical reasons. But you never know, I'm not a decision maker around here, just a bit flipper... ask your sales folks, tell 'em you want to buy the support... if enough people do then they'll start asking development for it... that's how a lot of stuff around here starts. :)

Honestly, I don't understand what all the fuss is about.

Unless you're the kind who likes to pay for water, just use one of the many other Linux distributions out there that don't have such odious licensing terms. It's not like there aren't any alternatives out there.

Or, better, you can use something with no restrictions at all on how you use it.

If Caldera wants to shoot themselves in the foot, who are we to stop them?

b&

I hope this is of help for your white paper...
I'd suggest you try the following: Think up a company and its IT infrastructure needs. Then ask both Microsoft and (e.g.) SuSE for an estimate for a custom solution including support.
As to statistics on this topic, I haven't seen any yet :(
SuSE have a collection of case studies on their website. Maybe those companies are a good point to start at if you would like to do some research of your own.

Nowhere in the article does it mention why Mandrake did the shakeup.

I assume it was obvisouly for finicial reasons. I am quie supprised. Mandrake is a very popular distro. I admit they do not have much support services but it seems to be more aimed at the linux newbie market then server market due to its bleeding edgeness. I wonder how much profit a professional distro like Caldera or Redhat make on services for bussinesses vs profits on the sale.

I noticed SuSE is gaining alot of market share and may be close to toppling redhat in the US. The link is at there website so it may be biased.

Its also one of the most easiest install's I have ever seen. Easy installations is one of mandrakes main strengths and selling points. It also is very solid and bugfree and still has a unix flavor.

Perhaps the rise of SuSE and support profits for redhat have eaten mandrakes profit margins. I also noticed that alot of geeks who are angry at bugs in redhat and mandrake have switched to debian. Debian probably is the most solid distro non commercial distro out there. I believe its just competition thats hurting them.

SuSE just released their latest version (7.1) for SPARC. It includes the 2.4 kernel and KDE2.

SuSE just released their latest version (7.1) for SPARC. It includes the 2.4 kernel and KDE2.

I used to use Mandrake 7.1 but it seemed a little too proprietary. I'm now using SuSE 7.1

Have you checked out SuSE's licensing? You might want to look at section three of the YaST license.

It is hard to find a Linux distribution more proprietary than that, dontcha think?

1. an entry and foot in the door for Global Services
2. 
   a way to sell WAAAAY more hardware and software

this decrease in value doesn't surprise me at all, thinking of the 'little' problems people had while utilizing the RH-improved gcc...

RH is breaking with the OpenSource concepts... they are getting to large for my sense. Hope they keep up to their history again with 7.1.

Use SuSE... this distro rules !

The Suse FAQ shows how to pronounce it.

What about SuSE Linux? It's free as in beer, free as in speech, and very German. It's also a very good OS. It would only make sense that the German government would adopt it. This is the same reason China won't use M$. It's sad to see that only foreign governments are realizing that Microsoft software is not secure!

The system tries to find the files in $CDROM LETTER$:\....what you need to do is type in :\win98\

C:

cd \

mkdir win98

xcopy $CDROM LETTER$:\win98\*.* /s C:\win98

"
This second major release of the KDE 2 series is a real improvement in terms of stability, performance and features," said David Faure, release manager for KDE 2.1 and KDE Representative at Mandrakesoft. "KDE 2 has now matured into a solid, intuitive and complete desktop for daily use. Konqueror is a full-featured and robust web browser and important applications like the mail client (KMail) have greatly improved. The multimedia architecture has made great strides and this release inaugurates the new media player noatun, which has a modular, plugin design for playing the latest audio and video formats. For development, KDE 2.1 for the first time is bundled with KDevelop, an outstanding IDE/RAD which will be comfortably familiar to developers with Windows development backgrounds. In short, KDE 2.1 is a state-of-the-art desktop and development environment, and positions Linux/Unix to make significant inroads in the home and enterprise."

"KDE 2.1 opens the door to widespread adoption of the Linux desktop and will help provide the success on the desktop that Linux already enjoys in the server space," added Dirk Hohndel, CTO of Suse AG. "With its intuitive interface, code maturity and excellent development tools and environment, I am confident that enterprises and third party developers will realize the enormous potential KDE offers and will migrate their workstations and applications to Linux/KDE."

"KDE boasts an outstanding graphical design and robust functionality," said Sheila Harnett, Senior Technical Staff Member for IBM's Linux Technology Center. "KDE 2.1 significantly raises the bar for Linux desktop functionality, usability and quality in virtually every aspect of the desktop."

At least it's an admission that MSFT HASN'T... Don't boast -- do it.
Instead of speaking to lawmakers about the "dangers" of Open Source distroying innovation, innovate.

What model produced the Internet revolution? Open Source; Open Standards. Yes, Microsoft has produced a nice browser. Yes, Windows is convenient to use for most people (heck, right now I'm using IE5.5 on Win98SE running via Win4LIn on my SuSe/KDE2 desktop;why? because my development work for the web requires IE5.5...because Windows is ubiquitous). I and many other prefer choice -- sometimes that choice is Microsoft, believe it or not.

Open Source against Intellectual Property?
NO! Open Source is not against Intellectual Property! The GPL enforces the rights of the author -- even though the source is distributed, it must be handled according to the terms of the license -- that is Intellectual Property enforcement. Does not the author maintain the rights to his/her software under the GPL? Yes. The difference between closed source and open source is not intellectual property but full disclosure. What is running on my mission critical servers? -- with MSFT products God knows; with Open Source products, I know (or, at least, disinterested third parties can know, too; call it, peer review). I personally can trust Microsoft (and Lotus, etc) with the secretaries desktop machine. But not my business' servers. I didn't care about this issue until our SCO UNIX servers started having mystery crashes in the early 90's. Then our DEC Alpha servers began having mystery file corruption in 1997 -- and DEC engineers were summoned to fix the problem. Being a software company we had talent in house that could have made use of the source -- but SCO and DEC were closed source. We were at the mercy of their engineers. Then, in 1999, after we had been running Linux servers for 2.5 years for mission critical applications, we ran into a tty limitation. A quick look through the source revealed our problem unambigously -- and the problem was solved in days. That was an invaluable lesson and is the main reason we choose Open Source versus closed source tools.

It seems to me that innovation has continued to exponentiate since Open Source came into its own. Hey, Microsoft, you might even join us. There's room for you, too. Just, don't think you will be able to take over. Once the source is open, so are the choices.

Besides, Billy Gates can't tell who the people are running copied versions of windows, how the hell are they going to keep us from going to somewhere like SuSE to d/l the OS, and any other overseas site to d/l what people have been working on abroad.
Take it a step further...what's to keep us from just submitting anything we do to some overseas forum?

Bill, sit down, shut up...enjoy the competition. I'm sorry if it's making you guys work to put out a better OS, but i think THAT's what we really need....

Ok, off the soapbox now...

-Caino

Don't touch my .sig there!

Also, while you can download a functional SuSE iso, you're missing a lot. The "evaluation version" doesn't come with anywhere near what the full version does -- 6 CDs worth. Sure, you can download it all, but it's a pain.

--

Just to keep things in perspective, SuSE lost about 30 out of more than 600 employees. It's a very big issue for those leaving, and - I wouldn't have thought it would be that big - also for those staying who see those guys leave.

However, from the companies perspective:
- No development for SuSE Linux took place here at all, so nothing will happen to the product.
- We had hired a lot of people in expectation of things to come in the US - and then the box sales (for ALL Linux boxes) didn't really jump up a lot, and the little was absorbed by much increased competition. That left a lot more people than needed.

I would also like to point out the difference between Europe and the US for SuSE. In Europe we have used the revenue from the box sales in a not nearly as competitive, but equally big or even larger market, to grow into the service business. T-Online, Europes largest ISP, for example, is a SuSE reference customer. And the great thing is they don't just use the distribution - damn, that's next to free! - they actually used and use our _services_ and give us real $$$.

Different in the US, here we only sold the boxed product (and started building Services only recently, which will continue!), and for that the workforce was way too big for that in the current market. If people bought as many packages as they download from the ftp-server, and that's true for all distros,...

So, basically, we got rid of a lot of functions needed for expected strong box sales which now will be done by the already established bigger organisation in Europe. you don't need two call centers for installation support if in the territory that the US one was to cover you sell much less than in the over one's territory (so that one is a big call center already anyway). So people here weren't as busy as expected.

The problems together:
- market situation now lets investors demand IMMEDIATE profitibility
- box sales were the largest contributor for SuSE Inc. revenue
- box sales for Linux in general didn't rise too much...
- ...but competition in this area rose a lot Which basically means for the boxes alone we wouldn't have needed nearly as many additional people as we had hired.

The good news is that SuSE in general doesn't depend on this. Sales in Europe has risen much more, and service revenue of our consulting company - which was founded only in 1999 and is about to become bigger than the "original" SuSE - has reached levels where the box sales have a hard time following, and it's increasing much faster than those as well. Yes, there are a lot more RedHat boxes out there - but unlike for SuSE Linux where we get money for every single one they don't get any money for by far most of it. Of course, now some people might call this bad because Linux is supposed to be free - and I respond yes, "Linux" is supposed to be free, and we still pay the most Linux developers and their stuff goes back to Linux, but "SuSE Linux" is not free. (Well, the ftp version even is, plus the usual stuff, i.e. buy on epackage, install a million times, etc.; we just don't want anyone else to take our final product and sell it filling _their_ own pockets.)

Michael Hasenstein

BEST Oracle on Linux support in town: http://www.suse.com/en/support/oracle/
...and our engineering presence at Oracle HQ will _increase_, not decrease. Yeah, I'm one of the Oracle guys around here ;-)

--
Michael Hasenstein
http://www.suse.de/~mha/

Layoffs and buyouts are generally kept very quiet, even (or especially) within the organization itself...it's a practice that tends (tries) to keep from disrupting morale. Situation normal, and all...

SuSE are putting it in their Linux 7.1, which is due to ship on Feb 12. (Original press release)

Now I'm waiting for it to be put in distros.

SuSE Linux 7.1 ships on Feb. 12, with kernel 2.4 available during setup.

--

It seems there is a real `Redhat == Linux' like syndrome with PowerPC GNU/Linux except its `LinuxPPC 2000 == Linux on PowerPC'

All of the distributions that run on PowerPC use the same Linux kernel, thus all distributions which run on PowerPC will also run on this new machine.

Just a few other GNU/Linux distributions which run on PowerPC hardware including this PowerBook:

Debian
SuSE
YellowDog

--

Some Additional Linux Distribution Suggestions

• Caldera Systems
• Turbo Linux
• SuSE
• Mandrake

• Sun/Open Office
• Applix/Applixware Office
• Oracle
• HP
• Compaq
• Dell
• GNU

• Osborne/McGraw-Hill
• O'Reilly
• Sybex

What I would like to know is, how does the free software community work on making Linux work on big expensive machines like this? I mean, its mostly a network of volunteers, and presumably they can't all have a supercomputer each to work on, so how do they do it? Is most of the work on Linux at this level done by big companies that can afford it like IBM, or is there a place for the smaller Linux developer and enthusiast?

Considering the fact that it is very unlikely that there are several hackers (heck, even one) who can afford to buy a $100,000 to $1,000,000 piece of hardware and invalidate the warranty simply to test the viability of porting Linux, I doubt that anyone outside of commercial developers are working on Linux on mainframes.

A quick search on Google for "supercomputer" & "linux" pulls up the IBM machines and a bunch of Beowulf style clusters and not much else. Interestingly most of the IBM links are to Los Lobos, IBM's clustered supercomputer.

Oops, I just did a search for "linux" & "mainframe" and found better links which look like they may point to some enthusiast sites after all, such as ROAM. There are also links to Suse's and IBM's mainframe linux products to be found.

Grabel's Law

According to c't (german magazine), the problem is just with SMP-Kernels, that have problems to identify the IO-APIC to know the number of CPUs.

Quickfix: Boot with kernel parameter "noapic".

or get a new install disk. (SuSE: ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/update/7.0/kernel /pentium4/)

Let's see. Depending on who you want to sell on the issue, we certainly have the big boys. IBM , HP and quite likely Compaq (the TrueUnix/VMS folks, not the crappy box assemblers) can quite likely deliver expensive support and professional Linux services. Of course it's up to you to determine the quality. But you also have to do that when EDS is shipping 10 of their clones with bad haircuts to you.

Then there are specialized companies whose most prominent representation is probably Linuxcare.

Finally and - in my experience most importantly there are the distributers who base their business model basically on services. I had outstanding experiences with SuSE (American site) which guided me through struggles getting X up on my notebook. They made a very idealistic, determined and goal oriented impression and delivered far better support then what I've seen with companies that charge $1/4 million a year (and that was the free issue installation support). They run a professional services department and they have various support plans including 24/7 - and dedicated resource plans. Pricing looks quite reasonable.

I can't vouch for Red Hat, Mandrake , or Caldera, but at least Red Hat has a good reputation.

So, here we go. There's a lot around to chose from and compare. If the gentlemen in the suits insist on an IBMHPSUNDEC rubber stamp, here you go and you probably pay for it through your nose. Not that the distributers quite give away theire services, but from what I've seen there seems to be excellent value there.

You probably want to search the linuxppc-user list archives from here and check out penguinppc.org for other useful resources and info.

As for the iBook, the archives indicate that it does work quite well. There doesn't appear to be support for Firewire though (or at least not good support).

The cube also seems to run LinuxPPC just fine as does those new dual processor G4s (drool). Though the multiprocessor support is in early stages. Did this just not port well from Intel or does multiprocessor support generally suck in Linux?

Aside from LinuxPPC, you may also want to check out YellowDog which is a very similar distro to LinuxPPC but apparently has an auto-update feature similar to apt-get as well as rpm support. Then of course there's SUSE.

Personally, I'd strongly recommend buying a PPC for Linux - the computers are substantially faster than Intels (despite the Mhz ratings, look at the benchmarks). I'm also looking at buying an iBook to go with my G3 desktop so I'd like to hear your experiences with it. Oh, and yes you can buy multi-button mice for Macs. Get one. :)

Adrian Sutton.

You've got to be kidding:

Imagine, releasing their 7.0 a week before KDE2 final.

SuSE 7 was made available on July 31. And today is what - October 23? I'd shoot for more than one week, let's say... oh a little under 3 months?

You realize what the problem is, don't you? All the desktop users who aren't UNIX gurus (you know, the guys still running the stock kernel) will be using RC1 (or whatever KDE2 Suse comes with) for the rest of their lives. I don't care what all the blowhard UNIX gurus say, KDE is too hard to install.

Actually, YaST lets you update any packages that are made available on SuSE's FTP site, including KDE. Now, I am sure there will be a delay between when KDE2 final is released and the update made available on SuSE's FTP site but nobody will be stuck with RC1 for the rest of their lives as you claim.

SuSE does have some nice features to use as a server out of the box. Firewalling and Masquerading are both fairly easy to install & don't require you to write lengthy scripts. I also approve of the default configuration of /etc/inetd.conf that disables several (risky) services that are enabled by default in other distributions. I've installed 7.0 twice so far and was amazed at the speed and ease. However, I recommend choosing Yast1 to install instead of Yast2 that tries to "do everything for you" and ends up depriving you of additional configuration options. Another adavantage of SuSE is the extensive & very up-to-data online-database at www.suse.com.

"I will make a sizeable contribution to The Human Fund in the name of everyone who establishes or points to a mirror :)"

Hey look, there's a mirror over there! /me points

As far as I know, Suse sells Sparc Linux versions.

Yep, they do.

At the moment, they have SuSE 7.0 for x86, PowerPC, Alpha and S390 (prerelease). And they have announced SuSE 7.0 for SPARC too.

However, I don't think that my old Sparc 5 clone will be supported.. :~(
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong though ;-)

As far as I know, Suse sells Sparc Linux versions.

Yep, they do.

At the moment, they have SuSE 7.0 for x86, PowerPC, Alpha and S390 (prerelease). And they have announced SuSE 7.0 for SPARC too.

However, I don't think that my old Sparc 5 clone will be supported.. :~(
Someone please correct me if I'm wrong though ;-)

(See? I keep the subjects clean! :) It's half-surprising it's taken this long for a Linux bundle on DVD.. Just remember them crazy Germans at SuSE did it first. (I can't wait to get the 7.0 upgrade; new kernel and more apps on the DVD than on the 6 CD's!) (Guess I need an RPC-I DVD drive now... :) ps: fyi: if you get a new dvd drive, make sure it's rpc-i. rpc-ii drives have the region coding firmwired into the drive itseld, and you can only change region 5 times. (maybe a new zealander can assist The Cause(tm)...)

SuSE has their professional version (7.0), at newly updated RH like prices, available with 6 CDs & the contents of the CDs on one DVD.

They have personal edition available as well, for what used to be the pr ice as the whole thing.

Lastly they have an update version which will save you a couple bucks but you lose the manuals.

A comparison is here.

SuSE has their professional version (7.0), at newly updated RH like prices, available with 6 CDs & the contents of the CDs on one DVD.

They have personal edition available as well, for what used to be the pr ice as the whole thing.

Lastly they have an update version which will save you a couple bucks but you lose the manuals.

A comparison is here.

SuSE has their professional version (7.0), at newly updated RH like prices, available with 6 CDs & the contents of the CDs on one DVD.

They have personal edition available as well, for what used to be the pr ice as the whole thing.

Lastly they have an update version which will save you a couple bucks but you lose the manuals.

A comparison is here.

SuSE has their professional version (7.0), at newly updated RH like prices, available with 6 CDs & the contents of the CDs on one DVD.

They have personal edition available as well, for what used to be the pr ice as the whole thing.

Lastly they have an update version which will save you a couple bucks but you lose the manuals.

A comparison is here.

What they hear is all that matters. Some newbie r33t h4x0r hears of Linux so he uses RedHat. Now if you move up (so to speak) you'll realize that RedHat has some third party software other distro's don't.

...server installs are where most of the market interest is at the moment.

Uhm...no. Most of the Linux installs are done as desktops. Don't believe me? Go look at the SuSE FAQ.

One thing which I can never quite get about Linux is the GPL stand on mandatory open-source. It seems to think that EVERYONE loves it. Guess what? Not everyone does. It doesn't pay the bills. Believe it or not but most of the people purchasing all those SuSE cd's are newbie pimple faced 15 year olds on dialups. Don't believe me? Go look at the SuSE FAQ. So when we all have our own broad-band connection Freenix cd sales will plummet. But the GPL advocates seem to love it when Oracle ports closed-source software over to Linux. Big deal if KDE is(was) linking their source against proprietary widgets? Go write your own widgets that can take the KDE source. Its open-source so it shouldn't be too hard. Trolltech isn't exactly making money allowing people to download their full product for FREE from their site. Think about it, they have to put up a system, pay someone to administer it, bandwidth costs money, and room to keep it in. It reminds me of the situation with Solaris 2.7 and Tadpole RDI. Tadpole isn't putting their Solaris 2.7 patches on their FTP, instead they have chosen to sell them. Good for them! It's capitolism at its best! Food for my family or free software.....

Cable wrote:

MacOS, this is going away once OSX comes out. The problem here is that it only runs on the Macintosh Platform, the most recent PowerPC Macs that is. The old 68K Macs can't run it, and there are no plans to port it to the WINTEL platform like BeOS was ported. All I see OSX as is just yet another BSD Unix hack. Might as well use BSD on PC systems then, you may not have that Aqua interface, but at least you can have multiple platforms BSD can run on and have the scalability that Mac hardware lacks.

With all due respect, you don't know what the fsck you're talking about.

Darwin (the BSD hack underlying Mac OSX) has already been ported to intel hardware.

New OSX-capable Macs can be bought for as little as $800 and there is a large base of fanatically loyal Mac users who will purchase new hardware, if they haven't already, to make the upgrade.

The issue of interface is not a trivial one to the people who use Macs, and the quartz layer is a powerful technology that will be highly useful to the graphic artists who have always been a core Mac constituency.

MacOS isn't "going away" anytime soon.

The stuff about "the scalability that Mac hardware lacks" is just bizarre. Do you mean that the OS lacks scalability, or the hardware?
You can cluster Macs...
And you can run linux on Mac hardware (LinuxPPC, Yellow Dog Linux, Debian, SuSE Linux)-- are you saying Linux isn't scalable?
Umm, whatever.

It's probably a good idea to do a little research on this stuff before you spread misinformation, unless you want to look dumb and piss off Mac users.

The full release version of SuSE Linux 6.4 for the Power PC is due out any day now according to SuSE and it is looking pretty good. It's going to give LinuxPPC some real competition.

Your problems are likely not Athlon or KDE related.

It may instead have to do with what kernel you're running. Apparently, the later 2.3.XX kernels have VM performance issues, and Alan Cox's Diary hints that 2.2.15 also may have some issues. (I'd give an exact entry date, except that I can't seem to get to the site right now. It was sometime in the last week or two.) I looked at the SuSE USA website, and noticed that SuSE 6.4 comes with Kernel 2.2.14. I'm not sure if it has the same VM issues that Alan was referring to wrt. 2.2.15.

Interestingly, from what I remember reading in the Linux Kernel mailing list archives, the problems are worse on large-memory machines.

PS. Why is it that nobody seems to be able to spell A T H L O N correctly?

First off, let me save a lot of quoting and redundant responses by asking this: Where do you get off assuming that just because the poster you responded to doesn't like User Friendly that they are a Windows bigot? You are demonstrating first-hand the poster's assertions about User Friendly's problem being with it's fans, and you're giving fellow Linux users a bad reputation, especially with that "burn in NT hell" line.

A bit of jealousy perhaps? We never hear about "Suprise, Suprise. With the sale of new distributions Linus is once again bringing his sub-standard kernel to the universe". Why is that? Is it because he makes no money off of Linux and Illiad does? Money != bad.

That's a total non-issue. Comic strip artists like Pete Abrams of Sluggy Freelance do not have this issue because they handle marketing in a tasteful manner, unlike Illiad's crass "branding" web site. Bill Watterson of Calvin and Hobbes fame once wrote an article in his 10th anniversary special book about how marketing in the manner Illiad is doing devalues and cheapens the art of the strip. Illiad can only hope to be half the comic strip artist that Bill Watterson was.

Audiences can not be commodized, product can.

Ah, but is that really true? Illiad has a fanatically loyal following of techie fans. Illiad is selling the ability for companies like SuSE to target and market to his audience by using his branded characters. In effect, Illiad is selling his audience to interested companies. Of course, this is just dithering about semantics, so I'll leave it at that.

First of all, since when has CARTOONS been considered art? It's COMEDY, by definition it's going to be formulaic, get over it. If you're looking for high-brow technical humor read some April 1st RFCs or something.

My, my. It's a sad commentary when a fan of an artistic media doesn't even recognize it as art. Perhaps your satisfaction with sit-com style formulae has stagnated your appreciation of what truly innovative and creative artwork and comedy should be.

Once again, I refer to Bill Watterson's 10th anniversary Calvin and Hobbes book on issues of the artform of comics. The essay there, which delves into the history of the artform before it became wedged into its current limited panel layout and forced schtick format is very educational.

The rich and gentle satire of politics and day to day living, Pogo, and it's modern day successor, Ozy and Millie, certainly qualify as a some of the best of the 20th century. Who can deny that the Sandman series of graphic novels are art? Certainly not the people who awarded it the Hugo award for Science Fiction and Fantasy. Perhaps you should pick up the latest offering, The Dream Hunters, which features a return of Neil Gaiman's strong evocative writing with Yoshitaka Amano's etherial, otherworldy artwork narrating the tale. Then you may still attempt to deny to the world that comics are art.

Just because User Friendly and many syndicated sellouts like Garfield and Dilbert seem increasingly incapable of producing art and non-formulaic humor as their profits from merchandising increase, don't assume that comics cannot be art. You are only appreciating the most bastardised version of it.

And this would prove what? You might has well have said "The first person that compares Tux to MS Bob gets a sticker"

That makes absolutely no sense. It's obvious you aren't familiar with the character Opus from Bloom Count or you'd be able to see the ways in which the Dust Puppy and he share many, many similar personality traits. The Dust Puppy is at best a tribute to and at worst a rip-off of Opus.

Jezus...what did they do to you to rip your sense of humour out so completely?

Perhaps, he just doesn't think that all comedy by definition should be formulaic as you do. Making fun of something can be funny. Making fun of someone making fun of something rarely is.

The keys to comedy are spontaneity, creativity, timing, and relevance to the audience. In the world of comic strips, #1 and #3 are usually handled in the layout and pacing of when certain lines happen, with the comedic twist almost always happening in the last panel. User Friendly well appreciates its market and has #4 well in hand.

It's #2, creativity, that User Friendly is sometimes seen as lacking in. This is much the same as Odie getting punted off a table by Garfield or Dilbert's boss saying something really stupid. They're running gags that have been run into the ground. Since you think all humor should be formulaic, you probably don't have an appreciation for the importance of this. However, those of us who do see the complete lack of creativity in a spoof of a spoof.

Do some exploring. There are plenty of good web comics that break the formulaic mold. I read about 30 or so of them a day. It shouldn't be hard to find one to match your tastes that is better than UF.

I would like? I would like a trip to Europe...

I would like to ask the owners of this "Red Hat Is Not Linux" site why they feel the need to do this? I mean, does that mean that Mandrake is not linux? Does that mean that /Suse/ is not linux? Well please, do tell, what is linux?

I agree that the "commercialization" of linux may one day be harmful to it as far as it's being a powerful and fully open OS. But that does not mean that simply because a company which produces a distro or some such to make money is no longer linux.

So what? So there are some companies which have chosen to only _support_ one distro of linux. How can we expect a "linux friendly" company to support all flavors of linux when it is open source and there can be so many subtle yet important differences between each distro? What do you suggest, standardization,?

Agreed, Red Hat should not be taken as "the" linux distrobution. But just because they have gone public or "sold out" or some such that they should not be considered linux. RH was the very first disro I ever tried, mainly because IMHO they were the first to try and draw in newbies and not treat them like morons. Not that I am not a moron, but I like to think that I can count all my toes without the need of a calculator.

But what do I know? I'm going back to knitting a sweater from my belly button lint...

More info on the alliance between SuSE and UF here.

kwsNI