Slashdot Mirror
More Companies Jump on the Linux Train
I had a thought while I was typing the words above: should Slashdot do periodic "roundups" of new Linux ports and support announcements? With so many hardware and software vendors now moving into the "Linux marketplace" (which is how many of them see Linux -- as a marketplace), these announcements are no longer "news" in the sense of being unique or unusual events, but they're still good to know about.
Should we make a weekly post out of all these announcements? Or, because they don't come in at an even rate, should we save them up until we have 10 or so and post them all then whether that takes two days or three weeks?
So, besides posting any new Linux product/support announcements you've seen lately, how about a little advice on how Slashdot might best handle these announcements in the future? I promise to read every comment with a moderation level of zero or higher.
- Robin "roblimo" Miller
And we're supposed to be pleased with this?
"...Is this world not a call I can screen out" --
At the risk of coming off as some unholy Stallman-wannabe, I have to say this.
Linux isn't what's important. Free Software is.
Linux is software, and software comes and goes. Whether some company or other jumps on the Linux bandwagon is irrelevant in the big picture. What is truly important is to spread Free Software in general - not only the software itself, but the accompanying meme that says, essentially, that "sharing is profitable". The catch is to ingrain this idea into our culture in the same way that sharing is already ingrained in the scientific and mathematical communities.
Once we've done that, we'll have achieved something much greated than pressuring a lot of companies to support a Free operating system. We'll have dominated the world. Because world domination is not achieved by actually taking over the world, but by having the world think that you're in control of it.
(Again, sorry for the rant. I'm in extended no-sleep mode.)
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
In answer to roblimo's question, I find that Linux Weekly News (www.lwn.net) already does an excellent job of such roundups. This isn't something slashdot needs to duplicate.
The evaluation of an action as 'practical' . . . depends on what it is that one wishes to practice.
Sorry, I beg to differ and I bet a lot of other people do to.
I don't require that everypiece of software is GPL'ed, or even that every piece of software is freely available in any form.
Binary only software distribution has it's place and so does (gasp horror) binary only software that you have to pay money for.
What is important about linux gaining mainstream driver support (even in binary only form) is that people now have a real choice in the future on intel rather than being forced to use Microsoft operating systems by default.
With the mostly collapse of non-intel architecture unix platforms in the workstation market (Sun, SGI, HP etc) we needed a robust unix based low cost alternative.
Linux is it, and I don't care if some software is binary only or I have to pay money for it.
I think i'd like a combination of some of the above ideas.
First create a anounce section, in which every 'anouncement' is an article. This gives people the option to discuss every anouncement, eg those aurol 3d drivers seem to be a nice discussed item, so why stomp the discussions.
Then create a slashbox, to show the most N-recent anouncements. This alows people who are interested to see all the recent trafic on the 'anounce list', but ppl who dont care dont have to be confronted.
Then every once a 'period' eg week, biweekly or whatever, do a roundup, as we do quickies every-once-in-a-while (Tm) currently, on the main page.
This way people who want to read, and reply to everything, can.
People who have questions on this release/anouncements, have a place to discuss.
People who just care a little bit, can just read the slashbox, to get a @ a glance impression.
People who care even less, will see an article commin by every week/ every other week, and get a quick glance @ what happend, and is of intrest...
This way we should serve all people, and all desire levels.
-- Chris Chabot
"I dont suffer from insanity, i enjoy every minute of it!"
I think this type of announcements are not longer different from any announcement on Freshmeat, and should hence be moved over there, perheaps bundled in a pack of tens of them at once. /. and Freshmeat are now Andover.net sites, I have seen little or no cooperation between them, at least in the content field (I don't know about code cooperation).
While both
This may be regarded as troll, non-/.-ish or whatever, but please read it and think twize, before you moderate or comment.
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
For what you seem to describe we have a situation with the following schema:
Binary driver --> C file (wrapper) -->Linux kernel
Given that Linus specifically allowed binary drivers these are not violating the GPL FOR LINUX ONLY (Linus said it was Ok, but this only apply to Linux).
They have a good reason to do this wrapper:
Linus don't care that much if new kernels break the compatibility with binary-only driver (and IMHO he is right), so doing a wrapper to the driver allow them to just change this wrapper to keep the compatibility, they can also put the wrapper under the GPL (or, better for them, the LGPL) and hope that people using their hardware will help them keep the compatibility between kernels.
It's a first step in the right direction (full Free Software driver) and this give them a first taste of Free Softare and we can only encourage them in it (by helping them keeping the compatibility and, when you submit the patch, tell them how great this would be for you and them if the driver was fully GPL'd).
Of course your post didn't mention wether the wrapper was Free (speech) but there would be little advantage to give this wrapper otherwise.
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
What you have to do is get a message to their marketing group that they do actually have Linux users and that demographic will get bigger for their hardware if they provide drivers. The best ways to do that is to E-Mail their tech support requesting that they send your message on to marketing or to open a suggestion defect requesting drivers and support for Linux. The justification is that the Linux market segment is growing and that Linux is the only non-MS OS on the market which is exhibiting such growth. Thus supporting Linux makes much more sense than supporting, say, OS/2, which IBM has been actively trying to kill for the last 5 years.
The more requests of this nature that go into the company, the more you'll see OSS awareness in the company grow. It'll probably be a couple of years yet before the entire company is completely clueful on the subject but I think that day will come.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
...we need a web page. With summaries of each company's existing support (and non-support), the structure of this support (closed driver vs. published specs vs. open source driver), and announced plans. That web site could then have a weekly news report of new announcements.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Well, I just got the word from VMWare:
Tommorow there will be a public beta of VMWare 2.0, and they included support for SCSI, Sound-in, Major improvment of running Windows 95/98 as a guest, Shrinking disk, Larger then 2GB Virtual disk support, and other goodies.
Check tommorow: http://www.vmware.com
Hetz (Heunique)
http://helllabs.org/~claudio/alsa/ rms-aureal.txt