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Wyse Ditches Linux For WinCE
Scrymarch writes "Wyse has switched to Windows from Linux on its thin-client devices because of lack of driver support, etc. Story is on CNET." I feel like a bitter boyfriend. 'You'll be back! You'll be back here on your hands and knees, begging me to take you back!' Maybe I can play 'Mom,' too. 'When you get nailed by stupid licensing schemes, don't come crying to me! It's all fun and games until someone loses stock value!'
Well, I've had a miserable time trying to get as far as a GUI. I sometimes don't even succeed in getting a boot disk to run; so far, most CD-ROM drives/drivers seem not to work, for one reason or another, so I can't do better than Debian's 7-floppy Base (Bless Debian...) in general. All that wonderful SuSE stuff... S.O.L... One machine (NEC) had 990K (or 956K) of video RAM, and apparently X Win didn't like that. GUI (SuSE KDE; (quite nice)) locked up totally in anywhere from milliseconds to minutes, once X was started. (Yes, I know I was probably asking for trouble. Had at least 16 MB of regular RAM, and 32 MB (or more) swap.) Seems that M$ has the huge amount of $ to spend on acquiring (or getting access to) oodles of different machines, and creating "hardware probes" as well as drivers to accommodate darned near anything, although I have not tried to install Win onto these older machines. However, every single one of them was running Win 95 when the customers turned them in.
I have the feeling that the volunteer nature of Linux development has meant that a great deal of wonderful work has been done, but nevertheless that coverage of the entire production of PCs out there is less than complete.
I like Linux, have lots of respect for it, and passionately want to see it succeed, but the problems I've had have been very disappointing. No, I haven't asked for help, because these attempts at installation are quite the opposite of "mission-critical", and I don't want to waste the energy and good will of someone for a relatively-trivial cause. Maybe worse, I have not kept notes, so I have only mental recollections of the problems I've encountered. In summary, it seems to me that much more needs to be done with hardware probing and drivers if legacy machines are to become useful. As it seems (in my tiny world), it's far too difficult to get Linux going on legacy machines. I'm quite aware that legacy machines are not Linux's main application, but the lack of successful autoprobing and installation of appropriate drivers (if they even exist) is related to the topic of this article and its comments. Believe me, my intent in this message is not to put down Linux; it's only to point out problems I've had.
I'm not exactly a newbie; was a midnight hacker in 1960, but was isolated from computers until ~1982, so I'm not really all that experienced. Nicholas Bodley
NetBSD is so magnificent that 6 people in the world use it.
Instead of making your stupid comments about licensing fee's, why don't you look at WHY they switched. Lack of drivers is a valid concern to any company.
/. switching the issue at hand instead of acknowledging a limitation linux is facing. Why don't you stop the script kiddie cheap shots & work on the concerns this company has. They are valid
Too many times do I see some post or comment on
I was sent by my former company to Comdex in Vegas to look for Linux based thin client devices. They run a Winframe network with remote offices connecting via 56k frame circuits mainly. This, and the fact that the internal users had difficulty finding the start button in Windows 95 was the primary reason for using Citrix servers. From my experience I was impressed by the setup. We were looking for a Linux based thin client b/c we were developing a web page with links to the applications on the Citrix servers down the left side. The CE based thin clients don't have a web browser. The only other option was some which have a stripped down NT which is extremely slow and hardware intensive. Linux was the next logical choice.
While I was at Comdex I asked the Wyse people about their Linux based thin client line. They informed me that it was going out of production. I asked about pricing for them and they said somewhere around $800-900. I sort of snickered as I asked why so high. Their reply: "Linux is so hardware intensive it is quite expensive." My snicker turned into a laugh. I replied: "Interesting, I've found about 3 Linux based units for under $500." They drilled me on which manufacturers and when I told them they shut up and got very rude. Interesting attitude for sales reps to have. Incidentally, the Wyse booth was located in the Windows 2000 Pavillion hellhole (the place was packed with angry people). I then proceeded over the the Citrix booth located in the Windows 2000 area to ask their reps if they knew of any Linux based thin clients. They referred me to Netier who unveiled their Linux thin client at the show. When I told them about the Wyse reps they informed me that Microsoft had pressured Wyse to drop the Linux line in order to be featured in the Windows 2000 Pavillion. Admittedly this is second hand information but fascinating nonetheless.
My research there turned up 3 suppliers of Linux based thin clients for Citrix environments which impressed me.
1 - Maxspeed: They just released the MaxTerm UT and were great to work with. They would be my top pick in the Linux thin client market at the moment
2 - VXL: They are based in India and make the Winlinx Netica which is a pretty cool unit but a bit more pricey. One cool thing is that they have access card slots which could be useful for security in retail environments.
3 - Netier: Their Linux based unit is pretty neat and relatively inexpensive. They were sometimes late in getting units to us, and I got the impression that the units were rushed out before extensive testing
Preach it, brother. And somehow in spite of this, we keep hearing the denial-based mantra "Slashdot is not a Linux advocacy site." Folks, proof positive right there in one of the actual editors' own words.
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companies even go into business with misspelled company names; latest is Conversent
Ah, but as Humpty Dumpty would tell you, that's a portmanteau word, a combination of Converse and sent. Clearly they are in the business of delivering sneakers by mail order.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
You've got to be making that up, or micros~1 is even dumber than I thought. That kind of thing is _exactly_ the kind of thing the DoJ can kick their ass for, and I thought MS would be smart enough not to try to pull shit like that right now, when the DoJ is damn close to crushing them. Where did you hear that news, anyway?
#define X(x,y) x##y
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes ,
To quote JWZ:
Linux is only free if your time is worthless -- Jamie Zawinski
I have found that the fun I have with computers was worth the time investment. I use computers a lot. For people who don't use computers regularly, or for more than one thing, the flexibility is not needed. Redhat goes some way toward catering to the people who just want a few things. I use Debian myself, because it gets your stuff configured for you if you answer the questions, but you can easily hack anything if you want. I recommend Debian to programmers and CS majors. For some people, all the commons OSes out there are too complicated. Windoze confuses _lots_ of people. It's only user friendly when you don't have to do something incredibly obscure to get it to work. From what I hear, BeOS is the OS for people who don't need to know how to program and learn about devices and all the arcane (to them) stuff that we revel in.
#define X(x,y) x##y
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes ,
First off - if you're "in the industry" you
wouldn't use the term "l33t" though your point
about Linux originally being hard to install/use
are true.
Your observations concering Mr Torvalds and Mr Cox
are nonsense, as is most of the rest of your post.
For a actual comment on the topic - I use to work
for the company in question. They are an
oportunistically managed company that doesn't have
a concept of "long term planning." They run
products out like people run ideas up flag poles.
They remove products from the market just as
quickly, never giving their channels a chance
to really figure out how to market the stuff.
Have you compiled your kernel today??
Kaufmann wrote:
> They aren't. Wyse is targetting the corporate market, which in practice means Joe Average PHB.
But of course, they're not. The piece _specifies_ residence boxes.
But,
> Call me crazy, but I don't think any "regular Joe" wants to be forced to use an operating system whose primary focus has always been on an user base of hackers, sysadmins and other "advanced" users who like to play with Unix.
is an even worse red herring. C'mon; have you ever _looked_ at a 5535? I did. Extensively. If you didn't know what Linux was you'd have _no idea_ what it was running.
Nor would you care; it Just Worked.
Has anyone here seen the picture of the Jumbotron in Times Square with the BSOD on it?
Cheers,
-- jra
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I'm sorry, you've confused what *should* be the next big thing with whatever we're going to get instead. I'm pretty sure I like your ideas better.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
The above post is one and a half hours old and hasn't produced the paroxysms of moderation I'd have expected but troll or flamebait or not, it raises a question I've been wondering about, "What's the next big thing?", or, more specifically, what's the next big thing that will be only for those "in the know" until it eventually goes mainstream, at which point something else will become the "next big but nobody knows about it yet thing"?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Not to mention that microsoft has over 100 pending class action suits against them that will be greatly enhanced once Jackson conclusion of facts become fact. While the appeal can go on and on, so can the class action suits. Win the battle (anti-trust suit), lose the war (class action suits).
All of them, from what remember, can use both the RDP and ICA client protocols. I have set up a number of them using ICA over both modem and LAN. My experience with RDP is limited to "Oh, look, RDP works."
I have seen many bar code readers that are serial in nature. The Citrix client for Linux can't do serial emulation, hence, problems with bar code readers.
(Visit www.citrix.com for info on what MetaFrame is and does.)
We've bought systems from Dell, without having them slob MS code onto them.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
From the number of off topic and abusive comments I'd venture to say "Breaking up is hard to do." or take.... :)
Back on topic, I thought it was interesting Wyse would say what was said. Then I figured they made a deal with MSFT. The deal probably included that article written by a MSFT PR person. You know the kind, just like Ford where Ford says all kinds of great things about Windows because MSFT is retrofitting Ford for free.... Then again WinCE is floundering so badly that MSFT may have told Wyse they can use it for free. No more choice of paying for drivers or paying for the OS. Only the insider know.
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Well the story is basically this:
1) Wyse has made CE-based devices for some time.
2) Wyse didn't like the CE licencing terms.
3) Wyse announced a Linux-based product to gain leverage against Microsoft.
4) Microsoft dropped the price on CE
5) Wyse dumped the Linux project because it was no longer needed.
(BTW, IE for WinCE is different than the Win32 product.)
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Well, terminals are not a consumer product, so you probably wouldn't see them in the store. Your store probably doesn't have the Compaq Proliant 8500s (etc) that they use to serve these things with either.
Actually, the best place to see Wyse products in a store is to take a close look at the cash register. They seem to do a pretty good business in Point-Of-Sale terminals. (They look to be VT220 clones.)
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Wyse has went downhill cince the days of terminals. I love this excuse of "it dont have support or drivers from our suppliers of barcode scanners, magstrip readers, printers... etc...
That is the largest load of bullhockey I have ever seen. No support for barcode?? bit me buddy! every barcode reader made that isn't a toy is either a serial device or inserts into the keyboard stream. credit card and check readers are also serial devices, and printers... if your printing recipts you use ASCII!
I have 3 POS terminals running Linux. I use OTS hardware, If little ol' bullhockey me can do it, why cant Wyse??
(note it took me 35 minutes to make the devices work.)
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You seem to have missed his point, that not all free software is Linux. He's not going against the herd(and not 'deliberately', as you put it, insinuating that he's not giving his actual opinions), although I would applaud him if he did - I'm rather sick of the flock of Linux supporters myself, who routinely bash all closed software, and ignore most non-GPL OSS projects.
If you think that somehow slashdot has been invaded by bunches of anti-OSS people who are getting moderated way up on the basis of their rebellious opinions, sorry, but you're a fucking loon. Slashdot is the same Slashdot it has always been, full of Linux groupies.
Of course a world dominated by Linux (or other Free Software) would be better than a world dominated by Windows. It's all about Freedom.
Freedom of what? Freedom to use the only choice available to you? Yay! If you're going to get down on the original poster for not giving details on why Linux is not fit for embedded use on terminals(as you 'put aside' the question of why NetBSD would be viable), you're going to need to explain what your odd vision of 'freedom' is. I don't think that I would feel free in such an environment, and would much rather have as many choices and competitors as possible, using different development models.
-lx
(dear secret closed-source brothers: moderate this up)
Absolutely. WinCE makes far more sense for the application, or perhaps embedded NT, which has been popping up in some WinTerms. Currently I use NCD ThinStars, but I'll probably be looking at Wyse and TeleVideo when it's time for more. I wouldn't have considered using Wyse if they were still on Linux.
-lx
Well, technically you can, I regularly run Word thru a webpage. One with a Citrix ICA java client built in :)
-lx
At first I wonder where Wyse plans to get drivers.
Thin clients arn't exactly "off the sheff" design.
If drivers exist for ANY os it is likely a slap job and not a real effort making significant changes in the hardware.
If the plan is to build a low priced system the added cost of WinCE puts an end to that...
I don't actually exist.
Thank you, Lx. I was just about to hit the Reply to This link to object to the poster having missed my point, when I read your message. So thank you for saving me those few minutes, not to mention quite a few keystrokes *.
:)
Also, you managed to summarise quite succintly both of my main points: that Free Sofware doesn't necessarily == Linux, and that world domination by anyone is a Bad Thing.
(*) In accordance with the popular notion that one is only alotted a fixed number of keystrokes in one's lifetime...
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
Linux on a thin client is the way to go, I'd be preaching to the choir if I had to explain why
:]) looking for rational discussion re. the benefits and disadvantages of using Linux on thin clients.)
Why?
(Moderators take note: this is not a troll, nor is it flamebait; this is just someone "not in the choir" (I'm not a Linux user, and I'm an atheist anyways
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
Exactly! This is a point that many people are missing. Yes, we would have an open source operating system, but it does not give any guaranties that the applications would be open source. The companies can still lock the users into closed data formats -- and we would be back to square one.
What we really need is several operating systems sharing the market between them. Then the commercial application developers must start thinking about capability between each other on the data format level, or have a port to all major operating systems (which hopefully would be to much hassle).
X is not a GUI. X is a networking protocol for networking gui commands. What you are referring to is the Window Manager, and in case you are blind or have had your head in the sand for the past few years, there are several very nice window managers. Let see, there are KDE, Gnome, Enlightment (which runs on top of Gnome), both of these are now pretty standard with most of the major distributions, and a number of others. KDE is pretty enough, and powerful enough for most people to use. Gnome (which I don't use that much) is pretty much in the same league.
-- Error: Cannot find file REALITY.SYS - Universe halted, please reboot!
Yeah, except that when you want and embedded browser WINCE doesn't have one, and their old Linux based Winterms did. Oh, and it had ICA too, oh and it actaully WORKED!
Since when does WinCE lack a browser? Last time I checked PocketIE shipped on every WinCe device I'd ever seen.
That is, whatever usually passes for "sanity" at /..
:-)
The question is, is someone orchestrating this, or is it merely the natural outcome of contrasting lifestyles?
All the MSFT supporters would probably just go away if Slashdot was subtitled "News for Linux-users"
But, not really surprisingly when you think about it, a large number of "Nerds" actually have to use Windows on a regular basis. And a number of them actually think there's some merit to Microsoft software.
So why would a large portion of slashdot readers get upset by continuously reading inflamatory posts about Microsoft? Beats me
I use VNC *all* the time to remotedly admin my NT boxes from my Linux box at the office and at home (check out the JAVA applet, running on port 5800 for something uber cool). But when you connect to an NT box, it's still just the one console. It isn't intended to replace WTS. I think it may allow true multiuser access on *NIX, but I've never had to go that route.
Before accusing people of "spouting off", read the article yourself. There is no mention of "Windows Terminal Devices". Now maybe that's what they're talking about, but according to the article the only problem with Linux is a few device drivers. Maybe that's a smoke screen, I don't know. But if we take it at face value it's pretty crazy. Writing a driver for a bar code reader is prety easy.
is the link that the troll provided. Man, is he lame, I mean really, how much intelegence does it really take to find another picture?
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Alex M. Hochberger
MCSE, CCA
If you want any credibility around here, you should probably not mention that you are an MCSE.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Itallicesed text is the submitter, Normal text is the slashdot editor. It isn't a very complex system...
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
I didn't attack him, I simply told him what I thought was true, based on other posts I've read on slashdot, that If you want any credibility around here then you shouldn't mention that you are an MCSE. I don't have a problem with this person, but in every post he's made he's mentioned that he's MCSE, and CCA. But, instaid of bosting his reputibility, hes harming it. Now, if I was arguing, I would also need to have a position, witch I didn't mention in my post.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
"I don't believe such behavior helps the cause(s) any farther, and only makes the people who do contribute look bad."
....
.|` Clouds cross the black moonlight,
*Sigh*! Learn to spot irony, dammit! Repeat after me: Irony Is Funny,
Or if you're going to moan, at least do it grammatically.
~Tim
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~Tim
--
Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
"Asshole" yourself - you can't even spot the grammatical error and go and post a couple more yourself.
.|` Clouds cross the black moonlight,
Run away, little fuckwit...
~Tim
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~Tim
--
Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
You seem unable to comprehend that
.|` Clouds cross the black moonlight,
a) your post had grammatical fuckups
b) mine did not
c) your second comment had yet more grammatical fuckups
d) you are an arrogant ignorant fuckwit
e) triple-digit? It takes one to know one. Now fuck off.
~Tim
--
~Tim
--
Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
You can't count OR spot errors.
.sig tweak and -1 for not spotting it as poetry. It's from a Runrig song, and I strip them all out in preferences anyway.
.|` Clouds cross the black moonlight,
There is nothing wrong with "*Sigh*!". Nor with my chosen initial-caps means combining quotation and block-whassit effect. The comma+ellipsis on the end is because I can't be arsed repeating it several times over but would rather you had so done.
There is nothing wrong with ending a sentence on an adverb.
I'll give you +1 for the
You have somehow, miraculously, managed to spot your own error to which I referred originally, "farther" v "further". Yet you still cannot sort out your "your" and "you're" (" hope, after your done being pissed at me"). And you can't even spell "definitely".
If you want to laugh, start with *your*self by all means. Then try applying it to other folks before getting all shitty-minded and missing irony in others' comments. THEN make sure you make your point in the best way possible, grammatical cockups included as they only detract.
Perfection had no part in the original point. Failure to spot irony and inability to express self in accepted/acceptable fashion were.
~Tim
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~Tim
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Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
man, wyse sure made a dumb move.
The majority opinion of /.ers seems to be that unless you have popular credibility, you have no credibility. And since in order to have popular credibility, you must be a freenix advocate, having an MCSE automatically disqualifies you. It doesn't matter that the topic at hand should make your independently verifiable expertise relevant to the discussion; quite the contrary, since MS has certified you as competent, you must be incompetent. Kind of a "friend of my enemy" thing.
Windows users have just as much choice with their computers as you do with yours
;)
I am one, so that does make sense. (Egads!, you mean it's possible to use more than one OS!
How about this for throat forcing...I'm about to cascade some machines. I am replacing P-133s with pII-500s (new ones). I'm planning on moving the p133s to Linux, so you think I can call Dell, say "Hey, I've already got NT licences for those boxes I'm getting, can I just transfer MY bought and paid for licenses to the new machines? I'm deleting the old ones? How much does that knock off the price? Oh, and I'd like to do the same for that Office package you've included" Now, do you think it is Dell or Microsoft that prohibits such action?
--
+&x
tell me how.
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+&x
I've got a term for mister "I'm so l33t and kewl"
http://www.dictionary.co m/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=perspective
I have an idea. How about you just turn off your best friend there, put a little of that energy into getting laid or something, and take a pill and relax?
Jeez.
Microsoft and Citrix came late to the thin client market with proprietary offerings that don't make too much sense to me financially, in terms of long term market viability, or in terms of performance.
Rather than investing a lot in ICA and RDP-based clients, I think companies should invest in thin clients that are based on open, well-documented standards like HTTP, HTML, XML, and Java.
The sad thing is that we are living in a Windows desktop world. You can't run Word and Solitaire in web pages.
The interesting part is that Citrix is making ICA servers for *nix - and clients for most platforms out there. Those of you that bothered to read the Finding of Fact knows that MS' most important tactic has been to maintain a high application barrier to entry. If you can run X/*nix applications just as easy as Win* applications you remove (most of) that barrier. Check it out
Unfortunately, this is just going to replace the Win32 API monopoly with an ICA monopoly.
If J.K.R wrote Windows: Puteulanus fenestra mortalis!
This is the logic that has kept us from adopting the metric system.
;)
I have been told that you are approaching the metric system "inch by inch".
If J.K.R wrote Windows: Puteulanus fenestra mortalis!
Not to mention that fact that unless microsoft chooses to end the whole issue they can appeal and reappeal for a while yet. Don't expect this to be over for several years.
> Maybe it's because Linux can't handle the load on their servers!
Is that why Windows (All of them) has the worst multitasking of any OS?
> I bet I could do better running Apache on DOS!!!
Well if you run Windows 95, 98 then you are running DOS, it just has a clown suit on!
I just have one question, are you Drunk or just stupid?
I didn't notice or else I would've only put the parent post at 1 instead of 2.
Sorry if I misled you to believe the parent post was insightful or important :)
IANAL, but I play one on
Ok I agree scanner support is way lame, printing under linux can be a pain in the ass but what the hell kind of bar code readers even need drivers? I work in the IT dept of my university's library we have alot of bar code readers and I've had to support at least half a dozen different brands and models produced over the last decade from light weight hand held scanners to one pretty indrustrial (and expensive) unit. Not a single one of them has required a driver of any type. Every single bar code reader I've setup has simply fit inbetween the keyboard and the PC and every barcode scanned sent the PC as standard keyboard input, works in DOS, Windows, and Linux no problems.
Sorry for the rant but Linux does have enough real issues of hardware support to work on as it is and it really bugs the shit out of me when people start going off about things they don't really understand. Stories like this hurt the credibility of author (for not checking his facts) and hurts Linux's reputation (to those who have have never had to work with the technologies involved) Ack.
Heh, with my luck I'll get a dozen replies pointing to websites of barcode readers that in fact have windows only drivers. ;->
"Listen: We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different!" - Kurt Vonnegut
I think they have a little point.. that linux wasn't meant for the home luser market. Linux isn't a swiss army knife that can be jammed into every possible situation, that would be stupid. NetBSD isn't a SAK either, and Windows is like a very blunt hammer that people keep beating their own heads with ;) But when you have a nail, sometimes a hammer is just what you need.
More Caffeine. NOW
We tried both versions of the Wyse thin client ( WinCE and Linux) at work. I over heard one of the Wyse techs say to his boss, that they were having trouble with the Linux version because " it does not have a complete TCP/IP stack like Windows has." !!!!!!
I want a version of Linux my grandma can use so that when she screws it up anyway, I can telnet in and fix it (assuming the network connection is up) Besides, CLI's are much easier to talk someone through over the phone, even if it is a little slow when you have to read each character.
So, the ideal solution is a nice, user-friendly, hard to do anything serious/dangerous GUI, along with a telnetd (better yet, sshd), and a key sequence to bring up an xterm.
For myself, I don't really mind using linux at home, HP-UX at work, windows for halflife, a mainframe for mainframe stuff, and PalmOS on my PDA, but on the other hand, I would just as soon get a directory listing the same way on all of them, and right now it looks like Linux has the best chance at being the base system from which all of those environments can be built.
The right tool for the right job is fine as far as it goes, but if they can all be built from Linux, so much the easier. The problem with Windows being that it is too tied to its UI, which isn't appropriate in all situations--there is no way that a 95 explorer style interface belongs on a PDA, nor does any GUI at all make sense on a rack mount web server.
Does anyone have a link to a press release on this? I went to the MS site but couldn't find any reference. There have been lots of rumors of them opening the source, but no word I have seen on giving it away.
Ken
You know what come from Texas, dontcha?
Sorry about that. I didn't need to reply, but dangit...I just felt the urge to use some Full Metal Jacket.
I don't know about you, but my servers run on the power of cotton candy and happy thoughts. -Anonymous Coward
Does anyone really care what OS the Wyse/IBM/NCR ATM/bank terminal is running? Wyse doesn't hence its 'own op..sys
Given Microsoft's history on security, reliability. Yes!
"Your bank balance has changed. Please reboot the ATM for your deposit to take effect."
I'll agree with your assessment of Citrix. Our original implementation was horrible...but it was done by an outside consultant who really didn't know NT as well as they espoused. We've reimplemented it using our own internal NT resources (and GSNW *instead* of Novell Client32). The results have been amazing...much faster, extremely reliable. Good product.
-witz
Yeah, except that when you want and embedded browser WINCE doesn't have one, and their old Linux based Winterms did. Oh, and it had ICA too, oh and it actaully WORKED!
I borrowed a demo unit from someone else in my company and gave it back because he needed it to be a web browsing client and the WYSE SALES REP. said that an old unit would be his best bet.
Yep you gotta love all that functionality these new WYSE Winterms have.
Ummm, the barcode readers we use DON'T HAVE ANY DRIVERS!!! They hookup inline with the keyboard (X-term, PC, WinTerm) and turn the barcode into characters. Theres some config stuff, but thats all done by scanning special barcodes that the unit recognizes as configuration codes.
Its really quite simple to attach these to any device that has a keyboard.
Why would I need a proprietary router like the Linksys?
In all honesty though, has anyone really had better results with a handheld device when doing graphical web browsing??
As much as I love my PalmPilot (on my 3rd. one now) - I still can't get it to web-surf reliably.
I've tried several browsers for it such as PalmScape and they always hang the machine eventually.
In fact, they often crash badly enough that I have to do a hard reset and lose all my data to recover.
because my video card, Rendition V1000 (yes, it's 4 years old and way outdated), is only "supported" in Linux and not accelerated.
That's interesting. Until recently I had an i740 (with 4M of RAM), which can use the SVGA server (ie it's "supported" and not accelarated). [I'm pretty sure XFree 4 has real drivers for it, but VMware doesn't run under XFree4 yet...]. Anyway, I never had any kind of problem with video performance. Of course if this card is 4 years old it's probably got no-so-great performance in general and needs the help of specific drivers.
I'm not big in gaming or 3D cards (my Voodoo3 is just fine, thanks), but I've never heard of this card of yours, which may (or may not) mean it was never very popular. Keep in mind that people write drivers for cards that:
A) Cards they have lying around that aren't supported.
B) Cards that are really popular and *need* to be supported.
If nobody owns one of these cards, probably people won't bother. I'm still confused that the SVGA server doesn't give decent performance though...
Also, something you should keep in mind: for the most part hardware vendors are the people writing the drivers, not Microsoft. An additional problem is that binary-only drivers (or source drivers that are intentionally obscured *cough* *NVIDIA* *cough*) aren't seen as "real" drivers, so nobody uses them and the device is still seen as being unsupported. Vendors write for Windows because if they don't they go out of business.
Hopefully, with Linux owning about 25% of the server market and maybe 5-10% of the desktop markey, vendors will start realize that supporting Linux (even if supporting Linux just means giving out complete docs for the interfaces) is a good idea for their business. Well, now that some big names (HP, IBM, SGI, Intel) are starting to contribute stuff, we should start seeing more and more hardware support come through.
I'm probably more optimistic that I should be, as all of my stuff works great under Linux. BeOS 5 being another story. And 98 stopped booting for some reason (maybe time to go with NT instead?)
We need another distro! Thinux clients!
Uhh, sorry, I couldn't resist
--
Tarald - The Lord of Smeg
Tarald - The Lord of Smeg
You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on
Are you sure of this?
The author was quoted as telling RMS that "you are Richard fucking Stallman, you don't need a badge" and is VERY pro-Linux/Pro GPL.
Knowing this about the author of the comment in question, I find it hard to believe it was a joke.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
Linux and PDA's - The code for booting up Linux on a PDA form factor is taken from NetBSD. (so the BSD ideal of code reuse everywhere is upheld again
/.
Commerical Applications - www.netbsd.org/gallery/software.html
Also note that NetBSD can run Linux binaries due to the compatibility layer, so the BSD's have access to not only Linux binaries, but SCO, Solaris, and even Windows binaries (via WINE)
So, as far as facts go, thanks for playing. When you take off the pro-linux rose colored glasses you will see that what you said is not backed up by facts.
As for mine being a 'cheap ripoff', mine was a tasteless parody of a tasteless post. Scatalogical humor of someone using scatological humor. Humor via goring the sacred cow that is
So rather than wasting time slamming other opensource projects, wouldn't the rising tide for OpenSource work better when ALL boats get floated?
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
Apple's Mac line is made by a company, yet you can see the 'community' get up in arms whenever a customer makes a decision to stop using Macs.
Motorola and a few universities are examples of this behavior.
RL has very little to do with OS zelotry.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
The marketing from Redmond back in the Windows NT 3.1 days was that, given the power of workstations, the running the application on a big box and just giving your graphics was dead. (the mantra was 'a better Unix than Unix')
Looks like the graphics on a local server, and the app elsewhere isn't so dead.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
Perpahs they have tried it but could they not have written thier own drivers for the nessesary scanners and printers and such. I understand that such a thing is not a small undertaking but might it not be cheaper than paying all those liscence fees?
The next remark is false. The previous remark is true.
Just to clear some things up, Wyse doesn't write the drivers for these "obscure products" and neither does MS. I don't know if you have ever used an industrial barcode reader or set one up, but the setup is incredibly important. You can't have ANY inaccuracies in a scanner when you have a line of people mixing chemicals, especially if the wrong mixture can start a fire.
There is a big differnce between being one and showing off being one. Lots of us can legally put fancy acronyms after our names, but only do so in relevant circumstances.
This seems a little more than odd...
Lack of drivers? Their build dumb clients. What type of hardware do these run? Linux has been ported to several popular HW platforms. Drivers should be Display (loads of support for laptop chipsets) and Networking (ne2k worst case!). devices such as Barcode scanners are usually use keyboard splitters, Even if it's a serial one... it's SERIAL! Simple recepit printers could be plain text printers. As for barcode printers I don't think WinCE has any better support. This has to be Micro$oft related. They have no real reason to switch unless M$ had applied some pressure. Driver support... get a real reason!
I think that it was a very bad idea for anyone to move form linux to any version of windows. Why would anyone want to have fish heads when they could have prime rib??? But this is only my opinion.
Sanity is the playground of the unimaginative
hmmm.
what "game" are you playing? it's certainly not life because you know there's more important things in life that the eternal search for l33t. the kind of things you talk about, writing color graphics?, who has time for that. hmmm, do my term paper in college or write color graphics...hmm..later on in life, lets go to work or write a document app. are you starting to get the point...life doesn't rotate around a os. really. it doesn't rotate around l33t either.
try and remember that.
-dennis the "weary"
This is a preview edition of the Microsoft Certified Linux Expert(MCLETM) test. The correct answers are currently shown in bold for your verification.
This test is there to ensure you know everything you need to know about both the Linux operating system and the Linux community.
1. You are told to install a Web Server on a Linux system. What do you do?
a) Install Apache
b) Install Microsoft InternetInformation Server
c) Linux is not stable enough for running web servers.
d) Install Windows 2000 on the server.
e) Install phhttpd
2. If you hear someone in the Linux world praising RMS, he's talking about
a) Richard M. Stallman
b) Redmond's MicroSoft
c) Remote Machine Services
3. After bootup, a linux machine hangs, showing the error message "login:". How do you fix this?
a) This is not a problem actually, I enter my login name and password.
b) Reboot, if that doesn't help, reinstall, if that doesn't help, complain to the vendor.
c) This system hang is a big enough problem to justify replacing Linux with Windows 2000
4. The correct way to install a word processor on Linux is:
a) rpm -i abiword-0.7.8-2.i386.rpm /sbin/reboot, insert a Windows 98 disk, fdisk /mbr, fdisk, format c:, d:\setup
b) dpkg -i koffice.deb
c) tar xzf lyx-1.0.1.tar.gz
d) Using kpackage to install an RPM, deb or tgz
e) Using gnorpm to install an RPM
f)
Lars -
hdparm -S 240 /dev/hdX will put them suckers to sleep after 20 minutes of idle.
Lars -
You can pick up a pci video card that is accelerated in XFree86 (Linux is not XFree86 by the way, VGA textmode works on every card) for like $5, or even for free. I got this 2mb S3 pci card for free and it works in X11 just fine.
Power management? You didn't mention you had a laptop. If you mean monitor blanking, it's there, and you can put your hard drives to sleep after a given time with the "hdparm" command. I don't know about suspend or software halt like in ATX systems since I don't halt my machine (and my operating system also doesn't self destruct like Microsofts).
Lars -
Thank you. If you didn't say it, I would have.
It's a simple matter of realizing that certain tools work fine at their job. My screwdriver works great, I really don't need Windows or Linux running it for me. And while scanners are slightly different, I think it comes down to the same basic issues. If you use Windows, and it does what you need it to do, then why change?
I'm a huge lover of Linux. I'm a geek. But my main computer runs Windows. Why? Because of alot of things. Time being the biggest. I don't have time to learn Gimp. Why bother? Photoshop works great and I know it. mIRC works great, MS Office works great, Quake 3 runs great, and, god forbid, IE works great. Maybe I'm among the lucky few that doesn't have that many problems with it, but Windows usually runs stable for me.
Yeah I could use WINE or whatnot, but why bother? If it aint broke, why fix it? The same applies to scanner drivers. Why should they spend time writing or paying for linux drivers when the windows drivers are either already there or easier to get?
Linux is great, but it's not the only solution. It's an operating system, not a religion. You will never see a doctor using a jackhammer on a cancer patient just because jackhammers are cooler than scalpals(sp). Don't crucify them for thinking outside of the linux box.
Feel free to moderate me down for thinking independantly.
They are "already there" because you paid for them
Who ever said I *paid* for my software. I'll have you know that I never pay for software. Before I was a computer manufacturer, I was a warez pup.
I have to admit WinCE is a good attempt by Microsoft to actually create some code that is concise and efficient (because they were forced to by the constraints of the hardware). However, I'm sure Linux is more robust and "crash proof". They will be back, just as soon as someone ports over the drivers they need to run whatever it might be that they are trying to run. The momentum of Linux is unstoppable now. I hate to see a reversal in evolution...
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
NPS Internet Solutions, LLC
www.npsis.com
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
www.haidacarver.com
Because the first one was original; yours is just a cheap ripoff of it. Also because the first one is an exaggeration of the truth, while yours has very little truth to it (Linux has a couple of commercial applications; NetBSD has what? Zero? [Okay, I think there is at least one, maybe two] I bought AcceleratedX back when they had a NetBSD version, then they dropped it. While both Linux and NetBSD run on PDAs, there are/will be PDAs that come from the manufacturer running Linux [Yopy]. NetBSD? None.)
Besides, NetBSD really is l33t :)
You're probably referring to running Linux on WinCE machines (pbsdboot). I'm not talking about that; I'm talking about PDAs that run Linux as shipped. E.g. the Yopy.
Commerical Applications - www.netbsd.org/gallery/software.html Also note that NetBSD can run Linux binaries due to the compatibility layer, so the BSD's have access to not only Linux binaries, but SCO, Solaris, and even Windows binaries (via WINE)
Yes, I know that... I was talking about native NetBSD commercial applications. There are many more commercial Linux apps.
So, as far as facts go, thanks for playing. When you take off the pro-linux rose colored glasses you will see that what you said is not backed up by facts.
Actually, they are backed up by facts. Linux PDA exists? Yes. NetBSD PDA exists? No. More commercial Linux software than commercial NetBSD software? Yes. And what pro-Linux rose-colored glasses? I don't like Linux, and I don't use it. I'm a NetBSD user and occasional developer (see the copyright line of this file? That's me.)
As for mine being a 'cheap ripoff', mine was a tasteless parody of a tasteless post. Scatalogical humor of someone using scatological humor. Humor via goring the sacred cow that is /.
Not much of a parody... not particularly tasteless either. well-done parodies involve some creativity. Running the original through sed to change a few names around does not make a good parody.
So rather than wasting time slamming other opensource projects, wouldn't the rising tide for OpenSource work better when ALL boats get floated?
When did I slam any open source projects? NetBSD is the best OS for me, but I know it's not perfect. I know its shortcomings. Even NetBSD's core developers recognize that NetBSD is just not gonna have a lot of apps compared to Linux and FreeBSD, and that NetBSD should make it's emulation good enough to run Linux and FreeBSD apps (and the emulation's not perfect yet; for example, I can't run the Linux version of the Pervasive.SQL 2000 database server).
By the way, I'm pretty sure that Linux on PalmOS PDAs came out before NetBSD/hpcmips, so even your claim that "the code for booting Linux on a PDA form factor is taken from NetBSD" is suspect. It's only the code for booting Linux on a MIPS-based WinCE PDA that was taken from NetBSD.
That fiasco is/was one of a business plan that used a total loss leader for their internet service. As they used to say (in the chicken add) "Parts is parts." The underlying os is of no matter if you can get it cheaply enough to remove that and install your own...
Along those lines...linux is not a company(aside from distributors). Sure, the community wants to further the acceptance and development of linux into the mainstream. And every company that takes hold of linux for one use or another, can be counted as a 'win' for the community. But in actuality, there is no bottom line that the normal people in the linux world have to meet. The majority of developers are still doing it just because. And though going more mainstream will bring more corporate and $-backed development, in the end there will always be the people that do it because they enjoy it. And not because they are trying to sell a product.
"At the end of the journey, all men think that their youth was Arcadia..." -Goethe
"Pick an A.C. sailor!.. We're cheaper than Karma Wh*res!" - A.C.
$HOME is where the
-- silver_p
that's not very bright... i wonder what's gonna happen when m$ gets screwed over by judge jackson? oops for them! --joe
SLACKWARE
Grtz, Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
Good bye and good riddance. They were too much of a WYSE ass anyhow. Oh, and don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.....
Just because you have your MCSE doesn't mean that you have a bad job or are a moron, i plan to get my MCSE to help my career along (as soon as Microsoft straightens out the Win2000 crap). I'm only 20, working as an NT sitter right now, i do aspire to bigger things, getting my MCSE just happens to be along that path (albiet really early on that path, followed quickly by my cisco certs.)
actually Wyse stock is public already and has been for quite a few years. The only problem is that it is listed on the Taiwan stock exchange.
-- All that's left of me, is slight insanity, whats on the right, I don't know. -- Bob Mould
Not to downplay your Linux router, but I think a better solution to the scenario you described is the Linksys EtherFast Cable / DSL Router. You should look into it.
I have a website. It's about Macs.
It was a joke. Get a sense of humor. Yeah, it's a bummer. Is it gonna hurt WYSE in the long run? No. Is it gonna hurt Linux in the long run? No. Everybody knows this; the author of the article was merely being facetious.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
Uh, Macintosh, hello?
Well if you run Windows 95, 98 then you are running DOS, it just has a clown suit on!
Bullsh*t. Do some research before making idiot posts.
--
A assume your post is self-referential .. at least inasmuch as pragmatism is wyse.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
If your going to post to complain about someone's choice of grammar, at least make your post syntactically correct!
... or the like.
..... I ended my sentence with a preposition! Let me correct it!." Come to think of it, you should probably learn what "Irony" is, asshole!
(Should have been "If you're going to moan, at least do it in a grammatically correct manner"
It would also be "RFK (Real Farging Kewl)" if you had a clue what you were saying. Like a typical "Linux Only Weanie" you think every post on Slashdot that doesn't preach Linux as a panacea is "irony." Come to think of it, you should probably learn what "Irony" is. Oh NO
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Yes, you can tell I was making every effort to be grammatically correct throghout my entire post by my use of the term "Real Farging Kewl". (we call the previous sentence a facetious statement, by the way.) I also noticed you were quick to claim I made errors, but didn't dare make a stab at what they might be and what the correct approach would have been (don't worry, they'll cover that when you get to the seventh grade.) Also, in a 1 sentence post you offered 0 grammatically correct sentences, which seems to be about your average hit rate from what I've seen.
The only part of the post intended to be strictly correct was the perfect english sentence:
"If you're going to moan, at least do it in a grammatically correct manner".
If it's not correct, go ahead and educate me, but since it is you may as well go find out what you misunderstood in English class before you reply.
Of course you missed the real points :
A) You shouldn't be pointing out errors of this nature unless you are at least able to keep from commiting them yourself.
B) You shouldn't criticize people's interpretation of things when you are less capable of understanding what was said yourself.
C) It's pretty annoying when some asshole gets his jollies calling you ignorant, especially when they do it in an ignorant fashion.
D) Yes I was being an asshole, because I was emulating you!
**** Why don't you go try and find a few more IQ points, so you can be in the triple digit club. Then you can attend an English class and come out of it with some kind of clue! ****
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Hmm... Well lets see .... You claim the post I originally replied to didn't have grammatical errors in it :
* *
....[[
... the word "is" should never be capaitilized ... the word "finally" shouldn't be capatilized in this case. A sigh is not an exclamation, making the ! inappropriate. For some reason I'm going to allow you the dammit, which isn't even a real word, since I'm feeling magnanimous today) Error count in this sentence alone: 4 ***
.|` Clouds cross the black moonlight, Rushing on down to the circle of the turning world .|`[[
... unless you feel one could mistake that for poetry, in which case the comma doesn't belong.)
.sig line: 6
... someone with a lot of (albeit tiny) balls calling himself PigleT. You posses his IQ, and by your own admission (elsewhere) his personal hygiene habits, but you *definately* lack his character and personality.
.... this flame skirmish was fun, but I'm starting to feel like a child burning an ant with my new magnifying glass. Why don't you just quit while your way behind?
... he is, is he? Then that's his couch is it?"
... yet.
... in fact I'm a bit of a Douglas Adams fan if you hadn't picked up on it.
(Original post elements surrounded by ]] [[)
(My corrections to your many errors surrounded by *** ***)
Begin Parse:
***********************************************
]]"I don't believe such behavior helps the cause(s) any farther, and only makes the people who do contribute look bad."[[
*** (This was the quote you were referring to, and it's fine, except the word farther should be further, but then you didn't write it. 0 errors by you so far. Seems you can cut and paste without screwing up.) ***
]]*Sigh*! Learn to spot irony, dammit! Repeat after me: Irony Is Funny,
*** (no comma should be used after funny
]]Or if you're going to moan, at least do it grammatically.[[
*** (It is poor style to end the sentence in this manner, but I suppose it is grammatically correct; this does not excuse you from beginning the sentence with the conjunction "or", however.) Error subtotal: 5 ***
]]~Tim --
*** (Don't capitalize "rushing", since it's not the start of a new sentence
Total error count in a 2 sentence post, plus 1
Average errors per sentence : 2
Peak error rate : 4
Average reading level : Grade 6 ***
***********************************************
:End Parse
I'm not even going to bother to analyze your latest reply, as I think even you are aware that it was wrought with errors. I will point out very quickly, however, that items A and B should have been merged, and since you wrote it you could have said something like:
"My post had numerous grammatical errors in it, while yours had quite a bit fewer, but then I started off the whole thing by being an arrogant asshole, and now that you piped in and emulated me, I'm calling you an arrogant asshole, because I can't figure out that when you say your emulating me you mean that your actually just acting like me, which means I really think of myself as an arrogant asshole, because I don't even know you, and your acting like me to prove a point." It's a pretty major run-on sentence, but then it *is* coming from you, so it's what I've grown to expect.
Seems someone goes to pieces when treated the way they treat others
Listen
As you English blokes like to say:
"Bugger Off"
"Go take a flying leap"
or my favourite: ( I use the antiquated English spelling in your honour, because I'm a colourful d00d)
"Eddies in the space time current? Oh
You really should consider changing your name to Arthur Dent, and then go lie in front of a bulldozer (I prefer to lay in front of them, but then beautiful woman would actually consider doing so with me. I'm sure you know a few men who would be interested in a change of scenery and lay with you in front of a bulldozer, rather than in your pig-stye (sic) as usual)
:)
ZK
P.S. - Now I'll stop acting like you on "asshole steroids" (since I should point out your not nearly as bad as I was acting to make the point), and act like me, since you don't seem to have the will to see yourself through your own eyes
Did you enjoy being treated that way?
I wish you good will. I hope, after your done being pissed at me (should that ever happen), you realize your really pissed at yourself. I hope you start treating others the way you wish to be treated. I hope you stop feeling the need to criticize people.
I was just like you for most of my life. I am still struggling. I can usually manage to stop being critical of people, with the exception of those who are blatantly critical of others. I have to work on my issues. You only need to work on yours if you have come to the conclusion you have issues to work on. I actually have nothing against the English
Someday (soon?) I hope you pick up on the massive prank that has been perpetrated on you in your name, and can learn to laugh at yourself. I'm not even close to perfect, but then nobody is perfect. *THAT* was the point of this whole thing; the only point.
HANL
-- An it harm none, Do as thou will!
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Fist off ... the quote with "farther" in it was not mine. That's just for the record, and to clear up the apparent misconception you seem to have that you have been arguing with the original poster.
... "Well you made *this*! mistake" stuff is quite passe')
... you mean I accidentally mixed up your and you're. I bet nobody has ever done *that* before! Come on .. are you for real ... is that supposed to imply I don't know the difference? (notice I didn't type "infer" .. do I get a cookie for that one in PigleT land?)
... where I won't give *any* lee-way is with the "*sigh*!", at least not until I see someone bang there (oops their) finger with a hammer and sigh.
.sig was poetry and then proceeded to berate it in assinine fashion, according to the template, so to speak. If I didn't recognize it as poetry, I wouldn't have thought to include that condition, most likely. (I actually read it afterwards and thought it was pretty cool, to tell you the truth.)
... go for it! It's your life, man. I'm just glad it doesn't have to be mine.
Second, I explicitly stated that I was not perfect, and that I was not trying to be, so picking on my errors is a bit of a waste of effort. (The point was that people make errors and picking on them is assinine. I then proceeded to show this by example, by being assinine, on purpose. At this point I hope your starting to get the point that this whole "you made this mistake"
Wow
In other words there is nothing wrong with what either of us typed, some of it is just grammatically incorrect. (in a different context, e.g. an English test, this would of course be an incorrect statement. Of course in a differet context I would have *cared*!) I disagree with you on a few points, and I'm guessing that much of this has to do with the fact that you were schooled in something closer to the Kings English than we are on this side of the pond. The only point I absolutely won't agree with you on
Also, I think you missed one of my best digs, which acknowledged your
I didn't say you "can't" end a sentence with an adverb, I just said that I feel it is poor style in the particular sentence you wrote.(OK I said it *was* as if it was fact, again according to the "assinine" template)
I laugh at myself all the time. I have enough self-confidence to do that. I am not laughing at you, in fact I think this whole thing has become quite sad and I regret having played any part in it.
I *WAS* trying to help you learn a lesson I learned the hard way, but if you want to take nothing from this whole mess but a false feeling of superiority
P.S. I probably spelled assinine wrong, and a whole bunch of other words. So what??? Is life so boring you have nothing better to do than this???
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
But that's life
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
I said *Quite explicitely* that there are Unix boxes *AND* Linux boxes. Mr Coward, I HAVE been a solaris admin b4 and I am 1000% aware of the diffs between it. Maybe I should of said that there where some legacy Novell boxen out there too...
And sheesh dude, before shooting your mouth off about other peoples compentencies, first work out /.'s sign up. Or is it somehow safer that way?
Ps. chill out fella. No need to be nasty.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
fair call
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
We had two of those expensive ass servers in our shop. The MCSE goofballs could not keep the piece of junk up for more than four hours a shot. What a piece of worthless crap. I guess hanging multiple users off of a piece of crap os is not a good idea.
Got Code?
There is only one big thing that Linux needs to overcome before it will ever get any desktop penetration. X HAS GOT TO GO IDIOTS. Joe home user could give a damn less if he can hang 50 clients off of one box. What matters is that he can play doom on his old piece of shit video card at more than 4 FPS. Hell I got a decent card with voodoo accelerator and that even sucks under linux. I have wrote my share of code under X-11 what a flexible - unflexible heap of slow junk. How about someone putting together a single user mode linux and fork the kernel. It is time to put the graphics subsystem in a place where we can get some speed out of it. Screw X all of the widget implementations suck because of the inflexibility in the x windows system.
Got Code?
Time being the biggest. I don't have time to learn Gimp. Why bother? Photoshop works great and I know it. mIRC works great, MS Office works great, Quake 3 runs great, and, god forbid, IE works great.
This is the logic that has kept us from adopting the metric system. It may be easier, but by golly I'm not gonna go learn another system.
Not to imply that I take any position on this issue.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
Good point, but...
Personally, I think that both Linux and WinCE are bad choices for thin clients and other such computers. I don't believe that Linux provides any significant advantage to the corporation or the customer of these computers, in the technical aspect, particularly in comparison to other existing OSs - NetBSD has already been mentioned, and Be's IA offering (which runs on Stinger) seems rather nifty. Call me crazy, but I don't think any "regular Joe" wants to be forced to use an operating system whose primary focus has always been on an user base of hackers, sysadmins and other "advanced" users who like to play with Unix.
If Linux is too focused on 'hackers, sysadmins and other "advanced" users' to be a good client, then what is NetBSD?
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
You can redistribute drivers under the GPL, or if they are independant modules dynamically loaded then under any license you choose. (you being the writer)
In any case it makes no difference to Wyse, NetBSD is no more functionally open from that standpoint and the abandonment of Linux had to be for other reasons. duh.
I don't know what the deal with LinuxOne is, but they probably tried to either a) redistribute proprietary RH code (not the same as redistributing Linux) or b) redistribute code under a different license that contains GPL'd code. In which case they should get their asses sued, for closing things that should remain open.
Linux users are often accused of being crazed zealots in promotion of their OS, but if NetBSD is "The only *way* to go" then what does that make you? Come on, let's give them all a chance. There can never be an OS that does all things for all people, or perhaps there can, but not by embracing that attitude.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
"Wow, we ordered this fleet of cars and they all came without exhaust systems! That's ridiculous! We're switching vendors!" "WHAT? Get off your lazy arse and get build the damn exhaust systems yourself! And while you're at it, make them free and redistribute them to everyone in the world! Don't give me that crap about not having the resources, and needing to show a bottom line to the stockholders! Bunch of leeches!"
--
The gravitational constant of protein has been changed[...] Also, rabbit carcasses no longer weigh as much a
Point taken, but things *can* change.
The only way Linux has gotten more and more popular is because of the user base. If Linux never gets used on these machines, then Linux may never be used on these machines.
I think that it can't hurt anything for a company to take a stab in an alternative OS, especially for this market, which they can make the unit cost less and write specific code for it, and even modify the kernel.
As for their reasons of choosing WinCE over Linux such as "Better Drivers" and such and such, sure .. but they are making the units, why can't they make their own drivers for their own hardware? -- Or are they just too lazy, and sence WinCE is already there, respected, and tried.. they jump to CE.
Sure maybe WinCE has been used and maybe someone would want to use WinCE over a "Hacker's OS" but maybe if a company took a shot into Linux, and showed what Linux *really* can do for these machines, maybe something big could happen. It has before..
...whose parents have heard of Wyse?
1) People don't seem to understand that Windows CE is not 'Windows'. It does not run any Win 9x, Win2K or NT drivers (no USB etc) & thus probably supports less hardware than Linux. BTW - unlike 99% of /.ers I have written & supported a vertical market app on CE - its pretty bad.
/. you will know MS have a big problem pushing CE (Palm kicks it & embedded Linux for now). MS almost certainly have given Wyse CE licenses for free/near free or paid Wyse to use it (they have done this with other CE partners like Compaq). Wyse might as well use it - there are lots of good embedded OS's out there like QNX. CE is just another smallish cheap OS & if it does not work out they can change again later - no big deal unlike with desktop PC's.
2) Wyse does not care what OS they run (thats the whole point of thin client OS's - "After a foray with thin clients using Sun Microsystems' Java software and then the Linux operating system, Wyse has settled on a special versions of Microsoft Windows or its own operating system.
. Does anyone really care what OS the Wyse/IBM/NCR ATM/bank terminal is running? Wyse doesn't hence its 'own op..sys'
3) If you read
Ignore the trolls & read the article carefully - Wyse is not saying that CE is better than Linux!
Yeah I could use WINE or whatnot, but why bother? If it aint broke, why fix it? The same applies to scanner drivers. Why should they spend time writing or paying for linux drivers when the windows drivers are either already there or easier to get?
They are "already there" because you paid for them -- bundling or not, but you did, your money were used by Microsoft to force companies to bundle their software, write windows-only drivers, etc. This is why you are guilty, and this is why we hate you.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
A world dominated by Linux will be no better than a world dominated by Windows.
Yet, you claim:
although I'm a fierce supporter of Free Software.
This makes me scratch my head. Is it that you truly don't understand the inherent advantages of Free Software?
Of course a world dominated by Linux (or other Free Software) would be better than a world dominated by Windows. It's all about Freedom. That's why we're here. If that weren't the case, wouldn't we all just use Windows, and stop using our free time writing/bugfixing/promoting this stuff?
Putting aside the question of how NetBSD is any more desirable to the "regular Joe" than Linux, perhaps this post is just another example of someone intentionally trying to "go against the herd" to get moderated up.
Really, though, "going against the herd" is no longer possible here, as there are two herds: one that supports Free Software, and one that despises it. The latter are the people who moderate up any post that appears hostile to Free software in any way.
I would perhaps agree with you, to a point, had you actually given any actual technical reasons why Linux was inappropriate for this application. You did not. Therefore, I can not agree that this post was especially "Insightful."
New XFMail home page
/bin/tcsh: Try it; you'll like it.
I dunno...maybe because Microsoft has illegally used its monopoly power to discourage said IHVs from supporting other operating systems than their shoddy ones?
Or did you forget about that little issue?
New XFMail home page
/bin/tcsh: Try it; you'll like it.
Old article:
So what did we learn? Java doesn't meet the needs of their customers (for this particular device), and WinCE isn't appropriate because it only plays well with Windows machines...
New article:
New information? Well, instead of using one version of Windows, they have *two* versions: a 'light' version of windows, and an 'enterprise light'? I guess Windows doesn't scale well anywhere...
We get another "doesn't work for our customers" response, but this time with respect to Linux, not Java. Well, their customers changed, sort of. Now they seem to be targeting the home market first, with buisness second, although I fail to see where barcode reader support enters into the home market.
In business, selling a complete solution gets rid of this problem, but to simply integrate with existing systems, driver support is good. By supporting the right network protocols on a real network (business user), Linux is obviously the answer over Windows, but for actual physical driver support (home user) Windows will always have better driver support as long as companies only write for Windows (or not release source under a decent license...).
And finally... IE on a light machine?!?? Aggh! Not only does it not have enough *space* on the screen to display 95% of the web, it doesn't have enough storage space to store IE! And if it *does* get ported, (IE Light? Wait for WinCE ActDesk?) there will be a looong list of IE supported platforms before Linux *ever* gets there. Wow, the free IE web browser, specifically ported to everything but Linux, along with the complementary Office suite, which runs on Windows now and Mac a year later...
So Wyse doesn't have a business strategy. They're flailing around looking for a solution, an answer, a magic bullet. And if Java or Linux ain't it, I just *know* Windows ain't it. But changing your target market helps. There's a big market for products based around all three technologies, if they're produced and marketed right. But picking one and sticking to it is just as important as finding a strategy and identifying a market.
Does anyone know if this National Semiconductor processor (Geode?) is a descendant of the Cyrix MediaGX? I want to know if Wyse also had to switch chips on this one, or if it just got renamed in the shuffle.
And is Wyse going to release the new Amigas too?
I also find no mention Transmeta in the low-end net computer market amusing. It fits their business strategy...
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
1) You see a menu item is grayed out, meaning "You can't do that." Sometimes, it simply makes no sense that you can't. Well, just like "balloon help" or whatever they call it, if you leave your mouse pointer on the grayed-out item, up pops a small windowlet that explains why you can't, concisely. A first-rate user interface trains the user as it does what the user wants.
Balloon help on Macs used to implement this. The balloon help "feature" was'nt worth shit anyway because there was no convenient/automatic way to turn it on/off (you could'nt use your computer for more than 30 secs with balloon help on without going Amok), and because, as in current MS programes, Help message were 90% stupid. Stupid as in: File > Open = "Open a file".
works quite well, thank you, other than the NT 3.51 desktop (won't handle some software that needs NT4). Costs a beejezus. To get a real command line I can work with on NT, I use VNC.
B.S.E.E., McSE
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
No matter how stripped, linux retains its unix heritage. So you have to write properly. When dealing with small specialized systems this can become a major constraint sometimes. Or a major resource overhead. Depends on the application.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
That appears to be not a technical shortcoming of Linux but a shortcoming of the various licensing schemes involved in the proprietary protocols and the limitations of the ICA clients. The difference matters because open source can fix technical shortcomings, but we can't fix licensing problems of some proprietary windowing protocol, not even by implementing something better.
Sure you can run Word and Solitaire in web pages in numerous ways. But my point is that you should rewrite applications to take advantage of the new open, non-proprietary, multi-vendor web technologies. I know: it's an expensive short term proposition, but it's the economically rational thing to do in the long term.
Even for Windows, there are lots and lots of ways of building thin clients. X11 clones like RDP and ICA are not the only way.
Maybe Citrix has good reasons for wanting to build RDP/ICA-based thin clients. But if you talk about "thin clients", please don't talk as if Microsoft and Citrix invented the thing and were the only game in town.
First, there is the issue of cost. When I calculate the cost of deploying WinTerms, it doesn't seem any more cost effective than desktop machines, even if there were significant administrative savings.
Second, people wax ecstatic about ICA's performance over modems, yet it's supposed to be aimed at corporate networks, where performance at T1 Ethernet speeds matters much more. Good performance over modems does not imply good performance over Ethernet. In fact, at Ethernet speeds X11 seems to be performing better overall, and to offer ICA as an alternative to X11 seems like adding insult to injury.
Third, AFAIK, the ICA protocol is still proprietary. That means that if I invest any significant resources in building an ICA infrastructure, either in terms of software or in terms of hardware, I'm at the mercy of Citrix and its fortunes. And, frankly, I don't have much confidence in the future of Citrix: their fortunes are too closely tied to whether they cut into Microsoft's revenue stream, and Microsoft seems to be able to dictate to them whatever conditions they like. I wouldn't be surprised if in a couple of years, Microsoft will simply kill ICA and push only RDP. X11, Java, and other open technologies, on the other hand, have multivendor implementations, and no single company can make or break them (no, Sun can't really take back Java at this point).
Microsoft and Citrix came late to the thin client market with proprietary offerings that don't make too much sense to me financially, in terms of long term market viability, or in terms of performance.
Rather than investing a lot in ICA and RDP-based clients, I think companies should invest in thin clients that are based on open, well-documented standards like HTTP, HTML, XML, and Java. Let's not let Microsoft reinvent the 1980's all over again by saddling us with another decade of MFC-based "network" applications and another de-facto monopoly.
Wyse also has experience in designing PCs from those days as well. I wonder how much of that experience they are drawing on when making decisions like these.
The thought of WinCE makes me, uh, wince. Sorry about that.
--
Gleepy the Hen. More intelligent than the average hen.
(...) if they are going to try to sell to Joe Average Consumer.
They aren't. Wyse is targetting the corporate market, which in practice means Joe Average PHB. So, although Linux has made a quantum leap in mindshare in the past year or so, you have to keep in mind that the great majority of the corporate world is still infatuated with Microsoft's marketing department - otherwise, there'd be a lot more Microsoft-Certified Engineers out there on the streets with signs saying "Will Point-and-Click for Food" then there are. (This is especially true in "follower" markets such as Brazil, which right now is about a year or two behind the US where trends are concerned - i.e., Linux is still starting to gain momentum. In these markets, Microsoft's power and influence is even larger than it is in the US.)
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
If writing a bar-code driver is all that easy, then why don't you show us by example? Pick a bar-code reader (the more the merrier), write the code, carefully test it, document everything, put it out under GPL, and then support it? And just out of curiosity, have you every written a bar-code reader?
there are two herds: one that supports Free Software, and one that despises it.
You're forgetting the third "herd", by far larger than the other two put together. And those are the people who like Free Software but don't worship it, those that like Free Software but don't like copyleft, those who run Linux or BSD but don't despise Windows, and those who don't like Linux but have no beef against Free Software.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Umm, I thought the big problem with Windows was the company behind it forcing its software around everyone's throats.
Despite rumours to the contrary, Microsoft has never tried to force Windows down my throat. As I recall, the only people who have ever told me to use Windows were the hardware vendors. When they did so, I just didn't use their hardware.
Windows users have just as much choice with their computers as you do with yours. Don't let the word "free" in Free Software confuse you into thinking that everyone else is enslaved. That's just orwellian gnuspeak.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
> Seems to be quite a number of sore MSFT fans here
/. crowd dominates during the week.
/. and moderate each other's post up to fives over the weekend, but sanity will reassert itself by Tuesday or so.
/..
They seem to be in the majority on weekends of late, whereas the traditional
Also, there was a strong rush of pro-MSFT posts last Monday morning when The Big Story hit, almost as if they had been waiting for it. I feel safe in predicting a similar flux when The Huge Story hits this coming Friday: MSFTers will flood
That is, whatever usually passes for "sanity" at
The question is, is someone orchestrating this, or is it merely the natural outcome of contrasting lifestyles?
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Crispin
--------
CTO, WireX
Immunix: Free Security Hardened Linux OS
So, does raving like a lunatic about hypothetical raving lunatics have the desired effect?
:P
Maybe it's just the effect of ranking posts by karma, but I don't see very much of the posts you describe. What I do see are people writing tirades against a straw man "linux zealot" in order to get their posts ranked higher.
And invariably, they do. It seems a lot of moderators can't distinguish legitimate contrarian viewpoints from opportunists and trolls who use the pschology of the "silenced minority opinion" to get their rantings heard.
BTW, I'm sure this will increase my karma, because I use fancy words and re-enforce the majority opinion.
Microsoft, with a proprietary product and a stranglehold on the IT world, has billions of dollars to push their agenda.
Linux, with its roots based firmly in the concept of freedom, has an army of people who love it to push their agenda.
Not that I'm arguing, just illustrating.
--
+&x
That's funny. Years ago, when few people admitted to using Linux in a corporate environment, the Linux advocates were pushing for freedom of choice.
Now, with Linux proudly in widespread use, the Slashdot editors criticize and whine when a company exercises freedom of choice and uses something OTHER than Linux.
And how does not using Linux affect a company's stock value? "Your stock value will drop if you don't use Linux?" That sounds an awful lot like, "No one ever got fired for buying Microsoft."
Of course, when Linux had nothing to do with the stock market, it was all about quality software. It was about using the right system for the right job.
This "movement" has gone from "freedom" to "world domination" almost overnight. I sure hope these Slashdot editorial snipes don't reflect the attitudes of most Linux users. I know they damn sure don't reflect mine.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
As for power management, no I don't have a laptop, but I like for my hard drives to spin down and the monitor to go into powersave mode. I don't know enough about linux to run my own powersave commands, and linux doesn't autodetect my motherboards APM.
But that just makes my point: for people like me, linux is just difficult. I know A LOT about computers and such, but I'm not a programmer and I have only a background in using UNIX, no in-depth knowledge. Don't get me wrong, I know I can make my machine run better in linux for only a few bucks and a little How-to reading on my part... I'm just lazy. And windows is for lazy people.
IANAL, but I play one on
I mean, Wyse is dropping Linux, but IBM is picking it up and developing for it in a major way. So, I have to say, I don't care what Wyse is doing. Oh, and of course if Wyse is really big in the thin client area, this opens up the Linux thin client business for IBM to get into it.
The truth is, forward thinking companies (provided they have the time and resources to make it work) are going to understand that Linux is better for their bottom lines that Micros~1. If you manage to make Linux work for you, then you are an independant company who is in control of your own destiny. If you make M$ work for you, you are beholden to M$.
I know which choice I'd make, if I could afford it.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
"A thin client in this regard ..."
--
"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
I guess I can see why they may want to switch to the M$ brand if they are going to try to sell to Joe Average Consumer. My parents haven't heard of Linux, but if you tell tell them it runs Windows or Microsoft, they've at least heard of it.
The sad truth is that many people buy products this way, they look for brand names that they've heard of, so Wyse is probably making a reasonable decision if they are trying to enter the consumer market. (On the other hand, how many people need barcoders in their homes?)
Dana
Does WinCE use the same drivers as full blown Windows? I was under the perception that it didn't. If you're going to sell a ton of these devices how hard is it to write some drivers for your hardware? I mean, come on. Everybody else has to write their own drivers. You go to any of the hardware manufacturers' websites and who wrote the drivers? The manufacturers did.
The only problem is the manufacturers only write them for Windows. THIS manufacturer shouldn't rely on other people writing their WinCE drivers, chances are they won't work as well if their hardware is modified at all.
I think the main reason is that they think that WinCE is a safe bet - one of those "I won't get fired if I pick Microsoft". The drivers thing was just an excuse... they WILL have to write some drivers, they'll just be windows ones.
Imagine that, the MS OS is a better client to Microsoft's own proprietary protocol than anyone else - commercial or open source. Slap me with a fish, I think I'm gonna faint!
...Wyse will be entering a crowded arena. Just about everybody, including consumer electronics giants, established PC companies and many start-ups, is coming out with a limited-purpose home computing appliance.
Wyse has to deal with reality, *today*, and others have pointed out that the Linux support might have been nothing more than a high-stakes gambit to force MS's to change its licensing terms.
Well said my friend. Also the article points out:
With new thin clients coming from Sun Microsystems, Neoware, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Compaq, the corporate market is no walk in the park, either
Sun, HP, and IBM aren't exactly Microsoft's biggest fans. I imagine they are going to stick with Linux for their thin clients. Perhaps Wyse feels that WinCE will be able to better support all the legacy Windows software that will be laying around in a couple years. There's a market that Sun, HP, and IBM aren't already gunning for (or maybe they are.)
And from the originator of this thread:
Instead of acting like immature snots and running around chanting "Winsux" and "M$" while recalling wonderous anecdotes of NT crashing every thirty seconds, why not look into establishing better partnerships with IHVs so in the future Linux will be a viable option?
OK, OK. I'll cut out the running around and chanting, but I'm not going to shut up with the anecdotes...
numb
Well let's look at this. First off, are you comparing Windows with Linux? And if so, what is your comparison based on? The biased opinion of Slashdot readers, statistics from sites like Netcraft, or something else?
Let's look at the webserver issue first. Apache does in fact have a 2:1 lead over IIS. You won't see myself, or anyone else arguing that for the moment, Apache holds the medals. However recognize that IIS is the second most popular webserver, and that's no small accomplishment.
Next look at the platform breakdowns. How many sites are served with Linux as opposed to NT? Remember Netcraft's statistics show webserver breakdown, not operating system. For all you know, Linux could make up a very small portion of the web servers using Apache. IIS on the other hand is used Exclusively by NT/2000. I'd wager that the number of sites served by NT is at _least_ equal the number of sites served by Linux.
File server: with Windows 9x/NT clients NT windows hands down, this has been proven time and time again. When someone conducts a test with both 9x, NT, MacOS, Linux and whatnot clients where Linux with Samba holds up, let me know. (Last time I checked, SGI machines with Samba were the highest performing file servers anyway)
Application server: Terminal Services provides remote application services for NT. X provides the same for Linux. Personally I'd rather run MS Office remotely, then Star Office..then again that's up to you. Generally Windows has a much wider range of quality commercial applications.
If you truly believe that Linux is the superior operating system in every concern, you're living in a dream world. If Linux advocates wish to continue their petty little war against Microsoft then they had better realize that arrogance and self inflated egos will only carry them so far.
BeOS of course =)
BZZZZzzzztttt!! Wrong answer dude.
From what I heard:
The real story is WYSE was wanting to do development with Embedded NT and WINCE. In negotiations with Microsoft they were given two prices for building new WinTerms with Embedded NT and WINCE -- the drop all your Linux stuff price (the low one) and the if you keep making stuff with Linux price (unbeliveably high).
So they dropped their Linux based WinTerms. Reports from someone who talked to one of their sales reps. indicated that the new "improved" WinTerms don't work half as well as the old ones. There was, at least a month ago there was still no imbedded browser for the new units.
This was no "Linux isn't good enough thing". This was an example of Micro$off weilding their monopoly power like they always have.
>MCSE, CCA
If you want any credibility around here, you should probably not mention that you are an MCSE.
Why? Does being an MCSE automatically mean that you're not clued up on techie things?
At least he's making money offa that crap, which is a good alternative when annihilating is not a viable option.
--
Tarald - The Lord of Smeg
Tarald - The Lord of Smeg
You're not drunk if you can lie on the floor without holding on
Linux is so magnificent that 6 people in the world use it.
THAT IS EXACLTY MY FUCKING POINT!
NO ONE in their RIGHT FUCKING MIND uses Linux. NO ONE knows how
to fucking install it. There are NO fucking APPLICATIONS. You want shit? You
FUCKING CODE IT YOURSELF.
You must be wondering, then, why anyone would want to use it, or why I advocate it
so strongly. Since you're obviously new to the "game" let me explain the rules:
Rule 1 The harder something is to use, the more l33t it is.
Rule 2 The less number of people that use something, the more l33t it is.
Rule 3 To win the "game", you must become the most l33t0 d00d of them all.
For example, NetBSD used to be hard to use. And few people used to use it. In those
days, NetBSD was what we in the industry call 'l33t'. Charles Hannum was 'l33t'. Alan Cox
was 'l33t'. Neither of them are anymore, because NetBSD is so incredibly simple to use
that any drug-addled adolescent who takes five minutes from downloading britney
spears pr0n can install NetBSD on his fucking Pee Cee. l33tness is not cumulative. It is
always changing. You must seek out sources of l33tness as the old ones dry up. NetBSD
is drying up. It is not l33t. Abandon it while you still can.
Linux, with its six users and no applications (not to mention drives; you want color
graphics? Write it yourself) is very l33t. In fact, it is sucking all the l33tness out of
NetBSD, FreeBSD, and now even OpenBSD (the choice of the highly paranoid,
criminally sociopathic, or in the case of Theo deRaadt, both). The only way to be l33t
is to use Linux. No companies use Linux. There are no Linux PDAs. No
Linux in my fucking toaster. No "Teach yourself Linux in 12 minute" bullshit
either. Linux is l33t. NetBSD is not.
To win the "game", you need l33tness.
To win the "game", you need Linux.
(And if you didn't consider this funny, then why was the 1st one funny?)
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
Ready Wyse's product listings. Citrix may not have coined the term Thin Client, but they grabbed it and ran with it. Wyse offers dumb terminals, 3270-style terminals, and Windows Terminals. They've been offering ICA ones for about 4 years, and RDP/ICA recently.
Alex
I'm far prouder of being an MIT Computer Science student and of my consulting work, however my MCSE and CCA certifications are relevant to this discussion, which is why they are listed. The fact that you know dumb people doesn't mean that all people are dumb.
Given that this topic is largely concerning a Microsoft and Citrix set of technologies, my expertise in Microsoft and Citrix technologies is actually relavent. I'm actually a professional in this field.
Additionally, people here would like to discount anyone whose opinions are contrary to theres. By stating that I am an MCSE and a CCA, the people who don't actually care about this topic except to tout the wonders of Linux can disregard everything I say.
Alex
The Java and WinCE/Linux devices were VERY different. The former was a Network Computer. When Oracle and Sun were pushing NCs, Wyse, as a Dumb Terminal manufacturer looking to stay relavent, looked into the market. The market never materialized, so they dropped it.
The WinCE/Linux device is a device known as a Windows Terminal, or in Wyse's case, a WinTerm. This device runs the Microsoft and/or Citrix client for access a Microsoft NT Terminal Server (and Citrix MetaFrame). Linux while more stable than CE (although I've yet to CE crash while running the relevant clients), is cheaper and offered different hardware options.
HOWEVER, the primary purpose of this device is to run two proprietary applications distributed in binary format only. With Linux, unless IBM and Wyse were able to develop an RDP client on their own for Linux (the Microsoft/Citrix deal prohibits it until '01 I believe), a Linux based Thin Client is less useful than a WinCE one. Given that most large installations use ICA (Citrix), this wasn't TOO big a problem but the lack of specialized hardware doomed it.
CE DOES live up to the purpose here. Wyse (AND ALL THEIR COMPETITORS) have a line of products. Many of the Terminals are CE based, and they run REALLY DAMNED WELL.
Alex M. Hochberger
MCSE, CCA
Alex
Really? Wow, I guess my info is out of date. I guess I haven't kept up on the UNIX Client (given that the client sites I've been at are all Windows Terminals and Windows 95, I haven't had a professional need to).
:)
What exactly does it map to? It can't exactly be: Client\Com1 now, can it?
Alex
This isn't very wyse.
----
Don't underestimate the power of peanut brittle
ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
(i am not too familiar with VNC and definitely no experience with Citrix...await comments from pros, especially on how VNC compares with Citrix)
....that's it.
:)
Assuming (as stated above) that the market for these devices is Fortune 1000, maybe Wyse/anybody can use VNC-Linux to solve this driver issue.
VNC already maps the local serial port, PS2 and keyboard to the VNC server. this is how it forwards the mouse/keyboard input to the VNC server (which can be Linux,Win9x,NT....)
VNC is open source, so Wyse could have hacked it to forward (+return path) the local thin client serial/parallel/whatever ports to an NT/Win machine running VNC server. the drivers for these devices (bar-code readers, scanners, printers etc) would be available on NT/Win.
btw, the VNC team is already quite advanced on this. Read about CORBA/Out going connections here.
having something like this available would open a lot of other interesting possibilities. an example of embrace and extend
Dropping Linux is probably more due to bad management at Wyse than any real shortcommings in Linux. Are they expecting to pick a generic platform and have all their needs met WITHOUT doing any work themselves? Why did they drop Java in favor of Linux in the first place?
In 12 months they'll discover CE doesn't quite live up to the sales pitch and they'll jump into bed with someone else.
Australian? Join EFA
Check out Compaq's T1500 thin client. look's and feels just like the wyse linux thin client, even has the same mounting holes on the base and has wyse's name all over the credits and in the file system. Compaq started advertising these exactly the same time that wyse canceled our order for the linux ICA thin client because they "were only supporting the windows version." Sounds to me like Compaq bought them out.
If Linux were a company, losing one customer would not be the end of the world. Wyse goes, somebody else comes. In real life, you look at the average and you don't get hysterical over something like this.
Don't be an idiot. Relax, take a deep breath, and write a damn driver.
In the market that Wyse was realistically after, namely producing terminals to connect to Windows Terminal Server, it should likely be preferable to work with Microsoft's client OS software. That means cooperating rather than taking action (e.g. - adopting Linux) which Microsoft would see as an attack.
On the other hand, there is reasonable reason to think that temporary adoption of Linux may have been a ploy to scare MSFT into concessions. The article suggests as much:
Since Wyse started getting into "WinTerms," they've not been a clear "friend" of anything not Windows-related...
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
This sort of whining is unproductive. emmett's rant about feeling like a bitter boyfriend is so appropriate it's ironic. What good does all that name calling, harsh words, and pining do anyone? Folks it's time we got on the ball and get the hardware manufacturers to care about more than Windows.
/.er put it, "that Windows it better than Linux as some things." Instead we need to concentrate on improving problem areas. The softnet patches as a response to the poor Mindcrafy benchmarks are an exellent example. Let's learn a lesson here and get on the ball. The whining stops here.
How? Demonstrate the benefits of open source to them. Make them understand how adopting open development practices can accelerate their development process, and help them to end up with a higher quality product. Help them out by giving them assitance when they have trouble integrating their module into the latest kernels, and don't know how to debug a kernel panic.
Complaining that someone switched away from Linux doesn't do any good. Neither does resigning ourselves to believe, as one
If they're switching OSes just because they can't write a few drivers for bar-code readers, there's something very wrong with the company. In fact I'm surprised if WinCE has very good support for obscure hardware, I'd imagine Linux would be better, not to mention that writing Linux drivers is probably a whole lot better documented.
>A world dominated by Linux will be no better than a world dominated by Windows.
Exactly! This is a point that many people are missing
Umm, I thought the big problem with Windows was the company behind it forcing its software around everyone's throats. At least that's my big problem. That's no a possibility with Linux, people have choice. So I'll disagree with this point. That being said, the original point "lack of peripheral drivers" is valid, but I would hope with a thin client they would be using their own hardware and using true open source to build the drivers, would probably work. Heck, hackers almost turned the i-opener into something useful.
--
+&x
"I feel like a bitter boyfriend. 'You'll be back! You'll be back here on your hands and knees, begging me to take you back!'Maybe I can play 'Mom,' too. 'When you get nailed by stupid licensing schemes, don't come crying to me! It's all fun and games until someone loses stock value!'"
Does anyone remember the Linux advocacy how to?
I find it sad that it seems that there are so many self appointed Linux/OSS zealot advocates who feel the need to throw fits when someone doesn't chose Linux for their product. I would dare say that most of these advocates have never contributed to a project, never written a line of code, and often seem to have no idea what/who they're commenting on beyond what they read into in an article they read on yahoo, excite or some press release. Often their argument is just a slam of another OS, or the company making a choice they disagree with, rather than making any positive remarks about Linux beyond Linux/OSS is better.
I don't believe such behavior helps the cause(s) any farther, and only makes the people who do contribute look bad.
Free Software does NOT help this situation.
This is the THIN CLIENT market, NOT the remote desktop market.
THIN CLIENTs implement The Microsoft and Citrix clients. The Microsoft Client is NOT available for Linux and will not be until their deal with Citrix no longer prohibits it.
The Citrix client for UNIX (including a Linux version) is less functional than the Windows one. This is not because UNIX is being slighted, but rather because the demands upon the UNIX client are different. The Windows client demands lower TCO and easy administration for rollouts. The UNIX client involves giving the Engineers Word, Power Point, and Outlook to access the Exchange Server.
There IS an add-on that add X11 support, but I doubt that Thin Clients use X11, too much of a pain. A Linux thin client while a great buzzword, is not a good idea.
WinCE is and will remain better than Linux at this application. Why? Sorry guys, no matter what you do, WinCE will beat Linux in this market. As long as the RDP and ICA clients for UNIX are NOT as flexible as the Windows versions, Linux will be an inferior Thin Client.
You can write all the drivers you want, with WinCE being free (as in beer) and having better versions of the two relevant pieces of software, all the wondering advantages of Linux are irrelevant.
The Linux "problem areas" in this market are: a licensing agreement signed in May '97 that prohibits MS from writing a UNIX RDP client.
This is NOT a good market for Linux. All the other embedded systems are good markets for Linux. The Thin Client market does not need Linux, it needs CE, I'm sorry to tell you.
Alex M. Hochberger
M.C.S.E., C.C.A.
Wyse was an early leader in the thin client market. They were thin client before it was sexy to be thin client, they were thin client when it was sexy to do network computers, and they were doing thin clients when pundits deemed the NC dead.
... I'm going to buy it from my video store?
But Wyse has changed platforms too manytimes, and like their failed PC line, I see their venture into the Windows CE market as doomed a dismal failure. The problem seems to be that the management doesn't know how to make up their minds. Sure, today it is Windows CE, but who knows what it will be tomorrow. They have come and gone through Java and Linux and probably countless other operating systems, and they will waffle through a few more before they realize the world has passed them by.
Their marketing plan for these devices is also doomed. they plan on reselling these through banks, telcos and entertainment companies? Am I really going to buy a set top box from my lame telephone company? Through my greedy bank? Oh ho
Meanwhile, my friends are going to buy set top boxes from their cable companies, or from consumer electronic and gaming powerhouses like Sony. Or they are going to buy cheap home systems from discount computer sellers.
Wyse is stupid.
Maybe Microsoft made them one of those really sweet deals. Providing them with equiptment, money, and advertising. We made you a deal that you couldn't refuse.
Fight Spammers!
First off, the headline, as is the trend these days, is not entirely accurate:
"After a foray with thin clients using Sun Microsystems' Java software and then the Linux operating system, Wyse has settled on a special versions of Microsoft Windows or its own operating system."
I have to agree with Wyse's move here. It's a chicken vs egg thing once again, folks. In business, unless you have the muscle, you don't want to be the egg waiting for chickens to come along, which is where Wyse was standing. Linux on a thin client is the way to go, I'd be preaching to the choir if I had to explain why; however support for it is still not there ("didn't have adequate support from companies that made bar-code readers, scanners, printers and other hardware with which the thin clients had to be able to communicate.").
What we're seeing is a company using Windows products because the software is already there. Had they stayed with Linux, they would have had to do some heavy work to get the software. I think (hope anyway) that yes, they will come crawling back. But they're not going to come crawling back, they'll come back when the market exists and it makes sense (read "profit") for them to come back. Chicken and egg :P
I am dual booting with Linux and Win98, but i pretty much always use Win98 because my video card, Rendition V1000 (yes, it's 4 years old and way outdated), is only "supported" in Linux and not accelerated. That means that video (even text scrolling) SUCKS in Linux on my machine, yet runs beautifully in Windows. Power Management from my motherboard (a year old MicroStar) isn't recognized either by Linux, so no power management in Linux.
And barcode scanners, projectors, etc. that they mentioned as things for which Linux doesn't have much support are pretty hairy even in windows. Yes, they could write their own drivers, but what if a product gets updated or discontinued? Will they have to spend the time/money to write new drivers every time someone wants a new device on their system or a currently supported device gets discontinued?
This is a major area where Linux needs work, but until then I think Wyse is justified in this decision.
I totally support Open Source and all that, but I am not a developer. Since it is still a relatively new field to the larger corporations, the developers who support open source are going to have to work overtime to make it a viable choice to the broader market.
IANAL, but I play one on
Man, I really wish the editorial crew would grow up.
"Wyse introduced a Linux-based thin client last year but will be phasing out that machine because Linux didn't have adequate support from companies that made bar-code readers, scanners, printers and other hardware with which the thin clients had to be able to communicate."
That says it all. Big whoop. Yes folks, surprise, Windows is better at Linux at some things. Raving like a lunatic and shaking your fist in anger and denial won't make your penis grow.
Instead of acting like immature snots and running around chanting "Winsux" and "M$" while recalling wonderous anecdotes of NT crashing every thirty seconds, why not look into establishing better partnerships with IHVs so in the future Linux will be a viable option?
Who the hell cares about thin clients anyway? You know, I am one of those bizzare people who feels that it's not worth trying to provide a version of Linux that my grandma could use. My thinking is - use what ever you like, if you want user simplicity, use Mac or Windows for christ sake, if you want a great stable multitasking multiuser secure hard core OS go with UNIX if you need to use IBM mainframes use OS/400 and if you want to run some cool code at home for yourself without your OS crashing, all secure and neet, use Linux or freeBSD or Beos and stay with them until you decide to run Halflife again.
So get out and stay out!
You can't handle the truth.
Individual developers can't approach the device driver problem the way a company can - largely because individuals cannot afford the test hardware. I'm quite disappointed at how little device infrastructure has been added to linux from the companies sporting huge market caps off of its backs.
NetBSD is so magnificent that 6 people in the world use it.
THAT IS EXACLTY MY FUCKING POINT!
NO ONE in their RIGHT FUCKING MIND uses NetBSD. NO ONE knows how to fucking install it. There are NO fucking APPLICATIONS. You want shit? You FUCKING CODE IT YOURSELF.
You must be wondering, then, why anyone would want to use it, or why I advocate it so strongly. Since you're obviously new to the "game" let me explain the rules:
Rule 1 The harder something is to use, the more l33t it is.
Rule 2 The less number of people that use something, the more l33t it is.
Rule 3 To win the "game", you must become the most l33t0 d00d of them all.
For example, Linux used to be hard to use. And few people used to use it. In those days, Linux was what we in the industry call 'l33t'. Linus Torvalds was 'l33t'. Alan Cox was 'l33t'. Neither of them are anymore, because Linux is so incredibly simple to use that any drug-addled adolescent who takes five minutes from downloading britney spears pr0n can install Debian on his fucking Pee Cee. l33tness is not cumulative. It is always changing. You must seek out sources of l33tness as the old ones dry up. Linux is drying up. It is not l33t. Abandon it while you still can.
NetBSD, with its six users and no applications (not to mention drives; you want color graphics? Write it yourself) is very l33t. In fact, it is sucking all the l33tness out of Linux, FreeBSD, and now even OpenBSD (the choice of the highly paranoid, criminally sociopathic, or in the case of Theo deRaadt, both). The only way to be l33t is to use NetBSD. No companies use NetBSD. There are no NetBSD PDAs. No NetBSD in my fucking toaster. No "Teach yourself NetBSD in 12 minute" bullshit either. NetBSD is l33t. Linux is not.
To win the "game", you need l33tness.
To win the "game", you need NetBSD.
If Wyse really believes that WinCE (or are they still going to call it "Windows Powered"?) provides a better foundation for their system than Linux, then let them; it's not important for them to use Linux, and it's not important to us either. A world dominated by Linux will be no better than a world dominated by Windows.
Personally, I think that both Linux and WinCE are bad choices for thin clients and other such computers. I don't believe that Linux provides any significant advantage to the corporation or the customer of these computers, in the technical aspect, particularly in comparison to other existing OSs - NetBSD has already been mentioned, and Be's IA offering (which runs on Stinger) seems rather nifty. Call me crazy, but I don't think any "regular Joe" wants to be forced to use an operating system whose primary focus has always been on an user base of hackers, sysadmins and other "advanced" users who like to play with Unix.
Someone says "but Linux is open-source". So what? So is {Free|Net|Open}BSD; so is eCos (although eCos isn't really meant to be used on thin clients, I think it'd make a nifty fit). Free Software is good, but not all Free Software is good, and not all Free Software is Linux. I personally dislike many aspects of Linux (aside from those which stem from its Unix heritage), although I'm a fierce supporter of Free Software.
In conclusion: although one must wonder why they've picked WinCE as the alternative, Linux is by no means the optimal OS for this job; come to think about it, one must wonder why they had picked Linux in the first place. IPO, anyone? And even if it were optimal (or even appropriate), it's not the responsibility of the Linux community at large (or the fraction thereof which reads Slashdot) to make sure that Wyse picked it. World domination is not a goal.
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
A thin client in this regard is a device being used to connect to a Windows NT 4.0 Terminal Server Edition or Windows 2000 Server with Terminal Services installed. The devices usually support the Microsoft RDP Protocol and the Citrix ICA Protocol (if you are also using Citrix MetaFrame).
This idea of these systems is to run these protocols. Like X Windows, the MultiWin system (developed by Citrix and licensed to Microsoft) divides the application's logic and display, processing on the server and displaying on the clients.
Without the Citrix MetaFrame system, the clients include Win16, Win32, and WinCE (OEMs only). With Citrix MetaFrame there are ICA clients for those platforms plus ICA clients for like a dozen Unixes (there is now a Linux version to) and JAVA.
The reason that Wyse switched to Linux was that it was cheaper than paying a WinCE license. Also, Linux can be run on cheaper hardware than the funky chips that CE runs on. However, the sole purpose of that machine was to run the RDP and/or ICA client. Because it wasn't Windows, it was probably the ICA client (this is a condition of the Microsoft/Citrix licensing deal, not Microsoft arrogance).
With the Citrix packages, you can have serial and parallel ports on your dumb terminals and map them as though they were connections on the Terminal Server. This allows you to include things like local printers, bar-code readers, etc. However, with a Linux based client, you would NOT be able to remap the serial ports (that is limited to the DOS, Win16, and Win32 clients), so you would need a driver for the base OS that would handle the barcode and make it available for mapping.
The idea for Wyse is to make prebuilt WinTerms that have this functionality so the customers can use those in their installations.
Citrix's ICA (and to a lesser extent Microsoft's RDP) are really amazing. While MultiWin isn't amazing (it makes NT multi-user, and it is sometimes flakey if the programs aren't properly written), ICA allows you to run a really quick connection of as little bandwidth as 28.8.
Now before I get marked down into oblivion for supporting a Microsoft related technology, I will point out that Citrix is developing a MetaFrame for UNIX system. I believe that the Solaris port is done and they are working on the Linux version.
The idea is that in addition to the Windows applications, you can deploy your UNIX and Java based applications through ICA for display on the clients. Although X DOES support this, rolling out a thousand or so X-servers is a pain in the butt. The Citrix ICA client has some amazing capabilities with automatic roll-outs.
These products are NOT aimed at home users. They are aimed at Fortune 1000 companies.
Disclaimer: I am a Citrix Certified Administrator and make my living (well, my pocket change, I'm a student) as a consultant. I also worked a summer job at Citrix a few years ago.
Alex M. Hochberger
M.C.S.E., C.C.A.
It isn't a few drivers. WinCE is THE standard for Windows Terminal devices. That is the one market that WinCE is doing VERY well in. A few years ago, before Microsoft strongarmed^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H pursuaded Citrix into licensing their technology, the only system using this was Citrix WinFrame with their ICA technology.
At the time, they licensed their DOS client to their OEMs (WYSE, NCD, etc.) to be modified to run in the ROM of the clients. The clients had an ugly configuration interface, and if there was a fix in the client or improvement, you needed to swap firmware. Along comes Microsoft WinCE and there is an underlying OS and they can flash in new client software. Also, with WinCE, they can just recompile the Client for the chip in question (usually a Cyrix cheapie) and recompile the relavent drivers. This is MUCH easier than customizing the software for each system.
As a result of dozens of WinCE based Terminals, the specialized hardware that makes this system so impressive became reasonable, and interchangable parts kicked in. Now the manufacturers of these devices release the relavent WinCE driver and it can be used by the OEMs with little difficulty.
IBM has a Linux thin Client which also could run (I believe) JAVA, 3270, and a Web Browser natively. Wyse tried to follow suit, in large part to stop paying licensing fees. Unfortunately, without WinCE, you couldn't do RDP (the MicroSoft protocol) which meant that you could only sell your device to MetaFrame shops.
The move to Linux, IMHO, was never really intended. By proving that they could switch to Linux and save money, the OEMs demonstrated to MS that they had to stop charging for WinCE, which they announced what, a week or two ago? MS was NOT happy if the OEMs all had cheaper Terminals that were Linux powered and were MetaFrame specific. Microsoft didn't want to be removed from having credibility in this market, so they buckled.
This was the right decision.
Alex M. Hochberger
Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer
Citrix Certified Administrator
note: those credentials are NOT bragging, it is a disclaimer so you know where I am coming from and can discount my opinion because I make my income with this stuff.