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What's Coming In Red Hat 7.0
An anonymous reader writes: "MaximumLinux.com has a story about Red Hat 7.0 which is coming out on Tuesday. Apparently it will ship with 2 installation CDs, XFree4 is set to default and the USB support is s'pose to kickass." I've finally seen USB work properly under Linux and its sweet. The sad part is that the only USB device I have is a mouse ... with a PS/2 adapter.
If they keep bungling things up like they do, they'll probably be closing their doors by year end. Bye bye USB CueCat.
Surely there are enough of us by now, we could have Blue BGP4 clubs.
Me here pub 2 miles away (and unless I really want to talk about collies I don't go there), everyone in the house don't drink.
But a 'nerd' pub, now that has gotta be worth the travelling and hotel expenses.
And can you imagine the ideas that could be birthed when everyone is so far out of thier gourd that they might be a hamster.
As twisted sister once said "we have the mumble mumble, they have the mumble mumble"
~ppppppppö
You rejected my story, which lead to a different story about the same thing.
Bastards.
I hope it is more like USB in Windows 2000
Hmmm... my coworker tried for a few days to get an USB Espon color printer installed under Windows 2000, and eventually just gave up. Downloaded the newest drivers, etc.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
> No. Saying Linux will be as valid as Windows for > the desktop is deluding yourself.
/etc could be condensed into a dozen well
/etc/rc.d first. Setting up a telnet
Yes, in many cases, it's better for the desktop. We have many machines at work that don't shut down properly with win98, endless problems with ILOVEYOU virus attacks, BSODs under all versions (fewer on the newer versions, I'll give you that).
> Few examples:
> Office Suites: If WordPerfect Office 2000 is
> better in Windows than in Linux, why use Linux?
Free/Open office suites like OpenOffice/StarOffice show a lot of promise. They are low cost, easy to install, and fairly reliable. I am able to manipulate larger Word docs under Linux w/ SO than under NT, given the same mem/cpu setup. Licensing issues are non-existent, and they will only get worse as MS moves forward. There is a lot of lost time in many companies when dealing with license issues, waiting for legal copies of software to show up, etc.
> Gadget Software: Where's that ultra-simple
> photo-grabber/correcter for my $50 scanner?
I don't know, but I have a scsi flash card reader that I use with Linux and my digital camera, and it's rock solid. Under WinDOS, it's iffy. Not always recognized, needs reboots, etc. It just worked under Linux. CD burning is also more reliable under Linux, at least for me. As far as a scanner, I'm not sure what the state of that is, I've heard they are advancing.
> Games: Even QuakeIII get's boring eventually.
There are a few games for Linux, many more for WinDOS. What is your big hurry? Things are improving, especially with XFree 4.0, which has much better support for GL accelerator cards. No on is saying Linux is better than Windows at everything, but it's pretty hard to ignore the speed at which Linux is improving -- in many areas.
> Being "as valid" for the desktop as Windows
> takes more than just technical quality. It takes
> creature comforts, asthetics, ease of use,
> integration.
Linux is still maturing, using a development process that is completely radical and new. It's use is spreading rapidly. In several graphics benchmarks, Linux is superior to all MS products. Same with server benchmarks.
Can you really say the Gnome Desktop (ala Helix Code) lacks aesthetics, integration and ease of use? That's really reaching. It's solid and easy to use. If your a shorcut or DND guy who;s going apeshit over X, remember that the vast majority of people don't even use either, and the situation is being worked on by some of the best in the field.
> 1) There are very few creature comforts in
> Linux. Sure stuff like ActiveDesktop or Win98
> Explorer (with the integrated preview) are not
> absolutely necessary, but they're nice to have.
Many people strongly dislike the previews and active desktop. There's nothing quite like watching an active control freeze your desktop, or watching the AD render a bunch of crap when I only want to see the files. Not much of a comfort for the many people (like me) who get frustrating watching there system freeze while Window is off doing God knows what.
> 2) Linux has no asthetics. Asthetics goes beyond
> pretty GUIs into the system itself. There is
> only so much KDE and GNOME do for you. Once you
> get into the system itself, its ugly.
And the system, as seen via MKS in NT, is not ugly? Surely your making a big joke here. After programming NT for 2 years all I can say is many things, from the GUI API, to DLLs, to font handing, to the command environment, to the documentation are horrifying compared to nearly any Unix variant.
> Initscripts are ugly (except in Slackware).
> Adding hardware is ugly. The config files are
> ugly. (My thinking is that the whole mess in
>
> planned files.)
Yellow question marks in the device manager, driver hunts, and downloads of many a binary file are your elegant solution. I don't think so! In many cases, I've been able to fix minor problems on my machine with a quick search on deja.com and a simple edit of a config file. No 20 meg service packs.
> 3) Linux has a learning curve shaped like an L.
> Sure, if your doing basic stupid-user stuff,
> it's just as easy as Windows. However, the
> minute you need to do something a little more
> advanced (like install non-KDE software!) or
> have to configure hardware less than 10 years
> old, you've got a problem. Take ALSA for
> example. This is supposed to be the next-gen
> Linux sound architecture, but I need to tell it
> how many soundcards I have? WTF! Need to install
> NAT? Though luck, you have to figure out the
> mess in
> server? Figure out inet first. It doesn't have
> to be that way. Take a look at BeOS. Setting up
> telnet and ftp servers is literally just a
> checkbox and a password-field away. Look
> underneath, however, and you have those
> plain-text config files, giving power to both
> groups of users. For some odd reason, no
> enterprising distro maker thought of this? (And
> don't point me to some link on FreashMeat. If
> the user was advanced enough to do that, then
> they'd be able to figure out inet. Also, find a
> way to get that link to the thousands of people
> who are sitting without a personal telnet server
> (incredibly usefull if you've got DSL and a
> static IP) because they can't figure it out.
I don't know what you mean about installing a telnet server. Most distros let you choose that from the install, others require something really challenging like "apt-get install telnetd" or some such.
> Another this is recompiling important system
> software. One of the great potential benifits of
> Linux is allowing users to custom compile their
> software for speed. However, most system
> software is so ridiculously (comparativly)
> difficult to hand configure, that this feature
> goes unused. A GUI interface for making any
> source package? That's the right thing to do. If
> Linux were judged by the same standards Windows
> is judged by, reviewers would bitch constantly
> about this missed opportunity. The bottom line
> is that Linux is hard. For ultra-basic uses, it
> may be easy, but the minute you venture out of
> KDE or GNOME, you hit a mess of legacy
> configuration crap, ill-thought-out
> configuration methods, and a totally
> inconsistant system. In Linux there are no
> advanced or intermediate users. There are
> newbies, and there are UNIX-gurus.
And if you want to compile anything under WinDOS, go shell out the bucks for Visual Studio, and spend hours learning how to tweak all the settings for whatever it is you're trying to compile.
And then you go on to imply that any novice to advanced windows user can or should be able to do this. Ridiculous. No one needs to compile any software for Linux, especially "critical system software", in any case.
But if someone chooses to go download a tarball, extract it, do a "./configure; make" in their home directory, they hardly need to be a "unix guru". The newsgroups are full of stories of people doing just that, who have no experience with Unix, and enjoyed the learning experience of how software is built. All for free! The tools came with their distro, in most cases.
Have you ever even used Kdevelop, Glade or DDD?
> 4) Linux isn't an OS. It is a bunch of software
> randomally glued together by a distro maker.
> Case in point: Some software uses make
> config/make/make install. Others use straight
> make. Others use the BSD style edit the config
> file, run make. Others use xmkmf. The kernel
> uses its own method. That's the wrong way to do
> it. There is no standard format for config
> files.
Actually, make, xmkmf, imake, BSD tools, etc. are all defacto standards with their strengths and weaknesses, proponents and detractors. For some reason, you don't like any of them, and you choose to say they are all horrible. Is there any environment you like, besides VS and MFC? Or are you just all about "Be"? I don't care about Be, but I also don't go looking for press releases about Be and posting endless falsehoods about what a crappy product it is.
Basic computer science, and common sense, tells you that if a distro were put together in a random fashion it wouldn't compile, let alone run. Give it a rest.
> Good GUI interfaces for configuration aren't
> included in the OS, and aren't similar to each
> other. Sure it may be hard to get so many
> developers to agree, but consistancy is a good
> thing for an OS to have, and I could care less
> about the managerial problems on OS has to bring
> consistancy to me. If its an inherent problem
> with the development model, then too bad, Linux
> should be judged by the same ruler as a
> commercial OS.
Gnome (especially the helixcode stuff) and KDE are both fairly intuitive and consistent.
> Can't fill a niche in the Linux software line?
> Then go help at www.beunited.org, where every
> developer counts.
After reading your post, I think I'd tend to shy away from Be, in ever increasing increments...Linux has a much larger following, and so many people using the product really helps to get it stable, and gives employers a nice pool of potential employees. Not to mention I don't get caught up in some marketing depts. grand sceme of how their going to dethrone Billy the Borg. No thanks.
Is the source code for Be availible? Just curious.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
Over the last few weeks I've installed RH, Mandrake, and Debian over the Interet (not to mention OpenBSD). Download a floppy (or two or three depending on what you're installing), boot, select the appropriate Internet install, and away you go. For some distros the floppy you download may have to be a "network" floppy (which contains the appropriate drivers for network installation), but it's *always* documented where you download the floppies. RTFM much?
"Cause there's 40 different shades of black, so many fortresses and ways to attack, so why you complainin'?"
Have they tried to be more security minded? Lots of 'newbies' install red-hat and run it with everything in default. Those boxes are a big security concern; both for the person who gets rooted, and the person who gets attacked via the rooted box.
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Since it's coming out next week, I guess it'll include RSA... :)
-Chris
And it's not as if Red Hat was the first distribution to offer configurable degrees of security at install time. I've already seen it with Mandrake and StormLinux, and that is merely two that I've done installs of in the not-so-distant past
As for the "sliminess," that's more or less a given when there starts to be tens or hundreds of millions of dollars flowing in from the Vulture Capitalists... Look forward to more...
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
I agree with what you say. Most computers and parts that are being dumped are perfectly fine. Since most computers are never upgraded, the fact that they have any free slots or external ports after they are initially bought/configured is not usually an issue. Use what is appropriate for the task at hand -- especially if it's cheap!
Personally, almost 1/2 of the adapter cards I use are ISA, and I'm still using a serial modem...yet, that's changing.
I'm getting rid of many of my ISA/serial/parallel devices by selling them or giving them to friends and family. The trend for new stuff is clearly towards USB devices and PCI-only systems. In a few years, you won't be able to buy many ISA/serial/parallel devices (or they will be dumped...cheap!). Here's a short list of reasons why I'm dumping ISA/S/P devices;
- New equipment has mothballed old, new equipment is fairly cheap, better, and better supported. Example: 512k SVGA cards (XFv4 does not support it), ISA SCSI cards (slow), and other cards sitting unused in static bags.
- Many devices are only available in USB/PCI versions. Example: Most web cams.
- Existing ISA/serial/parallel devices are becoming dated -- speed/capabilities -- in comparison to similar USB/PCI devices. Example: Printers, scanners, and sound cards.
USB and PCI are much better interfaces. There's little reason to fight the trend toward eliminating serial/parallel/ISA.As for USB compatability with *BSD, Linux, ... there's some work to be done but it doesn't look too dire. My main concern is with dumb devices that use propriatory -- binary -- drivers and hidden interfaces. These have been and will be an issue regaurdless of the interface used.
(An aside: first computer - Columbia Data Products lugable with 2-320k floppies, 128k RAM, and bundled CPM/86 and MS DOS 1.24.)
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
I've been using the USB support in the 2.3/2.4 kernels for a while now.
First I got it working for my Kodak DC240 Camera. Downloading all of the pictures from a mostly-full 64M CF card (160 photos?) took about an hour with the serial connection. With the USB connection, it got down to a couple of minutes. i.e about 10 seconds a photo, to around 1.
Second was my Epson Stylus 740 printer. The only problem is that it seems to take up a fair bit of CPU when tranferring data to the printer. I don't know if this is an actual USB problem, or is just something to do with the kernel driver and the way lpr uses it (polling?). I can 'renice' the lpr process so that it doesn't use nearly as much CPU and the print speed doesn't seem to be affected at all.
I've recently splurged on a Logitech keyboard and mouse and a HP scanner, all USB. The keyboard has a 2-port USB hub in it, which is cool. One port for the mouse, the other for my camera. The problem then was that I needed another hub to plug everything into the two USB ports on my computer. The new hub acts strange though. It doesn't initialize properly when I turn my machine on. I have to pull the power and put it back in; then it works. And my camera doesn't work when it's connected to that hub, it times out. That's why it's connected to the KB hub.
Of course, this requires the correct drivers in the kernel. The camera, printer, and scanner are pretty simple drivers to setup. Make sure that the drivers are finding their devices on the USB bus, and reconfigure your apps or redirect symlinks.
The KB and mouse, however, were just a little trickier. The 'input' subsystem had to be compiled into the kernel, along with the KB and mouse drivers. I hope the whole 'input' system goes into the kernel in 2.5, abstracts input devices and interfaces very well. It should make porting and adding new devices even easier, but for the moment it's just handeling USB keyboards, mice and joysticks.
Ok, so it wasn't "user friendly" for me, but I like being on the bleeding edge :). /dev and /etc, it's not too hard. I imagine that RH has it already setup nicely for new users.
For anyone who doesn't mind compiling the kernel and mucking about in
I assume the USB support in RH7 is based on SuSE's backport of the 2.3/2.4 drivers to 2.2 kernels, or something similar. I wonder, is there anything that had to be left out of this backport due to other differences between 2.2 and 2.4? I haven't had to use 2.2 for so long now, and I've lost track of all the differences.
SSH couldn't be included before just a few days ago because of the RSA patent. FTP and Telnet servers haven't been installed on RH workstations for several releases -- and not installing the clients seems a bit harsh.
Files in the bin and etc dir should be read only and not visible to other then say the admin/wheel group.
There are a lot of files in
xfont server dose not to be installed by default.
The X font server is needed for TrueType fonts under XFree86 3.3.x -- still a necessity until 4.0 is finished. Plus, if it's like RH 6.2, it's not configured to listen on the network.
ipchains and tripwire,
Packet filtering and Tripwire would be good, although doing it in a way that wouldn't utterly confuse newbies might be a trick. And tripwire isn't really useful without a database on read-only media.
and an automatic update cheker should be installed by default.
Looks like selling that is part of their business plan. Of course, you can subscribe to their free mailing list, which notifies you of updates, or use one of the many available autoupdate systems.
xv and xanim are not installed and are needed by kde/gnome.
xv isn't free software, and it's not even the best of its kind. Not sure about xanim. What exactly do you mean "needed by kde/gnome"? And more importantly, how is excluding these things a security problem?
--
3. Microsoft Back Office for the server apps
6. Third-party software for shells, scripting, and other essentials.
Does this third-party software in your working Windows system include a remote Windows graphical login tool?
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
I will not trust my data to a system that has known filesystem corruption bugs. Does 2.4-test8 have any bugs in ext2 or vfat support?
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
This comment is quite amusing. Obviously, you don't grok Sys V init scripts, which are far more elegant than the BSD-style mess. In fact, I'm afraid you're missing the beauty of Unix altogether.
The config files are ugly. (My thinking is that the whole mess in
You're kidding, right? Sure, it wouldn't hurt to make config file formats more consistant, but can you imagine how nasty those twelve files would be? They'd have to be machine-readable and manipulatable, since they'd have to be very different depending on which packages are installed. You'd have to use some sort of special utility to edit them. In short, you'd have the Windows registry -- which even Microsoft doesn't understand fully.
--
Yes, which is why people are working on things like Nautilus. These features are gradually appearing.
Problem is, the "gradual" appearance of such features will compound UI inconsistency problems.
Graphical programs that allow you to manipulate init scripts in a more sensible way exist
Dunno about you, but I've had some pretty bad experiences with such GUI tools attempting to modify my config files. In general, they don't seem very robust.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
The reason these "old" interfaces are going the way of the dodo is because, well, they are old and we have better alternatives that people are actually adopting this time.
You're also forgetting that people still have a lot of that old hardware out there. Some folks (not as wealthy as you) don't want to throw away a perfectly good modem, printer, or NIC if they don't have to.
And an even more relevant example, every external serial modem and 99% of internal ISA modems WORK with FreeBSD and Linux. But how many PCI modems do? Not very many. I have a few friends that want to try Linux but CANNOT because they have purchased a new computer with hardware that the OSS guys haven't figured out yet.
I think some of you guys are just too young to understand that good equipment does not become obsolete.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
The config files are ugly. (My thinking is that the whole mess in /etc could be condensed into a dozen well planned files.)
I think Apple actually has a good approach to this in OSX. It is transitioning the config files into XML, with a specialized XML editor as the front end. And since it's XML (and not some file format made up at 3am), other replacement editors could easily do the same job.
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Not to mention all of the networks between your system and your destination. Are you positive that no one along the way has had a security breech? Sure that none of their employees are bored and unhappy with their jobs?
And of course, if your own system or the one you're connected to is broken into, a switched/filtered network doesn't help much, and a sniffer is a lot faster than a password cracker.
--
--
I don't know anything about cable modems, but the original poster was talking about DSL. On my ADSL account I can *effortlessly* sniff all sorts of info from other people's traffic. And this is a quality DSL service, not some phone company crap. It gave me the willies when I first saw it.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Sorry for the confusion. Iirc, xinetd won't install on a workstation install, either.
(And the sysv init has been around forever, it's not new to redhat 7.)
It's not as if any operating system is currently shipping with USB 2.0 support. Not many folk claim to have even seen a USB 2.0 host controller. I don't think even Microsoft supports USB 2.0 yet -- they very publicly announced ship criteria that can't be met till next year some time.
Oh, and RedHat wasn't as big a backer of USB in Linux as SuSE ... by orders of magnitude, near as I can tell!
I'm not going to hold my breath for it, but it would be nice if this version came with IPv6 support enabled by default. This would include the kernel, net tools, applets such as telnet, ftp, & ssh, and Apache.
The tools for a working IPv6 host are out there. It's time for the distributions to start including the support. Once the core system is up and running with IPv6, the rest of the app developers will have some incentive to get their stuff cleaned up to start running under IPv6.
World Beach List, my latest project.
Don't underestimate the importance of easy upgrading to 2.4. This will be one of the killer features in 7.0
We're even including a patched 2.4.0test kernel on the second CD in the preview directory for people who need its features and/or want to play.
[root@bero]# uname -r
2.4.0-0.24
[root@bero]# uptime
7:08pm up 43 days, 24 min, 2 users, load average: 4.13, 4.17, 3.38
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yeah I remember reading that. Which is why I think no mobo's support it. Motherboard companies will most likely release new rev.s of current boards, just to keep in the game without spending too much money
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
You're wrong - the story was not a press release, at least not one from Red Hat.
We aren't in the habit of announcing releases before they're done, and it's "Red Hat Linux 7"
as opposed to "Red Hat 7.0". We don't issue press-releases that get the product names wrong.
Here's the other parts they got wrong:
XFree86 4.0 is set to default
This depends entirely on the chipset. XFree86 4.0 is used by default on certain chipsets only.
There are a couple of chipsets where XFree86 4.0 is far less stable than 3.3.6. For those (and those generally not supported by 4.0 [4.0.1 actually]), we're defaulting to 3.3.6.
The article also doesn't mention the two additional versions (special editions of the Deluxe and Professional versions for Europe) which will be out soon(tm).
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Your article was probably rejected because it wasn't news. ;)
We've had a copy of SuSE 7.0 in the Red Hat office for a couple of weeks, and we're usually not the first ones to get them.
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Really. I plugged in the Sony Music Clip, and Win98 gave me the BSOD. Good thing I now have Windows 2000 and a Rio 500, they work well together. In Win2k, USB devices (except for the mouse and keyboard) are treated like PC Card devices (i.e.: you stop services to them before you remove them; it's nice having the power to tell programs when to shut up).
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
7.0 was quite a difficult release to finish since a lot of the basic stuff (compilers, glibc) was still under heavy development.
That's where a number of problems in the beta (not the final, no known bugs yet) are coming from.
Please do report these bugs at Bugzilla - we can't fix problems we aren't aware of, and we won't notice hardware specific problems unless one of us happens to have the same hardware.
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--
What is the deal with this new web server Red Hat is working on?
It'll be released in a while (7.0 actually has a preview).
It's a kernel-based acceleration for serving static pages; the primary benefits are speed and scalability (an 8 CPU system makes a large difference as opposed to a 4 CPU system. It doesn't on some competiting products).
Caldera 2.4 [...] has a lot of what RH 7 has, plus KDE2
What makes you think we don't have KDE2?
We're still using KDE 1.1.2 by default (because it's more stable), but a KDE 2.0 preview is included on the second CD (in the "preview" directory).
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With Red Hat getting bigger and bigger, you can't put the workload of being CEO and chairman at the same time and holding a lot of speeches about open source on any single person.
Bob remains chairman.
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TUX is included in the preview directory on the 2nd CD.
It's not ready for prime time yet (and requires kernel 2.4), so it's not part of the default installs.
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If you reported it, it's fixed.
If it isn't, please take the time to report it.
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Remember when Linux fitted on a single floppy?
Yes.
Right.
Red Hat is good news for everyone, them included.
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I wonder if the redhat kernel will compile with gcc or is this new compiler going to be used by redhat to lock out competitors.
The new compiler actually is gcc, just a newer version of it.
And of course, the kernel will keep on compiling with older compilers.
Actually we're using egcs 1.1.2 to compile the default (2.2.x) kernel because it contains a lot of code that isn't ready for ISO C99 compatible compilers. 2.4.0 is ok, and works perfectly with gcc 2.96 (which we're shipping in Red Hat Linux 7).
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Yeah, but in a little while you can hook up a CueCat! :-)
John
The Church of the SubGenius -- because somebody had to put all that slack in there...
John
For some reason X itself took up 71M of memory.
Which graphics chipset? Which CPU? Did you report it?
We can't fix problems we aren't aware of, and this stuff definitely didn't happen on any of our test machines.
Too bad it will still use KDE 1.
7.1 won't - at the time we had to go gold, KDE 2 simply wasn't ready.
We're including a KDE 2.0 beta on the 2nd CD for people who want to play, though.
Is Redhat even *attempting* to create a nice KDE setup?
Sure. That's part of my job, actually.
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Try accessing that great warez server, ftp.redhat.com, some time after Monday. ;)
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I submitted a story two days ago about SuSE 7.0 shipping. I provided commentary on the two different versions coming out, what was in each, and the fact that SuSE has braille support and the article got rejected. But since Red Hat has USB support now, this story gets posted. WTF?? Linux is not Red Hat, psxndc
The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.
Noticed a small inaccuracy in the story...
"USB support, or the lack there of, has proven to be one of the negative aspects surrounding Linux as a consumer OS. Development for USB support has gone into high gear lately, and Claiborne says Red Hat handles it nicely -- even surpassing the competition in some cases.
"I was a bit surprised when I tried my Kodak DC 280," Claiborne said. "In Windows I have to put the flash card into an adapter which connects via a serial port and then Windows sees it as another drive and I have to take them off one by one. In Linux, I hook my camera up to my USB slot, run Gphoto and there are all my files."
Not true... I have a KodakDC280 and it works fine in Windows via a direct USB connection. No need for a separate CompactFlash card reader. Kodak even finally released Win2K drivers a little while back. I hate to nitpick, but it's better than having inaccuracy in the story... :D
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
I'm in the same boat. I've got a Microsoft USB IntelliMouse optical, and it's not too bad. I updated Red Hat 6.2 with the initscripts (and required modutils) from 6.95, and USB works really smoothly with 2.2.17.
Clay Claiborne of Cosmos Engineering is quoted in the article as saying "[USB] still needs to work so that moduals [sic] automatically load." In my experience, they do. I wonder what modules didn't load for him??
Anyway, the feature listed that excites me the most is including SSL support. I haven't seen this in RawHide yet, so I don't know much about what uses it. If anyone has information about what secure server (apache-ssl or mod_ssl) is used, whether or not openssh is installed, whether or not there's an SSL proxy for POP/IMAP, or whether telnet is still enabled by default, post it, please : )
Of course, I don't mean to knock RedHat's work -- it's great that USB support is finally working in Linux! Just trying to clear some things up since the article wasn't too specific...
Actually there was an article about it...6 239&mode=thread
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/08/01/005
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Grin..
as so nicely and sarcastically pointed out most of the backport was most definitely not done by Red Hat. Bits of stuff/debugging were. Most of it came from the USB backport work done by Vojtech Pavlik at SuSE. The 2.2.18pre stuff is also based on that work along with other fixes. Greg KH is currently working hard to keep my mailbox filled with patches to get the USB almost fully in line with 2.4test by 2.2.18
Alan
What is the deal with this new web server Red Hat is working on? It is supposed to be part of the kernel.
BTW, I have ran Caldera 2.4 Kernel Preview, and it rocks. It has a lot of what RH 7 has, plus KDE2...
In a few months, there is really going to be some nice Linux distros that are as valid as Windows for the desktop.
-- ERICmurphy -- www.jabber.org for open-source, XML-based IM
Reality: More people have winmodems than USB devices.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
and what I'd *really* want to see is sendmail and wu-ftpd going the way of the dodo (or just not installed by default), and replaced by postfix and openbsd-ftpd respectively.
1) Linux 3D acceleration is still weak. Software support is iffy (those stupid statically compiled apps) its still slower than Windows, and the fastest implementation (NVIDIA's) isn't officially supported and isn't quite perfectly stable. The state of 3D on Linux is still in Microsoft-beta quality.
2) 3D sound may be supported by various apps, but then they're writing their own 3D sound engine (unlikely.) I'm talking about the DirectSound3D or Aureal3D hardware everyone has, but Linux can't use.
3) I put the winmodem arguement, because winmodems prevent more people from using Linux than USB devices. Very few people have critical USB devices, but millions have Winmodems. I don't care if its supported to the maximum extent of the patant law, the fact remains that winmodem support is a bigger issue than USB support (which is what the author of the article I'm responding to said.)
4) Tell that to all the people who've bought force-feedback joysticks for $200. They're pretty cool technology, and they are an entire class of devices unusable on Linux. For every USB device, there are dozens of PS/2/parallel/serial equivilents. However, force-feedback devices cannot be used at ALL in Linux.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
For the record, I'm still using the same Red Hat 6.0 install from a year ago. It's been pretty heavily modified by now, though. I think it's about time to upgrade.
I quickly parsed the story, mostly looking to see if RedHat said anything about the infamous default installs. Lo and behold, there are claims that the default installs will be "more secure for cable and ADSL users" - does this mean no more apache, login, shell, nfs, etc. by default?
On the one hand, "It's about time a major distributor got around to thinking about security."
On the other hand, it just goes to prove that enough people demanding something will make it happen - how often do people complain about the wide-open default installs from most major Linux distros nowadays?
Re: USB support. I was kinda forced to try out USB support under Linux when my new Epson couldn't print using my parallel-port scanner's pass-through - the scanner's fault, I think. All it took was a quick kernel recompile, a quick skim of a howto, and that was it. Works like a dream.
As long as a rash of exploits don't appear in the two weeks after 7.0's release, it sounds like this version will be worth upgrading to. Of course, if you already have Mandrake 7.0 installed, then why bother - same stuff, looks like.
My main reason for even considering an upgrade is the fact that Red Hat, and other distributors, seem to be moving toward using a new glibc in compiling their brand-spanking-new packages. Go ahead, try a rawhide package. There's a good chance it won't install, giving you a dependency error requesting...glibc2.2? News to me, but if I want to keep up, I'll have to upgrade. For free, of course:)
----------
-------------
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
However, Fred is an odd entitiy. Very few people actually HAVE a USB zip drive, a USB mouse, and a USB scanner. Take a look at all the commercial computer systems (Compaq, Dell, HP). How many of them ship with USB hardware?
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Alright, you've said your peace, and I think you're a fool, so I will now say mine. ;)
:)
/etc is essentially very
.ini files, how many end users will ever touch their registry, or even realize a file called win.ini exists on their system?
.ini files. You fail to remember that the majority of the work-force grew up in DOS. However, look at it this way. How many desktop users install updates to their system via ActiveUpdate? How many install service packs (in essence recompiling your kernel, updating X, updating GNOME and KDE, and your libraries.) How many people install new drivers for their hardware? All this stuff is just too damn hard in Linux. For example, there is no standard way to install a driver. Some, you can just add a line in modules.rc. Other, you've got to edit modules.conf. Still others need to be compiled and installed via installers. Installing the NVIDIA drivers (which, sadly is indicative of how the bulk of Linux installs are like) requires opening up a terminal, compiling a program, and manually replacing files. Only a few applications "get it" in Linux. Helix GNOME is one such application. However, if one app does something well, you can't just point to it and say "oh, we're easy too!"
/etc can be condensed into a dozen files and retain all their information and ease of access (An all-encompasing GUI is not easier to access
/usr/bin and /usr/local/bin on a single-user machine? I'm not suggesting that all UNIXes change. I'm just saying that the "UNIX way" isn't going to cut it for the average desktop.
>>>>>
Fair enough. I think you're a fool too
Because there's more to life than shrink-wrapped hundred dollar office suites. AbiWord, Gnumeric, KOffice, are all coming. Additionally, StarOffice is
being drastically reworked into something that doesn't suck.
>>>>>
Don't ever talk to me about what WILL happen. People are touting Linux as a competitor to Windows NOW, not in the future. Right now, there is nothing comparable to Office or Wordperfect Office on Linux. Believe it or not, some people actually USE the extended features in Office. I for one, could never live without Publisher. If you need to write more than just plain documents, then you need the power of "a hundred dollar shrink wrapped office suite." Right now, WP Office 2K is the only (usable) one on Linux and its better in Windows.
Meet the tip of the iceberg. What, did you expect Linux games to multiply overnight? These things take time.
>>>>
Like I said, people are hyping it NOW!
Once you get into the system itself, you're doing more than 80% of the Windows userbase will ever do. Let's draw some parallels. If
similar to the Windows registry and
>>>>>>>>>
Lot's of people know how to registry hack and edit
If you believe
than opening a text file.) then you either aren't familiar with the Unix way of thinking, or you aren't interested in retaining the configurability and
flexibility that Unix offers.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I'm quite familiar with "the UNIX way." I started with Slackware 3.5, moved to Redhat, then Mandrake, then Slackware, then finally FreeBSD. I use BeOS most of the time, which is quite UNIX-ish in the CLI. I still don't like it. The UNIX way of thinking is not appropriate for a desktop computer. People like organization, and aren't willing to put up with the additional learning curve that the UNIX directory structure presents. For example, what is the difference between
Of course, if Linux is to be this grand desktop OS that people want to be, I fear it may lose that anyway. And that would indeed be nothing less than a tragic loss. (Which is why I don't think Linux in its current state should be a desktop OS. At least, not the way you seem to think a desktop OS works)
>>>>>>>
Duh, WTF are you argueing with me if you agree with me!
I'm going to be as brief as possible. First, have you ever even read about how Debian works as opposed to RedHat? There are distros besides RedHat, you
know.
>>>>
I know. I've used Slackware, Mandrake, RedHat, and SuSE. (I'll never run Debian since they aren't cutting edge) They all work more or less the same way. The NVIDIA drivers install the same way in all of them, ALSA installs the same way, the kernel compiles the same way.
Second, comparing BeOS to Linux doesn't work. BeOS is the project of a single development group lead by a single program management group. How can you seriously expect Linux to have the same goals?
>>>>>>
Let's be clear here. I'm not talking about Linux in general. That would be stupid. I'm talking about Linux as a competitor to Windows on the desktop. That's a very specific genere, and to succeed in that area, the goals better be pretty damn similar.
Now, if you want to compare a distro to BeOS, that's fine.
>>>>>
Why do people think the distros are so damn different? Do they all only run the software that comes with their distro? All the Linuxes work more or less the same way.
Third, personal telnet server? Are you
completely disconnected from reality? SSH, my friend. Telnet has no place in the hands of end users that don't know anything about security, nor should
they be expected to.
>>>>>>>
Good god. I'm talking about a specific way of configuring something, not the technical merits of the configuration. Fine, if you're so inclined, SSH should be configured with a check-box and a password field. (Which would be useless as the only account on BeOS is root.)
Fourth, your suggestion that Linux and Windows should be held to the same standard is a repeat of your faulty reasoning behind comparing it to BeOS. See above.
>>>>>>
The faulty reasoning is on your part. If you say that Linux is going to be a competitor with Windows (which everybody including Torvalds and the poster I'm replying to is) then it damn well better be held to the same standard.
Interesting, you've been judging and condemning it like one. And throughout this paragraph you expect it to be one. "Consistancy is a good thing for an OS"
is irrelevant if Linux isn't an OS. "managerial problems an OS has" is meaningless, since Linux isn't an OS.
>>>>>>
When I said "Linux isn't an OS" I was pointing out a problem. You seem to misunderstand me. I have nothing against Linux. I think it is a fine system if it suits you. However, I think it is useless as a destkop OS (at the moment, I'm sure it will get better.) Linux ISN'T an OS. In order to compete in the desktop market, it HAS to be.
Now, to point out why none of this matters. Linux isn't a product. It's a kernel. Linux distributions are products, and I'm sick of people comparing this
mythical thing that is Linux to operating systems. If you want to bitch about RedHat, call it RedHat Linux. Don't give the other distros crap for the
product of one company. Further. Don't expect the contents of any distro to be perfect, flowing, and totally consistent until a company shows up that
writes every single application in-house. Then, and only then, does it fit into your world of what an OS is. Then, and only then, may you compare it to
Windows and BeOS.
>>>>>>>>
Again, you mistake me. I'm not talking about Linux in general, but Linux in the context of a Windows-competitor. In that case, the Linux refers to the distros implicitly. It doesn't matter how many different people are chugging along behind the scenes, if the end result is inconsistant and hard to use, then that's a problem for the desktop market. The point is that nobody (statistically) in the desktop market cares about Linux as a movement, but Linux as an OS. All the "managerial stuff" I refer too hinders Linux. If the distro makers can't get such a disparate group of coders to unify, then maybe Linux wasn't meant to be a mass market, desktop OS.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Actually, push is pretty usefull. Of course, I have it turned off myself (because of the speed hit) but some people want it, and implemented correctly, it could be pretty nifty.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Well, sounds like things are moving in the right direction. Better security in the workstation installs is a big step in this direction. As far as I see it I'll wait for 7.1 so that I can actually get kernel 2.4 and KDE 2.0. Those are the things that are really be going to push me to do some upgrading. The inclusion of Open SSH on the disks is also a very good thing.
________________
They're - They are
Their - Belonging to them
I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
Yes, I know kernel 2.4 supports/will support USB, but this is, to my knowledge, the first distro to support USB out of the box. Which is fabulous, because USB has been the single most significant harware lack-age in linux.
My only question, however, is whether or not the Red Hat USB support is as integrated with the OS as Windows' is. Specifically, when I plug in a device, will the OS recognize this and do nifty configuration things for me? Anyone know?
Somehow I fail to see the connection between "ridiculously huge boxes" and security holes in the software. WTF are you talking about?!? Please elaborate, sounds intriguing. :-P
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
Fair enough. I think you're a fool too ;)
:)
.ini files. You fail to remember that the majority of the work-force grew up in DOS.
.ini files, etc. They're just end users that know ColdFusion.
/usr/bin and /usr/local/bin on a single-user machine? I'm not suggesting that all UNIXes change. I'm just saying that the "UNIX way" isn't going to cut it for the average desktop.
/usr/bin is system-installed and maintained software, and /usr/local/bin is stuff installed by the user that should never be overwritten or removed by the system. Which is to say if I manually install Netscape in /usr/local, even though RedHat already has a netscape rpm installed, upgrading the rpm should have no effect on the /usr/local copy. Put another way, /usr/local is packages installed from a source other than the RedHat distro.
:) Yes, the stable release always gets stale fairly quickly. And unstable is usually unsuitable for most people, but it's also usually perfectly fine for users that are fine with lagging a few weeks behind cutting age and be mindful about when they do apt updates. To make that a bit easier, Debian's been musing over adding a middle phase in development between the bleeding-edge unstable and the near-release frozen. Called test, probably, it'd essentially be a few weeks older than unstable, and it would only update when unstable had been noted to be relatively free of major bugs. Should be promising if they do roll it out..
:) >
:) See you around.
Alrighty. We're even then. Granted, my response was probably somewhat reactionary.
People are touting Linux as a competitor to Windows NOW, not in the future.
You're right, we do agree this is a bad idea.
Right now, WP Office 2K is the only (usable) one on Linux and its better in Windows.
Talk about a sad state of affairs if the best we can do is WP Office. I did the beta for that, and.. yuck. IMHO, doing it with wine was a half-assed way to go. I have to give StarOffice some credit for at least being functional, and using a native toolkit. Sure, it's monolithic bloatware like nobody has ever seen (Hell, MS hasn't even written an app like SOffice). But it does work.
Lot's of people know how to registry hack and edit
This may have been true 5-10 years ago, but certainly not today, where people take a few community college classes on how to use MS Word and head for any job that sits them in front of a computer. I work as a PHP developer in what is otherwise a ColdFusion shop, for example, and out of the 15 developers we have, perhaps 2 of them (Not counting myself) know anything about the registery,
Lots of people may know how to hack the registry, but I assure you that number pales in comparison to the millions of users who don't.
Only a few applications "get it" in Linux. Helix GNOME is one such application. However, if one app does something well, you can't just point to it and say "oh, we're easy too!"
In most cases this is true. Tounge firmly in cheek, I'll also point to RedHat's kudzo utility and say "We're easy too!", but realistically I find kudzo a distateful utility that I remove as a matter of course whenever I install a RedHat system. It's a step in the right direction, but it's still fundamentally incapable of being the solution, because the only things it can provide answers for are the things already contained in the kernel.
For example, what is the difference between
As per the FHS,
(I'll never run Debian since they aren't cutting edge)
As a Debian loyalist I can't pass this one up
Why do people think the distros are so damn different? Do they all only run the software that comes with their distro? All the Linuxes work more or less the same way.
I make the distinction of saying distros should be used for comparison because that's where the battles, for lack of a better word, will be fought. It's not Linux that's going to be held up by the media and reviewed side by side with Windows ME, it's RedHat, Caldera, Suse, Corel, etc. individually. We've seen this happen for years now. Nobody in the media compares Linux to Windows, because that would be too ambiguous. It's much easier (And more consistent with the mindsets of the mass market) to take RedHat or CorelLinux out of the shrink wrap, and compare it to Windows. Sure they work more or less the same at the core. We both know they even use 99% of the same software. But it's that 1% that distinguishes them.
All too often C-Net or ZD-Net will focus an unusual amount of attention on the installation process. This is unique for each distro. The next thing they'll look at is what the system has installed, and what the default environment(s) is/are. They'll say "Well, RedHat installed and provided us a desktop with a file manager, some links to a few websites, the Gnome panel, and some apps." Or they'll say "We installed Caldera's distro, and when it finished we were presented with a fine KDE2 desktop and a copy of StarOffice.", etc, etc. The mass market is very superficial that way, and that's why the task of becoming a viable desktop lies in the hands of the distro makers (And, in retrospect, the folks behind KDE & Gnome, which I should've thought to mention earlier)
< The next several paragraphs are all good, I plead no contest to your points.
If the distro makers can't get such a disparate group of coders to unify, then maybe Linux wasn't meant to be a mass market, desktop OS.
Well, I think we're seeing some efforts in this area. Certainly distro makers are backing the developers of projects that aim to make things better, either financially or with additional resources. It's progress, but I don't feel ready to predict if it will ever reach that level of consistency and unity that one may attribute to BeOS or Windows. I'm also not sure it should even be a goal.
Since this article has long since fallen off Slashdot's front page, I suppose this is it for our thread. It's been fun.
If I understand it correctly, you'd need to have a USB2 controller as well. I could be mistaken, but I thought it needed a USB 2.0 bus as well as software improvements.
-30-
Hey, Semantics Whore...
I've always thought it was a sign of an unhealthy community when labels became significant, i.e. "Negro" versus "Black" versus "African-American".
Your whining over the [h|cr]acker issue is pointless. My point is, simply put, that fixed media is a dangerous thing in an era where 0-day updates are everything.
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
On a normal workstation install, RH7 will not install any services. Iirc, even inetd isn't installed by default.
However, if you install a service, it defaults to on. RH's rationale is that you should not install services unless you plan on using them.
Whadaya mean? CORBA *is* the answer.
See, obviously I didn't make my point clear enough, since I got moderated down as "flamebait".
Lots of people who are trying to jump on this weird "learn Linux and make money" bandwagon end up buying a Red Hat box off the shelf from their local WaldenSoftware or CompUSA, installing it, connecting to the internet, and just kind of going along.
These "default Red Hat installs", I would estimate, account for 75% of Linux exploits. In stark contrast, few people who download Debian and realize that you need to update it once in a while are ever hacked.
Man, those off-the-shelf Red Hat boxes are the best thing ever to happen to the hacker community. Powerful enough to be useful, simple to exploit.
"Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he deems himself your master."
Don't underestimate the importance of easy upgrading to 2.4. This will be one of the killer features in 7.0. (as an aside, I installed a 2.4pre kernel in my mother's machine and it works great )
According to AMD, during the next year the ISA bus will no longer be available on most motherboards. That means that a lot of new systems are going to be sold with NO ISA slots, NO PS/2 ports, NO serial ports and NO parallel ports. Removing the old ISA controllers will mean more available area on the motherboard for high speed controllers or smaller, faster, and less expensive motherboards, depending on your market.
Internal expansion will be available with PCI, i810 bus from Intel, or LDT from AMD (LDT bus can be 2,4,8,16, or 32 bits wide and features 1.6GB bandwidth). External devices will use either IEEE 1394 or USB. I'm guessing that support for these buses will be (or has been) back ported to the 2.2 Linux kernel, but will be better supported in the 2.4 kernel.
I've been running what the ftp site says is Redhat 7.0 beta or Redhat 6.9.5 (Pinstripe) and is not too bad. It only runs a 2.2.16-17 kernel but it has USB hacked in and works a treat apart from a Sony memory stick reader which instantly freezes the box. I chose the default install which looks pretty security conscious - inetd is not installed. I've added sshd and wftpd for remote access. Xfree86 versions 4.01 and 3.3.6 are installed (with glx and xvideo on 4). So you can play DVD's on 4 with the XVideo support, but drop down to 3.3.6 to use the more stable Utah-GLX drivers for Quake3. My only nags are superficial - the File manager in X is very basic, I prefer what ships with Corel Linux - which has the ability to user mount samba and nfs shares on login. There's also several very nice OpenGL screen savers included with the many fantastic ordinary X savers already packaged.
2.4 is now in "Nothing gets done unless it's written down on the TODO list and even then not if it's not really, really necessary". The latest 2.4s have the dire VM from 2.2 replaced with something better (as opposed to something worse earlier in 2.3/2.4) and are now pretty stable. It's not too far off.
The reason you've only got one device that's USB CT is that you use linux, join us Windows users and our (flex) awesome USB devices!
The concept that RedHat is a large corporate anything is absurd. They are a small company with less than 500 employees. They are 1% or less than the size of companies like IBM, Intel and Microsoft.
What I'd really like to see it come with:
--
OK, good point. Your previous post made it sound like the big, wasteful, game-like boxes themselves were the source of the security holes. :D
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
My 386 finally finished installing redhat 5.2 last week.
you open source goons need to quit releasing stuff so early and often.
I hope it is more like USB in Windows 2000, and less like USB in Win98 (Once, just plugging in a USB device would cause win98 to crash. True story.)
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Pretty sure you need more than just support for USB 2 in order for it to work. You also need to have the hardware built into your computer. Pretty sure no motherboard is making mobos with a USB 2 port at the current time.
Check out USB.org
Although they do not make a direct statement saying it is different, they have alot of good info about the specs and classification.
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
Alright, you've said your peace, and I think you're a fool, so I will now say mine.
:)
/etc could be ondensed into a dozen well planned files.)
/etc is essentially very similar to the Windows registry and .ini files, how many end users will ever touch their registry, or even realize a file called win.ini exists on their system?
/etc can be condensed into a dozen files and retain all their information and ease of access (An all-encompasing GUI is not easier to access than opening a text file.) then you either aren't familiar with the Unix way of thinking, or you aren't interested in retaining the configurability and flexibility that Unix offers. Of course, if Linux is to be this grand desktop OS that people want to be, I fear it may lose that anyway. And that would indeed be nothing less than a tragic loss. (Which is why I don't think Linux in its current state should be a desktop OS. At least, not the way you seem to think a desktop OS works)
Office Suites: If WordPerfect Office 2000 is better in Windows than in Linux, why use Linux?
Because there's more to life than shrink-wrapped hundred dollar office suites. AbiWord, Gnumeric, KOffice, are all coming. Additionally, StarOffice is being drastically reworked into something that doesn't suck.
Games: Even QuakeIII get's boring eventually.
Meet the tip of the iceberg. What, did you expect Linux games to multiply overnight? These things take time. Frankly, I'm surprised Linux gaming has advanced as far as it has. My predictions that I made in 1998 didn't expect games to be commonly available for another year, but I can buy everything listed at lokigames.com at my local big computer store (Fry's)
2) Linux has no asthetics. Asthetics goes beyond pretty GUIs into the system itself. There is only so much KDE and GNOME do for you. Once you get into the system itself, its ugly. Initscripts are ugly (except in Slackware). Adding hardware is ugly. The config files are ugly. (My thinking is that the whole mess in
Once you get into the system itself, you're doing more than 80% of the Windows userbase will ever do. Let's draw some parallels. If
If you believe
3)
I'm going to be as brief as possible. First, have you ever even read about how Debian works as opposed to RedHat? There are distros besides RedHat, you know. Second, comparing BeOS to Linux doesn't work. BeOS is the project of a single development group lead by a single program management group. How can you seriously expect Linux to have the same goals? Now, if you want to compare a distro to BeOS, that's fine. Third, personal telnet server? Are you completely disconnected from reality? SSH, my friend. Telnet has no place in the hands of end users that don't know anything about security, nor should they be expected to. Fourth, your suggestion that Linux and Windows should be held to the same standard is a repeat of your faulty reasoning behind comparing it to BeOS. See above.
4) Linux isn't an OS.
Interesting, you've been judging and condemning it like one. And throughout this paragraph you expect it to be one. "Consistancy is a good thing for an OS" is irrelevant if Linux isn't an OS. "managerial problems an OS has" is meaningless, since Linux isn't an OS.
Now, to point out why none of this matters. Linux isn't a product. It's a kernel. Linux distributions are products, and I'm sick of people comparing this mythical thing that is Linux to operating systems. If you want to bitch about RedHat, call it RedHat Linux. Don't give the other distros crap for the product of one company. Further. Don't expect the contents of any distro to be perfect, flowing, and totally consistent until a company shows up that writes every single application in-house. Then, and only then, does it fit into your world of what an OS is. Then, and only then, may you compare it to Windows and BeOS.
I've been on Slashdot for quite some time now. I've posted, moderated, and meta-moderated more than my share.
IMHO, moderating down "First Posts" is really a waste of points. It is also not in keeping with the spirit of moderation (concentrate on marking up good posts rather than slamming bad ones).
The truth is that 99.99% of all FPs are made anonymously. This means they start at 0. The moderation system is designed so that people can bump their thresholds up to 1 and filter out all the FPs and AC goatse.cx links. Now, as a moderator, you should be browsing at -1, so you are exposed to this vileness. At the same time, you should remember that most serious slashdotters aren't seeing it.
Slapping a -1 on a First Post uses a moderation point that could have been used bumping a worthy AC post up to +1. Then, those of us who usually browse at +1 could see it.
I've been on Slashdot long enough to expect the "First Post" at 0. I set my threshold accordingly. By moderating the FP down to -1, you don't really spare me anything. At the same time, there's probably a post at 0 somewhere in this thread that is worth my attention. It's a pity I'll never see it.
CmdrTaco has worked hard designing this system. It really works if we just let it.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.