Slashdot Mirror
Linux on the Desktop
Dhar writes: "Rob Valliere has posted a Windows vs. Linux review: "This review focused on Linux Red Hat 7.1 from a business user's view and attempted to answer my client's question "Can Linux be used as a replacement for Windows 2000". After an intensive hands-on Linux project lasting several months, I was able to provide my client with a pertinent answer to this question." I like the answer. ;-)" It's good that he covers the pitfalls he encountered; opportunities for improvement.
If you say "Linux can replace Windows" three times and click your heels together, it might come true!
Instead of using complex and expensive superscalar and vector processors one can take another approach, like our company did. We chose Zilog's Z80A as our base processor. You can get them for 1c these days, so it's quite cool. Now we built a NUMA/XBAR system with 1,256,000 Z80s running a single image. Each processor has 64Kb of RAM for it's own, and runs a portion of the simulation that it pushes to the master processor, a single Intel Pentium III, that takes the data and creates the graphical representation in realtime. As the Z80 doesn't need a cache you'll never run into cache coherency problems. We developed a special kernel called Zix and developed a finetuned compiler and parallelizer to create the Solar System simulation.
If enough people is interested I can post some more info and links.
Sincerely, Mike Bouma (NASA engineer)
I just installed Win2K Pro SP1 on my machine, no bells & whistles - as a workstation - 55MB of RAM usage after first boot. Installed OfficeXP, loaded all apps (including FrontPage) - all this added 50mb of RAM usage. More than Linux? Yes. 170MB? Hell No.
Long live unbiased reviewers...
Price aside, just because it "can" be used as a replacement, doesn't mean it should be or that it is better.
I always wonder why companies who choose to try Linux always go for Star(open)office? AbiWord is a good word processor and can import word documents effortlessly. Has a familiar interface and can be use on anything from Linux to Windows to QNX to BE and OSX on the horizon.
Just my $.02
m.kelley
life is like a freeway, if you don't look you could miss it.
LINUX SUCKS!
...a tool that offers visual integration between Apache, MySQL and PHP without any line of scripting, and then I'll speak of a replacement for MS Access. Until then, it's all just for geeks.
"To find an alternative to the MS Access database application, we decided to develop a prototype of an intranet application using Apache Web server, MySQL database and the PHP scripting facility. This Linux solution was not only faster and more powerful than the Access application, the software was available at no charge. "
Dave
The bulk number of people that have no clue how a computer works, let alone the people who can't even make windows work, will grossly prohibit the 'common man' from ever straying from the main stream. (ie. Microsoft).
That doesn't make it right, but then again it rarely does.
Oh Well....
"This must be a Thursday, I never could get the hang of Thursdays."
The article says "basic firewall included in the Linux Red Hat installation" in the firewall comparison section. ipchains/iptables is far from basic. I would trust it more than ZoneAlarm any day because it doesn't crash.
Is he saying that just because it has no GUI front end? If that is the case that's not true either...the Red Hat 7.1 setup has a GUI to set up firewall options.
Execute? [Y/N] _
Offer an easy installation Yes. Excellent installation wizard facility, including on-screen help, 'Plug-n-Play' and Package Group selections. But all is not perfect. The biggest hurtle may be the configuration of your graphic hardware. Purchasing new computers with Linux pre-installed solves this headache.
The new SuSE version offer an incredibly easy install (including graphics), can get you and running quickly, with very little effort.
I personally haven't tried any new versions of RedHat, but I've heard it doesn't have the best installation.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Is this an astroturf attempt or just flat out flamebait?
Do I really have to explain to you that the equivalent document from Red Hat would have no more validity?
Honestly, I'd rather be modding you down, but I don't have moderator access today...
/Brian
Interviewing a (potential) new dev manager. Talking about setting up a documentation standard.
Dev Mgr: "So you guys all have Word, right?"
Me: "Nope."
DM: "Oh, you use notepad?"
Me: "Uh, no, I use Lyx. I think some of the other chaps use Tex directly."
DM: "Lyx?"
Me: "yeah, Word doesn't run too well on Linux"
DM: "So you use Linux as your desktop?"
Me: "Of course. I develop on it, so why not?"
This is a guy with 15 years coding experience. He got the job.
*sigh*
Why is it that many people who claim to support standards have such atrocious spelling and grammar?
This has to be a troll
(1) Windows 2000 requires minimum of 256MB. BULLSHIT. It runs *fast* under 128MB and a shitty processor for me.
(2) RedHat Linux 7.1 is stable and when an application crashes it doesn't bring down the whole system. BULLSHIT. Default instal used to crash all the time for me, until I cleaned it up
(3) Delete Keys and Enter keys don't work properly under Linux. SURE. If you don't set your keyboard up properly.
Please, please read articles before posting them.
Score:-1, Funny
I just heard some sad news up on talk radio here in Maine. Legendary author Stephen King, passed away in his New England home last night. He will surely be missed. Even if you didn't read any of his books, I'm sure you've heard of him.
Oh yeah, and Windows is Better!
Consider this comment:
After an intensive hands-on Linux project lasting several months, I was able to provide my client with a pertinent answer to this question.
Which is followed by this comment:
The primary reason for this decision was a $10,000 saving on his IT budget!
Facinating.
You will be stunned by the bang for the buck that Linux bundled free "open source" software offers.
Since Linux is free, wouldn't any amount of "bang" mean that the ratio of "bang" to "buck" is infinite? Q.E.D. Better than Windows!!! (not trolling.... well.... maybe a little bit... )
:)
Window 2000 demands a fast CPU (ideally starting with Pentium III) and a minimum of 256 MB of RAM.
This just isn't so for a workstation. I ran on my K6-2-300 and 96mb of RAM for quite a while with Win2K Pro.
And who the hell is this guy telling us what processor speed is ideal? If I'm joe schmoe that uses MS Word, IE, Excel, you don't need a PIII.
Not a word about employees who actually used the new software afterwords. What was the cost in lost productivity getting used to a new system suite? What about training costs?
The software comparisons all seem to be based on feature comparisons, not a single comment from a windows office drone getting used to the new system.
This report isn't going to make me switch over to Linux. I'll need to see or do some real testing first.
For managing images they could opt for compupic. They didn't say they were looking for 100% open source and functionality seems to be closer to what they're using now (based on reviews of other imaging programs and my experience thus far with compupic).
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
After the events that happened on September 11, it is clear that the USA needs to become a police state. The loss of freedom is a small price to pay to be able to sleep at night without worrying about people trying to kill you.
The fact is that the guy was very in-depth about it. I'd have liked to see his MSAccess replacement linked to, but oh well.
The problem with desktop applications these days is that they're gigantic for no obvious reason. I still want to see someone write a full-featured office suite that takes up a grand total of no more than a megabyte for the source tarball -- I would be inclined to think that a fairly nice word processor could be put together with nothing more than Perl and Tk, using standard command line tools like ispell for the more specialized services and (I've heard suggested) HTML4+CSS as the file format.
Nobody seems to have tried, though...
/Brian
But Windows XP totally obliterates any chances for Linux on the desktop. As much as I hate to admit it, Microsoft actually got it right for once.
While the article is certainly an excellent comparison and makes some excellent points, I highly disagree with the statement:
Anti-Virus | Norton Anti-virus |Not required with Linux, according to the experts.
While it's not really "required" right now, it's certainly a good idea - and as Linux continues to penetrate the corporate and home desktop, virus writers will shift their attention to Linux as well I'd be pretty sure.... It's not all that hard to infect a precompiled executable of gAIM or something similar when the final product is always the same...
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
Next, are you claiming that the report referenced in this article has no more validity than Microsoft's Linux Myths page? I'm afraid I don't see the connection, because I haven't seen a similar page from Red Hat, illustrating how Linux is better than Windows. Perhaps you'd care to enlighten me?
Linux, clearly beating the competition in useless ways.
don't forget to investigate your chances of acquiring this self descriptive set of URLs, from us, including a year's free, secure web hosting.
*Cough* This is a great example of someone writing an article to match what they "already know".
Did he actually do an analysis of what his office needs for word processing? I don't see a list of required features. The alternatives are feature-poor, so we simply don't know.
Although he says that StarOffice is "fully compatible with Word/2000", other experience has shown otherwise. Did he test with some complex documents?
What about printing? Did he test with all the printer types in his office? If he is 100% Postscript that he has some chance, but if there are any low-end Epson color printers, his users could be in for a big surprise.
And on and on...
It's pretty obvious this guy has never done a feasibilty study in his life. I give it a D-.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
He's not even an amusing troll.
His work is completely implausible!!!
WILL  YOU  CHOWDERHEADS  PLEASE  STOP  ENCOURAGING  HIM?!!!
That is a lame troll, and I am embarrased that so many people bit.
OpenOffice build 638 has nice linux and windows installers and lets you run components separately. It is much more polished in this way than the now much older 5.2 and should be used. www.openoffice.org has the downloads.
All that is missing is the "StarOffice" label; the guts are all there and run nicely.
What idiot moderated that "Offtopic"? It's obviously a "Troll". Idiots.
From the article: Anti-Virus: Not required with Linux, according to the experts.
Bullshit!! What experts would these be? Just because Linux viruses are less prevalent than Windows viruses doesn't mean that the Linux platform is invulnerable. In fact, because the Linux networking suite is far more capable than the Windows suite, the average Linux user must be more vigilant in protecting his/her computer against worm attacks.
Then again, now that I think about it I can't think of a major anti-virus application for Linux. Can anyone suggest one?
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
Nice cost savings, but it only works when you don't factor in lost productivity for retraining people to use the software.
The main problem is a lot of implementations try to look like windows, and that really only aggravates the issue.
So, if they saved 10k on licensing and hardware, how much did they lose in time devoted to people learning the new system? What costs are involved when hiring people? Using temp agencies?
The reason Linux is having a hard time moving into the mainstream office is not because of price, but simply the fact people would have to retrained to use it. Sometimes time is more than money
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Hail the powerful and wise bill gates,
For it is written, one operating system shall bind them all....
That this Linux user is touting the merits of bundled software yet 99.9% of other Linux users want to prevent Microsoft from doing the same?
If a built in firewall, built in CD burning, built in media playing software, built in web browsers and built in file viewers of various sorts are OK under Linux how can any Linux user who values logic honestly say it's "EVIL(!)" when Microsoft does it? Becuase the government says so? Please. It's really very scary any one person could be that hypocritical yet an entire collection of people but it seems to be a true enough mindset.
Sad really.
(This post, of course, being modded into hell because it's not anti-Microsoft)
My roommate runs Windows 2000. He is one of those people that just can't stand the god damn thing.
/. is biased, yes we all know this, tough shit. It has been like this for years and it probably won't change. All news media is biased in one way or another (usually politically biased) if you don't believe me you are absolutely wrong.
His video card isn't supported well and the drivers he can use don't support GL and he can't play Quake (big problem).
Before he installed some patches his machine crashed about 10x a day. After patches, at least 2x. He said at least w/Win98 all of his hardware worked and it only crashed every two days or so.
I have suggested he run Linux but he is of the "I know I could learn it, I just don't want to" crew. Which is fine.
What makes me think that Linux is supperior is that his card is supported, it won't crash every 2 days (probably not every 2 months) and it has been getting better overall.
I do NOT believe for a second that Linux is a desktop operating system nor do I think it will be anytime soon. What I do believe is that Win2k is mediocre and needs to have some serious work done to improve it.
Yes
If you don't like the news here there are plenty of other sites you are more than welcome to visit.
While I don't believe that they should be biased I have to live w/the fact that they are. If some site was pro-MS (which most are) I probably wouldn't frequent them as much (and I don't). Go where you are comfortable.
Afterall, the entire article shows where and how Linux and Linux alternatives can be used to replace Windows 2k... as well as it should since that's the primary thrust of the article.
I would think that everyone here would agree that Linux can more than admirably replace a Win2k desktop.
But my question would be, should it?
The wrtier uses Star Office for his example. (While there are better out there, I'll use it since he did) He even points out that the suite is missing quite a few of the Office features, almost all of which you and I will probably never use. But what about the secretary for your group? Or that person that uses Word to create forms? You might be able to do a lot of the things that these people rely on in Star, but what sort of hoops to do it? And could a computer 'illiterate' really catch on to those hoops?
That brings me to his PDF creation solution. Print to PostScript, then use a 3rd party utility to convert to PDF. It's not very user friendly, "but it works." If you look through the article, you'll find that phrase quite a bit.
My whole point is that Linux can replace/supplant a desktop for those of us on Slashdot, and typically do a far better job than the desktop it replaced. However 99% of the office workers out there are not the typical bored geek that hangs out on here.
So yeah you can replace Win2k with Linux for a business user workstation, but I personally don't think that you should. At least not yet.
'Life is like a spoonful of Drain-O, it feels good on the way down but leaves you feeling hollow inside'
I also agree with upgrading sets of associated packages - like KDE - this is still not anywhere near the level of ease of use that could be automated fairly easily.
I guess the real issue is - who is going to tackle this work? These are big problems that require the attention of a group with enough clout and authority to push their solution into the linux mainstream. Red Hat, IBM, Ximian and the FSF are the only groups I can think of.
I dont really think this is the interresting issue to discuss. Whether Linux will be a good desktop environment/replacement for Windows2000 wont really rely on "Linux", but on all the apps that will run on linux.
What i'm saying is simply that the Linux kernel has been "desktop ready" for a long time, its just the easy task of networking, supporting some common hardware, and not crash.
What IS the issue is what programs are available. Why do people choose to use Windows 2000 on the desktop ? Because they want to run the Windows OS ?.. Dont think so. People are looking for the programs that runs on Windows, like MS Office, Internet Explorer, Visual Studio, Borland tools [add a long list here]. They simply look for a good platform to run their favorite software on.
The Open Source community has a little dilemma here, first they try to say "We can replace windows 2000" by providing products that can communicate with [major software company] products. Then they try to offer software that works just like those products they are trying to replace.. Why should someone want to use the copy when there's the original ? Of course you cannot provide an Office Suit for Linux that will always be 100 % compatible with MS Office, simply because even Microsoft cant
The core issue is, dont try to walk your way to the desktop by making [almost as good] replicas of existing desktop software. Instead, offer something better! Something like a uniform word processor that uses the XML standard. Maybe use the same XML for spreadsheats, email programs, etc etc etc.
As long as we try to copy/replicate leading software we will always be one step behind. Why dont we take the lead and provide new things instead ?
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
Aristotele
Moderators are on crack.
How is this offtopic?
I could see flamebait or maybe troll... but off-topic? It's a crappy shitty negative comment ABOUT THE TOPIC YOU BLOODY TWITS! Please, geezus, yeah, mod shit down.. but mod it down correctly you putzes.
Fucking idiots.
Note, this is off-topic. You can actually say off-topic here, you braintrusts.
The fact of the matter that everybody has known for a long time is that only pedophiles and terrorists use Linux
on the Desktop.
On the whole, this fact has been too long ignored...Even though when you think about it, do you know
ANYBODY who uses Linux as a desktop OS who is not
A) A terrorist
B) A pedophile
I'll bet you don't, unless you use it yourself. Then you don't notice that your cohorts are terrorists and pedophiles,
because you are too busy hiding the fact that you are a terrorist and/or pedophile yourself. Or you may be in
denial, telling yourself that those fantasies about mortar shells and Microsoft are natural, as are those thoughts
about underage Britney Spears Dancing naked on your computer desk. Well guess what: THEY'RE NOT! So
wake up and smell the coffee, you sick Osama bin Homo Linux geeks.
Agree with you man. You wanna write articles, at least don't b biased towards one person/company all the time
... is the computer litteracy gap. I know that I'm going to get flamed for saying this, but it's true. The average secretary or marketing person for that matter probably would have problems with Linux applications just because they aren't developed for complete idiots like MS apps are. I like the fact that they aren't developed for idiots, it makes them more powerful for people who have a brain, but for those lacking, it would probably be a hard adjustment.
~ now you know
Moderators moderate trolls/flamebaits as "Offtopic" 90% of the time. This is a great injustice, and should be punished in Metamod.
Hmm... I had Win2K running just fine on a 96Mb Acer Travelmate. Sure, it paged like a bastard on startup, but soon settled down (and I did go back to SuSE/KDE). Minor niggle though, otherwise a great article, well presented, and commendably objective. Cheers!
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
My concern is Slashdot's absolute unwillingness to even consider the other side of the argument. Take, for instance, your roommate's problem. Talking about Linux on the desktop and Windows 2000 on the desktop is apples and oranges. Windows has been programmed for fast power and short lifespan (hence the constant rebooting), while Linux is programmed for long lifespan and decent power. You can't expect to compare a 15 year old operating system with one that's been around for only 5 years. It's just stupid.
I hate Microsoft as much as any slashbot, but you know, it's simply the best choice for the workplace right now because people know it and are familiar with it. Technology does not rule; politics and humans rule.
After patches, at least 2x. He said at least w/Win98 all of his hardware worked and it only crashed every two days or so.
Let me guess... he's a l33t overclocker, right? If Win2K is crashing that often, then he either 1) screwed something up, 2) has a hardware problem, or 3) This brand-x video card has shitty drivers.
He used StarOffice 5.2. The old StarOffice was incredibly annoying. Recent OpenOffice builds are much better. I know they're not officially released yet, but I think the development builds would have been a better choice.
Also, Evolution, Balsa, or Mozilla would have been better for e-mail. KDE probably has a native app that's better as well (KMail?).
He said he couldn't get the drives to automount on RedHat. Odd, that usually drives me mad until I remember to turn it off. Not sure what his difficulty was.
Trouble with dependancies for RPMs: use Debian or Ximian's Red Carpet if that matters. I think somebody told me Mandrake had apt-get for RPMs - that sounds interesting too. Ditto for the upgrade problem. RedCarpet and apt-get are miles ahead of Windows in this respect. On the plus side, once you get everything the way you like it it's really easy to set up painless network installs using RedHat.
On the whole a pretty positive piece, even if I don't agree with everything he did. You can probably chalk this up to his being a Windows administrator and not really knowing his way around the Linux world (I wouldn't do much better trying to fine-tune a Windows installation). It would be interesting to have one of these comparisons every six months or so just to see the progress. I bet it would be impressive. As far as I know most of the annoyances he mentioned in his article have already been addressed.
Funniest Quote: My customized KDE desktop is better than Windows 2000! He seems so surprized :-).
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
The Bottom Line This review focused on Linux Red Hat 7.1 from a business user's view and attempted to answer my client's question "Can Linux be used as a replacement for Windows 2000". After an intensive hands-on Linux project lasting several months, I was able to provide my client with a pertinent answer to this question.
Notice it didn't mention the Feasibility of Actually switching from a Windows-based Operating System to one of Linux.
I believe this to be an excellent comparision, and it does provide some useful information. One can at least assume, with his amount of content, that it was a well thought out comparison.
Who cares exactly how accurate he was, he's not flying rockets into space, he's merely making a comparison.
Again, he didn't address the actual feasibility of using Linux, he just said it was better. Let him define what's better/worse.
Go see ramdac
I wonder the same thing. Star/Open office is designed to look like and replace Microsoft Office, however.. I find that Koffice is much faster, more stable, and supports antialiasing.
I personally use Gnome, and don't really like KDE for my own usage.. but nothing on the Unix platform performs like Kpresenter for powerpoint presentations.. and it has AA which is essential for powerpoint.
I don't know how good Kword is in comparison to Abiword, I personally use Abiword and it is very stable on x86 and PowerPC. It isn't fully featured, but it does what I need. Some people do need tables in their word processor, amongst 400 other seemingly useless features.
In short, OpenOffice is the only portable opensource FULLY-featured wordprocessor.. but it has a shitty powerpoint tool in comparison to Kpresenter. It is also slow and buggy. If you don't need all the features of OO's wordprocessing or require AA, use AbiWord or Kword.. your mind will thank you.
--
Eric Windisch
Really, I want to use this product. I prefer its stand-alone approach to that of StarOffice, but they have got to get the stability issues dealt with. I honestly think the 0.9x version they have applied to their current code is deceptive - they should move the decimal place and call it v0.09.
The war between windows and linux on the desktop is over, windows won.
Let's not lose sight of the goal here. Ixnay on the uthtray, inuxLay should inway.
It's not so much how difficult that Linux is to install that makes it, to me, difficult to use. It's the community that feeds the perception that Linux is a geek's OS.
As long as the "more able", on-the-fence Windows users continue to get responses like, "Read the fookin esotericHOWTO, crypticHOWTO, and horriblyexcitingtoreadHOWTO, you idiot!" a la Jimmy Fallon on SNL as they take their first look at Linux and post newbie questions on usenet, the wall will never crack. Heck, when I first installed Linux I didn't even know where the HOWTOs were!
If I'm Joe Computer User and my "expert friend" says Linux is too complicated in no small part due to the "newbie flame" s/he got when trying to become part of the community, I'm not about to try out this new OS.
Ruffin Bailey
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
This is how Adobe Distiller works on my Mac.. I can print anything to a PDF because Adobe has set-up Distiller as a virtual printer. What happens when I print something is that the print task is passed to LaserWriter 8 and a postscript document is created, this postscript document is then piped through distiller to create the PDF.. It's very slick!
zz
none of the above.
no overclocking, no hardware problems, and a TNT 16mb card (I believe).
It should NOT have shitty drivers. Remember, everyone supports Windows right?
Blah.
In fact, because the Linux networking suite is far more capable than the Windows suite, the average Linux user must be more vigilant in protecting his/her computer against worm attacks.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. With the wonders if the tiered user access system (root vs. others), any user running their system properly (ie, not as root) is at little to no risk. There are always exploits to worry about, but these are not viruses in the sense that Windows users are accustomed to, but simply automated exploits. Further, these are almost invariably contained to limited portions of the system, again, due to the very nature of the Unix user system.
I'll bet you can't think of an anti-virus package for Linux. It's because it's wholly unnecessary.
-Waldo
Anti-Virus Norton Anti-virus Not required with Linux, according to the experts.
Enuff said.
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
Go buy a fucking Windows machine.
Nobody cares about your problems. Go home.
Idiot.
it isn't showing all of the comments.
<O
( \
X
8===D
As much as I'd love to ditch MS, the truth is that for the last X number of years, most all 3rd party apps.. specifically specialty apps writtten for specific industries, not just "Word", have been written for Windows.
I would love to get rid of MS in my work environment, but the apps I need to use simply don't exist under any operating system other than Windows, and it's extremely unlikely that the 3rd party vendors will blow millions of dollars to make a Linux version to please the small (albeit growing) percentage of computer users that despise MS.
You could make a wonderful office suite, a billion times better than MS Office, but it doesn't matter, because the office suite software is a minor set of utilities in many, many workplaces.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
Out of all the windows, 3.1 is the best. i rember it never stoping
No Sig
Why don't you go ask people running Win2k how good their SBLive! drivers are. It may be supported, but they do crash systems and sometimes require a clean install.
The article shows why you don't need to go to Afganistan to find fanatism.
I like the Linux os (but certainly not the FSF) but come on, why not stay with the truth?
Instead of KDE, a less complicated and easier to use and understand environment is Windowmaker + ROX-Filer.
:)
Instead of the apps he chose, here are my personal favorites:
Database: MySQL and Ksql for end-users, embedded perl for web-based company-wide databases.
PIM with Email: a web-based app tailored to the company's business processes for scheduling, and Pronto for mail.
Browser: Mozilla
Image Viewer: GQView
PDF Viewer: ghostview (gv) & Acrobat for stuff gv can't handle
Umm...what does a mp3 player have to do with business?
From the article:
And here lies one of the biggest challenges in the Linux world. The Red Hat installation is outstanding - you basically push a button and 500 or so rpms are installed and configured correctly. But upgrading individual applications, especially for a large package like KDE, is far from pushing a button. Upgrades in Linux have a long way before they will be as easy as upgrading Windows applications.
This guy re-installed Redhat because he couldn't manage to install new KDE 2.2 packages. And he takes it out on "Linux," when he should of course take it out on Redhat. I know I updated KDE with a few commands involving urpmi on my Mandrake install, and it should be even simpler to do on Debian -- certainly much simpler than upgrading something equivalent on MS Windows.
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
meanwhile BSD is still dying...
$2500 buys you maybe a week from a low-end integrator (and most likely one of their lowliest techs). If he's an idependant, maybe 2 weeks
worth of time. While he may have been able to setup everything in less than 2 weeks, there's no way he could have done a reasonable study, documented everything, and trained the users for that cost...
That definately affects the TCO -- labor! While they saved $$ on the software and got off the MS treadmill, the labor costs to implement his solution vs. the MS one are substantal.
So, while it may be the "better" solution, don't make it out to be cheaper....
XP is the wost windows ever. they can block software, modifey the system over the internet, upload core files and more. the wost windows ever.
No Sig
The author of the article kept saying how if there are hardware configuration problems (specially with older hardware), the best option is to have Linux pre-installed on a new system. Well.. yah, thats an quick solution to the problem, but what if you want to re-install the OS..as many times is required? and you have no time nor the money, nor the support to get the original vendors to re-install it for you. With winX you can get any joe blow to re-install/reconfigure the OS ..but with linux you need someone that knows their stuff...
Any other possible solutions to this?
There speaks somebody who couldn't be arsed to read the moderators' guilelines, which clearly say you shouldn't mod people down just because you disagree with them.
But you're right - it's unthinkable that
Yep ! M$ Windows$ 2000 is so superior that it can't even give me a mouse ! I've tried, IT at work have tried, but no mouse. Not even a pointer to push around with the cursor keys. Window$ gets very tedious without a mouse. I'm dumping Window$ 2000, XP probably won't be any better, I'm not spending 100's for a new machine so I guess it Linux for me.
It's not worth making anything into a desktop operating system these days. How many stories about desktop computers appeared on the internet this year? None. How many stories about PDA's and dedicated applicances? About 1,000,000,000.
So it can be done but why should I do it? I'm not for Win specifically, but I see no reason to change. What are the advantages to changing to Linux?
-Valiss
... don't you mean Natalie Portman?
---
I post links to stuff here
I didn't fuck your mom in the ass today. Could you tell her to come over?
Google says you've got about 26,600 weeks worth of future stories.
Anonymous posts are filtered.
What about printing? Did he test with all the printer types in his office? If he is 100% Postscript that he has some chance, but if there are any low-end Epson color printers, his users could be in for a big surprise.
You chose utterly the wrong argument here. I have an Epson Stylus Photo 1290 and previously had an Epson Stylus Color 850, and the GIMP-Print drivers for these have totally blown me away - the output I get from them is simply stunning, and considerably better than the official Windows drivers. They also support every feature and resolution of my Stylus Photo, even doing colour matching using Postscript.
Also, they don't crash, unlike the Win2k drivers...
Better yet, I'm using these drivers with CUPS as the print spooler and the KDE2.2 print framework. Using this combination, it is just as easy to add, manage and remove printers as it is under Windows. In fact, for networked printers, it is even easier, as I can also configure CUPS through a web browser from anywhere. The print dialog in KDE apps is fully comprehensive, easily customizable by each app and supports things that Windows doesn't - for instance, post-processing of print data through arbitrary commands, which means every print driver has the capability to print multiple pages per sheet, and every app can print straight to a PDF file. Truly, it is a joy to use. I haven't seen a comparable print framework anywhere else.
For more information, check out the GIMP-Print, CUPS and KDE Print framework websites.
Printing under Linux has finally come of age - and it is better than Windows!
Dude! This has already been fixed with dpkg and apt!! If this is our biggest challenge, then the world is ours!!
The journey is better then the end.
You never see the context in metamod though, and context-less (and hence topic-less) that comment is probably offtopic and lazy metamoders can't be bothered to check.
;-)
Even more offtopic, mod me down if you dare, I didn't want that karma anyhow
J-aims
--
Yo, whatever happened to peas? Join T( H)GS
I don't know what desktop this guy was using, but KDE 2.2 has a system wide "Print to PDF" option integrated into all KDE apps, including KOffice. That seems pretty user friendly to me.
I have an old compaq thats 233 with 32 megs of ram. It runs Windows 2K at a crawl, but its enough for IE and Word.
- gtaluvit (prnc. GOT-tuh-LUV-it)
Umm...okay this guy says he installed Win2k with 55MB of ram, which i dont understand how you could get a strange number like that..but okay. Ram usualy comes in like 4,8,16,32,64,128,256...guess if you add a few of those up then you could hit 55. But what troubles me is that win2k WONT install without 64K MINIMUM, or maybe that was only on the server version? Anways here is the minimum requirements from Micro$oft: http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/professional/ evaluation/sysreqs/
Minimum Requirements
Computer/Processor 133 MHz or higher Pentium-compatible CPU
Memory 64 megabytes (MB) of RAM recommended minimum; more memory generally improves responsiveness
Hard Disk 2GB hard disk with a minimum of 650MB of free space
CPU Support Windows 2000 Professional supports single and dual CPU systems
Just a thought
Windows is getting a lot of user level security tools now--easily configurable via a gui, not hard to use.
Linux Security is powerful, but is a morass of application and configuration issues.
Someone oughta make a GUI like gtp with tabs to logically split this stuff out and configure it, maybe even a tab for doing saint probes, nmaps, etc.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
OK, it's a fairly decent article. But some complaints are not justified.
.tar.z or .tar.Z. .Z is compress. I'll grant the .tgz and .tar.gz but who is stupid enough to get utterly confused by it?
XFree can run at 96 dpi with the fonts to match. startx -- -dp6 96. Plus if he wants fuzzy anti aliased fonts, KDE (Qt, really) supports them.
Konqueror can sort directories mixed in with files (but what a stupid concept): View->Sort->Directories First.
Limited firewall? Perhaps the reviewer should mention how it's limited. Or maybe by "limited" he means "I can't point and click my way to a false sense of security."
Form autocompletion is in Konqueror, but in all fairness, I think it may have appeared first in 2.2.
No thumbnail views?? This guy needs to learn how to actually find what options his applications have. Konqueror has thumbnails for damn near every file type out there, if you so desire.
Shift-Right and Shift-Left work fine for me in my KDE apps (except for where it would be bad, such as konsole).
Automounting certainly is possible, although I don't like or use it.
gzip'd tar files aren't
No select all in Konqueror: Edit->Select->Enter. Maybe complete illiterates won't figure this one out.
hwclock problems? It's always worked just fine for me. How about elaborating on what went wrong?
Documentation. Sure, there isn't always documentation. But "Give us a break!" is a really bad attitude to have. This is FREE SOFTWARE, folks, you're entitled to jack shit. If you actually want to be useful, WRITE DOCUMENTATION AND DONATE IT!
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:DbYXcv4JI5o:w ww.robval.com/linux/desktop/index.asp+&hl=en
How many users are at the company? How many replaced their Windows workstations with Linux?
Are these all savvy users from some ubercompany or the typical low-gray-cell-count folks found everywhere else who throw a fit when anything changes?
(I tried to post these questions to robval.com but the posting script times out. If you know the answers, post!)
This is hardly an indepth document on replacing Windows 2000 with Linux. He only covers a few of the initial costs and doesn't even talk about long term costs. If we paid a consultant to provide an analysis of Linux in our business, I would hope for something a lot better than this.
What's missing?
The most obvious is the training costs for the staff. Don't tell me you are going to replace every application the users have without retraining. Sure, upgrading from Office97 to 2000 might require training also, but it wasn't mentioned at all.
Where's the long-term TCO analysis? This would include support costs, software contracts, future upgrades, etc. And what's this 30-90 days of support for RedHat? Is hey saying the OS will be unsupported by RedHat after then unless you purchase an additional contract?
I was say this is pure shit, but he did do a decent job at comparing the alternative applications that are out there.
ÕÕ
This guy says that Access can be easily replaced with PHP/MYSQL. What in the hell is he talking about? Virtually any secretary-type person can make a quickie Access report. It would require a LOT of training to what would amount to essentially teaching these same people programming to do the same thing with PHP & MySQL. He's waaay off base on this one.
I've grown fond of Linux over the years, but for a long time I had a hard time taking it seriously. The was mainly due to my first experience installing it, many years ago. The basic OS installation wasn't too hard (though not for the computer newbie), but I couldn't believe how much time I spent on silly little configuration issues. Bad design, inconsistent design, undocumented design. It was actually worse than Windows 3.1! It took me an entire day to figure out why Netscape always mapped Backspace/Delete backwards from other applications. That's the sort of thing that drives up cost of ownership. My first response to Linux was, "OK, it's free, but can anybody afford it?"
Well, Linux has gotten easier to administer (thought it's still too complicated, and there's too much undocumented stuff) and Windows has gotten much much harder. But the total cost of ownership issue is still hard to answer. One big item is retraining everybody to use the Linux equivalents of MS Office. That's assuming you can persuade people to make such a basic change!
The Nvidia Win2k drivers are fine. Millions of other people don't have a problem. Unless you want us to believe Nvidia has been sending your "room mate" special drivers to cause him problems something is very likely wrong with his machine or his setup.
Why does the mouse handling support SUCK? I love how the mouse handles in Microsoft Windows operating systems, but in X Windows it is just plain terrible! Any word on when a fix for this will be out? Or does one exist already?
When copying files under Linux, original timestamps are replaced with the current date. So the "date last modified" file attribute becomes "date last copied". This becomes a nightmare for anyone dealing with many files - how can you keep track of when a file was last modified. You can force the original timestamps using cp -p., but this means not using the GUI file manager. Very poor Linux design feature!
Please somebody buy this guy "CVS Pocket Reference" !!! :)
:wq
hey didn't I see you in the gloryhole last night taking it in the ass?
fuckin whore.....
/*
/* comment out to actually play the game */
/* 15 b/c no moderation word or -> */
/*** declaration of variables ***/
/*** initialization of data ***/
/* seeds random num gen */
/* bitchslap! */
/* prompt for input */
/* loop until an alphabetic */
/* character is read from
/* end while */
/*** settling all outstanding business ***/
/* Bad moderations are indices 1 - 5. Good moderations are 6 - 10. */
/*
/authors.pl if you don't believe me.
/* posting at -1 by default */
/* posting with +1 bonus */
/* 7 passes at moderation of comment,
/* if the comment is not getting
/*** select a random moderation to apply to the comment ***/
/* direction == 0 */
/* if the mod is
/* if it's positive */
/index.pl.");
/* http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/06/26/205521 7 */
/* 4<=loss<=7 */
* sd.c version 1.0 June 2000 by Avian Chaos compile with: gcc sd.c -o sd
* released under the GNU GPL ( http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html )
*/
/*
* By default, player's chance of getting bitchslapped is 1 in 25 each time
* an action is taken (even if it's just checking your user info). To change
* this, send the integer you would prefer (i.e. 1 in X) as the first
* argument on the command line.
*
* In the spirit of open source, you are encouraged to improve upon this program
* and re-post the new version. Contrary to the spirit of open source, you
* are not encouraged to flame me for being a bad coder, which I already know
* I am, but rather to fix the code yourself, or to tell me how I should have
* done it.
*
* To post the output on Slashdot, use the "Plain Old Text" posting mode and
* (optionally) surround the text with <tt>...</tt> tags. They get parsed
* even though you told Slashdot you were posting in plaintext. Dumb, huh?
*/
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <time.h>
#include <ctype.h>
// #define RUN_THYSELF
/*** function declarations ***/
void initializeArrays(void);
void randomAuthor(void);
void applyModeration(int direction);
void postNormally(void);
void troll(void);
void whoreForKarma(void);
void writeStory(void);
void flame(void);
void joke(void);
void moderate(void);
void metamoderate(void);
void submitStory(void);
void checkUserInfo(void);
/*** global variables ***/
int karma = 0;
int comments = 0;
char moderations[11][15];
char authors[24][15];/* author's name is longer than that */
int
main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
char input = '\0';
int approx_turns = 25;
char actions[] = "ntkwfjmesu";
if (argc > 1)
approx_turns = atoi(argv[1]);
initializeArrays();
srand((unsigned) time((time_t *) NULL));
while (input != 'q') {
if (!(rand() % approx_turns))
break;
printf("\n\nYou can: ");
printf("post [n]ormally, [t]roll, whore for [k]arma, ");
printf("[w]rite a story, [f]lame, make a [j]oke, ");
if (karma > 3)
printf("[m]oderate, ");
printf("m[e]tamoderate, [s]ubmit a story idea, ");
printf("check your [u]ser info, [q]uit.");
printf("\n? ");
#ifndef RUN_THYSELF
do {
input = tolower(getchar());
}
while (!isalpha(input));
* stdin */
printf("\n");
#endif
#ifdef RUN_THYSELF
input = actions[rand() % 10];
printf("%c\n\n", input);
#endif
switch (input) {
case 'n':
postNormally();
break;
case 't':
troll();
break;
case 'k':
whoreForKarma();
break;
case 'w':
writeStory();
break;
case 'f':
flame();
break;
case 'j':
joke();
break;
case 'm':
moderate();
break;
case 'e':
metamoderate();
break;
case 's':
submitStory();
break;
case 'u':
checkUserInfo();
break;
case 'q':
break;
default:
printf("That\'s not an option.");
}
}
if (input != 'q') {
printf("\n\nYou have been bitchslapped by ");
randomAuthor();
printf("!");
printf("\nYour days of posting in the sun are now over.");
printf("\nYou are forever doomed to post at -1, and your trolls fall on deaf ears.");
printf("\nThat is, until you create another account....");
printf("\nBefore your bitchslap, y");
} else
printf("\nY");
printf("our karma was %d.", karma);
printf("\nYou posted %d comments.\n", comments);
return 0;
}
void
initializeArrays(void)
{
int i = 0;
strcpy(moderations[i++], "Normal");
strcpy(moderations[i++], "Overrated");
strcpy(moderations[i++], "Offtopic");
strcpy(moderations[i++], "Redundant");
strcpy(moderations[i++], "Troll");
strcpy(moderations[i++], "Flamebait");
strcpy(moderations[i++], "Underrated");
strcpy(moderations[i++], "Informative");
strcpy(moderations[i++], "Insightful");
strcpy(moderations[i++], "Interesting");
strcpy(moderations[i++], "Funny");
i = 0;
strcpy(authors[i++], "CmdrTaco");
strcpy(authors[i++], "Hemos");
strcpy(authors[i++], "Cliff");
strcpy(authors[i++], "Roblimo");
strcpy(authors[i++], "sengan");
strcpy(authors[i++], "Justin");
strcpy(authors[i++], "emmett");
strcpy(authors[i++], "timothy");
strcpy(authors[i++], "michael");
strcpy(authors[i++], "JonKatz");
strcpy(authors[i++], "jamie");
strcpy(authors[i++], "nik");
strcpy(authors[i++], "jimjag");
strcpy(authors[i++], "HeUnique");
strcpy(authors[i++], "CowboyNeal");
strcpy(authors[i++], "blizzard");
strcpy(authors[i++], "aeneas");
strcpy(authors[i++], "nathan");
strcpy(authors[i++], "mojoski");
strcpy(authors[i++], "OctobrX");
strcpy(authors[i++], "ThiemeWorks");
strcpy(authors[i++], "SlashTeam");
strcpy(authors[i++], "DanShearer");
strcpy(authors[i++], "Nate");
* I'm not making any of these people up, I swear. Look at
*
*/
}
void
randomAuthor(void)
{
int i = 0;
while ((rand() % 5) && (i < 24))
i++;
printf("%s", authors[i]);
}
void
applyModeration(int direction)
{
int i, mod, post_score;
int default_score = 1;
if (karma <= -25)
default_score = -1;
if (karma >= 25)
default_score = 2;
post_score = default_score;
printf("\nThe post's initial score is %d.", default_score);
for (i = 7; i > 0; i--) {
* 50/50 chance each time */
if (rand() % 2)
continue;
* moderated this pass */
if (direction < 0)
mod = (rand() % 5) + 1;
else if (direction > 0)
mod = (rand() % 5) + 6;
else
mod = rand() % 11;
if ((1 <= mod) && (mod <= 5) && (-1 < post_score)) {
* negative */
printf("\n Your comment is moderated \"%s\".", moderations[mod]);
post_score--;
} else if ((6 <= mod) && (mod <= 10) && (post_score < 5)) {
printf("\n Your comment is moderated \"%s\".", moderations[mod]);
post_score++;
}
}
printf("\nThe post's final score is %d.", post_score);
karma += (post_score - default_score);
comments++;
}
void
postNormally(void)
{
printf("You post ");
switch (rand() % 14) {
case 0:
printf("a calm, rational, insightful analysis of why Linux is not yet ready to be a desktop OS.");
break;
case 1:
printf("an innocent comment that accidentally refers to the epic poem \"Beowulf\".");
break;
case 2:
printf("a comment that suggests that Microsoft may have done something worthwhile, once, long ago.");
break;
case 3:
printf("a gripe about some feature of Python that bugs you.");
break;
case 4:
printf("a friendly warning to newbies that the parent post is a troll.");
break;
case 5:
printf("a relevant and insightful comment that happens to be one of the first 20 in the thread.");
break;
case 6:
printf("an artful and on-topic haiku.");
break;
case 7:
printf("an exquisite metaphor in which you relate the topic at hand to a date with Natalie Portman.");
break;
case 8:
printf("your honest opinion on the MP3 debate.");
break;
case 9:
printf("a comment suggesting that C might be a difficult language to code in.");
break;
case 10:
printf("a comment discussing why C++ is not truly object-oriented.");
break;
case 11:
printf("a comment critical of Perl.");
break;
case 12:
printf("a comment in which you suggest that the user should be the most important consideration when coding.");
break;
case 13:
printf("a comment suggesting that maybe not everything to come from technology is necessarily good.");
break;
default:
printf("**ERROR IN SWITCH IN POSTNORMALLY()**");
}
applyModeration(0);
}
void
troll(void)
{
printf("You post a troll ");
switch (rand() % 11) {
case 0:
printf("in which you expound upon various erroneous legal theories.");
break;
case 1:
printf("offering free advice on marketing Linux.");
break;
case 2:
printf("which credits the U.S. for \"saving Europe\'s ass in WWII\" and inventing the internet.");
break;
case 3:
printf("glorifying Microsoft for fighting to defend their god-given right to charge a lot of money for an inferior product.");
break;
case 4:
printf("condemning all open-source advocates who seek gainful employment.");
break;
case 5:
printf("outlining your extensive experience running GRTS-11 on NP-17 hardware.");
break;
case 6:
printf("which gratuitously links to www.olsentwins.com.");
break;
case 7:
printf("which says simply, \"YHBT YHL HAND.\".");
break;
case 8:
printf("referring to http://goatse.cx/ as an informative link.");
break;
case 9:
printf("in which you claim to run Linux at your business as a vendor of hot grits.");
break;
case 10:
printf("which disguises a link to natalieportman.com as information about a database program.");
break;
case 11:
printf("in which you claim to have worked for Ma Bell before the breakup.");
break;
case 12:
printf("in which you pose as a high school classmate of Bill Gates, and reveal embarassing information about him.");
break;
default:
printf("**ERROR IN SWITCH IN TROLL()**");
}
if (!(rand() % 10))
printf("\nYou troll for osm!");
applyModeration(0);
}
void
whoreForKarma(void)
{
printf("You post ");
switch (rand() % 6) {
case 0:
printf("a comment questioning the sanity of anyone who doesn't open-source their code.");
break;
case 1:
printf("an on-topic comment within the first 25 of the story.");
break;
case 2:
printf("in a story that didn't make it to
break;
case 3:
printf("a pretentious attack on another commenter, \"correcting\" every statement of fact he makes.");
break;
case 4:
printf("a comment that uses Microsoft as an example of how not to do... well, anything.");
break;
case 5:
printf("a comment that includes moderation buzzwords such as \"information\" and \"insight\".");
break;
default:
printf("**ERROR IN SWITCH IN WHOREFORKARMA()**");
}
applyModeration(1);
}
void
writeStory(void)
{
printf("You write a story ");
switch (rand() % 6) {
case 0:
printf("about Allan Cox, naked and petrified.");
break;
case 1:
printf("in which Natalie Portman discovers that you are her one true love.");
break;
case 2:
printf("in which your Queen Amidala poster brings you inner peace and enlightenment.");
break;
case 3:
printf("that casts Slashdot moderators as conspiring villains.");
break;
case 4:
printf("involving the gruesome death of Bill Gates.");
break;
case 5:
printf("which casts the Slashdot authors as the crew of a spaceship.");
break;
default:
printf("**ERROR IN SWITCH IN WRITESTORY()**");
}
applyModeration(-1);
}
void
flame(void)
{
printf("You flame ");
switch (rand() % 27) {
case 0:
randomAuthor();
printf(" for his alleged sexual prefences.");
break;
case 1:
randomAuthor();
printf(" for a grammar or spelling mistake in a story.");
break;
case 2:
printf("Signal 11 for trying to attain that elusive +2 bonus.");
break;
case 3:
printf("Bill Gates for... well, being Bill Gates.");
break;
case 4:
printf("Bill Gates for his as-yet-unexercised capacity to give every man, woman, and child on the planet $3(oh, hell, they 'd just buy crack with it anyway).");
break;
case 5:
printf("a user who tearfully admits to running Windows9x.");
break;
case 6:
printf("a BeOS zealot for not being a Linux zealot.");
break;
case 7:
printf("a poster who misrepresented the meaning of some obscure acronym.");
break;
case 8:
printf("a user who made the mistake of revealing his age.");
break;
case 9:
printf("a poster who expresses views that are suspiciously unlike capitalism.");
break;
case 10:
printf("Linus for not being from the U.S.A.");
break;
case 11:
printf("RMS and ESR for the crime of being public figures.");
break;
case 12:
printf("Hemos for being married.");
break;
case 13:
printf("osm for thinking of something you wish you'd thought of first.");
break;
case 14:
printf("TRoLLaXoR for being more creative than you.");
break;
case 15:
printf("someone from another country.");
break;
case 16:
printf("Slashdot for posting a story about a Good Cause, rather than something obscure and self - absorbed.");
break;
case 17:
printf("the Slashdot authors for not accepting a story idea you submitted.");
break;
case 18:
printf("JonKatz for discussing concepts you don't understand... you know, abstract ideas, that don't directly relate to writing code....");
break;
case 19:
printf("Microsoft's latest product without knowing anything about it except its name.");
break;
case 20:
printf("a poster who admits to not being an expert for not being an expert.");
break;
case 21:
printf("a poster who makes the mistake of asking a question, instead of having intuitive knowledge of all technical matters.");
break;
case 22:
printf("d, whoever the hell he is, because he sure Sux0rZ.");
break;
case 23:
printf("Al Gore for inventing the internet.");
break;
case 24:
printf("the trolls who are following you around, telling them to get a life.");
break;
case 25:
printf("Larry Wall for having poured hot grits down your pants.");
break;
case 26:
printf("Bruce Perens for thinking he's the only person in the world named \"Bruce Perens\".");
break;
default:
printf("**ERROR IN SWITCH IN FLAME()**");
}
applyModeration(0);
}
void
joke(void)
{
printf("You make a joke ");
switch (rand() % 6) {
case 0:
printf("about the notion that there might be females who read Slashdot.");
break;
case 1:
printf("about the blue screen of death.");
break;
case 2:
printf("about \"Jackass Penguins\".");
break;
case 3:
printf("equating Microsoft with hell/evil/Satan/etc.");
break;
case 4:
printf("by thinking up some witty new alternate spelling of \"Windows\".");
break;
case 5:
printf("about $3 crack.");
break;
default:
printf("**ERROR IN SWITCH IN JOKE()**");
}
applyModeration(0);
}
void
moderate(void)
{
int loss = (rand() % 4) + 4;
if (karma < 4) {
printf("You can't moderate right now -- you don't have high enough karma.");
} else {
printf("You pack a pipe full of $3 crack and kill some hard-earned moderator points.");
switch (rand() % 3) {
case 0:
printf("\nYour moderations are beaten senseless by anonymous metamoderators.");
break;
case 1:
printf("\nYou suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous metamoderation.");
break;
case 2:
printf("\nUnfortunately, the metamoderators got their crack for $1.50.");
break;
default:
printf("**ERROR IN SWITCH IN MODERATE()**");
}
printf("\nYou lose %d karma.", loss);
karma -= loss;
}
}
void
metamoderate(void)
{
printf("You metamoderate 10 random comments.");
switch (rand() % 6) {
case 0:
printf("\nYou rate every moderation as \"unfair\".");
break;
case 1:
printf("\nYou rate every moderation as \"fair\".");
break;
case 2:
printf("\nYou rate good moderations \"unfair\" because you don't like the choice of adjective.");
break;
case 3:
printf("\nYou metamoderate randomly, without reading the comments.");
break;
case 4:
printf("\nYou rate the moderations according to your personal preferences and beliefs.");
break;
case 5:
printf("\nYou overturn valid moderations for first posts and \"This link is more informative\" posts.");
break;
default:
printf("\n**ERROR IN SWITCH IN METAMODERATE**");
}
}
void
submitStory(void)
{
printf("You submit a story idea ");
switch (rand() % 15) {
case 0:
printf("about astronomers finding ketchup on a distant asteroid.");
break;
case 1:
printf("about Natalie Portman\'s friend\'s dog\'s birthday.");
break;
case 2:
printf("about geeks who really *are* in space.");
break;
case 3:
printf("about the release of XWinMan 0.1.4.8.2 beta 7.3 alpha.");
break;
case 4:
printf("about Microsoft's latest legal battle.");
break;
case 5:
printf("asking what can and can't be done with open-source code.");
break;
case 6:
printf("that tangentially mentions something remotely related to Transmeta.");
break;
case 7:
printf("about yet another magazine article whose author has just discovered Linux.");
break;
case 8:
printf("full of rumors about the next Star Wars movie.");
break;
case 9:
printf("about the latest plans to package a nuclear power generator with each box of Legos.");
break;
case 10:
printf("full of alarmist buzzwords and wild, unfounded speculation.");
break;
case 11:
printf("suggesting that some geeks may have social lives.");
break;
case 12:
printf("about somebody's nefarious attempt to shut down the internet and restrict its freedom.");
break;
case 13:
printf("that includes the character string \"MP3\".");
break;
case 14:
printf("that mentions penguins.");
break;
default:
printf("**ERROR IN FIRST SWITCH IN SUBMITSTORY()**");
}
if ((rand() % 100) < (karma)) {
printf("\n%d", (rand() % 10) + 2);
switch (rand() % 4) {
case 0:
printf(" minutes ");
break;
case 1:
printf(" hours ");
break;
case 2:
printf(" days ");
break;
case 3:
printf(" weeks ");
break;
default:
("**ERROR IN SECOND SWITCH IN SUBMITSTORY()**");
}
printf("later, ");
randomAuthor();
printf(" publishes your story!");
karma += 3;
} else {
printf("\nYour submission is rejected.");
}
}
void
checkUserInfo(void)
{
printf("Your karma is currently %d.", karma);
printf("\nYou have posted %d comments.", comments);
printf("\nYour user bio ");
switch (rand() % 12) {
case 0:
printf("says that you work in the cube next to Linus at Transmeta.");
break;
case 1:
printf("calls you the \"poster child for the moderation system\".");
break;
case 2:
printf("contains ASCII art of a hand with its middle finger extended.");
break;
case 3:
printf("is blank.");
break;
case 4:
printf("says that you are a professional engineer.");
break;
case 5:
printf("claims that you occupy a high position at Microsoft.");
break;
case 6:
printf("asserts that you are CmdrTaco's long-lost brother.");
break;
case 7:
printf("contains only the words \"Natalie Portman\" repeated until space runs out.");
break;
case 8:
printf("indicates that you are working on a top-secret open-source project.");
break;
case 9:
printf("vigorously denies that you're any sort of \"zealot\".");
break;
case 10:
printf("thanks Rob for that tarball.");
break;
case 11:
printf("pretends to accidentally show your four-digit karma.");
break;
default:
printf("**ERROR IN SWITCH IN CHECKUSERINFO()**");
}
}
Heh.
My old room mate ran win2k on a P200 with 32 megs. It took forever to start and paged constantly when loading an application, but it ran ok once a program was started, so long as you didn't try to switch tasks.
We did try linux on the machine (fvwm + mozilla), but it was unusably slow with the ten thousand ton monster running. xterms were fine, but really, a terminal program on windows provided all the needed functionality (as in it was faster to run programs remotely over a cable modem).
As of three months ago, the unpageable kernel of windows 2000 was smaller than the unpageable kernel of linux, and Internet explorer had a smaller memory footprint than mozilla. Using an embedded configuration may change the first, and the mozilla team is constantly working on the second, but my guess is that both of those will continue to hold in the forseeable future for a desktop configuration.
I'd really have to recommend windows 2000 as the environment for memory constrained computing if a graphical environment is necessary. Linux is really an option in this situation only if you can ditch the web browser and office programs.
Even Slashdot wants to hide some things
Let's face it... The main problem today in the large scale deployment of linux for the desktop is not of technical nature.
Any company with a half-brained IT administrator can manage, one way or another, to provide a decent desktop using GPL and free tools (as the article proves). Some people will complain (I've participated myself in some small-scale deployment projects and the secretaries bitched for DAYS before they would acccept StarOffice) but in the end, people accept it when they realize it works just as well as windows, only differently.
The main problem is accountability. When you talk about using linux in the business environment, traditional managers twist their noses and ask "But who supports that?". They just don't care for the money (after all, it's company money, not their money), but they do want to have a fallback company or person to blame when things go wrong.
What we need is full-scale support for Linux. We need big, well-known companies providing support and some good examples of large-scale successful deployment. Only then, Mr. Conservative Manager will think of linux as a viable alternative for his business.
"My client stressed that if Linux was selected as the alternative OS, he ``was not prepared to waste his time fighting IT fires; he wanted applications that worked with minimal fuss''."
Er, why was the client running Ms-Win in the first place, then?
I'm certain this'll be "moderated" down as flame-bait or whatever, but the question is serious. You see: of all the Unix (SPARC Solaris and still some SCO), Linux and Ms-Win boxen: we spend far more time "fighting IT fires" related to Ms-Win brain-deadness than we do relative to the 'nix boxen. It's always been that way.
This article does a good job of pointing out many of the flaws in using Linux software on the desktop. Linux developers would be well advised to read it and take the author's complaints in mind.
One thing the author pointed out repeatedly was the problems involved in installing and configuring XFree86. People have been saying this for a long time. I know that just about every time I have installed Linux, one of the first things I have to do is rerun xf86config and then manually edit the files to get things working right. If the Linux companies out there really want Linux to take over, the most important thing they could possibly do would be creating an entirely new configuration tool for X that is easy to use, configures scroll wheels, and has a better interface for less technical people.
Another sore point was StarOffice all being integrated together. I know that big changes are planned for OpenOffice 6, but we really need the Linux vendors to rally behind Koffice and Star/Openoffice for speed, ease of use, and file portability, as well as better Microsoft Office compatibility.
Of course, what I saw above all that really stood out was the fact that Linux is being compared to Windows, as if Windows needs to be as good or better than Windows at what Windows does. Linux will never be better at being Windows than Windows. Linux desktop developers need to stop cramming every little tool that might be able to fill a Windows-like function onto Linux desktops and start doing something special and innovative. Microsoft has spent years ripping off Apple's ideas, and all we get are good knockoffs of a knockoff - which is never going to put Linux up front where it needs to be.
I like abiword, having a gnome word replacement is good, but it needs to sort out some issues;
implement tables
more stability
use all X fonts
and it'll be ready for prime-time
I noticed this difference going back the other way, when I was learning Windows. At the time, I was frustrated that Windows was doing it wrong! I think that maybe that sort of thing happens whenever you change systems, you discover all the hidden assumptions you have been making about "how computers work".
If only NT would work at all! "But it works" is the sloppy catch phrase that MS folks used to throw out as they smashed down their crappy software on cluefull users. I work for a large company, with many databases THAT WILL NEVER TALK TO EACH OTHER, mail that gets stored in a propriatory format, and documents that never print the same twice. All of this is because of propriatory "standards" that never stand still. I'd love something that acutally worked around here freaking ever.
But my question would be, should it?
Of course companies should put Linux on the desktop and soon. Just reverse the question and see how obvious it is. Imagine your company was using FREE software and data formats. Try asking your boss, "Should we move to propriatory software that we have less control of, costs us more, is less secure, and does not work as well?"
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
...is that she can't find your porn if you don't giver her the file permissions.
God knows how many relationships Windows has destroyed because of that.
Freedom is the freedom to say 2+2=4, everything else follows...
#! /bin/bash
/dev/null 2> /dev/null
# Let user know we've started
echo "Scanning system for viruses"
# Make him think we're actually doing something!
find / -type f >>
# Report the results
echo "No viruses found"
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:DbYXcv4JI5
gotta love it!
[this added to get past the lameness filter]
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
If you don't like the topics here, you can download the slash codebase and buy a new domain name for about $15. /. has never claimed to be unbiased--they post what they are interested in. And the founders are linux people who were in on it from the beginning. C'est la vie.
This is interesting. I've never seen a linux review (bias or not) get such a slamming from the community. I've never seen such a review myself, and found it interesting nonetheless. Sure, it's far from perfect, but it does demonstrate some 'real world' example of possible deployment. With that said, there is no way our company would 'switch' but I have at home - like many of us here. The work environment needs professional, robust, and easy to use applications. Linux needs industry software. It's coming. The more people use Linux, the more developers will pay attention to it. Luckily I don't need industry software at home. Just the bare minimum to satisfy me. That's why Linux at home is viable.
FinePrint pdfFactory also uses a virtual printer paradigm to "print" to a pdf file, and it is also very slick.
His web page is at http://www.robval.com/linux/desktop/index.asp
Perhaps he has to upgrade his server first to linux?
Mark
Red Hat 7.1's good printing was a pleasant supprise. I gave it a try after the MS printing died on my wife's K6-2. Configuration was easy, and the output was just as good as MS ever was. Images from GIMP, documents from KDE are outstanding. Considering that the legacy alternative does not work at all, the ouput is infinitely better.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
What makes the difference, well, I suspect the fact that one machine (the PIII) has an AGP video card and the other has PCI video cards. No doubts that AGP is superior to PCI in terms of throughput, but it take a lock one quite a non-negligable part of your main memory. On the AGP system suddenly I have 32Meg "less" while running the game (depending on aperture size). The PCI cards don't have this "disadvantage". Well, I might misunderstand how AGP works, so please correct me if I'm wrong.
Of course adding RAM to the PIII solved all my problems.
In productivity apps (a la Office) it really doesn't matter, of course I just use Office 97 because it suits my needs more that enough and I kick OSA.EXE out of the startup folder...but that is another discussion.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
...and my desktop was replaced. Or do you want to say I'm just imagining it?
Of course I'm interested in comparisons of windows and linux. I just recently destroyed my W98 setup partitioning with fdisk and not paying attention. I've wished more than once in the last 3 weeks that I had a seperate box for linux to run on, but oh well.
;)
I find that alot of the articles out there on this issue are comparing windows and linux, when what they should probably be comparing is the individual window manager and windows. Just from the little experience I have garnered of late, I realize that Linux as an OS has a ton more power than I'll ever use, and on windows that was always a limiting factor, so where's the argument?
I'm slowly turning the tide and learning new stuff about linux, asking questions in irc, banging my head against KDE day in-day out. I'm pretty confidant that it won't be too long before I'm as comfortable using linux as I used to be using windows (which I still have to use at work) but there are still a few things that don't fit, and I wish that this guy had addressed some of those issues. Sure he talks about installation hiccups, but you aren't even going to be interested in reading about Linux unless you got past those. He also played into the familiar trap that you see so often... in that: he finds that he has some problem or other, and goes to the net to find a solution, he obviously found a solution, but he doesn't say where. It's amazing that we're this far into the whole concept of hypertext linking and people still don't hyperlink inside the articles they write for the internet. There's always a huge pool of links at the ends of articles.
It's tough going learning to use linux, with all the configuration files and compiling of source code for applications and I've also had alot of trouble installing the update to kde. I can't get my Wacom to work with my mouse in tandem, and the Kodak DC290 USB isn't going anywhere with gPhoto... Maybe I'll come out the other end of this learning experience and go back to Macintosh...
Like the marketing department, I think it's always easy to try and tear someone else's work down to elevate yourself, and I hate to think that this is what I'm doing so, in conclusion to this comment: I think the guy did an admirable job in promoting Linux specifically Redhat but hey, the article was well worded and the organization was easy to understand. I think we could all do well to be able to write an article like that.
mh
Microsoft's version of sprituality:
"Double-click the lifestone to attune your spirit to the lifestone"
He mentions Outlook as an e-mail client for windows and that there is Linux alternatives. Sure, mail and pine are great alternatives for MAIL. What about the OTHER functions of Outlook/Exchange? Tasks, Calender, Folder sharing, Centralized Contact database, Journal, notes.... Okay *some* of these things can be fixed by implementing an Imap server and ldap (folder sharing and contact database respectively), but what about everything else? Granted, this can all be done in OTHER programs but the fact that outlook has all of these features in 1 program makes it superior to anything currently on Linux!
/etc/passwd on the server... or by using the db file you can specify in smb.conf... or maybe, if you're a real hacker and AGAIN want to spend hundreds of man hours, you can implement an ACL system based on the same LDAP implementation you used for contact information....
Not to mention, how easy is it to setup sendmail, an imap daeemon, an Ldap server? You need REAL TECHNICAL ABILITY. For an IT firm this is fine, but for the general business use it will not work. Most corporations will not be willing to spend hundreds of man hours setting something up and then now have a support contract to fall back on.
Now... what about domain logins? Sure, this can be done under Linux... but it's not a turnkey solution like under Windows 2000. In Windows 2000, start the configuration wizard, make the machine a domain controller and log the other machines onto it. Under linux... uhm kerberos? Sure, now figure out how to use kerberos... modify those config files! Or NIS? NIS+? Even worse... sure, possible, but not a turn key solution!
Now we go to Samba... why use samba? Because it's GREAT! But the original intent of Samba was to allow filesharing between Windows and UNIX (not just Linux). It's great for that and has expanded, but what about access controls? You can control access via samba using
Windows 2000 + Exchange = 8 hours w/ all M$ patches they have released WITH implementation!
Now we go to the firewall on the desktop. First, why would one want such a thing in a corporate environment. And even if we had one, anything under Windows is better than ipchains or iptables. Maybe ipchains and iptables is BETTER but it's also HARDER and more COMPLEX... this is a big difference. It requires a higher level of skill from the end user to configure their firewall for everyday use. Now, I do work in an IT environment and even though I work with some smart people, they still fudge up their ipchains rules at home and ask for help! What about the corporate end user? Yeah, I'd be getting calls all day AND night with a nice queue that grows exponentially.
What about version management? Sure, redhat has it.. but does it come w/ something like SMS where you can rollout patches and programs to every RedHat box on the network with a click of the mouse?
One thing Mr. Valliere didn't mention in all his pricing was the amount of time required to set all these systems up. The number of man hours MUST be included in the cost of setting this up. Even the most skilled IT person with years of Linux experience in all the products I mentioned would take a good 2 to 3 weeks to implement w/ all the hacking and testing. At the same time, admittingly having NEVER really worked with Exchange or Windows 2000 server, I could guarentee a Windows 2000 network with Exchange and Office on the same number of desktops in less than 1 week!
My point being, although I will be mod'd down for trolling, is that although M$ isn't the BEST solution for everyone, it's the BEST solution for most corporate environments because it's 1) easy to implement 2) is designed for the corporation )file sharing, task sharing, calender sharing, etc) and 3) they can get support contracts in case ANYTHING goes wrong!
To say Kylix is an Access replacement is truly misleading. Kylix is a version of Delphi for Linux.
Your comment is saying that Visual Basic is a replacement for Access on Windows because it does everything Access does and more.
duh, it's a programming language.
...but he's using ASP, so it's not entirely unexpected...
He's right. That GNOME or KDE are any more difficult for the average user to work has got to be the #1 troll of the year. If anything, the interfaces to GNOME and KDE or any other window manager are easier because they do not suffer needless market droid type changes. Also, user customizations are much easier to save out and move from machine to machine. MS will never catch up.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
By a grumpy 65 yeah old New Englandah. Gaaad daaam chawdahaads.
"Contemplate the mangled bodies of your countrymen, and then say, What should be the reward of such sacrifices? ... If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude than the animating contest of freedom -- go from us in peace. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you."
--Samuel Adams
That little table there, listing programs common to, and running on MS, with alternatives, and how good they are, on Linux, I think that was sweet. No, I won't go into if I think the judgement was right on all of them...
But is there a more comprehensive list like that out there? For those that would like to trade in their windows, but has certain thing sthey want to do, be it doing word processing, program java just like in Borland or just Icq their friends - what is their options?
If such a list does not exist, it should. Unbiased, with comments from several actual users. I would think that such would be very helpful for a lot of people.
And be honest when there is no good match, ok?
There was no mail programs for office that was recommended in arcticle. Or did I miss it? Whatever the case, I think decent email client is pretty important for office.
Is there one comparable for OE? And no, I don't mean it's flaws but interface.
Is there a easy mail program for linux that can do well folders, threated messages. PGP. filtering, have address book, handle attachments and isn't Emacs/Gnus based?
Mozila seems to lose mail and news with me so I so I don't count it as a mailprogram yet. .
Nobody knows the trouble I've seen, nobody knows has the trouble seen me, even I sometimes wonder why I write these line
Therefore anything gets all the negative stuff aired.
To re-visit this client in a year's time and see how pleased he is with the decision, and indeed how well Linux has kept up with his business.
On a similar note, does anyone have any experience with a conversion of this sort that took place say a year or two ago (Burlington perhaps?), that they can share? Be interesting to see how Linux on the desktop is doing.
Why is it that many people who claim to support standards have such atrocious spelling and grammar?
/.
Somebody was asking about the cost of training. In most businesses today there is no end-user training for office apps. So that issue is usually a washout regardless of other factors; the few places that do train will do so on whatever software is in use.
Somebody else said "Why use an open-source clone of a M$ application? Why not use the real thing?"
Here's why: Four years ago my employer was paying over $800,000 US per year for software licensing costs. Today, that figure is less than $50,000 yearly. Linux, samba, rsync, and OpenSSH are the reasons why.
What's being done with all the money available from the avoided costs? Well, some of it is in my wallet right now. The M$-addicted IT directors out there don't control your paycheck nearly as much as the penny-pinching Smiling Men. And the accountants like to see those recurring costs dropping.....
Another thing I'm doing with that money is killing off Solaris, NT, and SCO-unix (and of course that dreaded train-wreck of a unix, HP-UX). This results in easier maintenance, and thus more time to work on the holy grail of a totally free desktop. I honestly don't care if it's linux as long as it's open source and doesn't require constant re-purchase.
--Charlie
Nobody uses a computer in order to use an operating system. An operating system enables people to write other software, and that's the software that is important. Focusing on the OS above all else is a distraction.
The trouble with attempting to clone the Windows environment is that we're getting 80% of the way there in almost all cases. Star Office is 80% of Microsoft Office. KDE is 80% of the Windows desktop. Mozilla is 80% of Internet Explorer. The total result is that Linux environments feel unfinished and shabby compared to Windows.
Cloning, by definition, is doomed to fail because it is a game of catch-up. A better approach is to think "What exactly do people _need_ to do?" as opposed to providing big and bloated toolsets which do all sorts of irrelevant things (for example, people don't want or need to be able to design a custom GUI for each application). As the risk of being considered a troll (and I guess light criticism is always considered trolling at Slashdot), I think that many people developing for Linux are not looking to "scratch as itch," as ESR likes to say. Rather they're gung-ho about putting Microsoft out of business by attempting to reproduce a popular Windows application.
You can never underestimate 'ease of use'. In my old position, I was asked (ordered) by not one but several people to print their files for them. I routinely needed to re-format .txt files because recepient's computers didn't open them as nicely as Word documents. And these weren't secretaries (no, they actually knew how to use computers), these were upper management, vice presidents, and the like.
I imagine that if any of these folks actually had Linux on their computer, they'd turn it on, stare at the screen, and quietly begin to cry.
if you're memory constrained, why on God's green earth are you using Mozilla? I use Mozilla all the time, I LIKE Mozilla, but even I admit that it sucks up obscene ammounts of memory. I mean if your system really is on the lower end, it would only make sense to use an application which can run on it (besides which I think a P200 is below the minimum requirements for Moz). To sum this up, you should be using Opera (or maybe Konquor).
I guess we see how, feature by feature, GNU/Linux is an OK replacement for Windoze. Personally I'd like to see the opposite comparison -- Windows as a replacement for Linux in a Linux shop populated with Linux users.
I mean really, the sorts of solutions that a dedicated *NIX user implements are frequently not even possible in off-the-shelf land. Or, perhaps more to the point, the canned settings/templates/interfaces tend to steer you towards certain kinds of solutions whereas the *NIX environment is more of an open canvas.
Somewhat on a tangent... Wired recently had an excellent article on the Linux Vs. Windows on the desktop. I get the "dead-tree" version of wired monthly, so I can't link to the article. ;(
./ community's opintions...
Very interesting points, most notably...
Should Linux Seek to be the common desktop?
Or would resources be better spent developing it as a more enterprise-server solution? Why bother competing for that market space, when it is largely already a monopoly.
I'm interested in the
plz no "rah rah linux!!" posts. They're tiring to read and pointless to write. (especially here on slashdot).
you all are hitting that poor windows/asp server and it is giving "Server to busy"... gee if people only knew how to scale ...
Only 'flamers' flame!
This one is very easy:
http://www.nusphere.com/products/mysqladv.htm
It's been very well rated by InfoWorld, ComputerWorld... yes, Windows-type magazines.
Of course, it comes at a price (small price, $299)... but how much do you pay for Access and the other tools?
I say it is a winner for Small Office development, that is, "Access-land".
Enjoy!
This text placed here to avoid slashdot's lame filters. The joke was contained in the header, and if you didn't get it don't worry about it.
What exactly is an enterprise operating system, and is there an application you need that is supported on Win2k but not Win98? Broader question, is there any reason for people not running a server to go beyond windows 98 SE?
A friend of mine asked me to upgrade his laptop for him, an old Tecra. 'Course all I could do was put more ram in it, but anyway I upgraded him to Win98 (from Win95) installed all his software careful to make sure nothing started up at boot time that wasn't essential. Two days after I gave it back to him he put Win2k on it. When I asked him WTF? he said he need an "Enterprise" system.???It's not just him. I know at least a dozen people who think that way, and even after you demonstrate that their system will boot slower and showing them how much ram is being used they just look at you and say, "but it's for professionals. I want it"
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
http://trolltalk.n3.net/
I recall reading that he points out "... costs of shipping CDs to Thaland..." (sorry, right now, the web is Slashdoted).
So he is talking about a Thai experience. Sure that in Thai, $2500 is a lot of money. check the GNP per capita and all that.
:)
It's very possible, and the results will be very good, and scalable. But when your goal is to save $10,000 you can't do much development work before you're paddling backwards up the money stream.
Where is this option?
Spencer Ogden
I've just finished writing an Internet Explorer based word processor for our offices. HTML is the file format - and 50% of my work has been providing tab-like functionality in a language that just doesn't have it.
Works though.
A lot of the applications I've written have been Access/VB front ends with Access/SQL backends. (Yea, I know what most of the slashdot community thinks about those development tools but that's a different argument...). I've seen more RAM on a server *drastically* improve performace, for example a process that takes 10-15 seconds become almost instant. These are custom apps, where the customer pays per hour about as much as it costs for like what, 256 megs of RAM (don't know current prices but it IS cheap). So if an app is performing slowly, you can either rewrite the logic, introducing new bugs, spending lots of hours coding, testing, building releases, etc., or sometimes you can pop some RAM in and the problem goes away. This isn't to say that all performance issues are handled by RAM, sometimes code just sucks, but this has been the solution on numerous products I've worked with.
Umm, and LyX has had export to PDF for how long? It's quite funny that there is usually no mention of LyX when talking about word processing on Linux/Unix. Maybe because LyX is not marketed as a word processor, in the traditional sense. Anyway, it wipes the floor with any other word processing program. html export (latex2html) is a bit sucky though, and docbook could be better supported as well.
The second CD is full of clip art and the like. My current Office XP folder is 103 MB (Word, Excel, Access, Powerpoint). To be generous, the 'Microsoft Shared' folder is an additional 87.8 MB.
DCMonkey
Anecdotal evidence suggests to me that moving to StarOffice isn't too painful an experience, if you don't rely on the more esoteric features of Office. My parents have managed fine. Sun use StarOffice throughout the organisation, where it's used by admins and techs alike quite happily.
Well I can tell you from a programming perspective I have never worked on a Win98 box which was as stable as NT/2000.. and I have had to work in both environments a lot.
.. would this workstation have data on it that people across a network would have to access off hours? NT/2000 you can run 1 week fairly happily without the need for a reboot.. with Windows 98 you will probably need to set up a schedule (First thing in the morning etc) of rebooting times.
.. just putting some possible reasons out there.
Windows 98 is a DOS extension and so multitasking is not as good either.. programs have to voluntarily release memory for multitasking to work, so if you have a lockup chances are you will have to reboot to regain that memory, even if you can kill the task.
Also though you said this is just a workstation the number of reboots have to be considered
I am not knocking Windows 98
Peace
Why would anyone upgrade to Office 2000. We're all on Office 95 and IT WORKS JUST FINE. It's hard to think of a secretary-useful feature that exists in 2000 and not 95.
very well put Florian, good points.
anyone who's run ethereal/gtk+ on win32 knows how goofy and slow it looks compared to the rest of the desktop, and that is, in essence what linux desktop users see all the time.
-Jon
this is my sig.
Clearly, this was written by someone who doesn't actually work in an office. I mean -- sure, you can save some extra cash in licensing fees, but you're going to get killed in consulting fees, training prices, and employee dissatisfaction.
StarOffice sucks. I hate to be the one to break it to you, but StarWriter no where near as good as Word if you're doing anything more than writing manifestos inherent greatness of linux. Those of us who do serious document production (graphs, charts, images, tables, mail merges, etc...) aren't going to be able to make do with some half asses clone. I'm sure there are workarounds and whatnot, but all that costs time. And where I come from, time is money. We won't even get into the flawed design of StarImpress and StarCalc.
Don't get me wrong -- I love linux. I administer a reasonably active linux server, contribute code to the open source movement under the GPL, etc... but I just cannot imagine Sally in the next cube over sending a fax from the command line. Or building databases using PHP and MySQL. Or using Gimp -- which, by the way, is a lovely tech demo but a piece of shit on the usability front. Especially when you compare it to photoshop. And especially when you compare it to the full range of production tools available for either the mac or win machines out there, tools which all work together to accomplish complex tasks.
Can you even cut and paste between KDE applications universally? They don't even have a consistent interface between apps... compare that to the average windows or mac app, and you'll see what I'm talking about.
Nice article, and I agree with alot of it. But one thing that is an outright untruth is the part about Gimp...
.png files way smaller than Gimp can as well.
Gimp is NOT an equal replacement for Photoshop nor Fireworks. The author must not do much image work, else he would have known this. Photoshop and Fireworks are the biggest reasons why I still have windows around. Gimp does not do vector -> bitmap translation, not does it have the multitude of plugins available for Photoshop. Fireworks makes compressed
My two cents, cause I work on images daily...
And for that matter, what do I use to make flash movies in Linux?
Linux has a long way to go before it takes over my desktop completely...
Consider the options:
- Windows route: Cost of Win2k (server and however many client licenses you need) + cost of training + cost of WinXP in a few months (another server, more client licenses) + cost of WinXP training + cost of Win2002 next year (another server, more client licenses) + cost of Win2002 training + cost of Win2003 (another server, more client licenses) + cost of Win2003 training...and so on to Windows Aleph-Null in the distant future.
- Linux route: Cost of one copy of Red Hat server + one copy of Red Hat Workstation + cost of Linux training (and since it's Red Hat, you can subscribe to their support service, but you were probably already paying for tech support in some form anyway, so the budget just stays the same in that area). The basic UNIX interface hasn't changed a lot in the past 20 years or so, and the GUIs stay pretty consistent (cosmetic changes, not huge interface-wide changes like the Win 3.11 ==> Win95 change).
Which one is more cost-effective? The one that has you pay now, and then next year, and then the year after, and every year in the forseeable future, or the one that you pay for once and upgrade for free into infinity?I realy dislike microsoft, but it takes me 2 minutes to make a web server work in iis
and a lot longer in linux...a lot longer
You cam up with 2 "viruses". Hooray for you. That doesn't make for "several".
Besides, from your Staag page:
"Staog is not known to be in the wild at the time of this writing (February 1997)."
...and from your Bliss page:
"Bliss locates binaries with write access and overwrites them with it's own code."
So if I have no programs executing from my home directory, I have nothing to worry about. And:
"Bliss does contain potentionally harmful code, but it is unclear if this is executed or not."
Yep, sounds like a super nasty virus to me!
You're just a Microsoft apologist who wants to try to say that "Linux is just as bad as Windows regarding viruses." This would be absolutely false.
There have been NO reports of damaging Linux viruses *IN THE WILD*. There have been 2 or 3 worms that affect SERVERS, but no viruses, again *THAT ARE DAMAGING AND IN THE WILD*.
Next....
Quickbooks does not play well with other tools, either. A tool built on SQL with a GUI front end is what is needed.
I'm interested in either finding or developing an OS small business accounting package. There are a few efforts out there but they don't seem to have achieved critical mass.
I can't understand this blind spot that seems to occur in all these Linux on the desktop discussions. Star Office resolves ~ 75 % of very-small business computer use. There is no clear substitute for Quickbooks, which would resolve almost all the rest.
Very-small-business is the ideal market for desktop Linux. They own a lot of non-current hardware, are under pressure to clean up their licensing, and can't afford the endless upgrades. Unlike non-profits, MS can't be stealing them away with well-timed "donations", and unlike corporations, MS can't hold onto them with huge sunk costs.
mt
nVidia's drivers are very stable. It would really surprise if that were the cause of the instability. Something seems really fucked up there: W2K's stability is far better than W98's (let alone WinME).
This sig under construction. Please check back later.
Well I've been saying that Gobe Productive looks like it's going to be great for promoting Linux in offices. And I see that they have a pre-order price special going on.
> the unpageable kernel of windows 2000 was smaller than the unpageable kernel of linux,
Using what configuration options of Linux? How big are we talking about here?
What was he smoking? For a user database Access is easy to use (and create a mess with). For a development environment it is probably a misuse. This is not an apples to apples or even apples to oranges discussion -- their is no comparison.
instead of latex2html, use tth -- much cleaner output (although it does still choke on a few things).
Why is it that many people who claim to support standards have such atrocious spelling and grammar?
I am not a database designer by any stretch of the imagination, and I don't program Access much, but what little I have had to do there I've found I can do just as well with "pgaccess", a Tcl/Tk front end to PostgreSQL.
Your Servant, B. Baggins
The real pitfall of Linux is it isn't very user friendly. In this I don't mean it's complex or clunky that is more or less incorrect.
Linux needs a considerable amount of computer skills to install configure and use. That is what makes it not friendly. But once you have those skills Linux runs as smooth as silk.
That is what makes it not suted for the desktop. A desktop should run smooth as silk with limited office skills. Not computer trainned computer experts but the high school or collage interns. The avrage low end office population.
So the best solution is Windows?
I think not..
As of late Microsoft has favored 'skilled end user' solutions to problems in Windows over real solutions. In part becouse some of those problems can not be fixed with out removing a significant feature.
The results are an office worker shutting things down for a few days.
The reality is you train your office workers. You have no choice. With this in mind the whole 'user friendly' advantage is a fantacy.
The defects in Windows really eats into productivity.
Finnally when you update the hardware get Mac hardware not more PCs. You don't have to train your users and they work hand in hand with Linux systems. Both are Unix like so you can run most of the same code on both platforms. Throw in BSDs and Solarus boxes and everything works perfictly. Just drop the right box on the appropreate desk. Not everyone need run the same system when they all work together.
I don't actually exist.
Check the RAM. I know several people whose machines would crash on a regular basis. New ram, problems disappear.
So there are plenty of free or cheap solutions out there, it's just that the public is brainwashed into thinking they need Office. I also think employees have come to expect a new computer, with the latest version of Office, as an important job perk.
And in case you're wondering, I use both Linux and Windows. I do prefer Linux.
I'm waiting for the ablility to join a samba machine to an NT domain and have the Samba machine pull its user list from the NT domain controller. Active directory support and NT logins would be even better! I'd like to build a Linux based fileserver for my company but it would have to tie to an existing NT domain controller and pull its users from that PDC. I don't want to enter users into the systems twice, once for NT and once for Linux. Does anyone know if Samba 3.0 will support this?
with really high prices!
m l? tag=pt.msnbc.feed..ne_7238508
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-7238508.ht
What's the cost of little or no competition?
For some Microsoft customers, it's paying as much as 107 percent more for the software they buy in volume.
As previously reported by CNET News.com, Microsoft on Oct. 1 will dramatically change how it licenses software to its largest customers. That change will drive up what they pay for products such as Office XP or Windows 2000 between 33 percent and 107 percent, according to market researcher Gartner.
Many customers also are finding they have to buy new versions of Office even to qualify for the new licensing program. With market share of more than 90 percent in both desktop productivity applications and operating systems, Microsoft is able to charge more in a way it couldn't in a more competitive market, say analysts and the company's customers.
Some Microsoft customers--many of which are companies not even halfway through their 2001 fiscal year--are outraged with the changes, which the software giant announced in May.
Help end the use of Sigs. Tomorrow
Why are they upgrading anyway? Seems to me it would save a whole lot of money staying with what they have. If they don't want under the windows trap of upgrading then don't upgrade at all. Since windows 95 and office 97 most business don't need to upgrade unless they want to run new fancy windows apps or some new hardware. If it is too new of hardware you may find problems running linux on it anyway for awhile. So why was it they were upgrading?
He recommends using StarOffice to replace Word97/Excel97/Powerpoint97. I completely agree here. I haven't had any need to replace an Access db application, since I don't use that part of MS Office, but I guess replacing it with an intranet web application is about as good as anything.
In my experience, StarOffice 5.2 is a fine replacement for MS Office. My only beef with it is that StarOffice loads an entire freaking desktop in order to bring up a simple Word document. (!) But I can understand the infrastructure here, at least: their intent seems to be to load as much as you can at startup, and assume you'll never need to exit StarOffice. Just bring it up once, and leave it there for the rest of the workday. Launching a document from within the StarOffice 5.2 desktop is pretty fast once the desktop itself is loaded. However, I think you need to make this point clear to any client or user who will be making a switch to StarOffice.
Now, I believe StarOffice 6 (developed as open source under the name OpenOffice) will be much better. That is, you should be able to launch a Word document, and that's all that comes up - a word processor frame.
What I was very shocked to see was that this guy recommends writing a PS file, then using (by hand) the ps2pdf program to create a PDF file. Yeah, very cool and everything. It certainly does work. But if I had recommended this method to my wife when she made the switch from MS Office / Windows to StarOffice / Linux (she migrated with her a 90+ pg thesis!) she would have sent me up a tree. The more professional solution would be to create a queue in the Xpdefaults file that creates PDF files. There is an 'Acrobat distiller' option in the printer setup dialog, but to be honest I think I had set up StarOffice with a filter that wrote to 'gs' and created a default file on the desktop. This is more than a solution "that works", it's a solution that doesn't give the user the attitude of "I had to do it myself".
If there's one thing that Windows has done for the user, it's that Windows gives the appearance of doing everything for you. Under Windows, you don't have to drop to a command prompt to get stuff done. You just do it from the app. IMO, making a migration from Windows to Linux, you need to be careful that the environment is set up in much the same way.
I agree completely.
I think KDE and Gnome are excellent desktops for even the typical business users, so that's one box checked. But there are a couple more critical items IMHO.
I'm not ready to stake my reputation on a transition to Linux until several more key items are a little further along than now:
- Evolution (or equivalent email/PIM organizer)
- Mozilla 0.9.9 (something fast, standard, that doesn't crash much (or Galeon, Konqueror, Kameleon)
- StarOffice 6.0 (something with less integration that 5.2, with standard XML file formats and better compatibility with MS Office formats; maybe KOffice) Something with better Excel compatibility.
For now, a Linux desktop is a great way for a SOHO to save some bucks if they have someone with some technical expertise and some time and not a lot of cash. Maybe that's why I got the impression this review was for a client in Thailand where you can get more people per dollar than in the industrialized world.For the general corporate desktop in the U.S., I think about 6-8 months from now should provide the point at which Linux is really a great option for the majority that don't want to be too close to the bleeding edge. Until then, for many users the transition from Windows is more uncomfortable than the dollar savings alone can justify.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
I'm not going to say this article is biased, but you can find more objectivity at a trial held by the KKK against racism.
The article clearly states that the machines were Windows NT machines using Office 97. They were going to be upgraded and re-deployed anyway, so there is no additional cost for this.
The biggest obstacle that I can see for Linux in the enterprise is that there is no good replacement for roaming profiles and single login like Windows 2000 Active Directory can do. A user logging in to any computer in the enterprise can get THEIR desktop, settings, and documents, and can have policies enforced. Of course Windows 2000 makes many old apps not work right when using active directory (and some current ones also) and prevents (for good or bad) anyone but the system admin from installing and running any new software.
When you set up 20 Linux machines as workstations, the user architecture is still like you are deploying 20 servers, all with their own accounts. I don't think any solution put forth yet for Linux makes account and resource administration as simple as Win2K active directory - where the admin can log into any machine and add a user account that almost instantly can log into any computer in the enterprise with the resource rights, profile and desktop template desired.
The other obstacle is applications. What if all your accounting is done in Peachtree, Quickbooks, etc.? That data will never come out of those programs, and it takes lots of training to use them.
But then again, Linux/KDE/Apps are all free...
Since StarOffice runs under Windows, why is he charging the Microsoft OS for the cost of the Microsoft applications? His $10,000 savings is actually closer to $2,000, if StarOffice really is as good as Office2K.
I think there's some bias here.
KDE is just as easy as any Windows version.
If you give an average secretary a new computer
with no OS, a windows CD, & some application
CD's, (s)he will have just as much trouble as
(s)he would with Linux.
It is not Linux that is the problem, it is the
pre-installed Windows market & Microsoft's iron
clad control of OEM's that is the problem, as
well as the lack of native Linux apps compared to
that Other OS.
It's dumb that apt-get only works with Debian.
That pretty much guarantees that nobody will
benefit.
well.. I'm using postgreSQL rather than MySQL, becuase of locking issues. So my comments relate to accessing a postgreSQL database from a desktop with no programming involved. First there is a nifty little program in the postgres distribution called pgaccess that lets you enter and retreive data. then there is the phpPgAdmin which uses the apache/php to let you access your postgresql database through a web browser (real handy since the only linux machine i've gotten in here so far - well, besides my personal laptop - is the one running the database ;-) ). So now our sales manager can now get accurate sales analysis information with just a few clicks in his browser, and the only programming was some database design, some extract programs on our as400, and some scripting to get the info from the as400 into the postgres - unless you you call writing some SQL queries "programming". BTW: we're also planning on getting our access databases moved over to this :-)
And regarding a "complex office document", where's your point? Of course it will have "fonts, layout, embedded images" and yes, possibly even "embedded objects"...but you know what? That's not going to make it more difficult to print. It might make it a bit of a job for the application to turn into usable output for the printer, but that's the app's problem, not the printer's or the printer driver's, and even then it's just a matter of churning out a PostScript or similar file. And after that, as you so eloquently pointed out, it's no more than dumping bits to the printer.
Anyway, I really don't see your point; people keep saying "wow I've found out that I have great printing in Linux", and you keep answering them with "yes, but do you have good printing? You make no sense.
Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers error '80040e2f'
/linux/comment/shopmemio.asp, line 84
[Microsoft][ODBC Microsoft Access Driver]Error in row
Maybe he needs to finish that transition to mysql.
Linux's memory footprint is a lot larger because of several things. First, Linux can't page out kernel memory. On my Win2K machine, of the 36MB of kernel memory, only 8MB is unpagable. Since most of the OS's features aren't being used all the time, this can lower the memory footprint of a running machine. Also, Linux can't page out the page tables, while Windows 2000 can. This becomes a larger problem in something like XCOM (used in Mozilla) where lots of sizable files are mapped in at the same time, but not necessarily used all the time.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I know this horse has been beat down to the ground, but it still bugs me. How can Linux get anywhere on the desktop without good performance? Win2K runs great on my relatively old 300MHz machine, but Linux/KDE seems much less responsive. It just seems to me that the Linux desktop is too much of a compromise. You can have cool features with KDE2, but you abandon performance. You can have a super-fast desktop with E17, but you have to put up with a tiny software base that actually uses E17's features natively. Win2K manages to get lots of features with good performance, so there is no reason to have to choose the lesser of several evils on the Linux desktop!
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
e-mail and task/calendar/whatnot client: Easy - Evolution.
sendmail, imap, ldap - since when are these setup on the desktop? I would love to see you point out to me how your windows ME or 2K workstation doubles as a mail and address book server for your whole company while you are doing your accounting or whatever. That's the whole point of *client/server* -- see, you have servers... and then you have clients. The "clients" connect to the servers to access the "services" that these so-called "servers" are "serving".
Domain logons? What are you really using them for? To provide access to certain file shares for certain users? Just use NFS. Or SAMBA or Appletalk for all I care - the point is that each of these things can be configured to provide the same functionality domain logons provide, and configured for more security if necessary.
Firewall on the desktop? Why would you want such a thing? Firewall as the network gateway, where it belongs. End users do not configure firewalls. System administrators configure firewalls. You seem to be confused. Maybe it's the whole "client/server" thing getting you down again.
Version management? First off, the example you give isn't of "version management", the example is about updating programs on user's desktops. Again, NFS means update one computer and they're all updated. Why waste time and bandwidth copying patches to every desktop in the office?
I would setup a server to provide all the functionality needed first. This would take approximatly 6-8 hours. Then I would begin setting up users desktops. I would install everything on one computer in about 1.5 hours, then duplicate the hard drive as many times as necessary. I could probably get 20 desktops going in 8 hours, if I had no specialized duplication hardware and had to manually shutdown the original desktop, insert the new hard drive, boot it, copy the partition, shut it down, take out the new hard drive and put it in the new computer, lather, rinse, repeat. If I had disk duplication hardware available, that number (20 in 8 hours) would be increased at least 4-fold (depending on how many disks the duplicator can write at once).
In other words, you are woefully uninformed, good sir.
In post-9/11 America, the CIA interrogates YOU!
Microsoft licensing changes criticized7 238508.html? tag=tp_pr
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-
-Lewis
Hp 932c... ATI Xpert 2000 ... support is minimal and
crappy, even on mandrake!
SO I will have to use windows!
Rumour has it that Raster was laid off...glad to see that dead weight gone........if true? anyone know?
Although I'd love to read another article about linux kicking butt, I noticed one important point missed. The article lists Star Office as a free Linux alternative to M$ Office in Windows. I searched the entire article and only saw a very brief mention that Star Office is also available for Windows for free.
In other words, you can chop money off your budget while keeping windows and migrating to Star Office. Like the author, I'd prefer a linux solution, but it makes the article misleading when considering the actual savings.
If you think thats good just wait till Star/Open Office && Abiword && KWord get their next generation of Standardised XML for Word Processing agreed and sorted out.
.rtf Files goodbye.
Im hoping i can finally make the switch and kiss all my old Rich Text Format
If they can standardise on a subset of XML then not only will we have the benfit of using existing XML tools, but new tools will work across a multiple applications.
Choice is good, diversity is good, real standards are good. Its all good.
I am tired of reviews comparing linux to windows. If you are looking to linux for a free version of windows 2000, linux is not for you. It is time to stop using windows as the benchmark.
Windows usage pattern:
[install] [tweak] [work] [work] [work] [work] [work] [work] [work] [work] [tweak] [work] [work] [work] [tweak] [work] [work] [work] [work] [work] [work] [work] [tweak] [work] [work]
Linux usage pattern:
[install] [tweak] [tweak] [tweak] [tweak] [tweak] [tweak] [tweak] [brag] [tweak] [tweak] [work] [tweak] [tweak] [work] [tweak] [work] [tweak] [tweak] [tweak] [tweak] [tweak] [tweak] [tweak] [brag]
Its right there whenever yo print.. just click the dropdown box where your printer name is and you'll see "Print to PDf", Print to PS" , "Send To Fax", as well as "Mail PDF". This is with KDE 2.2 of course.
"Booting with Lilo
Linux provides a very good and easy to use booting facility using Lilo. On the dual OS desktop unit that had an existing Windows 2000 installation, the desktop boots to Linux and a menu appears: I can select Linux (now my default) or Windows."
From personal experience getting NT/2000 and Linux to dualboot properly for many years, I have to say this statement is a bit of a misnomer. RedHat 7.1 clearly doesn't create a dualboot properly with NT (Disk Druid barely recognizes that the drive is NTFS!) The author comes off as making it sound easy to dual boot between the two completely different OS's, whereas doing anything close with 2000/XP today is a bitch and a half.
My best experience is to simply make a boot floppy for Linux and load as necessary. No muss, no fuss. Until one of these distros properly configures lilo, anyhow.
Not really. maybe the original poster just wanted to share his feelings about cocksucking. If the moderator thought that was the case, the moderation is quite correct.
The reasons are many from my point of view.
1) Is the installation/admin. I can take any monkey in the office and teach him to be a windows admin and show them how to setup a windows box. The same cannot be said of linux. It is a lot more complicated and needs a much higher level of compancy.
2) The users. Everyone even your grandma knows how to use windows and there is a common user interface. I can take windows 95 users and sit them down on a windows 2000 box and they will feel at home and can start working. Sure I got to tell them how to use ctrl+alt+del but they can start working. With linux there is no real standard setup. There is no set "office complient" interfaces between programs. With windows programs all programs have the same little icons for open / save / print / etc...
3) There is no standard desktop setup with Linux. In the wintel world there is windows, office, etc... With linux there is not even a de facto standard installation base. Users here still argue over which is the better word processor. Who cares! In the windows world there is no such choices because everyone is used to useing the same things. Also when I sit down grandma or the standard user they ask stupid questions like, I want to message my friend on MSN or ICQ. There is just no replacement to the staple of common windows products in linux.
There has to be some compelling reason for the average joe to switch to linux and money is not going to do it. Time is money and switching the average user to linux would be a huge waste of money because of the learning curve.
Now don't look at me as a windows zelot I am far from it and I do not think windows is the best. But right now all things considered I think windows is the best solution for the common computer user and Linux is still best left to the computer nerds. I just wish it would turn around where linux would be easy enough for grandma to install and where there could be a standard interface and standard set of programs.
His comment about time being wrong reminds me of the hassles I went through, and finally solved by using the hwclock and ntpdate init files in debian.
I'm amazed people don't install ntp as default in the enterprise, considering how it eliminates the clock accuracy problem (at least in my experience).
cp -p should be pretty simple to fix; just add a kde-wide option to preserve timestamps on copy, implemented by 'touch'ing the file back to the original mod time. How difficult is it to provide this (if it's not already there in KDE)?
People, virus protection for linux ISN'T for linux at all.
Linux is used for SERVERS in the corporate world (with some exceptions, but few). Everyone talks about how great samba is for windoze shares, but with an actual windoze server the virus scan would be checking those files for viruses. If someone uploads a file with a virus on it to a shared directory on the server (be it a macro virus or whatnot), virus protection on the server helps catch it before it spreads.
Now, I dunno if it's still there, but a few years ago I downloaded mccafe(sic) for linux. I'm not sure if it worked (I was just playing with it - I didn't have any windoze machines to serve to since it was my home computer) but it looked like it was trying anyway. Back then I had yet to gain enterprise fileserver experience, so I didn't think to check it for advanced features.
Any experienced windoze fileserver admin will tell you that a virus scanner on the server is neccessary. If IT admins are going to be using linux to share files to windoze machines, they'll demand it. Methinks the person who wrote this article lacks somewhat in experience with this.
Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.
>That brings me to his PDF creation solution.
Print to PostScript, then use a 3rd party utility
>to convert to PDF. It's not very user friendly, "but it works." If you look through the article, you'll find that phrase quite a bit.
I agree. Comparing Acrobat and ps2pdf is just not fair when speaking of capabilities. It looks to me that converting single document to PDF is not primary thing in bussines use. Try to convert linked documents using ps2pdf. However, I found gs+ps2pdf much faster...
Why the heck would you want to page out the page tables? Wouldn't the performance be murdered?
Just think of X as your video/mouse driver and low-level (i.e. line and pixel) graphics libraries. It's actually more than that, but that's its closest equivalent in the windoze world.
As far as the more advanced features such as remote display and font server and whatnot, you don't need to worry about them unless you need them. All in all though, X is fascinating if you're interested in that sort of thing, and while many parts of it are in extreme need of major overhaul, it's still one of the most advanced and flexible display systems out there.
Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.
Of course, Win2k is *far* more stable than Win98 (*spit*). That's certainly a reason to go for it than stay with the old Win9x stuff. It's more secure too and it doesn't feel any slower on my old desktop than Win98 did.
dave
Let me see. The Gnome Window Manager-- isn't that Sawfish?
And, after several years of using many different linux distros, I have never seen a the problems with the x configurator the author mentions.... Well, actually I have, but they were always caused by incorrect options selected in the X configurator, so I don't see what he is complaining about.
Now, this is the interesting part. The guy is very obviously a consultant who knows Windows far better than he knows Linux. Yet, they were able to make Linux work. I think that this is a very positive sign and makes for a good article...
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
What's worse is the redundant comments. What is redundant without context?
True, and it's not that easy to tell who posted first out of 900 or so comments anyway
J-aims
--
Yo, whatever happened to peas? Join T( H)GS
Unpageable Win2k kernel? Well, if you use XTeq X-Setup you get to tweak a whole lot of Win2k, including the ability to make the kernel pageable. I've had some luck running Win2k on a P166 with 32MB RAM. It didn't fly when I disabled all excess services, but it ran better than Linux/X/KDE, so I ditto your post.
Whatever happened to Wordperfect on Linux? I used it a while back and found it very good, better than anything else I had used, even on Windoze I think Wordperfect is much better that MS-Word.
look somewhere else for a sig... *** ** *
Let me give an example: You're a teacher who has found that in the past, a student has "slacked off" and not done everything exactly as you requested it, i.e., they did not format their page correctly, and did not leave proper margins. Then, on their next paper, you would meticulously measure each and every margin, every font, to see if they had disobeyed you again, and if they had, you would take extra points off.
You need to take a step back and use a "Consumer Reports" view on operating systems. Look at ease of use. Look at supported applications. Look at industry "standards" (even if they are not official, implied standards are powerful). Look at familiarity of interface. Now, tell me which operating system is superior, in those terms.
Not necessarily. Say you mmap a 2GB database file. Each process that maps the file uses about 2MB of page tables to maintain the mapping (even more in FreeBSD). If only some parts of the file are accessed often (which could very well be possible in a case like this) then the page tables mapping the less-used regions would be sitting in memory doing nothing. Sure you could have all sorts of complex logic in the program that tries to only map parts of files at a time, etc, but it is cleaner just to mmap the whole thing and let the OS deal with it. Page tables should be treated no differently from regular pages. The swap-out daemon should make no distinction between types of pages (other than locked pages of course!) It should choose which pages to page out based on how often they are touched. If a page table doesn't get touched often, it should be paged out with the anonymous memory that doesn't get touched often.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
KDE (2.2.1) does seem slow, even on my K6-2/400 with 768mb ram, it`s getting more and more bloated and slow, windowmaker on the other hand.. works just fine on a 486 dx2/66 with 16mb.. on win2k you are forced to use the supplied interface, no linux distribution forces you to use kde
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Ah. I see. Thank you.