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USA Today says "Linux waddles from obscurity"
JCallery writes "The Money section of Monday's USA Today carried a feature article entitled "Linux waddles from obscurity to the big time Momentum builds as upstart operating system proves it can compute". It carries a discussion of time and monetary savings in business, basic Sun and Microsoft arguments against Linux, growing popularity with Wall Street, Hollywood, and government organizations, and the credibility of Linux due to alliances with other industry companies."
When will people learn...
With the price of WinXP, even though I do like it, it's way too prohibitive to run throughout an entire business.
The functionality is pretty close to that of WinXP, so why pay $300 a copy? Sure it requires a bit more elbow grease to get configured just right, but it works great, and with distro's like Mandrake, it's almost easier than Windows to install...
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
What a long way Tux has traveled in the 12 years since Linus Torvald
Torvald? You think USA today could manage to get the creator's name right? I've never seen an article misspelling Gattes, Balmy, and Ilison. Other than that, you couldn't ask for a better PR article for Linux.
that have a Cowboy Neal option. :)
Nothing like paying good money to read newspaper reporters restate the painfully obvious.
"Breaking news: Some Americans now driving to work in lieu of walking!"
Dave------
http://cooltech.org
If it ain't cool, it ain't coolt
The Unix servers took 17 hours to calculate how much cash the bank needed in reserve to offset its investment risk. The Linux servers made the same calculation in 11 minutes.
A strawman argument.
Wow today's technology is cheaper and runs faster~~!!
But other than that. Yay for linix.
Its about time it started being used for critical applications.
...and a very good introduction to linux for the average USA-today-reading person who's never heard of it.
My quick question though: Is this article in the print copy as well? (The URL has 2002 08 05 in it, so i assume that it would be in yesterday's edition if it were anywhere.) Seems like occationally newspapers will put up stuff on their website that didn't make it in the actual paper version. Just wanted to make sure..
Momentum builds as upstart operating system proves it can compute
It never ceases to amaze me how an 11-year-old implementation of a 30-year-old design is called an "upstart".
The Unix servers took 17 hours to calculate how much cash the bank needed in reserve to offset its investment risk. The Linux servers made the same calculation in 11 minutes.
What they'd do, upgrade from 20mhz Sun boxes to Pentium III 933's?
These kind of performance comparisons are just SILLY
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Thats VA the company that runs slashdot.
Linix (the real company and OS) is actually quite healthy.
If I could find a report to post here I would.
Maybe a fellow slashdotter could help out.
Since the article says that each Linux server was over an order of magnitude cheaper than each Unix server, I suspect that they now have more of them at work. They should have been more specific about the cause of the speed increase.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
Come on! They must be leaving out ALL kinds of information here! What kind of machines were they running before? SparcStation 2's? These machines must have been 10 years old! There is no way just simply switching from SOME-OLD-UNIX(R) to Linux is going to improve the performance this much. I'm sure they would have seen a similar performance increase if they upgraded to Sun Fire V120's too.
In fact, there MUST have been some porting of the algorithms used to calculate this data. I'm sure some programmer looked at it, realized it was poor, 10 year old code, and modified it to run faster.
This isn't a valid one-to-one testiment to how Linux is faster than any other UNIX system out there and really shouldn't be in the THIRD paragraph of the article! (if at all!)
That will be tougher for Sun and Microsoft. Both live and die by licensing fees stemming from their proprietary operating systems. To the extent Linux rises in corporate use, they stand to diminish.
That might be true for Microsoft, but Sun has a huge hardware division. Why should it not be possible for them to follow in IBM and HP's tracks? To say that Sun "live and die by licensing fees" is a bit far fetched...
"I'd rather have a full bottle in front of me than a full frontal lobotomy"
"The Unix servers took 17 hours to calculate how much cash the bank needed in reserve to offset its investment risk. The Linux servers made the same calculation in 11 minutes."
I really don't appreciate that statement. Clearly, the hardware upgrade was the primary factor in the speed increase. USA Today tries to make it sound like it was all because of Linux. Absolutely detestable journalism.
Does anyone else seem to think that maybe their old Unix servers were considerably slower than the new Linux servers they witched over to?
Eddy.WriteLinux.Com
So it replaced 32 computer servers, based on the time-tested Unix operating systems, at an average cost of $50,000 each, with 40 Linux servers, at $3,000 a pop.
Why in the world did each server cost them anything? They already had 32 servers, and I am sure Linux would have ran on them, so why didn't they save the 96,000 and just use existing hardware..
In addition, they make it sound like "Unix Hardware" is more expernsive than "Linux Hardware", which while Linux works on just about anything, I don't see why they didn't use 3,000 dollar each machines for Unix in the first place. I don't see a 47,000 difference, unless they were stupid and just scrapped important stuff like memory, RAID, good mobos, redundant Power supplies, etc...
The Unix servers took 17 hours to calculate how much cash the bank needed in reserve to offset its investment risk. The Linux servers made the same calculation in 11 minutes
I don't think that if they had ran the same software on the unix servers, with the same hardware, that they would have had a speed increase really. Perhaps it was that they upgraded to new servers for the Linux, and used 8 year old Unix servers? That would make a good speed difference. I am glad that Toms hardware doesn't measure that way....
ie. "Well, Linux certainly beats Windows 95, we put Windows 95 on an old 386sx, and Linux on a spanking new Dell server, and found that Linux must be the faster of the two..." Retards...
Oh, an yea, I like linux, but this article is backwards.
Tibbon
tibbon.com
That computer company called H-P
From the Article:
:)
The Unix servers took 17 hours to calculate how much cash the bank needed in reserve to offset its investment risk. The Linux servers made the same calculation in 11 minutes.
-------------
I just woke up, but if my math is correct, this is almost 9300% faster?!? I cannot believe that just the optimizations of Linux have done that.
Linux is fast, but they didn't even mention the fact that the new hardware was quite a bit faster then there legacy Unix systems. It is a bias in the way of making Linux appear even better, so I can't argue too awful much, but consider this point.
No program that I have switched over to Linux (IIS to Apache, etc) have gotten that kind of speed gain. The only thing that I have seen with that kind of performance increase was when I put novell 3.12 on a P3 1.3 ghz (from a 33 mhz 486)
I didn't read the article online (I read it at lunch yesterday in the dead tree edition... Had a nice army of Tuxes on the cover of the section).
Blah Blah Blah.
Why shouldn't it? And if you don't think so, why should Windows? I've always kept using Windows together with linux, but when I had some HD shortage a month ago, I realized I hadn't booted Windows for the last year!!! So I made a quick decision: rm -r /mnt/win/*; mv *avi /mnt/win. This solved my problem, And I have never regretted I did it.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
So it replaced 32 computer servers, based on the time-tested Unix operating systems
.
.
.
The Unix servers took 17 hours to calculate how much cash the bank needed in reserve to offset its investment risk. The Linux servers made the same calculation in 11 minutes
WTF? Were they also running the time-tested 486? I suspect that hardware had more to do with the performance increase than the actual OS. I mean, full kudos to the Linux crew, but merde, are you really gonna get an increase in speed of such magnitude just by switching OSes? I would be inclined to say "no"...
You would think that the creators of Java would not speak so slightly of Linux. Pot/Kettle/Black, anybody?
This sig no verb.
</geek type="journalism">
Karma: T-rexcellent.
It is on the front page of 08/05's "Money" section.
(Karma = auto -1)
With so many cooks, Linux is destined to splinter into incompatible versions, Sun says.
Not as long as they follow published, open standards. They may not LOOK compatible, and may not have the same, homogeneous interface, but they will be compatible. The strongest will survive the best, but the others will still be allowed to live. That is how things will be different than today.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
For a long time the media took everything MS said as the literal truth. So today, when a newspaper that lives and dies by it's advertising is running a front page article that praises Linux and doesn't fully support Microsoft, it's an interesting situation. I'm sure that Microsoft is an advertising customer of USA Today and this article is hardly in their best interests. Will Microsoft use the same sort of threat tactics against the newspaper that they did against PC manufacturers? Probably not, since the media usually doesn't threaten easily, but MS isn't known for being smart about PR either.
This sort of thing will become more and more prevalent though because people are interested in it, and newspaper/magazine readership drives advertising sales. Media coverage will help to build momentum for Open Source software, which will help to build interest in reading about it, creating a neat little circle that helps immensely.
Over all a good article for the non-IT folks and helpful to the Open Source cause.
In my universe I'm perfectly normal, it's not my fault you don't live in my universe.
This is not true. Linux isnt reall any faster then solaris on same platform, Ok, maybe minutely. You cant put a Sun next to a PC and say "This operating system is faster". The machine is faster. Not to mention pcs were designed to crunch math. Suns were designed to be long haul database servers. Linux is ok but I wont hold a candle to my suns stability.
--- Always remember. 99.36% of all statistics are inaccurate.
It's interesting that so much time is spent talking about how Linux has gained credibility by what some company says about it or does with it. Isn't the truth more that Linux detractors have yet to come up with a lucid argument against using it?
Serious computing takes place wherever downtime cannot be tolerated. That is the very reason many web and e-mail servers have been running linux. An interesting article that shows the amount of ignorance about Linux that exists "in the mainstream".
cluge
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
I'm not quite seeing your logic here. I'm harshly criticizing an article that advocates Linux. You talk as though I'm slamming Microsoft while blindly supporting Linux.
Linus Torvald? Who is this guy?
Not a web designer.
Interesting point - although the amount of contaminants in water (even tap water) is minimal. It sure did look like when the water fell on the alien at the end that as soon as the water touched it - it was burned or what not. And what about the clown going to the lake? Were they afraid of that water?
On a slightly side note, with all the supposed acid rain and what not - shouldn't all the water be at least slightly contaminated?
Otherwise, I think you would have to agree with me on the character development.
The writing is on the wall.
Once Linux comes in a more friendlier average consumer front-end version, and more regular user apps are made, then Windows dominance will erode and eventually disappear. Unless, Microsoft (likely) makes some drastic changes to distributing their software:-)
Those kind of comparisons aren't silly, they're real world.
In the real world you upgrade pathetic old equipment with powerful new equipment. I upgraded from an old AIX box to a new one and acheived a 500% speed increase.
Sure comparing new equipment to old isn't fair, but the speed you gain is real.
Linux just enables you to make these gains at a very low cost.
OK, nothing substantial was revealed in the article that we didn't already know, but this is exactly where we need the attention. Increased business interest in Linux will create parallel markets that can be explored by existing software companies, Linux vendors, and by venture capitalists.
***Note: I realize the article did not discuss the desktop or home use. My comments are poor extrapolations based on the a potential future timeline.
I've followed the debates concerning linux on the desktop, and I agree that Linux is not ready to go after Redmond in the home user department.
But I do think that business penetration is the first step to home penetration. Once Linux becomes the de facto server system, there will be money and interest for desktop development ventures.
And later on, as businesses make the jump to linux on the desktop, so will home users. Many people learned to use Windows at work in the first place. Once these people say: "gee, I already use Linux at work. Do I really want to pay $100-$200 dollars to buy Windows Gestapo? I think I'll just install Linux.
At least that's how I hope it works.
Every time I see a story about how "Linux is Dead on the (desktop, webserver, database server)" I wonder why I should listen to the opinions of people who helped to build the last stock bubble with companies that did nothing (but they did it fast!).
Nobody knows how long it will take to 'correct' Microsoft's nasty effect on the the market, but remember, MS wouldn't mention Linux 5 years ago, then they laughed at it, now they're competing against it.
I think that some in the Linux community got scared because business people were pronouncing defeat for Linux because of, well, think of any reason you can: no apps, performance and security problems, no support, lousy interface. Recently we've been seeing that those opinions were just immature impatience, as Linux adoption continues in spite of 10 years of gloomy forcasts from the pundits.
Torvald.
Graduate Student.
University of Finland.
12 years.
Bah.
Same story, two years later:
The Germany-based bank sought a less-costly way to calculate risks associated with its portfolio of investments. So it replaced 40 Pentium II computer servers, based on the Linux operating systems, at an average cost of $50 each, with 50 Windows.Net servers based on Intel Xeon VI processors, at $50,000 each.
The Linux servers took 11 minutes to calculate how much cash the bank needed in reserve to offset its investment risk. The Windows.Net servers made the same calculation only in 3 minutes (not including several reboots time)
With a better and more frequent handle on its finances, the bank could shift tens of millions of dollars from its reserve account to active investments of MSFT
SUN has arguments against Linux?!
Well, at least StarOffice is GPL'd.
This article isn't for us. It is for our bosses, and their bosses, and so on and so on. It is a momentum builder. So the next time you mention Linux, instead of blank stares, your boss will dig into his memory and find a positive image of Linux as a REAL OS, and it will be a little easier to get him/her to go with your suggestion to use our OS of choice.
Use this article for what it is, and don't complian about what it isn't.
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
I have no idea why you were Modded down by someone, please mod him back up to be visable, because there is lots of good into there.
Anyway, so the performance boost really should be attributed to Perl vs. Java instead of Unix vs Linux...? Well, I personally like C++ and Assembly together, but that's just me (and a fast combination at that...)
Tibbon
tibbon.com
Did anyone else notice the "MS, We have the way out" ad at the end of the article? Was it there before? Makes me wonder if MS isn't looking for these types of articles and buying ad placement after the fact.
Sun's intital profit on hardware isn't very much.
Where Sun cleans up and this is something they pioneered well, is the multi-layered support system which has a yearly fee for each piece of hardware (and in some cases components inside of hardware).
--- I do not moderate.
So it replaced 32 computer servers, based on the time-tested Unix operating systems, at an average cost of $50,000 each, with 40 Linux servers, at $3,000 a pop
Did you bother to read the article?
Uh, perhaps because the AC was full of crap?
Pearl [sic] is nowhere even vaguely close to machine language. Nor is it a "1.5 GL" -- it's a 3GL or 4GL, depending on how you feel. It's on exactly the same level as Java, and, frankly, unless your Java compiler is amazingly slow or your Java code sucks rocks, I doubt that you'd see a major speed difference between the two -- perl is a compiled-interpreted language, meaning that perl compiles it at runtime. Java essentially does the same, with an intermediate bytecode step.
I wonder if stories like these, keep Bill & Co. wake at night? :-)
actually they went from 32 boxes to 40 boxes. but i'm sure the hardware was years newer. there's no way an os change will speed something up by two orders of magnitude.
happy BSD user here
The newspaper that thinks its a FOX tv show!
What they lack in journalism they make up for with large fonts and color.
That being said, I like the WSJ's new(ish) color format!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
"These kind of performance comparisons are just SILLY"
Not really. Go price an Sun 450 with 4 processors. Then price an equivalent Dell/Compaq.
Oh wait...not fair...the midrange sun only goes up to 450mhz. To get the fast processors you talk about, you have to go top-of-the-line Enterprise and pay 6 figures.
Not fair at all, is it?
I like sun stuff, but they're servers are WAAAAAAAAAAAY overpriced for the performance they bring to the table. Years ago, they were the P/P king because they were being compared to RS/6000's and HP/UX machines. They were less robust, but a lot cheaper. Now when they're compared to white-box priced equipment, they lose.
Live by P/P, Die by P/P.
Sun should know better.
I think the point was Linux allowed them to upgrade to servers using commodity components instead of RISC based proprietary servers running Unix. The performance of commodity servers has really caught up with most RISC servers, except at the high end. Also, while the comparison is uneven, it is a real world situation. Most companies go from the stone age systems to bleeding edge, then repeat the cycle many years later.
You do understand that the examples used in the USA Today article are all very large institutions? They run Enterprise software; its pretty much bespoke, and they pay a shit lot of money for it. If you're a bank and you decide to switch to Linux, your vendors will either port that enterprise software, or you can stop paying them and pay all that cash to a company that will do it. You pay the one off costs of doing the port, and then you continue to pay the same licencse costs as you were with your Windows platform.
Your list of "Industry Standard" packages ain't as "Industry" or as "Standard" as you think they are.
Well written, and done so that the most nontechnical (ie, the types of managers who make decisions regarding IT purchasing) can EASILY understand it.
This article is DEVASTATING to MS... It's main point basically was:
Linux: Better, faster, less restrictive, and you can't beat the price!
I noted that the usual MS FUDddie-duddy response was in there, the fear of "importing your app to Linux means that you jeopardize your IP" crap.
What shit, deliberatly aimed at implying that the GPL means that the FSF owns all programs that will execute on a GPL'ed OS...
I believe that MS's licensing system (which leaves you open to BSA audits and ANY future condition they care to slip into the EULA for the priviledge of downloading a fix for a product defect) is FAR more "viral" than a license that simply says that "if you make use of our code to make an application you have to let the next guy build off your code"...
The opening example of the bank that saved so much money and got a faster system as a bonus is a killer one...
And everyone ripped MS's cost of licenses... MS can't be happy that this is running.
Corporatism != Free Market
"Linux waddles from obscurity"
In other news, BeOS left a sharp stinging pain.
FreeBSD claimed the souls of the damned. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Sun shined brightly. Mario was unsurprised.
Windows has been shattered.
Unix has been castrated.
I remember a time just a few years ago when an article like this never could have been published. Its' funny to think that some people are just now getting introduced to Linux. I remember my first time.
this sig is deprecated
"It is for our bosses, and their bosses"
/. and do some coding for me. Your skinny white ass is on the verge of getting fired as it is.
I am your bosses boss.
Sonny, stop reading
Oh yeah: no raise this year, loser.
This might be very redundant but i dont know , ,and usualy the default kernel comes with everything as a module , which always keeps just the main core, the linux itself always small , and the rest is just specialised fat you can always cut away if you dont need it . So that is a split
if anyone has noticed this.
Linux has alredy split !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yes look at all the distributions, now you will ask,
thats not split . But if you think about it, it alredy is , it was just done so seamlesly in a good
design that none has noticed . Major point for splitting , is getting a specialised thing going (ie cutting the fat) . But that has alredy hapend
we have so many distributions that work in any freaking situation posible , and all the major diferences are pacage managment systems which is fine
almost without a split . Isnt it guys ??
by building custom kernels you can always have a specialised system . so basicaly you dont need a split. Just as long as those hackers keep the core
standards , everything will be cool.
Where do you get those prices? These are newegg.com prices.
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition - OEM Full Version - $90
Microsoft Windows XP Professional - OEM Full Version - $139
Good thing CmdrTaco provided that link to Microsoft in the article. I can never find their site.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
>Where do you get those prices? These are newegg.com prices.
:-)
Well, you could check the link. Futureshop is the same as your Best Buy in the US.
Either way, you quote OEM prices, in US dollars.
$139 US is about $220 Canadian. I can buy an entire machine here for about $400, so were talking over 50% of the cost of a new machine. Not cool.
Plus, with the OEM license, you tie the OS to that box only. I am quoting the price for a license with the freedom to move to any machine you like, any time you like.
Also, selling OEM versions to end users without computers is illegal, or it at least renders them unsupported and unlicenseable by Microsoft, and I don't want to buy a new computer when I have a decent one already... Bummer, eh?
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
The OEM version of XP is unlicensible and comes with no
service IF you move it to another machine??
gotta love it.
Those days are still very much here. There's more to installing than just installing the OS itself. I myself run OS X, FreeBSD, Mandrake and XP Pro. Just because Mandrake goes on easy doesn't mean its smooth sailing from there. Windows still has an awesome uninstall feature that makes installing and uninstalling software brain dead simple. Care to explain to the regular user how to uninstall a Linux app that uses its own custom install script?
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
(Yes, this is a troll.)
Dbit's PDP-11 simulator
Imagine doing table joins swapping large tables in and out of 4 megabytes of memory - or less - and imagine grinding away on the 60 hz processor. The machines they are replacing are probably not that old, but could be close. Two orders of magnitude improvement isn't that hard to believe when you think about Moore's law.
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
The wicked witch of the west. or was it east.
either way.
"I'm melting. I'm melting."
Don't tell me that all you had to do was throw a pail
of water on these creatures to kill them.
-
Hollywood sure is desparate.
upstart: A person of humble origin who attains sudden wealth, power, or importance, especially one made immodest or presumptuous by the change.
It doesn't have anything to do with how old it is.
I recently installed a copy of Yellow Dog Linux on an iBook. I'll skip all the boring and gratuitous details about getting the installation to work. YDL includes KDE as well as Gnome and lots of goodies. This was my first experience with the much vaunted KDE (3.0.1) and was one of the main reasons I installed YDL (the main main being that I use Gimp, which is the number one reason to use X Windows in any form.) I now appreciate Microsoft Windows more. Mind you, I don't like Windows at all, indeed I hate it. It is somewhat hard to believe that KDE could be the rallying cry of legions of Linux fans. KDE is painfully unrefined, hokey and klunky. My experiment with Linux lasted all of 3 days. I'm back to using Mac OS X with XDarwin along side it in order to run Gimp, a much better solution anyway. Why I would want to run Linux instead I have absolutely no idea and similarly, I can't imagine a Windows user wanting to run Linux either, other than to run Gimp on occasion. Linux needs something a whole hell of a lot better than KDE before it makes any real headway among anyone other than system-administrators-with-a-high-tolerance-for-me diocrity.
--- What?
Agreed, their statement was very silly.
I could understand if they were comparing two different database approaches...I worked on a project where we took a process that took 2 weeks on an Access database (granted, the programming was at fault, not the database so much) and converted it to Oracle (could have been any reasonable database) and the process would complete under four hours (including manual report collation, etc.).
Yes, this kind of overstatement on the part of USA Today is frustrating...however I doubt (fear?) that IT managers would rely on that statement to switch their server OSes.
I make no claims about whether Java or Perl is faster, but I think this article had some interesting information on performance in one area.
Alright, screw it, Perl ROCKS!. Java SUCKS!. See here.
Remember that you're talking about USA Today, here. It's not exactly the paragon of journalism. They hire "writers". You might as well argue that sentences shouldn't begin with conjunctions.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
From what I understand the applications were very memory demanding and make heavy use of the Virtual Memory subsystem. Linux's efficiency in this area led to the dramatic improvemenmt.
You can legally buy an OEM version of WinXP with even just a new hard drive.
How lame does that sound. "Penguins are flying" or "Penguins are taking over the world" would be more interesting.
Nice article though.
Pixels keep you awake!
Just a little later on, it states:
''All the noise and optimism of the early adopters doesn't in any way guarantee Linux will cross into the mainstream,'' says Peter Houston, Microsoft's Windows server products director.
What this tells me is that M$ is in a state of denial. So be it. All it means is that some day, perhaps a few years from now, a sea of change may sweep over the IT sector, and M$ will be fighting for its life.
If I were Billy, I'd be lobbying Congress to enact laws that would ensure my existence - how a law that mandates that the government fork over the cost of one XXXP license (or whatever it's called by then) for each citizen on an annual basis? What better way to insulate against unauthorized copying? And, what better way to waste taxpayer money? It's all there - a perfectly American plan.
Thanks much, good to know.
-AC
You must have meant:
Are you sure? Lots of programs run badly on Linux using Wine.
There. That's better.
Are we sure they weren't just hacked again and the hackers put up a Linux story this time?
>The OEM version of XP is unlicensible and comes with no service IF you move it to another machine??
;-)
Yup.
Here's M$s take on it.
BTW: You actually don't get any support either way with M$ OEM products. The all say somewhere in the manual "For support of this product, please contact your computer manufactuer". Nice, eh?
And, last but not least, you can't transfer your OEM license to another machine. Whatever computer it goes on, it stays on. Which can really suck when it goes on a cheap computer.
BTW: Here's Microsoft's own MSRP for Windows XP. Its actually more than $499 CDN (but maybe I'm overestimating the dollar exchange...).
A quote from M$s EULA FAQ:
# OEM standalone product. This form of license misuse occurs when OEM version software has been unbundled from its designated computer system and distributed as a separate, "standalone" product. As stated in Question No. 23, Microsoft's agreement with computer manufacturers prohibits them from distributing Microsoft products in this fashion, i.e., without accompanying PC hardware. Microsoft products on the retail shelf should never include a line on the front cover of the User's Guide that states, "For Distribution Only With New PC Hardware."
And, the last word comes from M$, in this handy document:
What is the difference between OEM product and Full-Packaged Product (FPP)?
ANSWER. OEM products are intended to be preinstalled on hardware before the end user purchases the product. They are shrink wrapped and do not come in a box like the retail products do. Full-Packaged Product (FPP) is boxed with CD(s), manuals, and the EULA and is sold in retail stores in individual boxes. The End User License Agreements (commonly referred to as EULAs) for OEM and FPP products are slightly different. One main difference is that an OEM operating system license (such as the license for Windows) cannot be transferred from its original PC to another PC. However, the FPP version of Windows may be transferred to another PC as long as the EULA, manual and media (such as the backup CD) accompany the transfer to the other PC. Also, when a customer purchases an OEM product, the OEM license requires the OEM to provide support for the product.
So, to sum it up, when you get an OEM windows, you get no support, you have to buy a new computer, and you cannot use the software on any other computer. Which means selling OEM licenses separate from the computer isn't a viable way to license your computer from Microsoft, since they still consider you to have broken the law.
Isn't M$ licensing lots of fun.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Although to be fair, Torvalds is not a standard Swedish surname. There are hundreds and hundreds of people named Torvald living in Sweden, Finland and for that matter all over the world.
If you bothered to read "Just For Fun", Linus explains that his grandfather changed his name from Torvald to Torvalds. There is exactly one family with the surname Torvalds, and it's Linus' family.
I suspect that somebody with knowledge of Swedish flagged "Torvalds" as a typo.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
I think the important point to make here is that, with the extremely high price of those old Unix servers (or the new ones that they would likely be replaced with), the company couldn't afford to replace them with new hardware and software. So, even though the major portion of that increase in performance was due to the hardware, it was the Linux OS and applications sitting on top of those shiny new boxes that made it possible.
Your Servant, B. Baggins
>You can legally buy an OEM version of WinXP with even just a new hard drive.
No, you cannot, sorry.
You'll want to read the links I provided in my other post.
Directly from the mouths of the people who created the software, it says:
"This form of license misuse occurs when OEM version software has been unbundled from its designated computer system and distributed as a separate, "standalone" product".
A hard drive is not a computer system, AFAIK. You _might_ get away with selling it along with a motherboard, CPU, and hard drive, since with those minimal parts you have a functioning system. But anything less is just not a computer system -- or at least not a computer system that any system builder would testify as being such in court. Well, I wouldn't, anyways.
Or maybe I have it confused here. I mean, technically, you can legally buy OEM windows without any hardware. It just wouldn't be legal to use it on anything, making it kind of pointless.
HTH.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
than I suppose you wouldnt mind the bias of zdnet on microsoft now would you?
bias is a plague. only if you have two sides of the story can you actually go to the middle to get the truth.
This reminds me of the days, when sex was safe and diving was dangerous.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
That's what makes the difference.
Looks like he was quoting the article. Maybe he should have used italics.
I kept complaining to Stephen Shankland of news.com that almost every Linux article he wrote included the phrase "the Linux upstart OS". I think he eventually bought a clue stick and stopped using the term...
Who takes that newspaper seriously?
What next...National Enquirer?
Linux does not need endorsements from any of those.
Tat Tvam Asi
what a crock of sh!t of an article:
Then Dresdner discovered a bonus: Linux, the upstart open-source operating system, was not only cheaper -- but also faster. The Unix servers took 17 hours to calculate how much cash the bank needed in reserve to offset its investment risk. The Linux servers made the same calculation in 11 minutes.
The correct thing to do should be to use italics - but that often doesn't seem to work on Slashdot .
I think when he means by a REAL OS he means a server OS like soalris and AIX. I dont think he was talking about desktops.
Quoting from the article: "Top programmers flocked to Linux and, guided by the iconoclastic Torvald, came to view themselves as software purists untainted by the profit motive."
Not one mention of GNU, FSF, or RMS. Sheesh!
How about: ...replaced 32 computer servers, based on the time-tested Unix operating systems, at an average cost of $50,000 each, with 40 Linux servers, at $3,000 a pop.
Going by their math - a brand new $3,000 x86 Linux machine will run rings around a $50,000 1993-vintage SPARCServer 1000 (which goes for around $200-$300 today.) And my handheld solar calculator has more computing power than a room full of 1960's-era big iron.
-- Never hit a man with glasses. Hit him with a baseball bat.
"Well, you could check the link. Futureshop is the same as your Best Buy in the US."
FutureShop is 100% owned by BestBuy. The proof is on my paystub.
Not everyone deserves a 320i
According to the IDC report, Linux-generated revenue shrank 5 percent in 2001, the first time the fledgling OS has seen its market contract. A similar NPD INTELECT report says that the Linux market shrank 10.2 percent last year.
Check this quote from the article, quoting Sun: "With so many cooks, Linux is destined to splinter into incompatible versions, Sun says"
What the hell does a cook have to do with a version of software? They only stuck with half the analogy.
If linux hackers are Cooks, then the kitchen must be Computer Science, the computer would be the cooking equipment, and the software would be the meal.
Well, the kitchen is infinitely large, so it isn't possible to have too many cooks in the kitchen. The vast number of resources--cooking equipment--assures that none of the cooks will be forced idle, and the sheer number of cooks ensures a vast variety of dishes will be served. Not to mention the fact that the more cooks you have, the more likely you are to have one or two really good cooks that can in turn improve your average cooks.
If you go to a restaurant, and all they serve are variations on a tuna sandwich, then the restaurant will quickly get boring--no matter how much you like tuna.
--Cheese
isn't that what they said about cowboyneal?
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
I was interested in this quote because I work in financial services. First, perhaps his quote is a little overly presumptuous--obviously there are much more complex systems than financial services systems--but if Wall Street really has started to embrace Linux, it could eventually turn the tide of (continuing) migration to Windows (from old Unix servers).
Where I work, Windows is seen as the latest and greatest--somehow it and Microsoft are associated with the great economic boom in the last decade. There is a strange sense among many tech and non-tech alike (here, at least) that Bullish == Microsoft--and no one wants to be a Bear. Talking about Linux often is equated with being anti-MS, and as a result, Bearish.
One of the next great struggles with open-source software will be in the database market. I am not aware of any large-scale financial packages that run on (for instance) PostgreSQL. (Most major financial packages aren't database-independent--most will only run on a certain DB...) Our licensing for that database software ran over $450,000...can you see the problem? That's just licensing. You can imagine that companies should be very interested in using--hell, funding--open-source initiatives so they don't have to pay this sort money for the limited right to run software.
I'm wondering what today's $3000 PCs would have cost in 1993.
Article Executive Summary: "Due to Linux Goodness, a fresh apple tastes better than that orange that's been sitting in the back of your fridge since 1993."
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
>FutureShop is 100% owned by BestBuy.
:-)
I was wondering how long that would take to finish... Thanks for letting me know.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
I click to the comments, and what comes up but an advert for Visual Studio.Net!
Is it out for Linux Now!?!?
Gee, I thought Slashdot was supportive of Linux!
Anything for a buck^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H
Linux is useful? No shit!
mstyne: real name, no gimmicks
According to this ZDNET article, Sun is reorganizing their low-end server strategy to include Linux. In the past, they have been one of the bitterest enemies of Linux, but now it seems like they've realized the benefits of using it on Sun systems.
It's not Shakespeare, it's the doors.
Break on Through (to the other side)
Several things I'd like to point out:
1) There is no University of Finland. Linus Torvalds (not Torvald) wrote Linux while he was studying in Uinveristy of Helsinki.
2) It's hard to separate the early underpinnings of the entire movement away from the contributions of the GNU project, providing what became ultimately an operating system
3) If Sun Microsystems is so against Linux, then why does Solaris 9 have Linux compatibility in its API?
4) As FreeBSD has its userbase in Apache, Yahoo and Hotmail, what would have been nice is mentioning Linux with Google.
All in all, a nice article certainly for a novice reader who may not have heard of Linux, but surely the journalist could have done much better for a more informed audience.
Well, lemme see... maybe they were able afford speedier hardware due to the savings on software. One does not simply wave a magic wand and make servers appear out of thin air. Someone has to pay for them, and if a bean counter sees a cogent argument made for freeing up money in software to get spiffier hardware, you can see where the decision process will lead.
::shrug::
If Windows were really up to the task, the bean counters would have forsworn initial savings for the longer-term dividend.
Mmmmmm... Bold, yet refreshing!
Vote for Windows in this poll!
Vote for Windows in this poll!!!
Actually, they aren't that silly. One of the advantages of Linux over the proprietary Unixes is that Linux runs on commodity hardware, allowing for more frequent hardware upgrades, which means that you can generally run on faster hardware.
One of the studios that switched from SGI to Linux on Intel for rendering a while back pointed this out. With the expensive SGI hardware, they could afford to replace the rendering farm something like every six years, so on average they were using three year old hardware. With Linux on Intel, they will be able to replace machines on, I think they said, a two year cycle, so on average, they will be rendering on one year old hardware. One year old Intel hardware kicks the crap out of three year old SGI hardware.
Linux still has a long long way to go, despite the optimism. It sucks, but its reality, getting sick of reading these 'upstart OS poised to take over' articles, they've been floating around for years.
My understanding of the contest is that you have to name all of the songs and artists. Nobody has named all of them in one post yet...
1. Stairway to Heaven - Led Zeppelin
2. Another Brick in the Wall (Part II) - Pink Floyd
3. Beat It - Michael Jackson
4. Break on Through - The Doors
5. Walking on the Sun - Smashmouth
Note: I stole these from other posts, but technically...
Without the pie charts, USA Today articles just can't stand on their own: Sun has derided Linux... as a "bathtub of code." With so many cooks, Linux is destined to splinter into incompatible versions, Sun says. What is with all the metaphors? Too many cooks splinter the bathtub? And that website is embarrassing - shouldn't they at least put a date on the article? I especially like that last statement "Linux is first on the horizon," Wicker says.Cover storyCover story - is that some sort of superliminal thing?
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
That is not the correct Pink Floyd song.
To clarify, the verb address means use any X amount of memory in a random-access fashion by a single process.
Black holes are where the Matrix raised SIGFPE
this is a paraphrased excerpt from some random linux users rant on a newsgroup. I can't find it for the life of me, so this really shouldn't be quoted, but from memory this is how it went.
"Corporate adoptance of Linux is the first step in the trickle down effect for Linux dominance. The masses of computer unsavvy windows "admnistrators" simply will not have the capacity to keep up with enterprise Linux admins, and the MCSE will become worthless [even more worthless than it is now?] Tens of thousands will be out of jobs and will be forced to find new careers, but tens of thousands of Linux users will now become the administrators of next generation enterprise computing. The developers of windows applications will be forced to contend with Open Source competetors and will find ways to profit in Linux development or fail miserably. These out of work developers will have to find new jobs as Linux developers, and applications will be scrutinized under public eye. Fatally flawed code (Such as MS's) will soil a company's name to the point where all software released for profit will be in near perfect condition. Finally the end users will adopt Linux as their OS of choice because of the advances made in Linux stemming from corporate acceptance"
This has been riterated thousands of times in different context by Linux advocates over the years. But note the accuracy. At the time it was written an MCSE was basically a ticket to easy money. Now it's worthless. My company just made the Linux switch and I unfortunately saw a few of my really good friends lose their positions there and were replaced by Linux techs.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
j00 |_1|\|u0x phUzX0rz |\/|@y/ m3 $1111kzxz!!!
I have experimented with virtually all of the PC operating systems. I loved the security features of OpenBSD, sending EVERY warning to every root console. I loved the software library of FreeBSD, 5 cds for download full to the brim with goodies. I loved the media capabilities of BeOS, 3d software rendering on my pathetic laptop. I loved the response times of QNX.
:)
I love nothing about Winshit.
Linux became the keeper however. I started with Mandrake for its PERFECT hardware detection, and after a year of dedicated use on my desktop (which became my server as well shortly afterwards), I recently switched to Debian GNU/Linux.
The software library is seemingly endless, and everything I want from essentials like gnome-xbill to my BSD favorites such as moria. It even has j2dk1.3 for crying out loud!
I convinced my boss to let me install it on my workstation, and tommorrow, I'll be running Forte4Java in style (with a manual J2DK1.4 install)!
Linux started a good thing, UNIX with a cool name. The more I use it, and the more I work on it, I realize that the best stuff is free. Linux ittself is free, Debian GNU/Linux is free, moria is free, gnome is free. I don't need to pay a single $1 for software!
In a few weeks, when I buy my iBook, rest assured it will have gnome in os X, and Debian GNU/Linux will have more than half of the hard drive.
(For those that joke about Debian GNU/Linux, think about what it means. It means that it is free and open. There are no catches. I will proudly call it Debian GNU/Linux. (even if I have the "non free" packages option enabled
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Because it was a blatant though decent troll.
Allow me to dissect it for you:
For more information, please see The
(No, I'm not a troll, but I sure enjoy reading 'em)
Writers imply. Readers infer.
Haven't any of their editors seen a magazine cover in the last two years?
You can always tell the windows fans when they talk about the lack of "support" for linux. Like there aren't millions of people willing to help, like say on linuxnewbie or whatever. I mean, a lot of them will say asshole crap like RTFM, but a lot more will actually help. Hell, MS help is so crappy I use online help for windows problems anyway. I ask you M$ fans - how many of you have EVER used the "support" (I use the term loosely) from MS? And how many IT people actually need help from the morons that M$ hires for tech support?
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Linux gives us the opportunity to offload this administration from the centralized IT staff, by helpfully requiring that each and every individual user is a highly proficient administrator and developer. Another great boon, is that this will inspire more tech learning at the 'undesirables' that don't wish to learn every detail of the system are swept away to tend to their foolish systems like cars, radios and tv's that are centered around use. Let us weed the population my 1337 friends (or the current 1337 method^H^H^H^H^H^H way of saying it)
Linux has many advantages, but until it is convenient it will only be a hackers tool. Helpfully, the number of hackers are growing.
Semper Complexitus
Supposedly crossover is ready, or so it would seem since they charge like $50 for it. Except it crashes more than windows programs do on their own. And it doesn't run much except M$Office. And it does that badly, and it crashes permanantly, and you find yourself re-installing office every week. Not fun.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
I recently had to do this. I installed Slackware linux, the HARDEST linux to install, and Win 98. It was harder to find drivers for WINDOWS, it took longer to install WINDOWS, etc. Have you ever installed windows from scratch? (That means bare HDD, not an upgrade). And no cheating using that handy install disk that came with your PC.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Shut up
The best ever has to be boot magic. I made the mistake of just deleting that crap. I had to actually format the MBR with linux's fdisk to get rid of that crap. Seriously, all of the pro-MS comments are from people who had their win pre-installed and heard linux is hard from a friend.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
May I sugguest you try: /dev/dsp via OSS compatibility mode (another set of modules to build).
1) A later kernel. If you're already running that...
2) A preemptive kernel. Yes, the patches are still there for 2.4, or if you're hesitant to go patching, the -ac tree (ISTR) and WOLK has this already integrated. For extra bonus points, try Ingo's O(1) scheduler.
3) Low-latency patches. Dunno where they might be integrated.
4) Make sure DMA is actually on. Run "dmesg" and look at IDE's initialization. If it says PIO, something's not right about your DMA - check that your kernel has the appropriate driver and, if you have to, manually kick DMA in via hdparm (optionally in your boot scripts).
5) Try ALSA - it supports multiple applications opening
Hope that helps.
Anarchy$ dd if=/dev/random of=~/.signature bs=120 count=1
..? It's not an 'or else' thing. It's an 'I can't believe nobody's modded this up yet' thing.
slashdot!=valid HTML
D'oh.. I just got the joke.. nevermind.
slashdot!=valid HTML
microshaft knew it would be finally beaten by opensource, thats why they created .NET. by doing so they become the middleman that everyone (?) has to go through to use computer services. they no longer have to worry about opensource because they will no longer be in competition with it.
17 hours on a 1960s mainframe (about as powerful as a PDA) to calcuate the issues of the 1960s ecconomics and 1960s bank regulations.
vs
11 minutes to calculate the same using 2002 bank regulations (after S&L scandals that resulted in boat loads of new laws) and ecconomics of 2002 (A more complex world ecconomy with more complex issues and more complex details)
This means?
The math co-process of your avrage pentium is more powerful than the bulky analog math logic unit.
I don't actually exist.
Linux gainned note early in life but only in the Internet industry. From there it pushed Sun Microsystems aside.
At the same time Microsoft created Windows NT and was unable to gain the same results untill AFTER Linux gainned a strong foothold.
Microsoft often likes to portray Linux as an alternitive to Windows NT. Sun likes to set the record streight (with an antiLinux spin on the truth)
But reality check... Ask the avrage user what "Seagate" is and again ask what "Linux" is..
9 times out of 10 they'll think Seagate is something to do with boats and Linux is an alternitive to Windows.
(Not that they'll know what that really means)
Linux is obscure compaired to populare fassions and major brands like Coke and Pepsi.
But then my grandmother knows more about Linux than she knows about USA Today...
and she reads the news... and won't touch computers
I don't actually exist.