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Linux Replacing Windows More Than Unix
LordNimon writes "Over the past couple years, we've been hearing several Linux migration stories, but they have been mostly migration from proprietary Unix systems rather than from Windows. Well, this story on News.com indicates otherwise: of the migrations, 24% were from Unix, but 31% were from Windows. Sounds promising."
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This troll is dedicated to Nicola Wheeler on ITV's Emmerdale. mmmmm.... top heavy....
maybe I need to read the article.
The coolest users migrate to the .test community instead.
since Linux is looking more and more like Windows every day. I'm amazed at how much KDE tries to ape Windows rather than trying to adddress the problems of the Windows interface.
I fear that if Linux continues in this problem we may end the problem of being weighed down by a monopolistic regime but we will still not have bettered the PC computing environment.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
no, it means that 46% left Linux/Windows for OS X :)
It's good, very good indeed, but I am still looking for a groupware solution. I am working with different startup companies from time to time and when i get the chance to get UNIX in from the start, it's great. :) And with *BSD, linux, whatever you can get a fileserver webserver, router, firewall up and running. So I need a groupware system with email, calendar etc, like you get with Notes, Exchange, GroupWise etc. You should also be able to get agents to sync with your PDA's. I remember seeing a Suse dist. with Notes once, but is it still available and Notes seems like a big mouthful when you are only 10 people. But then again there's room to grow with it.
my sig
...of the migrations, 24% were from Unix, but 31% were from Windows.
On first reading I was wondering what operating systems could possibly make up the missing 45%, but it's not 31% and 24% of the *migrations* but of the total new Linux servers:
"For those that have recently purchased new Linux servers, 31 percent were adding capacity, 31 percent were replacing Windows systems, 24 percent were replacing Unix and 14 percent were replacing other operating systems."
So as a percentage of migrations, nearly half are Linux replacing Windows (maybe over 50% replacing MS systems including DOS):
45% Windows to Linux
35% Unix to Linux
20% Other to Linux
My next sig will be ready soon, but friends can beat the rush!
Maybe Redhat could get some mileage out of this.
How can you tell that it is near the end of the work day in my timezone and I desparately need to be entertained?
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'
Purchasing a new (additional) server is not a migration, Thankyouverymuch. e.g. I was born June '82, I did not migrate. :)
Ali
Ph33r m3!!!
The hype is starting to die down and people are getting clued to the fact that BSD > *linux.
24% from Unix, 31% from Windows - That only makes up 55% of the migrations to linux. Where are the other 45% of migrations coming from?
I haven't lost my mind!
It is backed up on disk...somewhere...
With all the doom-mongers saying that Linux is failing as a viable desktop replacement, this just tells the story how it is. Linux is catching up. I'd expect this margin to increase dramatically over the next 12-18 months.
slainfu
"I can't be a terrorist if you're sucking my bum."
That is the REAL encoraging sign.
Sure there is the odd case of an incorectly sized server being put to a task it can't manage.
However most "Adding Capacity" is from satisfide customers who are moving other services to the platform in question or even better have grown the business so much that they need to buy more and/or biger machines.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
Statistics are nice to look at, but often have glaring loopholes that some people choose to conveniently look over.
The biggest problem with this survey is that Unix usage has gone through the roof in the last two years with the advent of Mac OS X.
Since people who have Mac OS X are technically 'UNIX users', but are unlikely to uninstall OS X to run Yellow Dog Linux, it is fair to say that less UNIX users that ever are going over to Linux. Why? Because they're happy staying on BSD.
BSD classifies as 'UNIX'.. and we need to remember a LOT of people are going over to BSD from old style UNIX. Yet.. they aren't factored in here. Legacy UNIX to BSD is not taken into account, when really it's a pretty important shift.
mogorific carpentry experiments
I'm not so sure if the limitations in audio and video applications are due to the i386 architecture or Windows, but I'm inclined to think it's more a software problem than a hardware problem. I love Linux for the limited things it does so well and reliably, but really wish there were more creative applications for Linux than there are. Lately, I've been taxing my Win2k (yes, I actually own one of them) with Cakewalk, Soundforge, MidiQuest tasks and it's starting to really feel the pain (can't make it run for several days at a time any longer, yet I think that's because of ColdFusion MX and that damned cfmail tag).
I'm starting to get really envious of all those MacHeads who seem to always stick with their beloved Apples. Frankly, I left the Mac in '93 because OS 7+ was such a freaking disaster to try and work with, but now that OS X is coming of age and all those OS 9-- applications are getting ported over, perhaps there's a brighter future for artist applications like ProTools and Adobe Photoshop. I mean, it's not like it takes too many switches to do a gcc ProTools.c on one architecture over the other does it? >:)
Perhaps we'll find out whether it's the hardware architecture or the operating system that's limited productive creative applications sooner than we think. We just need those Windows users to keep jumping ship; since the MacHeads don't appear to be willing to do so...
www.dedserius.com
VB != VisualBasic
This article seems to deal mostly with servers and corporations. What about desktop users and/or other home users.
While there are probably a lot of corps out there thinking about switching to linux from unix/windows, there are also an increasing amount of home users searching for an alternate desktop environment.
I wonder how this might tally if things such as linux firewalls, mp3 servers, and other more custom uses were considered?
duh.
"The remainder (46 percent) noted they didn't own and weren't considering Linux."
Somehow I can just picture the smug faces of managers answering this, like they're real proud to be MS-fanboys :-}
Belief is the currency of delusion.
24% from Unix and 31% from Windows ... look at the difference in the size of the install base! The 31% that convered from Windows are probably 0.01% of the total users, whereas 24% could be somewhere like 0.5% of Unix users.
Can you really imagine WinXP as a workstation tool?
... KDE as a workstation tool?" Get with the program, buddy, graphical is where technology is going. Just cause something doesn't boot to piss-poor console doesn't mean it's incapable.
Yes! By all means. Most Linux fanatics just don't understand how configurable XP is. You can disable all themeing quite easily. It looks just like Windows 2000 in every respect. It's more stable as well.
This is akin to saying "Can you really imagine GNOME as a workstation tool? Or
In fact, I find my WinXP box more stable than our Linux programming labs at school. No bullshitting, either. I can thoroughly freeze the console in our Linux labs with not so much as a keypress. XP has yet to crash on me (and so had Windows 2000 yet to, before I switched).
I think we'll also see a lot more Linux-loving fags openly declaring their love for other men's bowels.
Hmm, don't know about that one. IHBT.
Unless you're counting "Other" and "added capacity" as "well, they would have run Windows on them, so we'll count it as a steal" I don't see it.
The real question is how many companies actually migrate. I have heard a lot about big companies migrating to Linux, but what is the radio of Windows to Linux overall? This is good news, though.
Well, they are!!!
Is not flamebait!!
Whoa Whoa. Hold up. I thought every one was switching to Apple. ;)
Still I believe those numbers are a little higher than that. Maybe not for full production use, but everywhere I look I see a lot of people switching over to linux to provide a low cost alternative to M$.
"I bet I'll get blamed for this." --Mayor Quimby
Percentages mean nothing unless we have the numbers used to calculate the percentages. 31% of 10 is not such a big deal; 31% of 100 million, on the other hand, is significant.
Jamey Kirby
Ok here is the deal, If i have a kick-ass Solaris m/c which i bough 2 years ago (was kick-ass back then).
Solaris technology has not changed so much to force me to upgrade the hardware. I can always download the latest solaris OS and keep my m/c uptodate.
Same goes for other propritory *nix boxes.
Now on the other hand, I bought a WinNT Server two years ago. Somehow i have managed to work with it.
but now if i want to upgrade to XP, i have no choice but to buy the latest x86 based hardware.
Plus the trackrecord of M$ for security and stability is also at the back of my mind
Now if i dont want to upgarde my x86 based hardware every two years then a lean-mean version of linux makes more sence.
As in current economy I dont have the budget to buy a Solaris box.
If your company doesn't want to keep pace with the x86 based hardware upgrades, then LINUX is the BEST choice out there. Install it and forget about it.
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
If I were to guess at where there was the most potential for conversion from Windows to Linux, I'd guess low- to mid-end engineering apps (e.g. FPGA synthesis, place & route, simulation). It used to be that all engineering apps only an on UNIX (Solaris or HPUX). Then, these apps migrated to Windows. However, Windows was a terrible mess until recently for such apps. While Win2K has become a servicable platform for such apps, it's just "not the same" as the app under UNIX. Linux offers the same advantage experienced in the bygone days under Solaris/HPUX with the cost benefit of a free OS and inexpensive, powerful hardware.
I hate to break it to you, but the *nix war is over. Linux has lost. BSD is by far more accepted now than Linux is. MacOS X has it all: The ability to run commercial apps, the ability to run every app linux/bsd does, better support, and it has a hell of a lot better UI than any linux window manager. KDE/Gnome are a JOKE compared to OSX. You might as well get over the linux HYPE. The GNU commies have lost, BSD/OSX has won. It'll be ok, you might get over it, and maybe, JUST MAYBE, get actual lives.
...that happens when someone runs outta coffee!
One 31% is replacements, and another 31% is adding capacity.
Ali
Ph33r m3!!!
Evolution has really caught the attention of a lot of people in your position. It acts like Outlook and works with Exchange, but isnt filled with the M$ vuln. Plus it does a damn good job with pda compatibility. I know that there is a pilot conduit built in and they have it syncing with the zaurus pdas (not sure about pocket pc).
I really think that Evolution is one of the best products out there, I switched from kmail to it.
Plus, it's free (dont think its oss).
forget it.
Discontinue support for 2000 -- what kind of fucking FUD is that supposed to be?
Microsoft still supports Windows 98 and NT 4.0 for crying out loud.
It's funny how no one is mentioning that this article is about migration to linux SERVERS. It isn't a corporation changing all thier workstations, or anything worthwhile. Linux is great for a server, who needs more proof of that? They day it is an acceptable desktop replacement, well, we will have to wait and see when that happens. All hippies and commies do is conform.
Since there are way more Windows installations than Unix installations, the fact that 24% of the migrations are from Unix and 31% are from Windows means that Linux is hitting Unix WAY harder than it is hitting Windows.
You don't need braces, Donny!
Best.
Movie.
Evar!
Is it just me, or does anybody else here find it weird to go to a slashdot article about Linux and migration from Windows and find an ad for Microsoft Visual Studio .net right below the article (if you're not getting the ad, try to refresh a couple of times, I don't know if that will do it, but it's worth a shot).
Since when did slashdot start to advertise for Microsoft products?
--
\ Christian A Strømmen
Replace slick as a horny rattlesnake in a can of boiling olive oil WINx with obscure, whiny el-kludg0 KDE?? ohmeohmy read the article, byte-boyz ... it said Linux wuz replacing windows SERVERS, not Lusr GUIs ... jeeez the only Window GUIs being replaced by Linux are located in walls! Bare blank panes-of-glass on rainy dayz ...
Statistically valid surveys always quote their margin of error. If there isn't any, this survey is probably not representative of the industry at large.
It looks just like Windows 2000 in every respect. It's more stable as well.
So you say that w2k users get a $200 bugfix?
mp3: l33t term for empty.
company (I've got 1 linux server in the door).
It's simple economics, instead of spending time chasing down licenses you spend time improving your offerings.
The only proprietary system we use (outside the desktop) is oracle on solaris(sparc) but that is one of those things you'll never convince a CIO that Linux/Oracle 9i == Sun/Oracle 9i (which is true I guess if you look at the cost of servers, since sun is very expensive to run).
Our company (admittedtly a small one - around 35 people) has done both migrations at the same time and have saved a ton of money in the process.
We are an engineering company, and used to have two computers on every desk - a UNIX workstation (combination of Suns and HPs) for the "real work", and a Windoze PC for things like email and documentation. Now, these have both been replaced by Athlon 2000+ machines running Linux. The main thing we were waiting for was the UNIX EDA software (from Mentor Graphics) to be ported to Linux. We now use mainly OpenOffice for documentation and Evolution/Kmail (depending on personal preference) for email.
The combination of ditching the expensive workstation hardware and the MS Office software has made the basic platform really cheap. The main cost, however, is still the EDA software, but even that is coming down. The added side benefit is less computer clutter and much simpler system administration.
YAWF.
yet another windows fag.
"It looks just like Windows 2000 in every respect"
And that is a pro?
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
I can thoroughly freeze the console in our Linux labs with not so much as a keypress.
Yeah, Ctrl-S -- that's what's supposed to happen, stupid. Ctrl-Q to get it unstuck. It's called SCROLL LOCK, and just because Windows doesn't have this feature it doesn't mean you have to be so ignorant to assume it crashes.
And by the way, I can't imagine having no decent command line to do admin stuff on. Graphical tools are OK, but there's nothing like breaking out on a command line to quickly do your stuff, then writing scripts to do it all for you. Of course you have know what your doing, but if someone was hired as a sysadmin let's hope he'd know more than you.
When I came to my current job- the I.S. Director thought Linux was 'hacker junk'.
Well a lot of factors have come together and now he comes to me on a regular basis and says- "find me something open source that does such and such" We have 2 Linux servers up and running and we are looking to move a bunck of our desktops to Linux (using a browser for their apps)
The main driving reason has been cost.
.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Free clues for BSD fans:
;P Every mac "server" I've seen so far in the "real world" is a lowend fileserver for a cluster macs hidden in some publishing office.
1. The percentages were for _servers_. Sorry, but apple's server market share is like 0.00001% right now
2. The only people (numerious enough to be of any statistical relevance) "migrating" to MacOS X are Mac desktop users upgrading from Macs and a small number of windows/linux/whatever converts (though judging from apple's sales figures those probably fall into "not statistically relevant")
3. I love when BSD fans latch onto Mac OS X and say stuff like "see! BSD is more used then Linux!" blah blah blah. Meanwhile most people don't give two hoots about any BSD parts of the OS (they don't see it, don't really program for it). And proprietary apple-only APIs are what developers use to get the most out of the hardware and operating system. Sorry, but your average well written native apple app is about as BSD as Windows NT is UNIX (tm) Photoshop for FreeBSD anyone? Yeah... I thought so...
Oh well... time to get mod'd ( -1, The Truth Hurts )
--- polarbear
The efforts of Lindows and WineX seem to be counter-OSS, big businesses seem more interested in exploiting OSS than actually giving back to the community. Granted, there are a few businesses that help the OSS movement, but the carrier-class and business apps/server manufacturers are interested only in what OSS can get them for free, without ever releasing any source or adding patches to the community. Then there's the shizters out there that claim to be OSS that have these so-called Open Licenses (*cough* Apple) that are really trying to use code for free. And there are the projects that were open source and free (*cough* MySQL) that turn into payware developed by the community. These cases really show the need to assignment copyright over to the FSF, so that maintainers/contributors dont destroy great OSS projects.
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
Well, you usually hear this as an off-topic troll, but I'm willing to risk a few mod points to be a voice of sanity.
Linux really isn't that great compared to other Unices. It is the media darling, partly because it fits the "built in someone's garage" cliche. It really is an alternative to Windows, and not Unix systems.
Linux rarely gets used on big iron. The only time you'll hear about some fast set of machines is in something like a cluster, for non-mission-critical applications. Even IBM, the diehard supporters of Linux, will openly admits that it just can't compete with AIX.
My personal opinion as to why... It has always just been something cool to hack away at. Very little work has been done to get security and stability overall. As an example, take the filesystem, EXT2.
Anyone who has used Linux for more than a week has had an Ext2 filesystem get corrupted. While I realize that there are other filesystems now, and that example is out-dated, I haven't used Linux extensively for a while, so any examples I give will be outdated.
More than that there are consistency problems. So much work is going into adding new features as quickly as possible, that stability, consistency, and ease of use just goes out the window. Compiling a new kernel should be a simple process (and one that should be unessecary) but instead gives you tons of kernel modules that are unuseable. Not a show-stopper, just another little problem that will take more time.
Linux development just has the Windows' attitude... Not a Unix attitude. I can't speak for anyone else (although it statistically looks like I do) but I don't think Linux has a chance against stable, secure, consistent, high-performance systems. I just think of it as a geek toy... Like a Dreamcast.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
> In fact, I find my WinXP box more stable than our Linux programming labs at school. No bullshitting, either. I can thoroughly freeze the console in our Linux labs with not so much as a keypress. XP has yet to crash on me (and so had Windows 2000 yet to, before I switched).
Details, please - what distro, what has to happen in order to get a console freezeup? Did Linux crash, or just the console server?..
You can turn off most, but not all of the XP themeness. There are other issues with XP that make it less than desirable. I recently "downgraded" all of my workstations from XP to Win2K because of rampaging stabiility issues. That and draconian lisencing terms that I am not willing to allow into my house.
Win2K is much faster and much more stable than Windows XP. Yes, WinXP does bring up your desktop sooner, but is the syetm actually able to run your programs any sooner? No. They've just changed the order of some of the startup routines.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Steven: Yeah, I used to tell people to buy Window based computers all the time.
[Camera pans around a bit]
Steven: Yeah, and um, down in Austin it would get like intense over those blue screens that would pop up and like, I just totally couldn't stand that freakin' paper clip. Then my comp sci professor introduced me to Star Office. Like whoa! No paper clip! And like, my buddies say I can play around with the kernal! Yeah, I think he does fried chicken and stuff.
[Camera cuts to close-up]
Steven: Uh, my name is Steven and dude, I got a Del... uh, Linux. Yeah, that's right! Linux.
It seemed to me that the story talked about conversions on a server level. My first thought was "Oh, that's only on the server level?" But then I realized something: Linux is best at the server level.
I don't mean to start another flame war...but I'm am one who firmly believes that what you want to do fully impacts what OS you use. I have three computers at home. One runs Linux full time. One runs Windows XP full time. The laptop runs both Windows 98 and Linux (Dual boot). If I want to write music and stuff, I sure as hell ain't going to be using linux. If I want to be doing some serious firewalling...I'm not going to use WinXP.
So in conclusion, I would have to say that the migration is nice...but I don't care where they migrate from. I'm not in the open source war to beat down what we already have. One of the faults of war is to blatently avoid everything associated with the enemy. There should be some middle ground. After all, Marketing aside, Microsoft does have something.
why do lunix hippies always pull the same argument? wxp includes tons of new features that don't constitute anywhere near a "bugfix"
try telling your car dealer that the 2003 model is a $14,000 "bugfix" over your 2002 model. get a life lunix hippy.
Real kernel hackers run BSD.
Win2K is much faster and much more stable than Windows XP. Yes, WinXP does bring up your desktop sooner, but is the syetm actually able to run your programs any sooner? No. They've just changed the order of some of the startup routines.
Actually, IIRC, there is a reserved area of the filesystem located at the beginning of the disk that is inaccessible to normal users unless you know the special API to access it. It caches pertinent information needed for boot there on the previous shutdown, and just loads it up on boot. That's why it boots so fast.
As for the Win2K > WXP argument, YMMV. I been accustomed to most of the handy new features, and can't live without some of them.
I should point out, I've never owned a Mac in my life, do not use them on a regular basis, and have used Mac OS X for all of perhaps 30 seconds in PC World.
However, I am aware that BSD (not just in Darwin form) is becoming rather popular, with numerous people leaving Linux to go the BSD route.
While I might not have been totally correct about the statistics, it's fair to say that BSD has certainly eaten into the amount of people who may have chosen Linux instead.
mogorific carpentry experiments
XP has yet to crash on me (and so had Windows 2000 yet to
This code will crash Win2K. Compile as a console app:
int main()
{
for (;;) {
printf("This is really cool\t\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b"); }
}
}
Just one datapoint: We just migrated some 60-odd desktop systems to Linux from HP-UX, and are happy campers. Other divisions of our company are now looking into doing the same. Overall, we're a (roughly) 1100 employee company, from which an estimated (by me, here and now) 300 can become Linux users without much problems.
Of course, we operate in the EDA research business (and related areas), so we're atypical and many people around here very much prefer anything UNIX-like over The Other Operating System. But still... Less than two years ago Linux was still a big No-No as far as the head of IT was concerned, even though several unofficial system already existed and the presure to officially support Linux was on already.
Linux user since early January 1992.
So strip all the shi^H^H^H features and give w2k users what they pay for. I'll just ignore the personal attacks.
mp3: l33t term for empty.
Yeah, Ctrl-S -- that's what's supposed to happen, stupid. Ctrl-Q to get it unstuck. It's called SCROLL LOCK, and just because Windows doesn't have this feature it doesn't mean you have to be so ignorant to assume it crashes.
Um, no. Who's calling who ignorant here? I'm talking virtual console switching while at the XDM logon screen. Switch to any text console, you're OK, switch to console 7 (X) and the console freezes, keyboard, screen, the whole kit'n'kaboodle. I haven't tried yet to see if you can't ssh into the box, but I'm telling you now, I'm not about to find another desktop workstation to do this from, hitting the power switch is a lot easier and quicker. Plus the box is dead till you reboot. Although that f**ks over all the other users that happen to be sshed into that box at that time.
And by the way, I can't imagine having no decent command line to do admin stuff on. Graphical tools are OK, but there's nothing like breaking out on a command line to quickly do your stuff, then writing scripts to do it all for you. Of course you have know what your doing, but if someone was hired as a sysadmin let's hope he'd know more than you.
There are powerful scripting tools available for the Windows platform. Of course, to know about them, and use them, you'd have to be more knowledgeable than say... you.
A malicious user can always crash a machine when they have login access to it. But, with a *nix a good admin can configure it so that its much more unlikely to happen. Wrt network security and stability, there's no contest, *nix wins hands down.
keep living you linux pipe dream there loserboy
let me go ahead and set you straight on an OLD concept....
know your enemy
you definatly do NOT so go ahead and win your little battles on the slashdot forums... while other write software for a certain company that changes the direction of computing world wide...
Surely you jest, pad're .... can you imagine trying to run KDE_3 on a K-6_450 with 64Mb?
well maybe the newbies trying it would have been reluctant to try it if it didn't look familiar (a la Win/MacOS). I know my family is considering trying it now that they've seen KDE3/Gnome2 on my system.
They want something familiar and can do what they need it to do.
su `cat /dev/urandom` > /dev/null | su `cat /dev/urandom`&
now THERE is a GOOD IDEA!!!!
i can buy windows REALLY cheap and all the apps that I buy to run on it WILL NOT WORK because components they DEPEND on are NOT THERE!!
WOOO HOOO!! I WIN!!!
Did the poll take into account how many people were going from Windows to Linux, and back to Windows? And all of you know who you are....
Its cooler to say "Im a Linux user" I guess. Even in geek-dom do we have social classes. Sad and pathetic. Clinging to something as if it were religion. Maybe these people and the "Amiga-rulez!" crowd ought to get together. Here's an idea, people - be your own person. Dont be sheep for Redhat and Co. either...
Most Linux fanatics don't care how configurable XP is. I don't use Win, except 98 and then only for gaming; I NEVER use Win for email since it has more holes in its security than a whorehouse. I use Linux on a desktop and it is rock solid, dependable, secure and as smooth as a MS sales pitch for its own, buggy, mal-adapted products. Windows is clearly a toy and a media outlet even for Windows' select media (That is where they are going... I think...), whereas Linux will eventually become the machine of choice for the internet.
Dawn of the Dead
to wake up one morning and find out that M$ is gone, is no longer there. No winders, no 'docs', no crap. It will do the economy good, because with the disappearance of winders and its office tools, the cohorts of idiot upper and middle managers would have to go too ("Where do I click to do eeil ees?"). No more, "I'll shoot you a two line doc with the cost breakdown." (two lines, but still 2 megs, and three viruses).
I made KDE3 run on a K6-2 300 with 128. It worked perfectly. A little slow, but once I put in more RAM it was smooth sailing.
"But you've already got a DVD. It lasts forever....In the digital world, we don't need back-ups..."
-- Jack Valenti
"Sounds promising." Promising for what? Much of the good news here was generated by Red Hat, and last time I checked the Linux crowd was worried about them being a big software company like Microsoft (see the Slashdot article). Linux people are funny - if Linux did take over the computing industry, there would just be pissing over who did it and how! Time to face it - Linux people enjoy it when their OS is a little underdog... They should stop pretending to get excited when it gets more popular. It wouldn't be for the geek elite if lots of people used it...
1. It doesn't matter if I'm a Linux hippie, a screwed w2k user, a free sofware zealot or a BSODed win9xer. What matters is that you are avoiding the question at hand.
2. Never use two way arguments: if my posting on slashdot is the wrong way you are going the wrong way too.
3. Changes the direction of computing world wide? You mean like in countries that are using more and more free software. Or do you mean the world wide web. Notice the July to August 2002.
mp3: l33t term for empty.
Arguably, all icon/mouse-based interfaces are pretty much the same. I.e., you click on an icon and something happens.
Maybe building a desktop that uses icons and a mouse that doesn't look like all the rest will have to wait for the shift that rids us of mice.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
There's something really messed up with Windows when it takes over a year to migrate from NT to W2K. I read in on of the forums on CNN that some guy/admin wasn't even thinking of a WXP migration because they were still working on migrating from NT to W2K. A bunch of software needed upgrading and testing.
Maybe THAT's why so many NT and W2K sites are just moving to Linux. If it's gonna hurt so much, best end up with something less painful in the long run.
IMHO,
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
I have no reason to doubt the numbers. But are they particularly exciting, when you consider the sheer size of the installed base of Windows compared to proprietary Unices? I don't know the numbers, but I suspect the rate of Un*x defectors may actually be higher than the rate of Windows defectors. And that, in the long run, is the focus of Redmond.
I'm not talking about buying windows cheap. Just that existing windows users should get all the bugfixes for their systems, that where only added to later versions. The apps they already have should work just fine.. actually they should work BETTER.
mp3: l33t term for empty.
Check Netcraft for Confirmation. On another note this article supports an earlier survey here regarding the Enterprise environment and Networking. This is a 29 page PDF report from March. Biggest drivers: Cost and Ease of use. The report is a good read. A look at the source, and not a reporter's digestion of the facts.
If we don't fight for ourselves no one will.
do you think that the netcraft report is showing you what you think you are seeing?
The os is not frozen, its the gui. It comes to show how little you know. In time this will change.
Look into getting whoever's adminning your lab boxes fired. There's several ways to prevent ignorant users from switching virtual consoles. My personal favorite involves the application of blunt force trauma to the user.
Or, pester them to figure it out and fix the problem until they either do or throw you out of the lab for good.
What do you think it is showing?
mp3: l33t term for empty.
The OS isn't frozen, it's just that you can't use it because the part that's frozen is the part that you need.
Much better than the OS being frozen.
I am going to ;) and you are going to think "I thought so"
In fact, the biggest growth area for Linux is NOT on desktop installations, but workgroups and departmental server installations. This is because servers are usually configured very few times, not multiple times like you have with desktop machines.
People forget that Linux is not yet a true auto-configuring desktop operating system like Windows is now. That could result in a pretty frustrating experiences, especially when the desktop user starts updating hardware and adds hot-docked external devices.
Is it small wonder why the Linux 2.6.x kernel will include Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) support? With ACPI support in Linux, that makes it vastly easier for end users to upgrade hardware and setup hot-docked external devices that use IEEE-1394 and USB connections.
I can thoroughly freeze the console in our Linux labs with not so much as a keypress.
Umm, so you just fart, stare at it, send brainwaves, or what? In order to confirm your claims we'll need follow the normal peer review process. You do know what that is, right? Please submit all the relevant materials and conditions and at least a test case to prove your presumption.
The percentages given in the article and quoted here not of migrations, but of new Linux server purchases. Of those purchases, 31% were adding capacity, and were not migrations at all. The remaining 69% are what constitute the migrations, so the 31% of the total that corresponded to migrations from Windows actually corresponds to 31%/69% = 45% of the migrations. So in actuality, nearly half of the migrations are away from Windows. The revised migration percentages away from UNIX and "other operating systems," respectively, are 35% and 20%.
...due to Microsoft's new licensing scheme. That's something a lot of businesses hate with something of a passion, I believe.
#define sig "Every social system runs on the people's belief in it."
...is that I laughed hardest at your one liner. :)
see this thread
This code will crash Linux. Compile as a console app:
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/socket.h>
#include <string.h>
char buf[128 * 1024];
int main ( int argc, char **argv )
{
struct sockaddr SyslogAddr;
int LogFile;
int bufsize = sizeof(buf)-5;
int i;
for ( i = 0; i < bufsize; i++ )
buf[i] = ' '+(i%95);
buf[i] = '\0';
SyslogAddr.sa_family = AF_UNIX;
strncpy ( SyslogAddr.sa_data, "/dev/log", sizeof(SyslogAddr.sa_data) );
LogFile = socket ( AF_UNIX, SOCK_DGRAM, 0 );
sendto ( LogFile, buf, bufsize, 0, &SyslogAddr, sizeof(SyslogAddr) );
return 0;
}
Identify the class of distributions for which mean, median and mode are the same
Symmetric distributions are like that. Others may exist.
and give three (non-normal) examples. At least one should NOT be in the exponential family.
Student t distributions (other than the meanless Cauchy distribution), the Laplacian distribution (exponential reflected about the mean axis, which occurs often in image compression), and the sum of 2 <= n < infinity independent random variables uniformly distributed in the same domain (case n = 2 is a triangular distribution; case n = infinity is the normal distribution; n cannot be 1 because a uniform distribution has no well defined mode). In addition to these continuous examples, I could give any number of discrete examples.
Can the sample at hand be considered a member of that class? Answer true or false, and support the answer.
False in theory but true in practice. Intelligence quotient distribution is not strictly normal because a normal distribution has support over the entire real line, but IQ cannot be less than zero. However, it appears roughly normal throughout plus or minus three standard deviations.
ObMigrationToLinux: I'm a bit curious about the distribution of market capitalizations of companies that have recently migrated their servers to the Linux operating system.
Speaking of distributions, which distribution is most popular among Linux users who migrated from BSD? Is it Slackware?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Topic: Migration to Linux (and possibly from Mac OS)
I mean, it's not like it takes too many switches to do a gcc ProTools.c on one architecture over the other does it?
If the developers of Pro Tools ported their app from the Mac OS X platform to the Windows platform or to the Linux/i686 platform, they would have to either rewrite or emulate the PowerPC assembly language inner loops.
Perhaps we'll find out whether it's the hardware architecture or the operating system that's limited productive creative applications sooner than we think.
Do you really think Intel's SSE2 is better than Motorola's AltiVec?
Will I retire or break 10K?
http://www.morganstanley.com/institutional/eInterp riseSoftware/ciosurvey/cio_survey_release_3.5.pdf
The latest, hopefully the august one will show soon.
When I started my job two years ago, our data center was 100% NT-based. Little by little I've convinced management to migrate various tasks off of Windows and onto Linux. My single 2U RedHat server handles our corporate website, Intranet, FTP, DNS caching, and more. This eliminated several other systems and their associated licensing fees. The machine has been powered up stable since day one, and at 240 days, my uptime is the best in the room.
Linux has also proven itself at our company as a great free network monitoring tool, thanks to snort and MRTG, etc.
One of the biggest wins with the management here was that I was able to prove that Linux can play nicely in an NT domain. People are always surprised that it authenticates domain users and that sort of thing.
We still have alot of NT servers on the rack, but so far my one Linux box runs so well, I don't think we'll ever need another!
That's nothing. It took Malda 21 attempts to install XP.
21 attempts to plop in a CD-ROM & tell the installation what time zone you live in. Pathetic.
Actually it was 12, he said it on TechTV, but nevertheless, very pathetic.
What's that? My iMac runs Linux just fine, and I can install any of 10,000 packages from the Debian archive. Well over 99% of commonly-used Linux software builds and runs equally well on any hardware platform. './configure && make'
The Winlots might say that it's not so bad or it's only for their own good (having always the same version) some other market-speak.
But there are 2 scary facts:
1: With the new licensing scheme, Microsoft is taking the power to decide away from the user.
2: Microsoft showed that they don't hesitate long to change EULAs and licensing schemes the way they see fit.
Even if it were not more expensive (but it is!) it would be hated.
With Linux or *Bsd you have a very functional server running on
k6-450 with 64mg of ram because a GUI is not a necessity.
-
Just think how much someone from even just 1992 would
be laughing at your ass when you say that a 450 with
64meg of ram is not enough.
Exactly, why it's no trouble at all to pound out a script to do whatever I want with Windows! Microsoft even has a script engine available for download that supports two whole scripting languages, VBScript and JScript (I prefer JScript, the MS guys are geniuses inventing that to compete against VBScript)!
Heck, I can even embed scripts into an asf file! I can fix it so that everytime I watch my homevideo of the UFO, Windows hooks up to the internet via my dialup, and opens IE (the latest version of course, would hate to get stuck with some of the viruses that affect the older, totally unusable obsolete versions) to my favourite UFO website! Windows rules!
In my experience (I've been using linux for 5 years now) I've never had an ext2 filesystem become corrupt because of any reason other than power failure and even then I've only ever had to manually intervene in an fsck once and that was to press y a couple of times.
And yes, your example is outdated. Linux has several journalling filesystems now.
What would you propose? Linus doesn't control the hardware linux runs on so can't limit the options that way. Auto detect what is the current machine? Kinda makes it hard to compile stuff for a different machine not to mention making modules for hardware that isn't installed yet.Fact is linux probably supports more hardware than any other operating system other than Windows. NetBSD may support more architectures but linux has more device drivers.
74% of all statistics are made up on the spot so statistically speaking yours are probably among them. Say for instance you pulled your head out of your arse for a minute. You may actually realise that without the free nixes, the Real Unix world would be in deep shit. Windows wouldn't have any competition in the low to mid range. Universities are already starting to drop *nix as a teaching plateform and with *nix relegated to the high end this could only happen faster. With generations of IT Professionals only having used Windows it's only a matter of time before the *nix vendors start dropping it and His Billness rules the world.If nothing else linux is introducing a new generation of computer techies to *nix. It's a shit load cheaper than your Real Unix and despite your pondering (seeing as you admit to not actually using linux) linux is quite stable and reliable.
You sir are a troll.
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
I'm guessing Microsoft try to make a last dash for it...
More people are changing from Windows -to- Linux than Unix -to- Linux! Probably because there are more users that are fed up with Windows than those who hate Unix. That seems kinda obvious!
--Ps, That was a Joke.
| - | - |
I can destroy a linux workstation with one command:
sudo rm -rf /
OMG! OMG! OMG!
Idiot.
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
Some of them are:
gEDA - schematic capture, board layout
Icarus Verilog - verilog simulation, synthesis
Savant - VHDL analysis, simulation (sequential and parallel)
GnuCAP - a mostly Spice compatible circuit simulator
The Open Collector has references to these projects and many more! (Full disclosure; I'm an upstream author on the SAVANT project.)
That's inovation for you.
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
KDE seems to be striking a reasonable balance between not terrifying incoming Windows users, and curing some of Windows' ills. Have you tried the newer KDEs? KDE 3.0.x with translucency only looks like Windows until you click on something, KDE 3.1 even more so. I don't see XP ripping audio CDs for you when you drag them onto a filesystem, I don't see it giving you a choice of cut/paste methods, I don't see protocol drivers for odd devices (think palmtops) accessible within the existing file management paradigm, and so on.
Windows 3 had fixed-sized elevators because Macintosh had them. So IRL, who is it chasing tail-lights?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I noticed that they're not talking revenue .. if you look at revenues, Unix gets hit harder that Windows because a Unix box can cost a shitload more than windows.
From that standpoint, it's bad news for unix lovers.
But talking about Linux, yeah Linux wins no matter how you look at it.
Once again, an inferior operating system is being foisted on unsuspecting consumers. We need to get the word out just how badly linux has set back the state of computing trying to reinvent BSD.
Have you ever worked in a sophisticated IT environment? I have and there are several reasons why you would roll out your upgrades slowly.
Most sophisiticated IT deployments take several months while you test scenarios and interoperability - first in a test environment, then in a partial production, wait for an available window and the appropriate resources to do it, etc. Remember, the servers you are running are mission critical and it is far more important to your business that those servers keep running without a hitch than it is to have the latest whizbang software or hardware on them. Adequate care must therefore be exercised.
Mmmm.. Donuts
Try to buy a 32 CPU linux box and run oracle on it. And *no* Beuwolf is not an option here, and neither (usually) is OPs or federated databases.
I don't see protocol drivers for odd devices (think palmtops) accessible within the existing file management paradigm, and so on.
I am not sure what you are trying to say but I have been able to access my PocketPC filesystem through explorer quite nicely, thank you.
Mmmm.. Donuts
and Linux is the Windows of the unix world.
while other write software for a certain company that changes the direction of computing world wide...
Example? I think the only concrete example of MS innovation is the wheel-mouse, and I don't like them particularly.
Perhaps they should be teaching some of the history of computing to these idiotic dot-commers who learned VB in 1998? Bill Gates did not invent the internet.
Because all is not what it seems.
There's a TV ad here encouraging people to wear seatbelts. It says "Of the xxx fatal car crashes in Tasmania last year, 1 in 3 weren't wearing a seatbelt" or words to that effect. I joke that this means you are twice as likely to die if you wear a seatbelt. The error in that logic is that there are far more people wearing seatbelts than not.
What I'd like to see is the percentage of Windows users moving to Linux, not the percentage of Linux users who came from Windows.
hey stupid..he's trying to say KDE has it's merits.
can't read?
I imagined a MicroVAX running ULTRIX... can that run Windows too?
Do you have any figures to back up that claim? It seems pretty implausible to me, even if we look at desktop usage. On the server, of course, it is clearly false, given the miniscule usage of Macintosh for servers.
Besides, what is your point? Most Macintosh users don't use or see much of the UNIX functionality. UNIX applications still require quite a bit of porting to become native Macintosh applications. And Macintosh applications aren't portable to non-Macintosh UNIX systems. And Macintosh users still use Microsoft Office and IE, like good little Bill Gates clones.
1. There are definately BSD's being used as servers. Probably not a lot of Macs, because Macs aren't built to be servers. Why pay for a built in screen and graphics and such when a faceless server would suffice? No one uses Linux running Xboxes for servers either, that doesn't mean Linux doesn't make a good server.
2. O'Reilly did a survey and more new Mac users were coming from the Linux camp than anywhere else. From what I've seen of Apple's sales figures (latest 10-Q) sales are much too high to be the same old Mac users, the new ones are coming from somewhere.
3. I love 'em too. Most Linux desktop users don't give two hoots about the underlying Linux kernel either. Developing for an API like Apple's OSX API would be like, oh say... developing for Gnome or KDE's API, or God-forbid Motif. Did I miss something, because I have yet to see Mozilla run in the Linux console?
...and statistics. This article was bit misleading and overstated the importance of the sudden surge in Linux server acquisitions. The actual numbers only suggest that 41% of an undisclosed number of CIOs had changed their Windows servers to Linux. While this sounds good up front (as the article intended), when one considers that if this undisclosed number were a small percentage of CIOs considering purchases then 41% of, say 5%, is not a whole lot. I think the article failed to mention how truly insignificant this 41% really is on purpose.
i couldn't upgrade to xp because i didn't want to pay for my os, so in the future i may be forced to move to linux, even though windows is better.
why is windows better? because:
a. hardware support
b. applications (yeah linux has lots of apps and more every day but windows still has more)
c. games
No it's not
goooing to stop
til you wise up...
lol
http://saveie6.com/
Now I'm going to have our three whistlers... uh... please to present the next... um, the... um... musical... there were three... musical sections here, and this'll be the third... the third section... um... and they'll play a piece... it's very recognizable, it's... Chopin, actually... it's taken... it's, it's in the style of "March Militaire", which is a very... recognizable piece, so... if you please, just... listen to this, and I'm sure you can identify the... um, I'm sort of giving away the answer here, but that's... it's... Chopin... I don't mean to give away the answer... it's... please, just... you know... sing us a ditty, guys... a Chopin ditty."
Now that Linux/BSD is eating NT's lunch just like NT ate Netware, I get it.
Netware's superiority didn't matter, because Windows NT (even 9x at some sites) was (it sickens me to say this) good enough. It used to be that your server was the highest end box in the building. Now it's "don't throw away that old Pentium 166; we can use it as a server."
Servers are a commodity. The reason Linux/BSD is beating NT isn't because it's better (even though it is ;-), it's because it costs less. There is no major attribute by which a server can distinguish itself as being better than another (in the eyes of the common man), except cost.
Desktops were almost a commodity too, which is why Microsoft reacted so violently toward Netscape's web browser and Sun's Java. One of these days, someone is going to come up with something that they can make stick. And then Microsoft will join Novell in history.
Actually, I think it's kind of sad that it might possibly turn out to be something as lame as Gnome or KDE that unseats Windows. But sometimes I think peoples' standards just may be low enough (after all, they accepted Windows).
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I have been a UNIX admin full-time since 1993. I have had primary reponsibility for NEXTSTEP 3.1+, OS/2 WaRP, AIX, HP/UX, SUNOS, SOLARIS (Worked at Sun for 2 years), Linux, privately Mac OS 6.x & 7.x, and against my will, Windows 3.0 - Win2000. Not tp mention embedded systems, routers, Cisco IOS, etc.
I finally bought a Mac TiBook in February of this year. I felt that I had to reward the NeXT crew who successfully took over Apple, the Apple employees who saw the light and got behind the movement, and the users who deserve a true alternative.
I have the 31337 sk1llz to run and maintain one or several Linux boxes for my home use. I proudly run CoyoteLinux for my router, and my gaming PC boots into Linux to keep my NeXT Cube, Sun SS20 712MP and TiBook company. The TiBook G4 running OS X is, I firmly believe, the best example of a true commercial grade UNIX-like computing solution from newbie to greybeard guru.
When my old retiree family members next ask me to recommend and broker their personal computing solutions, I will recommend iMacs or eMacs running OS X. I can't recommend emacs, since vi r00lz!!!
OS X is a unified solution. Think of all of those erstwhile-productive cycles that have been wasted on emacs v. vi, Linux v. BSD, KDE v. GNOME, ad nauseam. Apple just made NEXTSTEP more modern, and made freakin sexy hardware to run it on. I have had a Mac 512K, a Mac Plus, a Mac IIci, a Newton as well as Sun Sparc 1, 1+, 2, 5, 10, 20 , Ultra 10, Ultra 5 (POS), Ultra 60, and have worked on (still do) Enterprise 1 through 6500 4-way clusters. How many of you work on million dollar computers?
OS X is whagt the linux community might have been able to develop with a truly visionary hardware manufacturer. But, that would have spawned many more religious wars about openness and such. So, fsck that all, Apple did it and did it well.
I _could_ use Linux now, to manage all of my professional and personal affairs. But, I _choose_ to run OS X 10.2. It is the grandchild of NEXTSTEP, and I once loved it's ancestor more than any aspect of the open Source community. Because it was Art. It was beauty. And it exceeded expectations.
When was the last time any aspect of GNU/Linux _exceeded_ your expectations?
Oh, shit, if I thought my considered rant would end up behind "Suck me big red beastie dick, you linux fag" I might have changed the tone a bit!
Regardless, beastie dick does have a point. OS X is the desktop that so many have labored for and sweated to build. It is not Solaris, (ugh) HP/UX (/ugh), or OS390. Those are server OSes for you kids.
It is a home and light industrial desktop in a networked realm. Do not get confused. But, it is beautiful, functional, and it does fulfill the promise. Though Services are still crap compared to NEXTSTEP.
I will use the above to excuse myself from having to suck on a big red bestie dick. Thed rest of you may line up.
How many CIO's don't even know they are running Linux??
Go out and get sailing!
But, my second was What is the count of UNIX to Windows servers?
I suspect that the number of total Windows server installed allows a greater numerical loss while suffering a much lesser market share loss...
RonSpace
The story goes something like this:
~Shop runs UNIX machines
~Base and upgrade costs on UNIX boxen are high, and Management complains of high TCO on UNIX, too.
~Shop migrates to cheaper x86 hardware running Windows NT
~Management and a few staff love Windows, the rest hate it for religious reasons.
~Windows-hating, UNIX-loving staff starts setting up Linux boxen 'guerrilla style,' shows Linux boxen working successfully to other employees.
~When employee support is high, Linux solution to task Foo is shown to Mgmt by members of staff that miss UNIX.
~Mgmt. chooses to accept or deny Linux solution.
~If Linux solution is accepted and works properly with few hitches, Linux takes over. If there are problems, shop keeps running Windows.
Red Hat wouldn't want to risk having Apple sue them for stealing the 'look and feel' of one of their advertising campaigns.
. . . about Microsoft using its market dominance to price-gouge the hell out of customers. Changing the contract for large purchases who only use Microsoft Office to increase the price, for example. The customers end up just taking it because they don't see any alternative to Microsoft Office.
Sadly, there honestly isn't a great alternative in many cases. I'm a huge Open Source guy, but realistically, I still can't see a good alternative to Excel yet, for example.
But as soon as OpenOffice.org irons out a few kinks and starts building a reputation (especially for its rather good Office compatibility features), I think the market is going to drop out for Microsoft. Their licensing practises are only building enemies, even in die-hard Windows-only shops (sometimes, I think, especially in Windows-only shops), and when a lot of people realize that choice has returned to the market, they'll make a decision, and it's not going to be the one that costs $300 per license.
Actually, I believe you need Ximian Connector, a non-free piece of software (not that I have qualms about buying from Ximian), to use Evolution with Exchange.
:-) )
If you have it, you get shared calendar and whatnot.
It'd be interesting to try running Mozilla + OpenOffice + Evolution and see what people think (aside from not liking the three different UIs
May we never see th
How many threads did this get posted to? I was reading about that vinyl record ripper (real or imagined) and ran across this same stupid comment.
I just found out there's no such thing as the real world. It's just a lie you've got to rise above. - John Mayer
After all, when people say "It was the average American Family", they don't mean a family that has two and a half children. They are referring to the mode, not the mean.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Actually the monkey got something right. (Not Shakespeare yet, but getting better.) I think this is something that is key for those of us in the Linux community. "Know your enemy". I always used to say this when I was a Mac user in college. A lot of my Mac loving compatriots ridiculed and questioned my desire to stay informed on what was happening in the Microsoft camp. I used to get PC Magazine, Computer Shopper, etc... Basically I wanted to see if MS was getting any closer to having a system that I wanted at the time. BUt, it wasn't just MS at that point for me. It was the entire PC world. I questioned why anyone would want a stark, unfriendly command line interface. Eventually, my curiosity (and my budget) forced me into the PC world. Now, eight years later I am a net admin who uses Windows 2K at work and Linux exclusively at home. I found that the moer I learned about my enemy, the more that they had some things "right". I think that we Linux users tend to become so involved with what we're doing that we have a tendency to forget what else is going on around us.
Today, I made the switch to XP at work. So far, I have to say it's probably the best performing version of Windows I've ever seen. There are a lot of things that MS fixed and got right. For example, the boot time. Mere seconds. Something on the order of 10 seconds on a P4 1.8 G with 256 Megs of RAM. And this is a boot to GUI situation... Even on my own systems at home with custom kernels, my boot time is never shorter than a minute. Why is that important? Think about it... back in the days of the Amiga and the Atari, boot time from a floppy with a few memory resident apps was maybe a minute or so. This was on boxes with 2-8 MHz procs and 1-14 Megs of RAM. Sure the systems were simpler, but why hasn't boot time on most OSes decreased as our hardware has gotten faster? It looks like MS nailed it with something. I imagine that they must have cleaned out a lot of legacy cruft in their kernel. XP can't run on anything less than an MMX Pentium, so they obviously removed 486 and non-MMX 586 kernel code. Why is it that we can't get a basic Linux system (with GUI) to boot in under 15 seconds? If anyone out there has empirical data to prove me wrong about this, I'd like to see it.
Another thing... "cool factor" of the XP login manager. Yes, we have KDM and GDM. But I have to say Windows XP's login manager beats both of them for coolness. It has "mouseovers" of a sort and alpha blending to give it a nice cool look. Why don't we have this in GDM or KDM? This is the kind of thing that attracts users, like it or not. Yes, it uses CPU cycles and has no point, but it's still a necessity if you want to see more "converts".
There are many more features that I will probably run into as I use the system. And that is what we need to be aware of. What is MS doing now. Not so we can imitate it, but so that we may jump a few steps ahead of them again.
Don't get me wrong, I love Linux and I won't be switching to Windows XP at home until the license is a little less ridiculous. (That means I could be waiting forever.) But, we need to look at LInux differently. Especially for the end user, if we want to convert them.
Here's on simple example of how we can beat XP. It's been a while since I've used a distro of Linux that comes with system sounds enabled by default. ( I can already hear the "oh yucks" in the room, bear with me...) Windows has had system sounds as a default since Windows 95. BUt, the one thing that's always annoyed me about it is that they don't really give you much of an option to choose things during setup with regard to those sounds. Why couldn't we have the following options to set a system default during an install:
Set Default Sound Scheme:
1. No system sounds for all users
2. No system sounds for root only
3. Audition system sound schemes and set a system default
4. Download and audition the latest sound schemes.
5. Use sound scheme default.
That would certainly make the system more inviting to potential converts.
I remeber seeing that Caldera's Open Linux a few years back also had a Tetris game you could play while installing. That gives them several million points for style, but what about substance? Linux is a multitasking OS. Why do we still need to sit and watch the system count bytes copied or time to completion? Why can't we instead, browse the web (if NIC is working), or grab the latest distro updates to a local dir for later perusal/installation? To be honest, I'm still not sure why there isn't a distro with an installer that just boots to the desktop you will have as a default. This would allow the OS to be installed onto your system like an application. This is the route that MacOS used to go. (Not sure if they still do, but I wouldn't be surprised. Just boot the kernel with the needed modules, FBDEV support and X running in FBDEV mode. When X comes up, it has a basic Gnome or KDE desktop with the CDROM mounted and displaying an icon on the desktop, or even an OS installation "wizard". The installation could then be performed just like installing an app. How much easier can you get?
So... getting back to the original troll. He's right, "know your enemy" so that you can know how to be several steps ahead of him when game time hits.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
One of our customers wanted us to port from Linux to AIX, due to the "unkown" factor - they were not certain about its stability and heavy load ability, plus they were concerned about their AIX-trained staff. Now, we're putting it on hold, since they are considering migrating as many as possible of their server. It seems that cheap server hardware and reduced license fees may be a bigger saving than retraining some of their AIX people would be an expense.
Stop the brainwash
Oh. They hate the old licensing scheme with a passion, too. Every time they think they are in compliance, Microsoft comes up with some demand or question.
Stop the brainwash
Let me guess: Nvidia graphics cards?
They may not officially be owned by Microsoft, but they are very close. And their "linux" drivers should never go near any linux system.
He is a troll. Like the *BSD is dieing troll who posts every 5 or 6 stories. Same old message in a row, over and over again. Before that slashdot had the gruesome goatsex.cx troll who just reapeted over and over again. Just ingore him. I would not be supprised if its the same troll and he/she is just looking for some new material.
http://saveie6.com/
Maybe he's thinking about InstantDB, that was never open source but free and very useful for embedded Java systems to name but one application. InstantDB got swallowed up and dissapeared in the Lutris black hole. It is a shame that the code doesn't even seem available commercially.
David
"go on, try it, the first hit is for free sonny, you know you'll like it"
What a disgraceful advert!
actually doing a 2k to xp is nothing...just set up ur image...distribute...and add to the networks...xp works the same way as 2k...we have a mix of over 150 xp/2k clients in a full 2k domain...no major quills watsoever with the software...infact our service calls have gone down about 90% since we migrated from nt4/98 to a full 2k/xp enviroment
If these boxes are running RH 7.3, they'll likely be using DRI by default, and there's a longish standing bug with that and VT switching (there are fixes available if you follow the DRI development tree, but I doubt they're in the RH packages yet).
Why on earth these lab boxes are running DRI, though, is a different matter - it's known to be very much a beta system, and likely to cause this kind of thing. Don't Do That Then(tm), Mr. Admin.
himi
My very own DeCSS mirror.
-Shops run UNIX.
-Some %@$#&!^&#@ bofin cinvinces a manager to run Windows.
-Critical services become unreliabale.
-UNIX is brought back.
All competent people have Linux at home.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
You may learn what percentages mean...
Jeezzz..
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
It is a percentage of sysadmins that is replacing. Doesn't say anything about the percentage of boxes that is replaced. If you've got big companies, they might have a lof of Unix boxes (who else can afford them). If they are replacing their Unix boxes they count for a few admins, but for a lot of boxes.
These figures say nothing about number of boxes, they only show some willingness to replace.
The site where: "I'm right, as long as you ignore the things that prove me wrong", became a valid method of debate.
Apple Patented the 'Switch' Commercial
Just shut the fuck up you whiny little bitch.
I'm sick of reading your pathetic, negative, uninformed comments littering this thread.
Just fuck off back under your rock and die.
First, I have to say that your "Key Examples" as to how Linux could be improved are quite possibly the least important items I have ever seen. Let's critique them anyway. "For example, the boot time. Mere seconds. Something on the order of 10 seconds on a P4 1.8 G with 256 Megs of RAM. And this is a boot to GUI situation..." First, XP shows the GUI really fast, but the OS stills grinds on the HD for another 60 seconds, so, the appearance of the GUI is in no means an indication that the OS is up and ready. It ain't! Next and most important. Assuming that XP truly finished it's boot process in 10 seconds compared to Linux at 60 seconds. Ok, you save 50 seconds over my boot time. Question, How many times per year do you boot your system? I average about 4 x a year. Assuming you do the same, you have 3 minutes and 20 seconds more productive time than me. OMG, you workaholic!!!! What really makes me curious is that if XP is the pillar of stability that everyone claims, how come so many of it's users seem to be so impressed with it's boot time? How come they are getting so much experience booting? One woman I converted from Win to Lin forgot how to shutdown Linux because she had not rebooted in 4 months and needed to move her computer,(she runs iceWM and XDM, no fancy login manager). Needless to say, she kinda likes that the thing she forgot was how to reboot. She still remember how to reboot windows even though she does not run it anymore. I guess repetition makes for lasting memories. Boot time is pretty irrelevant! "Another thing... "cool factor" of the XP login manager." I have to give this a 9 out of 10 on the "Who gives a shit-o-meter". Oh Yeah, the "COOL" login manager is a killer app. Lets talk about the 200(exageration) window manager(s), desktop(s), theme(s) that you can have/use in linux. You want mouth dropping stares, show a Win user the workspace customization available to them in *nix/X. WOW, you have a "COOL" login manager and a candy-ass desktop. Lastly, and I am not even bothering with a quote, Sounds and Games during a load/reload of the OS. Once again, you have hit on a topic that most linux users won't encounter very often and therefore it becomes a pretty useless improvement. However, there are already distro's that provide such things. Lycoris, being one of them, so it's a moot point. I guess, in the end, I have a lot of trouble understanding your areas in need of improvement. They all seemed to be based on booting, rebooting, loading, reloading the OS and also constant exposure to the login manager. You say you like and use linux at home. Why do you have so much time spent with all those tasks? Maybe you should try "Using" the computer instead of rebooting all the time. 9:04am up 47 days, 4:10, 3 users, load average: 4.46, 5.80, 5.23 71 processes: 63 sleeping, 8 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped CPU states: 0.9% user, 20.7% system, 78.2% nice, 0.0% idle Mem: 260316K av, 254820K used, 5496K free, 0K shrd, 53692K buff Swap: 257032K av, 328K used, 256704K free 38044K cached I guess we just use our systems differently! Bill
I haven't tried yet to see if you can't ssh into the box
Although that f**ks over all the other users that happen to be sshed into that box at that time.
YHBT
There are powerful scripting tools available for the Windows platform.
I really hope you don't mean WSH. It's awful, completely awful. Steering clear of personal preference, it does not compare to a UNIX shell script at all, for the simple fact it doesn't have full control over the system...there are too many aspects of Windows that are completely graphical, thus needed to be hacked around instead of just done. Windows may have some advantages, but their attempts at allowing decent administration on the server-level are as completely lame as Gnome shipping with a "Redmond" theme.
www.linux.org/switch ? tone
tone
Win for email since it has more holes in its security than a whorehouse.
What kind of an analogy is that??
The whorehouses I've been to have bouncers that will throw you out the door if they don't like you.
I think you misunderstood. *I* have uptimes at home that range from 40-90 days for my main workstation and I've had as long as 299 days for my server. But, we are not talking about the average Linux user here. We are talking about people moving from Windows to Linux. AVERAGE people, not regular Linux users like you or I.
As far as the fast boot... you are correct that XP is still grinding away. So... why don't we start X up a lot earlier and let Linux do what it does best... start all the other processes in the background? This "illusion" of the system being up and ready may not be important to someone like you or myself. But, to the average user, a system isn't ready until you see the big friendly GUI. And get rid of those ugly text based boot messages while we're at it. I send all of mine to the fourth virtual term so they don't botch the nice looking FB boot logo I patched into the kernel.
There is one main reason that people wil be rebooting linux on a regular basis; You seem to have completely left out laptops. Those people are constantly looking at boot screens unless they are lucky enough to have a distro that *MAYBE* recognizes their system's suspend abilities right out of the box. Sure... you or I could probably make the system suspend or suspend to disk, but I haven't seen a distro yet that does that without re-configing and re-compiling something or other. Or worse yet... repartitioning. (Keep in mind who we're talking about: Joe User)
The login manager. Again, not important to YOU, but very important to the average user. (Especially in a family computer situation) If you present them with xdm, they are likely to think the system is archaic and therefore inferior. It's a rare person who takes a look at xdm and says, "oooooh... I can see this is a superior system". You only get one chance to make a first impression. GDM is an improvement, especially in GNOME 2.0 and the gdm themes, but where are the alpha blends and mouseovers? Or even better, animations? Suse got their boot screen right, it's got the coolest animations I've ever seen for any OS. This is a point many Linux users (especially people like you) miss; the way something looks is going to make a bigger impression on most people than the way something works. You need the "coolness" factor if you want to draw average people over to Linux, plain and simple. Most people if given a choice between a shiny, cool looking, but inferior item are always going to choose it over the less attractive, uncool looking, but reliable item. Never forget that.
The multiple window managers available to X is great in comparison to Windows single, less customizable environment. But they are all getting long in the tooth at this point. The best WM I've seen is Enlightenment, but Rasterman appears to have abandoned the idea of desktop Linux, so I am not sure that the next version will be as useful. (I've only tried E 0.17 once last winter, it could have gotten better.. so don't scream at me.) But, with the exception of the KDE, I haven't seen any environments or WMs that are keeping up with UI improvements in Windows. I, personally don't like or use KDE for myself, but KDE 3.0 is a great environment for users, especially if it has the Liquid engine. Again, like it or not, "coolness" is what's going to get people moving to Linux, not stability, not security, not "superiority". If you show someone a system with xdm and twm... no matter how fast it works or how much you've optimized the kernel, apps, etc... no one is going to be as impressed as they would be if they saw an XP box that grinds along fairly well in comparison. If you show them a linux system with the same optimizations, KDE 3.0 with Liquid, and a nice sound scheme they will be a little more impressed and would think that this system is probably closer to XP. In reality, the first system is probably a lot better than XP, but Joe User doesn't see that. Think of Joe User as the guy who buys the flashy foreign car with the arse engine. That's who uses Windows. To get them to change, we need the same flashy foreign look, but with a super-charger under the hood.
While I'm replying, I may as well add that the stateful session feature of Windows XP is truly cool AND useful. I Know that Linux can be made to do this in some way, but it's not there right now. I've experimented with VNC combined with GNOME to try and implement something like this at home, but unaccelerated X is not much fun. I think it would be great to be able to set up a persistent X session for each user on the system. They log in, use their apps and leave them running and log out. Someone else logs in and does the same, then logs out. The first person comes back a few days later and logs in... all the apps are still running. Combine this with suspend to disk (even on desktpo workstations) and you have a real winner. The latest systems have more than enough power to do this for quite a few uesrs, but I haven't seen a distro that does it yet. It's not impossible to do, it's just that no one has done it yet. I think the key here is the login manager itself. Most dm programs restart the X session when a user logs out killing all the apps along with the old X session. Maybe some kind of "virtual" X server that the dm spawns when a user logs in that the apps connect to would be able to do this. (like VNC but with all the features of a real X server) The local X server allows the virtual one to connect to it as a client using the login credentials of the current user. The dm would check to see if a user already has a session running, if they do, it just reconnects to that session.
The bottom line is that to try and get more people to want to use Linux, we have to think about style as well as substance. Before I really got into computers, I always picked the most stylish forms of computing over the more "superior" forms of computing. The Macintosh was king in my former life. We can't forget that this is how most people think.
Since we're getting personal here (your comments on my abilities as a Linux user): Now.. down to you. You are the scourge of the Linux user base. People with attitudes like yours who poopoo the WANTS of others scare people away from Linux. As I've stated before, I use Linux exclusively at home. I love it, I think it's great, but I also concede that there are ways in which Windows XP is better. Will I run XP at home? Not until the licensing changes.
I've had plenty of experience working with Joe Average both at work and in my private life. I've even helped some people try Linux out at their homes. I've set up boxes with massive customizations (custom kernels, custom themes for their environment, optimized apps for their processor, etc...) to make sure that the system was as foolproof as possible. The boxes worked and worked very well, but in the end, Joe User went back to Windows because it had more of what he wanted. Not just the apps, but the "cool" features: stateful Windows session, suspend to disk, "neat" looking graphics (alpha blends, drop shadows, etc..) and big icons, built in CD-RW support, built-in video capture and editing capabilities, etc... How can you make someone who wants these things stick with Linux, when a lot of these things are not avaliable, or require consultation with someone who knows the system? You have to give them what they WANT. The features may not make the system any better from a technical standpoint, but Joe User is not technical and is likely to consider the system a pale imitation of Windows if it doesn't do what he wants. Your view is one like this (exaggeration):
You: "This is a superior system to Windows"
User: "Why does the login screen look so ugly"?
You: "You dare to question my authority"!
That's not going to attract anyone.
My take:
Me: "I've customized this system with as many of the typical features you might want. If you run into problems, let me know. Consider this a 'beta test' of a really cool product coming down the road".
User: "OK. Hey, how come the login screen doesn't look like Windows XP"?
Me: "We're working on it".
Think about it...
And one more thing, I see GDM a whole lot, since I actually take advantage of the multiuser features of Linux. My wife logs out when she's done, and I log in. My Quake playing buddies come over and log in with their own accounts, etc... So I don't see your point about a log in manager not being seen all that often. If it's going to be on the screen in GUI form, it should look nice. End of story.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
You might want to have a look at Richard Gooch's new init scripts. They start services in paralell, when possible, rather than trudging through them sequencially. There are also other benefits - it is designed to be something new and better than either BSD or SysV init.
o t- scripts/
http://www.atnf.csiro.au/people/rgooch/linux/bo
Among the crowd tech-type people, the decision to use linux is often based on the "tweakability" of the operating system, and the ability to greatly customize or alter the way the OS works (not to mention avoid crashing). However, for most home users (including myself on one of my desktops), software is definately the key.
/.'ers who can give me some advice on this?).
In particular, games would likely be the key in many cases.
If linux were to come up with a real killer app, or better yet a killer game, I think we could watch a drastic increase in desktop use. Actually, games are "partly" behind my uses of a secondary Redhat box as well, as I'm trying to get a windows-compatible VPN for network gaming purposes (any
>2. O'Reilly did a survey and more new Mac users
>were coming from the Linux camp than anywhere
>else. From what I've seen of Apple's sales figures
>(latest 10-Q) sales are much too high to be the
>same old Mac users, the new ones are coming from
>somewhere.
So are you just parroting something you heard, or are you deluded enough to think that the "survey" you're refrencing is actually a valid metric of who's migrating from what?
The "survey" consisted of a post to a mailing list, and got only 15 responses.
Matt
What'd you want me to do, go fund an actual scientific survey?
Just shut the fuck up you whiny little bitch
And yet you're the one about to whine. Here we go:
I'm sick of reading your pathetic, negative, uninformed comments littering this thread
Too bad.
Since you don't have the intelligence to refute them you whine and swear. I'm sure that went down well in special ed class, but I'm afraid you're just going to have to try a bit harder.
Just fuck off back under your rock and die
I can see why you're bitter. I have to port my code to Windows all the time, and it's truly completely broken. I asked management if we could employ someone who *liked* Windows to do this work, but they wouldn't do it, as it would mean lowering the entry standards, and if you do that once, it tends to be a downward spiral. Couldn't argue with that!
He means that KDE has a framework where URL prefixes (like http:// and ftp://) are handled by plugins. For example, with GPhoto2 and a kio slave plugin (sorry, no link) you can access photos stored on a digital camera with the KDE file manager. Even if they're not USB mass storage devices like most cameras nowadays.
The Cauchy isn't meaningless! ... It's fat-tailed, and has infinite mean and variance
Not meaningless. Meanless. Yes, I know that "meanless" is most commonly used on the Internet as a misspelling for "meaningless", but here I'm only stating that Cauchy has no (finite) mean.
I think that I would have answered that: "Symmetric, uni-modal distributions are like that"
Granted.
I think that any distribution which has mean, median and mode the same will be symmetric and uni-modal. If anyone can think of a counter-example, I'd certainly like to hear it.
Unimodal yes, symmetric no. Imagine the vector [2,3,3,2,5,3,2,2,3]/15 interpreted as a discrete distribution. (That is, P(0) = 2/15, P(1) = 3/15, etc.) Mean, Median, and Mode will equal 4 (P(4) = 5/15).
Will I retire or break 10K?
Wasn't difficult to convince my boss/his boss/his bosses boss either. We'd decommissioned a somewhat beefy Dell and I took it, loaded Linux Oracle 9, loaded the edatabases onto it and presented it to everyone. Linux and Oracle do fine together. You just have to show them (well, that and of course some of Larry's propaganda
ROTFLOL. If only the slashgods would give me mod points to bestow. But, no, I have to wait for 60,000 new users to join to cover the 300,000 abandoned slots plus the real members. And, yeah, I seem to recall previous lives at /. It's that karma thing. :)
hehehe That was funny :)
Hence running nothing but a name server on an expensive machine is a questionable business decision.
With decent network card/s a home linux server would make a reasonable name server for most companies - however it makes a lot more sense to have it on an existing machine that has a good reason to have an external IP address for another service.And I've been in these arguments a lot. And although there are maybe four or five Linux users out there who use it for purely technical or monetary reasons, everyone else I have talked to tends to wrap a nice tortilla of dogma around a meaty rational filling (or the other way around).
Just 'cos it's true doesn't mean it can't be a dogma.
holy shit! I am impressed with a post from a slashdoter!
Seeing objective comparisons against both OSs is the only real way to work it all out. As I have always said, I dont hate the OS, I hate its users.
I want to take a moment and explain to you all that when I was in my younger years and prime for the picking I was converted to MS software (regardless of the fact that I thought that Linux had a better foundation) because the WINDOWS users would spend the time to teach me how to do things where the LINUX eliete wouldnt give me a minute of time to learn about how TCP sesssion are built or how to do xxxx. It was FAQ land for me and no logons to the linux servers. So here I am now. Isnt that just disappointing?
Every day I wake up in the morning and go to work my main focus in putting another nail in the linux coffin. I had made the choice in the other direction by experience with the OS and was turned off by the PEOPLE.
enjoy
And the guy ran. Guess I wasn't all that pathetic or ignorant after all. Negative, I agree with - I'm always skeptical about stupid ideas.
Ah well, I was hoping someone could defend Windows and the like, as I really don't know any programmer who likes it. There must be some, somewhere. I can't explain it's popularity on the server otherwise, but there wasn't one single intelligent reply. Perhaps they're all just sysadmins with no real coding background, and they like NT as it looks like the thing the learned to play minesweeper on. Who knows?