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Is There An OS On My Hard Drive?
stm2 writes "Thanks to an agreement between Lindows and Seagate, from October you will be able to choose a hard drive with or without Lindows. Michael Robertson, in his usual marketing speak, compares this to adding "Fluoride in the water", because now you get for free something you used to need to go after (people used to go to dentist to get their Fluoride). According to the PR, the OS can autodetect and configure itself on the host machine."
because now you get for free somethis you needed to go after
What?
At least it will be easier to explain to people why new hard drives need to be formatted. To get rid of Lindows.
Michael Robertson, in his usual marketing speak, compares this to adding "Fluoride in the water"
Great, so not only do they make a crappy OS, their also after my precious bodily fluids.
now you get for free somethis you needed to go after
:-/
that's how i tried explaining it to my girlfriend, but just like these hard drives, she didn't buy it either
is a poison.... What are you trying to tell us?
Somethis just never cease to amaze me...
Welley Corporation - SLM Scammers
I'll save everyone some trouble, and get the obligatory usual comments over with now...
I, for one, welcome our new pre-installed overlords!
1. Have your OS pre-installed on HD's
2. ???
3. Profit!
Actually, click-n-run is probably their step 2. I wonder if it will work for them?
And yes, I know you can just add the debian sources and do an apt-get install packagename.
I completely concur with my forebearers, and echo their sentiments, in asking:
What the fuck is this post trying to say?
------
"Will the highways on the Internet become more few?" --George W. Bush, in Jan. 2000
Comment removed based on user account deletion
while i applaud lindows and seagate for this, I personally use Ark Linux arklinux.com which does the auto-login thing that lindows does but in a safer way. Plus the fact that arklinux is community based is a big plus as well. the way lindows runs as root is just wrong, arklinux created a program called kapabilities that makes it simple to give a user access to certain configuration things. plus its one of the few linux distros thats apt-rpm based. its really hard for me to weigh in on lindows. sometimes they seem like a smart and helpful company and sometimes they seem SCO/Caldera like. still, anything that gets more people using linux on the desktop is great to see.
Michael Robertson, in his usual marketing speak, compares this to adding "Fluoride in the water"
This is very funny. There is a long history of wackos equating floridation of drinking water with government mind control. Here is an example, which is very tame by the standards of the alternate-science crowd.
Gotta go, my alien gray masters are calling me by mind control satellite to their sub-antarctic base again!
There is a big chunk of people out there who aren't afraid to open up their own machines, but use Windows because they don't have enough Round Tuits to try Linux.
If Lindows is easy enough to give a go it might last for a few days before being scrubbed (doesn't play game X)... but then the idea that Linux systems can do things pretty well will stick in the back of the mind for the next time they have to assemble a 'second machine' for general use in the house.
Beep beep.
Michael Robertson compared Lindows to Flouride in the water??? He should have used a better comparison, if he was looking for positive impact. Flouride in the water is viewed as a severe health risk. He should do his homework before using analogies to make his point.
Urantian -- and proud of it!
with or without an Lindows
Silent L? Hmm...
At any rate, I have trouble seeing what Lindows is trying to accomplish with this move, outside of PR. Joe Sixpack will never buy his own drive, or at least his own system drive, and DIY people will, well, do it themselves. I'm sure it would be easier, and less failure-prone at that, to let OEMs install and configure for their hardware and then image their drives rather than hope that a preloaded OS on the HDD will work.
So, what's the point of this?
How long do you think it'll take Microsoft to entrap hard drive manufacturers to bundle Windows preinstalled and then force end users to pay for a $200 license. (damnit I knew 80 cents a gig was too good to be true!)
I can't think of a good reason that any of these situations would merit booting a default OS from a hard disk, rather than formatting it, and installing what you want.
The only people who might leave the Lindows OS on the hard disk are shops that build beige boxes, and don't want to burn a windows license to deliver a working computer. Maybe the mom and pop PC market is what they're after.
-- lk t lv ll th vwls t f wrds. T svs lts f tm t wrt bt ts pn n th ss t rd nd mks m lk lk cmplt dpsht.
I think this one the smartest moves Lindows could make. They are pretty much giving away the software for free and as a result become the default operating system on any system built with this class of hard drive.
Not a bad idea at all.
This is going to put Linux on a lot of desktops.
First off, it's not MS Windows so it's not *that* bad. second, you can opt to just get a blank drive. Third, it's kinda convenient.
:P nobody has a gun to your head saying you need to buy Lindows pre-installed on a seagate drive. I'm certainly not, although if i was buying a seagate i'd consider it.
:)
so quitcher bitchin
Plus for consumers this'll be "wow, no configuration, just plug the new drive in and the OS is there?" it's going to be great. Might even cause another mini-migration from windows for people who decide to get these drives.
But i could be wrong.
You like your new Mac more than you like me, don't you, Dave? Dave? I asked...She said Yes.
So whose is actually going to chose to buy a drive with Lindows preinstalled over a clean drive? Jerkoff end users who want to think they are using Linux but can't do it themselves.
It's Lindows for god sakes. I think somebody got into the wacky tabacky again, what is up with that fluoride reference.
vampirical
The first ten comments consisted of:
- 1 first post
- 5 complaints about the submitter's lack of English skills and/or the editors' failure to correct same
- 2 comments on how fluoride is not good for you
- 1 comment making a double entendre about "getting stuff for free"
- 1 Gentoo fanboy comment
- Exactly zero comments about the article itself
I predict that these proportions will be true for this article no matter how many comments it collects.
From the article:
Fifty-five percent of the computers sold today are "white boxes" meaning they don't carry a brand name. They are typically assembled by small to medium size companies.
s/OEMs/small to medium size companies/ in my previous post, and it still holds; unless these are really small companies, that only put out a few boxes a month or something, it'll still take not significantly more time and be more reliable to configure and image instead of using preloaded installers. Unless the companies in question have absolutely no computer expertise, and would Lindows really want to trust its reputation to such companies?
I think Robertson's at 6.7 deciJobs, and climbing.
...their "fluoride" causes a fatal exception in h2o.dll, and causes lungs.exe to be closed.
I've finally got a fan! Now what do I feed him?
Who cares if most people will wipe their drives? Some might not, and either way some people will find out about the existence of Lindows. I don't think Lindows is betting their company on this move, so there is no need to rip on them for being dumb. If a drive is going to ship, it might as well have something on it by default. And if its going to have something on it, why not Lindows? Seems like they got a deal, even though its not going to make a huge difference. I think this is a smart move, and props to Lindows being smart enough to do it. People are so anxious to call Lindows (the company) stupid that they are overreacting to a small move made by the company.
When does Kazaa partner with Western Digital to bring us hard drives preloaded with assorted music, movies and games?
They could do like NetZero does and advertise it as Internet SuperDuperDownload Accelerator. Download music and movies instantly! It's just a form of caching right? Right?
-JoeShmoe
.
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
I like this idea. Those guys at Lindows sure know how to get publicity. Proof in point, they're on the front page of Slashdot for what, the 50th time? I'm going to guess that they'll be on Wired.com, News.com, a few newspapers, and elsewhere in the morning.
Sure, most people will format the software upon arrival. Sure, few people are going to convert to Linux because of a preloaded OS on the HD. BUT, it costs nothing. Nothing to Lindows, nothing to Seagate (they have to test the drives anyway, it's trivial to load some software), and nothing to the end-consumer.
At the very least, we shouldn't be dismissing this effort. It's another small step to bringing consciousness of Linux to the average PC user. Isn't that something we all want to bring some balance to the OS market?
(1) Shut down computer.
(2) Install hard drive, connect power and IDE cables.
(3) Turn computer back on and make sure it autodetects the drive.
(4) Tear your hair out as the computer proceeds to boot Lindows instead of (FreeBSD/Windows/Linux/Plan9).
(5) Uninstall the hard drive, and sigh in relief as your old set-up proceeds to boot normally.
(6) Return the hard drive to the store, yelling and screaming until they agree not to charge you a restocking fee.
I don't know the specifics about lindows but... Considering that they are pushing this on a new drive, do they provide a *decent* bootloader to go with?? The majority of people like to install their own OS after, and the only way this would get much use would be if it bootloaded. That way, after someone throws on another OS, after a few reboots they might just decide to give it a look.
Lindows.com was taken over by the
Fiendish Flouridators!
We have to preserve the purity of essence of
our computer's body fluids...
Kosmo
Lindows might be paying Seagate for the privilege. Really. Then they'll hope to get subscribers. Kindof like razors/razor blades, but more like free lamps/standard oil.
If Lindows pays $5/drive with Lindows, it still seems kindof smart.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Are you sure this same model isn't used in "the other camp"?
I mean, what do I buy for having "Designed for Windows XP" stickers on my system that of course runs Linux?
It must cost money to do the necessary validations and to attach the stickers during manufacture.
At the end of the day, the customer is paying for that, even when he does not want to run Windows.
(worse, he may be even paying for a Windows license he is not going to use)
RTFA. It says they offer two versions, both the same price. Lindows is giving it away to increase their market share.
I never thought this would be a way to undercut MickeySoft's OEM practices....
Now, instead of asking, "Why should I over-right Windows? I have an OS that comes with my Dell!" People will say, "Why should I pay an additional $200 for Windows? I have an OS that comes with my hard drive!"
Costs the exact same price as a typical blank hard disc
My parents have an Odyssey, its the family wagon so to speak. Between the six of them (mum, dad, four small kids) they amazingly manage to use pretty much every cup holder in the car when they go on road-trips. If the few spare dont have cups in them, theyre usually filled with something else, like chips, nuts, or other snack for the ferocious carnivores that are my siblings.
That said, I agree with you on the pgup/pgdown keys. Theyre not exactly highly used. Which makes me constantly beg the question, why did the G4 mini-keyboard opt to keep those keys, and not the much more used Del/End/Home keys.
Ah logic.
Why should it cost more? You don't think Seagate writes a crapload of bits to the drive during testing? You don't think they could see to it that the last pass leaves a certain combination of bits (Lindows) instead of some other combination of bits (1010101010.. or SEAGATE OWNERZ YOU!!!)
Anyway, even if there is a cost, it seems clear that Lindows is paying it. Lindows isn't going to sell more hard drives, if anything it will sell less since people don't need the uber-GB that an XP install requires. So if Seagate isn't getting anything out of it, there's no reason for them to increase the cost to customers and hurt themselves in the market.
Rather, it makes sense they are selling this otherwise empty space to whoever wants to use it. Lindows gets a change to make a convert. If nothing else, its free advertising. Hell, if I buy a drive that comes pre-loaded I'd probably check it out for curiousity sake.
It's a smart idea. I predict that other hard drive makes make similar deals. What if someone decided to load the drive full of DRM music that people could just click-n-buy? Think about it...
- JoeShmoe
.
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
Guess what, Oxygen kills too. Just because it is deadly in pure form does not mean that it doesn't have a benefit.
...or are you just happy to see me?
This signature is intentionally left blank.
All your bases are belong to us
"now you get for free somethis you needed to go after"
Yup....it's all in the wording...
My guess would be that, this move is aimed at cornering that section of the PC-building market that try to trick consumers by offering amazing deals for PCs by omitting to mention they come with no OS, since most Joe Sixpacks assume that a computer always has an OS.
Now these shifty folks can safely claim that it does have an OS on it, with no increase in cost to them. Just think of the numbers of lindows boxes that are going to get handed out to ignorant buyers now!
the way lindows runs as root is just wrong
It is possible to set up user accounts in Lindows. KUser, the KDE user manager tool, is available (renamed to "User Manager") and you can create users.
It doesn't work perfectly out of the box: you will need to manually add each user to the "dialout" and "dip" groups if you want Kppp to work, and the "Click-N-Run Installer" will ask for the root password each time a user logs in. (The solution to the latter problem is to disable the C-N-R Installer from auto-running).
Once you have created a non-root user, the KDE login manager will run and prompt for user name and password.
The above applies to Lindows 4.0 at least; I haven't really looked at other versions. (I wrote a review of Lindows 4 for Linux Journal.)
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
How much do you want to bet a blank drive costs more than the Lindows drive? It has to be, Seagate isn't doing this for free, they get a kickback from Lindows for each unit shipped, I bet.
The answer to the story, even if the hard drive is blank, is most likely "yes", especially if its SCSI - just look at the firmware for the drive. I know for a fact Seagate disks run a real-time operating system (BOS or somesuch). As ATA gains ever more SCSI-like features (tagged commands and queueing), even modern ATA disks probably too run an embedded OS.
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
It will now be possible to go to a store, buy pieces and have a working computer when you get home with no other work necessary. That's a good thing!! Segate sells a lot of retail drives. If it works out even a little bit for them maybe others will follow suit. I've heard ATI has MMC for Linux in-house somewhere...but that's a big step to sell linux in the retail box. Most mice & keyboards work in linux. Most networking equipment works with linux [heck most home routers RUN linux!] This is a perfect path to getting Linux market share
It's too bad BeOS didn't think of this first! After all, Robertson is making an end-run around the infamous MS bootloader license. Shops can sell pre-tested barebones systems...then conveniantly slip you a pre-formated Linux drive. They are just selling "upgrade" pieces. And they aren't selling Linux at all...the Manufacture just adds that as a "test" feature. Very, very clever.
Lindows the OS is free.. If you want to take advantage of Lindows, you need to PAY for the SERVICES that open Lindows up to a useable product..
If you get a drive with or without lindows.. its still the same price..
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
whatever we may think Lindows has set out to achieve, there is no denying that i have just spent 15 minutes of my life reading what to all intents and purposes is an advertisement for the software on my favourite tech site.
maybe that was the idea... instead of shouting "BUY LINDOWS" at us via TV, they have instead bred an (mostly)informed discussion on the product. Not bad for a bit of free advertising
bah!*@%!
OK.
So the biggest problem Linux faces on the Desktop is the Microsoft-sponsored stranglehold on the industry.
Not only are OEMs strongly discouraged from installing Linux, they are usually contractually obligated not to install anything else!
So, Mr. Cowpland, making the best of a *bad* situation, goes one back in the supply chain - to the hard disk manufacturers!
Wow. Good thinking! No OEM contracts! Product delivered, ready for use!
I know, 90% of these preinstalls are going to be nuked. So what. If Lindows gets 1%, given the cost of duplication on the drives, this is a smashing success.
And, what else is he going to do? Knock Lindows as the orphan child of Linux, but, like Red Hat, this is clearly a positive commercial influence.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Well, IANAD (I am not a dentist) so what does flouride do for your teeth?
Many conspiracy theorists agree that fluoride was added to water to control the minds of the populace. http://www.sonic.net/kryptox/mcp.htm
The good news is that Lindows is built on Debian. And even better news is that the Lindows.com guys didn't rip out the APT tools. Lindows doesn't use them (they use their "Click-N-Run" stuff) but the tools are there.
/boot, a 256 MB swap partition, and the whole rest of the drive as a big ReiserFS partition, mounted as the root partition. I have not yet been able to build a kernel that can deal with the root ReiserFS; I keep getting the error "Unable to open initial console." I believe the problem is that it's trying to mount DevFS while the root partition is still mounted read-only, and I think the solution is to use an initrd (initial ramdisk). The 2.4.20 kernel that comes with Lindows 4 uses an initrd, and it of course works. I need to try building an initrd kernel soon.
It is actually possible to upgrade (or "side-grade" if you prefer the term) Lindows to just plain Debian.
Basically, you just edit sources.list to point to a Debian mirror near you. (Lindows has it pointing to the main Debian server; be a good net citizen and change that.) Then "apt-get update". Then blow away all packages that have "lindows" or "xandros" in the name, if you want that pure free-software feeling... or don't bother, if you don't mind a few Lindows packages floating around. "apt-get dist-upgrade", handle any conflicts APT can't suss on its own, and install anything you are missing. If you blow away the lindows* packages and xandros* packages, you will lose LILO and the kernel, so you will need to replace those.
Lindows by default sets up three partitions: a small
There will be an article about this on the Linux Journal website sometime soon... I'm not sure exactly when. I took a Lindows MobilePC and upgraded it to full Debian unstable; it now boots with GRUB and has a GNOME desktop, because that's what I prefer.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
They had a nice selection of scantily clad ladies in Lindows outfits, who were giving out snackfood. On the snackfood package was a picture of an octopus punching Bill Gates in the nads with 8 arms. No I am not kidding. It tasted quite good. I picked up my Lindows show-bag as well.
In the booth they had Lindows on everything with "Lindows approved" stickers pasted over the "Made for Windows XP" ones.
Everyone was trying to rm -rf / the PCs, but were failing quite miserably.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
Most of the negative comments here are obvious, but I think Lindows should be applauded for this move. A version of Linux (even if it's one for newbies) has managed to find a new and unique distribution channel that Windows doesn't have and is unable to compete in.
I expect drives to have a brief burn-in / testing period at the manufacturer anyway, so it makes no difference to me what comes on it by default - all zeros or an OS. As long as I'm still able to low-level format / repartition / high-level format it.
Admit it: if you ever got such a drive (especially if the pre-installed Lindows option didn't add to the cost), you'd boot into Lindows at least once to check it out, wouldn't you? If you were building a machine for a friend or relative, you might even want to see how they got along with it for a few days before you nuked it and installed Windows. Am I right?
Is this a sneaky way to get a machine with Linux preinstalled? Can I now get a Dell box with a Seagate harddrive in it that has Lindows preinstalled? If so, this is pure genius.. it really makes you wish that Be had figured out this strategy instead of banging their head up against the OEM brick wall.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I use the pgup/pgdwn keys constantly all day long. It's a helluva lot easier to scroll through code with them than pull my hands of the keyboard and use the scroll bar.
I think I need somethis it explaineded it more some then. For this to go after an Lindows. Gazorninplat!!!!
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
Oh, so it's *that* kind of OS... Now I understand why taking it to dinner and a movie didn't get me anywhere.
I guess the real question is, "how much do we care?"
Is Lindows important?
Quoth he
"It's all academic anyway..."
Lindows is great but what I'd really like to see is a choice: Knoppix, Dyne:bolic or Biatchux. These are all GNU/Linux live bootable CD-ROM based operating systems with automatic hard ware detection, which makes them particularly well suited for such a purpose. Knoppix is a general-purpose system, Dyne:bolic is for multimedia production and broadcasting and Biatchux is a data recov./forensics anal. and incident response tool, which is great if one buys a new hard drive because one's old one contains important data but the system/security failure has made it inoperative. I do really hope more hard ware vendors will employ my idea, which I have been promoting for quite some time now as someone who is sort of into operating systems in my institute. Lindows should prepare the new ground for professional operating systems. This is great news indeed. All we have to worry about is making sure there will be no hard drives with Microsoft operating systems preinstalled, but Microsoft is a convicted illegal monopolist, so they wouldn't be able to do it anyway, thanks to DoJ verdict. Great news and a very interesting article.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
... am looking forward to 'Lindows Refund Day'
> If you think Lunix is "usable", you need to stop using it for a few weeks and try Microsoft Windows XP Professional.
I did that, and it sucked.....
The command line was crap...I had to install cygwin to make that useable, and even then, the console app is brain dead - no ability to dynamically resize the windows.
The lack of focus follows mouse bugged me and there's no virtual desktops.
The ACL system completely screws me over when switching between the account I use for work stuff and the account I use for home stuff but using the same files....and fixing it requires clicking all over the place with a mouse (or braving cacl, the existance of which explains why Windows users think that a command line interface is difficult to use).
Having my MP3s skip bugged me too....
Note that there is a world of difference between Easy to Learn, and Easy to _Use_
Advanced users are users too!
I'm having trouble deciding which sucks harder -- Lindows or HanzoSan. They're both so far beyond any conventional, comprehendible level of suck.
Suppose a copy of Lindows costs $50.
Suppose the version packaged on Seagate drives is subsidised to $25 because there's no media, etc with it.
Suppose as many as one in ten users keep Lindows on their drive.
That means that the extra cost is only $2.50 per disk. Is that going to affect people's choice of drive so much? Most people use one brand and stick to it.
In Europe and the UK, there is a lot of discussion over adding fluoride to water. In Scotland, they've pretty much stopped adding it in most places. It's poisonous, and too much fluoride (like if you have fluoride in the water and use a toothpaste with fluoride, ie. nearly all of them) it will cause horrible damage to your teeth.
Also, some people are highly sensitive to fluoride. You can get non-fluoride toothpaste, but can you imagine the hassle it must be, having to use bottled water for things like brushing your teeth, making tea or coffee, and in fact damn near anything else where you might ingest some of the water?
After reading (and agreeing to) all the comments pointing out that this pre-installation totally misses any targeted audience, I think at the end of the day this might be just a strategy to inflate the number of "sold units" of lindows.
You know, much in the same way as it is argued that the real installed user base for Windows machines is actually lower, since OEM sales of boxen that are later re-formatted and Redhatized are also counted as Windows installations in industry statistics. So, every drive sold marks one unit of Lindows out there, whether it's DOA or not.
This is what it should do. Sit on an idle and protected partition on the hard drive. Allow Windows to be installed as usual. Then, after six months, or every time there is a BSOD, virus attack, new piece of hardware that needs the now unfindable installation CDROM, popup a little window saying:
Hi. I see that you're having some trouble
using your Windows operating system. Would
you like me to install Lindows so that all
your problems will disappear?
[OK] [Not yet] [Tell me more]
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Could you explain how "Oxygen kills" or provide a link please?
These are the tactics that we accused Microsoft of when they were trying to push other browsers like Netscape and other OSes like Linux out of the market. I'm pretty convinced they work.
:-) I'm a lazy guy!
Give people for free the stuff that you want them to at least try once. They they have to DO THINGS to get rid of it or change it. People are lazy, so at least some won't.
As to where will this end up? Well the small white-box assembly shops might be tempted to use the Lindows install on the drive to burn-in the computer. And leave it on if the customer didn't order a MicroSoft install. So the end users might end up seeing it. Great.
Some people buy a new HD, and will install it as the first drive, move the old one over. Bingo!
I installed two machines last week. They came with Seagate drives. Had a Debian based installation already been present, I'd just have upgraded that.
On this one -
Computer manufacturers will save millions by purchasing Seagate[...]
But Mike seems to think it will be a bit more -
Computer manufacturers will save billions by purchasing Seagate[...]
Why doesn't Portland fluoridate their water? Not good enough for them?
Oh, man...
Hrm... Can't comment on the 'stupidity' part, as I don't know your definition of stupid. (Obviously, the Republican party figures Portland is pretty stupid. Whereas the Green party thinks we're pretty darned smart. And the Democrats just plain hate us because we're TOO Green.) Don't have any comparative facts on cancer or senility. Docility? Well, Portland's about as non-docile as you can get, so you're wrong there... And malleability? Well, again, I'm not sure what you mean by malleable... If you mean that Portlanders (I believe the proper term is 'Portlandians', but I hate that term,) are more flexible than most, I'd have to agree with you. No 'lower rate' of that.
So Fluoride is supposed to lower rates of docility and malleability? Apparently then, it turns you into a Southern Baptist fire-bleching, anti-Disney preacher. (i.e. makes you less flexible, and more aggressive at the same time.)
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
It was mentioned in the blurb, admittedly in a confusing manner. The editor was a dork for letting it go through like that, but in any case, people are going to talk about what they read in the blurb. Throw a stupid analogy in there, and you'll get a lot of discussion about it. Since when, even on /., is the heading offtopic!?
Right at the bottom there is a lovely disclaimer....
Lindows.com is not endorsed by or affiliated with Microsoft Corporation in any way - in fact, we don't even really like them because they are suing us.
James
Firstly let me make make myself clear, I'd like the world and thier dog to use linux of some breed but ...
When people have been experimenting in using linux they have found that they couldn't delete the partitions using the standard fdisk which comes on a win9x boot disk. Yep, I know, use cfdisk or fdisk off a linux boot disk, or use The Ultimate Boot Disk, www.startdisk.com, if you want to get rid of the partitions (I don't know if the recvoery console in winxp will delete the partions or not)
Just trying to raise a valid concern
My pleasure.
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
My pleasure.
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
yo...
this is quite a good explanation:
Is it harmful to breathe 100-percent oxygen?
Well,
a) PlanetTimmy is experiencing technical difficulties
and
b) Normal service will resume shortly.
I took a Lindows MobilePC and upgraded it to full Debian unstable; it now boots with GRUB and has a GNOME desktop, because that's what I prefer.
I haven't used Linux a whole lot in the past couple years (these days its FreeBSD and Mac OS X only), so please bear with me if this is a stupid question, buuuut... What is the point/benefit of doing this, as opposed to just installing Debian? Seriously. It seems like quite a task to "side-grade" Lindows to Debian, so why not just stick with Debian to start?
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
You know what really bugs me about this? About 10 years ago, I used to use Unix + X-Windows all the time, and I really liked the focus following the mouse. Everytime I had to use Windows, the lack of it bugged me. Now I'm forced to use Windows by the place I currently work at, and since I have to do without this feature most of the time, I actually have trouble adjusting to it when I manage to sit down in front of X-Windows again. I usually end up turning it off because I just can't get used to it in the little amount of time I'll have. Sad, eh?
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
Jesus H. Christ man, you've just tried to back up your argument by using David 'I am the Second Coming, and will defect the 7ft Lizards who have taken over the world' Icke as a source. Are you completely insane?
I'm against flouride in the water too, as some people are clearly allergic to it, but bringing the mentally unstable Icke into it is a very bad idea.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
Now that I've read the HSW article I understand why, thanks again.
IMHO, this is a self-inflicted time bomb for Microsoft. Wait and see how it pans out.
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
I don't really understand why Seagate is mentioned. Lindows is delivering their OS on a HDD. It happens they chose Seagate but it's not like Seagate have added Lindows to their products...
..like an OS on a chip. So that we won't have to worry about viruses or other errant screware trying to destroy the functionality of PCs.
If you want a new or different OS, plug in a new chip.
!@#$% whole-grain cereal. When I want fiber, I eat some wicker furniture. - G. Carlin
What if someone decided to load the drive full of DRM music that people could just click-n-buy?
Didn't someone do this already? Gateway maybe? Anyone remember?
That's exactly how they figured that fluoride was good for your teeth. Poor folk in rural Deaf Smith County, Texas had excellent teeth despite not having access to dental care, and they figured it was because the water was naturally fluoridated.
Of course, it apparently also made a passel o' Smiths lose their hearing, but they could still smile right nice...
Thanks, but I'll take the hard drive WITHOUT Lindows installed on it. Linux or no Linux, I don't want an OS preinstalled on my hard drive. If I wanted that, I would buy a systen from a computer manufacturer.
-------
"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
-- George Orwell
Simple maths --- $20 dollars for 1G of Music ~ $1 for 1G storage ~, essentially the drive would be free, but with music a 100G drive would cost about $2000 you got it the wrong way around, the RIAA should be giving away Hard Disks :)
Easiest way to protect your teeth is to stop eating sugar - but that would eat into the profits of the pre-packaged food industry, wouldn't it. And the profits of dentists, and the profits of the people who want to get rid of their industrial waste - fluorosilic acid.
And as you say, it's a piss poor delivery method...
-- oldthinkers unbellyfeel ingsoc
Someone with worse typos than my own. :D
Only on
The lack of focus follows mouse bugged me and there's no virtual desktops.
Yes, I feel the same whenever I have had to work on Windows for just a few minutes. How can they call it userfriendly when it lacks such important features. (Yes I have heard virtual desktops exists as addons, but most Linux WMs have it by default). And how about the cut'n'paste on Windows which requires to use the keyboard or pull down menus. On X11 it is just mark the text and click. The Windows GUI is really not that great.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
(No offence meant to the Lindows guys - I'm in no way comparing them to SCO - just pointing out another way of getting free publicity on Slashdot :-) )
>...if you're NOT a vi user, you are a moron who should just step in front of a speeding bus and remove yourself from the gene pool forthwith.
Wouldn't that be hard for the non-vi-using bus drivers?
Go here to create your own Slashdot dis
Hard drives are thoroughly tested before they are sold. How do you think they test hard drives before they are sold? Think about it? Yes thats right, at some stage in that testing they must write data to them. Therefore it is trivial to install Lindows on the hard drives during testing.
From the sig of the parent comment: "I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing."
The war on violence is by far the biggest failure. Kill Iraqis to make them more peaceful?
Ta - much better. I'd have posted the first link myself if I hadn't lost it. All the evidence suggests that for the majority of people this is useful, as they aren't very good at brushing their teeth, and the majority of people get along fine with it.
However, the minority is a large enough one, and the side-effects bad enough, that the decision on this tradeoff should definitely not be taken out of our hands - if you are one of those badly effected, all you can do is move to an area that hasn't adopted it, or never drink tapwater.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
what about IBM drives, isn't IBM the Linux company ?
and why not other media ? a Knoppix CD with every plextor cd drive ?
there are loads of ideas on the same line...
IBM doesn't make harddrives any more. They sold their storage devices dept. to Hitachi.
BTW IBM is not the Linux company... there is no such thing. Linux is not owned by a single company, that's what Open Source is about.
Cats have rather different dental problems.
It's not so much that flouride is considered dangerous by a bunch of whackos as it is the fact that putting fluoride in drinking water is seen by some to be massmedication without consent.
m fl uorideban.htm
These people agree that fluoride is good for their teeth but they disagree with having to take fluoride internally in their drinking water. They'd prefer to apply it topically, as in a toothpaste.
The Irish Dentists Opposing Fluoridation movement is concerned with the levels of fluoride being added to the water in Ireland... especially after the ban by Belgium on fluoridated products.
http://homepage.eircom.net/~fluoridefree/belgiu
cheers
niall
You'll be better off, or you'll be dead. And if you're dead, you won't care that you're not better off!
OEM WinXP and Office XP require activation; the difference is that the OEM resellers are required to do it for you, thus shielding the buyer from this "activation" business and wondering about its implications.
:-)
I bet fewer OEM copies would be sold if every prospective buyer were made fully aware of this. One fellow at work nearly bought OEM Office XP but decided not to once I told him of the once-off activation thing. He's been a happy OpenOffice user ever since
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
Water treatment has saved more lives than any medical discovery,process,whatever.
Don't mean to argue, but you are almost right. Maybe water treatment is the SECOND live saver, but the invention that has increased life expectancy more than any other is actually REFRIGERATION. 100 years ago, food poisoning was way more common, and often the cause of death. Ask an insurance expert, who has access to life expectancy tables for the last 100 or so years.
Even the Simpsons know if you don't have a refrigerator, you should at least put your milk in a cool, wet sack...
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
I predict someone will once again make posts about how poor the posting quality is (even providing a list to prove it!), and how no one reads the articles, with the occasional "signal to noise" comment (which will then entail a Usenet flamewar).
However, every 11th poster will faithfully sit, read Slashdot, and post comments, and never get it.
Man, you'd think this site was required to get your daily Oxygen supply, the way people bitch about how bad it is. Every single day, and usually multiple times.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Now if I only bought seagate hard drives.
I do security
These things are being sold through distributors; they may not even be available retail.
The target is screwdriver shops. If you go into small businesses or local government, a locally assembled white box is about as common as a name brand PC. Also, their "computer guy" often also provides desktop and network support as well.
This is a freakin' brilliant strategy. The shop owner (1) saves a cost of the windows license ( he does NOT get at the discount of the big guys he competes with) and (2) just pops the drive in the box and hands it to the customer instead of doing the install (he probably doesn't have the facilities to automate this). Which means for the same $$$, he gets to keep more and spends less time earning it.
That said, most strategies, brilliant or otherwise, fail, and there's lots of ways this one could. For one thing I would provide, if I were Lindows, special training materials and possibly even a certification program for the screwdriver guys, focused on the problems of running Lindows in a Windows world. The advantages to the shop owner are going to mean nothing if he's dealing with irate customers.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Having lived in the UK for a number of years, I'd be more worried about all the lead pipes and lead lined storage tanks still in use than the addition of flouride, which as others have pointed out has been used for years in the US with no apparent ill effects. I could go into my rant about British plumbing, but suffice it to say I knew MANY people who had no idea that the only safe drinking water in a British home is from the cold water tap in the kitchen. One friend only discovered this when, as a child, the water in the bathroom sink (which she used to brush her teeth with) was blocked by their escaped pet hamster who had drowned in the water tank. See also the Fawlty Towers episode where the hotel inspectors are coming so Basil instructs Manuel to get the pigeon out of the water tank...
I heard that kids who drink mostly bottled water
(a fairly recent phenomenon) has more cavities.
Still I'm not crazy about the metaphor.
I think this is a great idea, in conceptual terms if nothing else. I like the concept of buying discs with OSs already installed; conceptually, it makes them part of the "fabric" of the disc.
Usually when I buy a HDD I think of it as an empty container to put things in. I'd much prefer to think of it as a toolbox with free tools already inside.
Yes, but will fluoride cause damage to my tinfoil hat?
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Almost all of their hard drives come with an OS preinstalled. Sometimes even Windows XP Pro! But it's the luck of the draw. You get whatever the previous owner was using.
The floridation of water is a communist plot to sap and impurify our precious bodily fluids! oh, well it has not hurt me all these years.
-- After all is said and done, more is said than done.
The six-previous-floridas comment isn't as silly as it sounds, some of the swamps have several generations of ruins under them.
However... I do wonder if LindowsOS will make the hard drive go brittle and blotchy.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Nothing worse than an ANONYMOUS zealot.
I personally prefer Mandrake, but nothing beats the karma bonus of shoving a CD into the drive, having a working machine 30 seconds later, then typing a one-liner to make it permanent.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
"Sits on the tongue like finest meringue
and on the stomach like a concrete bowling ball"
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Now there'll be some crazy guy at a US Airbase launching an all out nuclear attack on the commies from Finland in retaliation to their communistic infiltration and poisoning of his harddrives.
Fluoride is bad for teeth
No, we should have taken action long, long before Hitler became powerful. Billions for violence, little for diplomacy doesn't make sense, in my opinion.
Put an OS on your hard drive that is unsecure from the get-go.
I'd add a boot-once automatic testing routine, to be sure.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
..."May you live in interesting times and attract the attention of important men."
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Better start WW3, Lindows is a Linux/Communist plot to take over the world. Soon, all our computers will be impotent. We'll meet again, lalala, lalala... Steve Ballmer = Dr Strangelove ???
HenryJamesFeltus.com
my cousin died of cancer when she was only 17. Likewise you can get Alzheimer's before 60. I think there is a lot more to more people getting all sorts of diseases besides dying before they have a chance. For starters I would look at how much more chemicals are in our air, and some of the things we use; cleaning products, spray deodorant, etc.
Trust Your Technolust
I still have to go to my dentist to get flouride. The area where I live refuses to put it in the water. I think it's a conspiracy by the dentists. Either that, or there may be a significant element in the local population that fears pollution of their precious boodily liquids.
GF.
Lots of petrified grits
Lindows?
/.jp:
7 &topic=46&mode=thread
I read this article at
http://slashdot.jp/article.pl?sid=03/09/06/133624
I was really excited, because for ~$300 I could buy a Lindows preinstalled computer AND get 1 year of broadband. I was going to set up my mother-in-law with a firewall and broadband access (and toyed with the idea of using gnomeeting to avoid long distance calls, though I use vonage). However, I can't find any more information at either Lindows or Nojima's site (the articles just disappeared).
Have you seen or heard anything related to Nojima and Lindows?
Thanks.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
It's the same tactics Microsoft employs, only more so. They are probably making very little, if anything, on the seagate deal directly (they, in fact, may be paying to have it installed.
What they are expecting to make money on is the click 'n run subscriptions - there may be a trial period included, but it probably isn't longer than 30 or maybe even 90 days.
At that point, format, reinstall windows, and use all the old software that you've gotten for the last 10 years.
-Adam
And when was that you think?
The invasion of Sudetenland?
The Anschluss?
The re-occupation of the Rheinland?
Pre 1936?
Pre 1933?
Just after WOI?
Without knowing what Hitler would do later on? Starting another war with Germany? Do you think the people of GB/France/Belgium would have agreed to that?
The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.
only on a hard disk. I think it will be very popular for white box dealers to use in their products. Now MS can't say that those PC's should be sold with Windows to be legal.
What your missing is that the white box industry is a lot larger than you think. The white box industry (world wide) is ripe for this kind of innovation for several reasons:
1) There is no need to pay $100 to M$. This is especially poignant in the world economy where most people cannot possible afford to purchase an OS for $100.
2) No need to hire a Linux expert to install and configure your machines for you. Where the margins are razor thin for whitebox builders already, this cost woudl have precluded the possibility of going with an alternative OS.
3) The savings that the whitebox builders realize will get passed on to the consumer in the form of even cheaper PCs. This means schools, governments, business can afford to upgrade hardware without additional costs for software, or IT specialists.
Automatics are for old men
Fluorine gas is nasty, nasty, nasty stuff - it reacts with pretty much everything except stainless steel, teflon, and platinum. Fluoride salts are pretty nasty in high doses, but nowhere near as toxic or reactive as fluorine; I haven't found any research that shows 1ppm long-term exposure causes any problems, though.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
The city I grew up in was one of the first to have flouride. In other words, every day for the last 43 years, I've drank water with floride in it. I also brush my teeth, using toothpaste with flouride in it. But I've had a total of 3 cavities over the years.
My wife grew up in a city without flouride, and she has at least 13 cavities.
Which is worse, mercury in your mouth (the stuff they use for filling cavities) or flouride in your water.
I've had friends who took flouride drops when they were younger, and that was too much (Their teeth turned white, otherwise no ill effects). But generally speaking (they were extreme cases) flouride in the water is safe.
So stop your worrying.
Unfortunately not everybody gets it right in X11. There are some X-like implementations, some Windows-like implementations, some in-between implementations that make no sense at all, and some apps don't even support copy/paste. Personally, I want to have two clipboard buffers, the selection buffer and a copy buffer (though the names might be different). The selection buffer would be used for mark+middle click quick copy/paste, while the copy buffer can be used to keep something until I tell it to go away with a ctrl-C or something. It should be pasted with maybe a shift+middle click or a ctrl-V.
A solution to the problem with music today
Yeah, I know this is a troll and all, but I'm going to say this before someone else agrees with you...
.iso, or create a multisession or data+audio CD? The functionality simply doesn't exist without purchasing some third party software. Nearly every single Linux distribution comes with the tools necessary to do anything, from burn CD's to write your own software.
I've been using Linux as my primary (unfortunately not only) OS for the last few years. I've reached level 10 of the stages of Linux user evolution (i.e. I write my own device drivers). My laptop that I bought a year ago came preinstalled with WindowsXP. Sure, it's nice and pretty, and I thought "cool" when I plugged in my DV camera and a dialog came up asking if I wanted to capture video. But, when I actually wanted to do something useful, it became an extreme pain. There is nothing beyond that extremely simple "ooh, pretty" interface. Yeah, you can select a bunch of files in a directory and click "burn to cd," but what happens when you want to burn a
Linux is for getting stuff done. Windows is just for home users who don't want to take the time to learn how to click launch->programs->video->kino or whatever, and depend on having an automagical dialog displayed for them. They're the kind of people who download a song from p2p all over again when they want to listen to it a second time.
A solution to the problem with music today
Yeah, bought it off e-bay and not only did it have a copy of Windows 2000 on it but it had lots of credit card numbers I could buy cool new gear with! Thanks Seagate...
;)
That's what we're talking about right?
If your system boots the new drive instead of your old one, then you have the choice of wiping the new drive from within Lindows, an OS you may not be familiar with and which may complain about being erased while you're running it, or of booting off the Windows install CD and zapping the partition from there. I'd consider this a rather annoying inconvenience I'd prefer to avoid.
Shame on Google.
some apps don't even support copy/paste.
In my experience they are rare, but there does exist some combinations, where it doesn't work.
Personally, I want to have two clipboard buffers
Maybe you would like Klipper from KDE. It is not exactly what you request, but in some cases it works nicely.
while the copy buffer can be used to keep something until I tell it to go away with a ctrl-C or something.
Except from the ctrl-C part I agree it would be a nice additional feature. Perhaps ctrl+ins and shift+ins would be good choices, if they are not already used.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
hppc
Despite the fact that in all odds, a new hard drive will take its place inside a linux or OpenBSD box, if I were to buy one, I would have to choose without Lindows. This direct marketing stuff is getting out of hand, telephone calls during dinner that we are expected to just accept with good humor, bags of tree killing paper ads attached to my door, little nuggets of crap in my inbox wasting my isp's bandwidth and my time, and now this? Inferior OS's attached to a supposed blank hard drive.
I don't give business to companies that do this sort of thing. I live in an apartment complex where many college students exist. Therefore I get pizza ads on my front door all the f'ing time. Each one eliminates me as a customer, I won't eat there if I see an ad on my door from them. The same goes for Seagate, they wanna submit to the mass marketing god in a sick and unexciting new way? So be it, YOU JUST LOST YOURSELF A CUSTOMER!
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
First the X-Box/Linux challenge, now a free OS pre-installed on your hard drive.
Thats just plain rude. You really outta watch who you go callin French you could get beat down for that. I'm American through and through, I'm even in the military tryin to protect this country. Besides we all know the French don't use cleaning products and deodorant.
Trust Your Technolust
The poster supplies two good links with valid research and information, does not take a judgemental stand on the issue and leaves the opinion up to the reader. A simple and informative post that in no way seems intended to incite or mislead.
Moderators, get a clue. Just because a post doesn't line up with your worldview doesn't mean it's a troll.
OT thread, maybe. But not a troll.
Read, L
It is exactly like Seagate have added Lindows to their products. Those drives will ship directly from Seagate factories with the operating system installed.
That's all I've ever had to do. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
(an update from knx_hdinstall)
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I grew up in a Canadian province that had flouride in the water (Nova Scotia). To say my dental habits were "lacking" throughout my teen years would be an understatement. When I recently moved to British Columbia (non-flouride province) the dentist took one look in my mouth and commented that he knew I was from out of province because my teeth were in remarkably good condition for my age. I'm a believer.
Preinstalled free os on hard disk drives is not about end users but to do with OEMs building white boxes. The cost saving in producing a white box is reduced as once you have assembled the machine all you need to do is boot it to allow the software to adjust the configuration for the hardware installed. This sort of thing is a real threat to MS as it shifting the computer closer to being a consumer appliance - a non MS comsumer appliance. When it comes to consumer appliance's any bets that the PS3 will come with linux pre-installed with the security built into the GPU, ie open when it comes to browsing the net etc. closed when it comes to using the full power of the GPU for playing games or watching dvds.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen