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Linus on Linux in 1994
Vrallis writes "Ten years ago this month, Linux Journal christened their maiden issue with an interview with Linus Torvalds. It is definitely worth the read, and worth some reflection on just how far Linux has come in the last decade."
"In 10 years, there will be a linux oriented website capable of taking down the server this interview is hosted on."
...Beowulf Journal.
"What the hell is an aluminum falcon?"
Since then Linux has traveled around the sun ten times but its still in the same old place.
Remember, Linus himself endorses the Ninnle kernal!
...and for once I'm not kidding!
I guess that's what happens when you run servers on Linux, instead of stable, guaranteed solutions like Windows and Unixware
I'm curious if anyone remebers the Linus - Tanenbaum: polemics.
Of course Mach is a great idea: WIndows NT/2000, NeXT, Mac OS X, OpenDarwin, etc. but Linux is not dying...
You can defy gravity... for a short time
Bill Gates: "Linus who?"
-m
#
# Modus Ponens
#
Well, I see even the Linux Journal is not immune to a slashdotting ...
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I wonder what thoughts will be on Linux in 2014...
"In 1994, Linux was mostly a toy OS. Really not much of anything more than a bootloader. A shell of an operating system."
"Ten years later... well, it's basically the same thing, but it's been ported to every damn computer out there!"
Dragging people kicking and screaming into reality since 1996.
...it has come to pass.
Christening the maiden. Why does that sound so very naughty to me?
Check out the best P2P sharing website: MEDIACHEST.COM
Now I wasn't around for kernel 1.x, but I certainly have extensive experience with 2.4 and now 2.6. I even used distros back in the day that were based on 2.0 and 2.2. I cannot believe how far Linux has come - just take (for example) Gnome. I used to use the console alone because the two main WMs - Gnome and KDE - were klunky and not very usable. The text rendered horribly even at higher resolutions.
In addition, with the recently added hotplug functionality it is no longer necessary to know the exact specs for your hardware in some cases - it is automatically detected and supported.
It still has a ways to go though. Second-generation hardware is still not supported well enough yet - for example, ACPI doesn't work properly on my A7N8X Dlx. The system randomly crashes with it enabled and generates a ton of interrupt errors.
I am really quite impressed with the new functionality of the 2.6 series kernels. I think I'll go off and upgrade to 2.6.2 now...
Ads? What ads?
i think its funny that people put profanities in their code, but i think its even funnier that someone codded a program to look for swear words in code!
lol
spend money here
"and worth some reflection on just how far Linux has come in the last decade."
Well for one, penguin awareness across the globe is way up.
I notice from the swearing chart that the number of occurrences of the word "shit" has gone up in kernels 2.6.2 and 2.6.3. What happened? Did they get some new psychotic core developer? Heh.
Linus: I actually have no good idea at all: I haven't really followed either the CD-ROM sales or any ftp statistics, so it's rather hard to say. I guesstimate a user base of about 50,000 active users: that may be way off-base, but it doesn't sound too unlikely. The c.o.l. newsgroup had about 80,000 readers according to the network statistics back before the split (and I haven't looked at the statistics since), and I saw a number like 10,000 CD-ROMs sold somewhere. Not all of those are active users, I'm sue, but that would put some kind of lower limit on the number.
Here is a article from 1994 from Linux Journal about the DECUS conference.
I also once enjoyed reading an account of the early days of Linux by his near friend. I just can't remember the link or the name of him.
"Until you do what you believe in, how do you know whether you believe in it or not?" -- Leo Tolstoy
Linus (rhymes with shyness) Torvalds (author of the Linux kernel, see box) traded e-mails with us for several days in January giving us his views on the future direction of Linux (rhymes with clinics) and his ongoing role in its development.
Linux Journal: Ken Thompson was once asked, if he had the chance to do it all again, what changes would he make in Unix. He said he would add an e to the creat system call.
How about you and Linux?
Linus: Well, Considering how well it has turned out, I really can't say something went wrong: I have done a few design mistakes, and most often those have required re-writing code (sometimes only a bit, sometimes large chunks) to correct for them, but that can't be avoided when you don't really know all the problems
If it's something I have problems with, it's usually the interface between user-level programs and the kernel: kernel-kernel relations I can fix easily in one place, but when I notice that the design of a system call is bad, changing that is rather harder, and mostly involves adding a new system call which has semantics that are the superset of the old and then leaving in a compatibility-hack so that the old calls still work. Ugly, and I avoid it unless it really has to be done.
Right now I'd actually prefer to change the semantics of the and write() system calls subtly, but the gains aren't really worth the trouble.
Linux Journal: The most consistent compliment that Linux receives is its stability on Intel PC computers. This is particularly true compared to ``real Unices'' that have been ported to the Intel platform.
What do you see that was done right in Linux that is causing problems for these other PC Unices?
Linus: There are probably a couple of reasons. One is simply the design, which is rather simple, and naturally suits the PC architecture rather well. That makes many things easier. I'd suspect that the other reason is due to rather stable drivers: PC hardware is truly horrendous in that there are lots of different manufacturers, and not all of them do things the same (or even according to specs).
That results in major problems for anybody who needs to write a driver that works on different systems, but in the case of linux this is at least partially solved by reasonably direct access to a large number of different machines. The development cycle of linux helps find these hardware problems: with many small incremental releases, it's much easier to find out exactly what piece of code breaks/fixes some hardware. Other distributions (commercial or the BSD 386-project which uses a different release schedule) have more problems in finding out why something doesn't work on a few machines even though it seems to work on all the others.
Linux Journal: Have you heard of any problems running Linux on the Pentium chip? Do you expect any?
Linus: I know from a number of reports that it works, and that the boot-up detection routines even identify the chip as a Pentium ("uname -a" will give "i586" with reasonably new kls, as I ignore Intel guidelines about the name). The problems are not likely to occur due to the actual processor itself, as much as with the surrounding hardware: with a Pentium chip, manufacturers are much more likely to use more exotic hardware controllers for better performance, and the drivers for them all won't necessarily exist for linux yet. So I've had a few reports of a Pentium PCI machine working fine, but that the kernel then doesn't recognize the SCSI hard disk, for example.
From a performance viewpoint, the current gcc compiler isn't able to do Pentium-specific optimizations, so sadly linux won't be able to take full advantage of the processor right now. I don't know when gcc will have Pentium-optimization support, but I expect it will come eventually (most of the logic for it should already be there, as gcc can already handle similar optimization problems for other complex processors).
One interesting thing is that the "bogo-mips" loop I use to calibrat
Somehow I dont think Linux Journal has multiple T-3 connections...
...is it really about the story or just trying to show how slash whips phpNuke's ass?
$30 Off All Plans: Use code TRIPLESAWBUCK
well, fuck aint as popular as it used to be, but there's crap and shit all over. It's spreading more rapidly than our holy penguin!
In times like these, it is helpful to remember that there have always been times like these. - Paul Harvey
The site admins just finish blowing out the candles, and slashdot blows out the server.
...
Our work is done here
"It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
why does it matter that you work for the government and have multiple t3? get back to work and quit wasting my tax dollars.
although some people may find the link about the word count of the various "swear words" in the linux source tree amusing, i do not. it's not that i have a problem with swearing, i just don't think that's the place for it.
i know that when i do coding, i try to make sure that not only the code itself is of high quality, but also that the comments are informative and useful -- not vulgar.
i just think that it's a childish thing to do.
notice the sudden increase of crap in 2.4.2 . that must be when they add the stolen unix code.
They asked Linus this question in 1994. And are we all using Amigas and DEC Alphas? Nope. I wonder what assumptions that we're making these days (x86_64 will take over the desktop, Microsoft will keep losing market share to Linux, Slashdot will eventually get redesigned, etc.) will end up being dead wrong, and funny when you look back. Maybe all of the above ...
Stan: Oh my God! They Slashdotted LinuxJournal!
Cartman: You bastards!
The only reason we have the rights we have is that people just like us died to gain those rights. -- Cheerio Boy
It's quite amusing to consider how far Linus' operating system has come, how big it has become - to the point of challenging the multi-billion dollar corporations - when you think that at the start, Linus himself had said Linux wouldn't "be big and professional like gnu". Or to quote the original USENET post:
Heh."Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect" -- Linus Torval
Posted on Tuesday, March 01, 1994 by LJ Staff
Linus (rhymes with shyness) Torvalds (author of the Linux kernel, see box) traded e-mails with us for several days in January giving us his views on the future direction of Linux (rhymes with clinics) and his ongoing role in its development.
Linux Journal: Ken Thompson was once asked, if he had the chance to do it all again, what changes would he make in Unix. He said he would add an e to the creat system call.
How about you and Linux?
Linus: Well, Considering how well it has turned out, I really can't say something went wrong: I have done a few design mistakes, and most often those have required re-writing code (sometimes only a bit, sometimes large chunks) to correct for them, but that can't be avoided when you don't really know all the problems
If it's something I have problems with, it's usually the interface between user-level programs and the kernel: kernel-kernel relations I can fix easily in one place, but when I notice that the design of a system call is bad, changing that is rather harder, and mostly involves adding a new system call which has semantics that are the superset of the old and then leaving in a compatibility-hack so that the old calls still work. Ugly, and I avoid it unless it really has to be done.
Right now I'd actually prefer to change the semantics of the and write() system calls subtly, but the gains aren't really worth the trouble.
Linux Journal: The most consistent compliment that Linux receives is its stability on Intel PC computers. This is particularly true compared to ``real Unices'' that have been ported to the Intel platform.
What do you see that was done right in Linux that is causing problems for these other PC Unices?
Linus: There are probably a couple of reasons. One is simply the design, which is rather simple, and naturally suits the PC architecture rather well. That makes many things easier. I'd suspect that the other reason is due to rather stable drivers: PC hardware is truly horrendous in that there are lots of different manufacturers, and not all of them do things the same (or even according to specs).
That results in major problems for anybody who needs to write a driver that works on different systems, but in the case of linux this is at least partially solved by reasonably direct access to a large number of different machines. The development cycle of linux helps find these hardware problems: with many small incremental releases, it's much easier to find out exactly what piece of code breaks/fixes some hardware. Other distributions (commercial or the BSD 386-project which uses a different release schedule) have more problems in finding out why something doesn't work on a few machines even though it seems to work on all the others.
Linux Journal: Have you heard of any problems running Linux on the Pentium chip? Do you expect any?
Linus: I know from a number of reports that it works, and that the boot-up detection routines even identify the chip as a Pentium ("uname -a" will give "i586" with reasonably new kls, as I ignore Intel guidelines about the name). The problems are not likely to occur due to the actual processor itself, as much as with the surrounding hardware: with a Pentium chip, manufacturers are much more likely to use more exotic hardware controllers for better performance, and the drivers for them all won't necessarily exist for linux yet. So I've had a few reports of a Pentium PCI machine working fine, but that the kernel then doesn't recognize the SCSI hard disk, for example.
From a performance viewpoint, the current gcc compiler isn't able to do Pentium-specific optimizations, so sadly linux won't be able to take full advantage of the processor right now. I don't know when gcc will have Pentium-optimi
In times like these, it is helpful to remember that there have always been times like these. - Paul Harvey
It is not a problem with Linux per se. It is a problem with the culture. The Geeks spend too much time trying to show non-Geeks how uncool using Windows is, instead of trying to spread gospel, so to speak.
Today, the schism between these two classes is so great one views the other with hostility and mistrust. This is not how a society should evolve.
What should be done in the next ten years?
Nothing to see here
Bill Gates: "Destroy him, my scobots"
Excuse me, linux was more unix like. I remember when I switched from slackware to redhat back in the 5.2 days. This was back when the new gnome libs were just coming out and I had no idea it would be where it is today. Many of the tools back then were direct rip-offs of common UNIX tools. It's good to see Linux making it's own path these days and I hope it continues. We need to be the leader, not following one.
www.slashrank.org
FreeBSD celebrated its 10th anniversary this past november .
Has anyone thought that the text that belongs to SCO in the Linux kernel maybe only the sweat words? :)
And I disagree that GNU/Linux systems haven't improved. They support a lot more devices, are a lot more stable, and are generally faster and have better desktop software available. I'm writing this using Mozilla Firefox on KDE 3.2. From where I'm sitting, Linux looks like a bit more than a basic console OS.
What's Linus's current relationship with beer? Does he still drink lots of it? Can I get the penguin-hoisting-a-beer-stein logo back in my kernel?
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
I was completely riveted by the portion of the interview that detailed the night on which Linus broke into SCO headquarters to steal their intellectual property.
It's nice to know that 10 years later, he probably still hasn't gone through that entire cache of toilet paper.
Nah, Winmodems were a passing fad. Real geeks use DSL or WiFi ;-)
YES!
However the 'man picks his nose with electric drill' story is not.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Looking at the graph of swear word counts,
I definately see some sort of correlation
of the occurances of the words "crap" and
"penguin".
There's a jump in "crap" when the word
"penguin" makes it's first appearance.
There is a prominent spike in both in the
2.2 timeframe, as well as early 2.4, and
the graph ends with an uptick in the
occurances of both words.
What's the conenction? Is someone making
lots of references to "penguin crap" or
something?
Due to the pressure that the open source world has placed on Microsoft, the Redmond based giant has announced it will now include a swear count feature to rival that of the Linux survey tool for source code statistics. Betatests of the software have revealed that the source code for Windows XP contains the word 'crap' appears on a scale ten times larger than that of the linux kernel. Most instances of the word crap however, are not located in the comments of the source code, but come mostly from names of most functions, procedures, and objects - thus giving an accurate description of their value.
Linux/Unix is an operating system, nothing more.
Multi-media support, windowing systems, etc are application or user level programs. They should not be part of the OS, like Windows. Doing so increases security problems and makes the system potentially unstable.
...if he was thinking "I'll take over the world, any day now..." I'm sure he'd have given up long ago. If you start talking numbers, you immediately start talking about the competition. And as far as I can tell, he hasn't cared much about that, ever.
Even if he could have predicted what Linux would be today, I think he (and everyone else) would have a hard time guessing what Windows (admit it, 2000/XP line is a big step up from 95/98/ME *shudder*) and OS X (Apple? BSD based?!) would be like as well.
For being a SWAG I think he did quite well.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Thing is, the geeks are wrong.
Remember the DVD authoring article of yesterday? One dood got his +5 informative for a longwinded explanation of how to do it, which involved about a dozen complicated command lines to type.
Try to explain to anyone other than a linux zealot how that's superior to the two or three mouse clicks it would take to produce with Ulead MediaStudio, or Adobe Encore (the first of which shipped with my burner anyways).
Security, sure, reliability - arguably - I've had linux crap out plenty of times for no good reason, usability - you have to be kidding.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Stop saying how bad windows is. Say how good Linux is.
I propose saying how free linux is and that that is what makes the big difference at the end of the day in how it is good as a system and in how it is good as a community.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
* Few really and truly understand it from top to bottom. ...And finally, Penguins and Kernel hackers both stay out of the sun for at least 6 months in each given year. (cue rim-shot here.)
* It appears to be a helpless critter and an easy target, yet it happily survives in conditions that would kill most other creatures.
*
Cheers,
/P
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
GEE WIZ - and do we interpret you correctly? You want to infuse Linux and open source with CHRISTIANITY?
What a lovely thought.
[Moron.]
Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
If someone coded a program to look for swear count programs, right?
You just made me think of that scene from Absolutely Fabulous... when it's Edinas 40th birthday and she blows out the lit candles with a fire extinguisher (and the cake goes with it too).
On a seperate note, I loved question in the article asking Linus if he wanted a free subscription to Linux Journal... oh the irony!
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
Yeah, we know what redundant means and how to use a dictionary, you fool!
Don't care, am a happy Mac coolaid drinker and don't see the point of switching to a platform that is even more arcane than Windows. 99% of all articles going along the lines of "how the fsck am I supposed to do this or connect that" are total non-issues to me - although I do have a 3-button mouse-thingy ...
But I love the effort of moving all those cute K-programs natively to OS X... and love the GPL/BSD movement, very cool, good luck and congrats on having such a great community.
I think, therefore I am...I think.
...then I'll take some heed as to your notion of "appropriate" or not with respect to comments.
Linus et. al. have created an operating system I have used for over a decade and made over a million dollars using. If they find a little harmless humor or expressive freedom in swearing on occasion in the comments of their code, more power to them.
Saying "this implimentation if f*cked and needs fixed" is (in context) informative even if it is vulgar, and, quite frankly, it is their code, not Disney's (or $CO's).
i know that when i do coding, i try to make sure that not only the code itself is of high quality, but also that the comments are informative and useful -- not vulgar.
i just think that it's a childish thing to do.
It is no more childish than chiding someone who has put countless hours of hard work in for your benefit because their linguistic aesthetic differs from yours.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I couldn't agree more. amigoro makes a good point; there is too much concentration on the negatives of Windows-use and not enough concentration on the positives of Linux-use. I think the concentration on Linux should be more about why it is better, then worry about explaining the concept of open source, etc. The problem seems to be that you have too many absurd freaks like RMS and ERS out there yammering on and on about "free software" and whatever other definitions they want to invent on a regular basis, and this type of stuff turns nerds like me away from actually getting into Linux. Maybe some people, like myself, don't feel the need to concern themselves with philosophy all the time. I'm sorry, but I'm not the type of person whose strong sense of conviction is going to keep me focused for 8 hours straight so I can grasp ALL the concepts of a Linux distro install. Yeah, I've installed and played around with several distros of Linux, and yes I'm impressed. I see great potential there. The problem right now, as far as I'm concerned, is that there is too much of a political component to Linux.
Personally, I understand the concept of open source, but I'm sure a lot of people who might be interested in Linux don't. If they could just see the benefits first hand, see how great they can work for them, and THEN be told, "By the way, this was all made by dedicated and talented people in their own free time and as a hobby", I'm sure that would impress a lot of people on that fact alone. Most people need to see it to believe it, and the comments I hear so often here on slashdot comments like "Window users are stupid", and this is a pretty straightforward window into the mentality of a dangerous clique of Linux users out there; the ones who don't really care about a beneficial software movement, bute care more about appearing elitist and more intelligent than all of the "dumb" Windows-using masses. No wonder tech nerds like myself and the regular "dumb" Windows users don't want to touch Linux right now when it means having all this holier-than-thou philosophy being crammed down our/their throats.
All I'm saying is that I think Linux can have great potential, but the problem now is that it is so surrounded in geek philosophy that people would rather just use their Windows machines because it does what they need right now.
--
Is it me, or did it just get fatter in here?
No, no, you didn't finish the couplet...
"A new religion that'll bring Bill to his knees
Black Penguin, if you please..."
In article peter@taronga.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
/can/
>adam@flammulated.owlnet.rice.edu (Adam Justin Thornton) writes:
>> I'm frustrated because I'm too cheap to buy a decent OS for my 386 and GNU OS
>> isn't out yet and I have to run this silly little loader called MSDOS.
>
>Well, check out comp.os.minix. As the Arch-OS/2 fiend Peter Busser has informed
>me, there's a 386 kernel called linux under development in Finland. You need
>MINIX to bring it up, though.
Happily this isn't true any more (needing minix, that is). Linux
be used without minix, but it's not a tool for a user yet. Hacker-
material (ie I've got gcc, uemacs etc, but no real utils). Wait for
Hurd if you want something real. It's fun hacking it, though (but I'm
biased).
Linus "finger me for more info" Torvalds
(torvalds@kruuna.helsinki.fi)
---------
Hehe, I wonder if he is still waiting for Hurd to do something real.
Unfortunately, you're doing the same damned thing you're railing against:
The Geeks spend too much time trying to show non-Geeks how uncool using Windows is
[flame]Geeks are annoying. Most people only want to deal with them when something is broken. Most people don't like being preached to.[/flame]
(And yes, you can be both a UNIX guru and a non-geek.)
Understand that Linux is superior to Windows
By any sane/balanced person's standards, Linux is not categorically superior to Windows, sorry.
Linux may be simpler and speedier in many situations, but loses to Windows badly in the terms of: available software for the masses, gaming, video work, 3D design, drafting/CAD, audio work.
Simply put, Linux isn't the right thing for everyone, or perhaps even most people (for other than economical reasons). Recommending Linux to people who are better off using Windows or OS X is going to piss these people off and make them have a very unfavorable view of Linux, justified or not.
Stop saying how bad windows is
Quite some contradictory statements you've made there. You might want to rethink things.
or that "penguin" is considered a swear word.
Linux would benefit more if people would look at it as simply an OPERATING system, rather than a (religious) BELIEF system.
There's a reason why Linus has consistently distanced himself from the zealots; they don't represent his personal vision/goal of Linux.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Do you even know what that means, fuckwad?
DVD authoring? blah... get the Macheads here and we'd have a jolly good time.
Shove that copy of Windows far up your ass monkeyboy, then shit it out onto a cookie dish, bake it in the oven, then eat it, shit it out again, repeat.
Pure Goebbels. Great stuff.
LinuxNews, October 18-26, 1992 (scroll down to the "Interview" section).
Linus: "I'm most certainly going to continue to support it, until it either dies out or merges with something else. That doesn't necessarily mean I'll make weekly patches for the rest of my life, but hopefully they won't be needed as much when things stabilize." 8-)
"There are already a million monkeys on a million typewriters, and Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare." - Blair Houghton
The linuxjournal server is definitely ./ed but its still chugging along... if you wait long enough it'll give you the page.
--The best thing about working at home... Homebrew!
GWB said basically the same thing right after 9/11.
Don't care, am a happy Mac coolaid drinker and don't see the point of switching to a platform that is even more arcane than Windows.
echo 'Could not have done this on a shitty Mac'
Fucking rich kids. Sheesh.. Your parents need to quit spoiling you. Now here's something you can't do with your Mac:
CTRL-ALT-N
CTRL-ALT-N
CTRL-ALT-N
CTRL-ALT-N
Which one is better
(a) Goebbels
or
(b) Sex with a mare?
A lot of the arguments supporting Linux in there are now used by Windows supporters. Things like "All the software I want runs now" and the like.
Rolled in there with greater portability and flexibility, I guess Linux's focus has changed in ten years. I think that's probably the most important thing to note.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
that quote isn't in there
That reminds me: Do you--like me--feel naughty when editing the profanity filter for a bulletin board?
Linux has created two classes of people. Those who can, and those who can't. ...
Today, the schism between these two classes is so great one views the other with hostility and mistrust.
There are two classes of people. Those who understand and make tools, and those who use tools without understanding them. To drive a car it is not necessary to be able to tear down and rebuild the engine. It's a good idea to have a bit of respect for all the stuff you are not aware of.
What should be done in the next ten years?
De-mystify Linux
Good Luck, but remember (misphrased?) "Unix is simple but it takes a genius to understand its simplicity". Unix is lower-case and case sensitive. This is very off-putting to anyone who associates computers with PRINTED BLOCK CAPITALS. Lower case looks and feels different. Remember there is an enormous gulf between doing some things and doing all things.
True. Past the trivial, Windows users need to be superior to Linux users to accomplish the same thing.
It's just a computer. The better the computer system, the more this holds.
Computer systems suffer from the Flat Earth Society Syndrome. The computer does not know what the computer does not know. There is an edge where the computer's knowledge drops off. The computer not only cannot see the edge, it is incapable of comprehending that an edge could even exist.
Stop saying how bad windows is. Say how good Linux is.
Sorry, but I am using Windows. I will keep saying how bad Windows is. When I am using Linux I will stop saying how bad Windows is.
That dramatic sweep of hair across his brow, like he just tossed his head and there it fell, a cascade of black like the velvet curtain of night. I want him to take me on the hood of a King Tiger, its 1400 horsepower engine revving as he violates the virginal secrets of my Eagle's Nest.
I picture it like those glorious mass rallies the Nazis used to have. There he is lovingly pounding away at my second front while legions of goose-stepping Aryans march past and salute our union. Just as Hitler is about to empty his tiny ubermenschen into the expanse of my Liebe-raum a wing of Stukas will fly overhead, their sirens howling in synchronicity with the primal cries of pleasure from Der Fuehrer. My god, what a man!
How would one go about *testing* an old version of linux in a modern distro. I mean it would be cool to turn back the clock and try a very early version in chroot environment. Is this even possible on modern hardware? Or would I have dig out the old 386?
mitomac
moderators, **immediate** +1 funny attention needed just above.
Hehe, yeah, that's a cool one.
I bookmarked it when I saw it about a year ago.
Well, it's amusing that it's .com and not the proper .mil . But that just shows that the liberals are sometimes right about some things.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
And sadly I have no points. :-(
Well spoken, however.
Everytime I upgrade windows I not only have to rip the OS but a lot of the Apps to (ME=Poor3rdWorldSlave). Linux on the other-hand upgrades everything, supports older hardware better, by witch I mean my girls PI 233 MHz [IntelInside ;)] 92MB PC.
;) - but because it runs Firefox wich takes 10s to print to a post script file compaired to 30+ secs using Opera & PDF Machine - I love this ability of Firefox.
:)
I first used Win98 on it (2000 and XP won't install but it now uses Mandrake 9.2 & Gnome. It was an easy sell to get her off Win98 and onto Linux - not just because of the eyecandy
On the email side Evolotion is usable enough for her because she loves it enough to forgive it the speed loss compaired to using TheBat mail client on 98.
This all works for me beacuse I use her Linux box to keep my dialup working without a hic-up, which saves on the telephone bill - infinite calls = 60 hours for $0.7
I wish I could melt all my warez, but I just can't get my dual monitor display working (I use it as a tv/dvd player) on my ATI RADEON 7000 / S3 cards with XFree86 that comes with Mandrake 9.2 (think its ver 4.3) but will try with Mandrake 10 and a downloaded 4.4 - Hope to hell it works!
Cheers - enjoy the weekend.
Don't make your problems my problems!
It's interesting to note that the interview conducted by the publisher of the first Linux Journal - Bob Young, who left his own mark of history of linux. Namely as a co-founder of RedHat.
Umm, I was using Linux ten years ago, or trying to use it, anyway. It had a lot of power, but to claim that it 'far surpassed with I was using on the desktop' is presumtuous and plain wrong.
And with that, I have to agree with your second paragraph. It's improved quite a bit. I don't run KDE or Gnome, though, so that isn't where I'd say it's improved. FVWM2 is better than FVWM, of course.
---
Do you think your average user cares about this? Chances are he's running a pirated copy of Windows already, so he could care less whether or not it's free, and certainly won't bother to make the gratis/libre or beer/speech distinction since he simply doesn't care. What matters is the software support, and whether or not he can quickly and easily perform all of the tasks he's used to on Windows. What also matters is the hardware support, and the guarantee that the TV tuner card he just bought for $20 after rebate at Best Buy works properly with his operating system.
Of course, the issue with a lot of Linux evangelists is that they fail to realize how Windows is good enough for most people, that people are extremely stubborn, and will only change when forced to. My aunt Kathy doesn't care that Linux is made by a team of volunteers all around the world, or that Gnome and KDE offer many superior features to Windows. She cares that she can hop onto overpriced and under-featured America Online garbage and check her email. This is true of the majority of computer users, not the minority of dumb ones.
You can preach about free software all you want, but in the end, does it get the job done? And is it enough of an improvement to get people to give up what they've been using for years and learn an entirely new system?
There is absolutely no doubt that the Linux community has come a tremendous distance even in the last year or so. But we need to fucking work and work and work at improving the quality of the software, and drivers, if it's going to gain any mass-market acceptance. We're not done yet.
der is not capitalized, diphshit
FreeBSD celebrated its 10th anniversary this past november .
:)
Cool, I have occasionally wondered how old the free BSD's were, because I first learned of Linux when trying to learn Unix to help my chances of getting a particular job back in 1994. (I got it, by the way.) I had a couple of "UNIX emulators" which were really just simulators to learn the commands. Linux was the only free real-life Unix I found. At the time I thought BSD was for pay only. I didn't expect much when I downloaded Linux, but after trying it I thought it was the most awesome thing because it let me learn IT concepts at very low levels, and it was fully 32-bit.
Frequently I ready FreeBSD'ers talk about how they've been around longer than Linux, but that puzzled me since I was in on Linux before I heard of FreeBSD. So, did I just not read the right places, or did Linux take off faster than the free BSD's? I keep wondering if I'm not a FreeBSD user by luck or because Linux was available first.
(My first Linux was Slackware downloaded to floppies. It was Slackware 2.something; I remember Slackware 3.0 was called Slackware95
I propose saying how free linux is and that that is what makes the big difference at the end of the day in how it is good as a system and in how it is good as a community.
No one cares how "free" Linux is aside from people like us. Windows is free to normal people because it comes with the computer. But I do tell people how bad Windows is. Its probably the 2nd worse OS I've used, next to DOS (if you can count that as an OS). And I'm not picking those because they are from the same company, I'm saying it in terms of reliability and usability (I know many will disagree with me here). People know I'm a computer person, and they come to me with Windows problems, and I tell them that they are Windows problems, and that is why I don't use it, nor know too much about it anymore. I don't tell them to run Linux either. I would never do that. I recommend for "normal" people to buy a Mac. Unfortunately, they are expensive.
This sums up two problems:
1 Windows users don't give a damn about being "cool," they don't give a damn about being "Geek."
2 But, most of all, they don't make a religion out of an operating system.
Understand that Linux is superior to Windows... Stop saying how bad windows is. Say how good Linux is.
For all the talk of the cathedral and the bazaar, there is an authoritarian undertone to Linux advocacy that is not lost on the average Windows user. It is after all Windows and not Linux that brought computing to the masses and defined the experience in ways that they could understand.
Well, I finally got a story accepted. About time!
/. guys--I never had that link in there. It is hilarious, though!
/. editors were right in changing the title; theirs was better!
The last link (to the word count) was added by the
And yeah, the 'christened the maiden issue' bit was my attempt to add some creativity in hopes of acceptance.
Finally, the title was changed as well...I think I originally put in 'Linus on Linux -- One Decade Ago' or some such. The
So why is he trying to bother me How many reasons do they need I might just be right this time I'm talking for free i can stop myself it's a new religion oh I've something to see I can't help myself it's a new religion yeah
No one. You may have assumed it was attributed to Linus, but no one claimed it was.
...has just pulled the plug on their name and operations in Europe. See MSNBC's web site for the story unless you want to wait for /. to parrot it.
Buzz off, German. We kicked your asses in WW2. So shut the hell up and pray for the poor souls that died to liberate your shitty little country.
;-)
The uniforms were cool, tho.
haha yes.. only about 2 million lines of code and not much "fuck" at all in them..
;)
now lets look at microsoft.. 2 million lines of working code and 18 million more lines of FUCK.. So thats why M$ is so bloated
hey, it's our money that pays for those damn T-3's! why don't you get back to work instead of surfing slashdot during work?
additionally: eat it.
This would be fine if users haven't come to expect windowing systems, media players, et. al., to perform well, be installed out-of-the box, and have an integrated look and feel.
About five years ago I realized that MicroSoft sets the computer user community back by about 10 years. The reason is that they provide features that don't really work. Right now we have Windows that would some times not maximize, a task manager that sometimes cannot kill a process, an explorer that hangs and needs to be restarted by hand and an OS that some time is not be able to shut-down.
By contrast, I claimed to friends in 1997, if all this was done on more stable platforms -- Linux for example -- they would be late in coming and it would be some time before the grandma can send the pictures to the family by e-mail but the technology will be dependable when it is available.
This I believe to be one of the greatest harm M$ has done -- created features that don't really work. Most computer uses believe that the computer does need to shut down every night and that it does need to keep getting slow as time passes.
But I am happy to see that the features are becoming available in more stable environments and that these are taking less then 10 years to catch up.
I still have faith. Some day the computers will work as they aught to.
It's hard to find the "f" word inside another word, but when I grep through linux 2.4 looking for other words, I find quite a few hits on:
Matsushita (a hardware vendor, I guess)
scrap
While I have your attention, does anyone happen to know how to isolate specific words from the lines that match? I wanted to come up with a matching wordlist without the surrounding words that "grep" produces.
And that end is in sight now, right guys?
Guys?
-Chris
"Slashdot will eventually get redesigned, etc.) will end up being dead wrong,"
Where the hell did my "Barrel of Circus Monkeys" go?
I miss them already.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
... that Linus was not realizing that he was revolutionizing and empowering the porn industry :)
I'm a dad, not a kid.
I think, therefore I am...I think.
[Linus] has coordinated a great deal of it, but linux is no longer his.
I disagree. He has done an outstanding job of managing the dev process for Linux. One of the most valuable things he does is to say "no": he won't let Linux bloat up needlessly and he won't accept badly-written patches. He has a vision for the kernel that has turned out to be excellent; he ignored the prevailing wisdom of the day that microkernel was the way to go, and that worked out (look where HURD is compared to Linux), he pushes at all times for simplicity (consider his interactivity boost, consider his plans to replace numeric IOCTLs with file-like semantics).
He's not perfect. His continuing refusal to accept kernel debugger hooks in the mainline kernel is silly (he has claimed that kernel debuggers are a crutch, for those who don't fully grok the kernel).
But without Linus, the Linux kernel would not be as amazingly great as it is today.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
drivers drivers drivers and drivers you mean? yes yes yes yes yes. desperately. don't get me wrong, it gets 9 outa ten drivers on every system i have, but lets be honest here, if one box has no sound in linux, and one has no modem, and one has no ethernet, and one can't use the video card, which one am i going to run linux on here?
side note: win2k3 server is worse in the driver department than linux, no joke! i had 4 nics in in my server all running in 2k adv. server, switched to 2k3 advanced server, and half of them died from not having compatible drivers, and these were netgear and kingston 10/100's, not some ancient crap...
-and occasionaly a giant moose.
Mac OS X is a rock-solid open-source operating system, the most modern OS in the world! The other system cannot compete! So they have to be sold for free! Because nobody will buy them for any money!!!!!!! ! Hah ahah ahaha ahhaha!!! Apple has won and you have lost! But we are not sore winners so we invited you to come over and enjoy the greatest world system, Mac OS X!
If you do not believe how GREAT APPLE IS compared to your precious (like gollum on Lord of The Rings! HAH) Linus system, then READ THIS!! It is SOOOOOO MUCH BETTER THAT I CAN'T EVEN BELIEVE IT!!!
Linux is close to dead and WE are here to fill the space you leave in death of OS!!
JOIN Mac OSX and SEE FOR YOURSELF how good computers are SUPPOSED TO BE if they are not made by hacker and students in school like Linus Trovald.
YOU PEOPLE NEED TO LEARN about Mac OSX or you will be left as LOSERS with a computer nobody cares about. Nobody cares about freedom softwares, as long as Apple looks better you will lose forever. Open source! HAH! I do not think so! Everybody leaves you and gets a REAL computer made by the PROS!!!
READ THIS!!
From the Apple Mac OS X Page:
I guess I vaguely agree with the sentiment you and the grandparent poster expressed. Yes, there are some vocal zealots in the Linux camp who do more harm to their cause than good. But being a nerd/geek/whatever you should look past the ideology and concentrate on the geeky aspects: it's powerful, it's educational, and it's free.It doesn't take eight hours. There are pretty GUI installers (Mandrake, SuSE) that will guide you through everything, including partitioning and hardware configuration. You don't even have to RTFM (but it is a good idea). The only instance you would seriously have to devote time to study would be installing LFS. Does it take you 8 hours to (re)install Windows? No, it takes...what, 1-1.5 hours from start to desktop?Must have taken you days.
That's probably uncalled for but exaggeration bothers me.Yes, this attitude is quite wide spread and it does put people off. If you think someone is more or less intelligent based on their IT skills, you need to step back and evaluate just how much you've integrated them into your own ego. But Linux users do tend to be more knowledgeable about computers generally than their Windows brethren because:-
Then they should do just that. I have Windows using friends and, believe it or not, I don't shout at them all the time for using Windows. For their (non-geeky) needs, switching to Linux wouldn't be worth it.
For geeks though, it is. Like that poster's sig says: I use Linux because it's like having a chainsaw instead of a penknife. Not always necessary but more fun.
"The number of Unix installations has grown to ten, with more expected." (Unix Programmer's Manual, 2nd ed.; june 1972)
Linux has created two classes of people. Those who can, and those who can't
Linux didn't create those classes. I notice the same classes when it comes to many other things: fixing things around the house, working on cars, making things in a wood shop, etc.
It looks to me like there is a growing class of poeple out there that want everything handed to them on a silver platter sans any sense of understanding.
Today, the schism between these two classes is so great one views the other with hostility and mistrust.
Yeah, I see that too. But I think you misidentify the cause. And, once again, I don't think Linux has much to do with this.
Case in point: I was called by a Windows user the other day. He couldn't connect over the phone to a new AOL account. When I picked up the phone I could clearly hear just way too much noise on the line. I demonstrated how even a known good external modem would fail exactly the same way and told him that he had to have the phone line fixed. He treated me like I was lying to him, simply would not believe that there was anything wrong with the phone line and basically threw me out because I couldn't resolve his problem.
The source of his hostility and mistrust was not my preaching at him (I didn't) or any kind of complexity in Windows (the probelm was elsewhere). It was more likely situated in the fact that his problem couldn't be fixed right now, goddamnit, with no effort on his part! He didn't understand what was going on, I did, and why couldn't I just make the magic so it would work? Sorry, that's not how the universe works.
Understand that Linux is superior to Windows, but Linux users are not superior to Windows users.
Sorry, that's just not how I see it and I see a lot of both Windows and Linux users. Face it, there is a certain minimum knowledge about computers required to use Linux and, right now at least, it is higher than that required to use Windows. So, from that one particular standpoint - a basic knowledge of how computers work, the average Linux user is almost certainly superior to the average Windows user.
As another point in passing, I notice that Linux users are also the same people that fix things around the house, work on their own cars and have woodworking as a hobby. In general they understand that some things are possible only after acquiring a certain skillset and, God forbid!, actually put some effort into learning something new instead of just having everything handed to them on a silver platter.
what would Nick Park have used in his Wallace and Grommit movie?
The Windows 2003 HCL (Hardware Compatiblity List) is your friend. Windows 2003 does a few system-level things differently, including drivers. This was widely documented and I'm surprised that you apparently didn't hear about it before you decided to upgrade.
Nah, Winmodems were a passing fad. Real geeks use DSL or WiFi ;-)
Um.... Fax.
I recently spoke with my Mother who is admittedly one of the majority of people who really don't care much about operating systems, back-ends and god knows what else. We discussed the idea of putting Mandrake on her machine. The reason this is not really an issue is because there is no reason I can't set it up to dual-boot into Windows as well. This will give her a safe place to go when she's having trouble, but at the same time, I will set up Mandrake to be super user friendly and easy to deal with for the applications she'll need. Mozilla, Evolution (or Thunderbird), some simple card games, OpenOffice. I will also set it up so that she has access to her Windows partition from Mandrake so she can keep all her files in one place and won't have to worry about it. Gradually she should come to like and use Mandrake much more. I know that this will work as I did the same thing with my wife at home, and now she won't touch Windows with a ten foot pole.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d Capitalization really works: i helped my uncle jack off a horse
Stop saying how bad windows is
Quite some contradictory statements you've made there. You might want to rethink things.
Nothing contradictory there. Even if you argue that Windows is good, you can also argue that Linux is better. In any case, and in my opinion, it's much better to talk <fill in the blank> up than to talk <fill in the blank differently> down. Think of it in terms of talking about your girl friend, or your religion, or your car. Nobody minds if you think you have a hot girl friend, or a better religion, or a flashier car and back up your beliefs so long as you don't hit people over the head with them. Few people are receptive if you tell them their girl friend is ugly, their choice of religion is a vertical drop to Hell or their car is the worst thing ever to sputter and belch its way out of Detroit.
Someone you trust is one of us.
What printed (not online) Linux magazines are the best for general information? General as in not desktop-specific, not server-specific, etc. Yes, I've googled an found a bunch. Any recommendations?
I subscribed to LJ a few years ago and I was immediately spammed at the unique e-mail address I had created for them. The spam wasn't even remotely related to their magazine either, it was something about Oprah Winfrey. I called them and confronted them. They admitted doing it and I cancelled my subscription without ever receiving a single issue.
I wish you Linux become 100 years old!!! live in prosperity and in good health, and guide us to light as you ever did!!!
"I do hope and expect to be able to find a job much more easily due to linux."
If he cannot get a job with Linux, who could?
LJ 1st Issue
I thought about trying to sell it on eBay. I wonder if it would be worth anything. I did get some extra swag at LinuxWorld when I showed it to the people at the Linux Journal booth.
---
eeww, I'll have a crab juice.
Actually, in some 3D design niches (the really high-end) Linux is better than Windows. That's why a lot of movie studios (eg. ILM) are using it.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
"...By any sane/balanced person's standards, Linux is not categorically superior to Windows, sorry...."
And by the same token, Windows EULA is categorically evil (even borderline criminal) compared to Linux's EULA. So pick your poison.
What should be done?
De-mystify Linux
Understand that Linux is superior to Windows, but Linux users are not superior to Windows users.
Stop saying how bad windows is. Say how good Linux is.
Shoot Windows users.
????????
Profit?
Oh wait, open source. Skip the profit bit, just shoot the Windows users.
...their girl friend is ugly, their choice of religion is a vertical drop to Hell or their car is the worst thing ever to sputter and belch its way out of Detroit.
How the hell do you know so much about me?
Sig: Closed for refurbishment.
Try to explain me how to do that . I found out that GUI's are incredible from single-user perspective but if you have to show to some "new" users thy become a real pain .
yeah right, troll...
Wait till I get my next batch of moderation points, revenge will be mine!!!!
aaahahahahahahaaaaaarghl
oh, don't tell me, this is redundant, right? OKdoK
I think, therefore I am...I think.
Sincere congratulations!
This is the 10,000th posting this week which is motivated by the three magic words "worth the read"!
I remember back in '93 first getting a glimpse of Linus in the photo he mentions. He was arched over a desk, with a beer bottle, and his face completely hidden. Those were the days when you could install Slackware (Linux 0.98.xx or somesuch) from floppies, and RedHat didn't even exist. I remember the excitement when I first installed, and first saw the text console come up with "darkstar login:" (Slackware default). And how great it was to be able to get Linux on a single CD for the first time (from a Walnut Creek CDROM)! I still keep and treasure that CDROM.
I never expected Linux to be such a phenomenon. I was just glad I was able to run at home an OS like what I had at work. (I couldn't afford Coherent, let alone SCO!) I was just glad I didn't have to run DOS or Windows 3.1, never in my wildest dreams did I expect it to threaten the Beast itself!
Today, the schism between these two classes is so great one views the other with hostility and mistrust. This is not how a society should evolve.
Yeah, it's practically a daily news item on how much those non-Linux-users hate and mistrust the Linux users. Practically can't get away from it. Next thing you know they'll pass a Constitutional amendment banning those geeks from getting married!
Time to put on the tinfoil hat.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
But, most of all, they don't make a religion out of an operating system.,
No, instead they make a god out of a little dork who became the richest man in the world by screwing everyone else. In my mind, the Linux zealots are just assholes, while the Billy-G worshippers are downright frightening.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
If he cannot get a job with Linux, who could?
I think you need to brush up your reading comprehension skills. "Due to" is not the same as "with".
yep, how far linux has come. still clunky. still slow. still nearly impossible to use/configure. still a huge piece of shit. sorry dudes, but when it comes to ease of use, hardware support, and nice user interface, MS wins hands down
the Greeks have deprecated the Drachma in favour of the Euro and Beowulf was not a Greek hero anyhow, the remark is not so much Funny as non-sensical and irrelevant.
I'm gonna go and learn C and revise my knowledge of ASM and write a Micro-Monolithic Kernel. >:)
"That'll fuck'm".
Linux would benefit more if people would look at it as simply an OPERATING system, rather than a (religious) BELIEF system.
In the name of the Kernel, and the Module and the Holy Source, Amen.
Wow, that must be a pretty hardcore production server you've got with those $11 NICs.
Dehumanizing Bill Gates leaves Windows users cold. They simply do not think of an operating system in terms of moral philosophy, the cult of personality or Marxist class conflict.
In 1994 Linus wanted SysV binary compatibility. In 2004 commercial Unices want Linux binary compatability. How ironic.
Linux would benefit more if people would look at it as simply an OPERATING system, rather than a (religious) BELIEF system.
So, since I believe that Linux and other free software is better for mankind than proprietary systems, I am hurting Linux? How is this?
All interpreted languages are abstractions over Lisp
In the early twenties it took knowledge, effort and physical risk to get a broadcast receiver up and running, learning respect for high voltage circuits, undertaking hazardous ladder work out-of-doors to string a proper antenna, pile-driving stakes to get decent electrical grounding and so on. But the craft or hobbyist phase of any consumer oriented technology is inevitably short-lived. The machine fades into the background and most of the time it "just works."
A lot of that comes with familiarity and education as much as anything else. A lot of people from a given generation did or did not grow up with certain things or concepts and don't "get" them; and that's fine. Education's difficult sometimes.
How many people know how to program their own VCR?
How many people know how to milk a cow?
How many of you can change your own spark plugs?
How about recompile a kernel?
I have a few professional clients who look at it very intelligently I think; one's a doctor who pointed out that he has no problems paying me to fix up his computer for him just as I'd have no problem paying him to fix me up on an O.R. table.
Neither of us would try to do the other's work and we'd both be happier and less frustrated for it.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
"As to patents, I consider software patents a patently bad idea in the first place, and even if I didn't, I would abhor the paperwork needed."
My wife had the fast Linux learning curve dealt to her the day I replaced the Windows boot screen with a LILO: prompt that defaulted to Linux. I still regret not making 'hell' the name for the Windows boot, but that's beside the point.
Recently she got a job where she was working with Windows computers and came home to tell me all the "problems" they have that we don't have at home with our computer. I pointed out that these were all 'normal' things for Windows and to ask any of her coworkers; they all agreed.
Ugh.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Since he lives in Silicon Valley, which is at a
lower latitude than Redmond. Therefore his house
sweeps a longer path through the heavens.
Linux gained popularity first because at the time, the free version of BSD was mired in a copyright dispute with AT&T.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
Hey guys, just a thought. A few of the computer industry people have been honored in various degrees by many governments. For example, Bill Gates will be knighted soon (see article in last week's Time), Tim Berners-Lee (now Sir) was knighted a few months ago... And a few others were honored in various degrees. I am thinking that Linus should get some sort of official recognition for his contribution to the Computer Science field. Do you agree?
No one cares how "free" Linux is aside from people like us. .
;)
until you've explained to them.
My parents, whom I described in another post as computer clueless, have been running Mandrake linux on their desktop for 2 years.
They don't care about anything that is related to a computer at all. Yet, they are interrested in their computer not having viruses and the computer of their friends being off the net for one or two weeks every 6 months because of them. And being computer illeterates doesnt mean they are dumb, they can understand that a free (-dom) environment means that no unsecure decision based on marketing pressure needs to be done, they can understand that people code is open to peer review and that is shows, and they can understand that billions of euros are not going overseas to fund a notorious monopolistic and unsecure company. And they did.
The original post is about what we should say, that is: advertise or better, promote.
I don't promote anti windows or anti redmond crap, because it relies on redmond doing for ever the same mistakes. They won't.
I promote free software AND talk about the same things as you, even taking redmond as a bad example, but I always link those points to their origin: free code and the comunity behind it are the reasons
I don't tell them to run Linux either. I would never do that. I recommend for "normal" people to buy a Mac.
Well, linux has been a long way since slackware 3.5, you should try some new user friendly distro.
My child who is 7 years old, has her own account, type her login and password then fire up some incredibly stupid video of some hype top of the pop lame singer or the sims. You don't need to know any esoteric stuff to run your desktop as a "normal" user.
In my understanding of the issue being discussed, you are a little off topic, even if all you say is actually true. But english being NOT my mother tongue, maybe it's me who didnt understand the original poster. For sure, I didnt feel I needed to be precise in the free beer/free speech area, because there isn't such mix of notions in my language.
I understood that the original poster was talking about what needs to be PROMOTED to the person we want to recommand linux.
In that understanding, going along the anti windows road is a short sighted decision since redmond won't do the same errors always. It is also perceived as blatant lies by the people who, like you say, are perfectly happy running windows.
On the other hand, the fact that a company needs tens of billions and monopolistic practices to be able to do the same things that a handfull of coders around the globe, and is unable at the end of the day to achieve basic security where the free nature of the free software comunity FORCE THEM to always TRY to reach it actually interrest a lot of people, even clueless users.
People DO have common sense. They do understand the pragmatical benefits of free software without going deep into the theory. So that is what needs to be promoted, because that is what produces the difference.
Since we are talking about common sense, all you said about the work that needs to be done, both for the user who needs his system to perform well and for the coders, is, of course, perfectly true. I wouldnt advise linux for anything that it can't achieve (music or video editing comes to mind for example, although it's moving there), but I wouldnt restrain myself to advise it for any regular desktop behavior.
And is it enough of an improvement to get people to give up what they've been using for years and learn an entirely new system?
In itself, freedon is worth it. Now, I wouldnt advise such a person to give it up, I would advise him/her to give it a try, just to have his opinion made. But that is, another time, off topic. I've seen a mac user, a graphist working in manga edition, unable to switch to windows with the same software. So, linux or not, this point is about habits, and the difficulty to lose them, not about linux, windows, mac or freedom. Hey, even some linux users are lost without their distro!
"640K should be enough for anyone" Bill Gates, 1981
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
I find people's lack of desire for change with the current MS dominance disturbing. Gates, after all, is a convicted monopolist, gave extremely evasive evidence that made him appear an untrustworthy liar and faces massive fines in the EU.
Whenever I mention to people I work in a computing-related area, I get a stream of questions and complaints about lost work, crashes and system corruption caused by MS software. Yet everybody just carries on using MS.
Lemon curry???
You obviously haven't tried Ninnle...cutting edge Linux at its best! Windows hasn't a prayer.
sure, hardcore, if by production server you mean i got drunk, and installed a demo of 2k3 server to run terminal services so that i can use my laptop to play my stereo from any room in the house.
-and occasionaly a giant moose.