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Dvorak on How Microsoft Can Kill Linux
gewg_ writes "John C. Dvorak thinks he knows the way Redmond can kill Linux. Basing his premise on the relative dearth of device drivers available for Linux (compared to what is available for Windows), he sees an opportunity for the Borg to embrace and extinguish." From the article: "The immediate usefulness of Linux running under Windows is obvious. You can use all the Windows drivers for all the peripherals that don't run under Linux. Drivers have always been an issue with Linux as PC users have gotten spoiled with Windows driver support. Today's user wants to grab just about anything and not worry about installing it and making it work."
I thought Microsoft was hell bent on using blunt for trauma.
Pretty Pictures!
Can Dvorak detect life on Mars?
What do you mean I'm in the wrong story?
Sounds like vmware to me....nope did not kill linux and likely never will...
Got Code?
If only this one had been a dupe too, this would have been REALLY funny :-)
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
B
Does anybody still take a word that says seriously anymore? All he ever does is troll for ad hits by saying something which will piss off one fringe group of computer geeks or another.
Honestly. Why ever link to that joker?
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Post an article by John, "The clueless one", Dvorak.
They can't erase all the evidence. It still shows up in user listings of posts.
Cygwin or MS Services for Unix?
Plus, there are quite a few hardware devices that work in Linux and not all versions of Windows, for instance my Kensington SVGA webcam, fine in Linux, not available in Win2k.
Yeah, I think that about sums up this article.
Don't take a knife to a gunfight, or even a knife to a knife fight. Take a gun to a knife fight.
Please don't click the link.
John Dvorak knows the state of Linux drivers versus Windows (or Mac) perfectly well. This is an excellent example of writing something obviously incorrect so you get a huge amount of hits and links from people that (rightly) disagree.
Exactly like the Science Citation Index, actually, but speeded up about 20 times.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
And here I thought users wanted an operating system that was fast and didn't crash... Doesn't using linux under windows defeat the security and stability of linux?
John Dvorak has been in the computer industry about as long as Univac, but I really disagree with him on his points in TFA.
The first thing I disagree with is his assertion of how useful Linux would be when running under Windows. Is anyone crying for this?
His second assertion that Microsoft could create a flavor of Linux with their driver-base that people would adopt is just as loony. Beyond its quality nature, isn't one of the reasons people switch to Linux to get rid of Microsoft and their business practices and high prices?
I'm a big tall mofo.
I'll readily admit as soon as the next person that Linux doesn't support all of the latest & greatest hardware. That doesn't mean that it doesn't support last-generation hardware though - as long as you do research and buy the right sort of hardware, you can usually build a system where almost every piece is well-supported by any given Linux distro.
Companies like Intel and ATi are examples of how the hardware manufacturers are realizing that Linux users want to use their hardware too.
SCREW THE ADS! http://adblock.mozdev.org/ Proud user of teh Fox of Fire - Registered Linux User #289618
Threads that mention Microsoft end up as free-for-alls to bash Microsoft.
Threads that mention Linux end up as free-for-alls that revolve around the view that Linux is 256x better than Windows.
This thread that mentions Microsoft killing Linux will surely spark some flames.
My god!!!
They are even removing comments. I did reply to "Where'd the last story go" but can't find it anymore...
Hey, slashdot, what are you the HELL doing with your users... I'll tell you: soon you'll lose them!
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
B
When windows crashed would it save the data that was being used under linux to a tmp file, like linux does, would would a screen with bill gates dancing in a ton of cash and laughing pop up?
This guy needs to get out there, and play with linux a bit more, instead of just reading all the M$ fud
"Today's user wants to grab just about anything and not worry about installing it and making it work."
If they want to just install a device and go, then why are they bothering with Windows? Isn't that what Apple OS X is for?
"Klaatu, verada, necktie!" -Ash
This was a stupid story when it was on OSNews and it's stupid now. In what universe would making Windows drivers available in Linux hinder Linux adoption in any way? I'll note that Dvorak doesn't have a game plan for how this would work for Microsoft; what's their exit strategy exactly?
"Well Mr. Balmer, 90% of our customers are now using a POSIX operating system with API's we don't control and we're fully commited to continued support. Now what?"
Yeah, that's what I thought.
Microsoft make their money by controling the platform and they control the platform by controlling the API's. How would supporting an open standards based platform with a few drivers hurt Linux and help Microsoft?
L1NuX |)03$n'T $uPp0RT |\/|Y K3YB0aR|)!!! :-(
If that were true, why hasn't Windows gone away?
Dvorak thinks that open-source developers will stop working on their stuff if they perceive it as benefitting Microsoft. I say this is obviously not true; there are many, many projects now that run on Windows (like Firefox, just to pick one major example), and their developers don't seem the least bit deterred by running on Windows.
Have you read my blog lately?
it seems to me that killing access to the windows device drivers might do the exact opposite, and INSPIRE people to learn how to write their own drivers instead of having to rely on the ones provided by the devil.
am i right? if there's a need for it, people will usually come up with it on their own. just because we all like to plug-and-play existing solutions does NOT mean we wouldn't invent our own wheels in the absence of a freely available one.
just a thought.
---------
ask Aziz, he knows!
"when the sun sets on the ghetto, all the broken stuff gets cold"
"John A. Qwerty thinks he knows the way Linux can kill Redmond. Basing his premise on the relative dearth of device drivers available..."
But still since cygwin is feature complete . . Nuf said.
I've read about projects that can use windows drivers. I think there's one for wireless adapters. This is probably a paid link anyway; sensationalist story to drive up the ad revenue. meh.
This analysis is relatively shortsighted considering that there are many many factors beyond device drivers influencing people to use Linux. I would say that freedom from proprietary protocols and file formats is a major factor, and that's something Redmond will never have.
A musician without the RIAA, is like a fish without a bicycle.
M.
It's an interesting article--but I doubt just drivers would satisfy most people. There's applications they'll want to work, too. (That said, I'd personally be delighted if all my hardware would work under Linux; then I'd never need Windows. But I could just as easily have gotten Linux-friendly hardware ... and if you want Linux-ish distro that "just works" ... there's OS X. :)
R.Mo
Its called Cooperative Linux, and has been around for quite some time.
www.colinux.org
Yet, suspiciously, the Linux kernel running on my laptop hasn't spontaneously died. Hmm. This Dvorak chap is quite the retard.
The moving cursor writes, and having written, blinks on.
Dvorak says microsoft can sell a driver layer plugin for Linux based on the idea that vendors will only support the MS driver layer. Likely what would happen if MS in any way supported linux is that more hardware developers would support linux directly, taking away the power MS would have temporarily gained by using a driver layer.
I have experienced that many older/legacy devices have much better support in Linux. They might have drivers for Windows 98 or 95 exclusively and no longer work under XP. So if you don't feel like just throwing some old cards out and getting new ones, sometimes Linux is the only answer.
However, video card drivers are an entirely different matter...
Sure they sell the drivers, but how often does someone need to buy a whole new set?
And if it really took off, developers would start making their drivers for linux anyway.
Dvorak seems to have these amazing insights from time to time, but I can't seem to remember one that really came to fruition. In the aritcle, he makes all these assumptions about technology but he doesn't know what he's talking about. Then he uses his unfounded assumptions to conclude that all MS needs to do is embrace and extend Linux. For a more thorough discussion on this very article, see this discussion on Groklaw. Search for the second "Dvorak". --dv
Insert witty saying or aphorism here.
Tring to "sew" anything proprietary into the linux kernel taints it. Who would want a tainted kernel? Not me, that's for sure.
I quote: "The idea here would be to cut the driver layer out of Windows and attach it to Linux directly"
Yeah right! And how *exactly* would that be achieved?
The only way I can see is by rewriting said Win32 drivers for Linux and distributing them under a proprietary license.
In which case, they will all be disassembled, examined and free replacement drivers made available.
As I said, nonsense....
http://www.reeb.freeserve.co.uk
Today's user wants to grab just about anything and not worry about installing it and making it work.
Apparently yesterday's users were more interested in dinking around with stuff that hopefully didn't work.
Drivers have always been an issue with Linux as PC users have gotten spoiled with Windows driver support.
In my own experience (you may have fared differently) Linux has many more builtin drivers than Windows - SuSE has managed to put a distrubution that works with almost all my hardware automatically, while Dell has given me an XP Install Cd and an XP Drivers CD. There are more drivers available for Windows, but most of them rarely work automatically.
This is only turned by the fact that many Windowses come preinstalled, giving a false sense of drivers. If you have ever just reinstalled XP you will see how much doesn't work immediately.
Guy asked me for a quarter for a cup of coffee. So I bit him.
Yeah because I never have any problem at all with device drivers unders window, no sir, none at all.
Personally, I use removable hard drive racks. It ain't dual-boot, but it lets me game on a system I don't care about, and store XP disk images on the system I do care about. (Solves the reactivation thing pretty well, too -- I have a disk image of an activated XP/SP2 without installed video/audio drivers, which seems to work a little better when I swap hardware and install the new drivers cleanly.)
The real question is what would it sound like if Redmond were to pull out the Death Star and kill Linux. Probably sound something like a dupe of a 30,000-year-old Martian microbe story that suddenly cried out in terror that there was "nothing to see here", only to be suddenly made invisible.
*rimshot*
John C. Dvorak thinks he knows the way Redmond can kill Linux.
:p
John C. Dvorak thinks he knows everything about everything!!
Attention all planets of the Solar Federation! We have assumed control! - Neil Peart
Dvorak has pretty much not uttered anything remotely competent or accurate since inventing Ethernet.
Dvorak invented ethernet??
what mr dvorak is forgetting is that if that ms-linux driver layer can install on ms-linux then it can install on any linux. it may take some tweaking, but isn't that all part of the fun of linux?
As for the whole idea of the article, one wonders how Mr. Dvorak would explain that Apple hasn't killed Microsoft yet. After all, damn near every peripheral works right out of the box on a Mac without getting into driver hell. Of course, being who he is, his repsonse would probably be "because Apple suxx0rs, D00D!!! My brother B1FF SEZ SO!1!"
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
If Microsoft actually produced an MS-Linux that was the standard Linux attached to the driver layer of Windows, giving users full Plug and Play (PnP) support of all their peripherals, nobody would buy any other Linux on the market.
*sigh* Here Dvorak goes taking giant leaps in his conclusion. Being able to plug and play a scanner isn't the top priority for everyone. We have no problems with drivers for our servers at university. The fact that your software is non-Microsoft, and in fact non-corporation means you have a great freedom. You know that no one can come and boss you around. That's worth a lot in many situations. It's about control of your investments, and it feels better when the control belongs to you than some corporation. Cf article earlier today about Microsoft disabling Windows Activation.
And by the way, would people please stop shouting about killing free software. If people want to continue developing free software, they will. Software patents is the only thing I can think of that could present a severe blow to free software, but that would probably move a lot of development underground.
It sounds like he's saying that all Microsoft wants is peaceful coexistance.
This sig no verb.
Please, go fuck yourself senseless with you 'quality' windows drivers.
I've nothing but endless stream of problems with microsoft/windows drivers. Since switching totally to Linux (circa 1999), there've been no problems _that couldn't be solved_. Yeah, that involves contacting various developers and describing you problems with detail. But that's just something that isn't possible with windows.
fucktard is a tenderhearted description
"Today's user wants to grab just about anything and not worry about installing it and making it work"
I mean, all i hear, over and over, is how linux is BETTER than windows.
This last week i've been trying, over and over, to get ANY linux distro to boot upto a graphical user interface, so that my brother can use it without the worry of using the command line (which i think he could also use if he really tried). I've had no end of problems, first there was the problem of commands which stupid names, and commands which appeared the same.( xf86config is NOT xf86cfg )
I tried many distros, livecds and netinstalls, all of which failed in a different (And sometimes amusing ) ways. However, this just goes to show that linux is FAR from what is needed for the adverge JOE user to switch.
Plus its huge lack of support for games (i know its gathering but for joe, he just wants it to work) and such ideas as just plugging in some hardware and having it work.
Im not a windows lover, i hate m$ as much as the next guy, but unless someone can provide something which at least has a gui (yeh cmd line might be great but its not what i want) which works OUT OF THE BOX (or at least with very little configuring) then m$ are going to continue to win.
Oh, and i also use firefox.
- http://www.milkme.co.uk
he's obviously never tried to install half the sound cards made in the last 5 years under windows xp?
John Dvorak didn't invent Ethernet - Bob Metcalfe did
I agree. Wasn't slashdot all about NOT erasing user's comments or stories? TRUE freedom of speech and all that? I DO note that there is no way to remove or edit a comment I made...
I've been trying for a few weeks tpo find a RTL8150 USB Ethernet driver for Windows CE.NET 4.2 on the StrongArm platform. There are thousands of posts concerning the linux rtl8150.o module, even a BSD rtl8150 driver is avaiable on multiple platforms.
Finding a CE 4.2 rtl8150 driver for strongarm seems impossible.
I disagree. The proposed solution is really more akin to having another UNIX out on the market. To most users, Linux isn't just the kernel, but the group of free applications (mainly GNU apps) built on top, *and* a certain way of thinking about what software is and how one should use a computer.
Linux drivers are becoming better every day. Most users should have no problems running a modern machine on a modern Linux. Thus, there is little motivation to switch to MS-Linux. On the other hand, existing Windows users would need a lot of persuation to switch from Windows to Linux, even if it is MS-Linux.
Phoenix, Boston, Little Rock, see a pattern?
1) Linux device drivers are a big problem
and
2) Putting Windows PnP in Linux would be an easy task
I have a problem with #1 because, well, I haven't had a problem with device drivers for years. The first thing I do with a new computer (and I've gone through 5, from Dell and HP, in the last few years) is reformat, install Windows, and then install Linux. Guess which one is easier to install? Guess which one requires special driver disks and arcane "press-F8-at-the-right-time-during-the-install" crazieness to get things working? That's right: windows. With Linux, stick the CD in, click a few buttons, and done.
The problem with #2 should be obvious to everyone: one of the main tasks of an OS is to manage devices. Look at the code in the kernel that does this. Sure, there's other important stuff (vfs, memory management, process management, etc), but if you count the lines, the heaviest piece of the OS is device driver management. Ripping this out and sticking in Redmonds garbage would be disastrous.
Now, user-mode linux is a different beast. Even virtualizing the hardware could get things to work correctly under Dvorak's scheme without so much effort. But what he suggests is not only ludicrous, its outright silly, and really illustrates how out of touch he is with how technology works.
And on that note, this is such a moot point anyways. MS should worry about eradicating the spyware problem it help start and putting out reliable, VALUED filled products (i.e not charging $1000+ for a stupid word processor/spreadsheet/database suite). So with all that discontent surrounding ms' head to even suggest it can kill linux without cleaning up its act first is just pure ludacrious
Okay, BFOTO (blinding flash of the obvious): ./. I got suckered... Ad revenue whore, anyone...
If MS developed an "MS Linux" as described, it would be one of many distributions. Even if it became "the dominant" one (the only good use for which would be to use the Windows drivers for devices Linux lacks driver support for), then stops supporting drivers for their own flavor of Linux... ummm... hmmm... what would happen? Oh -
Dvorak suggests that this somehow magically kills *all* of the different flavors of Linux. (Not *nix, he mentions only Linux).
He also alludes to some heretofore unknown, undiscovered-but-for-M$-lawyers hole in the GPL that would somehow allow M$ to pry Linux from the hands of the community into its control.
I RTFA'd twice, but John, you lost me on this. I can only guess you were looking for more hits to your column website from
One of microsofts biggest assets is that fact that people are familiar with their UI and reluctant to change.
If a user run MS-Linux and liked it, then they could make sure their next system had hardware that could run gpl-linux.
And I really doubt microsoft would move down a pathway of familiarizing people with linux.
I've been spoiled by SuSE. Back when I was going to schoool, we had to walk 5 miles through the snow, uphill both ways, with no shoes... er... I mean, we had to actually compile a new kernel to make almost anything work. Driver support? Hah! Better check for drivers BEFORE you buy.
The only thing recently I've had linux not immediately recognize was a year ago when I bought SATA for the first time... and windows didn't have a driver for it either. (And the Dell truemobile card in my laptop; but given that there IS no linux driver and you can still get it working, that's not so bad)
We're not far off at all from linux getting premium support as an OS from almost everyone. The good companies already recognize how much enthusiasts love their linux boxes.
MSLinux would be no different than other Linuxes, except it came bundled with the drivers. So you buy it once, then layer RH, Debia, etc on top. Sure, you pay MS for the driver layer, but that will put it further out of the public mind, where it will die - how many of the general public even know what drivers are, anyway?
Are you sure it isn't? I clearly remember reading it a week or so ago. That was probably at OSnews or something though.
I am trolling
It's a troll!
Seriously, Dvorak has turned into a troll! Like, I mean, WTF? "Windows will run Linux as its secret sex slave and cut off all its oxygen. SCO was the trial run for that..."
Dvorak just made my permanent black list.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
Why not run windows under linux (ala VMware)
When it crashes hard, kill it's pid and move on.
I hardly think it work well the other way around (as per FTA)
Now as for drivers.
I like ndiswrapper. Wish there were more like it. generic wrappers for windows drivers.
then the manufacturers that are pressed for cash can still "support" linux and the larger manus can develop native drivers (or release specs).
I know some will cry that given the choice, no one would bother with the native ones. Make the wrappers work well and it won't matter.
The truth about Led Zep should never be told on
...have always been an issue with Linux as PC users have gotten spoiled with Windows driver support...
It's not called being spoiled, it's called progress. Why don't we go back to the days of ISA while we're at it & having to remember every IRQ and minute detail about every piece of hardware? Linux driver support and the community's ability to demand drivers and actually get them has gotten exponentially better since I began using it in '96.
"...we dont care about the economics; we just want to be able to hack great stuff."
I had a new hard disk a while back and I installed XP and Suse 9.2 on it.
Windows XP took around 15 mins to install, with a couple of reboots. I then installed my nvidia drivers. Rebooted. I then installed my firewall. Rebooted. I then installed the drivers for the cisco aironet card. Rebooted. I then installed the drivers for my Delta-Audio 1010LT soundcard. Rebooted. I spent over an hour installing all the drivers I needed to make my system *functional*.
Suse took ~20-25 mins to install with all the software I wanted. When I logged in, everything just worked...
People say they use windows because it just works. Bull. It's just that people have been conditioned to accept that installing drivers is not part of the installation process.
There may be more drivers available for windows, but I'll stick with the linux way of doing things and buy cautiously.
the article said:
"Well, except for the fact that Microsoft would be unable to produce such a product without allowing the other vendors access to the driver code as part of the open-source Linux license arrangement (GPL)."
If the device drivers are not derived from any GPL code (and as they is currently proprietary, presumably they are not GPL derived), then Microsoft can make a version of Linux which uses the drivers. The modified linux is based on GPL code (i.e. the base linux kernal) and the modified linux is based on propietary code (device drivers).
GPL does not require that copyright holder of the original software to agree to anything (in respect of the original software). Only the author of the derived software (in respect of the derived work) agrees to license the software under the GPL.
This artical is simply FUD.
Proprietary device drivers which work under linux today.
Moreover: The majority of device drivers in MS Windows are not even owned by microsoft at all, but belong to the companies which manufacture the respective devices, and licensed to Microsoft.
No one has a right to their *own* opinion. They have a right to the TRUTH.
I was getting my shots for international travel at a county health clinic yesterday. Every terminal in this clinic (as probably every other one in the state) were running flat screen Windows systems that had one application: some sort of terminal server that logged into the mainframe where every financial, medical, and information app was running in text-only mode. The likely reason for this purchase was that some company offered sexy-cool flat screen machines with a promise that they'd work to make the mainframe app work 100% in the same manner.
My favorite two bookshops have web based terminals that allow a user to search for a book and not bug the employees. One is unable to get out of these screens and into Windows, but one can tell by the sound, cursors, and occasional reboots that they are really win machines running underneath.
All of this reminds me of those days in the 1980's when everyone was putting Apple ][ based end user terminals in their shops, but the app or utility that was being served was pretty trivial. When the Apple clones came out (like Franklin and their ilk) the expensive Apple hardware started going away. (You could tell on those machines because there were ways to crash the system or "break" into basic and see whose hardware it was.
My guess is that ultimately on web based terminals and other mainframe terminal services, that there's a huge market of machines that are being sold on price alone. As long as there are "some" varieties of cheap hardware that run with Linux, I can't see this ever becoming a lock-in... price is just too important for some people. To those markets, it's the lucrative OS that will fall out of fashion in favor of the cheap and functional alternative.
Is if Microsoft released their source code. Companies and people who use linux use it for more than cost, but customization. We use a highly customized linux where I work, we have a kernel development team that modifies and tweaks our distro
to our specific needs. We can run Linux on a 500 mhz pentium with 512mb of ram, junk video card and an 18gig disk with no problems. No need for a video management solution to manage all 400 of our servers, no need for mice. Just SSH.
Microsoft aggravates my tourettes syndrome.
And, while it has been said many times already: Cygwin
... grumble, grumble, grumble, mutter, mutter, Millenium... Hand... Shrimp, I tol' 'em, I tol' 'em.
If you have found don't flipping publish it on Slashdot to advertise it!
Omnis amans amens
Drivers shouldn't be the problem here. The real win comes from battling against Microsoft and stealing money from them, regardless of the effort needed to win the fight. Who needs drivers, anyways? If Microsoft is such a problem for everyone, we should just buy some C++ bibles and build ourselves our own OS. Mandrake shouldn't be too hard to replicate, right?
Yup, my User Info page indicates appropriately enough that my comment to the missing story was 0, Redundant.
Mr. T pitied this fool on 27 July 1992.
Dvorak is a brilliant man with great insights into the world of computing. But seriously, does he HONESTLY think Micro$oft will release a distro of Linux? Fat chance. There's NO way to get around not releasing the source code. And would it even kill Linux as it stands now? Not a chance. You still have to pay Bill loads of bills to use any M$ product.
"Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so." - Ford Prefect
I don't see how a rational person can disagree with this.
Okay, allow me to disagree. Take a Knoppix CD and tell me what portion of hardware out there it doesn't correctly boot and find devices and peripherals on. Yes, I know there's a few. But they're rare. There's also a -lot- of machines out there that don't have their drivers on the Windows CD. And there's a hell of a lot more prompting, question asking, "Browse for..." clikcing, etc. in the Windows experience than in Knoppix.
So long as there are drivers for NICs and ATA/SCSI devices, I'm pretty sure Linux/*BSD/etc is sticking around.
--falz
Im a mac fan too, but if the device isnt blessed by Apple, it may not work well, or at all.
If it is blessed, then it works like magic..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
This week-old story from OSNews is pointless. Microsoft would never do that, because it would acknowledge that an opponent was on the level of Windows.
Look how Microsoft very rarely mentions Linux, and barely mentions OS X at all (if ever). Microsoft's voice is heard by so many pointy-haired bosses that to talk about someone or release a product based around them is to give free advertising. Granted, they make an Office for Mac, but you'd never know it if you weren't a Mac user.
Linux than any other operating system. So, uh, what's this guy's argument?
"Since plenty of commercial products "attach" to Linux and seem to be protected from the GPL, I have to assume that the scenario I describe is possible."
And you know what assumption is the mother of, too.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
boy is /. behind, this article came out 02.22.05
hack a day
They didn't remove the comment. It was just modded down. I think you can change your settings such that it will be viewed. Or just click X replies below your current threshold at the bottom of the page.
"Today's user wants to grab just about anything and not worry about installing it and making it work."
Funny how it only really works that way on Linux and OSX, in my experience. Dvorak's facts clash with reality, as usual...
The heat from below can burn your eyes out
Dvorak must be buying crack by the bushel these days. He's off in left field waving his arms going "Look at me! Look at me!".
I wish they would just retire that poor old fool before he embarrasses himself even more.
-This sig intentionally left blank
Get a number of large Fortune 500 companies to commit to switching to Linux. Then hardware and software developers will say, "Hmmm... If I want to sell into these companies, I have to support Linux."
Windows has always had the advantage of having more drivers than Linux.
So I ask, why not create code that would allow you to use Windows drivers on Linux?
This guy is talking out of his arse IMO. He claims m$ would then profit off opensource. Yes, possibliy, but it would involve doing something that m$ has never done, OFFERING CUSTOMER SUPPORT.
"The long-term implications of such a scenario, I believe, would be essentially to kill Linux. Microsoft's MS-Linux would quickly become the dominant Linux and the company would begin to profit from all the open-source development work that would go into Linux."
Also, does he not realise that ANY new for linux is GOOD news, if people see this giant, Microsoft start using and producing linux, they will go "Great, even microsoft are using linux, it MUST be good". Then they will start looking at forums for answers, and the answers will be there:
MS-Lin User : "Why does XXX not work with this nice opensource driver?"
Nice Linux user : "Because mate, you have to pay for those ms-drivers, but these ones at linuxisFREEdummy.com cost nothing, but just back up your work and install redhat/mandrake/suse first"
The nice new ms-users will flood the linux community, eventually all the ms-users will be using ext-2 and any normal linux user will tell them how to safely back up their work, and install a new o/s without any trouble.
In the end, ms will end up with a share of the linux user base (and it will be much larger than before) so everyone will be happy. Except when ms then realise they are trying to make money, and try charging for something...
- http://www.milkme.co.uk
Driv3r only has a native Windows version, for one thing ;)
Guy asked me for a quarter for a cup of coffee. So I bit him.
I read TFA. That's two minutes I'll never get back. Damn. What a bunch of crap.
Linux running under Windows
dear m$ customer,
we here at m$ have been unable to actually produce anything in years. we've talked a lot about longhorn but let's face it, it's never going to happen. we have, however, noticed that a number of people are starting to use this "linux" thing. in response we have done our best to crush the rebellion. we failed.
therefore we are releasing *new* MICROSOFT LINUX. we know it sounds funny and is technically an oxymoron, but we've been run by morons for so long it seems fitting.
new in MSL you can use MOO (microsoft open office) which combines all the flexibility of regular oo with the closed format bullshit you've been putting up with from us for years. also we have created LIE (linux internet explorer) which gives you the ability to browse the web without losing the functionality of all those wonderful pop-ups.
the icing on the cake is our new game suite which includes penguin hunter, in which you can stalk and subsequently shoot anything in black and white.
we appreciate your patronage and will require you to activate your new m$ linux over the phone (a 5 hour process) for your protection and convenience.
sincerely,
M$
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
-Oscar Wilde
I have also noticed that a fair amount of hardware I have purchased tell me to NOT plug it in before installing their software. If I plugged it in and the M$ drivers were installed it has the procedure on how to remove it and install the right drivers. Indeed, with windows you can't just "plug and play." Besides, if that were true then Apple would have claimed the market years ago.
I wonder if M$ paid Dvorak for his column/opinion.
So why does my TV card work in Linux but not in Windows?
the coolest club on
While I agree that Dvorak is a blowhard, he does have a point about Linux hardware support. I recently compared a dozen different install-from-CD distros, and only one supported my ASUS motherboard's on-board sound and video correctly. None had support for my Canon scanner, which I realize is Canon's fault. But don't tell me I need to buy a new scanner to be able to migrate to Linux. Your average Joe just wants to plug-n-play, and to me that's one of the two real advantages Windows has over Linux.
The other? Software. There are still some tremendous voids in the software area. There is no equivalent to Visio (yes, I've tried Dia and it's cute, but it's not Visio), and the Gimp isn't Photoshop or even Paint Shop Pro. Linux needs more apps like Firefox, Thunderbird, and OpenOffice that can really bridge the gap, and can offer clear advantages over Windows applications.
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
Why do they continue posting these bullshit articles by J. Retard Dvorak?
I read only the header (yes, I didn't even read the summary) before posting this.
Dvorak on [Insert sensational headline], is enough to trigger my flamethrower.
Bot Assisted Blogging
Well, I don't know if Microsoft (or anyone) could write a Driver interface for Linux, without being considerd a Linux Kernel derived work, since this will probably need some EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL functions, and if not, the kernel developers will just export some needed symbols as GPL only.
I never really thought of Windows spoiling me
That's about the craziest idea I've ever heard.
Like, microsoft will switch to linux,
That would definatly hurt them, Microsoft would not be able to keep a monopoly on "PnP" device drivers for long, because if everyone switched to linux tommorow, native linux drivers are bound to show up.
Furthermore, the idea that the Open Source community would abandon Linux, is nuts.
I'm sure work would continue on Linux, to make a non-propriatary device driver system to match microsofts.
Microsoft switching to linux, what's next Global Warming?? Or water on Mars??
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but doesn't MS own a version of UNIX? If licenseing Linux is an issue, I'm sure MS can just rewrite their *NIX to use the driver layer and market that.
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
Seriously?? Dvorak is a jackoff, and has been for some time. I used to enjoy some of his writing but this is getting totally ridiculous. What's the point of running Linux anything under Windows? It's like talking a Yugo and throwing some BMW dashboard parts into it. Sure, the parts make it look like a BMW (if you close one eye and focus on the dash only) but when the Yugo crashes... it takes everything with it. Wow
He thinks MS can kill Linux by releasing a MS-Linux. Who in their right mind would use that? No Linux geek will ever want that, and no non-Linux geek would see it as useful. Even if it did happen, and somehow did become the dominant Linux, and MS did stop work on it, the entire open source community would resurrect Linux from the ashes. Sure, I can see MS doing an embrace-and-extend like they always do, and injecting incompatible code into their base and not releasing the source, and then claiming that other forms of Linux are incompatible with their standards, but it's becoming increasingly obvious to everyone that MS is the one who is incompatible with the rest of the world, not the other way around.
Reject Fear - Embrace Hope
It's a hard decision to take, but i have to leave you.
/. for sometimes know that you're not anymore the one you once was...
/.
I've shared many good moments with you, but lets face reality: you've changed. Dupes 3 times a week, recurring stories, you're not really fun anymore.
And today i've discovered you're cheating. You have erased comments, and by doing so, you've broken the love i had for you...
Mod this as you want, that's your right... I bet on Troll. But those that know
Bye
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
B
Of course, this is the guy who has pronounced Apple as dead more than once. What value is the opinion of a pin-headed pundit? Wow. I was like, a poet there.
Anyway, MS-Linux? W(hy)TF would I use that? The reason people use Linux is usually to get away from Windows and it's diseases. Why would I run Linux as a subjugated app under an inferior kernel design on a server? To enhance security? Ha!
Dvorak says "MS Linux would quickly become the dominant linux distribution." He pulled that right out of his arse. Does he think that many people would actually buy Linux from Microsoft when it's available for FREE elsewhere?
John C. Dvorak--I think you over estimate MS's position to dominate a market that's based on not being Microsoft.
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
So what Redmond has to do is invest billions of stockholder dollars to develop a product they know they will kill once it kills everyone else and most of their own customer base is stranded in a no man's land of neither Windows mor Linux.
I haven't heard logic like that since Metallica sued their own fans.
MS is a closed company making closed products. The only way they can 'kill' Linux is to:
1) Be safer, faster more stable
2) Cheaper
3) Easier to manage
They already lost on 1 & 2 but they are winning on 3.
To be fair though there are whole categories of drivers that Linux does not do a great job with. Like Wacom tablets. The official Linux driver is source code you get from sourceforge and build it yourself. Lots of sound cards don't work, etc..
for exactly one version of mslinux.
Who in the world would take John C. Dvorak serious anymore? Just look at all the other bullshit he said and nothing if it turned out true.
I want to see Microsoft trying to port or reimplement the Linux kernel... that would keep them busy for the next 15-20 years...
However, I can already imagine the results:
Please insert Disk 1 in DRIVE A:
Disk 1 not found
LINUX.DLL not found
memory boundary violation
FATAL ERROR #65535
Actually, it sounds more like cygwin. Run your linux apps on Windows. That didn't kill Linux either.
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
So here's my 3 day old OSN comment:
:D
Dvorak is right about as often as it rains lava in New York.
Somebody who's been predicting the death of the Macintosh since TCP/IP stacks were still third-party user-installed add-ons thinks he knows where computing is going? The only thing separating him from a blathering retard in a homeless shelter is that whoever's paying him is even less cluefull than he is.
If Microsoft actually produced an MS-Linux... nobody would buy any other Linux on the market.
I personally have never bought a copy of linux.. I'd actually be surprised to see how many people have (I suppose for support reasons, mayhap).. Or *would* if the magical fantasy land he predicts actually became true.
If things became "so easy" under MS-Linux, you bet your pasty-ass the open source community would be all over it like sweat on Steve Ballmer.
Anyways, I mod Mr. Dvorak -15, Troll,Idiot,FUD-Artist.
- - - -
KickingDragon
Wrapper to run Wireless cards on linux using windows drivers-
http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/
Did you delete it, or did one of the other editors?
Oh wait, you probably don't read comments since you obviously don't read stories.
. . . a man whose entire carreer is based off of being "the guy who misses the point".
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
We're not spoiled with the Windows drivers, but rather with the installation method.
The only thing that gets spoiled from Windows drivers is the OS itself. (You might start noticing blue mold on your monitor every now and then.)
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
The answer is cygwin, which might not be as good as vmware, but it's free and fast.
A few weeks ago, I went linux-free on my home computer for the first time in six years. I'm currently using WinXP, and Cygwin to get my command line fix. (I see this as a temporary arrangement; once I can afford a powerbook I will begin a switch to Mac OS X.)
Why? Many reasons, but the device problem is a huge motivator. I got an iPod for christmas, and got tired of rebooting into Windows whenever I wanted to play with it. I also got a wireless router, and had problems with the linux WLAN setup. Now I have the best of both worlds, and I don't really care to go back.
I grant you that there are probably work-arounds to do what I was missing, but I've finally decided that my time and frustration are not worth the return I was getting from linux. I don't want to search around on message boards for a solution and download some crappy, broken v0.0.1 device driver from a site in Hungary. I just want to plug it in and go, is that so wrong?
Linux supports new hardware like wireless routers, lots of multimedia devices, etc, and he thinks MS making a Linux distro with a proprietary driver layer for a bit better compatibility will "kill Linux"? He can't have understood much of why so many people use Linux and not Windows. Why they even struggle to get stuff that don't work as easily on Linux, but still don't say "bah" and switch to Windows.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Did anyone happen to notice that Dvorak didn't do any end-of-year predections this year? I wonder why...
I wish I could find the ones he did last year - especially the one that said "I'm glad to see we've decided Linux isn't a desktop operating system."
Dvorak Summary: Windows can kill Linux by promoting and distributing a superior OS, Linux.
Windows business model is to beat competitors using its superior market share and by piling on features and "compatibility."
Forking off a significant chunk of operating capital to make a PnP distro of Linux and then promoting would be nothing but silliness for MS.
Such a distro would kill MS' efforts to own the business and infrastructure server market (using its Windows OS) and would seriously cut into its Windows profits.
It would also force MS to support yet another OS. MS is working hard to kill support for its legacy systems.
New summary: By seriously undercutting its own OS (not to mention its highly successful business plan), Windows could kill Linux. Egad!
"Hey guys I'm feeling poor again- why not come over to my site and click on a few ads? No need to read anything."
Think of the man hours saved!
"Physics is to math as sex is to masturbation." -R. Feynman
No even with threshold to -1, i can't find the original comment anymore! Could you? Title was "Where'd the last story go?".
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
B
...wait for it...
The first step in Dvorak's strategy is for Microsoft to build a separate 'commercial driver-layer' for Linux. His prediction: if Microsoft builds this 'essential' layer, a large portion of Linux revenues will go towards Microsoft and developers will therefore lose interest.
Let's put aside for a moment the fact that a major focus on Linux development would be disastrous for Microsoft (It would essentially encourage a mass migration from Windows servers), Dvorak makes some ridiculous blind leaps in assuming that an MS driver layer would [a] Become dominant (based upon what? Microsoft's proven ability to write superior code?) and [b] even if MS succeeded, that their success would cause the entire Linux world to pack up and go elsewhere.
Is Dvorak's supposition that all Linux development is driven merely by the desire to "not" give Microsoft any more cash? Funny, I thought it was to build a stable, faster, and open-sourced OS.
Developing yet another commercial add-on, hardly negates Linux's core mission and value. It would however negate the mission and core value of Windows Servers.
I say go for it Microsoft. Let's see who wins.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Once Gates and the old monopolist guard at MS leaves, MS will either kill linux or embrace and extend it. Currently, with their focus on bundling, tie-ins, and other tools to force users to buy MS, they are missing the opportunity to make people WANT to buy microsoft.
A new generation of management would be about to embrace open source and find the best mix of proprietary, OSS, and services to leverage MS's market share with an "I want that" product line to decimate the competition.
Take Apple, arguably one of the most proprietary and closed companies around. They have mastered the art of leveraging OSS (and the sweat of others), blending it with non-standard proprietary software, and bundling it with "I want that" proprietary hardware. Combine that ability with MS's current market share and nothing could beat it.
There is absolutely nothing preventing MS from pulling out the NT kernel and replacing it with a linux or mach kernel and topping it with a Longhorn or OSX Tiger type of proprietary presentation layer.
That's like the government saying, "If I were terrorists, I'd destroy the US by attacking the water supply."
Oh, wait... they did say that.
A big player needs to create a serious well-supported development system that allows writing drivers on both multiple platforms. Device drivers are a pain. An SDK that allows a developer to create a driver that runs on Linux, Windows, and Mac, would be well received.
The relative dearth of drivers has been an issue ever since Linux existed. It hasn't killed Linux yet, why would it kill Linux now? Especially considering that it's becoming less of an issue as time passes - Linux is catching up on the driver front (relative to five years ago or whatever).
Of course, this doesn't mean that it's not an important issue, and it doesn't even mean that it won't cause some cap on Linux' marketshare at some point in the future. But kill Linux? Uh, no.
Windows driver support?! Who is kidding here?
I have a four year old Windows 98 box, had to reinstall drivers last week -- audio (ALi) still does not work, even with freshly downloaded driver. FYI Knoppix no problem whatsoever.
It didn't disappear. You replied to it yourself. Moron.
And no, not funny. Not even a little.
Agreed. People need to stop promoting this douche bag.
He intentionally writes dumb columns in order to (negatively) attract readers.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
You'd think, wouldn't you? All it needs is a couple of COLUMBINE IS THE NEW POLICE STATE OH NOEZ HELLMOUTH references.
/. author I've filtered out of my existance- too bad I can't block by keyword, as I'd flush Dvorak and a few other things off of my front page.
Aside from that, the fucktardishness is spot-on.
Katz is the only
I thought that was a keyboard!
Zonk: Fuck... Published a dupe once again...
CmdrTaco: Not a problem, take a good article from Dvorak...
Zonk: That will do it!
CmdrTaco: At least for your pay-check.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
B
What Dvorak describes is too much work. Microsoft doesn't need to kill Linux to maintain dominance at all. In short all they really have to do is create their own Linux distribution, just like anyone else can, and then port Office to it. All of this can be done without violating the GPL or open sourcing Office. Office is the real source of MS power after all, people need Windows to run Office.
Even if the MS Linux distribution were no better than any other, people would still buy it and/or support contracts preferentially over any other. Most people always play it safe. MS could still support Windows if they wanted to, or they could gradually phase it out. If they play nice, they could cut their development costs by leveraging the vast open source development community. So far, IBM has been able to embrace Linux and open source without killing their business, I think Microsoft can do the same. Developers didn't abandon Linux when IBM and Novell joined the party and I doubt they will if Microsoft joined in too. Indeed, a lot of Windows developers would be pulled along too. The question is whether Microsoft is brave enough to let go of the Windows security blanket.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
Click parent. I imagine this may get modded offtopic, too...but I wanted to answer your question. I found the comment.
http://winik.sourceforge.net/
It's a Cygwin version intended for (more) ease of use and wider distribution / use.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Nonsense. Device driver support is quite good and getting better. In fact, more devices work out-of-the-book now in Linux than in windos, and I don't have to bother with installing device drivers or any such nonsense.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
...as a linux zealot, I must comment on this. How can Microsoft be a threat to Linux? If anything Linux is a threat to Microsoft, which I still think is not completely valid. I don't think either Microsoft or Open Source will come out on top, I think that it will be a split market. Microsoft is a company which offers a myriad of products and services, the quality of which is not under scrutiny here. Linux simply describes a common element in many Open Source products, which is the kernel. Linux is not a product itself, but a component. If you look at the two products side by side from this perspective, it's like comparing apples and oranges.
What about requiring everyone who installs linux to call in and answer a bunch of stupid questions before they can use it?
air and light and time and space
Thanks a lot Dorvak! Know M$oft knows how to kill Linux. I guess I will have to plan a funeral for my Slackware.
- This would only give Linux MORE support, not less.
- Sounds a bit like VMWare? Yep... move along.
- Do you really think Linux's momentum is going to STOP? Not with the support it's getting globally (think non-US) and by IBM.
Foreign firms and educational institutions are sick of dealing with MS's bullcrap. Linux and OS X are slowly chipping away. Microsoft is a marketing company (and a damned good one) moreso than a technical company. The rest of the world wants a product that works, not buzzwords. It's a slow process but it will happen, and no lack of driver support on bleeding edge hardware is going to stop it.
Besides, other companies will follow NVidia's lead.
(/me wonders if he will someday look back at this post and absolutely laugh at himself... hopefully not)
Berto
I've always HATED the dvorak keyboard. It seem obvious to me now WHY it's so stupid. Anybody as goofy as this guy has NO buisness trying to invent something everybody should use.... :)
Microsoft kill Linux? Not a chance and here's my version of why.
The Windows OS costs money.
Most Linux distros are free. Free to download, free to install and keep, free to change to suit your needs, free from activation/registration, freely available source code. I have been using Linux distros for years and my only expenses have been for CD-R's.
Microsoft office costs money and is not included in the Windows XP operating system.
OpenOffice.org is free... KOffice is free, and both of those office suites are included in the Linux distros I use (Mandrakelinux and Fedora Core 3).
Want to write your own software in Windows? It'll cost you lots of money to buy the software solutions to allow you to do this because those solutions are not included in the Windows operatin system.
Writing software in Linux can be done by launching the software design and creation tools that are freely included in most Linux distros.
Windows XP crashes.
I've never had an app crash on any of my boxes, but I have heard that there are times when Linux software crashes, but rarely does an app crash take the entire operating system down with it.
I can install my Linux distros on millions of machines and give away millions of copies of the operating system to anyone I choose and this is all perfectly legal.
This is not legally possible with Windows operating systems.
The only software solution I install, after the initial Linux OS, is Password Manager. This is because my favorite Linux distros come bundled with so many tools that it usually isn't necessary for me to install anything else.
I find this impossible with Windows XP. You end up being forced to install more software and that means paying more money.
Face it, Linux is here to stay and, from what I have seen in the past few years, Microsoft is slowly on its way out - some people are just too blinded or brainwashed to accept this fact. People are getting fed up with Microsoft, their practices and restrictions.
At least, 42 people that I know of, since that is how many people I have helped to switch from Windows to Linux in the past 11 months. And more than half of these folks have gone on to help others make the switch.
Drivers are so 90's. Every linux install I've done recently hasn't had any driver support problem. And if it did, there was a quick solution that someone in the community had solved. In my opinion, the biggest thing windows has is the games. The pc gaming market is huge. Whether or not I can get my graphics card working on linux makes no difference if there arn't many good games to play. Gaming is the only reason I keep my windows machine. If microsoft wants to keep a hold, they need to make sure the directX library continues to entice developers. When we see a linux gaming section at the local EB, we know that windows has started falling down the slippery slope.
He doesn't know the first thing about what he's saying!
Linux as a task under Windows exists!
Linux as a task under Linux exists.
In either instance, the "guest" OS doesn't get a "magic ride" on the hosts's drivers.
He takes an out-of-context comment, and combines it with half-knowlege of the subject and a dollop of wishful thinking.
Whoops! I think I just defined "Visionary"!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
My bad, wrong windbag
Dvorak's prophetic genius is awesome. Microsoft is working on Linux under Windows and it will run on the Intel-powered Mac that he predicted with 100% certainty a couple of years ago. No doubt the power source will be derived from the manure dropped by flying pigs.
--- Yx3 = Delilah ---
and asia is moving to linux in a huge way.
- My Printer (Canon, yeah, I could buy a driver that costs more than the printer)
- My Scanner
- My Camera (the movies don't play on linux)
Just because your devices work, doesn't mean everyone else's do.-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
My bad, wrong windbag.
Thinking of Metcalf.
Finkployd
Microsoft effectively killed Windows NT 4.0 by withholding USB support. Anyone shopping for a digital camera, webcam, printer, PDA synching solution, flash storage device, mp3 player, skype headset, etc. would find their choices severely limited to nil if they wanted to continue running their perfectly good installation of NT 4.0.
Of course the difference with Linux is it should be easier to integrate new drivers, once they are, um, written.
This talk of MS-Linux is ridiculous of course. If Microsoft took this route, they'd branch off of a platform with the much less encumbered BSD license. Hell, they could use Darwin and save themselves a lot of R&D and QA. Embrace and extend my friends.
... Linux has good-to-outstanding driver support for every class of peripheral, though not every single peripheral. It's getting to the point where engineering and testing companies are looking to support linux as a proven platform (you know, so they can put 'linux' on the side of the box of whatever hardware it is).
Dvorak is a long time head-up-ass type anyway, along the lines of a Charles Cooper or any number of Bob Metcalfe-style curmudgeons.
IMHO, Linux's biggest problems lay in usability, and that's because usability isn't a fun itch to scratch. It's not fun hearing end users whine about how hard it is to do something. It's not fun having your pretty baby maligned by techno-illiterates. However, if you want to rule the world, that means ruling the 'mundanes' as well... And great aesthetics rarely come from a committee of committers, they usually come from a power-mad dictator of some sort or another.
Damn! I finally RTFA, now I'm evil...
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
What he seems to be refering to is COLinux, which is GPLed. So if M$ tried to steal it, the developers, or even users for that matter, could do a class action lawsuit. On top of that he is completely ignoring the fact that projects like NDISwrapper exist. The beauty of Linux is that no matter what Micro$oft does it will not die, because it isn't just about money now.
Dvorak is officially on my id10t list now...
If this were the case, wouldn't everybody be running Apple Computers?
A lot of people called dvorak stupid because they didn't understand his last article, on Google co-opting Wikipedia. That's because the /. story linked to page 2 and with only the tiniest clue that it wasn't the start of the article people just didn't get it. Please re-read it from the start before diss'ing him (and contribute to wikipedia's fund-raising drive).
And meaner than a rabid clown!
it's just that those companies haven't chosen to support Linux. If MS decided to drop Windows and support Linux, everyone would immediately have Linux drivers ready to go and Windows' driver layer would be unimportant.
It's entirely a market share thing, not and OS thing.
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
I've long thought that it would be interesting to have an operating system for operating systems, an OS/OS. It would need to be a very efficient software platform that would be, for most practical purposes, invisible to the operating systems themselves.
Write the device drivers for the OS/OS and then the OS themselves just need a device driver for the abstract OSOS device.
Think of it as the lowest level of a layering of operating systems with a single job -- dealing with physical devices.
I think the main issue with what he's suggesting is that if the emulation/virtualization layer you are running Linux under doesn't have access to the device, it doesn't matter much that Windows does. Unless he's talking about a true API that would be the complete reverse of Wine (run Linux/*nix apps under Windows with complete access to all supported hardware), I don't see how this could work. Using Cygwin, I still have found limitations. You can't compile one of the Wireless (802.11a/b/g) applications for *nix under Cygwin and actually use it with a Windows driver supported wireless NIC. Or... you can't use an application that can communicate with SCSI under Linux in Cygwin. Or... you can't compile and run a 3D accelerated Linux app (game, etc...) under Cygwin and expect it to use the ATI or NVidia drivers you have installed in Windows. So MS would have to expend a great deal of resources to absorb *nix functionality into their OS that takes advantage fo their drivers. The flipside to all of this is that I think Windows has been getting more "Unixy" over time, but they just approach it from a different perspective (kind of a backwards one at times and visionary at others).
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Because no-one is reading the article, and I can't stand it, here is my understanding of what Dvorak is suggesting.
Suppose Bill produces a new product called MS-Linux. This is just a distribution of Linux that Microsoft sell in a box. He can do that, same as anyone can, right? Right. And he can undercut every other Distro, because MS have billions of dollars.
What Bill does that is sneaky is that he includes in the box a binary-only proprietary product called Microsoft WDM for Linux. He can include non-GPLed stuff in the distribution, right? Of course he can. Lots of other distros do this.
WDM for Linux is a bit of software that lets Linux use Windows drivers. This might be hard to do, but it is possible, right? It's kind of like doing at the bottom what WINE does at the top - interfacing between windows software and Linux. Right.
What Bill does now is wait for MS-Linux to gain market share.
Poor old Biglig comes along. He's downloaded 50 distributions, and has never gotten the soundcard or modem on his thinkpad to work. Ah, he thinks, $25 for MS Linux and I get Linux, with my soundcard and modem working.
Granny Maud decides to buy a new Dell with Linux on, and it comes with - surprise - MS Linux - because Bill lets them buy their Windows licenses cheap if they buy their Linux from him too.
PHB decides to roll out Linux. "Never heard of Suse" he says "but Microsoft rings a bell"
Sooner or later, Bill owns a big share of the Linux market.
How does Bill use this to kill Linux? Ah, this is the problem. Dvorak doesn't really say. In Slashdot speak:
1. Make Linux a MS product
2. ????
3. Profit
Dvorak vaguely supposes that Bill could drive all the good hackers away into the Apple/BSD/HURD camps, and then slow Linux development down, so Windows catches up. I think this isn't possible, since everything those hackers write on Apple/BSD/Hurd/BeOS will still be open source and so will come back into Linux without too much effort.
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
Being the geek that I am I'm planning on spending a chunk of cash to build 1 if not 2 HTPC boxes. I really want to use WINHaupauge PCI video cards to capture/encode/decode the TV signals, as well as an HDTV capture card. The dilema I am having is weather to go with MythTV running on Linux as a backend or BeyondTv, or even still Windows Media Center(666) I am finding that WindowsMedia Center is going to be the most painless route to take concderning hardware config. But I really want the power of running a Linux Box, and the flexability that Linux gives. Mind you the only box Im having this dilema with is my Backend which would be doing most of the work. I really want the backend to be linux but I an a *nix newb and it just seems an easier way out to use (666) instead of *nix.
-Could anyone give me some direction/opinions/criticizm on what I should do! Mind you with these boxes Im looking for performance/quality/ease of use as priorities....
Thanks in advance!
If you say "J*n K*tz" three times in front of a mirror, he will appear. And then, he'll try to understand your feelings and explain them to the uncaring wide world.
Trust me, you'd rather have the guy with the hook rip out your intestines. It would be comparitively merciful.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
Oh come on, the above article is idiotic. It isn't a Linux killer at all. Man oh man, with a fast enough processor (it's not very pleasant otherwise), you can use Bochs to run Linux under Windows.
I don't think it's idoiotic at all. If MS developed a version of Linux that ran all of the hardware that Windows could seemlessly it would dominate the linux market.
You can ignore it if you want to, but the main complaint people have with linux is hardware compatibility.
I don't think this would 'kill' linux because there would still be the zealots who will use an inferior linux distro just because it 'isn't microsoft'. By the same token, it would assure that all other linux distros would be what they are today, a non-factor in the desktop marketplace.
OK Let's try this "I tried installing the amazing OSX on my PC but it didn't recognise any of my hardware! So, I just installed Windows instead.."
You are really missing the point here.
Linux offers (and encourages) flexibility across many architectures, it doesn't seek to be a rarified lifestyle OS - as married to a single architecture (IBM's G* processor) as Winblows is (in fact more so. Winblows runs on the AMD's).
Time for a little chicken and egg: You buy an iBook G5 (which is incidentally made by ASUS computers) to run OSX on. When I want to run Linux, I choose hardware best suited to run Linux on. the only difference with using Linux being I have far more choices in the hardware market than you do.
BTW the G4 makes a great little linux lappie; excepting the Airport it Just Works TM. Give it a go sometime..
I thought that the ablity for *nix users to use binary drivers for Win32 was working now..
If that was expanded and made more seamless, that would solve the 'driver problem'.
Perhaps not the best solution, but it would at least work.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Just about anything works plug and play with Windows? Great, then this HFS format drive should mount jusssst fine under XP... right?
I need to get a job like Mr. Dvorak's.
Blacker than my baby girl's stare. Black like the veil that the muslimina wear. Black like the planet that they fear...
Point 1: If Microsoft were to get into the business of writing drivers for Linux, how would that differ (aside from licensing) from purchasing commercial drivers or downloading free drivers? More importantly, how would this kill Linux? As he pointed out, commercial software already runs under Linux without any GPL implications. The community buys this software when it must, but usually develops around it.
Point 2: I have had fewer driver problems with Linux than Windows. Windows actually seems to sometimes generate driver problems, by seeking out a very specific driver where a generic one will do fine. A good example would be the USB port on my EPIA MII-12000 motherboard. It's USB 2.0. Linux sees that it is USB 2.0, and runs it as such. 'nuf sed. Windows, on the other hand, requires that I use the driver that came with the mobo (which is not inherently a problem) and no other. Not that this is a problem, but why?
www.wavefront-av.com
Mr. Dvorak is forgetting one of the very key points that makes linux what it is...first and foremost, it's free. Why would anyone want to switch to MS-Linux just because it has the linux moniker? Give a break. That's like jumping out of the frying pan, into another frying pan. Both are being heated by MS-Fire, v2.01.
I don't know why the behemoth hasn't done this yet. Just spawn off another division and do MS Linux! Create a new revenue stream selling Office for Linux, .NET dev tools for Linux, and Windows interop/clustering tools for Linux.
Versiontracker.com listed quite a few proprietary freeware and shareware image editors for Mac OS X. In fact, I even remember paying for shareware GraphicConverter back in the Mac OS 8 days. But you must be unfamiliar with the idiomatic use of capitalized "Free" on Slashdot, which refers to free software as defined by the FSF.
I'm reading at -1, and it's there, just before your comment.
Have this man ever voluteered for anything is his whole small life? Does he knows the pleasure of doing something that can make our world a better place?
Volunteering as a free software developer is a pleasure, so developers WILL NEVER stop working on Linux. And suppose that they will, it's a very good chance for the popularity of Hurd (still incipient), and others free software OSes.
As told before: FUD. But I'll add one more commentary. This man has shown, again, that he can't see beyond his own nose, he's simply unable to understand the point of view of others and think about how they would act, how they feel about things that they praise so much.
He simply didn't have the effort to look for solutions similar to the "secret-projet-that-will-kill-linux" that actually runs on windows and is free. It's a mistery how this man can be a columnist so respected.
Of course there are many good things to be said about this man. But I'll let it to other opportunity.
-=-=-=-=
I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
http://www.colinux.org/
The peasents are revolting ... and boy do they stink.
There is no reset button in life; however, there are bonus levels.
Dvorak says he was talking to somebody at an RSA conference and had this idea. The subtext is that drivers will be signed and/or encrypted. The interfaces will be locked down so that Linux can't play without massive hardware reverse-engineering (to get the device's key off of it, like X-box).
In other words, this is a valid scenario to kill Linux in a post-palladium world. John just isn't very good at explaining the full details of his ideas, or maybe he doesn't have enough space or the magazine doesn't want him to.
some of us figured out that risk about half a decade ago. sure must be nice having a job consisting of belatedly getting a clue and then writing about it for pay.
Retard.
OBTW, they're not made by Asus, dipshit, do a little reading.
Fucking propagandisto: your agenda is showing.
Some mornings I expect Redmond to create an MS-Linux, but this would use the stable Linux kernel and on top of that implement GDI, DDE, OLE, and the rest of the wonderful user experience to run Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, Outlook, Office & co.
colinux,NdisWrapper If MS were to do as he has described, it would more likely serve as a migration mechanism and would ultimatly harm Windows dominance in profound ways.
I submit to you all that Dvorak doesnt even try anymore. Industry prognosticator he is not.
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
He actually makes some pretty going points when you think about it. Because Windows is a really powerful system with all the drivers you need. Drivers are important because you need them to run devices like sound cards, mouses, and video cards. That's why you need Windows because that's where it excels, you know, when you really think about it. *jerk off motion*
Academically, running Linux under windows is nifty. But the point of running Linux, at least to me, is that I don't have to deal with Windows. I am a SQL Server developer (MSSQL that is), and a bit scatter-brained in my development style. Often I launch a query, and while its running I do something else. Some queries take hours to complete. WINDOWS IS STILL NOT ABLE TO RESOLVE CERTAIN ISSUES WITHOUT REBOOTING!!! This is a huge productivity loss for me personally, it is utterly unacceptable when you are talking about servers. Why do I have to reboot so often you might ask? Kerberos, decoupled with my domain account, locks me out of certain systems. Service packs, 2 a month, automatically update and force reboots. And then there are the times when everything just comes to a screeching halt and the only option it to reboot. Sometimes Word fails to launch, and since its coupled with Outlook I cannot even email IT until I reboot. I haven't noticed any improved reliability from MS products in the last 10 years. I think reliability peaked with NT4, which lots of places still use for just that reason.
Yeah, I can understand Wine, W1nd0ws over Linux, but I have a certain difficulty understanding the reverse.
It is like trying to sell a car:
W: But I don't need a car, I walk to where I work.
S: That's true, but think of what other places you can go to with it!
W: But walking is healthy, and it's free... and I'm not feeding the Bin Ladens by using it. S: No, wait! I just happen to have a thing for you - a car with a built-in treadmill, so you can exercise all while the robo-driven intelli-car is driving you to work! Isn't that great?
W: But my work is only 30 minutes walking, that is 5 minutes with a car.. I won't get enough exercise..
S:
W: Yeah, I guess, but what about the price.. isnt it expensive..
S: Just for you - we have a special sale now!! 50% off - what do you say?
It's plain stupid.
Another completely retarded, pointless article that makes no sense. You know, I was at dinner last night, and I heard a secret that my landlord was going to kick us out. Wait a minute....
Dvorak's half right - Windows' device compatibility is a huge benefit.
But the other side of the coin - software compatibility - is equally important. Windows has the Win32 and DirectX APIs, and so long as they are dominant in software development, everyone else who reverse-engineers them will be one step behind - especially with DirectX, which evolves rapidly to keep up with changes in video hardware.
Unless MS is bringing Win32 with them to MS-Linux, it won't be worth it. And why would they bother, when they can make a ton of cash by keeping their code to themselves?
Your single, anecdotal case represents all people. Thanks for setting it straight.
the keyboards?
Oh yeah, REALLY reliable this guy..
Users -- real users, not techs, geeks, and their employers -- want, as Dvorak noted, to just buy stuff and not worry about it working.
That applies to operating systems, as well.
People do not want to have to make a choice of operating systems. People set out to buy computers, not operating systems. When was the last time you heard someone say: "I'm going over to Best Buy and get an operating system."? No, they go to Best Buy, and elswhere, to buy a copmuter. The OS is just an annoying bit that's noticeable only if it isn't preinstalled. ("Great, now I gotta go buy something else to get this thing to work?")
The need to choose between multiple operating systems -- all of which provide the same basic functionality -- will eventually be seen to be as annoying as having to choose between VHS and Beta tape formats. And just about as silly as having to buy an OS to make your TV work.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
People need to step back from their pre-disposition to hate devorak and look at this article as a convorsation starter. Sure it's way out from left field, however, it does good to look at other options to plan for rather than burrying your head in the sand saying "nope, not going to happen" caus' even if cygwin or vmware hasn't killed linux. Something, some time might... Especially if Microsoft is behind it. So look at it analytically and objecively instead of hastily and subjectively...
I haven't lost my mind. It's backed up on disk somewhere.
The only direct quote I've seen from Linus about this is from a mailing list where he mused that binary drivers were bad mmkay, and noted that they may be illegial under the current GPL.
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
Yeah sure. Microsoft, was waiting for Dvorak to tell them the way to kill linux! They are paying like 50000 goons over there to tell them how to kill linux, and nobody could find the solution. Only Dvorak could save the company. Thank you Dvorak. Now they will send you your free wireless MS QWERTY keyoboard together with a free copy of Longhorn BETA.
What a plonker!
So users can have the wide range of Linux applications while enjoying the rock-solid stability of Windows?
(Why is the Slashdot subject line limited to so few characters?)
Xenu loves you!
The arguement's too simple, leaves parts out....
.NET campaign; third by replacing it with some other new innovative wonder 6 months later; or fourth just by dropping the product when they don't see EVERYONE switching to it.
Microsoft tried this with Java, they called it J++. Sure some people went to the MS flavor of Java, but not MOST.
In the same way, just because MS starts offering Linux, some will go to it, but certainly not MOST, let alone EVERYONE.
Then there's those who have been so abused by Microsoft's manipulations the past 10 years. Why would anyone who's been paying attention to MS for 10 years not view this as yet another attempt by MS to manipulate and control. As such anyone with experience and sense would know NOT to touch this attempt by MS with a 10 foot pole.
Then there's the fact that MS itself will blow its own effort out of the water; first by completing the product 3/4 of the way, like they do most everything else; second by changing their marketing of it 50 gazillion ways, like they did to their
Not to mention he doesn't even take into account that many of the hardware vendors are in Asia, which has more than one country embracing Linux, or trying to do their own Linux like OS. Lets see the counties making our hardware, use Linux, so naturally we can conclude they'd prefer to write Windows drivers.... nah!
I don't think Dvorak got enough sleep the night before he wrote this idea down. He made it too simplistic.
Now, is this some example of visionary, enlightened forward thinking? Or is this what happens when otherwise normal grown ups start smoking rock cocaine?
John keeps babbling about the GPL this and GPL that, but the funny thing is that he understands so little about open source licenses that he actually thinks that just by writing a device driver for Linux it would automatically become GPL-licensed.
So you really DO combine all the security concerns of both platforms... in a nice bogged-down system. Emulation is usually for very peculiar needs or for amusement... it's not something the average person does out of habit.
What a dork! Hasn't he ever noticed that the drivers are the *one* free part of Windows?
Besides, Microsoft doesn't even make most of the drivers for new devices--those are made by the device manufacturers. It's not like Microsoft could sell them anyway.
--When you buy proprietary software, you don't get better software. What you get is the right to complain about it.
Two pages dedicated to state the obvious - this pointy-haired writer is an idiot and has absolutely no idea of what he writes about...
;-)
What a waste of Slashdot
And there are people who print his words on dead forests...
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
Microsoft doesn't need a secret project to create a hosted UNIX/Linux environment under NT, they already have an excellent one in the form of Interix.
If Microsoft is reinventing the wheel and doing it all over again, they're nuts.
I suspect Dvorak heard something about Interix and went off half-cocked. Given the way he's interpreting Apple's unbundling the Firewire cable from the iPod Mini (they're NOT removing FW support, they're just unbundling the cable) as Apple "dropping firewire"), going off half cocked is still his MO.
This is the same guy who says DVD-CSS is used for piracy, and thinks XML is a replacement for HTML (when we all know it's meant to replace SGML).
John Dvorak is ALMOST ALWAYS WRONG!!
He is just plain out to lunch when it comes to his predictions and opinions.
I've never read one of his articles that later turned out to be correct. I can't believe that he is actually employed. He is a contrarian indicator - if he says "white" - it must be "black". You can make quite a bit of money for yourself by investing in the opposite of what he predicts.
The driver layer argument is the stupidest comment *ever*. Most of the unstability and lack of reliabity in Windows (on desktop stuff, not speaking about professional servers) is due to poor driver design and a faulty driver hook in Windows kernel. Microsoft would need *eons* to get that brutally-melted ms-linux bastard running reliabily.
Lack of drivers in Linux is indeed a problem, but it's not a huge one, specially in the last two years. If Microsoft would want to kill linux that way, they only had to make their own distro.
Your head a splode
Today's user wants to grab just about anything and not worry about installing it and making it work.
The home users I get paid to help fix their computers often have trouble with getting USB devices to work do to their power saving features. While it is true there are lots of drivers for devices under windows, they are far from 'worry free to install'.
Most device documentation screams "cancel out of the windows driver install windows when they pop-up as you plug the device in", then run the manufacturer's installer.
As such, linux can succeeed because it won't matter what the underlying OS is. PCs reduce to embedded systems.
Do get me wrong here. Interix is a good product, but it doesn't fit the bill as Dovark is talking about. It's about a half step there.
Secondly, Apple IS dropping firewire, They (Apple) stated that they are going to USB 2. That's not unbundling, thats dropping.
I don't know where that guy's been lately, he might be smart, but last time I compiled my kernel, I had more drivers available than in Windows natively, and I run a laptop (think exotic hardware!). So maybe it might be true on the whole, but Linux does run on so many more things than windows, find me one portable mp3 player that runs windows embedded, whereas this site has several times reported a plethora of those running linux embedded.
Honestly, I don't buy his argument. And MS won't kill linux, no matter how hard they try.
To quote Starwars "The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip from your fist."
I don't believe MS has what it takes to kill linux, namely: a worthy competitor.
---- I am certain of only one thing : I know nothing else.
The article did not state that the drivers are free. The point of the article is to show how the plug and play portion of Windows, the driver layer, can be seperated and attached to a linux build, supplying the linux package with a part that is sorely missing right now. It's the layer that attaches drivers to the OS, not the drivers themselves.
Hahaha, I read the headline incorrectly... I thought the it said:
"Yeah, well, Dracula called and he's coming over tonight for you and I said okay."
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtualpc/
Sometimes seventeen/Syllables aren't enough to/Express a complete
Hi, If nobody will go for hardware that has no linux support then this will be pointless. my 3 cent
Microsoft would never be happy with being relegated to a middleware supplier.
Microsoft is maintaining dominance by deliberately cultivating Joe Average's misunderstanding that all PC's can only run Microsoft Windows. In fact from my eperience, most non-technical users don't even realise that Windows is a separate product from the PC itself.
Therefore its all about perception. That PC screen is prime real-estate and anything Microsoft does to allow non-microsoft logos on the screen directly undermines their core marketing approach of misdirection, misinformation and technical sounding doublespeak.
This is why the only way to fight Microsoft is by advertising the Linux name and getting Joe Public to realise that it can do everything that Windows can and more, it is more safe, stable and secure, and is truly free in all senses of the word.
Most of those drivers happen to be written by the hardware vendors. How can MS extinguish here? By not allowing access to driver development info?
Here's a clue for Johnny-boy: They pretty much already do this stupidity and you can bet your bottom dollar that if it came to be known with real evidence that they've arranged this, there'd be another anti-trust suit filed against them in most of the G8 at that point. 'sides, many of the drivers are reverse engineered anyway.
You know, I don't know why I'm even bothering- John's just another talking head that practically nobody listens to because he doesn't have the foggiest about what he's talking about most of the time.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
OK,
Microsoft takes Linux, somehow redesigns all driver needs to work perfectly with modular close sourced windows drivers...well there goes preformance, security and reliability. They're obviously not going to release it for free, there goes cheap. It's Microsoft doing the code work, there's no way it's going to be secure or relatively stable. It's linux, so it's going to be alien to the common desktop user, there goes easy.
So M$ is going to make a slow, buggy, insecure version of linux that is going to trash the opensource community because it has better driver support....
Umm okay, When is this guy starting his own talkshow? Is he training to be a Maury Povich replacement?
Has anyone noticed the simularities between John Dvorak and Andy Rooney? They both seem to have amusing little rants at times, but both them are hopelessly be behind on technology and often have no idea about the topic that they're ranting about.
:)
Both of them are WAY overdue for retirement, too. Until then, I'll enjoy his articles on Slashdot just for the amusing replies of people who still take him seriously
That's odd, I much prefer my Debian machines to my Windows machine because almost none of my hardware works under Windows.
I'm serious.
The "problem" is that I use old hardware which runs old versions of windows (98, ME) because 1) I don't care to spend hundreds of dollars for a new version of Windows and 2) the hardware couldn't run it anyway. The existing hardware works fine for my needs, and I can think of hundreds of better uses for the cost of a new entry-level machine.
But every so often I would like to use some of my other hardware with this box, and it simply doesn't work. My parallel port ZIP drive - doesn't work. My USB thumb drive - unrecognized.
Drivers are either missing or inaccessible. You might argue that I should have filed away the disks that came with the hardware, but they're totally useless to me since they don't contain Linux device drivers or configuration tools. Many companies, inexplicitly, don't provide downloadable drivers - if the manufacturer still exists.
My favorite has to be the thumbdrive that contained the driver. On the thumbdrive. So the driver is only accessible if its unnecessary. (I tried copying it via my Linux system, but apparently they decided against supporting 98.)
My point is that your argument is not just bogus because a sample size of one is meaningless, it's bogus because the "windows always has drivers" argument is false. If I need a new driver under Linux I can usually install a new kernel without too much else changing, and the package manager should take care of the few dependencies. But if my Windows kernel doesn't support a driver I have to install a whole new OS and probably kill several of my applications in the process.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
I fail to see what makes him think improved driver support will change people's reasons for running it.
... and the minority can either whine & be ignored, or give up and join the rest on the dark side.
Wow, you're really missing the point.
Microsoft's winning tactic is "embrace and extend": grudgingly accept the winning standard, get LOTS of people to use the MS version, then slowly deviate from that standard. They win by default via customer loyalty; when a large majority of users choose the MS solution, the "standard" becomes whatever MS says it is
In this case, the idea is to play off Linux's biggest weakness: lack of drivers. MS drivers may suck, but at least they exist! (Personally, it was incredibly frustrating to run Knoppix on a once-popular reasonably-capable Gateway laptop and not even have sound because the drivers wouldn't support even the most common sound card - but freakin' Win95 that was on it runs sound fine! ARGH!) By "embracing" Linux via a method heavily dependent on drivers, there would be a boom in Linux - to be specific, MS-Linux. Then, once hooked like crack addicts, upgrades gradually fork away from "real" Linux and toward Windows - exactly what Microsoft did to IBM regarding OS/2. The few hardcore Linux users left are left swinging in the breeze.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Microsoft would be better off instead porting their UI to the Linux OS, much like NT was written on top of a modified version of Mach. Then they could sell the desktop at the same price as XP. That way, they don't lose any revenue, can port Office or whatever else to only their desktop, and still gain the ability to run Linux apps.
... all they have to do is give Windows away for free and include all its source code. Blammo! Linux would then die practically overnight. Simple as that :-)
I am an ddministrator of more than a dozen
-machines but they did not even answer my mails after i said that i have to bring their product back if they will not support me.
Windows(2k/XP) infected machines at a german university. The origin of most of the problems are: bad drivers.
Onboard sound, (network) printer, printer server,
graphic cards are my favourites.
Even so called "certified" drivers ruined my
weekends.
Last time i tried to contact Brother for one of their "i-can-do-everything-but-you-have-to-pray-to-me"
Installing the driver fails again and again.
(Well, i guess it will be the last Brother product our departement aquired).
The onboard tools of windows are rather poor.
Most of the times i use a modified Knoppix
(famous "ct-edition" of Knoppix or "xfld") for
analysing and repairing.
I saw windows crashing it own automation mechanisms too often.
Thank god i will work for another departement
using debian linux - were i can concentrate on
the real thing (ldap, maybe i will try open mosix for distribution of the matlab processes, samba for the poors, tuning libraries for statistical mathematics - well, no more daily reading of virus alerts *g*).
http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/
Some vendors do not release specifications of the hardware or provide a linux driver for their wireless network cards. This project provides a linux kernel module that loads and runs Ndis (Windows network driver API) drivers supplied by the vendors.
http://www.jankratochvil.net/project/captive/
Project implements the first full read/write free access to NTFS disk drives. You can mount your Microsoft Windows NT, 200x or XP partition as a transparently accessible volume for your GNU/Linux.
This compatibility was achieved in the Wine way by using the original Microsoft Windows ntfs.sys driver. It emulates the required subsystems of the Microsoft Windows kernel by reusing one of the original ntoskrnl.exe, ReactOS parts, or this project's own reimplementations, on a case by case basis. Project includes the first open source MS-Windows kernel API for Free operating systems. Involvement of the original driver files was chosen to achieve the best and unprecedented filesystem compatibility and safety.
(you can use the FUSE LUFS wrapper to run this, as LUFS is now unmaintained).
Should Device Drivers be the responsibility of the hardware manufacturer or the OS company?
On the one hand, you have the market force that would make HW manufacturers want to provide quality drivers to the three OSes. On the other, you have the OS companies that want to support many drivers.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
it's hare-brained, cause hare is the hopping animal. Not to split a hair...
I don't have a lot of time, so I'll try to make it succinct.
1) Windows Drivers Suck. They are often buggy, and bring the system down. I don't want my Linux system dependant on buggy Windows drivers. I'm happy with my linux system as is (yes, you have to do some research to make sure what you buy is compatible. That's life--- Be an educated consumer).
2) Inane amount of difficult involved. The Windows driver model is VERY different from the Linux driver model. I'm not a sure a 'hybrid' is possible without a great deal of work/new code. Do you really want a Linux where MS wrote 1/3 of the Kernel?
Especially if that portion is closed source? Who knows what bugs/exploits will lurk there. No Thanks!
3) The Linux driver model is superior. I can take my harddisk out of my desktop (with ACPI on), and drop it into a desktop with a different processor, different network cards, different motherboard chipset (with ACPI off), different graphics card, and it'll boot. On SuSE, SaX2 will run automagically, press enter a couple times, and *Poof* you're up and running.
Try this on Windows. Blue Screen, almost certainly.
Does the Windows Driver Model permit dynamically loaded drivers? I think not.
Does the Windows Driver Model require a reboot on each driver installation/upgrade? Depends on the device, but usually.
Does the Windows Driver Model support having thousands of drivers installed simultaneously, and dynamically loading the necessary ones on demand?
I think not.
No thank you. MS-Linux will only draw people from Windows, not Linux.
Once you go to the pain of making sure ALL your hardware is Linux compatible (i.e. working drivers are out there), the Linux driver model is preferable to the clunky windows driver model.
Yes, I know there are reasons the Windows driver model is the way it is. Mainly backwards compatability. But rational != excuse.
Linux is better, and I like it that way.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
I'm just one person and I realize there are some for whom every driver they've ever used on Linux has worked perfectly, but I don't think this is the common experience. I've had very bad luck with Linux and its drivers and have basically given-up on it as a desktop OS. I still think its a blast as a fun geek-toy, great for specific tasks, and a wonderful platform for dedicated appliances (think TiVo), but for the home desktop and my devices it just takes too much time to get working if I can get it to work at all. Dave
My grandma has "a 45 years experience with cars" but I'll be damn if she knows what a carburetor is.
Even my father secretary has "a 20 years experience with computers".
That doesn't mean she knows shit about software engineering.
The same thing applys to Dvorak.
Device drivers run at ring zero for one, good, reason.
Not just the UI.
Microsoft would be better off making a replacement for X windows.
That way, you couldn't run KDE/Gnome side by side with their UI.
Of course, this will NEVER happen. Microsoft loves the NT architecture FAR too much.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Dvorak has been consistently wrong about most things.
He's have us using card punches.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
"Today's user wants to grab just about anything and not worry about installing it and making it work."
If this was true, then the Mac would be on top of the world. Since installing a program is simply drag and drop the app into the folder you want it.
People love messing with drivers and install programs. They love bugs and crashes. They love viruses, worms, and spyware. 90% has said so by using MS Windows.
We are the ones that are wrong in thinking that people want easy to use computers.
The above is not worth reading.
From TFA: "Drivers have always been an issue with Linux as PC users have gotten spoiled with Windows driver support."
Let me get this straight: being supplied with the drivers that let you use the hardware you've bought and paid for is "spoiled", simply because you happen to be using the most popular operating system? By that measure, isn't being given an entire OS for free being "spoiled"?
I'm just curious about the logic here, since it seems he's criticising Windows* for about the only thing done right, and it's users for being used to the convenience of actually being able to utilize their hardware. I think he's missing the point of why the "non-nerd" majority buy computers (and ignoring the resultant economies of scale that make them cheaper); unfortunately, it's a trait all too common in OSS advocacy. The philosophy is irrelevant if it turns peripherals into paperweights and demands that everyone on Earth becomes a programmer before they can do what they want. Realistically, that's more of an impediment than proprietary formats.
*IMO the best thing you can do with Windows is delete it. That doesn't mean I think Linux, BSD or OS X will suit everyone...
Blank until
I think this is the dumbest thing I've ever read. MS keeps it's monopoly by tieing you to Windows applications, not drivers. How many pieces of h/w do you have that came with a driver disk that was more current than Windows? Heck, you can't install a wireless card most of the time unless you install the driver from the CD before even installing the h/w.
What is the man talking about, clearly he hasn't seen that cooperative linux works in windows fine, and before that Umlwin32...
Nothing to see here; move along!
....Or anything Open-Source for that matter. People (well most of them) work on it for nothing, give it away, and actually (gasp!) ENJOY running it. Inversely, Linux COULD kill microsoft. Without the COMPANY there likely wouldn't be any more OS. The same cannot be said of Microsoft killing Linux or anything else Open-Source.
What he is suggesting is something similar to a project I think would be neat. That is, being able to run Windows drivers under Linux.
There are several Linux projects using Windows DLL's (MPlayer, Xine, etc.). I don't see why that idea can't be expanded to cover drivers. This could possibly facilitated by using things like WINE but you wouldn't necessarily need WINE.
Drivers are basically just DLL's that access hardware. Sometimes they use Windows API's (like USB) but those API's could be created for Linux for use by the drivers.
Then you could just run binary Windows drivers on Linux.
The ratio of people to cake is too big
oh, wait that was Novak ... sorry.
All those old guys who don't grok the real world all seem alike to me.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
In my opinion, and it is just opinion I have no facts to support this at all, if Microsoft released a Linux it would become a nearly instant success in the corporate market.
Year -1 (Now)
System Administrator: blah blah blah so you see how Linux would improve our productivity
PHB: No way. We're not having something put together by a bunch of hackers
Year 0
System Administrator: blah blah blah so you see how Linux would improve our productivity
PHB: Hmmm, OK, as long as we do it quietly. To protect us we'd better be safe & go with Microsoft Linux
Year 1
System Administrator: blah blah blah so you see how Linux would improve our productivity
PHB: Good thinking. MS Linux gets great reviews in PHB Weekly. Just make sure you get service pack 6.2.
Year 5
PHB: The CEO wants to know why aren't we running Linux on our servers?
System Administrator: It's too unstable, Microsoft keep screwing up the updates.
The few PHBs that ever knew there was a Linux before MS got in the market would quickly forget that unpleasant fact. If they ever heard of them they'd probably think Debian SuSE & Redhat were either cheap clones or outright warez. In either case something to be avoided.
That arguement might hold water for the Desktop, but Linux has the most momentum in other areas anyway.
In the server and embedded worlds, where linux is making huge strides, plug and play driver support is not nearly as important.
In custom embedded environments it isn't unreasonable to expect to have to write some of your own drivers, even if WinCE is your platform of choice. I can tell you first had that writing a WinCE driver is WAY more of a pain then writing one for Linux. Especially for somebody new to drivers. There are so many good examples of linux drivers out there to work off of.
In the server world, linux supports almost everything out of the box, and if your a good admin your not going to be playing with a lot of cutting edge unproven hardware anyway.
According to the article, ( Hey, /. sorry I read the article, I am new here ) MS developed a MS compatiable version of Linux and then shelved it.
As posted above MS bought(announced)Connectix Feb 2003.
When was it developed?
When did they shelve it?
Could he have mentioned dates or a time line?
Could it have been around this time? June 22 2001
http://news.com.com/Microsoft+license+spurns+open+ source/2100-1001_3-268889.html
A timeline would beter help me to understand some of the quotes and rationalizations that goes on in Redmond.
I don't think any important developers would stop working on Linux just because Microsoft would also benefit. The most common reasons why developers work on free software have nothing to do with hurting Microsoft but rather with creating useful software.
You got XP to install in 15 minutes!!!???
In the last year I've built a hundred + machines all 2.4GHz + Athlons and Prescotts with 512MB DDR and I don't think I've had a single one finish in less than 30 minutes (and that's with a quick NTFS format). Add Windows updates with reboots and all that cack and you're up to an hour at least.
Mandrake on the other hand takes about 20 minutes then run MandrakeUpdate, click "all" and walk away while it does the stuff it has to do (no rebbots for each 3 or 4 updates). The only hardware I can honestly say I'm wary of now is Webcams, USB modems and wireless but NDISWrapper seems to take care of that with reasonable results.
The more I had to use XP in my last job, the more determined I became to find a job where I wouldn't have to.
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
the relative dearth of device drivers available for Linux (compared to what is available for Windows)
That's a false premise. Linux has more drivers. Windows only has more drivers when you limit your scope to talking only about Intel PC's.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
"They tried to kill me with a forklift."
It's all fun and games until someone loses the key to the handcuffs.
Windows is for loosers.
OSX is for people who know better.
Linux is for people who like to explore.
Me, I learn and explore with Linux. Create with OSX and use Windows when... uuhmmm, never.
Linux isn't and will never be an OS for the average Joe so stop complaining and get on with life.
------
My native language isn't English so please...
Today's user wants to grab just about anything and not worry about installing it and making it work.
That's why I use a Mac.
Microsoft didn't seem to be trying to kill Windows with this strategy....
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
like anyone cares what this idiot writes!
No text
A pricetag.
going to kill what started out as a hobby and could just as easily dissolve back into a hobbist's system? Outlaw tinkering? The only way I know of is to outlaw computers. So Linux never reaches the mainstream. Big deal. Let the users have Micrososft, and we can continue having fun making our computers do what the authorities don't want you to do. Screw 'em. Just reverse enginner the hardware and make our own drivers. Upload them anonymously and let them try to sue. Like tell me that's not already happening.
What?
ummmm... movies won't play? Codecs maybe? These are required in Windows as well. Linux is no different. Actually, getting Win32 codecs on Linux is a snap.
Yes, because embracing a competitive product in exactly this manner worked so well for OS/2.
Dvorak's claim that users are spoiled by Windows' driver support level has a problem: sometimes Windows driver support is lousy.
:)]
There is a lot of hardware that doesn't yet work with Linux (which I wish did); for many people, this is a real downside to Linux as an OS choice right now for two closely linked reasons: 1) it means their existing hardware might not work with Linux, which might mean spending money to replace them if Linux is for other reasons especially attractive 2) When a new device comes out, especially a specialized one they might need in a field like medical imagery, it's likely to come with Windows drivers (if it's designed to interface with an PC, rather than self-contained) but may never work, or may only work with reduced functionality, with Linux.
However, there's another side to the driver problem. Adversity breeds strength; those devices which do work with my installation of Mepis Linux (and which have worked with various other distributions) generally don't need separate driver downloads to make work; my printer, for instance (Lexmark 210e) works under KDE after a 2-minute exercise with an actually decent "wizard" type application. (I loathe those "Wizards" in general, but this one works nicely, isn't condescending, and results in a working printer.)
For reasons unimportant here, I recently had to use a machine running Windows 2000; to make it work with the same printer, I had to find the driver for the printer and install it. (Which, surprising to me, did not require a re-boot. Thanks, that was less unpleasant than I expected.) Likewise, and more annoying, the same was true of an ethernet card I hooked to the same laptop. It came with a driver on floppy; none of my machines have a floppy drive. Luckily, I had a USB thumb drive handy, could download the driver from a different machine, transfer via the thumb drive. The same card is auto-recognized under Linux and Just Works. Perhaps it's also easy traveling with WIndows XP, but I don't have that to compare.
My dad has a color laser printer (Minolta/QMS) which for about half a year would cause his Windows-running computer to get even crummier whenever it was used; Minolta tech support blamed a memory leak in the driver or the spooler software. I think a new driver has solved the problem, but in the free operating system world. the problem *might* have been solved a lot faster; in the time between discovering the gooey performance under Windows and an improved driver, that model of printer actually gained support under CUPS.
I also have some older hardware for which drivers exist for Windows 98 -maybe also 2000-, but not for XP; that means that for many users it would be effectively useless. (Or do those drivers also work in some sort of compatibility mode for XP? Haven't tried, don't know.) Most of it works fine under Linux.
So while it's nice for the buyers of new Windows-centric peripherals that they can install software to make the peripherals work, it's also nice not to be dependent on separate driver software. (Which, Yes, is needed to make some things work under Linux, too -- there's an overlap, clearly.) And for ethernet cards, it's plain annoying.
So while using Linux as my every-day desktop (as I have for the last 6 years) limits my hardware choices, it also means that my printer, scanner, modem, etc. really *are* plug-and-play -- or at least closer than I've ever seen to that ideal under Windows. [Note, YMMV; I find Windows annoying enough that I don't ever deal with it at much of a stretch. The laptop in question will soon be upgraded to a nice Linux install
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Danger Danger MS-Cygwin is comming ...
...
...
It'll be like nothing we've ever seen
Run for the hills
I've always said Windows and Linux "need each other". I don't see what he's saying as happening though. His claim that MS makes a "lopped-off head" version of Linux would kill the development cycle is bogus. Think of the hardcore, community-based, non-commercial purists... the Debian, Slackware, Kernel people. Probably 90% of the Linux-people. They would never just "give up".
He claims developers would stop developing because MS would benefit from open source projects. Umm, if I developed a killer app, and I didn't want it to run on MS-Linux, I'd stick a compile-time flag in there. Set the flag for "MS-Linux" support. How many MS-Linux users (people who want many things to work out of the box and probably want to separate themselves from the running parts) would take the time to set the flag? Bingo. Linux-Killer Killer.
FLR
GPL would be quite a problem for MS here. Binary driivers are OK IFF they use nothing but a subset of the functions exported to modules. Other useful functions are exported only to modules that declare themselves to be GPL. No promises are made that any particular function will or will not remain available to non-GPL drivers.
The more interesting Windows drivers would be the third party ones for brand new hardware. MS doesn't own those, so if they want them to work in Linux, they'll have to come up with a full translation layer under the GPL. Native GPL drivers (by avoiding extra layers of bogosity and being open for improvement) will always be superior under Linux. For that matter, they tend to be superior to the Windows driver under Windows.
As for availability, I find that a recent Linux kernel is MORE likely than Windows to come with the needed driver. This is especially important for network drivers where you can't just go download it if you need it. The last example I saw was for the BCM5701 network controller. That is a fairly common builtin Gig ethernet chip (especially for AMD chipsets) that Linux has supported out of the box for quite a while.
Once hooked like crack addicts, people can just stop running MScolinux and run actual linux on their PC, because they're not really using Windows any more. Dvorak is either a fucking moron (unlikely) or he is attempting to set a trap for Microsoft (possible.) Or maybe he just took the purple acid and decided to write for his column before he came down.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The biggest problem with this whole idea is Micrcosoft's broken development strategy. It is a culture thing, and will see its way into any Linux hardware abstraction layer they try to develop. What I'm talking about is best explained with the video driver saga on NT.
Windows NT, by most accounts, was a solid OS design, partitioning and securing different parts of the system from on another. But it was fast enough to beat the competition on every benchmark, so Microsoft made the fatal decision to move the video driver into the protected kernel space. Thereby, damaging the OS stability.
They would expect to do the same to Linux. Play games and take shortcuts with the system stability, so that a fault in one system would bring the whole computer down. If they ever did try such a monstrosity, I think most user would totally reject such flotsam.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Making Linux into something attractive to commerical interests and/or regular home users isn't really critical to Linux surviving. Even if Linux falls flat in the commercial and home-user arena, it will just revert to what it's always been: a kick-ass OS that can be customized, with thousands of free open-source software to run on top of it. We don't need Wall Street's or Silicon Valley's stamp of approval to use and enjoy Linux. Consider it a priviledge that it's being shared and expanded for wider use / application.
I'm not trolling here. It's a serious question. The guy is the quintessential know-nothing tech writer who seems to have figured out how to thrive by writing utter hogwash.
Seriously. Name one thing in the last five years he's actually gotten right.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
Dovorak has no clue. I work for a major juice company. When we want fast, highly available, database solutions we go with Oracle on Linux!
We migrated many Windows databases off windows to Linux. Same hardware, Linux is just a better performer.
This is why MS hates open source software so much... it effectively blocks the embrace and extend strategy that they've relied on in the past.
Linux under Windows has been available for almost a decade now. It's kind of handy for a few things, but the main reasons for running Linux (the kernel, not just the GNU utilities) are completely negated if you run it on top of any version of Windows.
Saying that Linux under Windows will kill Linux is kind of like claiming that the kids won't want to move out because they've got a playhouse in the back yard.
May I ask if you sent in bugreports to at least one of these distro's or LiveCDs? The people who maintain them don't have every piece hardware that exists on their desk.
Filing a bugreport is mostly rather painless. There are real people on the other side. Who will guide you through getting the necessairy info out of your hardware to decide if the hardware detection is at fault or that the hardware is really unsupported. More people should know this, under Windows you rarely have the posibility to talk with the driver maintainers.
Plus you haven't mentioned what hardware you tried to run it on. This could in hindsight reveal what happened. I'm sorry, but I don't see any verifiable facts of the problems you mention in your story. Now you could just be some troll that want to give Linux a bad name.
This is quite a sad article to see from someone who used to have lots of respect as a perceptive industry observer.
I've noticed over the last year or so that he seems to be missing the mark more and more often.
This particular article, centering on complete misunderstandings of the GPL and fundamental misconceptions about how the Windows and Linux kernels work and are partitioned, is his death rattle as a serious columnist.
Goodbye from my reading list John!
Haha, it might be that "open source law" whatever is it is untested. But copyright law is old and stable. MS will never touch Linux, their programmers wouldn't even comprehend the code.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
only the interface layer between ms-linux and the driver layer needs to be GPL because of (assumingly) tight intergration with the linux core. the drivers adhering to that interface will still be proprietary, and most likely written by the same 3rd parties.
ps. i would like to be corrected if i am wrong
Is this the same motherfucker who said Apple was going to start using Intel/x86 processors by now? ROFLMAO! AHAHHAH!
WARNING: DO NOT LET DR. MARIO TOUCH YOUR GENITALS. HE IS NOT A REAL DOCTOR!
I know this is OT, but is this the same guy who created the dvorak keyboard layout?
This story could only come from the mouth that is in love (or bed) with Microsoft. Seeing that his whole world has been writing about Microsoft for years this is not so supprising.
Several points:
1) What he is suggesting as "the killer technology" already exists ten times over in various products of differing levels of compatibility.
2) Win32 drivers are an order of magnitude more difficult to write correctly than the very same driver in Linux land. An MS type driver requires a very high commitment in both Financing of instructional learning and software support, where as with Linux any compitent programmer can buy a book from Amazon and get started in a few days.
3)Drivers are developed by manufacturers, not Microsoft, except the generic ones which Microsoft can make run on many pieces of hardware or have licenced from a vendor. To be included in the MS distribution you have to move a lot of product.
4)What is missing in Linux land is information! Because of Microsofts control on the market, this information is a much guarded secret. Brand X really does not care if brand Y does its drivers one way or another, the apps on top of that driver move procuct, not the driver. If the iron grip upon that information were loosened, and allowed it to get out into the wild, there would be drivers for most every product under Linux today. Microsoft, by virtue of their contractual control on this information base is controling the drivers just like they control[ed] the OEM's by forcing them to put MS on every hard drive. What vendor would not want to sell to a Linux user given that they don't need any development startup cost?
Just follow the money Dorvak, and you will find the real answer.
First, he doesn't mention the impact on XP and potential Longhorn users. What are they supposed to think? Technically, it might make sense, but if these people were technically clever (ie. not requiring some MS marketing to make a decision) they'd have Linux already. If they had Linux, chances are they got it for a) pricing reasons, or b) independence from Microsoft, neither of which would be dented by this move.
Drivers may be a strong consumer argument (ever weakening with more universal standards), but a trivial enterprise argument.
Final point: why would M$ want to kill Linux? Sure, it threatens their market dominance, but what's bad about a competitor who reveals all their secrets? It sure beats any alternatives.
We all live in a state of ambitious poverty. -- Decimus Junius Juvenalis
I haven't paid any attention to anything he's written in the 10 ot 12 years. He makes less sense than Bill O'Reilly.
First let me get one thing straigth, I been a happy linux user for more than five years and I love it.
But reading a comments on a story like this, really make me question how seriously the average "+5 Interesting" slashdot comment should taken when the story is about anything remotely critical of "our" favorite OS.
You write about the great joys of the Hauppage WinTV series on Linux, and yes the bttv drivers are great. But the fact is, had you choosen just about any of the other hauppage series (or pretty much any other newer TV card) it wouldn't have been trivial at all. But luckily for you, you have choosen a card based on the only well supported chipset for that sort of thing.
Something you don't have to worry one bit about on windows.
Then there is the wifi drivers, the chipset drivers (for example, don't count on being able to use the new ATI Radeon XPRESS chipset anytime soon).
Try and listen to the interview with Nat Friedman that was linked here on slashdot earlier, he talks a good deal about driver support on Linux(mostly about why closed source drivers will be hard to avoid, but also mentions driver quality when talking about Xgl).
Driver support is getting pretty good, but saying its not a problem is simply closing your eyes and not facing the facts. It's not a HUGE problem, but you still need to give drivers thought when buying new hardware.
Seriously, this is the same guy that insisted Apple was going to switch to Intel processors.
I was playing around with some spare parts and plugged in an old dual boot hard drive from a different system. I booted into linux thinking it would be easier than trying to get W2k working on new hardware. Sure enough, RH 7.6 asked me politely if I would like to use this new hardware, and then just worked.
It turns out the data I was trying to retrieve was on an NTFS partition, so I booted into w2k to see if I could get my data. After an hour of trying to update drivers without having a driver for the nic, I gave up. Too bad I used W2k in the first place.
I think what he's saying and most people are missing is that provided MS could even come out with a distro that could become dominant, everyone on open source Linux projects would realize their work is going to help Microsoft's bottom line (since the majority of users are on an MS distro). Then they would run to the bathroom, throw up, and cease all work on their respective projects. Now do I agree? Nope.
he must need his stock in microsoft to go up. I recently touched a windows xp box with third party drivers from a periphal a friend bought and I ended up reinstalling the god dam operating system for her. what a joke - I told her to get a mac or I will install ubuntu for her but I am not going to touch her windows piece of shit again. third party drivers for windows just plain suck why do I need a driver disk for a god dam keyboard or a mouse. anyway I am done - but this article is crazy - microsoft is not going near Linux - and if they did no one who buys linux now would never buy it from microsoft - especially kludged up with third party drivers.
Those old farts can not even come up with something new but talking about lack of drivers!!! 10 years ago they were howling about OS/2 and now linux-have-no-drivers FUD started. I bet he have no idea what he is talking about.... I am disgusted with this "experts"
Dvorak is an idiot has-been. The mere mention of his name, much less any of his brain dead writings or quotations should be forbidden in Slashdot.
(Dvorak's a hack -- he's a sort of professionally-paid troll, with wannabe authoritarian leanings that make him consistently favor the usual industry juggernauts. His prognostications are almost all in a class with "There's no evidence that anyone wants to use these things" -- which is a paraphrase of his original reaction to a mouse.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Microsoft's winning tactic is "embrace and extend": grudgingly accept the winning standard, get LOTS of people to use the MS version, then slowly deviate from that standard. They win by default via customer loyalty; when a large majority of users choose the MS solution, the "standard" becomes whatever MS says it is
I can see what you're trying to say but, if that were the case, how do you explain Firefox popularity?
Caesar si viveret, ad remum dareris.
- Uhm, not to me, it's not!
- BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!! No stop it, please, my sides hurt...
- I want some of what that guy's been smoking!
- Err.. I think you got that the wrong way around.
- You know, I think you're a month and a week early with this one.
- *nod*, *smile*, *look for the nearest exit and move slowly towards it*
- echo "Dvorak" | tr -d 'v' | tr -d 'a'
D.When he was such the OS/2 zealot. Everything else to him was crap - especially windows. Now all of a sudden he is banging the m$ drum? Gee, when will he make up his mind.
Honestly, I never figured out why he was being constantly referred to as such an "expert".
I too work for a huge fruit, and we need to get away from Windows as well! I'm not sure what a Windows database is, but if we had one, we'd surely wanna convert that too!
Firstly, the reason SuSE took 25m to install is because it hardly installs a third of the software XP does. Moving on, XP installs *most* hardware drivers before it dumps you into the OS - but you've got to install some drivers yourself, such as nVidia's and certain others.
.cab file on the install disc.
You say you rebooted after installing drivers for video/audio/nic/fw.. while I'm not sure what kind of firewall requires an XP driver, I can assure you that you could have installed all of those drivers at once and then done a single boot, rather than doing five, and everything would have worked just fine. I work in IT, I do this all the time - never had a snag.
In XP, installing drivers IS part of the OS installation process - and a lot of stuff does JustWork, but certain drivers have to be installed seperately. Considering Windows has to support hundreds if not thousands more hardware devices than Linux, it would be nearly impossible to support *EVERYTHING* from a single
Also, for some of the drivers you can also just run WindowsUpdate and the latest WHQL-certified versions will automatically be downloaded and installed for you.
Your tale, while interesting (and perhaps due to OS-specific hardware), is definitly not the norm and you shouldn't believe it to be.
Cheers
WTF is going on?
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Dvorak, on the other hand, knows better. He knows that if he calls the iBook 300 "girly" or says that Linux-on-Windows will put Red Hat, Debian, and Gentoo out of business, people will rush to the web site to read his rubbish, and then comment on it it forums, link to it on blogs and slash sites, and go to great lengths to alert the world about how wrong he is... all of which gets his site hits, and makes his publisher very happy with him. He's laughing all the way to the bank, because his goal is not to be seen as insightful, but simply to be seen.
Did you ever think that maybe he does think the iBook looked girly? I thought the same thing. Did you ever think that maybe, just maybe he really did think that MS could kill Linux? No, of course not. He doesn't agree with your viewpoint so therefor he must be a capitalist rip off artist fraud. Your mentality is typical of the 12 year old slashbots that occupy this shithole.
I heard about a secret project. It concerned the development of a version of Linux that runs smoothly as a task under Windows.
colinux.org
That said, there is no way Linux under Windows would be practical with all the overhead involved.
It's very practical, actually.
If Microsoft actually produced an MS-Linux that was the standard Linux attached to the driver layer of Windows, giving users full Plug and Play (PnP) support of all their peripherals, nobody would buy any other Linux on the market
From first hand experience, I can tell you that this is not a really pleasant solution because it doesn't fix the things that are so wrong with Windows: lack of security, poor package and installer management, lousy system management interfaces, and a bad UI.
The long-term implications of such a scenario, I believe, would be essentially to kill Linux. Microsoft's MS-Linux would quickly become the dominant Linux and the company would begin to profit from all the open-source development work that would go into Linux.
First of all, Dvorak's premise is wrong: Linux has enormous numbers of drivers. Hardware "just works" under Linux when it requires cumbersome and flaky driver installations under Windows.
But let's assume the premise were right. So, people have pure Linux PCs and MS-Linux PCs. Well, that means more commercial Linux usage and the ability of software vendors to standardize on the Linux APIs. The consequence? Cutting the cost of shipping Windows out of a PC becomes a more and more attractive proposition and hardware vendors would ship more and more Linux-only PCs.
Microsoft only needs that one driver element to be proprietary for the plan to succeed.
The flaw in that argument is that it is not Microsoft that is creating the drivers, it is the hardware vendors. Anything Microsoft does to make Linux more popular or credible will mean more Linux drivers from hardware vendors.
This guy thinks Linux users are as stupid as business users. Linux users will never swallow MS-Linux. I mean, really; what planet is Dvorak living on?
Here's an alternative to the idea of "MS-Linux": how about "MS-BSD"? .Net "Shared Source" CLI is available from Microsoft for XP, FreeBSD and MacOS X.
:)
Consider:
1) MS have been bashing the GPL in general, and Linux in particular, for a long time. It would be too much of a U-turn for them to suddenly embrace it.
2) MS have borrowed code from BSD before, e.g. for the Windows TCP/IP stack. Look at how many MS Knowledge Base articles reference BSD sockets.
In fact, MS have interbred with BSD at least twice. Not only did they use BSD as a source for their TCP/IP code, they bought Interix a while back, which is where Windows Services For Unix (SFU) comes from: Interix had a pretty well-defined porting route from BSD, and as a result the Windows Posix subsystem is mostly BSD tools ported to Interix.
3) MS bought the VM vendor Connectix in 2003. Most analysts concentrated on VM sales opportunities in server rooms, but it's worth nothing that in addition to the "PC on PC" version of Virtual PC, there's version 7 of the Virtual PC product for MacOS X. MacOS X is BSD with a Mach kernel plus a very non-Win32 graphical layer. But porting VirtualPC for Windows to another BSD would give them an emulation layer for "legacy" Win32 apps on BSD.
4) The
5) Microsoft have never publicly bashed BSD, in fact they've even said nice things about it in public.
Dvorak is humorously suggesting that MS should port the Windows driver layer to Linux, but suppose they ported it to a BSD instead?
Then they'd have:
1) a rock-solid stable and secure OS, which is IMHO more secure out of the box than most Linux distros. I'm still a Linux user, because I know how to secure it and I prefer the GPL license. But then, they're not selling to me.
2) the prestige of becoming the world's largest Unix vendor overnight, with the ability to have pious pissing contests with Sun and IBM over whose OS is the most open
3) an emulation layer for Win32, allowing practically all existing Win32 apps to run unchanged, which they could bundle with the new OS
4) the BSD license, which they could proclaim is "more American!" and "less cancerous!" than the UnAmerican and Cancerous GPL
5) no legal hassles whatsoever from developing locked-up code on an Open Source base.
The name BSD is trademarked by U of C, so they'd need a new name.
How about "BSOD"? That's "O" for "Open".
Based on his past writings, I thought the short bus had taken him home for nappy time long ago. He probably has a colomn hidden away somewhere explaining why this new-fangled "toilet paper" will fail, too. Does he still have that MS tatoo on his rump? Guess so!
Minor typo in the first 3): "it's worth nothing" should have read "it's worth noting". :)
But you can choose to believe either one, of course.
Has Dvorak heard of coLinux (Cooperative Linux)? It runs as a Windows service and tries to offer the user the best of both worlds: http://www.colinux.org/ It looks very promising.
"Microsoft's winning tactic is 'embrace and extend'"
I think you mean "assimilate and destroy."
When free software is able to take market share away from a multi-billion dollar monopoly, I say "cool." What Dvorak fails to understand is that there will 'always' be open source software and that there is no way to completely thwart the efforts of the truly geeky. If Linux goes away, so beit, but many people will be there to fill in the gaps where Linus left off.
-MMMmmm beer.
Let's say MS were to do this (and AFAIC it's entirely possible that they may. Personally, I encourage them to do so). How would the OSS community react? Well, there are two options as I see it. Create another kernel/OS under either:
1) the GPL. All other complications aside it would, of course, only be a matter of time before MS co-opted that too, or
2) another license which explicitly prohibits the inclusion of commercial and/or propreitary and/or closed source code. Now, how many people do you honestly think would use such an OS? It would redefine the oncept of marginal IMHO.
Dvorak has a point, and it exists wholly outside of the desire of you, the Linux "Communists", to live in denial. Hope, for your sake, that MS doesn't take him up on his offer.
My promise raid works fine.
2) Asus V7100 Geforce2 MX with TV input/output. TV Input unsupported. TV Output unsupported. Guess I'll have to buy a DVD player and throw my DivX collection away
I have a Gainward geforce 2 ti with VIVO. Both video input AND video output work.
3) S3 Virge PCI running secondary monitor. Supposedly it's supported, but I never managed to get it to work, and I spent almost a week working on it nightly. No more multi-monitor support.
I'm sorry dude, but you suck at linux.
There's not really a nicer way to say it. You're listing shit that I *KNOW* is supported and saying that it doesn't work. That gives you ZERO credibility.
Here are some links proving that so of this hardware ACTUALLY IS SUPPORTED:
If you were actually being honest and saying that you simply couldn't get these things to work, I wouldn't be so harsh, but it's pretty damned obvious that you didn't even try, and that things you're calling that "unsupported" ACTUALLY DO WORK.
As a result, your cluelessness is misleading people as to the capabilities of my favorite operating system. The issue here really is your inablity to use google and read directions, not Linux's lack of driver support.
I'm sure I could find more links to get some of his other hardware working, but my aim here is to prove that this guy is incompetent and should not attempt to speak authoritatively on linux driver support.
Let me state this again and very clearly:
I'm not flaming this guy because he couldn't get his hardware to work, that can be a hard thing to do sometimes. I'm flaming this guy because, by stating that something is "unsupported" he is implying that NOBODY has made his hardware work. This is really obviously false, and denies the existence of the hard work of some very nice people. If you can't be bothered to install the right drivers and edit the right config files.... fine, JUST DO GO AROUND IMPLYING THAT OTHER PEOPLE'S HARD WORK DOESN'T ACTUALLY EXIST.
Life is too short to proofread.
I had this idea a long time ago. I hoped to God it wouldn't get on slashdot and give the microsoft guys some bright ideas if they didn't have them already.
Well, looks like they sure as hell do now. Now we've gotta find out how to stop them.
To be more specific, this wasn't my -exact- idea. My idea was just for Microsoft to TAKE Linux, start marketing it as Microsoft Linux(or something similar), and claim lots of ideas about Linux for themselves and once again reclaim the market. All the average joes that were going to be shown Linux will now see Linux as a Microsoft "property" and use ONLY Microsoft's version. And yes, I thought about that whole bright idea thing I said before. Obviously this article would've lead up to that idea anyhow.
Netraverse Win4Lin already provides Windows running on Linux with linux drivers, and by-and-large works better than Windows itself. Of course, the catch is the Windows version is Win98 but the Win98-on-Linux version is probably more stable than WinXP.
I think the only practical thing you can get from this insight is that drivers are critical to adoption. Most of the time I dual-boot into Windows, its to use some driver feature in Windows I need to use briefly that I couldn't find an hour to setup in Linux, like to scan in a document.
Pentium 6 1000GHz, 8 GB of DDR memory, and a really really big fan!
With all that, Microsoft feels it'll match the performance of Linux running on a Pentium 3 with 256 MB of SDRAM.
Microsoft can kill linux just like the MS super-wide split keyboard killed the Devorak keyboard in areas like performance and intelligent design.
As for MS selling linux "killing" linux, I do not think that is correct - we've seen plenty of windows only hardware out there and it was against that background that linux developed in the first place. There's nothing to stop MS selling linux - they've sold gcc in the past and fully complied with the GPL while doing so. An MS distro would be competing with all the others out there, and it would take years to get a significant share at this point even if there was some sort of MS only DRM controlled chipset introduced into most new home computer motherboards.
It's a respected journo coming up with an opinion peice and not showing it to enough others before publication. I would sum up the article as "It would be bad for linux if Microsoft got control of linux kernel development". True, but they no longer have the same grip on hardware manufacturers as they did, and when they did they couldn't completely stop a variety of competitors. - so they are very unlikely to get control this was. Even if Linus got a job at Microsoft today and handed over all control to Steve Balmer you would just get a fork, and it would still take a long time for Microsoft to dominate linux and lock out other distros from hardware. Even silly US digital anti-competition laws wouldn't stop it - the hardware is mostly made elsewhere and the rest of the world is not going to suddenly give MS money just because some US only laws say we have to - a lot of uncrippled hardware will still be build, just like with the US DVD region scam that Hollywood tried to enforce on the rest of the world.
This will never happen for many reasons. First of all if MS made MS-Linux it would cause them to admit that windows sucks, and that they have been selling crap software all this time. MS will never admit a defeat. Second as many people have said currently linux is mainly run by geeks. Geeks wont welcome MS as he said they will keep far away from MS-Linux. Linux companies wont want to change distros and stick with redhat Suse or what ever else they use. All it will do is convert the desktop to MS-Linux. Infact I think this would kill M$. The word would get out M$ is selling something you can get for free. Most drivers on Linux work just fine. Fedora you can install and everything works without configing anything. Linux is the future, M$ can do nothing to stop it.
Snarky little bastards, ain't they?
And no, this isn't the first time a story has been "disappeared" like a South American political protester, i.e., with little trace and even less explanation.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
o/~ Join us now and share the software
In short, Zonk (new editor?) and gewg_, don't take the bait. All you need to see is the name John C. Dvorak... Move along, nothing to see here.
Linux supports more hardware than Windows, uses less resources too. But it's really not up to linux developers in terms of supporting certain hardware. The power lays in hands of hardware manufactures, not developers. So, the best solution to Linux's hardware compatibility would be to make it more popular, then the manufactures would take Linux compatibility into consideration.
Regardless of whether it runs under Windows or on its own, the Linux API, something that can be programmed outside of Windows, is what makes Linux the threat.
MS's whole business works because it has developers writing for it. Everything they make is programmable in a fashion. If Linux ran on Windows, it would only hurt MS because it would make it more accessible to Windows developers, who might like it.
This is my sig.
Why not tweak Linux to support Windows drivers? This may be an idiotic question, but it seems that it might be technically feasible for Linux to support the same driver model that Windows uses. They are both x86 code... I'm sure it's more complex then that though...
He seems to imply that we're being greedy wishing for this? What a strange comment to make. Of course this is what people want! And it should be this easy under Linux too...
Even Zawinski agrees: http://www.livejournal.com/users/jwz/302761.html?n c=4
His ego..
Oh and his keyboard sucks..
PS- Wintel devices are the number one way to
kill linux support, and kill off a good number of
device vendors.
We'll just buy from China if Microsoft eliminates a number of our device drivers for linux.. China will surely embrase Linux centric drivers..
He knows enough to ruin the world and his own. Does he know enough to change himself and the world as well?
He's been a twit for at least a decade. In this changing world, it's nice to know one thing is a constant.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
The idea is how Microsoft can make money off of linux.. And Dvorak's idea is to replace the windows
kernel with linux, and have all the device driver stuff interfacing with the windows layer, with linux running atop.. I don't think there would be a problem with this as the Operating System only offers stuff like hardware and software interrupts to the device drivers, there is little OS management there.. You could probably do it such that any operating system could interface with it.. And I'm not sure about how the GPL would be able to interfere.. All Microsoft has to do is offer up a good API, then develop open source implementations that allow linux to use the device driver API.. They could keep the Linux open source, but they could leverage the device drivers and devices.. Realistically, this is what they have done all along.. Its like freeing up the city only to dictate the ports of entry.
He knows enough to ruin the world and his own. Does he know enough to change himself and the world as well?
...that would be FreeBSD then.
Dvorak is giving us fossils a bad name.
Today's user wants to grab just about anything. That would include all the music and movies ever made without paying any royalties. It would include just about everything except MJ's crotch. Todays' user is a seething mass of unrequited desires, same as yesterday's user and the lusers of lore. Galaxies will not align themselves as a result of this rantelation. As a living fossil, if there's one thing JD should know, that would be it: the more things stay the same, the more people complain.
Why didn't you just go make a small kernel with NTFS just for the purpose of rescuing that data?
Actually, i have a liveCD (they call it System Restore disk or something) that is made for this kind of stuff. Thing has support for every frikin filesystem out there.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
I wanted to point out the article in Wired as well. It really seems like Dvorak read the parody memo and decided that he'd try to sound intelligent by writing a serious article with its content stolen from someone else.
You mean Microoft? Amusing.
That's not MS Windows' fault - that's HP for you.
My Epson drivers are less than two megs.
Crazy Driver Bloat is exactly why I _didn't_ buy an HP.
I dub thee... Sir Phobos, Knight of Mars, Beater of Ass.
you are the 1st person to get to it: engineering standard for interoperable computing.
and it is this very thing, required of course by any sane person, that will instantly flush the microsoft commode. they will be gone. and a good thing too.
in the 1930's(?) there were several diff. proprietary telephone systems. wires everywhere. a huge MESS. they set some standards.
such a small thing.
congratualtions and please keep up the good work and Thank You.
By the way, the vendors I buy hardware from do care about Linux very much; that's why they get my money and the others lose.
LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
FireFox Most platforms.
Mozilla Most platforms.
Netscape Most platforms.
Ie version one run on UNIX and Mac due to a lack of graphical enviroment on Dos.
Then Mosaic on UNIX and Mac.
Then the forgeten texted based first on UNIX.
Yep it is a tree and a half.
Take a close look at the code and Firefox and Mozilla are UNIX apps ported to everything else.
One of the best cdrom test drives I have if it works in that one it will work in anything.
This is a remarkably dumb article. For a start it assumes that Linux and Windows are competing in the same market space which actually they're not (Windows is very successful on the desktop where Linux has too date been a bit of a dismal failure, and Linux is proving very successful in the datacentre where Windows has also been a dismal failure). The you have the technical aspects - The driver models for Linux and Windows are radically different and it would be very, very difficult to make them work well together. And then you have the fact that, on the whole, the Windows drivers are really pretty awful - buggy, badly implemented, and for many devices hosed by the broken device model (hence one of Apple's key niche markets being the music industry - not many pro studios run PC's and Windows despite the fact that most software vendors do product versions for them).
I'm sure MS are looking for ways to kill Linux should it ever become a threat to their core business (I suspect they're looking to Mono as one stream of this). Its going to be hard though. Broadly Microsoft's brilliance (and they must be quite brilliant to have been the dominant player in the software list for the last 10 years - the only company to have even been in the list for this long) has been to spot smaller, weaker, competitors, take their ideas and do it faster and cheaper. Linux, being free, is a difficult thing to undercut which is why a central part of the "get the fud" campaign is to try and convince people that Linux is anything but. I think MS are starting to struggle, to be honest. I mean money wise they're obviously fine but it has been noticeable that the things they've set out to destroy having done the job to Netscape so efficiently (Java, the Internet(!), Google,the Play Station, the iPod to name but a few) seem to be very much in evidence still. And Longhaul keep slipping and having bits drop off it. And I don't know any company that's done an MSOffice upgrade in the last 5 years. I'm quite relaxed about the future of Linux for the moment.
Here's my windows .vs. linux driver story. I recently bought a thinkpad with Win98SE, and installed Win200pro. For ethernet connectivity, it had a pcmcia card with a dongle. Predictably, the dongle quit working, so I installed and internal ethernet card. The 2000pro I bought had no drivers for this card, a card that has been around for years. Windows 2000pro could not recognize the card. I dug around and found drivers at Intel's web sight, ran the installer, which didn't work. The second download/installer round did work.
I installed SuSe 9.1, it recongnized the card and ran perfectly with no problems. More so, my roommate, a garden-variety computer user, sat down to use SuSe to browse the web, read/write email, and etc, and had zero issues whatsoever. She really didn't know it wasen't running windows.
Linux (SuSe) 1, Windows 0.
dvorak keyboard :)