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"Enemies of Linux" Trying to Undermine OS?
Pinawella writes "It's reported on VNUnet that 'Enemies of Linux' are trying to undermine the OS with a campaign of disinformation. It's based on an interview with an exec from the Open Source Development Labs, but who are these enemies?"
The enemy of my friend is my enemy's friend, or my friend's enemies are my friend's friends... Um, is this gonna be on the test?
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So who are these mysterious enemies of Linux?
Is it Mr. White of 42 Evergreen Terrace?
Perhaps the little old lady who lives across the road?
Or, almost inconceivably, the vicar's wife, Mrs. Candor?
Or, just perhaps, is this a thinly veiled attack against Microsoft?
Could it just be more FUD?
doesn't make them enemies.
Just very very very hostile.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
"Pinawella writes "It's reported on VNUnet that 'Enemies of Linux' are trying to undermine the OS with a campaign of disinformation."
Well that's a new tactic...
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Why the BSD people of course. Everyone knows the BSD triangle of NetBSD, FreeBSD and OpenBSD are out to get Linux. BSD stands for BKill SDamn DPenguin. What other free OS is there that could feel threatened?
Someone you trust is one of us.
If we still cant have consistant pasting between apps, I'd say we're our own biggest enemy. I've used linux since the 2.0 kernel days and even I still find it impossible to paste between different apps, especially with a different toolkit. Throw in an odd app like Mozilla and forget about it, you'll end up replacing your own clipboard with what you're trying to paste over, or pasting 3 lines into the url bar which happily takes newlines.
Why can't we just unite like all the good apps on windows, mac os, qnx, amiga.. and everything else with a real solid dev team?
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
Er, so when did Linux stop being an OS and start being a cult-like religion?
It's a f-ing operating system for god(s) sake people. It doesn't have enimies, it has competitors.
The evil monkey commands you to dance.
http://www.antarcticconnection.com/antarctic/wildl ife/penguins/index.shtml
Sheesh slashdot editors, at least do a simple google search first!
This is a good point, but asking OSDL members this question is somewhat akin to doing a survey of how many people run IIS among ASP developers.
I've only ever purchased one server with linux preloaded (from Dell). Every other linux system I've ever owned has come blank, except one workstation that had a copy of Windows preloaded.
Officially, I have 1 linux system, but in reality, I have probably 15 active systems.
Speak before you think
Nelson Pratt, marketing director of the pro-Linux organisation, which boasts Linus Torvalds among its top brass, said that unnamed vendors are trying to scare firms with a campaign claiming that Linux is inadequately supported for enterprise use.
Did anyone else picture Nelson Pratt coughing "MICROSOFT!" right after saying "unnamed vendor"?
I'm a big tall mofo.
Do Penguins taste nice?
It may sound like a strange question but people do actually eat penguins. In Antarctica there are research stations where scientists live for months or even years so for them having a penguin for dinner is much like us having a Sunday roast. From their experiences we have been told that they taste like duck and that they also have a high oil content, due to all the fish that they eat. Guano miners also eat penguins whilst they are working near to Humboldt colonies; this however is bad news, as the Humboldt penguin is now a critically endangered species. Guano is old piles of penguin poo and it is mined for as it makes a good fertiliser, this practice is also detrimental to the wild Humboldt penguin population.
Clearly, these people are trying to undermine Linux by spreading the word that penguin meat is tasty and nutritious.
"OMG they're eating Tux. You Bastards!"
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Did they really expect for linux to be a viable product and not get criticized by the people whos market they are taking?
... If you insist on multiplying a single security vulnerability by the number of available distros, or tell people that they'll have to recompile their kernel every time they add a patch, or claim that software to do X, Y, or Z isn't available for Linux when in fact it is, or claim that open source development is inherently insecure, or that running proprietary software on a GPL'd OS will get you sued by the FSF, or make any of the other kinds of propganda attacks we've all seen on Linux (and F/OSS generally) from Microsoft and its lackeys ... then you have indeed gone beyond "competitor" to "enemy."
"Criticized" is one thing; "slandered" is another. Linux is far from perfect, and all but the most rabid zealots acknowledge this; there are many valid criticisms to be made, and in some cases the validity of these criticisms is sufficient to point users direction of Windows or one of the proprietary flavors of Unix.
BUT
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
They can do/say all they wish about Linux. What they forget is 'Linux' isn't a tangible entity. It's a bit like shadow boxing.
:)
Nobody owns it (apart from !SCO), anybody can release their/a version of it, and more important, all the coders and developers don't really give a shit who uses it.
People that USE it though know the truth, and my Financial Manager likes it too, even though he doesn't really know what it is. He knows what £0:00 is, though.
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Who are the enemies
Just to the right of where the article says ,"So-called "enemies of Linux" are conducting a systematic campaign of disinformation which aims to undermine the enterprise credibility of the open source operating system", I see an add for MS's Get the Facts campaign. Hmmmm.
There are several companies who make products that Linux threatens directly. Any firm selling, for instance, an operating system, would feel threatened by what is becoming the standard OS much as TCP/IP became the standard networking protocol.
But to call these "competitors" of Linux is to misunderstand the nature of the threat.
Linux is not a business, it is not a strategy, it is not a concept.
Linux represents the brutal and unflinching march of technology towards the zero price point. Linux - and all free & open-source software - exists because all the barriers to its existence have been gradually razed.
The first rule of competition is that all players must be playing the same game. How can anyone seriously still think that Linux and (e.g.) Microsoft are playing the same game?
The game is not over - there is no game, and there never was.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
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"Enemies of Linux"?
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"They say that too many patches and we are not secure"
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"unnamed vendors are trying to scare firms"
Sounds like the tinfoil under his beanie may have become dislodged, and is allowing the CIA's paranoia rays to get into his mind!John
Now that IBM, RHN and Novell are in the ring, Microsoft, Oracle, CA and everyone else are starting to see Linux as a competitor. The problem is that most people in FOSS are not used to competition, they prefer enemies. Enemies are easier to vilify and ridicule. Competitors who are eating your lunch are not. This whole "we are holier than thou and you are so evil" thing is not going to work out there in the real world. Linux needs to compete, not be surrounded by fanboys who can pick their noses and chuckle when they write "Microshaft" and "Windoze".
Slashdot has been the main front in this whining battle for the past few years. It's gone mainstream now, of sorts, and people are starting to notice the ridiculous "OMFG WINDOZE IS TEH SUXX" headlines that adorn the front page day in and day out, complete with borg icon. And don't complain about Microsoft saying this or the other about Linux when most of you spend your waking hours claiming that Windows cannot be secured or otherwise used as a computing platform, using anecdotal data points to build feel-good statistics that only you believe.
Grow up and compete. The "some dude said something bad about Linux"-style whines like this article are starting to sound more and more like Suckdot.
As an exercise for my grade 11 students, I have them install a number of operating systems. Many flavors of Windows and Linux. Their assessment as to ease of installation and configuration? Linux is easier. Fewer reboots, you get everything in logical order, you can set up your network configuration while installing and all the hardware is automatically identified and configured (yes, I'm sure there are a few exceptions to this, but we've yet to come across them in our testing).
I had a look at the parent post's link and noted that it was from 2002 and even still there were a number of positive comments regarding Linux.
They key point from my perspective is this: nobody is telling you that you have to run Linux. All that is being said is that it's there if you want to try it and use it, and in a great number of cases, it's available for free. Nope, the gaming and some commercial apps aren't all there, but for the vast majority of computer use it's just fine.
I run dual boots on pretty all my computers at home except my firewall/gateway, which runs linux exclusively. I game more on my windows boots, and I work more on my Linux boots. Windows lacks the combined capabilities of bash, perl and gnu tools (unless you want to run cygwin). I don't mind spending the time to learn how to use the gimp. Like many *nix tools, it's great once you've spent the time to learn how to use it. Remember, however, that nobodies telling you that you HAVE to use linux. It's just an option being provided by your friendly OSS community.
They'll all start posting comments soon. They're regulars here. :)
Which is more painful? Going to work or gouging your eye out with a spoon? Find out!
http://www.workorspoon.com
Both gratis and libre, and both of those are excellent reasons for me.
I'm curious about OSX, and I'd like to give it a go, but:
So Darwin is Open Source: big deal. The rest of MacOS X is the ultimate in closed software.
And you think that translates into an "enterprise ready" game plan!?!??!!?!?
The article talks about Linux being an enterprise class OS. It's not an OS. Not all Linux distributions are enterprise ready. If you install Oracle on Debian, are you going to get support from Oracle or Debian? If you install WebSphere on Mandrake, will you get support? Even if you install Fedora and grab all the SRPMS for RHEL to setup a Samba server, is Microsoft going to help you if you're having problems connecting your windows desktops to it?
An operating system for a server doesn't do anything except provide a base to install what it is that will run the server tasks in enterprise deployments. If you can't get the software stack supported on the operating system, it's a mute point. People choose linux because they want to cut down their deployment and support costs and spend more money on the part that actually does the work. Even if you set up all that stuff your self and get it to work, the time and effort in getting it done and keeping it up to date has to factor in.
CentOS, is NOT a free RHEL. It is built from the SRPMS but you won't get support for it from people that support RHEL and it is not something that Red Hat is providing. The people that make CentOS (which is very good) take advantage of the GPL and build their own distro based on RHEL. Red Hat doesn't seem too happy about this.
I wasn't talking about OpenSolaris. OpenSolaris is different from Solaris. Apparently there's a pilot program for OpenSolaris with developers and about 50 or so ISV's. You can't even compare OpenSolaris to Linux. OpenSolaris is an operating system. Linux is a kernel. Just curious, what are these restrictions on OpenSolaris anyway? That it's not GPL'ed? That doesn't prohibit you from including GPL'ed tools with it, you just can't mix OpenSolaris and GPL code together. You can't take GPL code and put it into BSD'd code without making the BSD code GPL either. But you're right, it still hasn't arrived yet. Right now, it's still yet to be delivered, but Solaris 10 is out there.
Solaris 10 is free as in beer. You don't have to pay to deploy it, you just have to pay for support if you choose to but nothing is stopping you from downloading it and installing it on a bunch of systems. If you buy something like Oracle that is certified for Solaris 10, you can get support from Oracle even if you're not paying for support from Sun. If you buy support from Sun and install software on it, you can get support from Sun. Try to get support from Oracle for CentOS, SAP, Websphere, Peoplesoft, etc.
Linux IS free. Linux is not an operating system. Most people don't want kernels, they want operating systems. Without talking about specific linux distros, this article is just osdl marketing fluff. Don't get me wrong. It's not that I don't think RHEL or SuSE Enterprise Linux are enterprise ready, or that even the newest linux kernel is. But when you talk about linux os's in general, like this article, the argument doesn't work. A kernel alone is pretty much useles. This is talking about how good the kernel is, implying the operating systems that are built on it will have all the same qualities which isn't true.
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