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Torvalds Switches to a Mac
renai42 writes "Linux creator Linus Torvalds said this afternoon that he's now running an Apple Macintosh as his main desktop, mainly for work reasons, although partly simply because he's a self-described "technology whore" and got the machine for free." And yes, he is running Linux on it ;)
I'll get the stake, can asomeone else get the firewood?
My carpenter switched from a 15" hammer to a 16" hammer. It's just a tool fer Chrissakes....
that's great... why do I care? Seriously, I sometimes write code for windows apps, while running FreeBSD... who cares... sometimes you just happen to be in a different environment... it doesn't mean you've abandoned the other one.
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
As the jaws of many, many die-hard Linux advocates slam into the floor.
Always good to see another boost to the PPC64 platform though...
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I got a mac too. So what? It runs Linux just as fine as on any other mashine.
This has been known for a while. Read it and he discusses why he runs PPC instead of x86, just to have a different view on kernel development. Plus it's not like he runs OS X or something.
It should be pointed out that he is certainly not using Mac OSX - but Linux's PPC port (of course). Don't worry - *BSD is still dying. ;-)
Who cares about operating system usage? I run a bunch of PCs. I don't use MACs very often because I have been using Windows and now Linux most of my life, but I still like them. When the miniMacs came out I had to pick one up. Very cool, but now it belongs to my father. Does he also use a Palm?
You talk better than you fool!
it wasn't windows, because then I would be terribly frightened - see shivering in a corner weeping frightened.
He is using linux on mac hardware that was given to him. Wouldn't you?
Get a free ipod.
This is a huge deal! This is as worse as saying that Torvalds switched to Windows as his main desktop just for the .NET Framework! What a traitor!
Cost of hardware (he got it for free) and cost o software (he writes his own).
Hey, I'd take it too, given that kind of deal!
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Shouldn't we be seeing this in 3 weeks?
From a Gillette Sensor to the Mach3 Turbo, but that's as far as I'll go. I'm not buying a vibrating razor. http://theawhells.com
I am a self-described "technology whore" too... can I get my free mini mac ??
... and I shall strike upon thee with great vegeance, furious anger and a slightly positive karma.
While I think this has no real significance in terms of kernel development, I think it may go a long way in promoting the cross-platform, fashionable traits of Linux.
Some of my previous employers think of Linux (unfairly) as nothing more than a DOS knock-off. I'd love to see their jaws drop when they read about this. (Perhaps Vogue might do a fashion shoot with Linux on a Mac Mini?)
First Bitkeeper, now Mac, what next? A Pocket PC? It's a slippery slope. ;-)
Torvalds is showing 2 things :
a) Linux on PPC is at least as good as on any x86 CPU.
b) Apple hardware is desired over your Average Joe's box from Dell or HP.
Oh my God!!!!! This must mean linux is dying!!!! Let's all switch to *BSD and be just like the holy prophet!!!!
"Get a bicycle. You will not regret it, if you live." - Mark Twain, "Taming the Bicycle"
Yes.
Well at least Linus Torvalds has understood that computers are just tools which should do what they are expected to do: Help us get our work done.
I find all those OS and Hardware flamewars silly. Not that I expect them to stop now but that man sure gained some respect in my book.
RTFA. He is running PPC Linux.
Indeed he does. "My main machine these days is a dual 2GHz G5 (aka PowerPC 970) - it's physically a regular Apple Mac, although it obviously only runs Linux, so I don't think you can call it a Mac any more ;)", he said.
Guy asked me for a quarter for a cup of coffee. So I bit him.
...It *is* awfully close to April Fool's, isn't it?
Hadn't he already said this in his book? "Just For Fun"?
TW
Television is dead. Long live That Weasel Television
RTFA, he's running Linux on it. Duh.
But seriously, let's not turn this into the E! network for geeks. I really personally don't care what hardware platform Linus uses or whether he buys his underwear from thinkgeek.com just so long as he continues doing a smashing job maintaining kernel development.
Rats who jump from sinking ships, because somehow, they just instinctively KNOW that it's sinking?
Just kidding. For GODS SAKE I was just kidding. I swear.
Specialization is for insects. -Heinlein
No time to read the article... It's not really that long.
YES, he runs Linux on he Apple... I have no idea why Linus getting new hardware is news. If he actually ran MacOSX, then yes, that would be a bit funny or even interresting.
RTFA, mate.
(I understand this is a meme and joke all rolled into one, so please excuse my preempting those slashdotistas who fail to make this distinction. -1 Redundant)
I applaud him for the decision even if it was given to him. I used to have a bias against the Mac a long time ago. However, as Microsoft become the big gorilla on the block, I started to look for alternatives. I use several Sun machines, and of course, a few Linux boxes with an obligatory spattering of a few windows machines mostly for my wife. If I had to choose between Microsoft and Apple ... I'd go Apple too ...
Computing is a lifestyle. The OS and hardware you run defines you as a person. And if you make the intelligent choice and go with a Macintosh over any other system, it shows you are a genius with style. x86, AMD, SPARC is for fools. These chips are akin to pickup trucks, where the PPC is more the Saab or Audi of the CPU world. Style counts in everything you day. PPC + Linux = Style and Power = Intelligent choice.
Microsoft's chairman and chief software architect said this evening that he's now using Linux as his main operating system, mainly for security reasons, although partly simply because he's a self-described "crack whore" and got the distro for free.
RTFA, his Mac box runs Linux.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
First Bitkeeper and now this.....
That's it...I'm switching to HURD!
Keep the faith, share the code
"[...] the man who has single-handedly revolutionised the use of Unix on the x86 platform"
Oh, I thought there were several people involved in Linux? Didn't know Linus created it "single-handedly".
Thanks for pointing that out to me, ZDNet!
The dual G5 is a neat box, and having gotten it for free, it's hard to argue with his choice.
Personally, though, I don't see a lot of point in running Mac hardware and not running Mac OS X. The OS is what makes the system so insanely great.
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
To all of you repeatedly asking the question:
"WHY WOULD ANYONE RUN LINUX ON A MAC?"
There's your answer. Some of the people who do so write operating systems for PPC.
Anyone know if it's yellow dog or debian or etc.. or what?
He has NOT switched to a Mac. The article specifically says he's running Linux on a PowerPC!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Yes, this might reduce the G5 costs :)
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Is he running YDL, Mandrake, Gentoo, or something else? Does this mean PPC kernels are going to keep up with x86 kernels? With this revelation, hopefully more distros will keep up with x86 versions.
rename the article as "Torvalds Switches to G5 hardware" instead of trying to create ripples in the industry.
Why should it really matter what platform he's using? Is everyone worried that there is going to be an end to the x86 version or something?
Linux is portable. It shouldn't matter if the main man behind it is running it on a PC, a Mac, an Amiga, a PS2, or a toaster. This should be seen as a good thing.
"I'm not sure how many nay-sayers this "shocking news" might bring out, but my opinion is that if he fights his desktop environment less for day-to-day tasks, he might have more time, energy, and mental resources to code the linux kernel."
Which is why he erased that pile-o-junk called Mac OS from the hard disk and installed Linux instead.
Now if only the rest of the Mac world would follow, we'd see some real productivity boosts!
(I am joking, I couldn't care less what anybody uses, as long as they feel happy with it.)
It's funnier when you don't just guess at the expansion of the acronym.
You aren't LINUX TORVALDS!!!!! So it doesn't matter :)
Your ignorance is infinitely greater than you realize.
does this count as linux scandal?
Wrong
Apple includes full Developer's TOols with every version of OS X, including a customised version of GCC. So there is a compiler, and much more with OS X.
Actually I find OS X runs surprisingly well on old Macs (perfectly working on my 350MHz G3 iMac) but if you want to use Linux, that's cool too. Just don't make inaccurate statements about OS X.
Get a free iPod Nano 4GB!
Macintosh is the operating system, Apple is the company. So an Apple Macintosh is an Apple computer running the Macintosh operating system.
Comments on ZDNet rightly point out that saying "Torvalds runs Mac" is simply a cheap ploy to draw hits, besides being inaccurate.
For sure a g5 mac is a spotless machine and when you open it it's like a candy store for computer geek, but hey i can use a silver spray can to make my pc's interior look the same. Extreme makover for pc,,,,cheap 3.99$ for the silver spray can.
He had to code it left handed, because his other hand was, um, "busy".
Yeah, damn those Apple bastards supplying the compiler and associated tools on that disc labelled "Xcode Tools"...
... also wants linux to be run on a wider spectrum of computers (ie PPC) used by the managing kernel developers.
He stated this in a article or comment which was submitted to slashdot about a week ago (don't have the time to look that up) so this is fairly news...
Also, this is perhaps not the only reason he's switching but it seems valid.
Albert
Granted, he isn't the philospher RMS is, granted he's free to choose his own platform, but I'm not thrilled.
One of the great things about linux which came about organically and entirely incidentally was the fact that it works on commodity hardware. I live in and work as an open source consultant in a developing country; this stuff is not important, it is critical. Precious few people here can afford non-commodity computing assets (software or hardware).
Torvalds is the figurehead for the movement though, whether he likes it or not. I'd venture a guess that over 90% of linux users use x86 platforms; it feels a bit like the BMW CEO driving a Mercedes. Both good cars, but there's more to the decision of what to drive than that.
I am reminded of a story of the early days in the Chrysler-Benz merger; the Chrysler top execs would drive to meetings in a Chrysler van (they called it "the clown car"), whereas the Benz execs would show up in all sorts of fancy vehicles.
It's a matter of understanding your base better by using what they use.
Erh, sorry, ranting. I'm still infinitely grateful to Linus, and I'm not as upset about this as the post may suggest, but I still feel it isn't a good idea.
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
Ever look on the 2nd (3rd??) CD? Plenty of tools on there, including a compiler.
Good job! Love the analogy!
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
I'm intrigued by your ideas and very much interested in subscribing to your newsletter. I am overwhelmed by the feelings of interest that I have right now.
Concerned geeks need to know.
This is good for people who run big-endian architectures like PPC. That way, endianness bugs get caught sooner rather than later. It also means PPC support in general will benefit, because if something breaks for Linus, you can expect it will get fixed (or dropped) pretty quickly.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
where do I sign up to get my free dual G5?
/.?
the real question is -- who was the anonymous donor? Do you have to write an OS to get one, or just write inane posts on
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Gates switches to a Gilette Razor... Why do we care what type of computer the leaders of the tech sector are using? This is no better than preteen girls wanting the same kind of Jeans that one of the Olsen twins wear.
Which is a shame. Booting into OSX once in a while might give him an additional perspective.
he wants to test linux on PPC.
But I have it on good authority that he was convinced by this.
I just hope he doesn't move to Iceland.
Rob Enderle's excellent new book: Everything I needed to know about Computer Science I learned in Marketing School
I like Linux, and I enjoy using a Linux distribution more then MacOSX. Flexible system!
And if I wrote/managed the kernel of Linux, obviously I'd run it.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
When life gives you a USD$3,000 computer for free, it's a crime to not use it. No matter what use that may be.
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
Did you hear that?
It was the sound of the 30 Mac users simultaneously sighing after they found out that he's actually still running Linux.
The thing about Apple is that they put just as much effort into their hardware as their software. If you buy a Mac and ditch OSX in favor of Linux, they have still made a sale of exactly the same value. If a bunch of Linux users started buying Macs to run Linux because Linus does (even though he got his for free!) I'm pretty sure they'd be happy with that.
I know it can be a bother to RTFA but can't you even make it to the end of the blurb?
"The memory management on the PowerPC can be used to frighten small children."
...It says *right in the summary* that he still runs Linux on the machine. If you're not going to RTFA, at least RTFS.
:)
The G5 is a great, high-end machine, and I'm sure GNU/Linux is running very well on it for him
I feel so validated right now.
I've been using Linux for a decade now, but dammit there's only so much pain I'm willing to endure from my desktop computer. X11 sucks, and it's holding Linux back. I've given too many hours of my life fighting against arcane config files just so I could get a mouse to work or a display resolution that didn't make my eyes bleed. Never again. I've got more much better things to do than that.
It's nice to see that the leader of the Free world appears to agree :-)
I'm curious to see if this will be a motivator among the groups that have been messing around with a "usable" desktop Linux for years now without actually getting anywhere...
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
I wonder if he got his free mac advertising a Ponzi scheme on /.
"Hence, Torvalds said, a patch specific to the x86 platform that he was submitting to the list for consideration was totally untested."
Linux development process in a nut-shell. This is why *BSD/OSX will be alive and kicking for as long as people need a stable operating system.
(Flamebait me all you want, my karma is through the floor anyway.)
Which is a shame. Booting into OSX once in a while might give him an additional perspective.
He has repeatedly said that he doesn't care about userspace.
He has also said that Mach, which is the microkernel OSX is based on, is a "piece of shit". Read "Just for Fun", his autobiography, for full details.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
What distro?
Take off every sig. For great justice.
Sheesh, he's been using the G5 for over a year now.
About what?
Linus doesn't do desktop software.
Very "Insightful."
Second, the summary clearly states "he is running Linux on it".
While I agree with you, typically those summaries are added after-the-fact as a lame impression of performing tasks worthy of the title "editor". It probably doesn't excuse the flood of not-very-surprising responses assuming he's using OSX, but it might at least explain some of them.
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005
Bill Gates just bought a PS2. MSFT shares have plummetted!
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Absence of Warez != more expensive software. Even Microsoft Office is the same price on both platforms.
You realize about half of the comments on this story are either "Linus runs OSX?" or "No, RTFA he runs Linux on a G5". Today we see how few people actually read more than the headline ;)
-py
Of course they would be happy. For Apple the OS tax is built directly into the cost. Is it even possible to buy a first hand Mac without any OS on it?
Anyone who worrries that x86 support is going to end anytime soon is just silly. Thankfully, I don't see anyone claiming that anywhere. The sky is hardly falling.
But that doesn't mean it doesn't matter somewhere. Personally, I'm hoping that by having the "father of Linux" running Macintosh hardware that more attention will be made to PPC ports, incorporating more capabilities of the hardware, and bringing some of the distros more on par with their x86 cousins.
Are you aware that it's only been within the past few months that there have been some fixes for sleep support on Apple laptops? I'm running a PowerBook here myself, but until more recently couldn't even consider running Linux on it, as if I did I couldn't put the system to sleep (and expect it to wake back up, at least). The built-in AirPort Extreme wireless adapter is likewise unsupported.
Having Mr. Torvalds running on Macintosh hardware may help illuminate these issues, and get a push going to get Apple to open up their specs a bit more, or at the very least attract more Open Source developers to the cause. Personally, while I run OS X as my main desktop environment on my PowerBook, I wouldn't mind seeing PPC Linux on-par with x86 Linux when it comes to hardware compatibility. It's close, but there is room for improvement.
(And for the record, while OS X is my day-to-day OS for getting work done, I do keeep an Ubuntu PPC live CD in my laptop bag for those times when I want/need to run Linux, and have several Intel-based Linux boxes which I routinely access through the PowerBook).
Yaz.
Cut to the chase: What type of mouse is he using?
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
Not the kind of perspective Linus is looking for.
[ sorry ]
Which is a shame. Booting into OSX once in a while might give him an additional perspective.
Perspective on what? He works on the kernel, not the desktop. If he cared about the desktop, we wouldn't be in this mess.
Linux on the desktop is getting real long in the tooth for me. I'm trying real hard not to boot Windows but I keep doing it day after day even though I'm wasting all of my free time trying to assemble some usable "free desktop".
More
The difference between a PC and a Mac is great. The Mac is a much better platform. The Intel design is 30+ years old and full of sludge. Why anyone would sell a superior product for a inferior one, and then run the same software on it (the pc) boggles my mind.
It may also give Jobs some ammunition.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
We always talk here about the "Windows tax" when you buy a Dell, Gateway, etc. However, do you get your G5 cheaper, when you don't plan to use OS-X? I checked the store at apple.com, but I don't see that as a configurable option.
.... :-)
Although it seems that Linus got the best possible "Apple tax" rebate
Browsers shouldn't have a back button!! It's all about going forward...
not me.
Er, How?
Please, enlighten us.
Nah ... Linus is actually running Linux on Mac OS X running on CherryOS^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HPearPC on Windows XP.
when you max out your karma, who gives a fuck?
Is because an AMD64 with a gig of RAM can be had for less than half the cost of the equivalent G5 machine. The OS is interesting, but only for officially sanctioned WoW support. All my applications are on Linux (some are ported to MacOS X, not many), and I prefer to do all my work in a true Unix, not a half-baked Unix (you have to do intense amounts of work to make the OS X Terminal somewhat friendly with things like colour ls and bash, etc).
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Perspective on how poorly Darwin/XNU performs?
of course that seems like a waste to me :)
so Linus runs a PPC, he probably has a lab in his home with several compuers including his new G5 plus several ix86 too...
jeeezzzeeuuss fudruckin H. christ get over it people...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
I'm writing to share a tragic little story.
I have a PC that my sister and I used to use for our operating system development. One night, I was writing a new memory manager on it, when all of a sudden it went berserk, the screen started flashing, and the whole VI session just disappeared. All of it. And it was a good memory manager! I had to cram and rewrite it really quickly. Needless to say, my rushed memory manager wasn't nearly as good, and I blame that PC for the crap I got.
I'm happy to report that my sister and I now share an Apple Dual G5 that we got for free! It's a lot nicer to work on than my old PC was, it hasn't let me down once, and my memory managers have all been really good.
Thanks, Apple.
Linux Thorvalds
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
Note that I'm not the person you were responding to, but Mach's architecture is certainly more modern than that of Linux -- although I've no idea how it stacks up in real life terms.
Actually he's using a Dell, but it runs CherryOs.
before Linus get's P.Oed at the fact that the PPC processors have built-in bottlenecks, curtesy of IBM's lack of foresight. Compare the G5 to a similar AMD 64 and you'll see quite a difference.
Also noisy ship.
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
Not running OS X on that machine is like putting beef gravy on your veggy burger, just so wrong on every level.
Linus is a super high priced one if he's giving it up for da Dual G5. Yeah there are a few in my town who are good enough to hold out for an iPod or a Mac mini.
In my neighborhood though... the technology whores are giving it up for old sticks of PC100 RAM.
Hehehe.
:/
If only this weren't true...
Then again, there are billions of dollars being pumped into the Linux kernel by many a company...
"Linux creator Linus Torvalds said this afternoon that he's now running an Apple Macintosh as his main desktop, mainly for work reasons, although partly simply because he's a self-described "technology whore" and got the machine for free." This bothers me. One could rewrite this headline to say: TV Show host Oprah Winfrey said this afternoon that she is now wearing Versace as her clothes of choice, mainly for work reasons, althought simply because she's a self-described "fashion freak." Really, who cares? Why in the world would anyone care what kind of computer Torvalds is using? There are far more newsworthy things in the world than this. PFFT!
I'd rather hear news about Richard Simmons than this.
For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.
Check out the specs of an IBM openpower 720 (1-4 CPUS) or even the baby brother 710 (1-2 CPUS). Unbelievable performance and LPAR for up to 10 OS per CPU, chipkill memory, 5 PCIx slots, each CPU dual cores... (I have to go now my pants are getting damp)
I bet he cares when he needs to do some editing, or check his e-mail.
Anonymous Kev
Proudly posting as AC since 1997
(Finally got a dang account in 2004)
On Mac OS X 10.3, feeling not bad.
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
a lousy meal.
I'd prefer that Linus use OS X occasionally so he could see what's going on in the OS X world and decide if it might be a good to incorp/cooperate into/with Linux.
I'd love to see a RendezVous like technology of auto configuring hot pluggable devices that can be discovered on a LAN.
It makes printing and sharing hardware and software a whole lot easier on the Mac side of the wall.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
What's the point of running Linux on a Mac? Good quality commodity hardware can make a Linux box at least as good and more cost-effective; and on Mac hardware, MacOS X has advantages over Linux (it's more stable for one, and will run MacOS software). Buying a Mac and getting rid of the OS seems like buying an expensive sports car and replacing the engine with one from a family sedan.
This is coming from someone who owns and uses a Mac laptop (running OSX) and a Linux-based desktop PC.
(n/t)
# Please try to keep posts on topic.
# Try to reply to other people's comments instead of starting new threads.
# Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said.
But they lose out on charging you for OS upgrades (even service packs).
If he cares at all, he probably is worried about responsiveness more than eye candy, and OSX can't help you there anyway. The hardware can, however...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
He's e-mail: torvalds@ppc970.osdl.org, that was used for long time, not last days. I want a double G5 too :P hehe.. to run Linux ofcourse =)
Music is the sedative for mind...
Are you saying that if I give you free hardware, you will write the OS for it ?
I'm trying real hard not to boot Windows but I keep doing it day after day even though I'm wasting all of my free time trying to assemble some usable "free desktop".
Now, now, while Linux is definitly not "ready for the desktop" no matter how many of the zealots tell you it is, I really can't say that it "takes all available free time to assemble some usable 'free desktop'".
Gnome and KDE handle this rather well in recent years and they come pretty standard with most distributions and even bootable CDs... Perhaps your requirements are different than others?
Yeah, it's easier to use all that crap in Windows because you're comfortable with it and it happens to work better in most ways but it's certainly not as difficult as you make it out to be to do it in Linux.
I don't really think the arch makes any difference when your OS runs anywhere.
Imho, linux on a mac isn't "switching to a mac." It's just a prettier box for your linux machine.
Imagine if you weren't allowed to use roads because a bus company complained about your driving 3 times. --skunkpussy
2: Mac software sucks -- even when it's included for free. (And I always thought the myth was that it was the software, Stupid, that made Macs something special.)
3: If Apple ever finds out who gave Torvalds the hardware -- they're toast!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
OSX comes with the GCC compiler. Fucking A Period, dumbass.
Closed source software ..
First he makes windows irrelvant, now is he trying to prove doorstops are irrelvant too?
Well, for starters, Linux doesn't have a Finder. Without a Finder, how can you Find anything? Additionally, Linux doesn't annoyingly^W conveniently switch to the desktop if you accidentally click a sliver of transparent space in a foreground window. Plus, Linux doesn't frown at you when there's a problem. Finally, Linux offers prominent and easy access to terminal windows, which is turrible, just turrible. Clearly, OSX RulEZ, LiNUx DrOoLZ.
http://xkcd.com/386/
Somebody ship this man a free Windows PocketPC phone and see whether he's a high-class technology escort, or a low-down crack technology whore.
What's your damage, Heather?
As I recall aren't the new Mac's running a form of Unix now. This is not a stretch then in my mind. Chuck
Which is a shame. Booting into OSX once in a while might give him an additional perspective.
True... it'd give him some excellent perspective on just how much Linux rocks. OSX has a great GUI, but the underlying OS has a fairly poor scheduler, disk accesses seem terribly slow and the VM systems tends to thrash really hard when you push it.
With regard to what Linus cares about, Linux isn't just a decent OS, it's a superior OS, better than Darwin, better than Windows NT and better in some ways even than "serious" Unixes, like Solaris and AIX (and not as good in other ways, but it's definitely in the same league).
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
He could have just started using CherryOS for his testing! I hear it's really great - and the main developer is brilliant, he churned it all out himself in just four months!
cyn, free software and *nix operating systems enthusiast.
Linux creator Linus Torvalds said this afternoon that he's now running an Apple Macintosh as his main desktop, mainly for work reasons, although partly simply because he's a self-described "technology whore".
Torvalds, who initially created Linux for the Intel x86 platform, revealed to the Linux Kernel Mailing List in February during a discussion on kernel size reduction that his main desktop machine no longer featured an x86 processor. Hence, Torvalds said, a patch specific to the x86 platform that he was submitting to the list for consideration was totally untested.
ZDNet Australia was intrigued by this remark, and sought to question Torvalds on why the man who has single-handedly revolutionised the use of Unix on the x86 platform would move away from it, and where he had moved to.
Torvald's response came quickly and succinctly. "My main machine these days is a dual 2GHz G5 (aka PowerPC 970) - it's physically a regular Apple Mac, although it obviously only runs Linux, so I don't think you can call it a Mac any more
"As to the why
However the kernel guru stopped any potential accusations of favouritism in their tracks, saying: "And don't read anything really deep into that - Linux supports 20+ architectures, and the fact that I personally think that two of them are more likely to be the most relevant really doesn't mean all that much. It's just a personal quirk of mine."
But it turns out that the man who created a revolutionary operating system which he initially described as "just a hobby, won't be big and professional like GNU", is probably not all that different from any other technology enthusiast.
"Oh, and part of it is that I got the machine for free," said Torvalds, "I'm really a technology whore."
if i'm a grammar nazi, you're an illiteracy nazi.
Yeah, because doing that wouldn't be pretentious at all...
"Nobody owns the fucking words man." - James Dean
Nah. They'll still charge you for them. You have to opt-out if you don't want them, and they don't let you opt-out. Even if you move and/or register with false info, they'll find you. The Trendy Mafia is inescapable. You can't trick the white-trenchcoated Apple thugs. They own j00, and they look more stylish than you while they're at it. Plus, they get more chicks than you.
http://xkcd.com/386/
Linux on the desktop is getting real long in the tooth for me. I'm trying real hard not to boot Windows but I keep doing it day after day even though I'm wasting all of my free time trying to assemble some usable "free desktop".
I'm finding quite the opposite. I have 3 machines with 3 monitors all sharing the same keyboard and mouse using Synergy (which is a really a great piece of software). I can mouse over to any machine and use it with ease. The machine that I spend all my time in is Debian Linux. The Windows machine is almost always off (except when I want to write a quick test app in VS.Net) and the OS X machine basically just runs iTunes (though its no Winamp 5) and I occasionally use it to web browse when I need the extra screen real estate.
Granted I spend a lot of my time writing software and tinkering around doing things that a UNIX-like OS is best for. I guess for me, I've had a usable desktop in Linux for quite some time now, so it just feels natural and I don't have to spend time anymore to get things working. OS X is a new toy for me, and will probably get more attention at some point, but for the kinds of things I do I am just more efficient in Linux. OS X is UNIX, but the UNIX tools are lacking. For example, the Fink tools and repository just don't even come close to the quality found in Debian (unstable at that). I have yet to find a decent terminal app. Don't run OS X because its UNIX, run it because you want to run native OS X apps (which is where OS X really shines).
How could this be considered news?
This just in Linus uses Charmin toiletpaper. Not because it's softer but because he likes the packaging. Stay tuned, updates to follow.
======== In the future, everything will be artificial. ========
We see this same whinge daily on slashdot. It's just that: a whinge.
I last used Windows at home in 1997. Back then it was Windows 3.1 on MS-DOS 6.22. I've been using Linux for all my computing needs since then, after first trying it out in 1995 and then installing it as my primary OS in 1996.
Linux is very useable on the desktop and has been even my fairly non-technical users for about 5 years now. It's just different to Windows, which is what most people are used to and conditioned to think of as "normal" and "right."
The chances are if you're still finding Linux unuseable on the desktop, you'd probably find any non-Windows OS "unsuseable" too. If you can put up with the expense and inconvenience of Windows (and prefer it) stick with it, but keep your anti-Linux rhetoric to your self. We're sick and tired of hearing it.
Stick Men
FYI:
...DESCRIPTION
$ man locate
Secure Locate provides a secure way to index and quickly search for files on your system. It uses
incremental encoding just like GNU locate to compress its database to make searching faster, but it will
also store file permissions and ownership so that users will not see files they do not have access to.
This manual page documents the GNU version of slocate. slocate Enables system users to search entire
filesystems without displaying unauthorized files.
It's on the dev tools CD rom. Look in the box again, einstein.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I think he's saying he'd use an available linux port for that hardware...
Hmmm witty sig or funny sig? Maybe elitest techy sig!
Anyone have a decent benchmarks of Apple hardware for development related stuff - compiling etc. The only benchmarks I can find are photoshop and the dodgy spec benchmarks.
Apples do not come with a C compiler. Here at work, I have an iBook I bought in October
Funny, my wife's iBook, purchased in December, came with a compiler. It wasn't installed by default; I had to install it from one of the CDs that came in the box, but that only took a few minutes.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Real life benchmarks generally put OS X as slowest UNIX-like OS on the market.
As for "modern", it was a 1980s experiment. The problem is that underlying Mach/BSD OS basically got no attention for more than a decade so its way behind other Unixes that have been optimized for high-performance server use for years. (It doesn't really matter if photoshop saves files 20% slower, but for Oracle it does) So you have an old, overly complex design that also happens to be slow.
(please spare us stories about that cluster, it doesnt say anything about OS perf)
There's one HUGE important point to all this, and it has nothing to do with fashion, nothing to do with conspiracy, nothing to do with elitism.
It completely prevents the merging of kernel patches that malfunction on non-x86 platforms.
Sure, these would get ironed out eventually, but if someone were to inadvertently do something x86-specific, it would immediately break on Linus's computer. That's a pretty darn good guarantee that the kernel is going to remain architecture-independent all the time, rather than only after cross-platform QA has been recently performed.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
See, this is bullcrap. It's always been bullcrap. What people mean is that it's not ready for *them*, which isn't nearly the same thing. The desktop experience on linux is far better than Windows 3.1, for example. It's better than Win95. It's better, for certain values of better, than OS 9. In fact, the Linux desktop has a lot of advantages over WinXP and OS X, although they do have a polish advantage. The Linux desktop is perfectly usable, no matter your level of technical sophistication. People get upset because they're skilled with Windows and can correct problems there, but don't want to learn the same skills under Linux.
You read that in an Apple advertisement of course?
If it's not running Mac OS it's not a Mac.
I mean really, you didn't look too hard.
They give you the whole enchilada, you just have to unpack it.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
Wow! You mean you can run whatever code you want on a Turing complete system? That's amazing!!11!!!1
I wish I could own a Mac, then I could also get excited about UTTERLY TRIVIAL SHIT.
I could run MySQL & Tomcat on a fucking 386 if it had enough memory. Therefore the fact that you can also run it on your 4 year old Mac somehow fails to excite me.
The Linux desktop is perfectly usable, no matter your level of technical sophistication. People get upset because they're skilled with Windows and can correct problems there, but don't want to learn the same skills under Linux.
People who are interested in "desktop" use aren't interested in learning skills. On Windows (or OS X) they don't need to know anything. They turn on the machine and they surf the web. There isn't much to learn.
The big question now is long will it be until we see "Lintosh"?
1) publicity for MAC
2) pulling other geeks over the edge ('I want to be like Linus...')
Not only that, there is a choice of desktops. The two main ones are GNOME and KDE. Then you have things like XFce and GNUstep.
What's more, these desktops are not merely Linux desktops. They're portable desktops for unix-like operating systems. So, you have a choice of desktop, a choice of kernel, a choice of distribution, a choice of hardware architecture and a choice of vendor. Not only that, you can choose to have it at zero cost or pay for support.
Stick Men
So?
Stop talking crap. Linux *is* ready for desktop. It was ready A LONG time ago.
It is only up to users if they will use it. But there is no correlation between Linux ready for desktop and number of users running it as a desktop.
I mean, is Windows 2.0 ready for desktop? Is Windows 3.1 ready for desktop? Is Windows 95 (98, Me?) ready? Compare all of that with what Linux delivers today. Now compare the number of users still using Windows 95 to number of users of Linux (for desktop!).
In fact, the Linux desktop has a lot of advantages over WinXP and OS X, although they do have a polish advantage.
Ah yes, the Polish Advantage. Developed in Warsaw I guess...
Man Needs God Like Birds Need Helicopters
I think this is just an extention of the Torvalds-Tanenbaum debate.. Mach is a microkernel and Linus don't like 'em. Anyway in both cases, Mac and Linux, worship the product, not the creator...
-if at first you don't succeed, stay the heck away from paragliding.
Bullcrap. They have to learn how to power up and start thier web browser, and if thats *all* they want to learn, then Linux is fine. The people who cry about the lack of the Linux desktop are people with a signifigent investment in Windows (or OS X), who have skills there, and who don't like the barrier to re-training to gain the same amount of skill. Given the same baseline, which is a pre-installed and pre-configured machine from a standard image, then the hypothetical "I just browse the web" user, who I'm not sure really exists, can just as easily use Linux, Windows, or OS X.
and got the machine for free.
Why does he get praise, and I get flames for wanting a free mac? (see sig)
hack a day
Torvald's dislike of microkernels is no secret. I'm not going to wade into that particular debate, but suffice it to say that microkernels are hardly new technology.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
What? the Pope blessed them?
-if at first you don't succeed, stay the heck away from paragliding.
So what are your actual issues?
It's been ready for mine for some time. Anything I might "need" Windows for (with the sole exception of certain games) runs fine through Wine and/or VMWare.
I realize your comment was an overall defense of Linux usability...but I get just as tired of hearing "Linux isn't ready for the desktop" as I assume you do of "Linux is teh r0x0r!"
For most basic day to day use (e-mail, web browsing, typing up a letter and printing it) Linux is a fine desktop environment needing little tweaking (or at least no more than XP) and has next to zero learning curve as many environments are specifically designed to mimic Windows as faithfully as possible (unfortunately, as some would argue). For many desktop environments (mine in particular) it's superior. For others, it's sub-optimal to be kind.
The simple fact is, "ready for the desktop" is a misnomer and is no more meaningful than any other ridiculous invented memes foisted onto our consciousness by people (usually pundits, analysts, and journalists) who have little, if any, idea what they're talking about.
who gave linus the mac for free? could it be the dark side of the force? ;-)
if you can't beat them, bribe them to join you!? just kidding
Wasnt he using some IBM PPC hardware?
Interesting that he thinks the only serious platforms for Linux are PPC64 and x86-64.
Apart from embedded, 32 bit could disappear quite fast in Linux. Have noticed things like the 64 bit read and write support (to write over 2GB in one syscall for 64 bit platforms) appearing recently in 2.6.
Yes, but does it run Linux....oh, wait...nevermind... :-)
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Wait, I didn't know that Linux had a simple, easy-to-navigate GUI that installed just about everything a Home User needs in a Desktop Computer by default. Oh wait, it doesn't.
There are enough "OMFG! Linus is using a PPC!" posts but isn't Linux, FOSS, etc all about choice? Choice of hardware, choice of operating system, choice of apps? Mix and match?
:)
In this instance, it doesn't seem like much more than using the fastest, free system he was given. But isn't that whats cool about Linux and FOSS in general? The fact your ABLE to run a functional system using the OS of your choice on pretty much any hardware available is very cool.
Just curious, are there non-FOSS operating systems that offer this level of choice? I know Microsoft tried on a few platforms with NT but dropped that relatively quickly. MacOS has always been tied to 68k/PPC, Sun offers what most consider a castrated x86 version of Solaris (with hopes of it turning into a sparc system purchase).
Its great being able to get the best hardware for the job and know that your OS and apps will run on it. Its a beautiful thing. *sniff*
These are getting old.
For $2500:
Dual 2GHz PowerPC G5
1GHz frontside
bus/processor
512K L2 cache/processor
512MB DDR400 SDRAM
Expandable to 8GB SDRAM
160GB Serial ATA
8x SuperDrive
Three PCI-X Slots
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra
64MB DDR video memory
56K internal modem
Can you even get a dual-processor Athlon64 motherboard with SATA and PCI-X slots?
Watch the Gentoo slams. After compiling openoffice i am going to write you a witty response
Seriously Gentoo is cool, but to each his own
no god is good
tehere are several virtual desktops available for osx. also fink package manager allows installs of most of gnome and kde. try it out.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I really personally don't care what hardware platform Linus uses or whether he buys his underwear from thinkgeek.com
Damn you... now I have this image of Linus wearing HTTPanties etched into my mind's eye's retina.
At least, the Mac is a step in the right direction. It means there won't be any kernels released not working on a G5. And I doubt x86 will suffer by this.
Now, I only wish he would be running a Sparc, so that the kernel for Sparc wouldn't get fucked-up neither..
"The more prohibitions there are, The poorer the people will be" -- Lao Tse
Geez thanks for the -1 redundant, even though this was one of the first replies on this article.
Considering that Linux got a top-notch PowerMac for free, fuck the mini! Free the PowerMac! End the oppression!!
-if at first you don't succeed, stay the heck away from paragliding.
Read his post again, you missed the part where he said it was "feeling not bad." That phrase typically implies that the performance was reasonable, which it would not be on your 386.
Sorry, I have a far more time invested in Linux than I do Windows or OS X. I'd been using Linux "on the desktop" during the Win9x years and only switched during the 2000/XP timeframe. I recently switched to a Mac as well.
With all that time invested and the several years more experience I have had with it over Windows and OS X I am going to say again that you are wrong and Linux is NOT ready for the desktop no matter how many times people like you claim it is.
Wish somebuddy'd give me a fargin G5... I might even run Linux on it. Naw.
The OS is called OS X, it is NOT called Mac. It's the hardware that's called Mac. It's not Torvald's fault, he's just used to using inferior hardware and operating systems.
Don't mod me, bro'!!!!
Why don't you try installing the OS it came with? You never know, you might like it!
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Okay. Here are the instructions for installing the compilers on Jaguar.
Having said that, the developer package doesn't come with a fortran compiler.
Xcode is the worst IDE I've ever seen. The layout is cluttered and baffling. You can't include other projects in your current project as a dependency. If you have to build four libraries before your application, then you're SOL. You either have to open five projects and build them in the correct order yourself, or you have to use a horrible hack with the command line build tool for xcode in your top level project. The hack means that you don't have access to all of the nice features of the IDE for those external libraries, so what's the point?
Thank god for the command line and make. After struggling with Xcode for several weeks, I finally abandoned it as a lost cause. Perhaps they'll fix it one day.
Yeah, it's easier to use all that crap in Windows because you're comfortable with it and it happens to work better in most ways but it's certainly not as difficult as you make it out to be to do it in Linux.
I can't imagine it takes longer to make a "usable" desktop in Linux than it does in Windows. Everytime I need to reformat and reinstall Windows I end up spending AT LEAST an hour changing all the "stupid" settings that it defaults to (changing the task bar to "Classic Mode" aka non-Fischer Price style, turn off the stupid "personalized menus" option, removing annoying system sounds, etc etc) and un-installing all the crap I don't need/want (Outlook, Messenger, etc).
Setting up a nice desktop in the Linux distros I've tried was far easier and quicker.
If someone GAVE me a dual G5 Mac, I'd be using it everyday too. Of course, it would be running FC3 or Centos-4, but the hardware itself is rather sexy.
Cheers,
who gives a shit? you might as well be interested in what he uses to wipe his ass...
The chances are if you're still finding Linux unuseable on the desktop, you'd probably find any non-Windows OS "unsuseable" too. If you can put up with the expense and inconvenience of Windows (and prefer it) stick with it, but keep your anti-Linux rhetoric to your self. We're sick and tired of hearing it.
Really? I find Linux to be completely unusable on the desktop. It's amateur and low-rent. I'll concede that I haven't run it in a few years, but I think the breaking point was being told that editing menus in Gnome wasn't really something that was a high priority.
Meanwhile, back at the point, I'm typing this on my shiny new Powerbook. So, I'd say that your generalization is just that...a generalization.
where is the "I feel for ya, but that's some funny ass shit" moderation?
Well, yes, usually. But in this case, the 16" hammer's handle isn't quite as good as the one on the 15" hammer, and Torvalds happens to be the one making the handles. I'm hoping this means Linux/PowerPC will get a little more driver work etc.
And exactly and specifically what is it that you need to boot Windows in order to work?
I mean, is Windows 2.0 ready for desktop? Is Windows 3.1 ready for desktop? Is Windows 95 (98, Me?) ready? Compare all of that with what Linux delivers today. Now compare the number of users still using Windows 95 to number of users of Linux (for desktop!).
I'm not quite sure why you think that bringing up old Windows versions will strengthen your position but we'll go with it.
No, Windows was not ready for the desktop until Win9x (and please note the large migration to it) and it really wasn't stable and ready until 2000/XP.
Compare Linux with old Windows versions? Ok, the stability is similar (and in some cases better depending on various issues) to what Windows offers today in 2000/XP (and no my uptime on XP blows my uptime on Linux away so don't even go there). What Linux offers as far as "desktop software" isn't even in the Win 3.1 days though.
Let me know when it is and when there is sufficient general application support that is acceptable for 90%+ of users and I will agree. That will include being able to view web pages that are IE bug dependent, interoperating 100% with other Office users, and being able to play games.
While I'd love to see Linux win (or winning) it isn't and it probably won't... At least not in the next two years.
As AnonymousKev said below, "I bet he cares when he needs to do some editing, or check his e-mail."
Yeah, I know Linus just does kernel development. It seems to me he ought to care about the user experience just a bit. I guess it isn't as if he's influential or anything. /sarcasm
"I don't know such stuff, I just do eyes." -Chew Blade Runner
I bet he cares about it as much as I do, as in he just runs it. His focus is on the Linux kernel, userspace is someone else's consern.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
How about we just use the products?
Big deal. So he using excellent (and free for him) Mac hardware to run Linux.
What is the point?
BTW, I really like using Ubuntu on my Macs. However, there are some obvious advantages to running Linux on Intel processors: easier to get latest apps like firefox, easier to get Java support, etc. The solution is to also have an Intel Linux box on your LAN.
How many times have people been chided for saying "Linux" when referring to a Linux Operating system? They get lectured "linux is only the kernel" blah blah blah
;)" he said."
Well, here ya go, time to STFU about that
"Torvald's response came quickly and succinctly. "My main machine these days is a dual 2GHz G5 (aka PowerPC 970) - it's physically a regular Apple Mac, although it obviously only runs Linux, so I don't think you can call it a Mac any more
If the inventor of it can call the operating system "Linux", then I say that means it's officially "cool" to use the term "Linux" to in fact refer to Joe Blow's "LinuxOS". We;ve more or less dropped saying GNU in front of it, so let's just drop the pedantic grammar fascist lecturing about the difference between a Kernel and the OS.
Now the other issue. He doesn't care about userland space. You know, I think this is a serious problem. Think about this long and hard for awhile. Then rethink about it.
Maybe it's time someone with ultimate say so DID care? Just maybe that might be a good idea seeing as how it's 2005 and not 1995? Look on the shelf at the retail level, how much "Linux" do you see? Perhaps time for some groups to think about forking the kernel and having the forked maintainer dictators actually *care* about userland? Get some much needed standards going? Evolution is not static.
Maybe he can help keep the PPC distros up-to-date.
Yeah, Windows XP, Nervous Pack 2, certainly has made things more easy.
I really enjoy the struggle to use the superior 11g management interface provided by the hardware vendor.
The thorough explanation of how to use the firewall was only exceeded by the clear discussion of administrator vs. limited accounts, and the reasonable management thereof.
The side effects on my legacy drivers are a joy. I dig the way my HP wireless printer causes my shutdown to hang, because Doze can't seem to kill the driver process. Not necessarily Redmond's fault, but WTF do I do?
I won't mention the annoying thought-bubbles flatulently escaping the system tray, except to throw out a WTF in the case where, as Admin, it offers to de-clutter my desktop, then throws an error for being unable to delete the unused icons.
</mild sarcasm>
Summary:
In its attempts to grow a reasonably secure operating system, Redmond really needs to offer the user some Dummy-esque tutorials, and communicate
the pertinent system blocks
use-cases for them .avi through alsa?) get's sexier by the sync...
In fairness, with some digging, I did bookmark something security-related on the Microsoft site, but a) I haven't had time yet to delve into it, and b) With the firewall (maybe) randomly borking my 11g connection, I'd prefer a tutorial to be installed with the next Nervous pack.
Keeping this vaguely on topic, the declining usability of Windows is a strong encouragement to pursue additional perspective, and my Gentoo partition (admittedly as challenging to nail down--what do I emerge to run an
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
And this was modded insightful?
I myself run both Linux and Windows on different desktops here. I am beginning to find very little difference between the two anymore.
On both machines I use:
1. Mozilla for web browsing and e-mail
2. OO for all them Office things
3. Eagle schematic capture and board layout
Files move between the two machines so seemlessly that I have started keeping all of them on a cetral server so I can more easily use them from either environment.
The biggest reasons I still keep Windows around are:
1. Pagemaker for manual creation. Scribus is an up and comer, but is still not completely there. Last time I tried PM under Wine it had problems.
2. PIC development tools - most notably the MPLAB stuff from Microchip. Last time I tried it under Wine it had problems.
I have to support Windows machines for my clients so I have to have at least one around anyway. I certainly don't "waste all my free time trying to assemble some usable free desktop", but I am moving towards a suite of apps that I CAN use across platforms without relearning all the time.
At the same time (and I think this is the important central fact in the submitted article), I am moving more towards Linux because it is beginning to offer the same independence of the hardware that I am running on, too. The fact that Linus can move from x86 hardware to Mac hardware and still continue to develop in exactly the same way, with the same tools, is real important here.
I think it's great im a AMD guy myself but that is because im flat broke but still want performance. Apple makes great looking hardware and dual G5 is definately cool. Many people have access to any hardware they want with this magical thing called a network so im sure that linus has run patches against x86 machines. Also he states that many others (kernel developers) do run x86 platform so it's no big deal what he runs anyhow.
.02
I thought that linux was created to do cool stuff with!
I hope he starts hacking away on common PVR hardware soon that would be cool.
just my
Got hosting
I would disagree with that. I think there are so many levels of computer users that there is no statement that covers them all. There is no "average user". I have known many very smart people who don't really get computers. I have known some not so smart people who had no problem with them. Everyone talks about "so easy your mother could use it" - but they have never met my mother. She has now had a computer for 5 years, and still doesn't get some of the basic concepts. My 10 year old niece picks it up really quickly.
Think about 50 years into the future - nearly everyone will not remember when there weren't computers and the internet. Just like my generation, where I don't know what it was like without TV or telephones. Hopefully, the "average user" will move up the curve a bit. But until then, the computer (and thus, the desktop) is a learning ground.
To your point about OS X, when it first came out I went into a Mac store to check it out. I hadn't used a Mac for years, and never really liked them all that much. But I was looking forward to seeing OS X because I heard so many good things about it. I didn't get it. I thought it was too simple, and not in a functional way. The simplicity confused me, I couldn't figure out how to do anything. Maybe I am a bit too technical or something, or have been around computers too long. I just didn't care for it. I use WinXP at work, and it is OK (once I have customized the heck out of it) and I mainly run Linux at home. I only boot the Windows box when I need to burn a DVD or play a game.
I don't think that Linux is ready for "the desktop" - nor do I necessarily want it to be! Why is "the desktop" such a holy grail anyway? I would rather that the learning curve with computers goes up instead of the intelligence of the OS goes down.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I don't think that this would affect a kernel patch that malfunctions on UltraSPARC, would it?
it's good to know that he's taking the initiative, how ever well hidden he's choosing to keep it, but he's testing. it looks like a good thing to hope for in the development of the *nixes and OS X to work in conjuntion with each other for better intergration of OSS in to OS X tech.
running linux on mac hardware must be an interesting difference in comparison x86. I'm sure he (linus) is noting all of the minor and major differences in memory handling of the hardware, system response, application response, general bug reporting due to hardware/software issues he may be encountering.
i'd like to thgink he's working on the next stage of development. this was a machine that was a gift. Kind of like Moog giving Pink Floyd all those prototype synthesizers and saying "hey, make some music", so in relative terms, he's been given a tool to use, now he, i'm sure will craft some thing around it.
If you mean Thunderbird, you haven't tried it on 10.3.8 - the issues* will be fixed in Tiger, though.
*(A friend can't type anything into the To/CC areas of email in Thunderbird in 10.3.8 - could be 3rd-party related, but I think other people have had a similarly distasteful experience)
>> Yeah, it's easier to use all that crap in Windows because you're comfortable with it and it happens to
>> work better in most ways but it's certainly not as difficult as you make it out to be to do it in
>> Linux.
I have the opposite perspective - I use debian all day at work, and sitting down at my GF's windows machine
it feels like I'm working with one hand tied behind me.
Honestly, what the hell is better about the windows desktop experience that isn't a factor of a few apps not being ported over?
It's great to have an opinion but opinions are not facts
..But that's just my humble personal opinion, I don't run around claiming that windows isn't ready for desktop.
I have also been using Linux since windows 3.1 and on 9X years and I would never ever use windows on desktop (there are many things like virtual screens that Windows lacks but almost every other desktop environment has).
My quality social news site.com.
You just negated your entire post with that single sentence.
What? I merely acknowledge that certain games are incompatible with Linux and that negates my entire point? Are you purposefully being obtuse?
but how much RAM you can add on a 386 board?
BTW, the fact my B&W can run mysql+tomcat didn't excited me. I was amazed that I can still running firefox and writing posts to /. while browsing localhost in the other tab on the B&W.
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
You must be new here.
sig
The only thing keeping a large number of us from running linux full time is the lack of a real alternative to Adobe software. Sure you can mess around with WINE or Crossover Office until you get Photoshop to run semi-okay, but why put up with that when we can dual boot?
http://www.thelung.org
I guess that the Linux fanboys on slashdot take any comparison with OS X as a criticism.
You may think me a tired, old, cynic. I'd have to disagree about the tired bit.
I think Linus needs to progress his operating system kernel experience past his early 1990's university studies. To put it bluntly, the Linux kernel is a severely outdated design and needs to be scrapped and redone from scratch with modern techniques. For one thing, the lack of support for decent binary-only module abstraction layer is a horrendous oversight. A vendor should be able to compile a binary driver for my hardware and I should be able to load it into whatever version of the kernel I'm using without worrying about the compiler and kernel versions matching the build environment.
Xandros works great for a desktop. It has so far proven to be idiot proof. I have distributed the 3.01 cd to three users (non-techies, one brother, two salesmen) and they each successfully installed it (replacing Win2k). All three are using it now as their primary OS and are very happy.
In other news,Linus switched to Charmin toilet paper. When asked why, he just said he loves the "squeezable softness"
It was always so fun having to recompile the kernel in order to change video card resolutions.
Well, Tannenbaum isn't that impressed with the Linux kernel, for that matter.
I personally don't know jack-diddly about kernel design - but I suspect, given what I've seen during years of working with various software companies, and software in general, is that every microkernel, kernel, etc. is a piece of shit.
"Ninety percent of everything is crap." Fred Sturgeon
fact that the hardware choices and pretty standard as to the protocols that they must communicate through.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Thats because 64bits own you. Have you seen the handling for long long in 32 bit environments in gcc? Its atrocious, but there's no other way when the processor simply can't deal with math with a 64 bit number on its own.
In a world with 300GB harddrives and 10GB of RAM in a machine, 32 bit processors just can't cut it.
i think the biggest thing about this is that it legitimizes
the mac hardware for linux advocates - which have been
traditionally x86 biased. it legitimizes linux as
multi-platform more than anything else could have done.
j.
See? You forgot Poland.
-30-
Long ago, long before most folks were using Linux, Linus got into a fight with Andrew Tanenbaum about Linux and its design as a monolithic kernel. This is one of the more famous debates of linux lore, so it doesn't hurt read it and its annotations.
The quick summary is that Andy Tanenbaum proclaimed Linux dead way back in '92, saying, "While I could go into a long story here about the relative merits of the two designs, suffice it to say that among the people who actually design operating systems, the debate is essentially over. Microkernels have won."
Linus on the other hand much preferred the monolithic design of linux, for a variety of reasons. Mr. Tanenbaum even went so far as to imply that Linux wouldn't be a passing project for his class. Ironic, no?
Even so, Tanenbaum did and still does have some good points about the Mach microkernel. I can't exactly imagine Torvalds is the most impartial judge of the mach microkernel.
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
I would gladly put Linux into my brand-new-got-for-free machine from any manufacturer. Even if it's a MS x86 Hardware.
I did it to my bought-by-myself MS XBox!
-=-=-=-=
I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
It would be interesting if anyone knows which Linux distribution he uses....
I can't believe Linus would say that combination of words!
I don't keep a lid on my coffee so when I walk around I look busy -me
I wonder how he pronounced ";)"
;)" he said.
Torvald's response came quickly and succinctly. "My main machine these days is a dual 2GHz G5 (aka PowerPC 970) - it's physically a regular Apple Mac, although it obviously only runs Linux, so I don't think you can call it a Mac any more
Probably something like...
"My name is Linus Torvalds and I pronounce Linux as Linux"
Reed the Torvalds vs. Tannenbaum debate. Even though it's what, over a decade old?
"Modern" doesn't always mean "applicable to this problem". I think both Torvalds and Tannenbaum have good points; Linux focuses on performance, while Micro-kernels focus on modularity.
"...I am going to say again that you are wrong and Linux is NOT ready for the desktop no matter how many times people like you claim it is."
Proof by analogy is fraud, ok with that said:
Are stick shift cars not ready for the road since a number of people can only drive automatics?
Not that I am missing your perspective nor disagree on its merit. Perhaps I should have used motorcycles instead of stick shifts?
BSD is designed. Linux is grown. C++ libs
Mach is a microkernel and Linus don't like 'em.
Exactly, but the Mach component of Mac OS X has now been highly modified and no longer described as a microkernel. It is more monolithic now.
Linus's complaint I believe, was that messaging in microkernel architectures led to a high degree of latency.
CoreAudio in Mac OS X, demonstrates extremely low latency.
Finger in the air benchmarks, excellent. The only advantage Linux has over any of those other operating systems besides Darwin is price, and straightline performance on 2 CPU machines, or in embarassingly parallel grid apps. Here in the real world, it's a cruddy desktop for the end user (yes, I am talking about the kernel, see binary driver support etc., don't get me started on the Window Managers), bad scaling OS for 6+ CPU server use, poorly supported by serious workstation software producers, and horribly immature in high availability clustering.
If you trust the book "Just For Fun" he actually says nasty things about PowerPC architecture as well. He must have gone through a big conversion on PPC.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
it's certainly not as difficult as you make it out to be to do it in Linux.
All I can say is try getting a Netgear MA111 v2 (non-prism2) USB wireless adapter to work in Linux. Then you'll know what my last week has been like. Reminds me of issues I used to have getting a nic to work under DOS. Unfortunately, this is 2005, not the mid 80's.
I wonder if he's running a premade distro like Yellow Dog? Or (possibly more likely) did he compile his own PPC kernal from source?
Yes and No.
c .a sp
Not from Apple, not sure if you can even install OS X on these.
http://www.transtech-dsp.com/powerpc/pegasus_pp
PowerPC chips due exsist outside of Apple and not just from IBM.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Relax, man, he was being sarcastic...
No, you mean it's not ready *for you*. Unless you can provide an objective criteria by which you measure "desktop readiness" and then defend that.
I wanted to say the exact same thing. I'm not a Mac user, nor am I a Mac Linux user, but speaking as one who roomed with someone who was for a while, parent post is dead on. My friend managed to find endianness bugs in both GAIM and GCC (I think). Now this was a while back, and things have likely improved, but the fact that these two (or one, if I'm remembering GCC wrong) major projects had compatibility issues with PPC, implies that maybe having someone high up using this relatively obscure architecture isn't such a bad idea. With luck, this might knock some of the less caring projects into gear. I mean, if you're running a random open-source project, whose bug report are you going to address, if forced to choose? MacFree4Life25, or frickin' Linus Torvalds?
There are countless x86 Linux users, with varying degrees of clout, to test drivers and submit bug reports. But Mac Linux users are kind of rare, and as such, their complaints tend to fall by the wayside. And to people complaining that his use of non-commodity hardware will cause it to not work as well on x86 platforms, please understand that a) he is about as likely to switch hardware configurations on his x86 box for testing purposes as he is to switch between x86 and PPC, and b) compared with most x86 hardware peripherals, PPC is about as nonstandard as you can get without going embedded. You have nothing to worry about -- the only conceivable result is a more robust Linux.
And there was me running "Virtual Desktop Manager" all this time. What can I have been thinking?
r toys/xppowertoys.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powe
How about just oldskool 'find'?
Well, ignore the games for a moment:
:)
Anything I might "need" Windows for runs fine through Wine and/or VMWare.
If you need to run programs through emulators I'm not entirely sure Linux is ready for the desktop...
Tho personally I haven't touched Linux since around RedHat 5.2... But I do keep rooting (sounds like a bad pun, where's the tshirt at thinkgeek?) for it.
Wiwi
"I trust in my abilities,
but I want more then they offer"
Linus is storing up trouble. Now everyone knows he runs a dual processor machine, SCO will be after him for two licences.
The author of this post asserts his moral rights.
So.... he didn't really "switch". He just was given new hardware at work, he put Linux on it, and is using it. Sounds like much ado over nothing, to me.
That's ok, it wouldn't be reasonable on his 350MHz G3 either, but pointing that out seems kind of unimportant. Mac users always have these retarded "feelings" about the performance of their computers, that people not in a cult don't.
running Linux on it? That's a damn shame. OS X roxors.
By that logic, Linus used to run Linux on Linus, since a PC was the hardware.
Let's review:
For one thing, the lack of support for decent binary-only module abstraction layer is a horrendous oversight.
Linus' goals aren't neccessarily the same as yours. They simply don't want that, because they don't feel like making any concessions whatsoever to properietary kernel modules. Which this would result in.
Linus does hate the hashed page tables of PowerPC.
They are not cache-friendly, and they are complex.
The hardware does have redeeming features. It runs
cool, allowing for less fan noise. It has AltiVec,
giving it wonderful performance on software RAID,
crypto, and image processing. The FPU is very fast.
Plus, Linus got it for free.
And why is this wrong? Why should they have to relearn things? If what they're using works, then why even switch to Linux? Why are we trying to convert people to Linux, but then don't care to listen to them when they have ideas on how the experience can be improved?
1. Linux creator and self-confessed "media whore" Linus Torvalds has announced today that his dual 2Ghz G5 PowerPC computer system still hasn't gotten him laid.
2. Linus has a bowel movement, "It was brown and it floated. It was the juiciest piece of @$#! I'd seen since Mach, OSX's microkernel
3. Linux Torvalds, creator of the Linux operating system announced today that his left testicle has dropped and "now I can be a real whore".
no-ones asked the obvious yet... Gnome or KDE...
runs for cover...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
... and I've been wanting to set it up to run Linux, but on an external firewire drive. Does anyone know if this is possible? I actually don't want to mess with dual-boot OS loaders, but somehow be able to select it from the Startup Disk option in System Preferences in OS X. I don't want to mess around with partitioning the internal drive or modifying the boot sector and all that sort of thing.
I want to be able to boot Linux on an external drive, but when I want to use OS X, I just boot it without the external drive connected and have a clean OS X system without any modified partitioning or a modified boot sector. The reason I want it that way is because I want to just get my feet wet first, without actually making any dedication, at least initially. I'd need to use an external drive anyway, because my internal one is pretty full.
I've tried to use a Knoppix LiveCD, but it wouldn't boot properly, and ended up in a terminal window that gave messages in German and had the keyboard mapped differently, so I couldn't even type. I don't know of any other PPC LiveCDs.
I've tried installing Linux on an old Toshiba Tecra 740CDT, but had problems with the video drivers, and the graphical environments were too sluggish.
I'd appreciate any tips anyone can give.
FYI: the equivalent carpenter debate would be the worm drive circular saw vs. the sidewinder. No carpenter would be able to stay out of that argument even though they are "just tools".
And it was a good paper... and it was like, bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep.. /picz
------- Look mum! I have posted another Slashdot comment! --------
Apple would sure miss the $100+ you pay every year and a half to upgrade OS X.
You've essentially just defined an OS as "being ready for the desktop" only when it's a Microsoft Windows OS. FOSS does not need to attempt to recreate Microsoft's bugs to gain market share . . . in fact, it doesn't "need" to gain market share at all (although it is). With the current strategy, it'll gain more slowly, but it'll be better as it does.
I'm dualbooting SuSE 9.1 with Windows XP. I have an Nvidia 5200 Ultra which is a dual headed card. The NVidia drivers have been installed. I'd have two monitors hooked up and I'd like to go dual monitor. Under Windows, it's simple as telling it there is a second monitor attached (or rebooting after attaching the second monitor) Can you tell me under Linux how I go about installing that second monitor using YAST or another graphic wizard? If it requires editing some random conf file, forget it, you have lost, another point why linux isn't ready for the desktop.
Don't even get me started on my sound problems.
This doesn't apply to Linux on servers however..
People throw all sorts of free computers in
his direction.
So, "free" is nice, but nothing unique to the Mac.
I guess he hasn't looked at QNX then.
I have no interest in building a car, but I frequently have a need to drive somewhere... Does that mean that I am somehow less qualified to drive? We Mac zealots can be pretty annoying, but the Linux crowd is just as obnoxious. Your attitude toward us non-learning types is crap. My skill set has nothing to do with command line bullshit. I invested my learning hours in the tools I need for the work I do, not the work you happen to do. So, give it a rest you smug dickbag. We're all real impressed that you can see the Matrix. [clap clap clap] Some of us have actual work to do on our machines, and it doesn't always require kernel level tweaking. Some people have other interests, and only really use their computers for accessing the internet recreationally. Hell, some of us even use our dicks for something other than whizzing out the Jolt that we sucked down during a heavy D&D session... God, get over yourself and your "skills".
If you buy a Mac and ditch OSX in favor of Linux, they have still made a sale of exactly the same value.
No they haven't. One of the main things that counts against them when it comes to deciding what type of computer to buy is that most people run Windows.
The network effect is immense. Small newsagents often only stock Windows and console magazines. Small computer shops often only stock Windows software. If you ask your neighbour for help with something, he'll probably only know Windows. If you want to play a game, you'll have to hope that the Mac OS X userbase is large enough for the makers to port it.
Every additional person that uses Mac OS X makes it a more attractive platform to stock magazines for, to stock software for, to write games for, and so on.
Also, the more people that run Mac OS X, the more people they can sell Mac OS upgrades and software like iLife to.
Apple derives more value from a person that buys Apple hardware and runs Mac OS X than a person that buys Apple hardware and runs Linux.
If a bunch of Linux users started buying Macs to run Linux because Linus does (even though he got his for free!) I'm pretty sure they'd be happy with that.
Of course. But they'd be even happier if the same number of people bought Macs to run OS X.
That's nonsense - OSX users need to run some programs through an emulator if they're only available on Windows - but that doesn't mean that it's ready for the desktop.
People get upset because they're skilled with Windows and can correct problems there, but don't want to learn the same skills under Linux.
I've got the opposite problem now. I grew up with DOS and MS-Windows, and I learned how to administer and use these Operating Systems. However, since I switched to Linux three years ago, I've forgotten how to fix a Windows box.
For instance, if I'm having problem with my network card in Linux, I'll try '$/sbin/dhclient-2.2.x -q eth0', or maybe '$/sbin/ifconfig eth0 up'. With Windows, I'll spend hours trying to fix a flaky network connection or DNS problem. My wife's laptop runs Windows XP (she needs it for school, unfortunately.) When the network connection dies out, I've taught her to switch the primary DNS server with the secondary DNS server, and then switch back again. (Click here, then here, then here, then here, then here, then here, and then here.) I have no idea why this works, but it does.
Similarly, if I'm having an issue with my monitor in Linux, the solution is likely as simple as editing the '/etc/X11/XF86Config-4' file. With Windows, I'd likely have to download new drivers from the manufacturer. That *MIGHT* solve the problem. (Good luck, since the monitor's not working and the CLI isn't sophisticated enough for a simple lynx session.) If that doesn't work, it's likely time for a reinstall.
I agree with your point. I've never met a single person who had trouble getting work done in Linux who didn't also have trouble with Windows. You just say, 'Ok, remember how, in Windows, you'd click that little button in the bottom left hand corner to find the program you want to run. In Linux, you do the same thing. Oh, and to close a window, you click that little 'x' in the upper right hand corner, just like you remember from Windows.'
I did not become a vegetarian for my health, I did it for the health of the chickens. --Isaac Bashevis Singer
Honestly though, and this is coming from someone who uses XP 95% of the time and has no particular problem with it, Virtual Desktop Manager strikes me as a big kludge compared to the desktop managers I've used under Linux.
Next time just post "Mod up/down" posts anonymously. :-)
> If you buy a Mac and ditch OSX in favor of
> Linux, they have still made a sale of exactly > the same value.
In the past I would have agreed with you, but with iTunes, frequent OS updates and Apple's increased push into consumer electronics and servers Apple has made it clear that they'd prefer you stick with their own products, including OS X.
BEFORE YOU FLAME, I know there are exceptions to this. However, you must admit Apple doesn't want you messing with the insides of their machines. Example, iPod with their limited battery life. What if the CD goes bad or gets garbage in it on your powerbook? If the CD goes bad in my ThinkPad, I order one off ebay for $20 and replace it myself. You cannot do this on the Powerbook. Next example, I know a woman who had both PC's and Macs had a lightning strike that took out all her network cards. To replace the NICs on the PC's, $50 and 15 minutes of my time for each machine. For the macs, they had to be driven to the nearest repair center (2 hrs away), and it cost $850 per machine to replace the nics. Next example, try replacing the blown speakers in a iMac, you can't, they're molded into the plastic case.
I'll stick with more open and fixable machines thank you.
Its the Iron Fist inside a velvet glove...
3 degrees of separation from Vladimir Putin
It is precisely because of people like you that have no fucking clue what 99% of the world (some of us geeks included) wants in a desktop that Linux zealots have been fending off this argument for upwards of five years now.
Linux is absolutely not ready for the desktop. Until the community settles on a consistent interface and set of UI standards, it will never be ready for the desktop. For all the talk about how Microsoft is more committed to shiny new features than stability and consistency, they do a much, much better job than the OSS community in terms of UI. The controls in every window manager I've ever used have felt clunky and awkward. Shortcut keys are different in every application. And you've got 600,000 people each more interested in making their own window managers than in helping to develop a unified standard.
Which is fine. They're hobbyists, after all. But with that kind of attitude, Linux will always remain a hobbyist OS, and will never make it onto the desktop en masse.
...hw platform...
x86 would have been dead long time ago if it wasn't for Windows...
Now I'll kindly ask IBM to make us a PowerPad (preferably with that 1600x1200 display they used in A31p)... PLEASE...
He's running Linux, not any version of MacOS. You don't call someone running an Intel box running Linux a Windows machine, do you?
This is a bit off-topic, but there are PIC dev tools for unix-esque systems. Look into http://www.gnupic.org/. They maintain a list of programmers and have their own assembler. They do lack a decent high-level compiler, but one is in development (gpal).
kc8apf
"Linux is a fine desktop environment needing little tweaking (or at least no more than XP) and has next to zero learning curve as many environments are specifically designed to mimic Windows as faithfully as possible (unfortunately, as some would argue)." Are you kidding me? I've been using the KDE for about a year now and while its nice, it certainly is not a zero learning curve desktop. XP, whist MS crap, doesn't realy require one bit of tweaking. XP works fine for most people straight out of the box. Linux desktops have a ways to go and while I have a very usable desktop which I've tweaked for my specific uses, there is still some know how involved to get it there. Try explaining module installations or drive mounting orcode compiling to a regular user and you will get blank stares.
That's fine, but people shouldn't complain when users are switching in droves to MacOS X or other systems.
ready for the desktop?
Current Linux
+ universal software installer
+ hardware setup/modification with no command line
The last time I took a real stab at Linux these things still weren't there. At least, they weren't there in the distro I tried.
Pagemaker?
PAGEMAKER???
WTF?
If you want to make a tech manual (with an Adobe product), you can:
1) Run InDesign on Win or Mac
2) Run Framemaker on a variety of OSes
There is NO REASON to be running RageMaker.
Normally I don't reply to sigs, but yours is relevant to your post.
The quote is 90% of everything is crud, and it's Ted, not Fred.
I dunno whether I actually agree with it though. I guess what you meant by every microkernel, kernel, etc. is a piece of shit is that all of them have their problems. I'd have said that none of them are perfect, not that they're all shit. Just because something is flawed doesn't make it shit...
Anything I might "need" Windows for (with the sole exception of certain games) runs fine through Wine and/or VMWare.
You just negated your entire post with that single sentence.
I don't get it. Are you objecting to the "certain games" part, or the "need" part?
The parent indicates that Windows-specific applications are still compatible on the Linux desktop through WINE. They run perfectly well on the desktop. What about Windows applications that allow you to run an X Server on your desktop, so you can connect to your work's Unix box? Is that cheating? Does that mean that Windows is not ready for the desktop?
As for "certain games", the parent indicates that some programs are simply non-compatible with Windows. Does that mean that if I wrote a new application in Linux, but didn't make a Win32 port, then Windows is not ready for the desktop until such a port exists?
Some clarification would be nice.
Yeah, IIRC, Linus switched to a PPC64 box not long after his move to OSDL, and it's definitely had a positive affect on PPC Linux. In 2.4 days, anyone who wanted to build a kernel for their PPC Linux box learned quickly to avoid the mainline kernel -- mainline was the "official" ppc Linux tree, but quite often the releases wouldn't even build on ppc. Everyone (including most of the PPC-specific distributions) worked from the -BENH tree, where ppc-specific problems were quickly fixed, and ppc-specific releases were made. Those patches made it to mainline eventually, but like many of the other ports, PPC was it's own little fiefdom in kernel-land.
Today, you can't even find the -BENH tree. Every mainline release builds on ppc64, and ppc32 tends to need only tiny patches, if any; when PPC breaks, Linus notices, and cares. PPC is a "tier 1" platform.
Some of this is probably due to bitkeeper -- the ppc development tree was kept in bk before even Linus adopted it, so the common infrastructure probably smooths the path of PPC-specific patches into mainline. But the fact is, when ppc64 is broken in mainline, Linus can't work on any other part of the kernel until it's fixed, and every kernel gets built and booted on such a machine before it can become a release. It makes a big difference in the quality of PPC support in Linux.
"That's all I have to say about that" --Forrest Gump
Hypothetical 'just-surf' user does exist. What's more, if you put them in front of a KDE install, they will actually be quite happy, as long as they start with the idea that is superior to windows.
I built a Fedora Core 2 box for my g/f and she's delighted with it despite years of using windows. She was already used to Firefox after using it from 0.7 on my machine, she enjoys the kdegames collection and is happy using OO.o for the odd thing.
The people who suffer when switching are the middle ground, the people who are competant enough on windows to start fiddling with it.
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything." (attrib. Joseph Stalin)
If it takes you an hour to configure your Windows desktop, there's either something wrong with time in your area or you're exceptionally slow (and that includes a couple of reboots to remove Messenger et al.)
15 minutes tops - surely.
Although OSX is pretty slick and throught out top to bottom and better than current Gnome and KDE configurations, I'm perpetually perplexed by why anyone thinks the Windows Graphical Shell is "ready for the desktop"? The thing is a crude, inflexible and has some crazy inconsistent behaviors. And yet people claim this thing is better than Gnome or KDE?!
People are continually mistaking "familiarity" with "ease of use". Windows is definitely familar: it hasn't changed much since Win95. The problem is it isn't easy to use. Try explaining the quirks of Windows to someone who has never touched a computer. I can't predict what dialogs and messages are going to popup, what messages are going to be on buttons, etc. All of these things make for a strnage newbie experience on Windows.
The scary thing is that I see systems trying to emulate Windows more. I would rather they emulate Mac or come up with something original rather than use Window's incosistent patterns.
Linux is ready for my desktop. I've been using it exclusively for years.
Most of the people I work with use it on their desktops, too.
So, while it is true that it may not be ready for all desktops, to claim
that it isn't ready for any desktops is demonstrably false since we already
have lots of counter examples.
Get your mind around the fact that there is no "The Desktop". There's lots
of individule desktops.
It's not hard.
*sigh* back to work...
I don't know, I'm just saying that the talk about an OS tax, as usually applied to deals Microsoft has with OEMs, seems to not-quite apply here any more (or less) than it would apply to talking about the OS tax on a Palm device.
Find is hella slow. Slocate depends on a database which is updated via a nightly cron job, and database lookups are magnitudes faster than crawling all mounts in your filesystem. Slocate is also more secure, showing you only those files which you as a user have access to (read access). This behavior can be modified to your liking but that may defeat it's original purpose.
Anyone remember the time when he worked on an Alpha?
gopher://cramer.plaintext.cc http://cramer.plaintext.cc:70
I wonder how many people in this thread have looked at Xandros Linux. If anything is ready for the desktop, it's that.
It's beyond ready for the desktop. It makes the desktop easy, it makes it run well, and it makes it look good.
Linux is ready for the desktop and has been for some time. You just gotta choose the right distribution.
-kidlinux.
Even if you somehow manage to obtain OS X without the dev tools, you can download them for free from Apple's site (after signing up for a free online ADC account).
Now, now, while Linux is definitly not "ready for the desktop" no matter how many of the zealots tell you it is, I really can't say that it "takes all available free time to assemble some usable 'free desktop'".
I got so sick of hearing this that I actually decided to put it to a test.
First of all you have to define what "ready for the desktop" even means. Does it mean that Joe User can sit down and use it? Does it mean that it can be installed and its ready to go?
My dad, my mom, my wife and several of my friends have been able to sit down at my computer and check their email without too much problems. And I use Blackbox WM! All I had to do tell them to right click, they found Firefox, AIM, and OpenOffice without difficulty. Also out of the box Fedora takes me about 40 minutes to get up and running and about 20 after that while it downloads and installs updates. The last time I did Windows XP it took about 2 hours to get up and running because I had to find the correct hardware disks and dig around for a correct driver on a manufactuerer's site and then it took another 2 hours to get all the updates installed. Most of which I had to sit beside it and answer questions instead of the machine just doing it. So basically 4 hours for WinXP and 1 hour for Fedora.
People complaining about Linux not being ready for the desktop are used to windows and don't want to learn the differences.
The Anti-Blog
Linus = JK Bafford (inside joke)
My lame blog.
Ditto for other archs. Kernel support for amd64 is actually really good - I wish I could say the same about other FOSS.
Having major developers using non-x86 hardware just encourages everybody to write platform-neutral code. It isn't like it takes a degree in rocket science or anything - just don't assign pointers to ints and make other assumptions about data-type-sizes, endianness, etc...
Switching in droves?
Puhleez... Relax Mac boy.
People who choose Linux know it's a dynamic and diverse "work in progress" and don't mind a burp or a pimple here or there in their systems. The biggest reason people choose Linux is for what it stands for: open source, user (not profit) driven, user focused OS and software. And by "user" I don't mean widest market base, lowest-common-denominator user. I mean every user's needs, no matter how average or off-the-beaten-path their needs are.
Linux is a community of open source and diversity. Apple and Windows are businesses, profit-driven, demographically focused, closed-propriety systems...in a word: dinosaurs.
Viva la Linux
as he says in the the article, not Mac.
Ragemaker?
I have been using Pagemaker since '92 or thereabouts. I am comfortable with it, it just friggin' works and I see no reason to change yet. Scribus is probably the next alternative.
BTW, I don't do color, don't do fancy shit in my manuals and PM does just fine for me. I just need manuals to go with my products. Maybe if my entire life was creating manuals, I'd have a different opinion.
"For one thing, the lack of support for decent binary-only module abstraction layer is a horrendous oversight.
Linus' goals aren't neccessarily the same as yours. They simply don't want that, because they don't feel like making any concessions whatsoever to properietary kernel modules. Which this would result in."
That doesn't make it a bad idea from a technical standpoint
In this case, I don't see anything in the Wikipedia entry that would make me think it's more authoritative than the book in which I originally read the quote.
and it's Ted, not Fred.
I claim lack of sleep. D'oh.
Just because something is flawed doesn't make it shit.
Of course not. Just matching the normal level of hyperbole here on /.
If you're having trouble with your netword card in Windows XP, you'll find a tool with a lot of useful commandline diagnostics in IPCONFIG (You can flush DNS from there, which has actually been useful on more than one occasion). If you're having trouble with your monitor, Remote Desktop can be used to pull up the full GUI from another machine and work with it.
I'm an oldtimer, myself, and the Linux-style of "editing config files and using the commandline" is fine by me, but it's a bit much for a lot of people.
Yeah, I drop inthere once in a while. Since you seem knowledgable about it, does anyone support the ICD's yet? I am pretty committed to Flash PICs and the ICD1, ICD2 development tools. I also have an ICE2000, but I find myself using it less and less; ICD + flash almost always gets it done!
OSX users need to run some programs through an emulator because they're only available for OS 9.
Apple as a company may be happy, but anyone who knows anything about Steve Jobs knows he would be furious at the idea.
The comment has already been made. Let's move it along people. Nothing to see here.
There are some stories about opium in Macs so people like me will feel really good, but if the engineers at Apple could hide some opium in the computer and keeping dissipating out for 4 years continously, history channel should make this into Modern Marvels.
To be seriously, the reason some people claim the plastic Mac smells different from plastic Dell or whatever may be the Material Selection. Apple doesn't use Polybrominated biphenyls (PBBs) or Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) in its product, because of potential harm to people.
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
If you buy a Mac and ditch OSX in favor of Linux, they have still made a sale of exactly the same value.
That's not right.
If you buy a Mac, Apple has made a hardware sale, yes, but that's not all. They've also created a customer for other Apple and third-party products. If you buy a Mac, you're instantly in the market for Final Cut Express, for instance. You may or may not buy it, but you're in the market. Same with all other Mac applications.
Not to mention the fact that you also become a customer for future releases of Mac OS X. The vast majority of Mac users choose to upgrade their computers every year or two with a new release of Mac OS X. (The reason, of course, is because every release of Mac OS X to date, up to and including Tiger, has been light-years ahead of the previous release.)
But if you buy a Mac and then strip off the operating system, leaving the computer as just a bare piece of metal on which you can run home-brewed hobby kernels or whatever, then you're not an Apple customer any more. You're just another PC user who happens to have written Apple a check for $X,000.
If a bunch of Mac buyers started running Linux on their computers, Apple would be apoplectic, and would respond by kicking their software group into gear and releasing an operating system that puts Linux to shame in every respect.
Come to think of it, this seems already to have happened.
"Until the community settles on a consistent interface and set of UI standards, it will never be ready for the desktop."
This has never made any sense to me, at least if you're talking largely about the old Gnome/KDE debate. If someone decides they like (for example) KDE and KDE apps, it mostly just matters if KDE is internally consistent, not if it is consistent with Gnome. If KDE and Gnome behave differently, I don't see why that is any more of an issue than differences between KDE and Windows or between KDE and MacOS. The only difference is that you have the option of running Gnome apps under KDE, while you don't have such a simple way to run Windows/Mac apps.
If you have to build four libraries before your application, then you're SOL.
... if you haven't the foggiest idea how to write Mac software.
They're not called libraries. They're called frameworks. And there's no reason why you should have to build them before you build your application, because they will link at run time, not compile time. So just put the frameworks in your project and let Xcode decide what order to build them.
Xcode is, indeed, a terrible development tool
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.
Ever since IBM announced their so called "OpenPOWER" machines, I've been lusting after one. Sure, they are more expensive, but he could afford it and a dual POWER5 at 1.6Ghz would blow the pants off any current Mac.
STFU about slashdot bias.
Am I one of the few people who think that Tannenbaum won that debate?
Mentioning Wine and VMWare was illustrative, not substantive. I don't actually use Wine. I do actually use VMWare on my Fedora box because I develop software and I like to test it out on multiple platforms. (VMWare is a godsend of an app for cross-platform developers.) I don't use it so I can run Office. There is not a single application that I need to run that is not available natively in Linux. And that statement holds true for thousands upon thousands of people. I'd say it's up to them whether Linux is ready for their desktop or not.
Linux is quite appropriate for many a desktop upon reasonable reflection. There are distros tailored to corporate desktops, home desktops, mobile desktops, as well as servers, embedded systems, etc.
So, while you and whomever else argue over whether Linux is "ready for the desktop" or not, I and thousands (if not millions) of others will be using it every day trying to get it through all of your heads that you're arguing over colored bubbles.
I call bullcrap! You need a new word, dude.
Seriously, your argument isn't a compliment for Linux at all. Congratulations, you can set up a desktop for someone to just fire up a browser. Never mind when they want to use, say, GNOME apps but don't have GNOME installed. So now they have to install another desktop environment. What about developers? Which toolkit do they develop for? There are at least 10, all conflicting.
How about copy-paste? That's right, copy-paste still doesn't work universally. You left that one out.
Linux is absolutely not ready for the desktop. Windows 95--yes, Windows 95--surpasses it in functionality in a large number of ways, from binary install/uninstall APIs to a standard development API to code for. It's the reason most Win95 apps still run on XP. Try that with an old KDE 2.0 binary.
Of course, the standard counterargument is to reference freedesktop.org, which hardly anyone follows or else this all wouldn't still be a problem. Saying "We'll follow it...someday!" doesn't prove your point at all.
I'm sorry, Linux is a fantastic server, and a poor desktop OS. Unless you get a geek friend to spend a couple of hours setting it up perfectly so that all you have to do is click a browser icon. If that's all you're ever going to do, then congratulations--Linux is the best browser-launcher ever.
Some of us consider a "desktop" to be MUCH MUCH more than that. But supporters like you tend to narrow your definition to prop Linux up where it is not warranted. Only through constructive criticism and admission of faults will things ever improve. The community sometimes has real problems with doing that.
If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail - Abraham H. Maslow
If I'm not mistaken NVidia provides an app to configure your displays in X. Check NVidia's website where you downloaded the drivers from. It's been a while, but from what I remember all you do is plug in the second display, run the app as root, and point and click the appropriate configuration options.
Note the caveat here is that whatever X desktop you're using has to support multiple displays.
.technomancer
"is that every microkernel, kernel, etc. is a piece of shit."
What a truly ignorant statement. Microkernels are more stable than macro's (theoretically) but come at the cost of speed.
Its a tradeoff.
I know shit about kernel design as well but the arguments I see are as follows....
With kernels getting huge, microkernels could be easier to write and maintain since they have to be bugfree and stable. Macrokernels are easier to write generally but when huge can lead to problems. A kernel that has a bug brings down a machine unlike a userspace app. What is Linux? 70 million lines??
In this day and age of fast hardware and very bloated software and kernels, the argument to use a microkernel is quite strong. More userspace and less code touching the hardware can make sense. Also the speed difference is less and less of an issue today.
Qnx is a microkernel and so is AIX. Both are the most stable operating systems out there besides OS/390.
http://saveie6.com/
Torvalds did not write the software he uses (parts of it; yes). Like he himself said with the GPL when you write GPL software you get the benefit of 9 other software writers (or something like that). So, if you install Redhat or Mandrake and write one little program then the whole 2 gig of the software is yours. Just release the source code and remove the Trade Marks and call it Bob's Distribution.
To someone who's used Photoshop, GIMP seems a little weird - "worse," even - but it's exactly the opposite for a GIMP user. GIMP's interface is MUCH more productive than Photoshop's, once you get used to it. The single right-click menu lets you access every function, and everything works the same way. In Photoshop, I'm never sure whether I want an adjustment layer, a filter, or some other weird way of doing things.
GIMP rocks.
BOOOOOOOOOOOORING, wake me up or call me when you have an article of Bill Gates using apple :)
what the fuck are you doing on this site you moron ?
I took a shower this morning
I wonder if IBM donated teh mac to him?
IBM wants to replace AIX and powerpc linux is lacking behind x86.
What I hope is that Linux will be less buggy on non x86 hardware which is a good thing if Linus works on him version of Linux.
Keep in mind I am sure he still has his x86 boxes and maybe an old sgi's and sun's in his house to find bugs in the kernel on those machines as well.
Monolithic kernels have alot of hardware specific code in the kernel that can not be ported which needs to be rewritten for each platform.
http://saveie6.com/
Fedora Core 3, for instance, auto mounts USB storage and CDs upon insertion. Nice little desktop icon appears. And even FC3 isn't the most user-friendly distro out there.
Try MEPIS for a test drive.
Linus also said in userspace he really does not care what it runs. He cares only when writing kernel space code. He mentioned he liked Microsoft Office and powerpoint as an example.
Last, he is running Linux on it. Not MacOSX.
Also perhaps he wants to his his mac for home movies, photoshop, and other apps that are not related to hacking? Maybe his wife wants a nice, easy to use, and a reliable pc to run MS Office? A mac could fit the bill.
No offense but the GIMP sucks and digital camera's and camcorder support sucks on Linux. Lack of video editing software is a problem as well. MacOSX does come with some nice software for non nerds that is nice to have.
http://saveie6.com/
Guess what? Not quite. In Mac OS X Mach was merged with the BSD kernel, loosing any advantage -- or even characteristic -- of the microkernel design but keeping a few liabilities.
So booting Mac OS X would help nothing, but the GNU Hurd yes.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
You're a fucking moron. Just because you can't use linux doesn't mean anyone else can't. You just need to smarten up a bit. There are plenty of non-technical people who use ubuntu or mandrake, and it's not giving them any more trouble than windows, much less in fact.
The real problem is that the desktop is a broken paradigm that everybody keeps trying to "fix". Nobody with half or more of a brain could possibly argue that windows has the best possible desktop out there, but people keep using it because it's what they're used to. The KDE and Gnome projects keep adding enhancements, bells, and whistles to make their desktop "better" than windows and then wonder why people still use wondows desktops.
If you're going to use something as broken as a "desktop", why should you bother switching away from the one you already know.
Speaking of having no fucking clue, you should look in the mirror.
Until the community settles on a consistent interface and set of UI standards, it will never be ready for the desktop.
Have you ever used windows in a business environment? What kind of crack do you have to smoke to see windows applications, hell, even windows components as having a consistent interface.
And you've got 600,000 people each more interested in making their own window managers...
Apparently you've dug up a rotting argument from the mid '90s. Try visiting the present. Find me a desktop environment that supports multiple window managers. Good luck.
If you want people to switch from something they already know, the change will have to be fairly revolutionary. Why don't people come up with a system that overcomes the inherent flaws is the "desktop" model. Things like the difficulty, nay, impossiblity of performing many to many file operations... Hell just come up with an interface that allows you to do all the things you can do in the command line... As it is now you can't even do a fraction of those things. Do that, and you'll have something that is truly better; something that it would be worth considering a switch to. Until you've done something like that, people will stay with windows.
Stand back! I'm about to power up my web browser!
Url? Check.
Plug-ins? Check.
Bookmarks? Check.
OK, ready?
Contact!
Pull out the chocks! Fasten your seatbelts!
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Tell us your story
"Well, I found the need for a dual CPU big-endian computer with 64 bit addressing on which to test patches for the Linux kernel, so I got this Power Mac G5, wiped OS-X..."
There's plenty to learn if you want to use windows.
/mbr to the install disk, and the install disk hangs on boot if the partition table has been edited by debian. Also, XP refuses to leave some space at the beginning of the hard drive, preventing you from placing linux's boot partition in front of the @#$%! 8.4G bios limitiation that apparently still applies on some new computers. So much for assuming 'I'll have Linux create a boot partition 50Gig into the disk and install grub, I can just restore the MBR if necessary...')
You need to constantly upgrade IE, avoid malicious sites, learn which activeX warnings to click 'no' on, install anti-virus software, lock down your mail client, or learn to "view source" before clicking links in email, figure out which office features are correctly supported by newer/older versions of office, etc, etc.
Most people that ask me windows questions are having trouble with security or hardware trouble. I have similar problems with hardware under the two OS'es. (I only buy stuff that's supported under Linux.) As for security, there's no comparison.
Most of the people I work with (all Computer Science grad students, in other words, expert users) that run Windows XP have had their systems infected with viruses / spyware at least once over the last two years. I don't know anyone that's had this happen under Linux over that time period, and I know more Linux users than Windows users.
Why? It's simple. Linux software tends to be relatively secure by default, both in user interface terms, and in terms of underlying technology (for example, there is no activeX, and most software comes from a centralized, audited repository). Also, since Linux has a smaller user base, it is less of a target for phishing attacks, browser hijacks, worms, etc.
Besides, I "just turn on the machine and surf the web" once I have the OS installed, and last I checked, the infamous Debian installer worked much better in a dual-boot environment than the XP one.
(XP moves the equivalent of fdisk
January Called, it wants its news back. This was covered in an Interview by Linux Magazine back in January. The article is available on the web here.
Tovalds: I personally also feel that ppc64 is interesting, and that's actually what I run on my personal desktop( it's a dual G5 Apple box, although it obviously runs Linux, not OS X).
I bet he signed up to those "Get your free Mac Mini" and "Get your free ipod" campaign. I always thought that this was a scam, but now...
Linus Torvalds today wiped is ass. When asked why he switched from the cost effective one-ply, to the wastfull 2-ply, Torvalds replied that he had been getting an odd rash. And yes it runs linux :)
I'm so glad we are kept up to date on one mans life.
After someone tells you a punchline, do you usually ask, "And then what happened?"
Microkernels are more stable than macro's (theoretically) but come at the cost of speed.
Yeah, yeah - micro, macro, CISC, RISC, this here achitecture is the best evar for everything.
Also the speed difference is less and less of an issue today.
Mmmm. You like bloatware, too, don't you?
Hmmm. A free Macintosh. A free Macintosh. Gee, I wonder how I could get a free Macintosh. That would be cool. A Macintosh for free. Hmmmmmm.
(Start modding me down... NOW!)
Insert witty sig here.
Actually, it's "90% of Wikipedia articles are crap"... shit, I mean "crud."
You guys hijacked a perfectly good - Bash Apple topic with a Linux on the desktop trojan horse.
Lets get back into the normal course of this topic, and resume the Apple bashing.
Btw. I don't think OSX/DARWIN is a true microkernel anyway.
a man, a plan, a canal, panama
Hey, I hate MAC OS as much as the next guy, but this is pure fucking FUD.
the wireless connection doesn't initialise until you log in
Then you're a fucking idiot. Let me spell it out for you:
System Preferences
Network
Show: AirPort
AirPort tab
By default, join: A specific network
Network: (select the network or enter its name)
Password: if entering a WEP password in hex, don't forget to put a $ sign in front
Apply Now
That's it. I have several machines on wireless only and I often remotely reboot them (after a softwareupdate for example), then ssh back in after they come up. NO CONSOLE LOGIN REQUIRED.
Conclusion: you're either a complete fucking idiot, or you're spreading FUD. Which is it??
firewire keeps locking
YEah, firewire sucks ass on the MAC. I had a bad firewire disk and it kept kernel panicking my MAC. I hated that fucking thing and wanted to pull an Office Space on it. Piece of shit.
I'd much rather have Linux
YEah if Linus were any good, I would agree. But it sucks ass 100x worse than super-sucky MAC OS. I have this high power web hosting server and if any one (1) - yes one! - process starts thrashing the disk, the whole fucking machine blows up. Linus disk access sucks big time. I'd rather put up with the supreme shittiness of the MAC than that crap. At least when my MAC is slow (which is 100% of the time), it still responds in about 10 seconds or so. Not with that crapass Linus server (the hosting company has tried 2.4.x, 2.6.x, they don't fucking know... it sucks ass either way).
Remember: "All operating systems suck big fucking ass titties. This one just sucks 0.000001% less than everything else."
It's a crappy platform, even Wintel wishes they didn't have to support it forever. I don't know why Slashdotters are obsessed with that platform when there are much superior ones out there, including PowerPC. x86 is an awful architecture in this day and age. You people will keep it afloat forever...
I think it has been admitted that though technically it would be a good idea, the encouragement it would be to hardware makers to produce binary modules would damage the linux kernel more in the long term, since it would lead to something comparable to the windows world, where there are no open source drivers.
Currently the cost of maintaining a closed-source driver for linux is prohibitive, so any hardware maker that wants their hardware to work on linux is strongly encouraged to release their hardware specs, and plenty of them do. With a solid binary-only framework in place, there would be little to no encouragement to release specs, and so most drivers would end up being closed source.
To sum up: technically good, politically bad, so no go.
XCode is designed for Objective-C and Java MacOS X programming. It *does* C++ CLI programs, and it *does* some other stuff, but that's not the focus.
The concensus seems to be that for Objective-C and Java OS X programming, XCode is pretty damn sweet. For anything else, it's a little clunky. XCode is a good example of Apple employees eating their own dogfood-- it's developed by people who make OS X GUI software, and so it's really good at making OS X GUI software, and not-so-good at other things.
Comment of the year
I feel quite honored to have the same computer as the father of linux himself.... although I kinda gave up the linux thing on my G5... Knowing him (not that I do) he will probably want to run a 64bit SMP variant, being that... well.. he has multiple 64 bit processors. As of last summer, when I tried playing with putting linux on my box, the only viable option was tgall's PPC64 project Unfortunately, as of last summer, the cds were buggy and it took me quite a lot of work to get it working. Not being the creator of linux, I wanted to keep OS X, so I decided to keep multiple partitions: one for OS X, one for gentoo and it's requirements (swap, etc), and one that would be a common partition that would be mounted as /home in linux and /users in OS X. This turned out to be HELL. In OS X 1.3 (highly reccomended for a G5) the files like passwd and shadow are almost a buffer for what's really used by the system. You have to load it to net info. This is all fine and dandy - there are some guides out there, but every time my system crashed (MUCH more than a mac ever should, but that was cause of buggy software more than anything else) net info would go to default and I'd have to redo some of my work to get my system back in order.
All in all, it took a month and I never got it working to my satisfaction.
Perhapse this kind of toying with OSs isn't his thing? I think it'd be pretty obvious that if he had to make a decision he'd choose OS X.
Ah well... even if you can't use firefox, it's reeeeaaaaly cool to emerge KDE in 40% the time it takes my P4 ^_^
I wouldn't hold my breath on that. They sure didn't flock to the Transmeta systems...
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
Yeah, I know Linus just does kernel development. It seems to me he ought to care about the user experience just a bit. I guess it isn't as if he's influential or anything. /sarcasm
Who are you to tell him how he ought to spend his time. If you care so much, then you evangelize the user experience.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
This is actually a pretty good car analogy (a rarity!), and it even holds up when you extend it slightly. I'll get to the extension in a moment, for now I want to explicate what I think is your point.
Linux is ready for some people's desktops, but not for others. It's that simple.
Just as some people like to tinker with cars, or even like certain cars that require extensive tinkering, some people like to tinker with their OS, and become quickly bored and limited by the proprietary OSes. I'm not thinking of junkers that remain in the road by means of baling wire, but of MGs, Jaguars, Muscle cars, Lowriders. Whatever. Some are highly customized, others just require mechanical skills and TLC. Also, there are those who like to machine their own parts (developers).
In the corporate environment, it's cost effective because you can have a pool of "mechanics" (and you generally have such a pool anyways, for Windows), and you can standardize on the configurations to make the mechanics more efficient. (I think this is where the analogy starts to break down. Is having a standard configuration akin to making all your users drive in first gear?)
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
...and only switched during the 2000/XP timeframe. I recently switched to a Mac as well.
So you swiched during the KDE/Gnome's largest usability advances? I used OS9 in college and it sucked, OSX can't be ready for the desktop.
Funny, my wife's iBook, purchased in December, came with a compiler. It wasn't installed by default; I had to install it from one of the CDs that came in the box, but that only took a few minutes.
My iBook, purchased Nov 2001 did not come with the dev tools CD. I downloaded it for free. It came with everything else, and when I upgraded to Jaguar, the OS box came with the dev tools cd. So I believe the grandparent.
God save our Queen, and Heaven bless The Maple Leaf Forever!
I wanna know what he had for breakfast!
I agree somewhat. I think that if the monolithic kernel is working for now, we should keep it--there's no reason to rewrite something that works. A little look into any possible performance gains vs. the cost of added complexity might help. However, I wholeheartedly agree with you about the binary module idea. Eventually, perhaps by 2.8, there should be a solid set of API's that have stabilized, and there should be a way to load modules with a more abstract interface that only works with those API's. It is a pain to have to use a specific kernel with specific config options just to make use of a binary kernel module. (I'd like to point out, however, that between major versions of Windows there is almost never binary driver compatibility, or at the very least problems can show up.)
Tired of free iPod sigs? Subscribe to my blacklist
Thanks for the advice. I've looked into using ipconfig to solve this problem. Hmmm, perhaps I should start at the beginning.
Occasionally, the browser has trouble resolving a host. Once it has this problem, it can't seem to look up any other hosts either. Pinging the IP address of the host works, but name resolution fails. I know that XP can experience problems with a tainted DNS cache, but flushing the cache does not solve the problem. The only solution to the problem appears to be to switch over to another DNS server (something that XP does not do automatically, it seems.) I'd love to be able to script a solution to this problem, but I don't want to have to put hours into solving a problem with a good, well-defined workaround, even if the workaround is a PITA.
As far as the monitor is concerned, Remote Desktop can be helpful in these situations. However, it's the only Windows box in the house. Is there a Linux client available? (If X fails to load, it'll drop me to a shell where I can solve the problem.)
I agree that command line hacking is a bit much for most people. I also think that configuring alternate DNS servers is a bit much for most people.
What the grandparent and I were both getting at is that a fundamental difference exists between administrators and users. And Windows has not made ordinary users into administrators. They still need us to help them set up their computers, fix their monitors, and repair their Internet connections. If a user with XP experience is just going to be checking his email or visiting his favorite portal, he or she won't experience much of a problem using Gnome or KDE.
I did not become a vegetarian for my health, I did it for the health of the chickens. --Isaac Bashevis Singer
Maybe Linux is ready for the desktop, but the vast majority of unsophisticated users aren't ready for the Linux desktop.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
What about 'ready for the internet'?
I would suggest that it's very hard to argue that Windows is ready for the internet. In fact, when it comes to the internet, Windows it the worst OS, bar none. It gets viruses, worms, is remotely rooted, becomes a horrible piece of junk that spews spam, and all this after merely an hour connected to the internet. You know, the real internet, without firewalls and anti-virus, and anti-spyware and popup blockers.
I do not contest that Windows has a pretty good UI. It's just that all the technical stuff is so bad, i cannot use windows without embarassing myself.
I did read the article, and I know that he's running Linux on it, and thus my congratulations. I'm not sure why I'm marked as troll, save by people like you who think I was being sarcastic, or perhaps by Mac fanboys. Touchy group in either case.
Mach never had the BSD kernel. It DID have a monolithic BSD-compatible kernel interface in Mach versions 2.x. But since Mach 3.0, it's been microkerneled. It's been a loooooong time since 2.x -- back in the NeXTSTEP days.
Funny, I don't recall e-mailing my post to Linus.
If you care so much, then you evangelize the user experience.
I do.
But then again, who am I to tell J. Random Developer how to spend his/her time?
I usually enjoy your posts, but you might want to switch to decaf for the rest of the day.
It is funny but disheartening to see how even Slashdot editors can't remember yesterday... before Intel (or HP or Compaq, you name 'em) killed the Alpha, Linus was given a four-way Alpha workstation he used for quite some time, I think it was two or three years until x86 hardware took over in performance (over his three-years old system!) or Alpha was seen as a dead end or whatever.
So he's just doing the same, this time with a platform not so fancy but with a safer future.
It means an easier life for us Linuxers on PPC, but we were already blessed with great hackers both on the kernel and in other parts; for example the leader(s?) of the Debian X Strike Force are Linux on PPC users.
Now what would be great is if proprietary vendors start porting their stuff... every day I miss things like j2re plugin for Mozilla, a Flash player, Adobe Acrobat and NX. Granted there are alternatives and clones, but gcjwebplugin still crashes Epiphany and ain't Java 2 level yet, swf_player is only playback, no interaction and takes way too much CPU, Evince doesn't do PDF forms and X.Fast (LBX) simply can't work in POTS dial-up situations where NX shines.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
"... Well, for starters, Linux doesn't have a Finder...."
Your right. The Linux kernel doesn't have a finder (and doesn't need one in kernel space). But there are several apps that you will find installed on most GNU/Linux systems that will. eg: locate, find, whereis, and which.
My dad, my mom, my wife and several of my friends
Most people won't have access to you personally to set up with linux. Do you want to come over to my house and get me up and running in linux? Also, I'll be calling you frequently for tech support.
Sure, this is a problem with windows as well, especially given all the problems with malware. Which is why I gave my dad an eMac. I honestly don't have the time to give him much tech support!
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Having a dual-proc PowerPC with G5 (PPC 970) processors will increase the chances that Linus will think about performance issues for such hardware. The 970 has a longer pipeline than the G4, for example, so it's possible to leave quite a bit of performance on the table with code that stalls the pipeline a lot.
If Linus' insights on this for Linux can help the OS X people even find 1% better performance for any publically quoted benchmark, it will have paid for itself many times over.
This is just a SWAG (simple wild-assed guess).
Hmmmm, Terra's claims notwithstanding, I generally find OS X to be faster than Yellow Dog. That's the closest comparison I can come up with between the two OS's that removes hardware as a variable.
Even if OS X were slightly slower, it's so much superior in other factors (module loading for one!) that the tradeoff is well worth it.
Depends on the distro. Most used to not handle this gracefully, but now some even have a graphical "safe mode" (Xandros, Lycoris) or better recovery CD (Ubuntu).
Ever since Suse put all the installer stuff into the control panel, distros have been much better with new hardware configurations.
"Torvalds switches to a Mac"
Has the headline been edited? If not, what's misleading? And where do you get anything about MacOS from? Neither the headline, TFS nor TFA say anything about anyone using MacOS.
Humorless smacktards
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
The Apple Powermac Dual G5: worth running Linux on if the hardware is free.
Q:Why do smart people buy powermacs?
A:To install Linux on.
Q:What version of OS X are you running?
A: 2.6.11.
First it was MOL, now its LOA.
>>I'd like to point out, however, that between major versions of Windows there is almost never binary driver compatibility, or at the very least problems can show up.
Bull... the exact same binary of the driver my team supports work on Windows 95, 98, 2000, XP, 2003, and Longhorn. Different interfaces may be available and different levels of kernel functionality, but I ship a SINGLE binary. Very easy for my team to maintain.
I also ship a single Linux binary. If you're not using the latest shipping Red Hat you're SOL. For IP reasons that are way beyond my control, I cannot ship source, and I cannot support all the different binaries.
My product happens to be one of the ones that everyone complains there is no Linux driver support for. I feel thier pain. I would like to support that market, but cannot... I believe that a REAL module interface would go a long, long way towards legitimizing Linux in the corporate IT desktop world...
#include "standard_disclaimer.h"
I usually enjoy your posts, but you might want to switch to decaf for the rest of the day.
Decaf? Never!
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
A vendor should be able to compile a binary driver for my hardware and I should be able to load it into whatever version of the kernel I'm using without worrying about the compiler and kernel versions matching the build environment.
This could be a big advantage to OpenSolaris, and Solaris doesn't break binary compatibility between minor releases either. Since OpenSolaris will be a breeding ground for Solaris, Sun will have to enforce this. ISVs like these sorts of things, because their investment is meaningful to users beyond a two-month window. Expect Solaris to gain a lot of attention in government and commercial sectors over the next year or two.
-- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
Not only that, my dear fitten, he started using this Apple hardware about a year ago. Unsurprisingly, it's now "NEWS!" at slashdot.
Given the high level of Linus worshipping that goes on here (higher than even the Steve Jobs worshipping), it's odd that more slashdotters weren't already aware of this.
I am somewhat reminded of the scene in Life of Brian when he loses his shoe while fleeing a crowd of would be worshippers, and the worshippers begin to argue over the meaning.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Perhaps you should RTFP.
GNU/Linux systems have progressed to the point where the usability issue is arguable. I use Xandros 3 and Mac OS X at home. My Linux use goes back to 1999 whereas I haven't been using OS X for more than 2 months...
To enable firewire networking with my friends' WinXP systems, I clicked on a few checkboxes in OS X. In Linux, I have to recompile the kernel.
GNU/Linux is a networking powerhouse: So WHY did it take until Dec 2004 for someone (Xandros) to come up with a VPN client?
Oh, and if Linus or the FSF would allow themselves to see just how wonderful application installs/moves/removals are under OS X then perhaps we would see support for aliases in Linux. Dear LORD the problems that would solve!
Experience doesn't make you any more correct.
"Ready for the desktop" is in the eye of the beholder anyway. I prefere X11/ratpoison to WinXP for instance. You can keep your pop-ups, I'll get some work done.
Oh, and "Linux" isn't a desktop solution, it's a kernel. Have you been using very user-friendly distros (xandros, SuSe, Novell Linux Desktop)? Or are you whining about how no newbies will ever install slackware? My guess is you're trolling actually.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
To sum up: technically good, politically bad, so no go.
However, most users really couldn't care less about the politics. I'd rather see more crap on the shelves at Best Buy say "Linux 2.X drivers included" than have to spend a weekend thinking of search phrases for mailing list archives to see how to force something to work. Laptop chipsets come to mind--people just want the damn thing to work, and the alternative is to put Windows back on it (is that better for the Linux cause?).
So you swiched during the KDE/Gnome's largest usability advances? I used OS9 in college and it sucked, OSX can't be ready for the desktop.
Did I say that I stopped using Linux? No, don't put words into my mouth.
...unless, of course, the userspace "app" isn't just an application but a server process upon which operation of the system depends; those can exist even in systems with "monolithic" kernels, but with "true" microkernels in which large chunks of core system operation are moved to server processes, more of those processes exist.
QNX I can see - but how much of AIX's core kernelish functions are performed in, for example user-mode server processes?
rdesktop for your linux client for Remote Desktop.
Dude, This discussion has been there, since linux was created. Dont beat the donkey dead, its dead anyway.
> People get upset because they're skilled with Windows and can correct problems there, but don't want to learn the same skills under Linux.
"People" became skilled with Windows problem solving because they had to, not because they wanted to. Big difference. No, they don't want to have to learn the same "skills" under Linux, those skills were learned under duress, and they don't want to have to slog through that same swamp twice - once was quite enough.
For every program out there, we have to fork a new branch Mac-* (MacPython, MacGcc, MacMplayer). Why? Not only a waste of resources, but once the new brach is forked, apple developers contribute only to the MacBranch and never give back to the main project. See what happened to gcc and ObjC. The apple developers only cared about their branch and then wanted everybody else to delay the release of 4.0 until ObjC was fixed -- so they would be forced to fix it.
Apple is doing more harm to OSS because it divides the developers from the common sourcebases and introduces many incompatibilities.
Why, for the love of all that's holy, should anyone care what computer Linus uses to do his work? If he uses a Sun, Mac, PC or even a PDA, does it matter as long as what he produces works?
I think the simple matter is that Macs are generally appealing, and that those who like them tend to evangelise a lot and those who don't have some fear that x86 is not good enough, or somethiing to that extent.
Now, now, while Linux is definitly not "ready for the desktop" no matter how many of the zealots tell you it is, I really can't say that it "takes all available free time to assemble some usable 'free desktop'". I'm going to have to disagree here. It is more than ready for the desktop. It's the hardware vendors who aren't ready for a Linux desktop. When I put a PC together, put XP Pro on it, and the sound card, NIC, video card, and TV Tuner card don't work immediately, would you say that XP Pro isn't ready for the desktop? No. It just needs the manufacturer's drivers installed. That is the step that is missing from the Linux Desktop "experience". It's not an OS problem. It's a hardware vendor problem. I will grant you that the user's experience is diminished becuase of that, but again, it's not the OS. It's the hardware vendors. If they didn't release drivers for Windows, Microsoft would be in the same boat.
If you mod me down, I shall become less powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Well, at least one person understands. I've re-read my post several times, and I suppose I can see how someone could misconstrue it as a troll. I forgot how sensitive Linux and Mac fanboys can be, looking for insult and innuendo in even well-intentioned comments. Oh well, /.ers aren't known for their subtlety, so I suppose when they suspect subtlety they overreact.
Nobody with half or more of a brain could possibly argue that windows has the best possible desktop out there
I never said that. I'm not sure that such a an abstract concept as "the best possible desktop" even exists. Do you drive the best possible car? Do you live in the best possible house? It's far, far too complex of an issue to be shoehorned into a linear scale like that.
The KDE and Gnome projects keep adding enhancements, bells, and whistles to make their desktop "better" than windows and then wonder why people still use wondows desktops.
It's because, as so many people fail to understand, it's not about bells and whistles. I don't need windowshade mode or alpha transparency. I'd much rather have a stable, consistent interface. But such things as consistency and stability are far from glamourous, and require strict project management and a good helping of elbow grease. It's not something I'd want to do in my spare time, and I don't fault others for feeling the same way. But without it, you just can't compete with the commercial offerings.
If you're going to use something as broken as a "desktop", why should you bother switching away from the one you already know.
Precisely. Especially when the new one, while stronger in some areas, has just as many flaws in others.
Speaking of having no fucking clue, you should look in the mirror.
INCINERATION! You're the insult master!
Have you ever used windows in a business environment? What kind of crack do you have to smoke to see windows applications, hell, even windows components as having a consistent interface.
Agreed. I don't think you can ever have an openly programmable environment in which all third-party developers follow all the rules. But Windows itself is generally consistent. There's usually a preferred "Windows way" of setting something up. In Linux, there are many different ways, each as legitimate as the next. Which is great for the person writing the code, but not so wonderful for everyone else involved.
Do that, and you'll have something that is truly better; something that it would be worth considering a switch to. Until you've done something like that, people will stay with windows.
Which is pretty much what I'm saying. Linux, as a desktop OS, offers no incentive for people to switch at the moment. And with the advent of Win2000/XP, Windows is stable enough to be tolerable. I'm not a big fan of Microsoft, but OS X notwithstanding, I think they offer the best current solution for a vast majority of people.
Why are people so obsessed with pushing Linux onto mainstream desktops, anyway? It seems to me that doing so would require eliminating a lot of what the geek community values in it in the first place.
It's not a question of cognitive ability, and I'm quite capable of using Linux, thank you. It's actually my preferred OS for servers. But if you think it belongs on everyone's desktop (keeping in mind that people, as a whole, really suck with technology), you're clearly out of touch with reality.
Fuckface.
Oh, I'm well aware of that particular debate. Both sides do have good points, but I'm not sure that I think Torvalds's point is as strong as Tannenbaum's -- although to be fair, Tannenbaum can be a bit of an arse throughout.
It's an interesting debate, in any case. I'm a big fan of Microkernels myself, but it is certainly a debatable subject.
> What about when I stick in another hard drive?
/dev/hdxx values, then you might have an unbootable system until you boot from a rescue CD and fix up those two files.
If you add another drive and you're using ext2/3 filesystem labels in your grub.conf and fstab files, nothing bad will happen. If you're using
Apples are more common than the mini laptops (usually only available in Japan) that the Transmeta systems were installed in. Now if they would have made them so they would be plug compatible with a PIII, then they would have had more of a following.
For PPC users, this is great. Around the time that Linus switched hardware, all of a sudden I was able to build the vanilla sources on PPC. Before that, I always had to use someone's patchset. I'm not sure if the one thing is directly related to the other, but it makes a lot of sense to me.
Now my only problem is not being able to run Flash. Of course, with all the Flash ads out there, I'm probably better off...
"And yes, he is running Linux on it ;)"
I was worried Linus had lost faith in his own creation, until I read the above line. Couldn't imagine him actually switching to MacOS.
Vote for Pedro
Sorry, I was referring to the ignoramuses. I forgot about the snobs at the other end of the spectrum.
Stick Men
Thanks, I'll check it out.
I did not become a vegetarian for my health, I did it for the health of the chickens. --Isaac Bashevis Singer
I'm not talking about KDE vs. Gnome. The trouble is, at least the last time I had a desktop Linux install running, neither of those environments was terribly internally consistent. Or stable, for that matter. (Granted, it has been a while.) I've also found the memory and CPU requirements for desktop Linux to be equivalent to (or higher than) what Windows wants. And since I'm much more of a pragmatist than Richard Stallman, I guess that just leads me to ask, what's the point?
BTW, thank you for being the only responder thus far to not call me some manner of fucking moron. It definitely bolsters your case. :)
you that have no fucking clue what 99% of the world (some of us geeks included) wants in a desktop
I agree, Linux is a hobbyist OS. It was that way from the beginning. I like it this way. Being able to look at the source when a bit of documentation is lacking makes for a nice development environment.
Personally, I could care less if it becomes mainstream. I also don't care what 99% of the population want in an OS, I care about what I want in an OS. It meets my needs now (as has for quite a few years). The 600,000 people wanting to make their own window manager demonstrates new ideas. It also demonstrates that having only one way of doing things will not make everyone happy. It shows that you don't have to accept a compromise (as do Mac and Windows users). You don't have to be a conformist. You can have it YOUR WAY, not Steve's way, not Bill's way, or some marketing droids way.
If you say its not ready for the desktop, clarify, its not ready for YOUR desktop, or even insert percentage here number of peoples desktops. I personally don't care about your desktop or anyone else's. I care about mine. I also don't care how many people use the same OS, window manager, CPU, mouse, keyboard, etc as I do. If I write an application for me, I'll share it with those who are interested. If no one is interested, I don't really care (I wrote the app for myself).
Most Linux and Linux application developers don't care about your needs. They write code to meet their own needs. They just happen to be nice enough to want to share it. They were writing code before the platform became popular. They'll still be writing it if the popularity wanes. The only people who get all wrapped up in this nonsense have somehow got their ego tied up in it. Most of these people are not developers, they're just looking for attention.
If you like conformity, top 40 music, and dressing and being like everybody else, then maybe Windows is the way to go. If you want to be an "artsy" non-conformist conformist, you'll choose a Mac. If you don't give a f*** and just want it the way you want it, then you'll use an OS that empowers you. Linux is just one of many that fits this last category.
I hate these stupid OS arguments. Everybody says mine is better than yours in public. Everybody curses their OS, Everybody. They all suck in their own special way. As for desktop environments, how did they become the defining factor in an OS? This boggles the mind. Use a Mac because its lickable. ??? Use Windows because its got a polished UI.
How about, I use OS? because it does what I want, and you can do whatever you want.
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
You just negated your entire post with that single sentence.
Sounds like gaming is all that matters...and if that is so, then I can understand running windows. However, for people in Math, Physics, Chemistry, Econ, or any other discipline requiring advanced computational software, I'd recommend Linux. For gamers, its a whole different ballgame, for sure.
Try Mandrake for a simple user hardware setup/modification "with no command line". It autoprobes better than any other Linux I've tried. I'm not sure what you mean by a "universal software installer", but windows isn't as good as debian's package management, or apt-get. If debian had mandrakes autoprobing, we'd be there. Seriously.
Unfortunately the "them" you are referring to is 90% or more of the computer using public. I have spent years working around people with bachelor's and master's degrees. These people refer to Word as "Microsoft". As in: I wrote the file in "Microsoft". They refer to MSIE as "The internet", as in: "Does this machine have the internet?" If these people mastered life as well as they master computers, they wouldn't be able to tie their shoes.
Linux will be ready as a desktop for the masses in my opinion when the average (L)user can install and remove applications more easily, when it has a ID10T ready help system that doesn't scare the hell out of them (no big words, no jargon), when it has a desktop that offers a fairly complete and polished control panel system like Windows 95/XP/OS9/OSX, when the average A+ moron can install and configure a piece of hardware graphically with drivers and all without a recompile (for when the (L)user takes it to CompUSA) when the user interface has better continuity (I still have problems occasionally with cutting and pasting between apps), etc.
I really dig Linux, especially Slackware, but I'm not putting my mom on it because she lives too far away for me to support it (2300 miles). And even though she is a SASI administrator (annoying database app created for educational use), I'm pretty sure that it'd be a rough haul for her without direct help/me administering the machine. My father, who is mostly a non-user (if you move the icons around, he gets confused) would be completely lost.
Hell, at one school I worked at for a bit, I did some configuring of an OSX box from the command line and the other Network Techs got all freaked out. They were flabbergasted when I setup automated backups of the grade books to the district office using rsync (if you use THAT, who will support THAT if you are not here). Since the Network Techs at my last job couldn't figure out how to do anything other than launch what was listed in the KDE menu, and re-image the machines using the CDs the outside contractor gave them, I have a rather low opinion of Linux's readiness for the masses
...You just gotta choose the right distribution....
/. but has plenty of money for hardware and software. Is there *any* Linux distribution ( Xandros?) that will meet ALL of the above requirements? I know Macs and Windows will do all this, but Windows susceptibility to malware will cause the user grief sooner, rather than later. That really leaves only the Mac OSX as a viable alternative as far as I know. Little, if any malware is out in the wilds of the Internet that will spontaneously infect a Mac.
So which is the RIGHT distribution? Someone who wants to word process, get/send e-mail, surf the web, plug in a digital still and/or video camera and edit pictures/video and burn the results onto disk to mail to their friends? Also being able to rip their CD music collection and copy it onto an iPod and legally download music for it is needed. What computer, out of the box, can a person buy that will do all that? The user knows less about computers than any reader here on
All theory is gray
Games and watching DVDs. Really thats it. Ain't nothing else.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
Similarly, if I'm having an issue with my monitor in Linux, the solution is likely as simple as editing the '/etc/X11/XF86Config-4' file. With Windows, I'd likely have to download new drivers from the manufacturer
:-)
I disagree with your opinion.
I'd definitely rather try to solve things through the Windows interface than trying to solve whatever is on the XF86Config-4 file (and how should I know that it's the Config-4 file? XF86 I can guess stands for XFree).
And you DON'T need to download new drivers, maybe in Windows 98, but I've found the Windows XP default driver works for even the most esoteric pieces of hardware I had lying around (who would have thought that WinXP can run with a 128 Kb ISA video card
Of course, that is a problem of training, but I have Suse 8.2 (the professional package with all 5 CD's and 2 DVD's, manuals and all) with KDE and I can't figure out some stuff even with the manual. Besides, having been raised by Windows, I keep trying to find those Wizards or GUIs for all those Config files, and I have the Yast configuration console (quite good but not up to par with Windows) and the KDE console, and whatnot, and they are NOT intuitive to use IMO.
I did get Apache to run, but I'm happy to know that someone is developing a GUI for Samba which has stumped me.
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
First off what a title to this story that seems to elude to Linus giving up on Linux. This is a title I expect on the National inquirer or the Sun. First off Macintosh hardware is exceptional. Right down to the openboot prom. Linux runs very well on Macs. I wish I could afford one I would put linux on one. And if like Linus I got one for free. I would use it. OSX did do some good changes like a some Unix, a command line, and the ability to go into console mode, The best change they did was get rid of OS9. Which Apple later admitted sucked. But it did not seem like enough change. I feel the reason they did not do more was because they are trying to maintain tight control of their product. And with that corporate control comes less consumer control. "I generally despise Apple users. It's like they are asking if you want to be Saved by Jesus when they find out you are a sinful PC user." -B It's like some kind of techno cult.
I went in exactly the other direction...after years using Windows variants, all the way to XP, I just got simply sick of the "Microsoft Way"of doing things. Granted I'm quite a technical user, and so didn't find the switch to Gentoo's flavour of Linux difficult. I now do absolutely everything I did in Windows on Linux with no problems - therefore to me it's indeed "ready for the desktop".
Web browsing, email, website design, scientific coding, CD/DVD ripping & burning, game playing (my RtCW & E.T. clan), media serving to TV/stereo - all for free (well, not RtCW)!
I've saved a mint with this switch, and thats all the reason I need.
Amen brother. I've used Linux since slackware came on 14 floppies. My co-workers mock me now because I spend more time emerging (read: compiling) than I do using. They ask me why, and I reply that I am hopeful that eventually the programs will reach the level of the windowsXP counterparts. I'll use Linux for servers without hesitation, but as for switching over for my desktop -- I'm not quite that masochistic yet. At least there is dual-booting (and VMWARE!)
I wonder how exactly one says ":)". Anyone?
He has also said that Mach, which is the microkernel OSX is based on, is a "piece of shit". Read "Just for Fun", his autobiography, for full details.
... but to his credit, I haven't heard him mouthing off about microkernels lately, he just says that "monolithic" kernels are underrated, microkernels are overrated, and for the most part, he's right.
This does not make him an expert on Microkernels. Mach's performance on x86 has always stunk, and its design is pretty lame compared to modern microkernels like L4. I bet Linus doesn't know a thing about L4 or QNX
What he said in the past was pretty defamatory, sure (he basically accused microkernel researchers of engaging in academic fraud to get research money) but it's water long under the bridge. He just doesn't see any need to redesign Linux under any new architectural principle, given that the layers of emulation that would be needed for compatibility would stovepipe the whole mess into the same function it always served, only even harder to maintain. New designs are for new kernels. So let's just let this whole microkernel "debate" rest if Linus isn't even participating in it now.
I am no longer wasting my time with slashdot
"bullcrap" doesn't mean lack of something.
I am using Linux since 1993 and feal rather alienated by the so-called Linux Desktops: Gnome and KDE.
Using Windows as a model for the "Linux Desktop"
is an extremly bad choice.
What people really want is an alternative to Windows
-- not another windows clone.
receive a satisfactory experience on windows, linux, macos, or a number of other operating systems
Well, if all you want is a "satisfactory experience"....
Pretty much explains why IE, Windows and Office have the userbase they do. Why be "good" or "great" when people will buy "satisfactory"?
Then ripped out all the leather, wood trimmings, chrome plated parts, etc. and replaced it all with treadplate stainless steel. Seats would be covered with sandpaper, and there would be no steering wheel. Real men don't need steering wheels anyway, they can drive from the console.
My grandmother (87) is a happy XFCE/Firefox user. Currently she is bugging me to tell her about that "email thingy".
Nobody tells me, that Free Software is not up to the task.
I don't know how many times I see someone who's obviously wrong on /. get called out for it and then claim "lack of sleep/caffeine/whatever" as their excuse. Just be a fucking man and admit you were wrong! This is why so many of you nerds piss me off...
/flamebait
Most people won't have access to you personally to set up with linux. Do you want to come over to my house and get me up and running in linux? Also, I'll be calling you frequently for tech support.
Sure, for $50/hour you can call me for all the tech support you want.
I don't listen to people whine about their Windows spyware problems for free, either.
The mods who gave the parent 4, Insightful know nothing about the kernel development process.
For one thing, the lack of support for binary-only modules is not an "oversight". It has been done deliberately, for somewhat political reasons, and is a touchy subject with many kernel developers.
Before giving (or modding up) grandiloquent advice on what the kernel and Linus "need", one should have at least some understanding of how the kernel is developed and what is its current state.
Much as I often think of Linus as an arrogant blowhard, I have to imagine he is pointing out pieces of the architecture he personally dislikes, the ones that gave him headaches ... but that he wouldn't bother pointing them out if they weren't a disappointment, i.e. that he otherwise likes it. It's a stretch sure ... but I imagine he has a litany of nasty things to say about x86 architecture, given his extensive experience with it.
I am no longer wasting my time with slashdot
+ universal software installer
I use synaptic... I install any piece of software I wish with about 3 mouse clicks. No CD insertion, no msi installers (what do you mean I need a newer version of the windows installer), no serials... software installation hasn't been a problem for years. It's all the weenies that had a bad experience with linux 5 years ago because they had to fight through compiling their own software that propogate this myth. You want really damn easy, check out Linspiers software installation mechanism.
+ hardware setup/modification with no command line
C'mon now... assuming it's supported hardware installation is often automatic. Usually you don't even need to download or install drivers. Granted, there is some specialized and modern (by modern I mean crap that the manufacturer keeps in a black box and hasn't been reverse engineered yet) hardware that takes some CLI finess--finess that is beyond your average PC user-- but most crap out there just works.
My advice is to try one of the modern distros designed to be easy. Mepis was suggested earlier and it is pretty great. And as more manufacturers figure out that this Linux thing is only going to get bigger I can't imagine device support getting anything but better in the future.
LilMikey.com... I'll stop doing it when you sto
> I wonder if IBM donated teh mac to him?
Psst -- I hear IBM makes their own hardware.
I am no longer wasting my time with slashdot
In your terms, I started with no investment in OS X nor KDE/Gnome, and found the investment in OS X expertise much more rewarding. This is still true, I try a new Linux/Gnome install about every six months, and don't make it to a stable network/browser/newsreader/word processor/CD player-burner status before my patience runs out.
(shrug) Call me impatient, call me stupid, call me whatever; but no, it's NOT as easy to get a Linux box set up and running basic applications. For JUST web browsing, you *may* have a point, but you have to learn the package management system to get to that point, and I know I've tripped over library dependencies and font issues just with Mozilla. My definition of a basic usable systme is a bit beyond just web browsing, as described above.
KeS
Occasionally, the browser has trouble resolving a host. Once it has this problem, it can't seem to look up any other hosts either. Pinging the IP address of the host works, but name resolution fails. I know that XP can experience problems with a tainted DNS cache, but flushing the cache does not solve the problem. The only solution to the problem appears to be to switch over to another DNS server (something that XP does not do automatically, it seems.) I'd love to be able to script a solution to this problem, but I don't want to have to put hours into solving a problem with a good, well-defined workaround, even if the workaround is a PITA.
net stop "dns client"
net start "dns client"
Put that in a script, like "kickdns.cmd". When you have problems, run it. Put it in a scheduled task if necessary.
I am no longer wasting my time with slashdot
Many people intentionally use it on the desktop, therefore it is ready for their desktops.
This is one of those laws that most people forget to write down because they think it's so goddamned obvious no one would ever doubt it:
- If it happened, it must be possible -
Linux is used on the desktop, therefore it is ready to be used on the desktop. To argue otherwise is shear idiocy.
My life is an open book ... up to a point.
On my windows machine, I have:
Windows Media Player 10
Microsoft Works (hey it was free)
RealPlayer
Adobe Reader
Yahoo IM
You want to tell me those are consistent? Users really do NOT care about these differences (though they DO like having "ok" and "cancel" be consistently in the same places, not to point any fingers -- AT GNOME -- or anything)
I am no longer wasting my time with slashdot
So sombody give alan cox a free vax or something and hope he starts using it.
Hi Tannenbaum!
That's why he got the Mac dualie.
Otherwise I might prefer Apple's machines to x86 too. But I need my hardware watch points. Once you've been made to endure software watch points, you know you've bought the wrong machine.
your good question -> "How would userspace applications be helped by forking the kernel? I can't think of anything obviously missing from current kernel builds, but please state what is absent, if anything"
my answer -> What is in spadesabsent is "this kernel" inside of some linux operating system sitting on a hard drive, said hard drive being inside a computer that a major vendor pre installed and shipped by the millions to stores all over. THAT'S what's wrong with this model of linux development and getting it out to more people. It's not happening in any big way outside of the less than 1% linux enthusiast realms, and this is 2005 like I said, not 1995. Whether or not you can see this as a problem or not is just a matter of taste, but frankly, I'm sorta tired of NOT getting to see "linux" inside the computers being offered on the store shelves, having to see all these peripherals that say "XP READY!" on them, and etc. For every install of linux, there's a thousand new MS offerings getting shipped and sold. I think it's time to address this, because in the long run, having a lot more people across the board use "linux" it will get a lot better faster. I'm just saying it's way past time to take it mainstream, and that won't happen with anarchy distro fork cult linux. MS got adopted because it came pre installed mostly, that's it, that and some apps. Linux is there, has the apps, but it's not really showing up preinstalled in machines yet outside of a few little baby token efforts. And I blame it squarely on fanboi distro cultism,and fanboi package management cultism, and so on, the fragmentation of "the community", and the complete lack of caring from the head honchos of the "movement".
Thanks! I'll set up the script tonight. I'll ask my wife to try it next time the error pops up.
I did not become a vegetarian for my health, I did it for the health of the chickens. --Isaac Bashevis Singer
I'd bet 90 percent of complaints about linux stem from installation issues. I honestly don't think the issue is the usablility of the desktop- it's compatibility issues that appear during installation. Anyone can get used to the desktop. If Linux isn't preinstalled, though... I had an experience with an older Gateway laptop. I literally tried 6 different distros, trying to find ONE that recognized my display. No luck. I browsed the forums, found some advice that ended up not working, and had to stick with windows on my laptop. I didn't even SEE the GUI on that machine.
My good looks paid for that pool, and my talent filled it with water.
...So, you have a choice....
/. crowd, but will never become used widely by common ordinary non-geek users.
Indeed choice, choice, choice, etc. is wonderful, but that implies that a potential user has enough knowledge about how the various choices are related to what the main uses of the computer will be put. For server use by an expert, LINUX is a wonderful choice, far better than any other system. For most novice or casual users, LINUX is the worst possible choice because it is 1) fragmented by incompatible versions and interfaces, 2) does not support many hardware devices, especially multi-media, 3) requires a high level of computer knowledge, 4) not much "click or drag" easy to install software for free or for money. Until LINUX overcomes the above limitations, it will remain a great OS for the
All theory is gray
Why was this moderated down? This is by far the most insightful post I've read all day.
I am not taking any side here.
I just hate dumb claims like "They suck..."
Both have tradeoff's
http://saveie6.com/
I use Linux maybe 80% of the time, but the reason I can't use it 100% of the time. Thus, while it's ready for some use (and some of the ignorant posts here would have you believe that means it's "ready") it's definitely not a full fledged solution. Problems that I've encountered (and still encounter) 1) CD/DVD burning (I don't think I've ever successfully gotten a CD to burn under Linux, why should I be root to do this?) 2) Sound 3) Changing graphics parameters. I have fiddled and gotten Sound and Graphics to work as I want them, however it was MUCH more effort than it should have been. Until CD/DVD burning works, then forget it. That's MY test for when Linux is ready for the desktop. I don't care if it's ready for you, I care if it's ready for me.
Really? I find Mac OS X completely unusable on the desktop. It's all gloss and little substance.
Meanwhile, back at the point, I'm typing this from a shiny 12" Powerbook, running Fedora Core 3.
I don't see what the problem with Linux on the desktop. I use it every day (haven't booted to windows for over three months, and only then to play a game). I currently prefer WindowMaker because I simply find it to be convenient and powerful. KDE and GNOME actually annoy me a bit, although I couldn't explain why without consideration (I haven't used either in months). In my opinion, most of the major WM's (GNOME, KDE, WindowMaker, FVWM, AfterStep, etc.) all work great and are much better than Windows. If you put me on a Windows machine, a pre-OSX Mac, or even an OSX machine, I'll quickly become annoyed with certain brain-damaged things; OSX is the lesser of those three evils, but it can still be a pain.
Anyhow, brand me a zealot, but I like Linux on the desktop.
Klingon programs don't timeshare, they battle for supremacy.
If you buy a Mac and ditch OSX in favor of Linux, they have still made a sale of exactly the same value.
... like $600 for Photoshop, say.
Not true. There's a decent chance the Mac user running Mac OS will come back to the Apple store and buy some software
They're not upset about the sale, but they'd rather have people running Mac OS.
Have you ever used windows in a business environment? What kind of crack do you have to smoke to see windows applications, hell, even windows components as having a consistent interface.
Open 5 Windows programs at random. Hit Alt-F in each one. Tell me what happens.
This is just an example but will still probably work unless you choose Winamp or something on purpose.
I guess 'find' will show you file names (but not contents) of files you don't have access to. However, as any-old-user, I do get plenty of 'permission denied' messages when doing a 'find' from '/'. Can you also do something like: 'find . -type f -name somefilename -exec somescript {} \;' using slocate?
I'm not going to STFU about stating the unspoken obvious outloud.
The emperor has no clothes.
They can merrily hack away all they want on the kernel, it's a supremely important job,no one denies that, there just needs to be some rational and constructive leadership in the operating system side of the "Linux to the masses" efforts. It doesn't exist yet, that emperor has no clothes. It won't exist until somehow several of the major vendors are persuaded to actually preinstall and ship "linux" and they get put on the store shelves all over, so that a critical mass of people out there can use it. And for that to happen, they will needs to be offered something that well and truly is a major community COOPERATIVE effort.
1% usage on the desktop is NOT a very good showing in 2005. If the kernel gods refuse to do it, if they don't care, why should anyone else, especially people who have never seen it or use it?? And if you think fragmenting all the efforts in a thousand different barely compatable distro directions is going to get them on machines by the multi multi millions..well, just go right ahead believing that. Well see one year from today what the numbers say, then in two years, then three. Go back three years, what were the numbers? It hasn't changed much at all has it?
Maybe one or two critical aspects of linux development and deployment might need to be readdressed? Just maybe? Can I say that outloud?
There's another thread running, "how do you make money with open source?" Well, I would think one way just might be if there really WAS a mainstream linux out on the machines that the vendors ship, one where the devs on it all got a small fee for development? One that has a unified look and feel and how things worked, one that actually worked out of the box with all the hardware out there, one that was professionally maintained and worked on, not a hodge podge of conflicting overlapping similar in function and too similar in bugs apps? How is this going to happen without some serious consolidation and some rational standards?
No one is demanding the end of linux hacking as a hobby, I'm just *suggesting*, really, all it is is a suggestion from someone on the other side of the aisle, a consumer, that it's time for ya'all to take it to the next level for the rest of the planet outside the hobbiests, to actually notice this linux car got a transmission with more than one potential gear in it. The kernel engine keeps getting horsepower improvements, but the userland OS fragmentation and obvious cultism is keeping it stuck in first gear when it comes to getting it to go down the road into millions of garages. Step away from being a serious IT guy next time you go to the average computer store and look on the shelves and put yourself in the shoes of joe consumer of computers and software, then maybe you can see what I am talking about. There's no rational choice there yet, when you walk into that store it might as well say "welcome to XP land!". You can either see this or not, but it's *true*.
I think this can be addressed by doing just a couple critical things differently, but it would take quite a bit of mass ego swallowing to accomplish. That's my opinion on it anyway.
I'd been using Linux "on the desktop" during the Win9x years
Yeah? So you're saying you didn't like Red Hat 5.0? Wow, that's relevant. I suppose actually using Linux exclusively for the last two years, and my complete happiness with it, is a figment of my imagination? Up yours. *You* aren't ready for Linux.
Anyway, returning to the point, you are not using the word satisfactory correctly. You seem to think I mean "barely acceptable", which generally means that it gets the job done. I mean that I will be satisfied with its performance for my own use... "Giving satisfaction sufficient to meet a demand or requirement; adequate."
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
so true
This just in! Torvalds switches toilet paper brands from a bulk no-name to purex. Slashdot users awed!
-
Why does it matter at all what he runs? This isn't even news worthy.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Wow.
Open up a gnome or KDE desktop and do the same thing.
This is just an example but will probably still work unless you choose a program with no file menu on purpose.
Now try your experiment again. Were the menu items in the same order in those programs? How many had sub menus?
Pick five windows programs at random and figure out how to open their options or preferences dialog.
Install a microsoft program like Money or Project. Look for where in the start menu it put it's icon. Now install Office. Look for where that put it's icon (hint, it's not even in programs).
Open up the control panel and look in the Power settings. Now tell me why some of the settings you expect to find in there are actually in the Screensaver tab of the Display properties window... including the amount of time before the hard drive spins down.
Consistent my ass.
But your argument about putting Windows back is not a wise thing to do. I have many times have big time troubles with windowsinstallations and no troubles with linux installations (Mandrake). And I talk on a lot of different hardware.
Let me give you an example. Windows (Samsung native driver) will not work with my screen (It uses 1280x1024 60Mhz) but it should do 1280x1024 85Mhz. I have tryed every thing. x.org just do the spec for the screen SyncMaster 900SL plus (1280x1024 85Mhz). Think about it.
I would say that Windows will create a lot of exstra work for the average user than Mandrake 10.1.
Many of my friends (average joe computer users) windows users - reinstalls windows on a regular basis - loosing all sorts of information (digital pictures, bank logon information, documents etc.). And some times i have to spend a hole night trying to rescue or reinstall the windows system as they had it. What a waste of time. I newer tryes to "sell" them linux because they will not get it. Not because it is hard to understand/learn but because windows "standads" are so clever made that it is to hard for the average joe user to figure out how to go from openstandard files - png, ogg... (used on linux) and out to the rest of the world and the damned closed formats that all windows programs conforms to .
Linux isn't for the desktop and never will be until the driver issue is settled. When I bought my digital camera, I had patch the kernel in order for it to be recognized. It was a trivial patch, granted, but still I shouldn't have to do that.
/etc/foo restart init.d. That is bullshit.
As far as learning new skills to correct problems under linux, that's a bit of a canard. Linux problems tend to be a lot more arcane than problems under other oses. Patch the kernel. Edit
I am not a fucking sysadmin. I do not enjoy fucking sysadmining. Trying to find out out why I have to manually load a module to get USB to work is not my idea of fun. I don't get my rocks off by screwing around with XF86Configs for a week only to get an image that almost fills the screen, and is almost straight across, and just has a little bit of white and black vertical lines in along the top and left edges. When I shove in my USB mouse, I want it to not only be recognized and made usable, but I want all 7 buttons to work damn it. For 10 years I've run linux as my primary OS, and not once in those 10 years has all my hardware worked.
Even if the driver issue is resolved. You then have to deal with the "community". Buggy software that if you ever say anything bad about it, you'll be shouted down as a heratic that should learn some respect for getting something for free. Releasing subpar software doesn't mean you're infallible, it just means you have a hobby. Then if the sofware ever gets to a usable state, the software will be rewritten "the right way" and the bug cycle starts all over again.
I like unix. I'm comfortable in unix. Unix let's me do my work, but these claims of linux apologists saying "Just wait! It will get better! Linux on the desktop is just around the corner! Linux is just a easy as windows! Linux is easy to install, it's windows that's difficult!" (That install line, is my all time favorite.) are getting old. I've heard them all before. Hell, I even used to spout that tripe. Then I grew up.
How can something be theoretically more stable then something else?
BTW, since most studies show the most used applications on windows are Solataire and Minesweep (by some huge margin), then we could say Linux is ready for the desktop (by software usage).
disclaimer:
I see those programs in my KDE menu but, I haven't actually played the Linux versions.
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
That is *exactly* why in our company we don't hire the mini "Tanenbaum" who are coming out of school with good grade--we suggest them to go back to the matrix--real world is full of mono-kernels and what not, go back to the university where you can sit on your mighty high chair and comment how engineers in the real world have falied to design the right thing.
- People who believe other people have no right to live, got no right to live ...
I'm sure it is possible to ship one binary for 5 versions of Windows, but most websites have separate listings... maybe that's just for organization, I don't know.
Do you work for ATI or Nvidia? (They're the companies most often accused of bad Linux support--Nvidia tries, I think, but ATI just doesn't do anything. I don't know much about this since I'm too cheap to be interested in drivers other than intelfb and i915.)
Tired of free iPod sigs? Subscribe to my blacklist
However, most users really couldn't care less about the politics. I'd rather see more crap on the shelves at Best Buy say "Linux 2.X drivers included" than have to spend a weekend thinking of search phrases for mailing list archives to see how to force something to work.
It's been tried. nVidia released a buggy binary-only driver that crashed. People complained that the kernel was crashing. The kernel developers couldn't do anything about it since it was nVidia's fault. I don't see how that situation benefited users or developers. Hence the origin of the 'tainted' flag.
And that should be the main excitement here.
There was a time right before OS X dropped in our laps that I was running Linux PPC or YDL more often than OS 9 on my well-abused Powerbase (long live PCC). Now OS X is leaps an bounds ahead of OS 9 in all the right places, but having an alternate OS that has a growing user base that's able to do some pretty intersting development just might be a great fire under Apple's butt to keep the performance improvements coming.
I mean, imagine in a year if Linus and PPC Linux junkies end up being able to run a (hypothetical) Linux/PPC Doom3 at 50-100% increased fps over OS X. Bring it on. Push these boxes to their limits.
I'm not leaving this hardware platform any time soon. Anything that's going to put competition at the OS level to push the software development on that very platform can only bring good things(TM).
I don't know what Linus' financial situation is, but I'm gonna guess he ain't living in his mom's basement. I doubt if he's swayed much by free stuff.
It's more than ready. The main issue IMO is also it's main strength - third party commercial support.
The bad: A more limited set of apps to choose from, some pains to get commercial windows apps running via WINE, etc.
The good: rather HQ free software, that does what most people need most of the time, with the ability to run much commercial windows software, making linux the platform capable of running the most software overall. This ties in with a lack of dependence on commercial software - no Norton firewall/spyware/anti-virus required for basic secure operation. To a newbie, these security issues and updates, etc., take the ease right out of windows in my experience [1]...
I never get complaints about the GUI, for example. I also never get complaints about installing most software - GUIs for apt-get are often easier than hunting down software from the WWW, and much safer too (especially for a newbie) (with the less-choice proviso mentioned above, of course).
The complaints are about the inability to run software application x, y and z, which run fine in Windows. This issue affects OSX as well for many applications.
The issue hasn't been the desktop for a long while now (in computer time), but the rest of the world ;) (that last statement is not as fanatical as it seems ;) )
[1] "I didn't know I had to update my spyware software!", "I tried to install spyware, but my system is so slow and unresponsive, I couldn't", "I had no idea that Windows updates were that important", "what do you mean I should disable the Windows firewall and use a commercial firewall software instead?!", "What do you mean that two of my 5 concurrently-running anti-spyware programs are actually spyware programs posing as anti-spyware programs!?!"
dahlek (will you squirm when you are pecked
Wow! Really? I had no idea that Apple was distributing my software with their OS. Get a clue moron.
Er... Um... Yes.... But...
HURD!
evil is as evil does
Who can blame him? I certainly won't make a case against Mac mardware. it's some of hte best out there. The only flaw, historically, has been that it's expensive, but I doubt that's too much of a problem for Linus who has way more cash than you or I. Well . . . or at least I.
To enable firewire networking with my friends' WinXP systems, I clicked on a few checkboxes in OS X. In Linux, I have to recompile the kernel.
Only if you compiled a custom kernel to begin with. All of the major distros ship kernels with pretty much everything built as loadable modules.
On my Debian boxes, I didn't do anything to make firewire work: just plugged in my camera and fired up Kino (after an "apt-get install kino", of course).
GNU/Linux is a networking powerhouse: So WHY did it take until Dec 2004 for someone (Xandros) to come up with a VPN client?
What? There have been multiple VPN packages available for Linux for a long time, based on everything from IPSEC to PPTP to SSL (ssh tunneling or stunnel). I've been using a VPN client on Linux since 2001 to connect to my employer's internal network.
Oh, and if Linus or the FSF would allow themselves to see just how wonderful application installs/moves/removals are under OS X then perhaps we would see support for aliases in Linux.
Symlinks work pretty well. In fact, I've seen some pages recommending that they be used instead of Finder aliases on OS X, because symlinks work just as will in the UI, and Finder aliases don't work with many command-line tools.
Of course, none of this has anything to do with the kernel, and is therefore unlikely to be of interest to Linus.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Who cares how much apple makes on the sale?
The important thing is:
Is an Apple computer, running Linux, a good price/performance ratio?
Pull out the "value adds" of the apple hardware functionality, that may not be available under Linux (sleep, keyboard volume controls, eject key (I'm guessing here), the free apple software (most of which is also available free on a decent Linux distro, so I don't count this as much), the system integration, services (.Mac), and application compatability (for which there may not be a linux-compatible alternative) - and weigh the value of the system alone.
I guess it also depends on how much custom AltiVec code you've got in your Linux distro. (If I were Linus, I'd do a lot of that).
Given the price paid for Apple desktop hardware (IMNSHO, well-worth it, at that "level") - is it still worth it without those other things? I agree with Linus.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
My wife's iBook also didn't have a "Dev Tools" CD. It had "OSX Install Disk 1", "OSX Install Disk 2", "Additional Software & Apple Hardware Test" and "Airport Extreme".
The Dev Tools were on one of those. The "Additional Software" disk, IIRC.
I suspect you *did* have the dev tools, but just didn't find them.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
I'd definitely rather try to solve things through the Windows interface than trying to solve whatever is on the XF86Config-4 file
/etc/fstab file." And it will work! And if it stops working, I'll know how to fix it.
I'm not saying that I prefer a CLI to a GUI. It'd even be nice if I thought I could modify the XF86Config-4 file from a Control Panel-like window. What I'm really saying is that, for me, it is easier to solve Linux problems than Windows problems, even though I have more Windows experience.
When something doesn't work correctly on my Linux box, it may take me some time to discover the cause and develop a solution. In the end, however, I WILL know why it didn't work before and why it does work now. I might say, "Oh, that makes sense. I needed to make sure that the usbdevfs module had been inserted into the kernel before I could mount the drive from the
With Windows, I was never quite sure what was going on. "Hmmm, this thing doesn't seem to be working. I'll try rebooting. Oh look, it's fixed. Oh, there it goes again. Maybe it's a problem with the registry? I'll try reinstalling."
For me, it's not that Linux is easier or more intuitive. Rather, Linux is understandable. Granted, like many Slashdotters, I have a degree in Computer Science, so understandable is a very relative term.
I did not become a vegetarian for my health, I did it for the health of the chickens. --Isaac Bashevis Singer
With kernels getting huge, microkernels could be easier to write and maintain since they have to be bugfree and stable.
Yes, kernels have been getting more complex since a couple of decades ago. Still, the most complex kernels are those from unix systems (solaris, linux, etc) and their uptime is measured in YEARS. I don't see how "macrokernels" are more unreliable
Microkernel supporters have always been biased toward monolithic kernels.
(Mac OS X is NOT a microkernel, BTW, it's just derived from one and hast lost the most important thing from a microkernel - running everything in userspace, mac os x runs many things that a microkernel runs in userspace in kernelspace, just like NT, both are Mach-derived, with Mac os x having influences from bsd and NT from VMS. They're far from being microkernels)
Microkernel supporters have always been biased towards monolithic kernels about "manteinability", "modularity", etc. Modularity does no come from passing messages between processes. It encourages it, but there's no reason which stops you from writing a really bad interface in a microkernel and do it less modular than a monolithich kernel. Modularity comes from the internal structure of the code, and it's perfectly possible to write a modular monolithich kernel. How do you think commercial unixes, BSDs, Linux, have been able to cope with things like SMP, etc, in the past decades. It's exactly what Linus have been saying for years: Modularity is not a feature of a microkernel, is something outside of the scope of microkernels or even kernels, still in most of microkernel sites you'll find comments about "modularity" and the apparent "inhability" of monolithich kernels to deal with complexity
Another rant I have with microkernels is the fact that they can hang the system. Any driver can do it: touching registers of a graphics card, IDE controller etc can hang your machine. It's in fact what happens with X - it implements drivers (the 2D ones) in userspace (like a microkernel) and can hang your machine by touching the wrong register. No software can save you from hanging your machine - as long as a driver has a bug, it can hang your machine, be it in userspace, kernelspace, or not. The amount of people who really thinks that microkernels can avoid that is amazing, despite of being clearly wrong.
Let me know when it is and when there is sufficient general application support that is acceptable for 90%+ of users and I will agree. That will include being able to view web pages that are IE bug dependent, interoperating 100% with other Office users, and being able to play games.
Bullshit, if by "Linux" you refer to GNU/Linunx distros.
I don't know what kind of application support is acceptable, but for all the home users I know, Ubuntu GNU/Linux is enough. It connects you to the Internet, has OpenOffice, even some games, and you can install Mame and play old games. Modern games, well, I only know a couple of people that own 3d accels, anyway, and for the other people skill set, they would be much better off buying a console than a 3d card for the same price.
Viewing IE dependent pages is stupid too. I have just come across two pages that are that way. Wth the rise in Firefox usage, most popular websites and webapps will have to get fixed eventually.
Interoperating 100% with Microsoft Office users is not that much important. Plus it's can't be a measure of the completeness of an application, to be able to reverse engineer an hostile competitor formats.
Over the years, people should understand the importance of having their data stored in reasonably documented formats that can assure retrieval (I have no evidence that MS formats are). Then, office compatibility would be a non issue. But that's a problem with people, not with OpenOffice.
Open Office 1.1.3 does a great job with MsWord and MsExcel documents.
There are still some problems, but nothing that harms too mumch interoperability.
It's superior right now in many respects. For example, database access from oocalc, and formula editing from oowriter are way easier to configure than with MSoffice.
What I mean is that the current situation is not the result of a technical lack of features of the "Linux" desktop.
It's just a lack of incentive for people to use other tools than what MS sells them.
Now, whoever wants to stop using MS, can. I did, a long time ago, and never looked back.
Ack, that's too many choices!
See, that was my natural reaction. I really wouldn't know what choices to make without a lot of research or a helping hand, and that's a big problem.
What is Linux? 70 million lines??
/usr/src/linux/ -name "*.c" -or -name "*.h" -exec cat {} \; | wc -l
$ find
1165052
Did I miss something?
I kid you not. The trick is to simply ignore all
the wild and crazy stuff. Linux does this.
With a normal PowerPC chip, there is no way to
avoid using the hashed page tables. You simply
can't ignore it.
I run BeOS, QNX, FreeBSD and FreeDOS on my PC. So I don't think you can call it a PC anymore ;) I said.
I wonder how he describes his PC usage. Does he say, I use a Windows? Or I own a Linux? No, he says I use a PC or I own a PC. Just like he uses a Mac now.
He reminds me of straight men who deny they have homosexual urges.
It's a crappy platform, even Apple wishes they didn't have to support it forever. I don't know why Slashdotters are obsessed with that platform when there are much superior ones out there, including x86. PowerPC is an awful architecture in this day and age. You people will keep it afloat forever...
"Linux is not ready for the desktop" is a meaningless statement.
/etc/resolv.conf.
/etc/resolv.conf.
What bothers you? Is it something you cannot fix for yourself? Can't talk anyone else into fixing it for you?
Here is an exmple.
I do not like to hunt through page after page of dialog sheets to change the dns my computer uses. For me, it is much more intuitive to edit
Or heck, if I am too drunk to use vi, echo "nameserver 123.45.67.89" >
Some folks have brains that remember which dialog sheet contains the command they want. Others have brains that remember strings of text. I happen to be the latter, you seem to be the former. Does that make me wrong?
If you've been using linux on the desktop for years and years, I'd say it's been ready for the desktop for years and years. Else you were sitting, staring at the monitor, thinking "Crap! I wish this damn thing were ready!", and waiting.
= )
^..^
Don't forget, with that nVidia card, you can turn on hardware accelerated Window transparency (for both Windows 98 and XP). Its under "effects" in the nView configuration panel.
See the nView desktop manager guide
I was blown away when I found out about it.
Shame they bury it so deep.
Actually, that feature is just for Windows XP/2000.
...when you install it on a TI-89 and completely forget about it until you get to your calc exam the next day...
I, for one, welcome our new karma-whore sig writing overlords
I couldn't agree more.
Until the users can pick up a box, insert a CD, click "setup" and have new software, or download from a webstore, click "setup" and have new software.... linux is going to face some trouble making inroads to the home desktop. RPM's & debs & emerges and whatever just aren't as convenient as a CD with everything on it for the average person.
And yes, I realize Linux supports such installs, but in my experience very few vendors do.
The other big issue is, and has for quite some time, been the installers... and that's frustrating, because the installers are very good now. But the point is, you have to run them... and that's frightening for alot of people.
Gotta be able to ship out boxed software, and gotta be able to ship out pre-installed (and well installed) machines.
Maybe if you read the blurb that says it is running Linux you realize that OSX isn't ready for the desktop.
This is why you can't have an intelligent discussion about computers on Slashdot. One second, people are talking about whether or not an OS is "ready for the desktop", and the next second, someone is asking about an installation question. And then he says that if he doesn't like the answer to his question, then it will somehow have a bearing on whether or not an OS is ready for the desktop.
Is there a livecd of xandros?
I'd like to take a look at it but don't have a spare machine to do a real install.
Also I think the real "takeover"-linux gotta be a livecd (like knoppix). Because why should a computer novice be bothered with something like "installing" the OS?
Throw in the disc, boot, get work done.
Personal data and config settings can go to the harddisk, on a special partition or, heck, into a file on an existing partition or better, a removable device like a memory stick.
Updates for software packages available?
Fine, they are loaded to the harddisk (or mem-stick, whatever) via a shiny GUI and the OS cd will detect updated packages there during boot and use them instead of the cd version.
Want to make backups? Fine. Click the "backup"-icon, insert CDR, your data, settings and updated packages go to the backup CD.
Hard disk breaks? No problem. Replace drive, throw in the boot cd and be greeted with a shiny "Oops, this seems to be your first boot"-dialog.
The dialog would ask you to enter your last backup CDR (if available) and restore the state (personal files, config, updated packages, everything!) from the last backup.
I, personally, know a lot of people who would *love* such a "computing made easy"-disc. They are sick of their PCs slowing down to a crawl after some months of "normal usage" (sounds familar?). They don't want to waste energy on figuring out why this or that broke and how to fix it.
A boot-disc is perfect for these people because even if they find a way to break something bad, a simple reboot *will* fix it (unlike wintendo).
Would that make WinXP and OS X "pollacks"?
Before you start flaming about ethnic slurs, I'm quite Polish myself...
I wish I could write clever and witty sigs.
I've been using Linux for longer than most, and I still completely agree with you. This is why I now use OS X on my desktop.
/. readers can actually handle the truth, especially when the truth flies in the face of the reality-distortion-field surrounding the "Linux on the Desktop is Finally Ready" movement.
All I have to say is "duck"... few
bash-3.00$ uname -a
SunOS panda 5.10 Generic sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-2
It seems like an irrelvant question but which distro does Linus use?
I can see thee major options:
1. His own (seems very Linus but maintainace might be a problem if he likes a lot of things but if he was just a terminal all the time guy then this wouldn't be so bad).
2. Fedora Core PPC or Yellowdog
3. Debian PPC
4. Maybe Gentoo?
Does anyone know?
I've STFW (and STFUsenetGroups too) but haven't come up with a good search query.
I used to use SUSE 8.2 myself, and I ran into issues that if it's in a config file that YAST plays with, but YAST doesn't offer the config option for, I'm screwed, because YAST would screw things up next time it looks at that file. Perhaps that's because I used the download edition and didn't get a manual that said "click here to tell YAST to go fuck itself." I actually found system configuration getting easier when I switched to Slackware 9.1- sure, no pretty GUI, but all of the config files are wonderfully clear and readable. After that, I haven't found a reason to use any other distro.
I wish I could write clever and witty sigs.
OK, I have to expand on this with a little joke:
One day two Russians were sitting at a park bench.
Dimitri, you are my best friend! If you had two coats, would you not share one with me?
Yah, Yah, I would share.
Dimitri, you are such a good person. If you had two houses, would you not share one with me?
Yah, Yah, I would share.
Dimitri, you are a saint! If you had two chickens, would you not share one with me?
Nyet! I would not!
But Dimitri, I do not understand! Why would you not?
Because I HAVE two chickens!
(I don't know why they are Russian, though - seems to work with pretty much any human...)
while (sig==sig) sig=!sig;
A vendor should be able to compile a binary driver for my hardware and I should be able to load it into whatever version of the kernel I'm using without worrying about the compiler and kernel versions matching the build environment.
Why, can you do that on any other OS?
I sure didn't have much success last time I tried to use a Windows 95 driver in XP...
Agreed. I have a WinXP desktop and a Linux server. I track time between power outages with the Linux box. I track time between software crashes with XP.
I wish I could write clever and witty sigs.
X's implementation uses very fast IPC for the overhead (cost = same as normal windowing calls) for the case of Xservers and clients on the same machine.
/etc is a joke, and much of the work requires non-X apps, making remote administration ni-impossible (a situation worse than even the 1980s Unix face you claim to be Madonna!).
The other major point you bring up is, why-oh-why does OS X's Unix experience have to be the Unix of the 1980s? Haven't we learned anything in 20 years? I think we have, and it's all in Linux. A much richer, enjoyable environment which has better support for efficient work patterns.
It also has the unfortunate side effect (thanks to it being Apple) that I can't configure it effectively at all.
OS X's Unix is old and archaic, and any of the subtle beauty is removed in favour of a single-user, local machine approach to computing. It's BeOS with better POSIX support. I still think it whips the pants off of any Windows family OS, and I'd love to use it on a laptop, but for a desktop I'd always choose Linux.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Did anyone else notice that we actually hit *every single major flamewar* with this one submission? I've see Macs vs PCs, Linux is/isn't ready for the Desktop, Linus is/isn't God, openBSD is/isn't dead (as a component of MacOS), hell, someone even dredged out the ancient AST vs. LT macrokernels vs microkernel flame war for the occasion!
:). Can't disappoint the flamers, can we? ;)
Is this a new record of some sort? Someone should note this!
In that vein: has Linus ever owned up to which EDITOR he uses? Vi vs Emacs is the *one* Holy War I haven't seen yet
The desktop experience on linux is far better than Windows 3.1, for example. It's better than Win95. It's better, for certain values of better, than OS 9.
Windows 3.1 was released in 1992. So 13 years later, Linux is finally "far better" than Windows 3.1. The good news is that Linux improvement is accelerating. Linux only took 5 years to become "better, for certain values of better" than Mac OS 9, which was released in 1999.
cpeterso
What's a clue moron?
If you buy a mac and ditch OSX, are you supposed to demand a rebate from apple?
you missed the point of the post.
"Ready for the desktop" is a phrase that must die.
if it's not "Ready for the desktop" then how can I have been using it on the desktop for 8 years?
Yes those issues are important and are a significant barrier to entry for some (many), the grandparaent was not denying that.
But "ready for the desktop" is such a massive generalisation that it is a completely meaningless phrase.
Advanced users are users too!
I've been using Linux for longer than most, and I still completely agree with you. This is why I now use OS X on my desktop.
My laptop I used to post that, and this, is a mac. MacOSX is still very new to me, so I'm witholding judgement on it. It is pretty niffty once you add things like virtual desktops.
First, both Chrysler and Benz have not been doing that well financially lately.
From reports I have read both have had quality issues.
BUT, the REAL TRUE STORY, which 99% of the Slashdot crowd does not get - and why this thread is so damn stupid - is that most people don't repair their own cars anymore and most people in the world don't write kernels or operating systems.
They see the computer as a TOOL. They use it, and they get on with their lives. It is all about the functionality the tool gives a person.
If you really want to look at what the future holds look at what Google is up to, not Linus Torvald. It will be all about the SERVICES. What does the TOOL DO FOR YOU? And most people won't be using some desktop PC. Cell phones, set-top boxes, PDAs, Tivos, and communications like WiMax , etc. are the future.
For every program out there, we have to make a new "Free" version (gcc, OpenOffice, etc). Why? Not only a waste of resources, but once the Free version is made, OSS developers contribute only to the Free version and never give back to the commercial vendor. See what happened to Visual C++ and Microsoft Office. The open source developers only cared about their version and then wanted everybody else to use their version instead of the commercial release -- so they would be forced to be incompatible.
OSS is doing more harm to regular people because it divides the developers from the common users and introduces many incompatibilities.
You obviously have never used a Mac. Terminal.app is right there for you to run. Wow! I'm running it right now! Bash is not Linux, and Linux didn't invent terminals. The free iTerm is much better than any terminal available for Linux, by the way.
And yes, focus follows clicks in OS X, and it does so in a consistent way. Weird, I thought that Linux nerds were always complaining about the lack of focus follows mouse. (Which you can have in X programs. I can run Fluxbox on one monitor and regular Aqua on another.)
OS X has two major UI advantages over any other GUI: proper window management, where programs own windows instead of windows owning programs. No "main windows," no wondering if you have two windows in one program or two instances of one program, etc. And second, file management. Applications consisting of only one file. To "install," copy that file to \Applications. To "uninstall," delete that file.
There is no reason for a program to spew detritus (other than plain text\XML config files that are user-specific) hither and yon all over your harddrive. Only OS X behaves properly in this regard. Linux is the worst.
I said firewire networking with friends' computers, not camcorders. I think you'll find a lot of distros don't have IP-over-Firewire pre-compiled.
Enabling a feature shouldn't be this difficult.
Need a driver for Wifi equipment? Just install it! (ooops, wait, thats on Windows and OS X... on linux I have to find something like ndiswrapper, prism54usb or even more obscure and COMPILE it with my kernel).
What do symlinks offer towards to goal of drag-and-drop application installs/moves/removal? Aliases track their targets, symlinks do not.
This guy dsicovered that Linus uses PowerPC and Pine a month ago.
my sstream of consciousness
wow, how strange, it makes sense in both cases. Why can't companies just supply the damn hardware? When is a cell phone company going to supply a white box cell phone?
How we know is more important than what we know.
With all that time invested and the several years more experience I have had with it over Windows and OS X I am going to say again that you are wrong and Linux is NOT ready for the desktop no matter how many times people like you claim it is.
I honestly dont care what you or anyone else thinks about how ready linux is for the desktop.
I think it's ready for my desktop and has been for 2 years. Should longhorn knock the socks off of linux I'll switch to it. It's a tool, if it works use it, if it doesnt work shut up and find something that does. [/flame]
Ummm...no
Interesting observation but there is a growing market out there of Linux geeks who wouldn't buy FCP anyway. Do you really think Apple would prefer to shun those users and send them over to Dell for their Linux box?
How about looking at it this way?
You might buy a "Linux" box from Apple. You then might then be tempted to have a "look" at OS X (hey you've got a copy right there!) You then might like it. Now you're in the market for FCP.
Nope. I know the difference between microkernels and their monolithic counterparts, and I feel that "more modern" is a fair comparison to make, in architectural terms. There are better examples of the microkernel model now, though, obviously.
When I said its "architecture", I was referring to the fact that it's a microkernel system. I was just trying to explain this in a quick and easy way to something.
I'm sure some people would be happier if I posted a 3000-word essay on kernel types in general, but I reckon more people are happier with the simpler idea, in context. The reason I mentioned its "architecture", though, was simply because I didn't know enough about it in practice to say further. But I do feel it's fair to describe a microkernel architecture as "more modern" than a monolithic kernel.
Well ... no mention of anything new - just point releases. Big talking up of Linux compatibility (the L in 5L). Plenty of mention of migrating from Solaris to Linux (e.g. here), nothing about migrating to AIX (they mention upgrades, but not migration). The whole Project Monterey thing, now defunct. To me it all says IBM aren't much interested in AIX.
Thank you for getting it :)
http://xkcd.com/386/
Yup. I know. That whoosh you heard a little while ago....that was the joke passing over your head.
Besides, I don't run any OS other than CP/M. Who needs a directory tree?
http://xkcd.com/386/
What? 2005 is not the year of Linux on the desktop?
/etc goodness and got myself a Mac. Never looked back. The problem with a lot of the zealots is that if you mention a problem the standard response is "well, why dont YOU fix it?" Just because something is free doesnt meant that it is faultless! Strangely enough most of the OS X converts I know are experienced sysadmins / developers with years of experience on *nix.
Totally agree, after years of trying I finally got sick of having to frig around with all the
I have obviously never used a Mac? Bullshit, buddy. You have obviously never heard the adage about assuming. Also, you don't get jokes. Good luck with the rest of your humorless, cold, antiseptic life, you grey, joyless chunk of bitterness. Since you claim programs have no reason to 'spew detritus', perhaps you can give your justification for doing same...
Also, please disregard this message. I'm too drunk to be posting right now, but for some reason I'm still able to. I'm going to have a few more drinks, which should solve that problem.
http://xkcd.com/386/
Strangely enough most of the OS X converts I know are experienced sysadmins / developers with years of experience on *nix.
Indeed. When I first switched started using a Mac casually, it was still largely "the artists platform". These days, I know more programmers and systems administrators sporting PowerBooks than I do graphic designers.
bash-3.00$ uname -a
SunOS panda 5.10 Generic sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-2
Out of curiosity, wherebouts in Aus are you from? (Im assuming youre from Aus from your username)
:)
A warm sunny greetings from the nations capital
Psst -- I hear IBM makes their own hardware.
Right, but did IBM have a fast desktop-ish machine available 1 1/2 years ago when Linus acquired his G5? This happened right after Linus moved to OSDL from Transmeta, and it's always seemed suggestive to me.
"That's all I have to say about that" --Forrest Gump
It doesn't or the one I had didn't. I did get it running under Gnome (I think I can't remember) but it required alot of x86config editing and trial and error.
All that means is that he's full of shit, and doesn't have many clues beyond his fanatical ideas.
... and then they built the supercollider.
on Wednesday March 09, @12:49PM (#11890548)
Actually, it's "90% of Wikipedia articles are crap"... shit, I mean "crud."
Haha, excellent! Mind if I borrow that sometime?
I like tossing it around and bathing in it too.
Perhaps you should have been more clear in your post.
Now perhaps I can get better Linux support on my Mac! I'll bet Linus moves to Ubuntu. It works wonders on any hardware I've seen yet.
Who moved my sig?
Ahh, so you ARE one of those ignorant bastards that makes sweeping judgements against groups of people, like Slashdot readers.
Your comment was anything but well-intentioned. C'mon man, it was sarcastic as sarcastic can be.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
...Throw in the disc, boot, get work done...
CDs are generally very slow compared to a HD. Apple had something like this in OS9 days, but the CD took a *long* time to boot. If the boot CD copies itself to the HD and then reboots from it, that should fix the speed problem.
All theory is gray
Just a side note, but that would execute a lot faster if you just piped the list of names through to xargs and let it run cat, rather than run cat once for each file:
That depends on your distribution of Linux and the version of Windows we're talking about.
Installing Mandrake was a pretty much a snap for me -- easier than Windows because I answered practically all of the questions before anything was copied over (so I could walk away from it), I didn't have to reboot to continue the install, and I didn't have to hunt up a license key.
I think one of the RedHat 6.x installers would crap out near the end if I set the time zone a certain way -- my other experiences w/RH seemed reasonable.
I reinstalled my latest distro (Debian Woody) about 4 times. Once I managed to skip installing the bootloader. Once, I tried to use dselect (anybody who tells you to do a minimal install and apt-get *everything* else is right on the money). Then I had a couple rounds of figuring out which kernel modules I needed, and tweaking XFree correctly -- pulling out monitor specs and trying to figure out what a framebuffer was and why my X didn't work (the other distros were more or less automagic).
I know ranting about the Woody installer is about as noble as kicking a special needs kid in the nuts, but I hope those guys can get Sarge out the door soon.
Amen! Desktop Linux is a disasterous mishmash of 4,000 people's different ideas of what makes a good GUI. Its going to get worse. That stuff on 3D windowing systems it just going to slow everything down more with stupid effects like writing snakes and shaking links. Ohh, lets not forget windows that are put on sides of a rotating cube. For some reason, everyone uses that for a demo effect.
Hmm, I didn't know that was up for debate, but you're right, I suppose, there may be some /.ers who are known for their subtlety. ...
You aren't one of them, though.
I have no doubt it will get there-and in some form. Those are the two critical questions and what the timeline of my mini combo rant and beg session is about. When and in what form, and tangentially, who will actually control it and what level of acceptance will actually arise? What's the goal, what is really the target?
The 'community", the people like you and me all all the others who really *care* about it, can present a more unified front to offer the hardware guys and the business guys and this "the masses" guy to work with, or, we will dither and procrastinate and fragment even more, and one morning wake up and these decision and designs and forms will have been made for us-by the big guys, the hardware vendors and the small handful of big companies seriously working on linux now, and, sad to say, by legislative action as well. It's just reality or as the old expression goes "nothing personal, it's just business".
I just see it as a critical crossroads at this time frame. I didn't see it two years ago or even last year,(the quality wasn't there but it is right now) but I see this timeline critical peak happening now. I so much see it it's simply overwhelming.
It's my hobby, I don't software code but I read and analyse all the micro events that add up to the macro overview, and do projections, extrapolations, and I've been pretty good at it over the years with the subjects I have picked. Not perfect but good if I can toot my own horn just a little. It's make it or break it time for all the thousands of dedicated devs and enthusiasts out there, near as I can read the economic and legal and political tea leaves.
Perhaps you should try using the latest Xcode. It's been able to handle subproject dependencies since 1.1. It's currently on version 1.5.
Xcode is an OK development platform, and version 2.0, coming out with Tiger, will be much better judging from what I've used in the prelease builds of Tiger.
I've used truly BAD development IDEs. Xemacs is hardly an IDE compared to Xcode, but many claim it is. And then there's Visual C++, which has a Microsoft Word-like toolbar with icons that all seem to look alike and a project settings window that looks like it was designed by a blind person.
IMHO, all IDEs suck. Because an IDE that interferes the tiniest bit with my coding sucks. Every IDE I've ever used has had some bug that eventually drove me to the brink of insanity. Incorrect compiler invocations, lost debugging output, debuggers that crash...they all drive me nuts, they've all happened on all the major platforms, and they've happened with the different IDEs. I stick with BBEdit, gcc and gdb, thank you very much.
Applications are the entire reason we use computers, and if your camera and its editing software only run in MS windows XP, then that is what you use, no matter how good anything else is supposed to be.
Cygwin gives you decent shells and unix tools on MS Windows - Redhat host the downloads these days.you had me at #!
Because it's a joke about communism.
It's not like the PC is protected either. These things don't come with fiber-optic cables. They can easily burn a chunk out of the motherboard if they get hit by lightening.
Stop trying Linux on the desktop, get a Mac and use OS X. I use Linux quite often, but not for general desktops (it didn't work for me either). And I haven't used Windows about two weeks after I bought my Mac.
Pros:
- There are some apps I know from Windows
that I can use in Slackware. Firefox, Thunderbird, Citrix etc.
- There are some bundled KDE apps that are pretty self explanatory: a CD player, mp3 player, instant messenger etc. They're all easy to find and labelled clearly.
- The K menu widget is easy to use if you've used the Windows start menu.
- Fast autodetection and set up my video card and all drives. Nice.
- I can open
.doc, .pdf files sent to me by my colleagues.
- I can cutomise the wallpaper, theme the menus etc. This means a lot to most people.
Cons:- I had to configure my network and soundcard from the command line. The soundcard was easy to to configure though alsaconf, though.
- I'm still not sure how to get access to the network printer... CUPS has offered to portscan the company network, but that makes me look like an attacker.
- There's no one way to copy and paste, which is confusing.
- The different KDE panel widgets have different context menus; some can be removed from the context menu, some cannot.
I think Linux is at the point where it's a viable desktop for a power user willing to invest some time in it, or for a company with an IT department willing to set it up and lock it down for their users. But I definitely don't think it's ready for my parents to use yet. The terminal is the clincher; it's got to be totally GUI configureable to be ready for the home user.Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
I said firewire networking with friends' computers, not camcorders. I think you'll find a lot of distros don't have IP-over-Firewire pre-compiled.
Really? Let me check the ones I happen to have handy:
So, three for three. I suppose it's possible some don't, although I can't think why they wouldn't. It's just another module, and it's only 25KB.
Need a driver for Wifi equipment? Just install it! (ooops, wait, thats on Windows and OS X... on linux I have to find something like ndiswrapper, prism54usb or even more obscure and COMPILE it with my kernel).
Granted, WiFi is a weak spot for Linux. Not because of any kernel defect, though, the kernel is perfectly capable of running a WiFi card, all that's lacking is the drivers -- and those often exist, too. I'm posting this on a Thinkpad with an Intel Pro/Wireless 2100 -- no ndiswrapper and no kernel recompilation required.
It's worth noting, BTW, that there are no drivers for the Intel 2100 for any Macintosh OS. Only Windows and Linux are supported. So it appears that if you *really* want to have drivers for everything, you should use Windows, nothing else.
What do symlinks offer towards to goal of drag-and-drop application installs/moves/removal? Aliases track their targets, symlinks do not.
That I didn't know; that's useful. Actually, though, I just looked it up and Linux *has* aliases, just like Darwin.
Aliases are a feature of the HFS+ file system, which you can use on Linux. They're not very useful on Linux, of course, because they don't work through the standard POSIX file APIs, and not many Linux apps use the extended APIs necessary to resolve aliases as more than symlinks. Actually, there appears to be only one: an app written to be a Linux workalike for the Mac Finder. The only difference is that for Mac OSX the bulk of applications are written to use the Cocoa/Carbon file APIs rather than using the POSIX file APIs.
As for what symlinks offer, there are several Linux distributions that use symlinks heavily to make application installation and removal simple. I don't know of any that implement application movement.
However, I still don't see how *any* of this would matter to Linus. None of it has anything to do with the OS kernel, it's all on top of it.
What modules are compiled in by default is an issue for the distributions. What drivers are available is an issue for the hardware manufacturers (though the distributions could take a hand, as Apple does). What application toolkits do is up to the toolkits. The kernel isn't involved in *any* of that.
So, I reiterate: The only useful thing OS X has to teach Linus about kernel programming is that he should stick to his guns because, compared to Linux, Darwin is a dog. What's sitting on top of Darwin is nicer in some ways*, but the Linux kernel is top-notch.
[* Different strokes for different folks and all that; After fighting with OS X for a couple of weeks I decided that if my wife's iBook were mine, I'd format the drive and put Yellow Dog Linux on it.]
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
This post deserves mod points solely for introducing the description "grey, joyless chunk of bitterness" into the discussion.
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PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
Deja Vu! No wait... This isn't a Steve Jobs uses an IBM Thinkpad thread is it?
That is where the drivers live in linux.
I know how drivers work in linux, but apparently the word "patch" was lost on you. I'm not about even merely recompiling the kernel, but actually opening up vi, editing the source code, and then recompiling. This goes beyond the standard "compile the foo module". I had to edit unusual_devs.h before the USB storage device driver would properly mount. Tell me when the last time you had to do that.
It all depends on how you state the question - a little bit of tact goes a long way.
The ability to take criticism goes longer.
If learning the skills isn't going to get you anywhere or is of no intrest then you stay with what you know or get others to install your new mouse or whatever.
This is the mouse problem: XFree only allows you to define one mouse. Other mice are configured as SendCoreEvents, which means the device merely echos the same events as the primary mouse. If you don't have the primary mouse configured properly, XFree won't interpret the mouse events correctly.
The fun begins when you want to use an external MS Explorer mouse on a laptop. The mouse has a touchpad, which is interpreted as a simple two button ps/2 mouse. This mouse is always there, so you have to configure this as the primary mouse. The external usb mouse must be configured to simply SendCoreEvents. Now when you plug in the explorer mouse, the middle button, scrollwheel, and thumb buttons aren't configured properly. Now theoretically, you could fix this with some xmodmap magic, but oh no! XFree makes it nigh-impossible to configure different mice seperately. xmodmap only allows the user to configure the primary mouse, which in this case means modifing buttons 1, 2, and 3. Buttons 4, 5, 6, and 7, the buttons that aren't configured properly, simply don't exist.
I've got better things to do than fix someone else's software. Like, fixing my own software.
Cygwin gives you decent shells and unix tools on MS Windows - Redhat host the downloads these days.
So what? It's just lipstick on a pig.
I've never come across an installation of windows that required more than simply pressing "finish". Sure once the base install was done, you had to install a bunch of oem drivers, but again it was just clicking "finish".
Debian is my distro of choice because of apt as well. Apt is great, but there's still problems with package configuration in debian. Too many packages install with broken configurations. Take for example hotplug. I'll never upgrade from usbdevfs and pcmcia-cs/cardmgr to hotplug. Why? "hotplug is now installed, but requires manual configuration before being usable." Screw that. usbdefvs and cardmgr works now, and works just fine. I'll upgrade when they pry my working configuration from my cold dead hands.
Cheers,
Ashley.
Anyway, the earlier statement that "Linux isn't for the desktop" appears to be disproved by the fact that there are linux desktop systems. It is not MS Windows, so people trained in MS Windows should not expect to be able to do complex configuration tasks without finding out how to do them.
Then get someone else to do it for you - you either spend the money or take the time. Unfortuntely some things in life are not obvious, sometimes you need to read the docs. Students sometimes expect to pass without going to the lectures, reading the texts, or doing any prac work - and we look at them as taking an unrealistic attitude. You still need to do your homework after you get your degree/diploma/MSCE.Any paticular OS not working with a paticular set of hardware without doing some configuration may be a minor failure, but it does not doom it if there are plenty of successful implementations out there. NT4 doesn't work with USB at all, and takes time to install on new hard drives but that doesn't prevent it still being used in a lot of situations.
What drivers are available is an issue for the hardware manufacturers
I didn't say they weren't available. I know they're 'available' for compiling.
The only difference is that for Mac OSX the bulk of applications are written to use the Cocoa/Carbon file APIs rather than using the POSIX file APIs.
Since when is resticting onesself to POSIX a part of constructing a usable desktop system? Doesn't GNU discuss these issues with Linus.... or do we have two whole layers of OS developers who refuse to think about such basic, ubiquitous use-cases as installing applications and drivers? If they do, I'm sure at least one of two things are true: a) their use-case actors are limited to programmers and sysadmins, b) they don't even know what actors and use-cases are.
Sometimes you need to tell a program like Xfree86 what hardware it is talking too.
.edu email address is some snivelling 18 year old.
No. It should determine that on its own, afterall, the kernel supposably knows what it is.
I don't know what chipset my video card is using, nor do I care. The fact that I should open up my case and read off numbers of some dip inside is ludicrous. Granted, this has gotten better over the years, but it still isn't right.
Besides, Xfree86 is not linux and X.org is a better implementation of X based on Xfree86 so you probably should be using that.
You've highlighted the other problem with the community, the "You run that? You suck. You should throw away a perfectly functioning system, and run this instead!" Screw that. The idea that someone wouldn't like to constant throw away working software is alien to a large segment of the community.
Anyway, the earlier statement that "Linux isn't for the desktop" appears to be disproved by the fact that there are linux desktop systems.
Linux is also running on the ipod. That doesn't mean that it's meant for it. Windows is running complete with a taskbar and a semi-wimp interface of millions of pdas the world over. That doesn't mean that wince is the best approach. Just because someone has done it, it doesn't automatically make it a good idea.
Then get someone else to do it for you - you either spend the money or take the time.
That mindset is the problem. The idea that "There's nothing wrong. You suck. Just read the fucking manual." is the problem. The system should take care of itself. That's the whole idea behind plug-and-play, and now self-optimizing servers. I shouldn't need to know how it works. It should just work. The fact that many systems don't work this way doesn't invalidate the critism at all. It just means that all the available systems suck.
Unfortuntely some things in life are not obvious, sometimes you need to read the docs.
You mean docs that are either 3 versions behind, or better yet, 12 html pages of "FIXME"? We've all come across that level of "documentation".
Students sometimes expect to pass without going to the lectures, reading the texts, or doing any prac work - and we look at them as taking an unrealistic attitude. You still need to do your homework after you get your degree/diploma/MSCE.
I'm 29 years old and in grad school finishing a thesis. Prior to grad school I worked in industry at Motorola GSM. I know how the real world works. Don't assume everyone with a
If only I was a prof.
All this rambling really gets away from the original statement "linux is not ready for the desktop". It's already there, even if you haven't seen it.
The world doesn't work that way - if something isn't know to run on paticular hardware it isn't going to run, and if you are going to set up a system you have to at least make the effort of finding out if you have compatible hardware. Computers are not simple things, someone has to put some effort in somewhere to get a system ready for you - and if you are lucky a well put togther distro that gives you exactly what you want with no effort is out there, but usually only if you have low expectations. The mindset is the problem - then pointless obscenity follows? I don't think you really find the mindset as a problem, the alternative is the mindset of instant gratification with no effort that is found in the most incompetant of management and in welfare recipients that have just given up. I suspect if you didn't want to spend the money or take the time in anything you wouldn't be in grad school.It's simple, if you can't be bothered to do something it isn't important to you anyway. Your views are interesting but I do not agree - I see plenty of evidence to the contrary every day.
Well, Yes. After long years of using linux on my home desktop (and Windows at work, I admit) I recently switched to Mac at home. That was superb. Never before I had an installation run so smooth. Everything I tried worked immediately.
Every linux application I liked was available on the mac and running faster.
--> A mac without OSX is no mac. But: the underlying Darwin allows us to run every app we started to like on linux. Obviously the mac grants the best of both worlds the unix world and the graphical user interface world.
That sounds a little but like a double standard. To me the OS tax is when I cannot buy the hardware without also paying for the OS. If anything, it is a hell of a lot easier to buy a PC with Windows than it is to buy a Mac without OS X and a Palm with PalmOS.
We both seem to agree that third party support is weaker than it should/could be. Certainly this is due to the whole catch-22 deal - "we'd make nicer installers if more people used Linux on the desktop" - "more people might use Linux on the desktop, if the installers were nicer".
Summary: if the software is free and within the package system, installation is easier, safer and more lovely than in a Windows environment. If not, it may be really easy, or, it may require a newbie pasting commands into the command line (open source, cross-distro, installation software is required here!)
dahlek (will you squirm when you are pecked
Lest anyone forget, Linux was originally written for the x86. To me that in itself means that if Linus is now moving away from x86, it's somewhat significant.
Linus makes it sound here as though his primary machine being a Mac is something of a coincidence, and it may be. But we could also possibly take it as a subtle (or not so subtle) hint that he believes that the x86 has had its time in the sun and is now in decline.
Anyway, even if you choose not to take this interpretation yourself, it's a reasonably safe bet that Intel themselves possibly will. Given the degree of reverence that a lot of people have for him, (I have a fairly high degree of respect for the man, naturally...but I don't worship him...partly because he's requested that people don't, and partly because as gifted as he might be, he quite simply *isn't* God) Linus is in a position to exert quite a lot of influence over said people's hardware choices if his become known. You can be sure that at least some Mac purchases are going to be made as a direct result of this article. Linus himself may very well not have meant for revealing his choice of primary hardware platform to be a product endorsement, but that is exactly what it will become. I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that it was actually Apple themselves who gave him his Mac...and if they did, from a marketing point of view it was a stroke of sheer genius.
Anyway, a complaint against Microsoft for that makes sense to me, and that's what was (to my knowledge) origin of the term "Microsoft tax", in that they were taxing OEMs for doing business rather than charging them for licenses.
A complaint against Palm for not selling PDAs without PalmOS? Oh, shoot, it's also hard to buy a cell phone without address-book software already installed! And try finding a television without a power cord or remote. I wanted to build my own, cooler, remote control, but they're going to charge me for the included remote anyhow!
Yeah, I think some of this is just a matter of the market for products that don't function out-of-the-box is much smaller that for products that function out-of-the-box, and most large vendors don't want to spend much time and effort going after that small market.
My main desktop is a Linux/XP dual-boot box, but I recently bought an iBook, and it kicks butt! To get Linux working, I had to re-partition my HD (eliminates 90+% of people right there), and found that no single distro supports ALL of my stuff OOTB (out of the box). Also, Windows didn't recognize my printer! However, everything I've plugged into my Mac worked OOTB. No fiddling of any kind!
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
I assume that since you've dropped the IP over firewire argument, you're conceding that one? Please, argue honestly and admit the points you lose. It makes your remaining arguments stronger, and the debate more friendly.
Pardon me for thinking that not being able to just download and use drivers is a kernel issue.
I would be happy to, but I think you're saying that sarcastically. Pardon me (sincerely), if I'm misreading your intention.
I didn't say they weren't available. I know they're 'available' for compiling.
Well, lots of them are in the kernel tree, so you don't have to compile those. And, as I said, contrast this with OS X, where many drivers for non-Apple hardware are simply not available at all (granted, drivers are not available at all for some Linux hardware as well). Well, I suppose you could try porting the Linux drivers to Darwin, or at least studying them to learn how to write a Darwin driver for that hardware.
For most of the drivers that are not in the kernel tree, I agree it's somewhat annoying, but it's a tradeoff: Making it possible to "just install" a driver requires defining guaranteed-stable kernel APIs for drivers to use, and that would both require the kernel developers to carry backward-compatibility garbage and would also make "binary-only" drivers much more common, an outcome that would defeat in large part the point of Free Software.
You and the kernel developers disagree on the relative importance of access to the code vs ability to use any random piece of hardware. That's fine, you're welcome to use something that meets your expectations. Using OS X is not going to convince Linus (which is what we're discussing here, remember?) that easier driver installs are worth losing Freedom.
Since when is resticting onesself to POSIX a part of constructing a usable desktop system?
It's *very* important, if portability is important to you. And there is a lot of value in portability. You can run GNOME and KDE apps on a bewildering variety of platforms, including Windows and Mac OS X.
That said, there's really no problem with using a library that provides those alias-resolving APIs, and falling back on POSIX behavior if they don't work (which is what good OS X developers have to do, since you can also run OS X on the UFS file system, and it *doesn't* support aliases). It's just that the value of aliases is not apparent to the desktop developers. It's not apparent to me, either, frankly. They're marginally more useful than symlinks, but not hugely so. I can't imagine why you'd want to bother moving applications around.
Doesn't GNU discuss these issues with Linus.... or do we have two whole layers of OS developers who refuse to think about such basic, ubiquitous use-cases as installing applications and drivers?
*Many* more than two layers. Of course, this isn't unique to Linux; it's normal to all OS development. Where Linux is unique is in the degree of autonomy the groups have. You appear to have just now discovered that the Linux OS is not managed by any central body. Congratulations! :-)
The lack of central control impacts many areas of Linux, some for better, some for worse. The phenomenal rate of progress in Linux development -- kernel and everything else -- is entirely attributed to the fact that this very loose coupling allows a much broader developer base than could be possible with more tightly-managed processes.
You can't get the advantages of a very loosely-coupled, distributed, development process without accepting the disadvantages as well. Those disadvantages may mean that *you* are not interested in using the OS. That's fine. But Linus isn't going to agree, and no amount of exposure to OS X is likely to change his opinions. Well, it doesn't change my opinions, anyway, and his seem to be more deeply held than mine.
I'm sure at least one of two things are true: a) their use-case actors are limited to prog
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
The games I'll give you but watching DVDs is easy on most recent distros. Mplayer works perfectly.
>The system should take care of itself.
>The world doesn't work that way.
Why not? I plug in my digital camera in MacOS, Win2k, or even Fedora and things work fine. Same with my USB thumb drive. Why shouldn't everything work this way? Software design should be sophisticated enough by now that you should be able to plug in a device and have it function properly without extensive hacking. Platform should be irrelevant.
This l33t sysadmin necessity, this driver/compatibility thing really is what's turning Linux into a headache for those who want it on their desktops. Creating software is about satisfying the needs of whoever is going to use it, and if the "community" wants to preach so loudly about Linux on the desktop they had better be listening to these problems.
My personal lack of Linux headaches stems mostly from my not using unusual hardware. Plain desktop system with plain PS/2 peripherals and a plain VGA display and a USB printer. I've learned the hard way that fancier hardware--heck, even a mouse with more than "3" buttons--is a no-no on Linux unless high maintenance is your goal.
It is if most of your software is warez.
No, Aus isn't an Australia reference.
That said, am in Toronto.
bash-3.00$ uname -a
SunOS panda 5.10 Generic sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-2
Not that I am missing your perspective nor disagree on its merit. Perhaps I should have used motorcycles instead of stick shifts?
You're not disagreeing with the perspective - you're disagreeing with the definition of the term "desktop". Under your definition, desktop refers to all users, including technically savvy ones. This desktop is like "the road" - it's universal. There can be motorcycles, stick shifts, semis, etc.
Grandparent's definition of desktop is the desktop of "non-technically savvy users". He's not talking about "the road", he's talking about "class D drivers" - and neither motorcycles nor semis are "ready" for class D drivers.
-T
It doesn't - it's video hardware. XFree86 is not part of the kernel. With MS windows you need to install the correct driver too
Well, actually the correct driver is selected and installed automatically. You rarely, if ever, are presented a two pane window with manufacturers on the left, and chipsets on the right.
You can use the kernel to query the bus to return the proper card id string. Which user space apps can do. You then use that information to select the proper driver automatically. It's not all that hard. Maintaining the database may be hard, but it's doable, as seen by the billion websites that list XF86Config files for various hardware configurations.
expecting it all to "just work" is no good, you at least have to pay some moorlock to set things up for you or crack open a book/pc case/web page whatever.
There's a better way, yet too many appologists see the trials and tribulations of linux as as some sort of badge of honor, or at least a right of passage. The way things are, aren't how they are supposed to be. There are better ways out there today, but many in the commmunity are blinded by what they see as an initiation ritual. You see it all the time with comments like "Well if you don't like it, go back to windows!" or the semi-witty, "Linux is user friendly. It's just picky about its friends."
Take for instance how isapnp worked. You had to query the bus to determine the card id. Then you had to go hundreds of textfiles to find the matching configuration file for that card id. Then you had to copy that file to another master configuration file. You then repeated that for every isapnp card you had.
That's stupid. A perl script can do that job. A perl should do that job. Instead of just working, my time is wasted, doing something that could just as easiliy been done by the machine.
The world doesn't work that way - if something isn't know to run on paticular hardware it isn't going to run, and if you are going to set up a system you have to at least make the effort of finding out if you have compatible hardware.
There's something wrong when you have to spend a week researching what chipset your card uses, only to find out that it comes in two different chipsets, one that's supported and one that's not. So you in the end you have to pick a card off the shelf, install it before determining if it's compatable or not. That's a problem. Simply saying, "that's the way is" doesn't make it right. The world won't change unless the community doens't stop lying to itself and realize the problem staring it in the face.
You don't have hardware problems under windows like you do under linux because drivers are readily available for windows. Windows also has good hardware detection and autoconfiguration.
I don't think you really find the mindset as a problem, the alternative is the mindset of instant gratification with no effort
No the alternative is allowing the user to actually spend his time working on his own tasks as quickly as possible rather than babysitting the machine. Using the computer isn't some hobby. It's a tool to be used, and the best tools are invisible. Unfortunately, we're a long way from there.
I suspect if you didn't want to spend the money or take the time in anything you wouldn't be in grad school.
The reason why I'm in grad school is because computers suck. I want them to suck less.
I see the earlier posts as "I want it to do whatever I want no matter what it is without knowing anything about it or getting someone else with knowledge to set it up for me". Computers have got a very long way to go before that - if it's even possible. You still need to change the oil in a car, but that isn't a problem - you need skills or knowledge to operate stuff.
As for the sig - insight does not come from ignorance, you have to learn something on a suject before you get insights.
From where? Magic? Unless you actually have the driver on your windows CD you need to get it from somewhere - a download or an install CD - recently released hardware is unlikely to have drivers there. It's exactly the same with linux, if the driver isn't with the kernel you have you need to go get it - exactly like the situation where the hardware drivers don't come on your windows CD.
/lib/modules and that some live in /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/drivers. They all need to be installed, and the all need to work.
It doesn't matter how it gets it. It should get it. A simply search order of "check disk, check update site, fail" is all that's needed. If it fails, then you try a compatable driver if one exists (i.e. vesa for video drivers) You then throw up a dialog informing the user that it tried and failed. This isn't anything more than sticking hardware detection and automatic fetching of packages together.
Also to repeat things in a different way X is an application in user space, and the kernel doesn't care much about video hardware so you need to actually set up X seperately.
I fully understand the difference between kernelspace and userspace. But from a user perspective, it doesn't matter that some drivers live in the kernel or at least
Who cares how it works on the backend? The user should just see one simple interface. If the user wants to dig around with 90 different config files, let him. But he shouldn't have to.
Take how applications are installed on a mac. The user drags an icon to the disk. That's it. he's done. When he double clicks it, the application starts.
Now that's not what's really going on. When the icon is dragged off of the install disk, a self extracting archive is copied. When the user runs it, the app is unzipped, and the main executable is run. When he drags the icon to another disk, the application is zipped up and copied. When he drags the icon to the trash, the application is uninstalled.
The user doesn't see the 50 files that actually make up the application, because he doesn't need to. From his perspective the icon is all there is to the app. It really isn't, but it might as well be.
I bring up the mac, only to illustrate that you can present a simple interface to a user that hides what is actually going on. The majority of the time this is preferable.
This attitude that the display manager/window manager/web browser etc is part of the OS is a relatively recent MS marketing invention - the kernel is a different thing to the applications that display your 3D video.
To a developer, userspace versus kernelspace is important. To a user, it's distinction without a difference.
Getting back to configuring X, It's absurd that I have to edit XF86Config and tell the xserver things like BusID and VideoRAM. Screw that. It should figure that out on its own. It can, because I had to run a userspace app to get things like the bus id. If I can run the app, then xfree86 should run the app for me.
I see the earlier posts as "I want it to do whatever I want no matter what it is without knowing anything about it or getting someone else with knowledge to set it up for me". Computers have got a very long way to go before that - if it's even possible.
That's why we need to start cracking on that now. Some of that technolgy exists today. If you put it together properly.
You still need to change the oil in a car, but that isn't a problem - you need skills or knowledge to operate stuff.
Can we please dispense with the car analogies? They're incredibly strained and unoriginal. And now that Mobil has released oil that is rated for 15k miles, you may not even have to change it for as long as you own your car.
As for the sig - insight does not come from ignorance, you have to learn something on a suject before you get insights.
It's directed at more of the general abuse of "informative" as a mod. Too many times I've seen something like "You are dumb" be modded up as "informative". There's incredibly little if any information in a post like that. Insight, maybe, but not information.
Under WinXP, I don't think I've ever had a piece of hardware that didn't plug and play and JUST WORK. So, to some extent, I now expect this from an OS, open source or not.
For the Nth time, OS X is not just about eye candy! It's about services and Applescript and being able to type oe®¥øåß©ç just by holding the option key down. It's kind of like Emacs, but graphical and without the learning curve.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Is that your example? Now let me give mine.
None of the current Linux distro (tested with Debian stable latest, Fedora Core 3, Mandrake 10, SuSe 9) out there can detect my RAID controller, thus Windows XP is the only way to go.
I would say that Linux will create a lot of extra work for average user than Windows XP.
Many of my friends (average joe computer users) that uses Windows XP with SP2 rarely reinstall Windows on regular basis, and when they do, all important data are back-up safely in opticval media or another HDD. And some times, I have to help friends who tried Linux finding drivers in vain, just because drivers for 2.4 kernel can't be used with 2.6 kernel without serious hacking needed. Linux is so hard to use (if they install after all) that they would rather use closed format files that actually works without too much hair-pulling.
Conclusion: Just because you have good experience with Linux, doesn't mean everyone will.
Why is this such a big deal? Wake me up when Bill Gates announces his main computer is a G5.
Umm...I did...so here's my reply to you: Hate the Game, Not the Player!
Am I one of the few people who think that Tannenbaum won that debate?
That seems slightly more sensible than saying the Confederate States of America won the War of Northern Agression.
Tanenbaum opened the thread with a specific testable claim: that over the next 10 years, microkernel OSes would become dominant. He also said that writing Linux was "a truly poor idea".
Over the 13 years since the thread was posted, both of those predictions have been shown to be flat-out wrong. Maybe, at the time, Linus wasn't able to defend himself in English argument against a prestigious professional lecturer. But time has told who was really right.
Yours doesn't work. She had "find /usr/src/linux/", but you put omitted the trailing "/". Since the end of the 2.4 series, linux has come in a directory named linux-2.N.N, and "linux" has been a symlink to it. Find won't pursue a symlink without the trailing slash... so of course yours is fast, because it searches zero files.
Linux "comes" in whatever directory you put it in, it could be in /var/log/kernel-source for all you know. You're right that putting in the trailing slash is a more general way of making sure it works even if it is a symbolic link. It has the unfortunate side effect of making the resulting list a bit messier by inserting an extra / in the resulting paths (e.g. /usr/src/linux//README) using the BSD version of find, where the proper solution is to use the -H flag. Of course, the more annoying aspect of BSD find is that it requires at least one path, it doesn't default to the current directory. On the other hand, the annoyance with GNU find is that when you omit the directory, it still puts in the ./ as part of the listed path. What I really want is a -D option to specify a directory to change to first (best not to use -d, as that is a synonym for -depth in BSD find).
Actually, you're right that mine doesn't work, because I don't even have a symbolic link at /usr/src/linux, much less a directory. However, my example is still be many times faster, if there is a directory full of Linux source at /usr/src/linux - for example, on a dual 1.8GHz G5, with all files cached in memory, against a particular version of Linux with a bit over 4 million lines of .c and .h files consisting of 120 million bytes, running my version took 3.2 seconds real time, 2.7 seconds CPU time, 1.6 seconds system time. Using -exec in find took about 46 seconds real time, 9.5 seconds CPU, 39.1 system. That's running under Mac OSX with the BSD version of find packaged with the system.
To be even more general, you should run find with the -print0 argument, and run xargs with -0, just in case you have a file with embedded naughty characters, and you should also probably put in a check for -type f, in case someone created a directory called files.c or something. Doesn't change the point of my post.
Also, the original was wrong, and not only pedantically: it only gets the .h files. Needs a \( and \) around the -name tags:
with my full-blown version being:No, one of your claims is completely false, and the other is too debatable to call a fact.
Linux is clearly not dominant. Microkernel OS's like Mach (Macintosh) and Windows NT have far more market share than Linux. Linux is only catching up to Macintosh, but it still has not surpassed it (at the time of this writing).
As far as Linux being a poor idea, that is still up-in-the-air. Gaining acceptance cannot support an argument that something is a good idea. If it did, Windows wouldn't be dominant. There are a lot of reasons why Linux is a bad idea, and I think Andy Tannenbaum covered them pretty well. Time is showing whether Linux even survives, much less becomes dominant.
The faggots gave up and left the conversation because they knew that they suck at style! They couldn't admit that they didn't have a good response to the fact that I'm not trolling them and that I take stylish computing very seriously! This proves my point! They are the clueless jackasses and I am the victor of this exchange. No amount of saving face is going to work fuckers! I won this battle and you are too ascared to admit it! Damn!!! Boo-yah!!!
that shit is funny - keep up the good work
Try buying a PC laptop without an OS tax. It's impossible unless you can get some custom thing which will probably end up costing more anyway. I may be wrong though, there may be a few reasonable offerings for laptops without an OS or linux laptops. Though in any case you're sacrificing a lot of choice in hardware to go down that road.
Jeremy
Melbourne, Australia
Jabber Australia
The free iTerm is much better than any terminal available for Linux, by the way.
Um, iTerm sucks down 23% of my CPU sitting there not doing anything. And it breaks Apple's Rendevous programming requirements and sits there churning the network as well. [Quite possibly why it sits there chewing up CPU.]