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EDS: Linux is Insecure, Unscalable
daria42 writes "Large enterprises should not use Linux because it is not secure enough, has scalability problems and could fork into many different flavours, according to the Agility Alliance, which includes IT heavyweights EDS, Oracle, Cisco, Microsoft, Sun, Dell and EMC."
... of losers to Linux. :-)
Trusted Computing FAQ | Free Dawit Isaak!
No chance of any anti-linux bias from any of that lot, eh? :)
So.. it has come to this
In relation to the spirit of this article.
In an industry where companies distort facts, thwart community efforts, it can be hard to know who to trust and what to believe. I think it is times like these when we the Open Source/Linux community can compare itself most closely with other changes and booms in society's history.
Think of all the doomsayers who like to say "The sky is falling" around times of economic uncertainty and social change. In the end, the ones who take the risks during those times, usually come out ahead.
I consider the Open Source community to be the "risk takers" per say of our time. I don't think that we'll end up on the wrong side of the fence when all is said and done. But if we do, so be it! At least we tried to make something better of the world. Something that gives rather than takes.
I don't think we should spend so much time reading articles like this that give us the attitude that the sky is falling. We should spend more time celebrating Linux and Open Source and leading the way to what will come next. We need to be leaders not Doomsayers.
If you want to read a good article on why open source is the right way to do things, read this Peruvian Congressman's letter to the manager of Microsoft in Peru. Really great read.
Interesting how all of them just might have a teensy > agenda of their own which is threatened by Linux in its ascendancy, huh?
Yawn.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
And in other news, McDonalds sez "Burger King is bad for you! Try our new salads!"
1984 was supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual.
Don't forget, it's also not very profitable for the underwritten companies. I wonder why they don't like it...
Maybe we'll see a linux fork from Oracle..?
Why do people mention forking as a problem? If a new version forks off and you don't like it, just don't use it! Why is this a bad thing?
I am a viral sig. Please help me spread.
Water is wet.
.. snip...Microsoft...snip
which includes IT heavyweights
Oracle on the other hand, that's a surprise considering how much Linux they use now and are planning to use.
Who could imagine Sun and Microsoft speaking out against Linux... Just Shocking!
The Answer
Phew! Thanks for telling me. I'll get right on the phone with our MS rep to let them know we'll be renewing that contract...
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
"...EDS, Oracle, Cisco, Microsoft, Sun, Dell and EMC"
Well. There's only one reasonable thing to do here. Gather 'em all up, send 'em to Pluto and nuke the whole damn thing from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
I Want To Believe
Naturally EDS has financial interests in saying such things. They're a company that makes millions off of companies by pushing proprietary software.
It's no suprise that Netcraft shows them as being hosted on IRIX, Solaris and now Windows; they just don't know anything else. Stodgy suits making backdoor deals with Microsoft to push MS product into companies they consult to.
If your company uses EDS, be aware that your best interests are not on their radar.
"Those who can, do; those who can't work at EDS."
I think this is a fair summary. But really, Microsoft, I see you listed. Is Windows more secure? Is Windows more scalable? I mean, they know as well as we do about the possibilities of it splitting into multiple varieties, but aside from that...
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Nothing new here. Same old FUD from a Microsoft shill.
In other news:
Democrats advise constituents against voting Republican.
Apple recommends iTunes users to purchase iPod.
McDonald's suggests that Burger King's fries are bad for your heart.
Snowball introduced to hell. Snowball melts.
Sun rises in east for 1,324,408,203rd consecutive day.
Thomas Galvin
...so buy from us instead.
If Microsoft were the subject of this, how soon would some sort of slander or liable lawsuit follow?
...Rob
The American Dream isn't an SUV and a house in the suburbs; it's Don't Tread On Me.
It is not like anyone is forced to use it. Not like it comes installed on every pc or anything.
Perhaps the key is the company most conspicuous by its absense: IBM, who competes with all of them.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Obviously, I thought the study was biased, looking at the list of supporting companies. But then I RTFA:
The alliance comprises a group of IT hardware and software firms that have combined their expertise and products to help EDS create 'best of breed' solutions and compete with the likes of IBM Global Services and Hewlett-Packard for the most lucrative government and enterprise contracts.
Well, if Microsoft wants a lucrative government contract, clearly the organization that is supporting this move is going to decry the competition to push its own agenda.
Why do people even listen to these organizations? I suppose you know their bias from the outset, rather than having to 'read between the lines' of other organizations.
"There's no success like failure, and failure's no success at all."
- Bob Dylan
From TFH:
From TFA:
Fuji Xerox = Oracle?
Biased "studies" should be banished from the humankind.
and just shook your head and didn't have anything to say?
That article was the worst.
This is just more proof that EDS ain't worth a poop.
"From a corporate perspective, we are not confident where Linux is right now today. A large enterprise needs to be sure because it relates to securifying [sic] the environment. We see some of the same things occurring that did to Unix -- it could splinter into many different types of languages. We are quite cautious about Linux and its deployment," said Rasmussen.
What?
-- Bryan
I would not consider someone who would refer to Linux as a language, as Mr. Rasmussen did, to be terribly knowledgeable about this things.
~*~ Tara
FTA:
"according to the Agility Alliance, which includes IT heavyweights EDS, Fuji Xerox, Cisco, Microsoft, Sun, Dell and EMC."
Where did the inclusion of Oracle in the post come from? It is not currently mentioned in the linked article, in either the quote or anywhere else
Also, the forgot to mention: Linux is free AND open source. AHHH!
Dashboard Widgets
Wow, the competitors to Linux in every single field Linux and OSS excels in (Microsoft: Linux itself, Oracle: mySQL and other OSS databases, Sun: Linux powered super computer "clusters", Cisco: Linux powered routers, Dell: They only use Windows!) are telling me that Linux suxx0rz! so they must be right, naturally.
... and in the DRM, bind them.
How long are we gonna let people say things like this before something happens? I'm sure the big corporate Linux distro's like Red Hat, Suse, etc. could possibly be losing a lot of money from these sort of lies. How come none of them are stepping up and putting in a lawsuit or two? Does the entire Linux community need to start taking up donations to defend itself through advertising (something like a SpreadFirefox.com)?
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
The top arcticle on Slashdot states:
..and the one below it states:
;)
EDS: Linux is Insecure, Unscalable
Google and Their Server Farm
Google is small, they always get hacked and their search engine doesn't scale. QED.
A flamebait slashdot post about a FUD article with virtually no content (stuff like "we are concerned..." and "we have been seeing..."). Pan it, move on.
Strategery.
A large enterprise needs to be sure because it relates to securifying [sic] the environment.
I think that pretty much says it all. This is a quote from one of the people we're to take advice from...
Quick someone better warn Google!!!
The article, or at least the people putting forth their thesis (I call bullhockey, it's really more of an agenda) do much to discredit themselves with claims such as:
I don't know exactly what they mean by "splintered", but working in the Unix field now for twenty-plus years, I never experienced:
I don't find or see anything enlightening or new in the article, and walk away shaking my head when these kinds of observations get any press at all.
Yea, Bill. Thanks. We hear ya. Linux sux Windows rox blah blah blah.
Move along. Nothing to see here.
Unlike Windows wich is secure (XP SP1 box is compromised in 18 min when online), scalable (try running ANY version of windows on more then 2 processors), and has never been forked into multiple flavors (NT, 95/98, ME, XP Home/Pro/Corp).
Yawn..
Uh oh, not good. Unscalable too? I guess someone should break this bad news to Google.
--It's Pimptastic!--
Amusing seeing this right next to: Google and Their Server Farm.
is making it into everyday use!
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
...because now I have a nice neat list of vendors to never, ever consider buying anything from ever again.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
"...I think I'll have a sandwhich."
I'm sure he said some other thing, but that's the one that comes to mind.
[ps: if anybody posts the actual friggin' quote in a followup reply to this article, I hope your genitalia sprouts wings and flies away.]
A consortium of companies all agreed: You shouldn't use the products that compete with the consortium's common business objectives, for the following unsubstantiated or opinion based reasons.
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
"Large enterprises should not use Linux because it is not secure enough, has scalability problems and could fork into many different flavours, according to the Agility Alliance, which includes IT heavyweights EDS, Oracle, Cisco, Microsoft, Sun, Dell and EMC."
to:
EDS: Linux is Insecure, Unscalable?
Why not: "Sun: Linux is Insecure, Unscalable (except the ones we support)" or "Dell: Linux is Insecure, Unscalable (except the ones we sell)"
Mod article -1, Troll
Just stick with the version that's compatible with your requirements. Or stick with a single vendor. Surely having Linux splintering into separate applications is not going to be any worse than having Linux, various types of Unix, and Windows to choose from.
While the group definitely has their own interest in bashing Linux, mixed with the alliances comments are some grains of truth. Certainly all the flavors of Linux can cause some problems, but on the other hand, it does allow for creativity that a single flavor can't possibly have.
Plus it may have undesirable effects such as anxiety, agitation, trouble sleeping, sweating, abnormal heart rhythm (prolonged QT), unusual dizziness, sudden fainting and diarrhea.
BoD
Funny that this story appears right above the story in which Google takes over the world with their cheap hardware Linux server farm.
How can you say this was biased? The fact that Sun says Solaris "beats it hands down on functionality and everything else"?
Nope no bias here... Move along people...
Not scalable, my ass.
-HJ
( No, my ass is not scalable either. :p )
I wonder which marketing clowns created that piece of FUD.
I mean, just for starters, EMC's storage devices come with a built-in administration system - which runs on RedHat Linux.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
How are about this story and this this story?
I want some of whatever this guy is smoking. We evaluated Solaris 10 and like previous versions it's a steaming pile of shit. The only thing it does well is make a high end Xeon run like a P2/400, kind of like Windows.
the same EDS that charged billions for systems that don't work, and they still get more contracts ?
in todays world incompetance is rewarded and responsibility has all but evaporated in buisness
get rich and fuck over your friends, family,community and society in general cos that 30,000 sqft house is more important
perhaps a sniper rifle and vigilanties would put management and their families into line
Give me a fistful of FUD with my daily news please.
Up where would you like it, sir?
I was consistently surprised with what we teased linux into doing back in 1996 working on a free community network. I've seen some pretty impressive operations in the ISP/ASP world build on linux foundations.
Security
Well that argument is just tired. Any idiot can crack an unsecured system, and very few smart people put enough work into security. Nothing wrong with the OS though. (What about that security certification that SUSE or whoever got recently)
Stability
Well that's just a matter of using the appropiate hardware and software, push the limits in a lab, but use your head in production. It's that simple with most OS's in most enviroments.
The rock, the vulture, and the chain
"Large enterprises should not use Linux"
We've been over this before, everyone, DON'T FEED THE TROLLS! Any enterprise that ditches a free OS that is also at the forefront of high-speed computing and research, well, is probably an enterprise that isn't smart enough to survive.
... Google's server farm has failed so miserably.
That is how I'd mod this story.
Agile for dinosaurs, I guess.
EDS, Oracle, Cisco, Microsoft, and EMC are not names I associate with agility. It would be like IBM, Exxon-Mobile, GE, and Wal-Mart getting together and calling themselves the "Lightweight League of Business".
That is all.
Guess its back to Solaris and Windows Server. Oh well.
Back in 1996 EDS declared IE to be the "standard" browser for use on all internal machines. When those of us who were using Sun boxes asked "What about us?", the reply was "We have Sun users?"
DMCA - Chilling free speech since 1998.
Seeing as all the people in this 'alliance' are all proprietary venders. I don't think we can trust them :)
for doing an extremly lack luster job right? The same EDS that I have had to waste time after time dealing with their 'enterprise' people that have no idea how computers work right? Sheesh Id sooner take advice from Unisys.
I doubt all of the members actually agree on this. Oracle has been pimping their stuff on Linux pretty hard lately, and Linux is what they actually do their development on now.
Cisco has been using linux in several of their products, including the cache engine card that fits in 2600/3600 routers, the WLSE, the Airespace stuff they just bought, and a bunch of other stuff.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
All I see is an organization badmouthing its competition and providing little argument other than "We're bigger and better, so there." It could easily be argued that if not for the threat posed by Linux and the vendors and services that have effectively aligned with it, this group wouldn't even have any reason to exist. In the end, they legitimize and acknowledge their competitors' role in the marketplace.
Ironic, no?
Well, you left out Oracle...
It's weird to see Oracle say that about Linux, especially since they are the ones pushing SLES/RH on their proposals. They have an agreement with RedHat and Novell that makes Oracle the single-point of support for Oracle-on-Linux problems, i.e. even if the problem is because of a kernel or OS usespace problem Oracle fixes it.
This position goes against their current practices. Maybe this was just spited out without the members knowing it (it happens a lot on this kind of useless "Alliances").
What? Microsoft is part of this Agility Alliance?
I actually like this quote from NewsWire from this text.
"The EDS Agility Alliance promises to take industry collaboration and innovation to a new level by applying the assets and expertise of key industry leaders and partners to a single vision," said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.
Single vision means monopoly right? That's weird, why is "collaboration" and "single vision" in the same sentence?
No sig for now.
I'm not against a study finding faults with Linux. But when you see something like "which includes IT heavyweights...Microsoft" it kind of makes it hard to take seriously.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
..linux may still be a no go for the less digitalized part of buisness life as it does require some level of system managing skills, but i do not see how this applies to experienced admnistrators or the enterprise hiering the right brains?
Notice that everyone of the companies mentioned are full scale service providers who do not like small competitors whom in the future, i believe, will deliver far more flexible and cheap solutions using linux.
So according to Cisco, their own routers are insecure.
Linux and *BSD are the worst OS's available, except for all others, of course.
That these "heavyweights" come to their conclusion tends to demonstrate
1. incompetence
2. self-interest
3. ***
4. Profit
* Sun: Forked everything in Linux except the kernel for themselves
So they, in fact, forked nothing in Linux? The kernel is Linux.
You sure they are not talking about any microshaft OS?
This piece of fun was particularly amusing coming straight after a story about Google making other OSes irrelevant by using the capability of their mega (Linux) server farm
There's nothing in Linux except the kernel.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
for Linux's inscalability and insecurity - here.
;-)
Is this the general opinion of the Alliance, or just the opinion of one clueless spokesperson?
From TFA:
I know this has been said before, but what is Sun's deal with making Red Hat = Linux? I dunno about you, but as far as "Enterprise Editions" of Linux, I've heard SUSE is better anyway. Doesn't matter anyway. If Sun brings down Red Hat, it's not like they bring down Linux. There's a lot of distros out there that Sun would have to target before Linux is dead.
I wish I could write clever and witty sigs.
We all knew that most of these people don't like Linux, and for obvious reasons.
So, does Linux need them? No. They can't harm Linux one bit, and that's what's bothering them.
Can Linux harm these people, and their shareholders? Indirectly, yes, as long as they cling to old fashioned ways of making business, thinking they can win by putting other people down, instead of creating something worthwhile.
"please IBM, don't hurt us too badly.."
Just do a search on EDS and "NMCI" - the Navy - Marine Corps Intranet. Fucked up (and is still fucking up) big on that.
securifying the environment
compelling cost advantage
beats it hands down on functionality and everything else
Does this seem like Educated, Experienced IT Personnel?
Or does it seem more like coportate executives regurgistating company policy fud?
All of them seem to be in need of Public Speech and Formal English classes. I mean really, "securifying"?
FreeBSD: The Power to Serve!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Let's look at world history here as an example. The few that were in power (the royalty of Europe and Asia between 1000 and 1700 AD) were actually a very small number of people. The czars, emperors, and kings all had a very limited perspective and an inflated sense of self worth. In essense they had a monopoly on power. They all thought they had more to offer and were smarter than the masses.
In every case the masses overcame the gentry and have long since moved on. Yes there are still some royals around but are any of them in power? From Japan and China in the East, through the czars in Russia, and on to the kings of Prussia, France and England. Arguably none of them are in power even though some still maintain a token existance. They all had a vested interest in keeping down the masses. Whether they (the rulers) like it or not, FUD or not, people tend to overthrow the rulers they don't like.
If I were one of these big companies I would seriously consider what the masses really want. They should try and become part of the solution before the masses realize how to overthrow the problem. Democracy is Open Source.
What "risks" are Open Source taking? What things am I risking by running Debian?
In fact, it's a negative thing to say using OSS is taking a risk. Pointy haired bosses don't want to take risks, they want to use what's safe and reliable.
"Risk-takers" is not the image you want to portray of the OSS community. I get what you were trying to say, but there should be a different choice of words.
To some, especially the slashdot crowd, security means keeping the hackers off your network.
Corporate interests naturally want that, but they are also equating "security" with access control. Microsoft has a fairly robust access control methodology, supporting central group control, and distributed access control lists.
What does Linux have in this space? NIS? A Kernel that pukes when a user is a member of more than 16 or 32 groups? Can you have robust access control if you can only be a member of 16 or 32 groups?
Security is more than just keeping the hackers out.
I'll really glad such a magnanimous and unbiased group of companies were nice enough to let me know to stay away from Linux. I might have made a bad mistake and started using Linux. I guess I'll just have to stick with FreeBSD.
"Sun rises in east for 1,324,408,203rd consecutive day."
Is this since the last time the Earth's magnetic field switched polarity? When that happens, does east become west? Inquiring minds want to know.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
This is hardly a unbiased group. They all are joining together to fight Linux. Not that they like each other. Solaris 10 have more functionality than Linux? That's a laugh. Why is Sun borrowing ideas from Open Source and Linux?
Of course, as a "former" MS user, all I wanted was a clean, fast, secure, with no aplications at all and more efficient Windows to install the softwares I needed, AND a cool app-bloated gamer-oriented Windows for my games and for any kid sit and play. Well, now I know there is Slackware and Knoppix...
\m/
compared to what? not running servers at all? certainly windows servers don't offer more security!
How elegant. Linux is the kernel, so claiming that Sun forked "everything in Linux but the kernel" reduces to "Sun forked everything in Linux but Linux" and thus "Sun forked nothing." This is entirely true, but it still manages to perpetuate the myth that Sun is damaging Linux. Simply masterful. I think you have a future, perhaps in the PR department of a major political party.
"In the news today, Linux servers have been forking all night, there is no more control!"
"Run for your lives!"
"Linux, do you have a coment on this? -If the Agility Alliance say it, it must be true"
No sig for now.
Hmmm... everyone, stop using UNIX right now, I believe they said the same thing 20-30 years ago. And look what happened, UNIX failed.. Solaris, BSD, AIX.. nothing but failure
Like:
Windows NT (with and without the win 95 shell)
Windows 95
Windows 95 OSR2
Windows 98
Windows ME
and then later
Windows 2000
Windows XP Pro
Windows XP Home
Windows Server 2003
Windows Terminal Services Edition
Windows Advanced Data Centre Edition
Windows Small Business Server
Windows XP without multimedia
and also
Smartphone 2002
Smartphone 2003
(each customized by hardware manufacturer)
PocketPC 2002/2003
(like wise)
I hardly think linux is any worse just because some of those flavours are "done at home" and "just for fun".
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
Interesting, given that Oracle recently moved the entire development staff from Solaris to Linux and made Linux the primary development target.
No chance of the reverse from this crowd?
Each claim should be evaluated regardless of messenger. If the claims don't make sense, there's no reason to immediately dismiss them because you know you're right. Instead, address them. Yes, there are cases where Linux is insecure and unscalable. There are cases where it is more secure and more scalable.
We should adopt more balanced opinions around here. Unfortunately, what will happen is that people will counter the article's reactionary opinion with an opposite reactionary opinion.
It's like hearing what the leader of China thinks about Democracy as a competing form of nation-state rule.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
First of all, you are not as deep as you think you are. This is overly dramatic drivel from an obviously insecure (alleged) human being.
Secondly, it is per se not per say. Nothing upsets me more when someone is trying to be "deep" and then misspells something that simple. If you're trying to be intellectual, use a freakin' dictionary before you hit submit.
Thirdly, how do you celebrate a computer operating system? You use computer operating systems to get work done, stupid. And, if you truly consider yourself a risk taker of our time, why don't you try getting a date? You sound like you spend a lot of time alone just thinking about stuff.
Finally, Peru is about as influential in information technology as the local mom and pop grocery store. If you're trying to enhance your "deepness" by pulling some obscure reference from an otherwise impotent governement to impress everyone, then try again.
People like you need to step away from your desk and get a life.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Linux is not Windows
Someone better tell this to Google.
Their Linux servers wont scale to handle a service the size of theirs and the costs will be prohibitive!
Did George W. Bush take a job with their speech writing lackeys?
"Powers. I have them."
Ohhh..... So they suggest using Solaris instead of Linux...interesting. Haven't hundreds upon hundreds of bugs and holes been found in their code since it was released recently? And doesn't the new "open solaris" have the same forking issues? What a load of b/s.
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
linux have too many variant (spelling?) and one can't scale it up correctly with such a lot of different distro doing different things. That is why you should stick to ONE distro. Linux do have scalability problem but say, redhat, shouldn't if all the computers/servers are in the same distro. I do think there will be the same issue if there are both solaris 10 and windows in the same system?
I am harvesting funny/good quotes. Please help by putting them in your sigs
This is just more proof that Linux has arrived on the scene as a real contender in the IT world. I remember when I first heard of Linux, there were literally daily changes being released for the kernel and things were seemingly in a constant state of flux. At the time I was using OS/2, but I was curious enough to keep an eye on Linux and where it was going. Years later, when it really mattered, the choice was simple, Linux. Why? I work in an environment where I'm an army of one and costs and security are very important. Windows just wasn't the best choice for what I needed to build and the budget I had. I guess I wasn't the only one who thought that way! So called studies that refute what frontline IT people see everyday in the field just prove the desperation of those threatened by Linux and the overall free open source movement. If they're smart, eventually they'll learn to live with and perhaps profit from it, but right now they seem more interested in stopping it through FUD and legislation.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
It's the Microsoft of UNIX's. If I need to, for whatever reason which I can't yet even possibly imagine, run the latest NVIDIA 128MB video card for my web server or database server under UNIX, I'll use Linux. For anything else, I'll use FreeBSD and OS X Server.
It's funny how Microsoft is in that Alliance. What an oxymoron.
I feel so sorry for the Microsoft and Linux userbase camps.
Hopefully, one day you folks will all actually get it. Until then, sorry about your luck.
Large enterprises should not use UNIX because it is not secure enough, has scalability problems and could fork into many different flavours.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
..that Linux is unscalable.
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
This, of course, is the same EDS that repeatedly show how well Microsoft products scale in their guaranteed-to-fail UK government IT projects. The only things that scale well are the cost and time to throwing in the towel - Usually somewhere between 200% & 300% of the original negotiated contract.
One of many EDS problems. I can't recall a recent headline where EDS successfully delivered on an enterprise scale project that was on time, on budget, and actually worked...
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
is fighting to keep their contracts.
It is as simple as that.
Too many current government and enterprise clients have been asking and installing Linux.
I work with one of the many EDS government contracts. We have been receiving a flurry of emails, letters and articles offered freely by our EDS overlords. Each one derides the idea of switching to anything outside of EDS's microscopic support.
I'd love to identify myself..... But I'll just say this organization has lots of guns available...
I was just reading about Orion Multisystem's cluster desktops. These have from 12 to 96 CPUs clustered in one easy to use desktop system. Of course they run Linux.
Then I click over here and learn that Linux has "scalability problems."
I've yet to see any version of Windows scale to 96 processors in a single desktop! Not that it'd be worth it anyway, as the cost for Windows alone would probably exceed $20,000!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
This is slightly off-topic in that it doesn't have to do with the companies in the article, but I find it fascinating how quick Slashdotters are to point out bias in others while ignoring that Slashdot is owned by OSTG, who makes money off of Open Source products. It is therefore in their best interests to point articles negative toward competitors like Microsoft and get page hits through baiting people. Have you wondered if that's why we get so many crappy flamebait stories lately that are barely fact-checked?
I just wanted to point out how people are so quick to find bias in others while ignoring the corporate bias of the very website they're getting their daily news from. Slashdot is a corporate-owned entity. Rob Malda is an OSTG employee.
Wow, this Robb Rasmussen (vice president of EDS Global Alliances) has some amazing arguments against Linux. Check it:
... what are the other splinters?
"From a corporate perspective, we are not confident where Linux is right now today. A large enterprise needs to be sure because it relates to securifying [sic] the environment."
That by itself should disuade any respectable corporation from even considering Linux.
"We see some of the same things occurring that did to Unix -- it could splinter into many different types of languages."
If there's one thing we hate, it's French Linux.
"We are concerned about security [on mainframe computers] on an open standard environment like that."
Wow, apparently security through obscurity is better than openness. I guess closed/proprietary Windows has proven to be a lot more secure than, say, OpenBSD, with it's dirty laundry out in the open for all to see.
"We are also concerned about some of the scalability issues that we are seeing on our clients on a global basis."
10,000 Windows98 licenses scales globally much better (for Microsoft) than Linux does.
"Also, we are somewhat cautious about what happened with Unix - it splintered into eight applications..."
Hmm... vi, emacs,
"... until McNealy (Scott McNealy, chief executive of Sun) finally announced he won the battle and had the one surviving Unix out there. We think Linux has the possibility of going the same route," said Rasmussen [in an impressive display of knowledge of the history and state of the art of Unix]
"Quite honestly, in the notion of costs, as we look at what we are structuring with our alliance partners, we are not seeing a compelling cost advantage that would lend us towards Linux..."
Lend us toward Linux? WTF does that mean? What language is this guy speaking? This "structuring our alliance partners" garbage is pure McBride.
Jim Hassell, managing director of Sun Microsystems Australia, argued that "Solaris 10 beats [Red Hat Linux] hands down on functionality and everything else."
Oh yeah, that's plausable... [/sarcasm] Seriously, there must be at least some respects in which Solaris 10 does not beat Red Hat hands down. Maybe there are more drivers for Red Hat. Maybe it supports more CPU architectures. Maybe it costs less money for the license. Maybe it has more packages. Whatever it is, the guy destroys his credibility (as anything other than a marketing guy that will say anything) when he makes obviously false sweeping generalizations like that.
This whole affair is pathetic, and I don't see how anybody with a fscking clue could trust what these people say.
Was there a preliminary report to this one that studied how Linux affected/eroded their business models? Perhaps they saw that Linux provided a very powerful base for NEW technologies to leverage it as a great springboard for potentially competing products. This report didn't make it out, but now they are on this bandwagon.
Do they cite an alternative that is better? I guess since Windows XP supports two processors (wow) they must be. Microsoft is also renowned for security (e.g. IIS, IE, Word, Exchange) so this MUST be what they are getting at.
I have to add that this comes across as a bit of a surprise from an Oracle backed group after seeing 5 years of Oracle adds on the back of the Economist magazine:
"Unbreakable Linux"
"Powerful Linux" - ok I made that one up
"Unbeatable Linux" - and that one but you get the point
I guess now we can look forward to Oracle adds reading:
"Unscalable Lnx"
"Breakable Li n - u x"
"Beatable linux"
And in other news, IBM disagrees.
Hunger is the best sauce.
... and windows is secure and scalable.
Apache is a fork from NCSA.
Firefox is a fork from Mozilla.
Cinepaint is a fork from Gimp.
What do these have in common?
They are all successful forks because they are all OSS and that they share code/ideas.
In contrast, the Unixes are good examples of code that started open, but was closed. Upon doing so, each fork of ideas,API was bad news. A better one is SMB. It was developed by IBM, IIRC. Yet, MS forked it and created network neighborhood. Doing samba and other apps to interoperate with it, is very difficult.
So no. Forking in OSS is not bad. Forking closed source, or forking and then closing it (as would happen with BSD) does cause problems
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
According to the article, Linux might split into several "Languages". I'm beginning to suspact that this is a bad translation of a south-asian language news release.
Story here.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
used to work with eds - they are about as technically compentent as my dead grandma - no disrepect to my dead grandma.
tried solaris 10 on my sunblade but it was unusable because it was so slow - was like using a 286 - so I stuck debian back on and it flys - sorry sun
Sun has contributed more to the open source community than any other corporation.
So your comment was not just wrong, it was retarded.
Sorry, you fail it. GPL violations are 100% okay according to Slashdot, because Slashdotters support copyright infringement on P2P. If infringing on that intellectual property is okay, then so is violating the GPL. Fucking hypocrites.
I see no reference to Oracle in the article - perhaps you should remove it from the /. version of this news.
Has anyone told Google? IBM?
Sean Milheim
iDREUS Corporation
Having worked for EDS for seven years before moving on to greener pastures, I think the same thing can safely be said about them...
Is completely missing the point: Enterprises should fork their own linux.
.. of course, this would be 'bad for the distribution economy', but that overlooks the fact it'd be good for the 'teach people to effectively roll and administer their own enterprise systems' economy ...
Tah-duh! New era of productivity for Enterprises' who can handle rolling their own
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
that's Google's system stuffed then ;-)
Would be nice to have details of these scalabilty issues the customers have had.
Mind you this whole thing is to help EDS so given their track record on large projects I don't need to say much.
Sun:Forked everything developed by GNU Sun:Added Java to GNOME so they could claim some ownership Sun:Has secret handshake with Microsoft Sun:CEO is an idiot who likes to blog How's that? Feel better now?
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1732672,00.as p
Most of the desktop computers in the UK's Department for Work and Pensions were paralyzed for four days on Monday, when a failed upgrade took them offline. The outage, covering 75 percent to 80 percent of the DWP's 80,000 PCs, is one of the largest in the UK government's not entirely impressive IT history.
And possibly one of the most costly. According to staff reports, the outage occurred on Monday afternoon, disconnecting staff e-mail, benefits processing, and Internet and intranet connectivity. According to one, a limited network upgrade from Windows 2000 to Windows XP was taking place, but instead of this taking place on only a small number of the target machines, all the clients connected to the network received a partial, but fatal, "upgrade."
Another source says that the DWP was trialing Windows XP on a small number ("about seven") of machines. "EDS was going to apply a patch to these. Unfortunately the request was made to apply it live and it was rolled out across the estate, which hit around 80 percent of the Win2K desktops. This patch caused the desktops to BSOD and made recovery rather tricky as they couldn't boot to pick any further patches or recalls. I gather that [Microsoft Corp.] consultants have been flown in from the U.S. to clear up the mess." EDS is also thought to be flying in fire brigades.
Jason Lotito
The second paragraph says it ALL:
"The alliance comprises a group of IT hardware and software firms that have combined their expertise and products to help EDS create 'best of breed' solutions and compete with the likes of IBM Global Services and Hewlett-Packard for the most lucrative government and enterprise contracts."
"They" will say anything to gain another contract. All one needs to do is RTFM.
Microsoft has a whold department dedicated to securification and other securifying type stuff.
Of course Microsoft and Sun are famous for opposing Linux, but Oracle has actually put a good bit of effort into using and promoting Linux. Cisco is also on public record as being very pleased with their adoption of Linux, and they do a good job of supporting it with their products.
When you get such diverse members of some bogus consortium, you can't exepect every member company to agree with every piece of nonsense released by said consortium.
What's needed is to get behind NSA Security-Enhanced Linux and push. The key apps that are regularly attacked (mail, web servers, browsers, databases, DNS) all need to be modified to work as multi-process programs with small trusted parts and big untrusted parts. Trying to patch monolithic trusted apps undergoing ongoing enhancement is never going to work.
So quit gloating and start coding, Linux people.
non-Lunix fanboy post detected. Teh parent actually brings up a valid point and it does not inculde how great linux is.
,as well as possibley get modded up as funny or insightful.
Mod down immedietly. We must not let these types of logical argumets escape into the wild.
Please reply to parent with Microsoft insult to both avoid answering the questions and attempt to change the subject
I'm pretty sure they're using Linux in the context of GNU/Linux in this case. As in Linux distributions, not specifically and entirely the kernel.
"You're older than you've ever been, and now you're even older."
I think that people and companies should not use Microsoft's product, Windows, because it is not secure enough, has scalability problems and could [has] fork[ed] into many different flavours.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
This message posted from a bank server room with one 128 CPU Linux cluster and two 256 CPU Linux clusters.
So much for difficulties scaling. As for the number of security issues - zero. As a bank we tend to be worried about security which is why we dumped MS and SCO.
Next........
Ed Almos
Budapest, Hungary
The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws. - Tacitus, 56-120 A.D.
Is Don King dabbling in IT now?
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
End of Dependable Service
Well, in the actual article, Oracle isn't mentioned. In the slashdot "article" it is.
Hmmmm. Who to believe... Who to believe... I give up! Who?
Having worked at EDS I have to say they're capable of making any Operating System Insecure and Unscalable.
While I was working there this summer the "Junior Sysadmin" discovered a misconfiguration on the WINS servers at the secondary site (built by one of the Senior Admins, naturally) that's apparently been screwing up name resolution and routing since the server went live. It took them three years to find it.
I'm skeptical of any claims EDS makes about security and scalability.
My username does not make me Apathetic. It's irony, get it?
This is the most insightful post so far in this thread.
And now a message from the national apple society:
FUCK PEARS!
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
Someone forgot to tell them this:
:)
Cisco - Uses Linux
Dell - Uses Linux (I just installed a Windows 2000 box with their Linux Based system instaler
Microsoft - Uses Linux (see Hotmail)
Oracle - Uses Linux, Supports Linux
Hmmm.. Enterprise companies that *USE* Linux are telling us not to use Linux?? What next, is the sky not blue?
Let's say they are right and Linux is both insecure and unscalable. If you put an unpatched Windows PC (any version) on the Internet, within 5 minutes your system is completely unusable. I'd take an insecure and unscalable Linux over completely unusable Windows in a heartbeat. Nothing more to see here, move along.
I hear they have a few Linux servers.
They'd better get to work on rebuilding that cluster on Windows Server 2003. After all, we need it to be secure!
I better start migrating our cluster to Windows!!! Our linux servers get cracked open all the time and and everytime I add a new server it takes like an hour to set up!! It's a nightmare!! I trust Windows because it is rock solid and known for it's excellent security!!
So let's see.. it will cost $50,000 in license fees to move to Windows.
Nevermind.
Oracle is NOT mentioned in the actual article. Oracle is part of all this in some fantasy world, called Slashdot.
Since Sun and Microsoft are in this group do they recomend Solaris or Windows?
You may now fight it while we watch.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Good thing there's only 391 distributions listed on http://www.linux.org/dist/list.html
AH, HAHAHA HAHAHA HAAAAAH! Oh man HEE HEE HAH! That is so goddamn funny, AAAAHHAHAHAHA! Oooh, man stop it pleeeease! HAHAHAHAAAAAA <<hacking cough Ugh, tee hee hee HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA! insecure..HAHAHA HAAAH! Oooh man this is good, hehe, because it could FORK! HAAAAHAAAAHHAAAAAHAA! Oh shit man, what a fucking joke! Dammit my sides hurt.. HAAAAAAAHAAAAAAHAHAHA!
"EAT SHIT, 20 Billion flies CAN'T be wrong!"
Linux sucks. Windows is awesome. Apple is too expensive. Linksys is owned by Cisco.
God I wish people would quit bitching. Out of the box, what is the more secure operating system?
Since most computers are directly out of the box, this is an important benchmark. Which is more secure? Which has more vulnerabilities?
Yes, we all know if as many people used Linux that use Windows, there would be a 90% vulnerability rate for Linux as there is for Windows. We know that. Same with OS X.
I'm so tired of companies coming up with all these studies "proving" that !Linux is so much better than anything else. The fact is that at the end of the day, when the boxes are configured, locked down, and still usable. OS X and Linux will always be more secure than Windows.
from TFA:
what the hell? There is no mention of Oracle in the article.
NOT mentioned in the actual article. Remember? You're reading Slashdot...
It is simply disgusting and appalling to see companies try to sabotage Linux by spreading false claims and FUD because of their own business interests. Now I know what vendors to avoid when purchasing for our IT department or ordering PCs for our classrooms. Not that those vendors would be good choices to begin with...
They could have choosen a better frontman. This guy sounds like a tool.
Scalability issues that we are seeing on our clients? WTF does that even mean? Splintered into eight applications? Let's see: ls, vi, cat, sed, grep, more, cd, echo, wc, bc, dc . . . I haven't even gotten into X-based stuff yet. Oh. Wait. I get it. Geez, it's like listening to Dubya.
Don't save Windows XP! http://www.petitiononline.com/jjw1xp/petition.html
I think the subject says it best. Any report put out by Microsoft's cronies is biased FUD. People that perpetuate the information on slashdot are trolling.
I guess IBM's opinion doesn't matter.
It has scalability problems, and could change to become better suited to different needs, including scalability and HW architectures? They must be getting desperate out there in Cartel Land.
--
make install -not war
I'd like to see them tell google that linux isn't scalable! It's only the largest linux farm in existance!
WURD!!
http://grids.itmanagersjournal.com/article.pl?s
"More than half of the [world's] fastest supercomputers -- which recently might be more accurately described as super clusters that are assemblies of many lower-power processors -- run on Linux, and Top 500 super list co-compiler and original editor Erich Strohmaier does not foresee any change in the open source operating system's dominance anytime soon."
charlie harvey's website
aside from all the silly, kee jerk reactions about inproper use of terminology, or what fork means, no one* seems to be addressing the central point, which seems reasonable: is Linux heading toward multiple, slightly compatible/incompatible flavors, AND is this worse then other OS/packages...
Just because they are biased, does not mean they cant be correct.
If the Linux/OSS community's only response to "is your software splitting..." is "You are a fudster, go away"....well, if OSS doesn't want corporate dollars, thats fair.
I remember in the old days, when we walked uphill to school both ways in the snow barefoot, there was a company called heathkit, that sold kits to build your own radios. a large part of thier biz was supplying kids, who grew up to be the geeks and engineers and scientists who drove the 70s/80s/90s tech revolutions.
I see one of the roles of linux as the equiv - something for todays kids, who will be tomorrows leaders, to play with.
the question is, can OSS be more ?
...in the same way that cockroaches scale well.
I work at place that has a million EDS idiots running around.
Meetings are a joke, you are on a conference call with 23 people and there are exactly 2 who are involved in actually doing the work.
They are a blackhole for money and only add negative value to any process they are involved in. As a previous comments says, be aware that your interests are no where on EDS's radar.
And don't forget EDS masterminds some of the techniques used by Enron to profit from the California Energy Crisis Hoax/Theft/Fraud/Conspiracy
Anybody want to buy a used Linux license?
"From a corporate perspective, we are not confident where Linux is right now today. A large enterprise needs to be sure because it relates to securifying [sic] the environment. We see some of the same things occurring that did to Unix -- it could splinter into many different types of languages. We are quite cautious about Linux and its deployment," said Rasmussen."
If I were a company looking to outsource my IT, EDS just talked themselves out of it. First of all, I don't know how anyone could securify anything. Second of all, I thought Unix was an operating system, not a language. It appears to me that Mr. Rasmussen has no idea what he is talking about and is obviously in WAAAAAY over his head. That's embarassing.
Isn't this more or less precisely what the Linux community has been saying about Windows?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
"Also, we are somewhat cautious about what happened with Unix - it splintered into eight applications -- until McNealy (Scott McNealy, chief executive of Sun) finally announced he won the battle and had the one surviving Unix out there."
i swore sco said they were the owners of the one true unix! and somebody should tell hp and ibm that they don't have real unix oses.
sum.zero
...until McNealy (Scott McNealy, chief executive of Sun) finally announced he won the battle and had the one surviving Unix out there.
Wow, that is news to me, Sun won the battle and has the only surviving UNIX out there. EDS is on top of their game!
I can't imagine that even the PHB's still think of any of these "think tanks" or "research houses" as reliable sources of information. Are you gonna tell me that somewhere there's a guy with a tie on saying that he made his decision based on a Ken Brown article out of ADtI? Gimme a break. That guy would be so fired. I hereby declare any entity that puts out "research" which is backed by corporate funds a "FUD Factory". If anyone catches their boss looking at this drivel, please commence to beating them about the head and neck area, preferably using a club with a nail in it. Carry on.
Visit my blog http://www.protocolostomy.com
Forbes Supercomputing article
You really have to wonder about organisations like Agility Alliance when they claim that large enterprises should not use Linux...
Hello, and welcome to 1999. The turn of the century is approaching, and maybe one day linux will be fit for enterprise use.
Seriously. Does anyone manage to not laugh at these comments? They're so retro they're almost avant-garde.
This One seems ok...
Just wondering...
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
what happened to Oracle's pro linux thing they were pushing a couple of years ago?? Noticably absent from this group IBM ( sells alot of servers with someone's flavor of linux on them) as well as AIX, HP (Ditto) + HP-UX ...
Also some moron in the article, president of something calls solaris the 'one surviving unix....'. Wonder if he's heard of AIX, HP-UX, OSX + BSD..... Actually Apple sells more Unix boxes than sun, they are just smaller..
More crap from the 'we can't innovate so lets scare people with stupid magazine articles' folks.
I'm surprised Anderson, Accenture, AiC and some other slimy consulting companies didn't jump on this band wagon with EDS.
So Long and Thanks for all the Fish.
"We are concerned about security on an open standard environment like that. We are also concerned about some of the scalability issues that we are seeing on our clients on a global basis. Also, we are somewhat cautious about what happened with Unix - it splintered into eight applications..."
I love how a person can raise concerns about an issue without presenting any justification as to why the concerns exist. As if asking more and more negative sounding questions adds some sort of weight to the opinion that "linux must be bad".
-WHY do you think an open standard environment has any inherent bearing on security?
-PROVIDE EXAMPLES why linux is not scalable.
-WHY would linux necessarily go the path of unix when linux is totally different?
Conclusion: stupid article, typical fearmongering. The fact this is an "aliance" adds absolutely no weight to the irresponsiblity of the conclusions.
I hope that I don't get any geek demerits for saying this but how would the response of Slashdot readers be different if this article was about how Windows wasn't a valid option for companies due to scalability and security (feel free to reply with ignorant reasons why Windows is really a spawn of Satan and Linux is God's gift to the world). I mean seriously everytime an anti-Microsoft article is posted everyone falling all over themselves to agree with it but when ever an anti-Linux article is posted the writers of it must be clearly "biased" or "stupid" because "how could anyone in their right mind not understand that Linux is perfect in every possible way."
I personally dual boot right now. I use Suse Linux for development and Windows XP for just about everything else and news flash to everyone (you might want to sit down to read this) neither of the OS are overwhelming better then the other, they each have their strengths and weaknesses. It would be in the interest of all if we could come to grips with this fact.
The licence fee doesn't scale up with the number of installations.
>Naturally EDS has financial interests in saying such things
So Red Hat are scum as well - if for no other reason, then for the fact that they don't give away their software and services.
>They're a company that makes millions off of companies by pushing proprietary software.
That's actually totally irrelevant - you obviously have no clue about government (and enterprise) purchasing.
If they suddenly were able to get the OS for free, they'd sell more other non-OS software (or services) to their customers.
Needs are always bigger than budgets - you get some extra dollars, you spend some dollars so the money saved on OS would just go someplace else.
Coke issued a report today that Pepsi is mostly rat-piss and makes those who drink it uglier.
No, no conflict of interest here, right?
I would say that much of that if FUD rammed down our throats by people who want to sell us non-free products.
They say that Linux isn't necessarily the best choice for mainframes, which may be valid -- but for reasons that I don't agree with, and for FUD'ish reason that they fail to justify. I'll throw in a disclaimer that don't know a whole lot about mainframes, and even less about IBM's mainframe Linux, but what I do know is that there is stability and there is mainframe. Mainframes are usually incredibly robust (but a huge hassle when things go wrong). Running Linux on a mainframe is a pretty new concept, and given the audience, there is some risk involved with running Linux in that environment (in a relative way). The thing is, they're not even pushing mainframes. They're pushing Solaris, which is not a mainframe OS.
Their qualifying of the mainframe statement was a bunch of FUD, however. Stuff like:
Why are they concerned with about security? Doesn't Solaris use those same open standards? Also, since when have all of the other Unixes died? IIRC, there are other Unixes out there, and Sun didn't "win" anything. Scott McNealy's proclimation that they're the one surviving Unix has about as much validity as Michael Jackson declaring himself as the King of Pop.
It's pretty clear that there was financial motivation behind this announcement. I'm pretty certain that it's not as nefarious as most people here think it is (payoff). I'm guessing that EDS has had existing partnerships with those companies, and the majority of their onboard staff have expertise in those areas. I think that they were trying to justify their core competencies with some unmitigated chest-thumping. If I were a reseller for Brand-X hardware (and really knew my Brand-X stuff inside and out), I'd want to push that pretty hard too. I'll betcha that if I included EDS in an RFP to build a major IBM Mainframe Linux application, they'd bid on it in a heartbeat.
In short...there's nothing to see here. Move along people.
-Turkey
Rick Inatome (CompUSA founder) soundly lost a debate to a Honeywell and an IBM jurassic defenders I attended back in the 1980's at WSU with the conclusion being that microcomputers (not really called PC's yet) were amateur level while big iron will be needed to run important business matters into the forceeable future. Well that was one version of myopia and Sun/EDS suffer from another.
Large enterprises should not use Linux because it is not secure enough, has scalability problems and could fork into many different flavours, according to the Agility Alliance
Wow, I'm surprised Google, Oracle, IBM, all the governments, or any large scale university that runs massive amounts of Linux arn't joining in the frey and telling everyone how crappy the product they're using is. Oh yeah, thats right. They are using it not competing with it. The difference here.
Sun has no problem biting the hand that helps feed it. Sun will follow VA. It's hardware business will die. It will be software only. Solaris will become BSD like. A great OS, but will not have the support and will likely fall behind in the OS rat race. Without SPARC Solaris will fade. A single company cannot keep Solaris running on the myriad of Intel hardware without vendor support. What company is going to support an OS that is only used as a server? (yeah, I know some people use it as a desktop, but I have no idea why) It's just like the problems Linux had/have. Nobody wanted to use the resources to make their product compatible. It will be even worse for Solaris. It's usage is dropping.
A consortium of companies competing with Linux said don't use Linux. There's a surprise.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Can you really take someone's claims seriously when they make statements about Solaris being the only remaining Unix? Uh, I'm sure the Open Group, and maybe IBM, HP and SGI *might* just have something to say about that. And the *BSD teams and Apple, while we're at it.
And probably Darl McBride too. After all SCO is the current "owner of the Unix operating system" right?
My blog
It's not. It's grey. At least here, today...
... when they say "Linux", do they mean any particular distribution, or is it a total generalization about the whole subject?
.. I dare say that the NSA's work on Linux has resulted in quite a secure operating system, were one to use their distribution.
.. none whatsoever. No point arguing, it will not change 30 years of experience with reality. Every Sysadmin/Unix Guru/Linux type I've met, who was able to think in terms of "de-tar -> working system", was a guaranteed viable hire, while those who parrot the distro 'truths' are generally junior-qualified, at best, and will probably need to be watched..
I think its that latter, which is interesting, because it belies a weakness in one of Linux' primary strengths: poor brand control.
Let me explain: In fact, 'some' distributions of "Linux" are very insecure, and forked, and quite bogus when it comes to Enterprise computing.
However, we all know this doesn't apply to "All if Linux"
It is interesting, however, that the argument is being made on "Enterprise" buttons.. the "insecurity of some distributions of Linux" is being used as a straw-man to divert managers' attention away from the very powerful fact of Linux in the Enterprise: any Enterprise which rolls its own Linux is going to have a superlative installation of the operating system.
As I have stated before, to me "Enterprise Linux" means rolling your own, plain and simple. Dufus admins may complaing "but this is too hard for us poor lowly administrators", but as I cut my teeth in big-iron Unix computing environments in the 70's, 80's, 90's and naughties, I have seen one kind of sysadmin to treasure and one to 'train', and the difference is on whether they can, in fact, assemble their own working installation/build from scratch, on a virgin disk/hardware configuration.
Whether or not a 'roll your own' is even 'thinkable' in a circumstance of computing use is, to me (and every Enterprise I've worked for/in) the standard which defines "enterprise" versus "personal/artistic" computing.
So, attacking Linux on its 'brand reality' and making overly generalized statements on 'the whole Linux scene' is to me a curious tactic, overlooking entirely that the best OS install for Enterprise is one hand-assembled by competent systems administrators.
(No, I do not personally think there is any argument for "competent systems administrator" not to include in its definition 'able to assemble and consequently administer own OS build'
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
about google's server farm - one of the biggest linux server parks and argueable the most famous search engine with incredibly great overall-performance.
*rofl*
"linux" is a term which does describe the linux kernel, however "linux" as a term has also expanded in usage (right or wrong) to mean "the greater linux community" and "all things related to a common Gnu/Linux Distribution". In order to _productivly_ argue against a persons point of view it is better to first acknowledge the point of view that you are arguing against. and then prove it right or wrong baised upon the general idea of your own points. Which may or may not contain subjects that can have both a connotation and a denotation. But to simply shoot someone's point down by attempting to undercut or discredit the arguement they are making over some kind of semantic meta arguement, in the hopes of making them sound foolish, is just a cheap shot, and it does *not* address the issue at hand, or solve anything. Lets give each other the benefit of the doubt in these things in hopes to actually progress the debate rather than fight in the mud as it seems we are so quick to do these days.
Im not going to edit this comment for grammar or spelling nor am I going to check to make certain that all of my words have similar connotations or denotations. I am simply going to ask that you overlook any minor errors I have made in this post as hope that you can understand the underlying meaning of the point that I am trying to present to you here. If you are able to do so, we may be able to salvage a civil discussion from this mess, if not, its quite sad, but its your loss more than mine. GOOD DAY!
... bullshit! As well all the other major enterprises that have many thousants of deployed Linux boxen running business-critical software. These folks use Linux because 1) it's much more secure and securable than the competition, 2) it scales massively, 3) they can have their own fork (e.g. apply security patches, performance changes, etc. to the current production kernel version on their schedule, not some vendor's). Isn't it ironic how some of the uses of having your own "fork" improve scalability and security. 8-)
Let's not forget that it's far cheaper than the proprietary competition even for all of those benefits.
The management console on the switches use linux to configure the switch. So if it is so insecure, why would they use linux?
The company that I work for, is currently moving everything they can over to smaller faster machines running linux instead of the larger more expensive and slower Sun equipment.
Oracle
Cisco
Microsoft
Sun
Dell
What do they all have in common ?:
1. Hate Linux.
2. Hate open source.
3. Hate the fact that linux & open source are the choices today.
They all have in common that they are down wind of linux and open source.
While Linux and BSD will always run my boxes, Solaris 10 does have that special place right between my beer and the coffee table.
UNIX: A set of Linux-like operating systems that grew out of an original version written by some guys at a phone company
That's the more well known way to set it up. In the setup's that I'm running, I'm using Kerberos, OpenLDAP and OpenAFS which make also supports distributed ACL's, encrypted data transfers, readonly volume replication for redundancy, integrated backup, and a few other things that make for a very low maintence infrastructure.
You would think people in companies that size are doing their homework. Well, perhaps they did but business interests seem stronger than facts. However, spreading false claims like that is not very condusive to their reputations. Anyone wants to refute that FUD?
My guess, you work for Sun.
Maybe Sun has contributed to open standards, but open source (as in licensing)... fuck no.
More Microsoft-sponsored FUD.
First they buy off Sun, then they use some consortium nobody every heard of to denounce Linux. And of course Sun goes along because Schwartz and McNealy are still smarting because Linux is kicking Solaris's ass in the marketplace.
And EDS needs to recover from their Windows disaster in Britain where 80,000 PC's were crashed due to their stupidity.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Don't forget NMCI, the mother of all doomed projects.
Follow the money....it seems that these are the same people who object to anything in the hi-tech industry that doesn't involve money changing hands.
Agility is not the first thing that comes to mind with these Levianthans. Don't these companies have an Orwellian tendency to use anti-language to describe themselves? I would call these companies the "Entrenched Alliance" or the "Legacy Alliance". That would be closer to reality for these rotting hulks.
an ill wind that blows no good
I think this is mostly just that these companies are being sour grapes over that they can't scale their business plans on Linux.
is full of horsesh!t,
/ 15/cz_dl_0315linux.html
s ID=3295
this is exactly what makes Linux so great, you can install & run Linux on anything from imbedded devices as small as wristwatchs & PDAs to IBMs Big Blue, Linux can scale just fine if Big Blue can run it..
http://www.forbes.com/home/enterprisetech/2005/03
http://www.techworld.com/opsys/news/index.cfm?New
and secureing Linux is not a problem...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Big Iron:
BigTux Shows Linux Scales To 64-Way
My current test system has 16 CPUS:
zeus0:~ # tail -15 /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 15
vendor : GenuineIntel
arch : IA-64
family : Itanium 2
(yes, it is Itanium!! Anyone got a 16-way Opteron box? Anyone? Buhler? I thought not...)
And, of course, we all know about Linux clustering:
Beowulf Clusters
Single System Image Clusters for Linux
Ignoring the oddity of Oracle being in that group, none of the rest of the members actually make a scaleable Linux box, just ones that compete with them. The slant is obvious.
- Necron69
hm maybe someone should have told Apple (we are talking about GNU/Linux I think, so it applies) and IBM before they switched their marketing model. ;)
What do those "IT heavyweights" know about "agility"? They're giant, ancient monolithic dinosaurs, threatened by the vastly more agile little mammal Linux.
--
make install -not war
"Linux is Insecure,"
on the other hand Windows is full of self confidence.
Poor little linux.
The EDS are insincere, scaly reptiles.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Google uses FreeBSD not Linux
It is interesting that these large corporations belong to industry alliances that actively contradict the marketing messages that these corporations are trying to send. We know from other press reports that companies like Oracle and Cisco are actively supporting Linux strategies for themselves and their customers, but some organizations to which they belong seem to have different agendas. It seems that the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. It seems like the CEOs and their marketing departments need to get their act together on things like this.
Do they think those of us that represent large corps are just mindless drones making our decision based on their esteemed brilliance? They may be the industry experts, but lets face it, their conclusions are to support their own best interests not ours and rightfully so. On second thought, groups like this probably do have an impact on our the decision making process. Just not in the way they planned! P.S. Isn't Solaris 10 supposed to be open source? http://news.com.com/2100-7344_3-5364052.html
www.sunsource.net
www.opensolaris.org
www.openoffice.org
Sun supports Linux, too
What were you saying?
-- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
Basically what FOSS, particularly Linux means is the commoditization of software. No longer will the operating system cost nearly as much as the base model of the server itself. With FOSS, instead of paying out big bucks to a software company with huge margins you are going to pay for support. You can buy some support from the Linux distribution vendor. You can hire Linux support personnel or retrain your current support staff on Linux. And if you want your software customized its only a good contractor or in-house programmer away. The IT money will be spread around more in a way that benefits skilled IT workers over big software vendors.
This guy seems to think that it's not important to have a really good lock on your door, so long as nobody sees you hide the key under the doormat...
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
Like Coke telling us water is bad for us.
Does this kind of bad advertising work on GNU/Linux also. If it's just Linux then maybe the kernel developers would like to smile at such foolish advertising. I understand the kernel dudes are world class coders... ;)
The immature mind measures.
I'm no Linux hothead... don't hate it, like it, but prefer the BSDs myself, but I have to question the scalability accusation here because...
Isn't Google's server farm run on Linux?
Personally, my experience is that unixes (both AT&T Unix descendants and workalikes like Linux and the BSDs) tend to utilize multiple processors (both on the same motherboard and in clusters) far more effectively than any of the Windows variants (hmmm... Windows Forks?). Exactly what kind of scalability are they talking about here? Scalability of license fees for the vendor?
gp: Sun has contributed more to the open source community than any other corporation.
you: *scoffingly* Maybe Sun has contributed to open standards, but open source (as in licensing)... fuck no.
OpenOffice.Org (among other code) isn't open source?
Here's an example, http://www.openoffice.org/license.html. You tell me. Sun may suck, but they are definitely trying to 'give back'. (Probably less due to altruism as to pragmatism.)
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
It's true, Linux isn't really scalable.
And that's exactly why it's being used in several top SuperComputers/Clusters, including (but not limited to) NCSA's Tungsten, IBM BlueGene/L, LLNL's Thunder, BSC's MareNostrum and NASA/Ames' Columbia.
Count them, that's 4 out of the 5 fastest [publicly known] SuperComputing clusters.
If you look at EDS's 5y share price graph, something bad happened to it in 2002 and it hasn't really done all that great since.
I guess it's trying to drum up some free publicity -- and -- like Secunia making pronouncements that OS X is less secure than XP (despite the fact that its own published results indicate no such thing) it never hurts to loudly claim something contrary to common wisdom to get some press (or at least get Slashdotted).
Really don't know about the rest of the Alliance companies, which doesn't appear to include Oracle. I would be suprised if Oracle were a party to this as Oracle has in recent years become a big Linux cheerleader. Oracle pushes Linux over Solaris on a regular basis.
Think Deeply.
Actually, if you ever listen to Sun's blogging CEO talk, he pretty much "gets it." He's not an idiot, and he knows how to really throw jabs at Microsoft, IBM, HP, and Red Hat (he doesn't slam the Free Linux distributions, like Debian, BTW).
Ah yes, the dreaded fork. How many IT departments running Linux haven't experienced the horror of coming in one day and discovering that all their Linux boxes have started spontaneously forking in divergent ways? Suddenly, maintenance becomes a nightmare as what were one homogeneous installs are now wild and free.
Seriously, unless people's sysadmins are too stupid to tell the difference between different flavors when it comes time to install, where exactly is the problem with the existence of forks?
May we have an anti-Linux study that isn't funded by Microsoft, or an anti-Microsoft study that isn't funded by some open source advocacy group? It makes me wonder if these things are worth reading at all.
The last time Microsoft funded a study on scaling versus Red Hat Linux, it turned out that Microsoft had to measure throughput from 4 networks cards bound to 4 CPUs serving static pages through NetBEUI connections to Windows 9x clients, specifically, in order to come out on top.
-Fred
I guess that Henery Ford was right when he said you can have any color Model-T you want as long as it is black.
The Automobile industry is a case of nothing but "forks". Forks are good. When you come to a fork in the road pick it up!
As to KDE / GNOME issues: baloney. I can run GNOME programs on my KDE desktop all day long.
I was trying to debug a program that ran as a subprocess. The program would crash, so I attached a gdb session to the process to watch it. When the access violation happened, I tried to print the pointer which caused the crash. I was not trying to print the contents of the pointer, just the value the pointer contained. When I typed "print p", not only did the gdb session lock up, the entire kernel locked up, to the point that the computer wouldn't even respond to pings, or to the keyboard on the console.
Now, granted maybe the choice of RedHat as the distro was flawed (the customer requires it). Maybe there is some problem with using that particular version of Electric Fence with that particular version of gdb, after using that particular version of gcc to build the software, and a problem with that particular version of the kernel. But I'm sorry, Operating Systems 101 says "user programs must not crash the kernel." And as a software developer, I should not have to worry about it happening. I never had that kind of problem with Solaris, SunOS, HP/UX, AIX, or even A/UX, and certainly never with VAX/VMS. Why do I have the problem with user programs crashing the kernel in Linux, MacOS X, and Windows?
If Linux is going to be the "secure, reliable" standard in the future, it's going to have to stop being prone to these kinds of problems. The applications that support Linux are going to have to be built with more discipline, and rigidly and thoroughly tested. Why would a utility like "up2date" need to be "patched" since it's been around so long? Why are there "security holes" in ssh? Why is it a requirement to sign on to an endless daily stream of patches to be applied to so many critical parts of an operating system?
At any rate, the bloom is off the Linux rose for me, I've been touting it as a valid alternative for Windows, and I will continue to do so, but with caveats and with less enthusiasm. I also fully expect to be moderated "Troll" or "Flamebait" which bothers me not in the least.
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
Actually, out of that list Oracle really doesn't care. As long as a platform has the features to support their products and the demand is there for them Oracle is happy.
.technomancer
The claims can be easily disproven. Unfortunately, while companies enjoy First Amendment protections, they are virtually immune to slander/libel. A pity, as there'd otherwise likely be enough money to be made from such a suit to keep every Linux user and developer fed and housed for the rest of their lives.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
These entrenched companies, led by Microsoft, have a particular blind spot when it comes to recognizing the damage they are doing to their own reputations and public image by continually and obviously lying to the public.
Microsoft has already damaged their reputation to the point that MOST IT professionals understand that anything MS says to them is most likely a lie. They may buy MS products for other compelling reasons, but always with the understanding that MS is a sneaky company.
Aren't they apprehensive, even a little, of having NO goodwill among their customers? If the technology competitive landscape changes (eg: the power of the monopoly weakens) their customers will be eager to jump ship.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
Your sig's got a superfluous comma.
"Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens."
"Quite honestly, in the notion of costs, as we look at what we are structuring with our alliance partners, we are not seeing a compelling cost advantage that would lend us towards Linux -- given the other things I have mentioned" Oh man I just love that "Quite Honestly" at the beginning of that sentence.
EDS solutions are costly, always almost run over budget and time constraints, don't do what they're meant to, fall over when trying to do what EDS say they're capable of and don't scale.
:o/
Almost every government contract EDS attempted in the UK has gone tits up, it's normally the death knell for a public sector project when EDS wins.
I am NaN
We must warn them before it's too late! Thanks Oracle!!
If there is one misconception about GNU/Linux that should be easily buried it is that GNU/Linux will fork into incompatible variants as Unix did. This ignores four very import points.
1) Unix forked in large part because every vendor had their own proprietary hardware which required that every application be ported and tested on each platform and that end uses had to buy and support the applications that they used on each flavor of Unix that they used. For better or worse, there are essentially only three Enterprise ISA's now for Linux, x86-32, x86-64 and Power. Instead of splintering, in two or three years, there will be only two, X86-64 and Power. Applications that run on one Vendors GNU/Linux/x86-64 box will run on every vendors box.
2) Unix vendors introduced unique product differentiation and because the source was not licensed under the GPL, each vendor was forced to implement features their own way, usually in a way that was incompatible with every other vendors implementation. Because GNU/Linux software is licensed under the GPL, that simply can't happen. If one vendor has a feature, they can all have it, and since it is the same source, it will run the same way.
3) This is a corallary to point 2, but in the past, not only did all Unix vendors have their own window system, they didn't support the other systems, so if you had a Motif application, it wouldn't run on a Sun system unless you bundled Motif with your app. In Linux, if you install all the window system toolkits, and given the cost of disks and memorythere is no reason not to, every windowing application you buy will run. In addition, since Linux is Unix, in the Enterprise, there is no real reason to install desktop apps on the client. Install them on App servers, and make them available to clients using NFS. This is vastly preferable to the Windows install everywhere approach.
4)Finally, if it were not enough that GNU/Linux/x86-64 is becoming a single platform, a huge number of Enterprise applications are written in Java so underlying architectural differences simply don't matter anyway.
In summary, the Linux will fragment like Unix did is a truly stupid argument that ignores that fact the Linux bears no similarity to traditional Unix other than supporting the same API's.
I was high on my Linux administrative powers and I had gotten the munchies. After preparing myself a bowl of Cocoa Penguin-Puffs in the kitchen, I opened the silverware drawer and saw something truely amazing. There it was, a knife and spoon forking. It blew my mind.
Since that experience, I've swore off compiling my own kernel.
the Agility Alliance, which includes IT heavyweights EDS, Oracle, Cisco, Microsoft, Sun, Dell and EMC.
Trust us, youz don' wanna use Linux, or else YOUZ MIGHT FIND YA SECURIDY SEVEEEALY THREATENED. Aight? Capisce? Good. I'm glad we seem ta have come to a undastandin' hea.
..."circling the wagons"?
Actually, I was trying to be Insightful, not Funny.
Suppose these name-brand purveyors of enterprise solutions were right. Who are they talking to anyway? I aint the bank of america or general motors. god hasten the day I need hugely redundant server farms and lightning fast SQL service. I know because I have done it that it is possible to transition a complex realtime system with SQL usage, threads and forks from, for instance, a solaris platform to a Red Hat linux platform...so I doubt like hell it could be that hard to go the other way unless I had a stupid system design based on linux hacks.
What I know is that the next Google or Amazon is at least as likely to start in a garage as it is in the chilled and cavernous server rooms of a large corporation. All the arguments, right or wrong about TCO and scalability don't cut it with a guy who has almost $2500 in his budget for "servers"...gimme linux NOW and ask me next year if I need Cadillac Computing Configurations...scalability is the LAST problem you solve. Cost of entry is the FIRST problem.
BTW, haven't these guys at Agility Aliance noticed how much press Google gets for its massively scaled production systems? How much work did EDS do for google?
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
"..until McNealy (Scott McNealy, chief executive of Sun) finally announced he won the battle and had the one surviving Unix out there"
I am sure HP and IBM would disagree!
Quick, somebody tell Google that Linux doesn't scale so that they can switch to Windows! It would also be a good idea to notify Amazon of the same thing.
Google uses FreeBSD not Linux
;
From the slashdot interview here:
Craig Silverstein answers your Google questions
3) As a market leader...
by Marx_Mrvelous
It's well known that you use Linux in your mega clusters. I was wondering if you have ever been approached by Microsoft, Sun, or HP in an effort to switch to their proprietary OSes.
I can't imagine that you haven't. It must have been a huge decision to invest in one technology, so are you satisfied with what you have?
Craig:
We have been approached by several vendors. However, the advantages of Linux for us are pretty strong: It's an environment our developers tend to be familiar with, it offers unsurpassed tech support (we usually talk directly to the author of a piece of code when we're having problems with it), and it's cheap -- an important consideration when you have over 10,000 computers.
I think Linux works here as well as it does because of our technology culture. Our engineers feel comfortable being a partner in debugging kernel problems. For companies that would like to be able to give bug reports like, "Our network is slow" and have someone else take things over from there, Linux probably is not yet the ideal choice.
There's also a question of "Why Linux rather than FreeBSD?" or another free unix-like OS. We're not really religious about this issue. We used Linux -- as well as other, proprietary Unix variants -- when still at Stanford and were happy with it. My guess is if we had used a different open-source, unix-like operating system, we would have been happy with that as well. We're pretty pragmatic about using what works well for us.
You are corrected.
Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.
EDS, Oracle, Cisco, Microsoft, Sun, Dell and EMC
0 24 3&tid=198&tid=99&tid=126
Wasn't it EDS the large corporation that allowed 60,000 or so computers to crash in the UK gouvernment because they didn't do the required Windows Update awhile back... also see:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/01/172
Kinda makes you wonder if they are fit to comment on this sort of thing.
Microsoft says Linux sucks? Say it ain't so... Could it be that they are in DIRECT compatition with them... News at 11... according to MS the TOC is also higher on linux nm linux is FREE... yadda yadda support... ever try to get MS support or any real support? Oh look dell is next how appropiate...
Dell, ok they aren't the ones to really comment either. They are so in MS pocket it just isn't funny. Dell is basically just a dilivery service for Intel and MS. They think Linux is no good either eh... well go figure. They also say AMD is no good. Well we all know that is true. They are much slower, more expensive, and consume more energy... oh wait...
Oracle... all I know is they make DBMS systems. While a good portion of their systems probably run on some flavor of unix/linux/bsd/vms/etc... all the clients (ie buisness) will be Windows, which is MS, which is probably 80-90% of their buisness, so again go figure. (I may be full of crap on this one, I am just making stuff up now...:)
Cisco... don't they make networks and cables and such? wtf does their opinion matter about linux and its scaleability and security... What OS do they use. How SPECIFIC is it? how USELESS would it be to a general user... so who cares what Cisco says.
Sun. Well much like microsoft they make their own OS and systems.... so yeah direct compitition may say the other guys product sucks... Everyone go out and buy Solarius NOW! right....
EMC? who the f#@k are EMC? Ok I googled them, and if it is the same one as www.emc.com then I still don't know wtf they do! Though by the looks of it they dabble in a bit of everything corporate or enterprise (Much like EDS, btw whats with 3 letter names starting with "E" anyway). So maybe they might be able to make a semi useful comment. Then again Bah! Never heard of 'em so who cares!
In conclusion: This is a stupid statement and/or article to make. News is "supposed" to be unbiased. To make a big anouncement, to discover, that linux is not scaleable nor secure, is hardly believable (true or not) if it comes from the mouth of those that are in direct compitition, have a lot to gain or lose by the addmission. In other words, Lame.
and no I didn't RTFA.
My 2 cents, enjoy!
DarthVain
http://www.eds.com/services/casestudies/eds_instan t.aspx
EDS claims here that linux provides security unavailable elsewhere. Am I missing something?
I use Linux on a regular basis across many many machines of different sizes. Their maybe some truth in the article saying that Linux does not scale well. Firstly the whole thing of security is over rated. It is a corporate fudge factor, things are as secure as the apps that you use and you make your system. Linux does have a strange threading model but it works and does 99% of jobs with out issues.
I run linux on SMP boxes ( more than 8 processors a machine) and their are some problems. Usually with network device drivers or some watchdog card. But otherwise it works. The most important thing is to learn how to get the job done.
I have not used Solaris 10 thus I don't know what the new features are. The closed UNIX systems "seem" more robust because they sell the hardware with the software and ( example AIX with IBM POWER boxes ) and they have some major, major, major testing.
Now the article says using Linux on mainframes is concering, well it sure is. Because why pay for a iSeries OS/400 license when Linux runs on the box rock solid. Linux on iSeries is amazing, it is a piece of art in itself.
This was nothing but some technical jargon by soem companies that have outdated security procedures and they don't even have any facts. This is not news this is gossip.
Also another thing Linux is a far more versatile system than people acknowledge it to be.
cat Windows_Security_Report.txt | sed s/Windows/Linux/ > Linux_Security_Report.txt
That is about the only explanation that I can think of...
FWIW Rick Inatome was a/the Computer City founder Henochowicz and Keith were the names of CompUS(l)A(ve)
Bad Panda! No Bamboo for you! In matters of importance ACs will not be responded to. Want to say something critical,OK
I am just amazed that an industry alliance group with both Sun and MicroSoft in it would have reservations about Linux.
I guess we should feel reassured that they have only our best interests heart.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
No SCO? I think I feel cheated of the full deck-is-stacked experience.
If the fork rejoins in an arc, shouldn't it then be a spoon?
If it cuts clear and the line ends and the fork becomes the line, shouldn't it then be a knife?
And what's so bad about forks? Is it as though Microsoft hasn't forked up everything already? Every patch and pack might as well be a new kernel for all the incompatibilities between one state and another.
Nope, there's no such thing as scalable *nix. Nope. None whatsoever. Just ask IBM. Or... maybe not. Sun? No, wrong people to ask about scalable *nix. Oh, just Linux is not scalable... Maybe it's just that Linux is not totally in their hands where they can control every aspect and thus every dime you get charged for the support contracts? No, it couldn't be that.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
Good article from all the way back in 2004 regarding where this is actually pointed. http://www.crn.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=510 00391&flatPage=true
e x.html. Guess not.
m l
s p
Would Sun rather see Linux go away? Sure, but they also believe in it enough to sell it. http://www.sun.com/servers/entry/v20z/index.jsp
These are quotes directly from they guy heading up EDS's strategic alliances. Not from members of the strategic alliance - has anyone asked Ellison if he thinks Linux is insecure, prone to unfriendly forking? Guess not. http://www.oracle.com/events/unbreakablelinux/ind
Cisco? Well lets see they have linux running on some of their hardware, and apparently its good enough for their engineers to run http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2005/0216cislinux.ht
So lets round out the list...
EMC - http://www.emc.com/products/systems/linux/index.j
Dell - http://linux.dell.com/
Microsoft - http://www.mslinux.org/ Err, umm - ok maybe not.
http://windows.scares.us
That EDS is a "Microsoft Partner" (Windows whores) and they haven't even managed to impelement single-sign-on for all the apps on their corporate network yet. And Windows has really taken them a long way with that US Navy contract. Maybe if they'd gone with a UNIX based solution, they wouldn't be years late and unpaid for that thing...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Maybe they should ask Google how Insecure and Unscalable Linux is.
They say linux doesn't scale well. SGI has Linux systems with 256 cpus in a node. http://www.sgi.com/products/servers/altix/ Microsoft is only now getting a cluster version of their OS http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/0 3/04/2134229&tid=201&tid=231&tid=156
Mooooo. Mutherfscker
would highly resent having to replace all it's fine work on NMCI with a new technology. Even if it would be an improvement.
-- Improve Windows - Buy a Mac!
touché
Perhaps what they said was that the cost for support contracts for Linux aren't increasing exponentially per annum, but there was a typo in the interview notes and it came out as "Linux doesn't scale".
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
this is subtle but interesting detail. Maybe because that socalled "agile alliance" in fact started using Oracle RAC thingies on Linux ;-)
Oracle actually is in the Agility Alliance even though the article does not mention it. That is why it is in the snippet; the OP actually did a bit of research
There are two kinds of sysadmins: paranoids and losers. I'm both kinds.
Cisco.. Dell.. Microsoft.. Oracle.. EDS!
:-))
These guys epitomize the "steamroll iteration N+.001 to the suck^H^H^H^Hcustomers for big bucks and do it again next year" business plan. They couldn't innovate their way out of the stone age.
And they call themselves AGILITY alliance, "solution for the Agile business"!?!
Aah, yeees, it's the Rational RUP thing again: we can't make it work for us, that's why we can tell you how to do it right
I better run into the datacenter and unplug all the Linux-powered EMC control stations and NAS heads we just bought! And they told us that they take security seriously! LIARS!
Timeo idiotikOS et dona ferentes
Get nursie to increase the dose!
Oracle is not in the actual linked article.
Oracle is an Agility Alliance partner, though. You could have checked this easily.
Thank you for enlightening us people who never RTFA.
Windows apps may look the same but they do not work the same. Because they DO look the same
The cure is the HTTP browser interface, which luckily (if not miraculously) captures a level of UI that most users can handle and which is somewhat consistent (despite the best attempts by some page designers and web designers to break out).
I think Oracle is worried Linux might set the wrong precedent. Once people have switched to Linux and against all odds are happy with it, they might get it in their heads to try and switch (or do new developments) on PostgresSQL/MySQL/one of the other open databases. As many Oracle users don't actually need all the features that Oracle provides (but still have to pay for them) such a switch could seriously hurt Oracle's pocket book. Even if it doesn't threaten the high end of the market per se.
Surely Microsoft would feel ashamed of stating something like that? Considering that Windows won't run for much longer than a couple of days on a uniprocessor PC while just having to keep explorer running, it's funny that they are trying to attack Linux on SMP platforms. But then again, M$ is the one with the "Copyright 1981.." lines all over their binaries. Same for Sun, whose screenshots boldly display KDE and a host of other interfaces commonly associated with Linux. What's really disturbing is not that they're calling the competition bad but that they're doing it while at the same time relying on the system they're just attacking.
Well that's great, that's just fuckin' great man. Now what the fuck are we supposed to do? We're in some real pretty shit now man... That's it man, game over man, game over! What the fuck are we gonna do now? What are we gonna do?
Maybe we could build a fire, sing a couple of songs, huh? Why don't we try that?
668: Neighbour of the Beast
Thank you Agility Alliance. You are spot-on!
Proof: the world's largest supercomputers are based upon Dell and Sun hardware, run Windows and Solaris, and are backed by EMC storage. Their deployment and operation flawlessly managed by EDS.
You Linux weenies just ignore the facts.
And besides, I've found that KDE isn't exactly the most stable GUI in the world. I recently loaded SUSE 8.0 Pro on a pc...it didn't recognize my mouse, so I changed it to a ps2 mouse and rebooted. After accepting the driver, SUSE gracefully shut down the GUI and refused to load KDE again...even when I tried to manually start it from the shell.
Mercy was given to me by Christ...I must give the same to others.
Large enterprises shouldn't use Windows, because it isn't secure enough, has scalability problems, and is only available in one flavor, according to slashdot user arodland, which includes such IT heavyweights as me.
Linux can run on anything from a Zaurus or a TiVo all the way up to an IBM mainframe, and well. I'd have to call that pretty scalable.
Just because people say something it dosn't make it correct .
Linux is a kernel not a name for a full OS , xerox is a company not a copying machine , hover is a company not an alternat word for vacume.
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
They all have something to gain by assaulting OSS.
SIG
Those in the know, know.
Oh Please. More 'Security through Obscurity' FUD. I work in a data center with about 8000 Linux server and around 200 Windows servers. The windows boxes get hacked 3 times more often than the Linux boxes. Of course these are just web servers. We all know the real hackers are going after desktops and cracking your pron collection. right?
UNIX: A set of Linux-like operating systems that grew out of an original version written by some guys at a phone company
which includes IT heavyweights EDS, Oracle, Cisco, Microsoft, Sun, Dell and EMC. .
EDS: Some company I've never heard of, but am quite sure noone gives a shit about.
Oracle: That company that has that database that is getting beat by that...mySQL...thing, you know, that's...not scalable and all.
Cisco: The people that haven't meant shit since the '90s!
Microsoft:
Sun: One word: Solaris.
Dell: They sell Windows PCs, what do you expect?
EMC: Some other company I've never heard of that I'm sure noone has cared about since the mid-80s or so.
As soon as the phrase "best of breed" appears in an article...
I know everything in the article is bullsh*t, remincient of late-90's IT-bull-speak.
I got so excited over that that I've pissed my pants!
>>I think if people got together and rallied behind Linux in general (who cares what distro you use!), that we could see some really cool things happen.
Oh for fuck's sakes!
Dream on sucker!
I work as an administrator for EDS and we are using Linux for some of our mission critical services.
This amuses me, because I work for one of the aforementioned companies and I just finished writing a Linux-based tool which should help us out immensely.
It sounds like another smear campaign. It sounds to me like the ones that used to be the big boys are now throwing a fit, because they are not the big man on campus anymore. What do we expect? They are trying to save their reputations and sources of income. They obviously see Linux as a threat, otherwise, why bother??? The funny thing is that it is now taking an angry mob, to take on the Linus and his following.... People want Linux, it's apparent. Nobody said it was perfect. I think less than perfect is not so bad, when you look start weighing the possibilites and your wallet!
have shovel indentations in their faces and arrows sticking out if their backs.
We just went through an industry shakeout and lost about a trillion bucks because people weren't careful.
We prefer risk MANAGERS to risk takers, when we aren't totally risk averse.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
That's Jim Hassell, managing director of Sun Microsystems Australia.
Bold statement, Jim, I've got one for you: "You're wrong (and teh gay)", said Damian.
SEO Firefox Extension
...for its RDBMS development platform. See this article So I hardly think this applies to them.
Some people like and use Linux, others don't. No need to get religious about it.
I happen to use and like Linux, at the same time I can appriciate other people who have a different opinion.
I wouldn't want to be caught outdoors when it rains.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
because they can't yet toast 80K Linux desktops the way they managed with Windows in the UK pensions department.
I never mentioned anything about security through obscurity. I merely asserted that Windows is a much bigger target for hackers and it's flaws often make CNN headline news; unlike Linux. As such, problems appear more rampant than they really are compared to Linux, which largely gets a pass, both in terms of the amount of effort being put into exploiting it, and the amount of attention it gets when it is exploited.
I further asserted that this extra scruitiny that Windows gets has led to vast improvements in Windows security and stability. This process will continue. If Linux is ever to make it more mainstream, it too is going to have to go through this process. You are fooling yourself if you think it has even been remoted tested the way Windows has.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
are just handing out a forking pile of forking FUD!
I see three possibilities for the article's glaring errors - either the author of the article left out lots of insightfull answers from Robb Rasmussen, or the author didn't ask many questions, or Robb Rasmussen can't connect the dots.
"does not consider Linux to be a suitable operating system for the largest of enterprise customers because the open source operating system has issues with security, scalability and the possibility of forking."
Linux's security track record compares quite favorably or at least on par with Solaris, AIX, True65, even BSD. Oh, and yes, it puts windows security to shame, but then, doesn't everything?
Linux's scaleablity is on par with other Unixes, and of course far past windows what windows tries to pass of as 'scalability'. Cisco, for example, is moving to linux due to its superior scaling qualities.
As for the forking 'issue', god forbid that people should try new things. That would *never* happen in the windows OSes, or Solaris. Apparently Rasmussen thinks we must fear all new things or he doesn't have the slightest clue as to what forking is. So far it seems that the articles errors are mostly due to Rasmussen's lack of basic industry grasp
"We see some of the same things occurring that did to Unix -- it could splinter into many different types of languages."
In any context, this statement is just plain stupid.
"Also, we are somewhat cautious about what happened with Unix - it splintered into eight applications -- until McNealy (Scott McNealy, chief executive of Sun) finally announced he won the battle and had the one surviving Unix out there"
At this point, it clear this guy is totally ignorant of the current landscape.
Final verdict - the article's author could have asked more thoughtfull questions, but probably would have gotten either dead air, or answers even more foolish sounding that the above statements.
Is that like the Superfriends?
"Agility powers...ACTIVATE!"
...and it also, erm, eats into our profits. So, um, don't use Linux because, it's evil, eeeeeeeevil!
Proverbs 21:19
He means that he, as a non risk taker, benefitted from the risks taken by others...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Yeah, large enterprises should instead continue on spending tons of money on (usually overpriced) stuff from IT heavyweights EDS, Oracle, Cisco, Microsoft, Sun, Dell and EMC.
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=www.oracl e.com
The story prior to this is about one of the largest (if not the largest) and fastest-grown server farm installations in the world, and it's all Linux. And, IIRC, it doesn't contain anything from "EDS, Oracle, Cisco, Microsoft, Sun, Dell and EMC."
Within the above companies, I know that some at least use Linux or linux/BSD-derived products within their own.
Cisco is a good example, they make Linksys products which I believe are known to use such iptables or something similar?
Anyone out there not know that google uses a massively parallel linux network? Preaching to the converted on slashdot again..
Bavarian Purity Law of Rice Krispie Squares: Rice Krispies, Marshmallows, Butter, Vanilla.
I'd say Linux is about as mainstream as it get for server. Don't beleive me? Look here <URL:http://news.netcraft.com/archives/web_server_ survey.html>
That is if Internet Exploder doesn't invite some truly devious shit into your box along the way and fry it.
UNIX: A set of Linux-like operating systems that grew out of an original version written by some guys at a phone company
Hi,
I am the Linux systems specialist at Welchs. yes...
the company that brings you that awesome purple grape juice. We are in the middle of an ambitious
ERP project migrating from a Mainframe/AS400 to a
Linux / Oracle RAC solution. We are running Linux Clusters and Oracle RAC. We've got connectivity to our EMC SAN. I've got a development, QA, and Production landscape. Here's our PROD landscape layout, 2 Oracle Database RAC Nodes, 4 application servers loadbalanced with F5 load balancers, and we seperated out the concurrent managers and have
2 concurrent managers (oracle cluster manager controls those nodes). Linux is highly scalable.
I'm also implementing Linux HA to deliver some
highly available filesystems to our cluster.
Look no further than freedesktop.org for proof of the progress that is being made.
Now KDE and GNOME may never standardize completely on look and feel, but the defaults should eventually be close enough that they are comfortable for anyone. In fact I don't see that as a problem as we've never had anyone complain about that here.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
...A large enterprise needs to be sure because it relates to securifying the environment...
Did that idiot actually say securifying? What is he, some kind of f**king hillbilly or something? I'm sorry, but I can't take advice from someone who promises to securify my network.
Proverbs 21:19
Fud, fud, glorious fud, Nothing quite like it for boiling the blood. So follow me, follow, down to the hollow And there let us wallow in glorious fud. http://members.aol.com/HippoPage/hippsong.htm#hipp osong/Hippo Song
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
If enough people say something, it sometimes does make it correct. That's why (at least in the US) people typically ask for a "Band-Aid" instead of the generic "adhesive bandage". Sure, there will always be the occasional word-nazi who will argue that they only carry Curad-brand adhesive bandages while you bleed all over their carpet, but most people will understand what you mean and help staunch the flow.
No, it means they are concerned about the fact that such an environment will be secure. Otherwise they'd have to be concerned about insecurity ...
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Just because people say something it dosn't make it correct .
Linux is a kernel not a name for a full OS , xerox is a company not a copying machine , hover is a company not an alternat word for vacume.
Quite correct, which is why you won't be upset when I point out the following mistakes in your reply:
dosn't
hover (should be Hoover)
alternat
vacume
Thank you, that is all.
"You're older than you've ever been, and now you're even older."
Well I'll keep my response simple If Linux is not secure and is unscalable then Microsoft is truely Fucked. Microsoft is as scalable as my big fat momma, shes to fat and bloated to move so where she was put and what she was designed for has to stay or you risk destruction of 1000 restarts. Great for a production environment microsoft 24/7 uptime yes, no problem after this restart! Linux is whatever you want regardless of forking you have what you want, when you want, where you want and theres no real deciding factor on where to stop but your own skill and knowledge. Microsoft goes further for those with deeper wallets, whos slowing technological development its not Linux thats for sure and who are the companies they look like an anti-Linux co-operative to me.
they'll have to port their search engines to Windows 2003 and Oracle immediately, since it cannot possibly work on Linux...
"A large enterprise needs to be sure because it relates to securifying [sic] the environment. We see some of the same things occurring that did to Unix -- it could splinter into many different types of languages. We are quite cautious about Linux and its deployment."
First off, "securifying?" WTF?
Second, I wasn't aware that Linux has become a language now. I'll have to learn this. Does it have a C-like syntax? Is Linux OO?
EDS->credibility--;
In 1968, Bill Gates said that Windows NT had UNIX in it, so who is calling the kettle black????
Open Source also makes for a good weapon against competitors. Open sourcing StarOffice, and now Solaris, was a strategic move by Sun.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Xerox is the original reason for the existance of FSF and GNU, but the reason for the existance of the GPL is no other than James Gosling.
This is just another shining example of how the encumbants will bind together to keep their market share. First: Form an alliance to dictate what customers 'need' not what they want. Second: Spread as much FUD as possible about those who threaten that market share.
Pay no attention to the OS behind the curtain.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
They lost credibility and showing the true face of the purpose they support.
> I never said KDE was a fork of GNOME or vice versa.
Gnome is a "baby-with-the-bathwater" level fork from KDE. I kind of expect athat they would have forked anyway over other issues (C/C++, how much to pattern after MS, etc.), but the split was caused by license issues.
hawk
First they ignore you.
Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you.
Then you win.
This sig is intentionally left blank
Hello Jonathan, when you get a moment could you ask McNealy to back-off Ballmers flacid member?
...but I haven't been able to see one actual good argument against what these companies are talking about out of the /. community. The best... "forking can be good for projects... sometimes."
::cough cough guaranteed binary compatibility cough and support cough::
Everybody here is just hinging on to the fact that MS was in that bunch, but no one offers a good counter argument.
I agree with them... Linux is great 'n all, but it's not enough for large enterprises.
Large enterprises should not use Windows because it is not secure enough, has scalability problems, and is controlled by a single vendor so it's not even *possible* to fork, should you need to.
Note that Dell and Oracle and Sun all have webpages describing their enterprise Linux support. If they were really concerned about Linux not being up to snuff, they probably shouldn't be offering it to their customers.
I've had RedHat7 running in my business for years. Its outside our firewall. Its been rebooted once in the last 2 years. Its never been jacked or hacked.
Conversely, in less that one minute, I plugged my mother-in-laws new computer in via ADSL and it had no less than 2 virus and 1 trojan. Just by connecting it to the wall...
/\/\icro/\/\uncher
Pedantry will get you everwhere. :)
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
Don't let your employees drive "cars" to work, they could show up in a "sedan", "coupe", or "subcompact". Some jokers might even try to arrive in work in an "SUV"!
Stay away from "pencils". You start out on a #2, but the wide array of options will leave your employees wondering if they should be using a #6B or a #9H to fill out their weekly status report.
"Even so, Linux clearly is by far the top choice for high-performance computing. Meuer reckons Linux powers 301 of the 500 top machines, compared to 189 on Unix, two on FreeBSD, a Unix variant, and one on Microsoft's Windows."
/ 15/cz_dl_0315linux.html
Hot of the press, argue that bitch.
http://www.forbes.com/home/enterprisetech/2005/03
I am typing this as I walk into the data center and unplug our cisc enterprise fiber switches and Cisco Intrusion detection systems....
-- You can be a geeklord too
MS - Given. Competition
SUN - Given. Competition with a very similar OS
Oracle has been a big proponent of Linux as long as it has been feasible. To Oracle the OS is irrelevant, but Uncle Larry would really like your money to come to him and not Bill. IIRC, Oracle has contributed a lot of real programming to the scalability and clustering ability of [Red Hat] linux to advance their own products (such as RAC).
Dell - this one confuses me. Dell sells HARDWARE - who cares what OS is installed, right? <tinfoil> Unless Michael Dell has an incentive for Windows to succeed because they get discounts and kickbacks for the OS??? </tinfoil>
EDS - not enough insight to comment.
CISCO - <tinfoil> Cisco would only care on the assumption that Linux is inherently more secure than Windows, so that would reduce the market for Cisco security products. </tinfoil>.
EMC - You sell storage solutions. Why do you care? Other than once people are in the habit of letting the money flow for high-end hardware and by-the-tush-licensing, they are desensitized to the pain of paying for EMC hardware. With Linux in the equation, EMC becomes a bigger percent of the expense on paper, so its harder for IT to "sell" to accounting.
+1 Informative, -1 Flamebait = My $0.02
Why, oh why, didn't I take the Blue Pill?
... is bonch laughing at all of you who bit on this tired, old troll.
The funny thing is it seems that the moderators are in on the joke as well, having moderated this garbage as +5 insightful. For shame.
At the end of the day competition is good. Look what competition has done for microsoft in recent years. Many people dispute that linux/open source software has any affect on the big MS however its clearly not the case.
Over recent years windows has gone from 95 (super super crap) to 98 ( super crap ) to windows me ( ok but still crap) to XP on the desktop market. XP maybe slow in some situations but it works pretty well. There are still all the issues with worms and other issues with stupid users but at the end of the day windows has improved significantly and thats not going into the server market where its improved even more.
I personally see linux as a better server operating system than a desktop system even though I use it every day as my desktop at both work and home. Taking that into account its still a rock solid stable desktop (Slackware current) and I dont have any problems running it on my laptop.
So often there are big projects in the opensource community that fill real gaps but the lead programmers get to a point where they are happy and leave it at that. Its then taken up by other coders and the project is dead in few months or years because its become a mess, people have not realised how much time is involved in writing good efficient, secure code.. they got to the point where they are happy with it and so on..
One of the problems with where things are going with linux is that we will have redhat/suse and a few other distributions all running corporate level software.. and then there will be distributions like slackware, gentoo and others that will be used more in the technical enthusiest market. All of the different distributions have their place.. so do the different versions of windows.
At the end of the day you can have a secure user level windows box and linux / open source box with a web browser and you can almost bet that the windows box will be trojaned before the linux/open source one..
'"If you test Red Hat against Solaris 10 against whatever else... we would say that Solaris 10 beats it hands down on functionality and everything else," said Hassell."' You mean that somebody on Sun's payroll is telling their product is better? Sounds honest to me.
By that argument, Microsoft being in the BSA doesn't mean MS supports raiding corporations based on "tips", or that a "think tank" that is funded by MS isn't a MS mouthpiece.
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
Well, because your premise was wrong, it sort of invalidates the conclusion you made. But let's suppose you were talking about BSD/FreeBSD/NetBSD/OpenBSD - for some interesting reading on real forks, read this article about Why Linux Won't Fork.
And regardless, the vast majority of Windows apps DO look the same and use native widgets, have buttons in the same place, have the same menu items, use the same keyboard shortcuts, and can copy-paste damn near anything between each other.
Interesting, I was just reading that had KDE used CORBA for their architecture, as did Gnome (Bonobo/ORBit), you *would* be able to cut & paste between these window environments. No such luck, as, in hindsight, KDE while initially trying MICO, went with their own KParts. Might as well have been proprietary. However, it seems KDE is now rethinking this idea.
The Linux offerings don't come close, because they won't standardize.
SWT, which is what Eclipse uses, certainly comes close, as it relies on native widgets. Unfortunately, their GTK bindings apparently perfrom rather poorly, in comparison to the windows bindings. The Motif bindings are better, but it does illustrate the difficulty in supporting the various different GUI toolkits.
That is what the web is all about.
LOL
:)
Yes, because companies who buy a very expensive Oracle solution could just run their enterprise on MySQL..
LOL
You made my day, thanks.
If I were SAP etc I would be annoyed. SAP and Oracle are both pushing Linux to their customers. All those companies have dozens of other partners as well.
In fact if I were EDS I would be worried. In order to maintain 20% growth Microsoft will eventually have to move heavily into consulting (copying IBMs old form).
My guess is by speaking about Linux he immediately gets better press coverage.
Until you can show us documents written by Microsoft stating this, as the patent poster did with ORACLE...
No.
My mom uses linux. You cannot possibly put less time into learning linux, or windows, or anything else than she has. And she can use it just fine. This tells me that you aren't new, just stubborn and lazy. People who don't know about computers are just as confused by windows as they are by linux. People who have gotten used to windows and want to think they know "all about computers" expect linux to be windows. There is no point to linux if its just going to be windows, so give up on that and just keep using windows. Just stfu about it, we don't care if you use linux, or what you want linux to be.
The computer problems were pretty bad, but what really sucked about it is that Monday lasted four days!
anytimes EDS says something pretend you are hearing it in Ross Perot's voice.
problem solved!
-pyrrho
I think *this* is equivalent to "*this*", but without the quotes.
-pyrrho
You know, to give everyone -- especially the analysts and critics -- a little perspective on just how secure and scalable Linux is and why it /is/ so much more appropriate for the enterprise than Windows, I think we should coordinate a world-wide demonstration.
For just one day (hell, and hour would probably be sufficient), let's get everyone on the Internet who maintains a public DNS server, mail server and/or web server running on Linux to turn them off. Right? Let's turn off all of our "insecure, unscalable" Linux servers for an hour and see just how much these same critics can get done during that time.
What do you think would be their response? When there's no way to resolve most domain names into IP's, when there's no Google, no Yahoo, and no AOL, Earthlink, etc etc e-mail. Hell, even MSN Messenger won't work without proper DNS resolution. I suspect those same critics would change their tune rather quickly and reassess why most of the Internet isn't running on Windows -- because of the very same accusations, unfounded though they may be, that they're making about Linux.
OK whats funny is that microsoft is part of this panel, and so is sun. Half the talk in it sounded like Microsofts TCO speal. The second half was a crack against redhat and support for Sun's Linux Distro..
Just a bunch of FUD...
Yeah. Stick with closed systems. That'll keep you agile.
Thanks Agility Alliance!!
Insecure, unstable, and... it will make you go blind.
Example (Ok, I stole this story from Robin Williams)
Mother to Son (while frantically banging on the bathroom door)
WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN THERE!
Son to Mother
GOING BLIND!!!
Linux will make you go blind. It's also apparent that EDS is losing a truckload of business because their Linux strategy Sux Like A Hoover(tm). Will they be part of an IT shakeup like Wang, Apollo computer, DEC, Compaq, Data General, Control Data and so many others?
Forks. . . mutations . . . iterative evolution. . . Darwinian selection. . . cross-pollination.
Sounds like an excellent application of a well-proven model by nature.
You want operational stability? THAT IS WHAT DISTROS ARE FOR.
Distros are a layer above software evolution. Don't confuse operational desires (homeostasis) with a evolutionary desires (transistasis). You get both on different layers.
I worked on a product in the early 90's running on Unix. We supported a large number of different unixii, placing an enormous build, test, develop load that just should not have been there.
Our build script would test the version of unix for all sorts of bugs unique to each type (being system s/w, these bugs impacted us hugely). Our source and makefiles where littered with ifdefs to get around them on different systems.
We are well on the way to heading down the same path now. Release systems are different (.rpm?, .deb? etc), OS's are subtly different - system files move, boot scripts are organised differently.
Windows isn't perfect - there have been lots of changes as time moved on (e.g. registry, APIs, MSIs etc) but my app written for 9x still installs and runs on XP. Thats pretty impressive.
Forking is bad, bad, bad. It might not be the death of linux (there's always geeks like us who run it, and solid use cases in corporates) but its an impediment to development, to products, to consumer acceptance.
For example - I was just on a group where VIA were lambasted for only releasing some drivers for about a dozen varieties/versions/installers of linux. Cmon - thats a major effort and I take my hat off to them. But its no-where good enough to cover the broad scope that you need, and indeed my FC3 machine was not in the list.
Dont fork.
"We see some of the same things occurring that did to Unix -- it could splinter into many different types of languages. We are quite cautious about Linux and its deployment," said Rasmussen."
Languages?? WTF? They call themselves "industry heavyweights". I doubt we'll see Linux fork in Ruby or C#!
First we saw this talk with SCO, now with the rest of them. I must agree with parent - a bunch of losers *to* Linux.
google's machines all have this in their startup scripts:
/proc/sys/net/scalability /proc/sys/fs/scalability /proc/sys/vm/scalability /proc/sys/kernel/scalability
echo 0 >
echo 0 >
echo 0 >
echo 0 >
NT4, Win2K, XP - they all have incompatibilities with applications of the same kind and severity as different flavors of libc or glibc on Linux might have. Problem is, you usually cannot recompile your commercial app and link it against the upgraded OS if you have Windows. So with Windows, users can easily end up with a application that requires an obsoleted OS that the Microsoft no longer supports.
But this is run-of-the-mill stuff with Linux. Apps are patched and recompiled to run on newer distros all the time, and users do not need to wait for the vendor to do it.
Edith Keeler Must Die
Be specific.That would be IBM, Red Hat, SuSE/Novell, and I'm sure there are others.
Yet each of them is a "fork". Red Hat includes patches that SuSE doesn't. SuSE includes patches that Red Hat doesn't.
If the patches are deemed "good", then they will be merged to the main kernel and included in EVERYONE's distribution.
It's all about the GPL.Possibly. But only if you're following the bleeding edge development tree (what "enterprise" would do that?).
Rather, the forks are different approaches to solving a problem. Enterprises would NOT be deploying them in production systems (not without a damn good reason).
Enterprises would, instead, be deploying the stock kernel of whatever distribution they were using (or with Oracle approved patches for their Oracle system). They would NOT be downloading the -mm tree or the -ac tree and installing it in production.
But the patches from -mm and -ac DO get incorporated into Linus's tree when he so chooses (and deems appropriate).
Forks are only bad when software is free: because what one man can fork, another man can merge. It's proprietary licenses that are the real problem: they're what killed UNIX's popularity, because it was illegal for one organization to merge successful features from one branch into their own branch. Voila! Market fragmentation and vendor incompatabilities; all unreconcilled and, worse yet, irreconcilable.
So yes, in situations where it's illegal to merge code, then yes, forks are bad. That's not true with free software.
With free software, we can recover from forks quite well. The examples you've chosen may sound bad: but they aren't really forks at all. In programming, a fork is when the same codebase is modified in mutually incompatible ways, and two derivative copies distributed. The term derives from a "fork" in the road: where one road diverges into two paths.
KDE and Gnome aren't forks of the same project: they're examples of parallel development. They were both attempts to solve the same problem, and so they ended up similar. The original was licenced in a bad way, so people who cared about free software began a new project. Complaining about the difference between KDE and Gnome is like complaining about two public roads running a few yards apart: when one road started out as a toll road, and only stopped charging tolls after the public began building their own free road nearby. If people had been free to work on the original road, the situation would never have happened.
Open Office is an open-source re-write of a proprietary codebase. Again, it is not a fork of Microsoft Office: the coders never saw a line of Microsoft's code.
Firefox is a fork of Netscape: and it's proven more popular than Netscape. That's a good thing: since the codebase is free software, we can take all the popular features of Netscape that aren't in Firefox, and merge them in. If Netscape was more popular, we could do it the other way around.
Forks are a good way to determine what the public wants. Often, people can't articulate what they want: but they know what they don't like. So, fine, let 'em try stuff! If they don't like it, get rid of it. If they like it, keep it!
Forks are good, because it lets people try new things, and gives them the freedom to choose. Merges are even better, because they strip away all the unpopular choices, and leave Joe Average with something that the average guy likes and understand.
--
AC
In the future, when you copy text wholesale from an article from The Register, you might want to credit them.
Sean
... has been sacked. Obviously, the eWeek article, which I was at first unable to hit, bought the story of El Reg. My apologies.
Sean
Work is punishment for failing to procrastinate effectively.
Oh yeah, I would really want to take advice from EDS about what systems are scaleable. I mean look what Colorado got for our $200,000,000 in taxpayer money: --
Benefits plan assailed -- Lawsuit targets benefit system -- Benefits program hits predicted snags -- Loss of aid to poor feared -- Computer causing headache, heartache -- Computer upgrade in works -- Donate food, mayor urges -- Judge: Keep system running -- Company has other unhappy customers -- Computer glitch costly -- Food drives ramping up over weekend -- Pressure to go online -- Mixed results on rollout -- Living on the edge -- Glitch leaves poor out in cold -- Benefits system lawsuit revived -- Old system assisted payroll -- Woman desperate to get meds for son -- Needy could wait months for welfare benefits -- Federal report blasts state welfare backlog -- Benefits battle boiling -- Letter blasts benefits system -- Demand for food 'unprecedented' -- Consultant derides new benefit system -- Nursing home 'crisis' -- Counties faulted on benefits -- Mother deals with confusion on benefits -- Lawyers wrap up arguments on benefits system -- Judge: Clear backlog --
How odd that my new LinkSys (aka Cisco) WRT54G router uses Linux as its operating system. People appear to be pretty happy with this model, and it seems to be selling well. Given Microsoft's quality and security deficits, it will be a cold day in hell when I knowingly purchase *anything* that is running Windows Embedded or CE.
I have a theory that the real reason so many mega-corporations hate Linux is because with an open-source operating system, it must be more difficult to implement licensing and product activation type features than in Windows. In my opinion, this Registry crap that Microsoft came up with is mainly there for the benefit of companies that want the operating system to help secure their software.
Hold on. Before they run into trouble, I'd better go inform the Physics department .. and Google, and Yahoo and NASA, and -- oh, hold on. NASA's already in trouble .. but it's got nothing to do with Linux.
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
No, there is no indisputable point in your post, its your opinion. Your opinion is that linux is not as easy to use as windows. But what is easy for one person, isn't easy for someone else, so you can't claim anything to be indisputable facts.
If linux is less valuable to you because you would require time to be productive, then do not use it. There is no obligation involved here. Linux was written for the people who wrote it, and it serves them just fine. If other people benefit from that, great. If you don't, then go away. Whining about how people aren't making your perfect custom OS just for you, for free, because you want them to isn't going to help anyone.
Nobody cares what windows users want. Linux is for linux users. If you would like to be a linux user go right ahead. If you want free windows, hit up your local warez dood.
And finally, yes I truely don't care. I am not being defensive, I am telling you that your high and mighty opinion is still only that, opinion. You might think linux serves no purpose unless its exactly what you want, but plenty of people find it serving its purpose just fine. Its for those people, not you. And I am not from the community holding linux on its shoulders, I dislike linux and avoid it as best I can. I come from a unix background, and thus find linux to be ackward, nonsensical and poorly documented. But for mom's desktop, it beats the hell out of windows.
You mean, some of Linux's chief competitors think it's not very good?
I'm shocked, I tell you. Shocked.
For 3 years I have been installing linux about evey six months on a stand alone box dedicated to monitoring for the day I can make the switch to Linux. The box has changed as new generations of hardware appear. A very few apps keep me with Win2k but Mandrake Linux 10.1 is perfect for the sytems I recently set up for my wife and her 6 out of state sisters. I set them up with Open Office, email, a browser, IM client and even a few Windows games on Wine. The savings on my long distance paid for the computers. I tried this first with Windows but viruses, spyware and the propensity of their kids to install a dozen file swapping apps etc screwed the computers. Don't tell me to keep administrative priviiges to myself. A local person has to have them sometime and the kids always find out. So far Linux is a mystery to them and if they do figure it out, they will become tech support. Anyway, I see a lot about Linux for the power user hacker, but for me Linux is now perfectly suited for grandma's desktop.
All of us gathered here agree that Linux does not work into our business plans and cost us revenue. Our purpose today is to compose a report on why Linux has poor value. Ideas anyone? [man in the back with arm raised] Ohh..Ohh... Forking is bad!
The sense I get is that they only speak against companies trying to monetize open source as direct competition against them. For example, Sun openly competes against Red Hat's support business, but I've never heard Sun say anything negative about Debian, Gentoo, Slackware, etc. or FreeBSD, etc.
This is fair, IMO, because business is business when real money gets involved. Sun and Red Hat have been jabbing at each other for quite some time now. It's no different than Sun vs. HP or Sun vs. IBM. They are all after the same base of _paying_ customers, so they need to fling mud at eachother every so often. (No company is innocent in the mud-flinging, not even Red Hat)
-- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
Uuhh, like Windows 9x and Windows NT?
No. NT was intended only for businesses and servers. The consumer product was always 9x. With the introduction of XP, Microsoft has unified the codebase.
Anybody who says Windows is easier to use than Linux is simply wrong.
Look, I despise Windows, too. But even an objective examination of the ease of use between Windows and Linux has Windows far ahead, from widget consistency to copy-paste to app installation/uninstallation to system updates.
... members of the Horse, Cart and Manure-collection Guild have declared that cars, trucks and trains are too slow, do not travel very far, and are too unstable.
I know this reporter is going to stick with their technology just to be safe.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Now the spelling in your post is identicaly bad ;)
However I find it interesting that you have nothing to say about my point - that its a sad state of affairs when OS advocacy degenerates into endorsing violence and murder but have plenty to say on a preceived mistake on my part that was a tiny component of what I had to say.
... as much as I detest and despise our corporate masters and the mindless suit-clad lemmings that follow them, I loath and despise violent civil conflict even more. However, as the misdeeds of said corporate masters escalate, there will come a time when violent civil war is the lessor of two evils. Monanto poisoning the deep south and killing scores of Americans in the 1990s, not yet. The theft of thousands of people's retirements by the Billionaires of WorldCom, Enron, and the White House? Not yet, but getting closer perhaps, particularly when those tens of thousands find themselves homeless and ultimately dying as a result.
... may those days come long after I'm gone, or better yet, not at all.
Everything is degenerating in this manner. It appears to be a broader symptom of an escalation of business malpractice and outright malfeascance without consiquences, and a general consensus in the population that there is absolutely nothing anyone can do about it (within the "system").
I've heard everyone from my mother (who's 60+) to small children I've passed on the street make similiar comments. The undercurrent and consensus that is forming, at a subconscious level perhaps, is that the only way to effect change is going to require violence. So far, the cost of a violent uprising againt $favorite-powerful-jackass is greater than the perceived reward, or put another way, the pain of living with injustice the way it is is less than the pain involved in changing it. However, the latter remains constant while the former is increasing at a pretty good clip. At some point the two will be equal, and at some later point, the pain of living with the status quo will be greater than the pain of violent revolt. Sometime after that things will get very nasty indeed.
I only hope I never live to see that day
The mass starvation of most of the population because there is no social security, everyone's retirement has been pilfered, our constitutional protections are (completely) long gone, and there is no democratic process to ever reverse it, and monanto's production of seed grain is interrupted by a manufacturing hiccup? Probably
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
:D we all got owned
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
Don't get your panties all in a knot. LINUX will continue to exist as long as people like to use it. Companies that don't like it can't do a damn thing and they know it.
Companies like google and software like LINUX continue to exist because they exist not to compete with others but exist by itself and for it's users.
LINUX is DEAD! Long Live LINUX!
The article mentions they are teamed up to, among other things, compete for government contracts. Then they blast Linux for being unscalable and insecure.
I keep going back to look at this page: http://www.nsa.gov/selinux/
I wonder what the NSA would say to Linux being unscalable and insecure.
is that Oracle has a bunch of clueless people working on their Linux stuff. These people have much to learn about writing drivers for Linux. And yet they blame their poor scalability on Linux kernel. For example, they just figured out that they were using wrong type of Linux kernel on our database servers running Red Hat Linux six months after the servers are deployed to production. We had weekly kernel crashes on these Oracle servers until I questioned their choice of kernel.
I use Office 2000, which uses normal looking widgets. However, I have seen Office XP/2003, which uses the exact same widgets Windows has, but with some outlines drawn around them.
Visual Studio? The same. And it didn't even do it before Visual Studio 2003.
Internet Explorer? Here, you're either trolling or confused because Internet Explorer uses native Windows widgets.
Meanwhile, the vast majority of Windows apps all use the same native widgets. And by the way, even the apps that draw their own widgets aren't loading entire GUI libraries into memory to do it, like in the OSS world, which was another part of my point. Why do I have to load up four ways to manage button widgets in RAM just to get work done because people want "choice"? I just want to get my work done without losing all my memory to the reinvented (and reinvented, and reinvented) wheel.
http://www.google.com/search?q=+how+Insecure+and+U nscalable+Linux+is%3F&sourceid=mozilla-search&star t=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls =org.mozilla:en-US:official
Now, can someone ask Netcraft?
There's a huge fucking difference between some buttons getting little outlines drawn around them as opposed to TWO ENTIRE COMPETING GUI TOOLKITS that reimplement everything. On Windows, you're just overriding a freaking "Paint" event for the same widget.
I would disagree that it makes it correct , it makes it commenly accepted but that is nothing like correct use .
,i was mearly putting a counter argument so no reason to duck in with the spelling correction ( i know how badly i spell already)
to use a slight hyperbole , in the 16th centuary most of the world thought that this planet was flat and the sun moved across it , it was a commenly held thesis , the use of such terminolgy was commen but we know now it was a tinny bit inacurit
and to the grandparent , i was not insulting your idea so keep your boxers on
Basicaly any person with enough skill to make a rulling on the viability of linux in the enterprise market should be a person with the skill to diferentiate between a kernel and an OS.
Would you take health advice from a doctor who couldnt understand the difrence between your left arm and your left ventrical
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
Actually Windows 2000/XP kernel is pretty mutch the same old NT4.0 SP6 with additional support for USB devices (actually, if I'm not mistaken this is the only major change, since it allowed them to add 1394 and all sorts of additional mish-mash too). And taking into account how Microsoft fares with development - I would bet my money (let's say 50$) that Longhorn will still be ye good old NT 4.0++ (it's just that good :)).
;) (ok, it's not a typical case. But I hope it ilustrates my point)
As for 3.x and 9x - I wouldn't call them a kernel. Respective kernels STILL are good old MS-DOS there - just that the GUI layer incidentially adds not only API, but some memory management functionality as well.
And if we are discussing forking of Linux - how is the problem different (altough the reasons are different) - each distro still uses different libraries, 2.4 and 2.6 are hardly compatible and then of course comes the ultimate nightmare of admins - tracking the configuration approach for each of their 50-100 servers with different distros, vendor distros, etc. Linux may technologically be more superior (and I agree that in some ways it is), but this isn't transferred to user/administrator.
And as for advanced/scalability features - sure. If you are ready to be the second adopter of that specific implementation with patch or diff to kernel that doesn't supports some specific hardware you need three major versions ago
But what the heck did Larry Ellison smoke this morning? Larry, go read your own web page, look which platform makes the fastest growth for you at the moment, and think it over again.
Or EMC - why did you buy VMware to begin with, if you think that the ESX server base OS does not scale, and is insecure? Oh you added your own patches? Okay - where is the source code, and how about forks?
Hey Cisco, do you have a problem with Asterisk in the upcoming VoIP hype?
And Sun... well they advertise SUSE Linux and Red Hat Linux on their web page, but I didn't expect these free riders to actually *support* Linux. These folks turn any discussion from Linux as a teaser to Slowaris x86 within a wink of the eye. The fork discussion is particularly interesting. As far as I remember, it was not Sun Microsystems who prevented the UNIX fork from happening in the 80s and 90s, despite all the XPG4's, SPEC1170's, Single UNIX Specifications and all these other marketing smoke grenades. "McNealy ... finally announced he won the battle and had the one surviving Unix out there." Scott, go sleep again. Or get sued by SCO because they allegedly own Unix.
Scalability problems is a nice thing. Go read the top500.org list, see what OSses are at the top, and come back then. Hint: it's not Microsoft Windows, and it's not Solaris, especially not the system on rank 2 (has anybody ever seen a 10000+ CPU cluster even *boot* Sloaris or Windows?). The top 10 were not built by EDS, EMC or anybody else on this list. There is *one* Windows system on the list - the entry is 15 months old and fell from rank 84 to 194 within one year. Apparently, nobody dared to run another Windows HPC benchmark ever since. The fastest Sun machine is on rank 31, and guess what, it's not an UltraSPARC box, and did it run Solaris? So far for scalability. BTW: The fastest UltraSPARC machine is on rank 32, and it's not a Sun box, but from Fujitsu-Siemens. Watch your six, there is an Alpha machine behind you!
They assume their customers are deaf, dumb, and blind. Disgusting.
open (SIG, "</dev/zero"); $sig = <SIG>; close SIG;
Of course we should believe the FUD!!!
Google's ever expanding server farm obviously isn't and example of scalability.
Move along... Nothing to see here! Move along...
Your have the Linux Kernel sources as hosted by kernel.org Then with each new release come a bunch of forks, such as.d ened-sources
the redhat kernel
love-sources
ac-sources
ck-sources
har
mm-sources
usermode-sources
Too many to list.
Get a free ipod.
Should put Cisco in an interesting position, since John Chambers declared they are going to be a Chinese company.
The Chinese are pretty big on Linux because they don't like to pay royalties or licenses to non Chinese corporations so they don't much want Microsoft controlling their IT infrastructure in the long run.
Unless you live in China Cisco is very deserving of a boycott because they are selling themselves and the rest of the world down the river by moving all of their capital and IP to China. Chambers also sounds especially stupid in his willingness to do whatever the Chinese tell him to do. You have to wonder exactly at what point America's business leaders transitioned from being some of the best and most ruthless competitors in the world to being complete and utter suckers. Guess thats what dangling cheap oppressed labor, and a rapidly growing potentially giant market in front of them does. American business men will sell their mother to the devil for those two things.
"China will become the IT centre of the world and we can have a healthy discussion about whether that's in 2020 or 2040."
"What we're trying to do is outline an entire strategy of becoming a Chinese company," Chambers said."
"Our contract manufacturers, at my request, and candidly at the request of the leaders in your country, began to move our contract manufacturers here to China," Chambers said.
@de_machina
right?
Mod parent up. This is why the "UNIX went all to hell, and so will Linux" argument falls apart.
I pity the foo that isn't metasyntactic
On the first point, I will admit that I find it very furstrating that I cannot cut and paste properly when I am stuck using windows. But that's just because I am used to doing it a certain way, so the windows way seems awkward and counter-intuitive. That's not proof that windows is harder.
Second point, I don't care about linux replacing windows. Neither do the people writing linux. That's a dream of lonely dorks that circle jerk on slashdot all day, and it will never come true. And you don't want linux to be better, you want linux to be more like windows, and hence worse.
I am not telling you that you are wrong. I am telling you that I DO NOT CARE IF YOU DON'T LIKE LINUX. Which part of this is hard to understand. The universe does not revolve around you, there is no desire to spend hours and hours working hard to provide you with what you consider the perfect OS for free. If you don't like linux, don't use it. Plain and simple. Linux has no UI features, random GUI applications do, they have nothing to do with linux. And again, I have no linux-is-great pitchfork. I do not like linux. I certainly dislike it less than windows, but its worse than every other Unix system I've used, except unixware, and hp-ux. I am simply telling you the facts, linux is developed by linux users, for linux users. If you do not like what linux is, then nobody who matters cares, and nobody is willing to make linux crappier for you.
You see what you are not. Pick a term that describes what you are not, but people want. Then name yourself that. Never mind you arent that.
Works for govt too, look at the names of some of the bills being passed.
emt 377 emt 4
.... An 'independant' group of linux nerds (lets give them a name like: information technology aliance; ITA for short) and get them to go around drafting reports about how windows ins't scaleable or cost effective and BSODS are really confusing and what kind of operating system has a screen of death anyway?
Windows is easier to use for alot of reasons. Monopoly is good for the end user in some cases. -MS's market share mean you can buy a window PC and do anything you want.(including getting the hell kicked out of your box b/c of virus/spyware/malware ect i said some not all cases) -Marketshare means in a company still has to have IT guys but some of thier workload gets distributed to knowledgeble but not technical members of the staff. Spending money is easier than learning. always has been always will be. Most computer users are Joe Internet and Windows does that admirably. any one can go grab a Windows box, but it's alot harder to just buy a Linux box. Accessories- I can buy any webcam,digital camera, printer,gadget, or thingmagig, five minutes after I get home it works, 95% of the time as soon as I plug it in. I know y'all will probably mod me down. If linux was as much better than windows as you hoped it would be more than a tiny toehold of the market.
I've been using Unix or Unix-like systems since Interactive Systems-1 on a PDP-11 back in 1979, so for me, Windows is still virtually unusable until you install Cygwin from RedHat, Mozilla and/or Firefox from mozilla.org, Java and Netbeans 4.0 from Sun and then it makes it into the barely usable category. For me, Fedora Core 3 now does everything better than Windows, and I haven't booted Windows on my desktop machine in ages. I still boot my laptop into Windows to run MS SQLServer which we use at work. If it were my choice, it would be Postgresql, but it isn't. In any event, I'm down to a single 'must have' MS app, and hopefully it will be 0 before the end of the year.
It's google applications that scales and works fast. From what I know they use linux just as you would in your basement - boot the server, put your services in init and hope it doesn't falls over too soon.
BTW google openly admits that their servers/nodes fail pretty constantly.
Maybe they should call themselves the Sour Grapes Club.
Games could be the most popular software on Windows, but they are irrelevant when it comes to the desktop experience. The desktop part of an OS currently provides the user with the ability to manage multiple applications and/or documents. Games violate this abstraction by taking over the entire computing interface.
Most games take ignore higher level OS functions in order to maximize performance. They use low level APIs to directly manage graphics. They also use special APIs to take advantage of hardware accelerated audio. I suspect they perform their own memory management as well. The hosting OS virtually disappears when the game is played.
[cough] you can run apache* on windows*...
*(some versions of)
Sure, Linux MIGHT fork. But Windows DOES become obsolete. I.e., you know with absolutely certainty that the version of Windows you use will no longer be supported by Microsoft in a couple of years.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
"And you don't want linux to be better, you want linux to be more like windows, and hence worse."
Again, you're not listening. I have made this pretty darned clear.
"The universe does not revolve around you, there is no desire to spend hours and hours working hard to provide you with what you consider the perfect OS for free.."
Again with the not listening. I'm talking about broader adoption of Linux, not me specifically and solely. "What's so hard to understand about that?!?!?! *fizzle fizzle grunt*" It's being offered to me for free, and I'm being told left and right to switch to it. Whether or not you personally want to do the work doesn't matter to me in the slightest. The people working on Linux, whether it's the kernel or with the distros, want Linux to be more user friendly and more broadly adopted.
"If you don't like linux, don't use it. Plain and simple."
You know, it's funny, you're telling me about how the universe revolves around me etc, yet you're sitting here telling me to shut up and live with it because you don't want to hear it.
"If you do not like what linux is, then nobody who matters cares, and nobody is willing to make linux crappier for you. "
Uh yeah. Again with the not listening. Okay, maybe you're not arguing with me because you like Linux, maybe it's just because you hate Microsoft. Whatever, it doesn't matter much. I'm the bad guy for suggesting improvements to Linux. Bad me. I should stfu and let the developers spin on their thumbs. Heh. I'm sooOOOoo sorry.
"Derp de derp."
There's no way there is agreement on this. Am I the only one who remembers Cisco's IT manager's words? http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/19/ 1529207&tid=163&tid=98
Windows 9x and Windows NT "forked" in the early 90's. MS hasn't devoted serious resources to the 9x codebase since Win 98. Virtually all of their new development has been on the NT codebase for many years now.
This is important because the real problem with forks is resource contention. Suppose there are 1000 competent Windows OS developers in the world. If Windows is forked then only a fraction of these developers will work on each branch. Neither fragment will be able to accomplish as much as the entire unified team.
Gnome and KDE are an excellent example. There are active development teams working on both systems, and there are application developers that have to choose one platform or the other. Neither desktop gets the full support of the community. I don't see how half the developers are going to be more than twice as productive in order to accelerate the rate of positive change for either desktop.
PS: Are you really complaining about the layout of the Start menu? I'm surprised that you managed to successfully install Linux if you can't figure out how to fix such a basic GUI element. I stumbled onto the Classic switch pretty quickly during my first session on XP.
Same EDS that had the whole state government of South Australia outsourced to them ... and guess which state government was flooded and crippled for a couple of days by the great email virus attacks a couple of years back?
Windows sure is scalable - I have never seen such large-scale virus and related email problems as I have in Windows-only shops, such as the one run by EDS in South Australia. Other states without such ludicrous IT set-ups survived much better (like us with our Linux-based email system).
"Agility Alliance" sounds like a meeting of dinosaurs trying to ban mammals. May they have as much success!
I am anarch of all I survey.
* is just a way of adding emphasis. It's usually equivalent to bolding, same as / is for italics and _ is underlining.
I can't imagine having your head that far up there can be comfortable. You are not talking about broader adoption of linux, you are talking about what you want. Trying to veil your demands behind vague "everyone thinks" claims doesn't change that fact. Broad adoption of linux is not what the developers of linux care about. So quit bitching about developers not doing what you want, when they never said they would. If I offer to kick you in the nuts for free, and you accept, that doesn't mean I want to hear about what shoes you think I should have worn, you were given what you were offered, nobody is forcing you to accept the offer.
I am not telling you to shutup and live with it because I don't want to hear it. I am telling you to shutup and not use it, because you are a rude, selfish fucktard with no appreciation for other people's time. Thousands of hours have been spent by people to make things they want to use. If you also want to use those things you may, but if you don't want to use them, you have no right to bitch and moan about how they aren't making THEIR programs serve YOUR needs. IT IS NOT FOR YOU. If you think redhat should do what you want, go talk to redhat. Bitching to the people who allow you to use their work is not welcome.
I am not doing this because I hate microsoft. I am doing this because I hate self-centered, greedy, whiney shitheads that insist on bitching about what they have been given for free. I am a programmer, I have released code I wrote under open source licenses, and I have had shitguzzlers like you bitch and moan about what I need to do to it to make it "good enough". Fuck you, its my program, its how I want it, and if you don't think its good enough, THEN FUCK OFF AND DO NOT USE IT. Your whining is not constructive, and not wanted. STFU and use something you do like, or do the fucking work yourself.
what does that mean?
is that even a word?
or is this another bushism?
Arash Partow's Philosophy: Be a person who knows what they don't know, and not a person who doesn't know.
I'd hate to sound too antiestablishment, but it really doesn't matter what an "alliance" of corporations think. The choice is in the hands of those consumers who are smart and do their own research. Hell, why don't they realize that the consumer has them by the balls from day one. Oops, there I go ranting again.
I (like many slashdotters) use and have used Linux for quite a while. I don't have to repeat the same old "Windows machine gets viruses and Linux box doesn't" thing for everyone who gives a damn to realize that this is all just more FUD.
(Dell Xerox, Cisco, etc... are their own corporate entities. I doubt that Microsoft or EDS alone has the blame for this.)
I think its quite funny that EMC of all companies is siding against linux, considering their much hyped (and highly expensive) CAS Centera system uses a special stripped down version of linux.
im going to stop using linux now.
thanks for the heads up... fucking morons...
Then you are fucking stupid and not properly administering your Windows servers. There is no legitimate reason why they should be getting 1.) hacked, and 2.) hacked so often... if what you're even claiming isn't just a complete lie.
but we still use it.
...
Heck, it's so insecure we have all these virii floating around designed to use it's weaknesses, and most DBMS on a MSFT platform fail in some way around the 1 Terabyte level
NEXT FUD, PLEASE!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Nice, I always love the way that any dissenting opinion (that is, any opinion that doesn't worship linux) gets flagged as a troll. Is the linux-community ego really that fragile?
I am currently moving a user from one machine to the other. The user is running Windoze 2K professional. The reason for the move is that the motherboard on the first machine is a bit otl because somebody kicked the keyboard connector and loostened it. Ok. Neat. Take the disk out of machine 1 and put it into machine 2? Not on your life buddy. They are different mobos. You get nice things like; 1) A boot for a bit and then BSOD of "inaccessable boot device". Try to come up in safe and fix it? Not on your life. 2) Partial boots and then death plus a reboot. And on and on and on.
What I am not going to have to do is to do a total re-install. Do the 4 hours of connecting to M$ to get up to rev. Attempt to move over her software by moving the old boot disk over the new one and hacking at a low level in the registry. The alternative to to re-install everything from install disks that she probably has long since lost.
Contrast that with moving a disk between two macs and or two linux machines. Unless I have done a gen on a kernel that is pretty weird. Its a piece of cake.
If you hate to edit conf files, why do you put up with the registry? Its a single path fault that is a resting place for the vermin and problems of the world. I will take the odd conf file any time.
The problem with XFree was a liscence change. So while Xorg has been innovative, that was neither its main purpose nor the reason that distros are switching to it.
This post written under Gentoo-linux with an SCO IP license.
Micro$oft wrnas people not to use Linux.
Of course.
Even NSA has been working with Linux From http://nsa.gov/selinux "Linux was chosen as the platform for this work because its growing success and open development environment provided an opportunity to demonstrate that this functionality can be successful in a mainstream operating system and, at the same time, contribute to the security of a widely used system. Additionally, the integration of these security research results into Linux may encourage additional operating system security research that may lead to additional improvement in system security."
"Large enterprises should not use Linux because it is not secure enough, has scalability problems and could fork into many different flavours, according to the Agility Alliance, which includes IT heavyweights EDS, Oracle, Cisco, Microsoft, Sun, Dell and EMC."
Large enterprises shouldn't use any product from Oracle, Cisco, Microsoft and Sun as they have already proven their software is insecure.
WTF!
Yup, that's about the most intelligent reply one could expect from a windows user. And "I" don't administer any windows servers. Read the name UN1XG0D. I won't be associated with such a pathetic excuse for an OS.
UNIX: A set of Linux-like operating systems that grew out of an original version written by some guys at a phone company
Here is a slightly more elaborate system, which minimizes downtime.
- Install the new drive in the server alongside the existing one.
- Partition it appropriately. I will describe how to move one file system to the new drive; any others can be done similarly.
- Mount the new partition somewhere temporary, such as
/mnt.
- Copy all files to the new drive: cp -ax <old mount point>/.
/mnt
- Shut down all processes using the old mount point. (Single-user mode with init 1 is probably the easiest way to do this.)
- Update the copy to reflect any changes made while it was being copied: rsync -aHx --delete <old mount point>/
/mnt
- Unmount the old mount point, and
/mnt.
- Update
/etc/fstab to install the new partition in place of the old one.
- Mount the new file system in place of the old one.
- Restart all tasks, daemons, etc.
With various LVM systems, or something fancy like Sun's ZFS, you can do it all on-line, but that's the basic technique which works for anything. There are, of course, many other ways to copy the contents of a partition around; cp amd rsync are just two. There are two things I know about which could need special handling, because they depend on the inode number of the copied file: qmail spool directories and nethack saved games. Both packages include utilities to fix things up after changes such as the above. Changing the root partition requires a slight modification to the final steps, using the pivot_root(8) utility. (Or you can just reboot the machine.)They are called branches, not forks. Forks generally do not try to sync with each other as much as possible.
Additionally, all of the branches yield to Linus's tree as the authoritative kernel.
Stop spreading FUD, even if that isn't what you intended to do. The reason to choose your words carefully is because MS will use them to distort what you really mean.
Pragmatism as an ideology is not particularly pragmatic in the long term. Keep it in mind when you dismiss Free Software
Don't think I ever said the word troll, however no matter how many times you use the word assert, it doesn't mean you actually have a clue
UNIX: A set of Linux-like operating systems that grew out of an original version written by some guys at a phone company
I found that very interesting, thanks man. :)
Question: Would this be fairly easy to script together?
"Derp de derp."
/opt
Oh, I wasn't commenting to you specifically, just noting that my post was moderated down for being a 'troll'. Which is pretty typical whenever I express any opinion that doesn't tow the party line. No wonder all you lemmings think alike here.
What EDS hasn't told you! EDS has made alliances with these companies not based on technology understanding but on the basis of how much EDS paid. EDS paid in the millions of dollars under Dick Brown and now under Mike Jordon. I'm talking over 500+ million (which = a lot of employees jobs) A not so know fact is that EDS has paid Microsoft large sums of money for getting access to microsoft knowledge. What this means is EDS is paying to be in the alliance. Once you are in the alliance you better talk the talk and walk the walk. It's like the membership at the country club. Another example is that employees recieved Dell laptops. Wouldn't you know it, there is a Dell represetntitive on the board at EDS. EDS employees used to have IBMs. So all of this makes perfect business sense to the individuals who thought it up because who wants to say "Geeze we spent 1 Billion on this alliance and it isn't working". So this company is forced to turn away LINUX because of alliance leaders disapproval. EDS has been pushing training for employees in .NET & Java. No big suprise that they are doing this.
EDS really lacks the technological edge over their competitor IBM. EDS has been hurting for business for years now and having to let more and more people go because they have not much to offer clients.
It's funny that some of EDS bigger contracts are not using the Alliances products and yet still seem to function just find without .NET/Oracle/etc. A matter of fact some clients are pushing LINUX with C application.
Not sure exactly where EDS stood in the past but when you are crying for business you better buy yourself a better friend and this is what they are doing.
My bad then. Hadn't noticed you got modded.
UNIX: A set of Linux-like operating systems that grew out of an original version written by some guys at a phone company
I agree with your two points. However:
There is no sensible way to talk about "Linux" in this context. It's not "an operating system", it's the kernel. I'm honestly not trying to be pedantic here; it's just that there are several distributions, i.e. OSes, in Linuxland. Proclamations like the current one by the Agility Alliance that lump everything Linux into one basket are simply FUD-slinging. I agree with you, the big vendors need to get together and just choose one, and by "one" here I mean distro. (By "vendors", I mean anyone trying to seriously look at issues of "security, scalability and the possibility of forking" and not just muddy the waters.) Comparing Debian to Redhat to Suse to Slackware to Gentoo and complaining that "there isn't enough commonality", which is what the Alliance seems to be saying at one point ("the alliance does not consider Linux to be a suitable operating system for the largest of enterprise customers because the open source operating system has issues with ... the possibility of forking."), is simply silly.
In fact, it seems relatively clear from the Alliance comments that they are fully committed to comparing disparate systems and finding fault in the differences. Looking at some of what they say:
Aside from the surface logical problems (is Unix a collection of languages, or applications? Since when was Solaris the "one surviving Unix"? etc), it's clear the Alliance is not in the business of making clear, informed, and informational statements about Linux, or even Unix in general.----
Ultimately, I agree with most of what you say. However, I cannot fully agree with nor understand your statement that until there is some standardization between them though, there's no reason to switch. Why should there be standardization between them? (Well, aside from simpler developing processes -- this is obviously important for anyone writing software for public release.) If a company decides, as you suggest, to go with "GTK on Redhat" for their internal enterprise systems, then good, more power to them. It shouldn't matter one wit to such a company, vis-à-vis their own internal systems, what's happening over on Slackware.
Or should it? If so, great -- convince me. :)
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
I used to work for EDS.
Most useless f'ing company in the world.
When it comes to insecurity and unscalability, Windows blows Linux away.
And as far as forking goes, Windows forks about every 2-4 years in a big way!!! Compared to linux forking about every ten minutes in microscopic ways. Bigger is better!!! Right?? Hello?
Anyway... Linux is only suitable for poor people, cause it's free, and it don't break as much, so I have more money for crack and lottery tickets. Big corporate types can buy Windows, hairplugs, feraris and them really fancy hookers, so's they got no use for linux see?
You'll have a lot of wasted space with that method, unless you use something like /parted/ afterwards.
I just tried it on Office 2000, writing *bold* auto-changes it to bold as you asserted.
Um, if you're under the impression that risk-takers generally win, you need to take some time to seriously reevaluate your concept of "risk". I mean, if your success is pretty much certain, it's not that risky, now, is it?
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
This seems like EDS making a huge PR mistake. They're clueless as to how fast a quote will be taken by internet media and spread far and wide. And many of those companies (Oracle, Dell, EMC) are big Linux proponents, with huge budgets riding on Linux marketing and Linux R&D.
Oracle in particular. I would be surprised if Larry Ellison didn't withdraw from this alliance shortly, or at least give them a public spanking.
-Stu
The Super Mega Super Alliance (short for my buddies and familly) has determined that all people that do not like me are stupid, will never amount to much and probably cheated at their exams. At the last Super Mega Super Alliance meeting in An undisclosed place in the moldavian region of Transdniestra Rob ThatCrddle announced new findings about people that are not in full admiration of myself, they are naughty !! The Super Mega Super Alliance has many members on many continents and represents billions of interconnected cells. Some of the computing facilities they are using would clearly outcompute any top500 cluster on complex decision making algorithm (like wake up or stay in bed, omygood do these marketing critters have no shame at all). You could read all about the Super Mega Super Alliance on our highly secure third generation Post-Internet unfortunatelly your security clearance is not high enough, but trust me it shows the validity of what we say.
As a separate note, I believe its an act of charity of the Open Source community to take some time off to write a couple of announcements for the "general public", having to rely on such marketdroid drivel to pad their magazines and web site is bad for the journalists karma.
But you cannot expect them to write all articles themselves, its just too time consuming compared to the cents per word they get.
The chief differences between the GUIs of Windows, Mac and Linux are just habit. Thanks to MS long dominance, most users are familiar with the "Windows" way. Of course that was in large part borrowed from OS/2 when Win95 came out, and seriously mangled when XP was released. Users accepted it because they had programs they used and the Win* GUI is what the programs worked demanded, unlike many Linux programs that will work in most GUIs as long as the right libraries are in the path.
What "keeps Linux from dominating the desktop" is simply user reluctance to learn something new. However, let MS continue trying to force developers to pay through the nose to develope in Windows, make the application programs stunningly expensive to users like Adobe Photoshop, S-Plus, or Oracle is, and keep up the development of Linux, KDE, GNOME, Enlightment, and the other GUIs and managers and watch. While no single GUI may dominate, cost will lead to the broad adoption of Linux and one or more of the compatible GUIs. Even if the apps rmain costly, the developers can work at less expense. They should be able to develop at less cost, provide a less expensive product and still have a good margin. Cost is what is driving linux uptake now and that is what will drive it for the foreseeable future.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
I find it quite hilarious that almost all of the "defenders" are proprietary software advocates... all except Sun. Maybe I'm missing something and just maybe that's a big reason they are so slow at open-sourcing their personal operating system and programming language... but why in the hell would Sun (even though they sided with Microsoft) sponsor this and say that Linux is unstable? If my calculations are correct, and I know for a fact they are, Sun Microsystems maintains one of the most popular Linux distributions today... the Java Desktop Environment (Java DE or JDE for short). Kinda hypocritical, wouldn't you say?
"Instant gratification takes too long." - Carrie Fisher
Then what shall we call it?
I take it your one of those GNU/Linux purests right? Isn't there anything better to do with your time that debate silly names?
I can say Windows is not Windows. Its just the gui. Obviously that does not make sense.
Almost all the geeks I know call the kernel, the Linux kernel. Which kernel is it? There's nothing in a car other than an engine is how I look at it/
Linux is a full OS. A kernel just boots up. It does not do anything and its not a full system.
This is the same argument for calling Linux GNU/Linux.
But if society calls the whole system Linux including Linus himself than its Linux.
http://saveie6.com/
But there's no point in calling the things that Sun has included in Solaris "Linux" things. Free Software didn't start with Linux. It's a short-sighted thing to attribute all Free Software to Linux.
If you want to consider me pedantic, that's fine, but Linux isn't the be-all end-all of Free Software.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
that something which actually is scalable even exists?
Linux is also utterly unreliable, untrustable ... as botnet component, especially compared to other (great) OSes, like windows.
In other news, our win2000 server just broke it's uptime record: now it's 14 days! Not bad compared to RH7.2's 712 days....
Yeah, free Ipod! He is innocent!
I find it absolutely hilarious that EDS (as part of this alliance) weighed in on the issue of scalability, given their software's spectacular crash and burn in Colorado for the past 6 months. In case you haven't heard, Colorado's Department of Social Services deployed a new EDS rollout last year, which promptly slowed processing times to a crawl and left about 30,000 families without food or housing benefits. I don't have a link, but it's been reported on several times in local media.
Tell me again about that shitty linux scalability, EDS. Maybe I can make a drinking game out of it.
However, beyond the macro perspective here, I fail to see how a corporation that doesn't like Linux somehow justifies armed revolt and murder of innocent people who aren't even related.
... occasionally (though I do believe the powers that be are getting better at making sure they don't work, which feeds into and magnifies the ugliness I allude to).
I wasn't referring to that specific example. I agree, advocating armed revolt because some idiots spread a little anti-Linux FUD is rediculous. I was referring to a deeper trend in our culture, where people routinely advocate massive violence when things aren't going there way. Some of it is self-centeredness, but a whole lot of it comes from a feeling of disempowerment, and the growing notion that we CAN'T effect change any other way. I don't agree with that notion. Boycotts, massive protests, and elections still do work
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
...I ignore it completely.
Who cares about the ozone layer?...thanks to CFC's I can write my name......IN CHEESE!!!
...sniff... Linux babies. Wipe your tears and keep trying to match MS for usability.
Actually, I mostly use UNIX/Linux/BSD, I'm just not a nerd that bigoted about something as stupid as operating systems. So I guess it probably says something about UNIX users overall, just as it would for Windows.
And yes, what you said was complete bullshit. If what you say is actually true, and I seriously doubt it is, you need to fire "whoever" is administering your Windows servers, because they aren't doing an adequate job.
I'd also fire the firewall administrator for being incompetent and not competently managing their risks.
If they say so...
I work for a project where the application is deployed on a grid with 1,000 nodes, all of them with Red Hat Enterprise 3, 2 Gb, and 2 CPUs.
That certainly demonstrates that Linux is not scalable, don't you think?
Hey, I also have a question: how many of these guys do you think know how to spell Linux? (or their own name for that matter, but that's another story).
I missread your previous comment. My apologies.
I assumed Solaris included the possix utilities that BSD includes instead.
There is more than gnu in free software. Agreed.
http://saveie6.com/
Installing software has changed a fair amount over the years. It used to be "copy the files over", then it became "run install.exe", then it became "run setup.exe", then it became "stick in the CD and it will (mostly) automatically work". These are fairly slow and minor changes though, but the same could be said for any given Linux distro.
As for install GUIs, the last time I installed RedHat it was actually easier than installing Windows. Windows had problems with my video card, and gave me all kinds of headaches. RedHat just worked. But, that was a long time ago. Maybe Windows has gotten better since then.
Writing a good installer is hard, and if MS can't do it well with their billions of dollars, it's amazing that you can get even close with free software. It doesn't help that all the device manufacturers consider Windows as their primary platform and only consider Linux as an afterthought, if at all.
In the end, I think Knoppix is the way to go. You don't have to install anything at all, and for the most part, it "just works".
I am embarassed for my employer. We are now being run by accountants rather than IT professionals.
12 Linux positions as of 3/17/06p licant/SearchAgentMgr/SearchProcess.jsp?pljbHome=/ eds/edscareers/applicant/index.jsp&searchaction=Se arch
http://pljb7.rmx.scd.yahoo.com/pljb/global_jsp/ap
It appears from the job descriptions that THEY are using it as well. I could be interpreting in incorrectly.
[offtopic]
:P
Get nursie to increase the dose!
So you think "arguments" like hey, we know the truth: the stuff can be either bad or good and calling himself the "chance of the reverse" don't deserve to be made fun of ? Gee, if this means I'm on drugs, then I plan to stay
[/offtopic]
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;18136 34491;fp;16;fpid;0
A study on EDS' own web site confirms they use it and love it.
The opposition to Linux is so uniformly pathetic...it truly boggles the mind.
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters