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Google Gives Reason Why it is Built on Linux
Rob writes "A common reason why more governments and enterprises around the world are moving to
open source software is unhappiness, it was revealed during a panel discussion at the
LinuxWorld Conference in San Francisco yesterday. Google Inc open source programs
manager Chris DiBona said the search giant has stuck with Linux throughout the company's
life, in part, because it
was unhappy with the terms of another software company. Which borgware company is he referring to?"
I had a circuits professor who had either done some contract work or worked at Google back in 2000. He told me and a couple other students that they used Salckware and ran the entire site from RAM, OS and all. Before that talk I never new you could run entire systems directly from RAM. Wild.
This is offtopic, but because it didn't survive the submission I did I thought it would be best to post it attached to another Google story.
A few days ago I noticed several websites which are linked by default in the Google Personalized Homepage show staggering increases in web traffic and page views. According to Alexa.com Wired more than doubled and also Slashdot , the NY Times and the Washington Post show remarkable growth at the end of july.
Is this a redefinition of 'slashdotting' or is there something else going on?
Repeat after me: We are all individuals
With well known companies like Google and IBM endorsing Linux, I wonder why it isn't more widely used in the enterprise?
I wrote some thoughts about that in my website earlier today.
Expert Java EE Consulting
Open source can never be very easy to use and easy to run.
Never? Maybe if people sat down and said "gee, here is what we need to do to make it easy, without making it utterly stupid" it might get done.
The problem is, is that "ease of use" for most people means "microsoft crayola". Where, ok, if you want to disable that autorun thing, you can dig around in the system control panel under hardware to disable it for your cdrom drive. I could walk my mother through that on the phone. If you want Windows XP to stop trying to autoplay your 200GB USB drive for an hour while it scans every damn file on it over USB1.1 for an autorun file, THAT takes editing a group policy with the policy editor. I couldn't even figure that out on my own.
Come up with something where we don't have to cripple our cool toys to make it easy enough for an idiot to use, and we'll happily do it.
Are you going to back up your bullshit statement or are you just trolling?
Linux is successful many say because of Google- Google being the free 24/7 searchable customer support for your Linux problem. Somewhat ironic that Google's success is in part from using Linux.
The selection of Software available for Graphic and Media are simply pathetic for Linux.
Pathetic? You have got to be kidding. First off, video support sucks under Windows. Let's see... I need Windows Media Player for wmv and mpeg, Quicktime for mov, RealPlayer for real, a proprietary DVD-codec for DVD's, etc. etc.
Linux? mplayer
Let's go to the audio now. First, you get Windows Media Player that can play mp3 and wav. OK. Then, I need to search through the Internet to find codecs for all of my ogg's and numerous other streaming formats, etc.
Linux? gstreamer
Even the performance of Linux is vastly superior to Windows when it comes to audio and video. A whole flame war almost erupted on the kernel-mailing-list because Linus changed the hertz polling time to a sane value instead of 1000Hz. This caused some audiophiles to cry out because they would miss a couple frames every now and then. BTW, just for comparison, Windows is set at 100Hz.
If you want to flame Linux, do it based on its shortcomings (for example, Office suite, video drivers, games). But, don't do it in the area that Linux shines under - especially when so much development is ongoing with projects like amaroK.
- Stan
While showing a slide show of Google's hardware evolution, which began humbly with an odds-and-ends collection of "spare computers that were lying around Stanford" (hobbled together, literally, with pieces of Lego and duct tape) and ended with a present-day photo of Google's current server room (darkened to the point of being indistinguishable, for competitive reasons), DiBona said Google has used Linux all the way.
Forget software licensing, I just want to see the slide with their server room!
Any links?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
It is not uncommon for things to operate to the benefit of each other. Another way of putting it is that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This kind of thing is an unpredicted benefit. It gives open source a competitive advantage over proprietary software. Of course, Rome wasn't built in a day and it will be a long time before Microsoft's domination is broken but things like this assure that the day will come.
Well, when I was in college, 2000-04, you could only get one license of all MS software, and could only install it on ONE computer. Not get the software, and load up 4, 5, 10 computers. Only the administration or the IT staff could load up multiple computers since the school had a license to do so, but the students were not on the same license. And every school is different, I asked for another copy of Visual Studio for a second computer and I got a flat out NO, only one install. And for the first install, I had to return the install disks after a week or so, or would have been given fine I believe. Of course I made copies, but we were not suppose to have copies either. And this was Penn State. Then, how are you suppose to go from students on a students MS license to an actual company. All that costs to get the correct licenses. You think MS would have let them get away without getting the correct licenses.
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Then it becomes clear that Linux is truely more accountable to free market paradigms, and in the information age - as information becomes commoditized, that will be even more so
The problem is that information reproduction has been commoditized, not creation. It still takes some kind of investment to create new information. Open source is not more or less free market than closed source, there are many advanatages and disadvantages for each.
Google and IBM use Linux because its license offers them technical and business advantages over other licenses, both closed source and open source. With Linux they get the ease of an open source backbone, while still maintaining many of the proprietary rights of their own code.
as the companies that treat unrestricted copying over the internet like a threat will loose, and those that treat it like an advantage will win.
It's not about embracing unrestricted copying, it's about figuring out how to make it work. iTunes is still restrictive, but could be considered a "win."
The companies that can strike the balance between consumers and content creators will be the winners.
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my employer wouldn't be considered a "bleeding edge tech" company, but we've had to modify the linux kernel source in order for it to work properly in the networking environment it was placed. I've also had to modify getty and a couple other packages to get the system to work with the oddball hardware we use and to satisfy a user requirement. The patches went back to RedHat and whether they used them for a future product is up to them.
I'm no Alan Cox and my changes weren't monumental, but I was still able to do it because the source was available.
With all the talk about mult-core processors, there has often been mention of Oracle's per-core licensing fees. And remember the whole debacle with the state of California's Oracle contract.
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
Given that the nature of F/OSS is to assimilate things, wouldn't that make it the real borgware?
This is the same for MS Office. MS has not really provided compelling value. MS Office is aging technology, and the base price should really be $100 for everyone. The full bloat version can still be $300. We have not seen a real update in 5 years, which, for a flagship product, really indicates the indifference MS has to the market.
I am not really defending or attacking anyone, simply stating that MS is a unique postiona and therefore has unique issues. In the timeframe that we are talking, Apple would not have been a contender. If it had, Google could have just taken darwin, as it did not need the gui. The point has not been proven because the licensing issues with MS stems from a monopoly status, in the same way that IBM once effectively was. Other IT firms, like Sun and SGI were the best in a field, and if one needed it, the price was not too much. Most of the time one was looking to solve a problem, and the licensing was often not the overiding issue. If google specifically needded transparency of source, the Linux is the clear winner as no one else can solve that problem as cheaply.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I did a contract job for Google over the past four days. There is a silver BMW M5 in the lot over by building 42 that has a license plate that says:
I[Heart]LINUX
I should have snapped a picture of that car with it's two little penquins in the back window. Poor little things are being subjected to 368 lb/ft of torque on a daily basis.
Storm Shadow "The Hook Up" http://www.pe
Sorry, I jumped to conclusions, as is common here on Slashdot. :-) Over the years I haven't come to expect much from the Slashdot crowd and that makes me sort of agressive around here. So if you see an angry AC (never bothered creating an account, or, I did a few times and forgot the passwords and usernames) and it happens to be me, mea culpa.
:-) I think, when it comes to the corporate world, "Do no evil" doesn't exist. Google really does find itself in a position with a lot of power, and power is something I don't trust. Maybe that makes me in line with the tinfoil hat crowd, or maybe I'm just crazy like a fox.
I do agree (and thought about putting in my post but was too lazy) that it's not a HUGE problem, as, first, you can delete the cookie, and second, it'd take a lot of extra work for Google to really take its data and use it for malicious purposes -- work that no one has the time to do for each and every one of google's millions of users.
But. I too am a bit suspicious of Google. Why would a company have to come out and say "Do no evil" unless they had something to hide?
If the drivers for Airport extreme are open, why has nobody ported them to Linux, yet? (That's the main reason why I don't use Linux on my Powerbook - no Airport extreme support). If it's not open: Of what use is an open source kernel without open sourced hardware drivers?
Georg
Prior to my getting hired by the company I presently work for, there was a painful BSA audit. I can say with 100$ certainty that the BSA is the main reason for our migration to Linux.
To start with, Google is the most well-known poster-child of Linux success.
But does anyone outside of the Linux/slashdot/techy community *know* that google uses Linux?
It's official. Most of you are morons.
And many of those people would be Linux zealots.
And many of them would just be professionals with their feet on the ground. As surely as many Windows defenders are nothing but ignorant zealots. So what's your point ?
The "zealot" argument for dismissing some mass opinion doesn't hold ground for long now.
Their ingenuity lies both in being able to pick the right OS to go with and in being able to turn it to really suit their needs. Choosing Linux (or almost any free OS of that thime) let them have the right environment for customization and development. That's all that counts.
plenty of reasons for them to use Linux (or a BSD) without invoking massive technical superiority
I've always found the argumentation about Linux being only "good" because it's "free" absolutely ignorant. And besides that yes, there are plenty of professional and technical reasons to choose Linux/BSD/etc. for such a task over Windows or any/some closed sourced OSes of that time.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
I was a Linux/FreeBSD zealot for SO many years. I wrote all my code with 23423 platform portability in mind, things were good. Then I realized that I didn't have any real experience writing apps for Windows and I thought I should give it a try. I picked up some books on VS (Visual Studio) and started with C# (I had quite a bit of Java experience all ready so it was pretty easy to pick up the language). Then something very strange happened. I began to really like it. I found I was able to write applications which would have taken weeks in C using VIM or even a week in Java using Visual Age. I became a much more efficient programmer. Mostly due to .NET and the absolutely amazing IDE that is Visual Studio.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a pure Windows guy now, but I do have an XP SP2 workstation and I spend quite a bit of time in VS.
I agree. The new keyhole thing doesn't run on Linux, and they have no plans to port it. They aren't going to make any of their desktop stuff run on Linux. It's kinda disappointing.
I'm not saying that google hasn't given back. They've given a lot. They're no Amazon in that regard.
But really, the thing that would really make sure Microsoft's monopoly died the true death would be a good Open Source desktop alternative. If google really wants to help Linux, they'll start making sure any end-user apps run on Linux, and make that support public and official.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Sorry to point out the obvious.. But I just want to take a moment to thank this community and Google for being so amazing. Here we are talking about an issue and the person in question is right here talking with us. AWESOME! Microsoft to Google - Responsiveness to change is the big picture. Open source and close source respond to change on different frequencies.
Is this serious?