Slashdot Mirror
The Linux Identity Crisis
Jayze Calrtini writes "From an article from ZDNet:"If you've been following the current rift in the Linux community between Linus Torvalds and his minions squaring off against Con Kolivas and the mainstream Linux fanatics, you probably know that it's getting quite heated.
You also probably know that these two entirely different ideas could create three possible paths Linux can take for the future: stay geeky and appeal to the advanced tech guru in all of us; go mainstream and leave the advanced functionality and reliable kernel behind to compete with Microsoft and Apple; or face a "civil war" that could lead to total Linux annihilation."
I vote for total annihilation.
I mean, with Vista, who cares about Linux anymore?
The opposite of progress is congress
Two outcomes... Linux gets better or Linux dies. Either outcome is acceptible and should be to any other OSS "believer" as well. Survival of the fittest and all... even if the fittest isn't Linux.
Sounds like another storm in a tea cup. The linux world has had more flame wars than not, and will continue to do so as long as it exists. It's one of the characteristics of a democratic system that people have arguments. The "total annihilation of the linux world" is a load of incendiary exaggeration. Typical slashdot "editorialism", I guess...
Daniel
Carpe Diem
Come on over to *BSD. We're the 'big tent' OS. Room for everyone.
Don't like the direction the kernel is going? Branch the kernel and call it MyBSD. Whatever, no one is going
to get pissed.
Linux folks take themselves WAY too seriously, and besides, *BSD has a 'cool' factor with the chicks that
Linux will never have. You should see the honeys flock to me when I sport my FreeBSD tshirt.
Come on in to BSD, boys, the water is fine.
desktop improvements do not need a revamped kernel. I really don't know where this idea came from.
Both gnome and kde have their irritating features and this - IMHO - is where the problem is.
The article--no, make that rant--has nothing to do with the debate between Linus and Con. The author somehow thinks that this technical debate about the kernel's workings has something to do with "Linux" desktop usability. The author clearly does not understand that there is a difference between the Linux kernel, the thousands of programs that comprise a Linux distribution, and the distributors who glue all this stuff together. He says Linux shouldn't "go mainstream" (here I guess he means distributions) and ignores the fact that Ubuntu can go mainstream while Gentoo can stay geeky.
Total waste of time; prevalence of this crap on Digg is why I stopped reading it, and now Slashdot isn't too far behind it seems.
Penny - plain text accounting
No, Linux will not be "Annihilated" although I do think that this could cause some forking to happen in the kernel...
There is no "disagree" moderation, and troll, flamebait and overrated are not valid substitutes
Slow news day.
Deleted
The Linux kernel isn't the cause of Linux's lack of pep on the desktop. Sure it isn't a particularly good desktop OS kernel as it's mostly made with the server in mind, but it isn't bad. The real reason why Linux hasn't been adopted be Joe Average everywhere is because of the high-level parts of the system: the KDE, the Gnome, the package mess, the difficulty installing software, the hard to use programs, and so on.
If you're not happy with Linux, there are other places to find what you're looking for. The world doesn't need to be Linux.
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
Keep the advanced functionality and reliable kernel while incorporating other features and continuuing to go mainstream.
One part of me likes the first two ideas. I mean, there could eventually be a Windows killer distro out there. And at the rate things are going, Ubuntu seems to be the likely candidate. On the other hand, Linux does have a place with hardcore geeks out there who like to tinker and tune the kernel.
A second part of me is wondering why we all can't get along. Linux isn't going to be annihilated. Even if Torvalds were to walk out in front of a bus tomorrow, development of the Linux kernel will not cease entirely. Businesses have too much riding on Linux for it to fail. I could be wrong; but I highly doubt the doom sayer's claims.
The game.
What rift? It rather seems to me that some publications are trying to write up a rift out of thin air. There have always been disagreements between developers, but suddenly there's supposed to be a large enough group that wants a kernel fork?
I don't buy it.
What really pisses me off as far as Colivas camp is concerned is that they equate 3D games smoothness to desktop performance and keep on quacking about "desktop linux performance". Their stuff has nothing to do with it.
It is just one tiny facet of desktop linux. Further to this, in order to demonstrate any of the performance you have to throw in two big unknowns - a binary only driver and a card without a fully disclosed and known specification.
Self-serving benchmarks for 3D game on local machines should not be used to claim superiority in all desktop linux tasks period. In fact they should not be considered at all at least until something comes out of the recent ATI and Intel spec disclosures. When non-binary 3D accelerated drivers become widely available there will be a point to start benchmarking towards 3D performance and smoothness. Until then this is a complete waste of everyone's time.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Linux is for people that like to fiddle with their OS.
Windows is for people that like to fiddle with their apps. Like AVG Free, Norton AV, and the like.
Why can't it keep the nerdy, hackable kernel and go mainstream at the same time? I though that was the reason why we have different distributions; obviously not everyone's going to be happy with Gentoo, luckily the casual user has Ubuntu and Linspire, and us network admins have our server distros. Do these people really have this George Lucas kind of power over the things they have released to the public, or is the community in the driver's seat enough to keep it working for everyone? I feel like it certainly leans more to the latter, although I guess I'm pretty far removed from the development process.
I've been a fan of Con Kolivas -ck patchset and used it exclusively on my desktop computers but seriously, in the end, the influence of the KERNEL with regard to usability of a desktop system is rather low. In addition, I haven't seen anything that may give reason to assume that the kernel developers somehow snub the desktop. Sure, things got messy and there with fighting and Con left kernel development, which is sad, but Ingo's CFS is far from being a bad scheduler for the desktop, quite the contrary.
Maybe RMS is right after all with his "GNU/Linux" considering how journalists like to conflate kernel development with the development of the general system. There's a dispute about the CPU scheduler and some people think that "desktop improvements" are somehow low priority. Seriously, things that the KDE and GNOME developers do have an order of magnitude more influence on someone's desktop than the CPU scheduler or even the kernel as a whole (though drivers are also very important).
lkml has always had robust arguments bounced about. This is not new, but new people are reading it all the time and sometimes it hits the mainstream. TFA is mainly not about lkml flamewars, but about a review by Walt Mossberg which might be important to a certain readership in the USA. He isn't very important to readers in the rest of the world. I read the review. It was fairly balanced, he found good points and areas for improvement. The fact that he reviewed it at all is more significant than any findings or conclusions he made. I am amazed at the number of meta-articles about this one review that I have seen. Journalists - do your own flipping review. Don't write articles reflecting on someone else's reflections.
Is it me, or is this guy just trying to generalize from another misguided artcile dated no later than a week ago?
I can't wait!
Dude, I'm building a Krogoth.
Maybe the real question is, how to get Linux
developers to play the game professionally.
Do we really need more incomplete, undocumented,
fail-disable, unverified software? The issue
of Linux success is more a question of when will
Linux software become polished, real end user
value? Why do I spend so much time hacking
around fixing scripts that should have been done
right before they were posted? Why am I re-writing
resolv.conf after re-boot to replace the incorrect
(gateway address, not nameserver address) mismanagement
in some layered, undocumented fork from network?
Com'on guys, the field's 100 yards. No touchdown until
the job's finished. We don't need another 'final coding
left to end user' version of anything.
Kevin O'Kane http://www.cs.uni.edu/~okane/
LINUX IS THE KERNEL.
Ubuntu is a distro comprising of a linux kernel and userland tools/libraries. Why would going the "ubuntu" route would involve any changes in the kernel is beyond me. Ubuntu is nothing more than a well engineered collection of userspace tools that makes the PC useful, it relies on the Linux kernel to manage the system.
In short, you can appeal to the "mainstream" [also known as the dumbification of society] and yet keep a technically impressive kernel behind the scenes.
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
People still do not understand open source, in that there is always a little friendly "nudging"... Because everything is out in the open, a few people upset means to some people that "Linux is in peril"... The reality of the situation is that business drives Linux development. I for one feel that if IBM did not contribute what it did, that Linux would only be a fraction of what it is today. Meaning, IBM, from my perspective, helped businesses see Linux as a viable business tool... I do not think that their contribution can be understated from that perspective...
So where does it go from here? Mostly what it is doing today... I would be shocked if it ever gets much traction on the desktop front simply due to no company putting the huge investment to continue advancing it and marketing it... The real success of Linux, I feel, will always be a background player... As far as the future in development... One market that I do not think people have realized enough it what I call "smart appliances" industry, in that using Linux on standard x86 hardware with OS/Database/Web support that you just plug in and run. Linux has allot of room to grow in this marketspace...
I don't know what he is basing this crap on, like that Linus thinks Linux shouldn't go mainstream. Linus works for the Linux foundation that "promotes, protects and standardizes Linux by providing unified resources and services needed for open source to successfully compete with closed platforms."
Next article, please.
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
(1) and (2) can conceptualy be alligned. That's part of the purpose of distros. Many distros help abstract users from all the stuff in the kernel they don't care about, and make it "just work", without lessening the functionality/reliability.
(3) Usually results in a fork at most, a path reworking on average, and nothing at the least - and not the end of the world... It could happen, and if it does, so what?
34486853790
Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
The worst war has already been fought to an uneasy truce:
Emacs vs. Vi.
Next to that, this 'kernel' thing is polite disagreement.
isn't Con Kolivas the guy that quit working on the kernel because a patch he submitted was rejected by Linus? if that patch he made was that significant then he should have just offered it to some distributors of desktop orientated Linux' and if it was that significant of an improvement i am sure it would eventually make it upstream to the kernel...
as far as Linux making it mainstream? i don't care one way or the other, i been using Linux since 1998 & learned Linux the old school way...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
go mainstream and leave the advanced functionality and reliable kernel behind to compete with Microsoft and Apple
Would help if the author knew what the trade-off was. Servers are simple. They maximise throughput fairly. Then there's desktops, which are supposed to remain responsive to mouse and keyboard and audio events even under high load. The latter is more complex. It is the one with the "advanced functionality", and it loses reliability in the process.
There are geeky people in both camps. Geeks who want a server, and geeks who want a desktop.
The geeks who want a desktop want advanced functionality at the expense of reliability, and since the entire hypothesis of the article falls over in the first paragraph, I'm not sure why I bothered to continue reading
Then it continues with crap like If we want unstable systems, we can buy a Windows box.
NOBODY, not even windows users WANT an unstable system! I want a good opensource system that will run reliably and efficiently on my desktop. By the same logic I could say "if we wanted a reliable server, we could just use BSD".
Con Kolivas wrote some nice patches. I'm still yet to see if the CFS is as good.
I wrote my first program at the age of six, and I still can't work out how this website works.
If people are that bothered, could they not just fork the kernel and have one for the home user and one for the server?
Well, there you have it...another sensationalist article.
This isn't news. This is normal in linux. There are many passionate people with opposing viewpoints on tech.
It will all come out in the wash
This looks like vaporous hype designed to try and make linux look unstable. Didn't Con Kolivas say last july he's leaving linux kernal development?
How did this make the
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
The only thing the author proves is that he has absolutely no clue. There's no reason why Linux shouldn't get mainstream and keep advanced functionality and a secure kernel. Remember, the mainstream part is about the user interface, which is totally unrelated to the kernel. If the advanced functionality cannot be put into a nice, easy UI, well, then keep that for the command line users and config file editors. After all, some things on Windows need tweaking undocumented registry settings, and has that hindered Windows' success? Clearly not! So why should it hinder Linux' success if some advanced functionalities are only accessible through well documented CLI tools/config files? For Linux getting mainstream you don't need to make everything available to even the dumbest person (indeed, some things you should better not make available to those not willing or able to learn using text interfaces, because those are likely unwilling to learn the consequences of changing those things as well).
In short, the way Linux should go is: Make simple things easily available through GUI, without removing access to advanced features for those willing to use a shell and text editor, and of course without compromising security. I see no reason why this shouldn't be possible.
Dont fear the penguins!
We're all doomed! Doomed I say!
Am I just jaded or does this seem a wee overdramatic? Total destruction of Linux? Civil war? Yeah.
Unbreakable toys can be used to break other toys.
I install Xubuntu on all my friends laptops. They love it. They used to have like 20 tray-icons and all kinds of spyware. Now the run basically the same programs. Azureus, FireFox, GAIM, VLC, Evince etc.. They know it is much safer because, there is no more popups when they open IE!!! And by typing the password to install software, they know that some other program can't do stuff like that on their machine!!! I don't see a crisis. I see a marketing issue, but that's all. Usability? As if Vista is that usable...
I think I go for the fourth outcome:
Really good make-up sex between the parties.
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
That's quite a leap to make without giving any evidence at all. The article first mentions Con Kolivas' spat with Linus as if that is some kind of indicator of Linux's future when it means very little. It makes the assumption that CK's scheduler was more techinically advanced than Ingo Molnar's scheduler. That isn't the case. I don't think the author understands the reasons behind Linux choosing CFS over SD. It was more about maintainability than anything else. It was a decision that took into account long term issues instead of just short term emotions people had for CK and his scheduler.
When did this become a Republican/Democrat issue? Maybe I'm showing my bias here but how in the hell is the "liberal" wing in Linux all about making money? Isn't that the domain of Republicans? If you think that Linux really is split into a liberal wing and conservative wing the comparison would make more sense if the roles were reversed. Conservatives want this to be based about money and the free market. Conservatives would rather have corporations like HP choosing the direction of Linux based on their needs. Liberals are more worried about their rights with the software and abuses taking place by the corporations.
Even without taking the phoney political comparisons into consideration this article is an anti-Linux fluff piece with no meat at all. There is no critical thinking involved at all. It's purely an opinion without any facts to back it up. I wish garbage like this would stop showing up on Slashdot.
Time makes more converts than reason
when it comes to discussion abou the kernel, then his views are important. But all he's responsible for is the kernel. All it is is a component of a complete system for using a computer. What do the people responsible for the GNU tools have to say on the matter? Or those who write X or Gnome or KDE? They're all as important to most Linux distributions as Torvalds is. I imagine most of them are all for a mainstream Linux.
How much more easy can it get?
I actually agree with Con's assessment that Linus' refusal to accept these performance enhancements shows that the desktop is not a priority in the core Linux kernel, just as embedded devices are not. What I don't understand is why there's so much controversy over creating a kernel variant to address this. It's been done before, and these variants seem to coexist more or less peacefully with the core. You have uClinux handling embedded devices, while SELinux has a following among the security community, RTLinux does realtime stuff, and so on. Why should a "DeskLinux" with Con's performance enhancements be any different?
Just another article spreading FUD by making it appear that some internal rift will cause the downfall of Linux.
This whole thing scheduler issue and Con thing regarding focus on the desktop is rather funny.
This is linux we are talking about here, don't like the direction feel free to change it. If no
one will listen patch your own kernel and call it my ultimate desktop edition. It certainly would
not be the first time a focused distro has been developed.
Bottom line, there is no rift in the community somebody cried because there scheduler got beat out. I assume this is because it did not make the cut for some reason, however if I wanted to run Con's scheduler I would just patch my kernel and run it.
Got Code?
One for the advanced geek in all of us (which is going to probably also mean the server market)
and, one for the mainstream user.
its surprising you already didnt do it. you should not need fight for it. you need to create 2 subprojects.
Read radical news here
There is nothing to see here. These sorts of infights are not only common, they're necessary, due to the very nature of the project. Competition means survival of the fittest, and these fights are the best method for weeding out the strongest code solutions from the ho-hums. Best we fight amongst ourselves, for the world itself wants to crush us in it's fight for mediocrity! But the moment an external force tries to pick on onef us, we unite into one gigantic geeky mass. We can pick on each other, because we're family, even the BSD guys. But nobody else has that right!
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
Please stop the 13 year old fearmongering summaries.
Slashdot is now teh suck.
I don't see the point. Every problems needs a specific solution and there's enough room for both solutions.
The article confuses Linus Torvalds' Linux (just a kernel) with distribution.
No matter what Linus thinks, there are still out there very geeks oriented distro like Gentoo and Slackware with "let the user configure himself everything" in one end of the specturm and Ubuntu, complete with its "means 'I can't install Debian' in african dialects" types of joke.
The TFA is just a meaningless rant.
For me the two outcomes are without linux dying, because each variant is fittest for some specific usage pattern (geek vs. joe 6pack). And thus both outcome may happen simultaneously.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Yep ... it's looking that way -- for VISTA. Right now my DAPPERx64 install performs better. And I'm certainly no byteboyz. Unless *NIX commits suicide, the release of LTS_8.x in April '08 will nail the M$ coffin shut.
Do civil wars ever lead to "total annihilation"? Don't the survivors end up rebuilding?
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Boy, Good thing we are not getting tired of these Taco Linux troll and Linux bashing pieces!
You would think it would be so transparent that he would be embarrased, but no - that does not seem to worry him.
So, Keep the anti Linux Fud coming Taco, no one seems to notice!
May RMS was right after all and the thing that you run on a computer should be called something else than the kernel of that OS.
The kernel will always be to complicated for grandma, and there will be lots of distributions. Always. Maybe someone can make a linux for grandma, and maybe it takes as long as your girlfriend being a grandma. It will be the distribution that will be simple or complicated. Not the kernel.
In a comment linus said: I don't care.
Go more mainstream to improve adoption among the general populace while maintaining a stable kernel.
There is no reason to give up advanced functionality or stability.
Maintaining a stable kernel is not hard considering it is change that creates instability. Advanced functionality can be available through the command line or even GUIs.
The kernel functionality is good. What is needed is better usability, especially for configuration and management of non-kernel OS components.
I would love to put a better face on Linux and make it more usable to the average user, but there is no margin in it. It would take too much time and would not provide any income, so why bother?
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
The article is utter crap.
It confuses Linux (the kernel) and the CK/CFS spat with the various distributions of GNU/Linux, Gnome and KDE and their usability issues for non-techie types.
There is no risk of a "civil war" and one, certainly, would not bring total annihilation. At most, there would be the threat of a fork and some distros offering a CK patched version of the mainline kernel. I would like to be able to start up my machine with a choice of schedulers or, better yet, as someone pointed out, starting my servers assigning different schedulers to different processors according to their workload.
But all of this has nothing to do with how grannies use their Linux boxes.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
Just do it! Don't talk about it for 10 years.
What in the Kernel (the only place really that Torvalds has anything to do with Linux) makes it impossible for Linux to enter the mainstream... Maybe some slight license wranglings about attaching proprietory drivers to the kernel (this seems to be becoming less of an issue anyway). Some of the current(?) scheduling stuff might be relevant too, but these are _very_ minor.
My only request is that the team that branches the kernel call themselves "The Browncoats", and the other team call themselves "The Alliance".
Because in the end, MS-FOX is going to cancel both of them.
I don't understand why this was tagged as FUD. For those that can't stand the light of truth, they may strike out with such a tag, but the truth remains.
The only way to take down Microsoft, or make them improve their ways is through serious competition. And, I means s e r i o u s.
In it's current form, the geeky-nerdy-rebel OS that can't decide if it wants to be a server or desktop or embedded or social change harbinger cannot be that serious competition.
Current legal action cannot change Microsoft. Nor should it. In a capitalist system, the market is going to have to do that. And that empowers people. Always has. But, first, you have to offer the alternative.
The efforts should be, and this could cause a certain amount of forking:
The point is, make the consumer, a.k.a. Joe Notageek feel comfortable that it is easy to use, that he can buy applications for it at Best Buy, Walmart, Target, or Amazon.
The current Linux culture responds with a few old gems:
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
until they come to terms with auto-detect of wi-fi hw, incl. usb. see you there?
...are bloggers and reporters trying to make a technical argument about kernel schedulers into some sort of holy war between free software server geek fanatics and corporate desktop smooth integrated experience lovers? Does the scheduler even matter that much?
"When did this become a Republican/Democrat issue? Maybe I'm showing my bias here but how in the hell is the "liberal" wing in Linux all about making money? Isn't that the domain of Republicans?"
Yes you are showing your bias and what is worse you are contributing to what you say you hate.
Desktop Linux isn't making money, server Linux is. I doubt that Desktop Linux will ever make money but will instead allow a top to bottom Linux stack with companies making money on the server and embedded ends.
What gets me is the freedom part of Linux can never really be in danger. You have the source so you can port it to whatever machine you want. As long as people keep the right to load software on their PCs there is no real risk.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
The FUD machines are still running at full speed and spewing loads of irrelevant lies, damned lies, statistics, and general crap. It's done because it is rather effective on the uninformed masses of managers who have little depth of knowledge and simply want "safety".
Seriously, the Linux kernel is in no danger of imploding any time soon. The community is rather strong and resilient. Really, the big difference is that the development process is visible, as opposed to proprietary software houses where these conversations are inside the walls of the company. The debates we're hearing about are a normal part of development and will eventually lead to a solution that works for everyone.
Desktop Linux vs. "Server Linux" is a total non-issue at the kernel level. The userland tools and interfaces are far more important, and really the only real roadblock right now is a few hardware manufacturers' active resistance to working with free software. This isn't so much a conspiracy to lock out certain operating systems, it's just a way to manage their obselecence cycles to ensure future sales. After all, if customers can keep using that printer until it actually wears out then quarterly profits will see no replacement sales bump when the next Windows release comes out.
This resistance is starting to fray around the edges, and we can see the evidence in AMD/ATI's starting to open up chip specs and Dell's entry into the desktop Linux market. It's beginning to become a non-viable business model to actively impede interoperability with open source software.
You should check out www.groklaw.net. There has been a lengthy article just recently about the latest anti-Linux FUD campaign. Now that SCO is bankrupt and nobody believes anymore that there is any Unix code copied into Linux illegally, they had to come up with something new. The new campaign is: Linux is self destructing! Sources are the usual suspects, like ZDNet in this case.
However, if you think about it, there are several thousand Linux developers, and with that many developers, occasional arguments are unavoidable. The same arguments happen within Microsoft software development, except that you don't read about them on some kernel development newsgroup, and the press doesn't pick up on it.
"It's a floor wax. No, it's dessert topping." Linux is the kernel. Ubuntu is a kernel bundled with a bunch of apps, including a window manager. TFA is FUD masquerading as an article. Some guy, who I have never heard of, says the Dell/Ubuntu notebook is not good and we have an identity crisis? Why, if the desktop is built on a solid kernel, can't we have a good desktop experience? This seems like a case where we can have "both", not an "either/or" situation.
The article is from ZDNet. The author probably stumbled upon kerneltrap for the first time and thought, "OMG! There's a real *war* happening here! This is news!" -- not realizing that the "war" was business-as-usual.
Another thing the author doesn't seem to realize is that Linux code (the kernel) is forking all the time. It may be support for real-time embedded or support for MMU-less processors, etc. The point is, people experiment, discover something interesting (fork), then try to get the interesting part back into the mainline tree. Happens a lot. Let the code fork in a big way? It will later merge and improve, yet again.
I recommend to anyone covering geek news: Be a lurker for longer than ten minutes and try harder to understand what you're writing about. From the article: "Much like Republicans and Democrats, Linux is dominated by two factions with entirely different ideas." In psychology I think that's called "projection".
I have a good idea of what the result will be: Ubuntu 8.0 based on PCBSD.
Micorsoft dumbs-down their products to make
them appeal to the lowest common denominator.
Apple, on the other hand, makes their poducts
smarter, to make them easier to use.
You can guess what I recommend (;-))
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
i finally switched to linux a couple of weeks ago. using ubuntu. i couldn't be happier and haven't missed XP/Vista yet. it took a little geek to get it dialed in, but what's funny about that is that it was fun. compared to windows, where doing this kind of stuff just feels like such a drain. with all the changes in hardware lately (multi core, pci-e, etc.) i was going to have to build/buy a new pc to be able to play the newer games. unfortunately, my athlon64, 2gb ram, nvidia 6600gt machine works great for everything EXCEPT the latest games (pointing at you Bioshock). at this point i'm out on pc gaming. i can get a 360 AND a Wii for what it would cost to upgrade this pc. and i'd STILL be upgrading video cards every 12 months. bleh.
In the article, he says:
I wish he'd specified what functionality he means. On my G5 Mac, I can run software written for Mac OS X, Mac OS 9 [Classic, SheepShaver], DOS and Windows [Virtual PC], X11 and Unix. I've never seen any other platform that can do all that!
Total Linux Annihilation sounds like it would be a pretty exciting video game. The backstory seems very deep. Can anyone tell me where I can pick this up?
These guys are complaining about infinitesimally small kernel components causing irreparable harm to the OS as it functions wherever on the continuum from general purpose desktop/laptop to specialized workstations and servers. Are these components important? Yes, obviously. Are the differences THAT catastrophically profound? No. The problem is mostly that project A has one person's name on it and project B made it to release, so the author of A runs around the net screaming that this horrible injustice will be the doom of the whole project.
In the end, this is little more than a childish tantrum over a favorite toy and the perpetrators seriously need to go to their rooms for a time-out until they grow the hell up.
It's mostly goin' to be imbedded one day anyways, eh?
"The article first mentions Con Kolivas' spat with Linus as if that is some kind of indicator of Linux's future when it means very little"
This is all of the truth.
Also, I very much doubt people could tell which scheduler was in use when using Desktop apps on Linux. Interactivity and responsiveness are such vague metrics for performance that there is not even a good way to benchmark them yet. All the 2.6 schedulers are pretty good to start with.
It's like that audiophile nonsense. The less people can tell the difference, and the more they need to rely on others opinions, the more they get worried and paranoid that something is wrong that they personally cannot recognise. So they look for expert opinions and reassurance from external sources.
The experts in this case are Linus, Kolivas, Ingo etc.
Any disagreement between these experts makes people very unhappy, as people just want to be told 'this is the correct answer', and not to have to deal with nebulous and difficult to understand arguments.
And linux people don't do illegal stuff, so it is out of question.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
you insensitive clod!
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It looks like a Divide and Conquer strategy imagined by a Microsoft "Evangelist"
Mainstream a Linux desktop, and by mainstreaming, I mean make it commercial. Make it so Joe Notageek, and his grandmother, can install it with less clicks than it takes to install Windows. Provide apps for it.
Linpire installed on Wal*Mart machines with free and paid software repositories.. Desktop only.. Check
Suse - Check
Red Hat - Check
Ubuntu - Check
Freespire - Check
The only way to take down Microsoft, or make them improve their ways is through serious competition. And, I means s e r i o u s.
Firefox - Check
Ubuntu - Check
Apple OSX Check
Notice MS starting to get serious about security? Notice MS notice that not all developers are MS developers? They thought they owned development. They thought they could be lax on security due to the lack of competition. They thought they could round up the pirates and make them pay with WGA and the BSA. BSA backfired in a big way in Russia. As the result of a BSA raid, the entire Russian school system is going Linux. They are starting to see that they are no longer the Monopoly they were once upon a time. They are starting to adopt or die.
Mainstream a Linux server. Yes, I know there a lots out there, but again, only a few companies are really commercial.
The few companies will adjust to the market as needs grow and change. It is just how the free market works. Don't advocate over supply.
Getting the industry to create a logo for Windows apps that are compatable under a WINE or other emu system would be great.
Get a hint. Let me fix it.
Getting the industry to create Linux, Mac and Windows applications would be great.
Fixed it for you. Getting rid of the need for WINE is the goal. WINE is a patch for applications not yet ported. Native apps don't have to be spoon fed serial ports, USB ports, cut and paste, etc.
The truth shall set you free!
"You also probably know that these two entirely different ideas could create three possible paths Linux can take for the future: stay geeky and appeal to the advanced tech guru in all of us; go mainstream and leave the advanced functionality and reliable kernel behind to compete with Microsoft and Apple; or face a "civil war" that could lead to total Linux annihilation."
There's a false trichotomy if I've ever heard one... Maybe nothing will change. Even if the discussion is getting heated I doubt that there will be any big changes in the direction linux has been taking. More and more linux is appealing to the mainstream, but retaining its advanced feature set. I think at worst we'll see another fork.
Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know. ~Lao Tzu
total linux annihilation? more like totally off base however, if linux doesn't achieve both of these goals, it can never be the 'year of the linux desktop' (TM)
I do not understand why linux can not be both reliable and "geeky" and at the same time apeal to the mainstream. Why can we not make it work reliably without hassel of editing config files for non techy users, and still leave the option if you want to do that? The idea that you can not have one with out the other is why windows sucks. Ease of use and configurability can coexist, you can have the options hidden under the surface, as long as you do not block what is under the surface completely and only hide it from those who do not wish to see it. If the mindset of the "linux has to remain hard to use" to stay linux does not change it will fail miserably to do both!
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070921112733615
Really, this supposed infighting doesn't exist, and having these articles on slashdot just helps us be part of Microsoft's mouthpiece. Even if there was a lot of infighting among the kernel developers (there isn't, by the way - not in the sense of a civil war causing total annihilation), all you'd get is a fork and people would move in that direction. I believe that all these articles about Con Kolivas's scheduler are part of this FUD machine and are blown way out of proportion.
For the curious wanting to understand a bit better about Linus's tree not being the be-all and end-all, check out this gentoo kernel page that talks about some other branches and unofficial trees.
Getting the industry to create a logo for Windows apps that are compatable under a WINE or other emu system would be great.
Get a hint. Let me fix it.
Getting the industry to create Linux, Mac and Windows applications would be great.
Fixed it for you. Getting rid of the need for WINE is the goal. WINE is a patch for applications not yet ported. Native apps don't have to be spoon fed serial ports, USB ports, cut and paste, etc.
There's a half-way point similar to what Winelib was, and what Transgaming's Cider is.
As long as Wine (or a fork of Wine) targets only a specific set of APIs, it should be possible to both perfect it, and to make it look more "native", and interoperate with the Linux desktops (KDE/GNOME) better. Once that becomes the case, and assuming this Wine-lib-ish API is still 100% Windows compatible, developers can start to target it, rather than target Windows OR KDE OR Gnome.
Instead, target Winething 2.5 (or above) and Windows XP (or above), and your app will run anywhere you have a Windows XP or Winething 2.5 (or above) install.
Right now, Wine is such a hard problem because it is pure reverse engineering. If developers were willing to target a wine-like framework, it would be a _much_ easier problem to make Wine (or at least the Winething framework), and it would be much easier to make cross platform apps, particular for shops that are accustomed to Win32.
The nice thing is that you could get this API to compile most anywhere; Wine already runs on Linux, OS X, and BSDs.
Wine is a great project, but I agree with you; you'll never be able to keep up with Microsoft. The key is getting developers to target a stable Wine, rather than targeting Windows. Target Wine, and your app will run just fine on Windows, and it'll run just fine everywhere else, too.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
While you might not be a classical "nerd," your knowledge of the issue seems to indicate that you are, in fact, a "geek."
The way the word is bandied about nowadays seems to imply that a geek is one with technical know-how. By understanding that there are multiple lixun distros, that it avoids vendor lock-in, and that you (seemingly) know how to administer and secure a linux box, this implies that you are a geek.
No offense meant. Honestly, many people would take the "geek" title as a compliment!
Most journalists don't write articles on Linux on a regular basis. If stories like this suddenly start appearing, the question becomes, "Who is pushing the story".
Linux and the kernel are completely independent of whether or not the Distro is easy to use. The kernel is the core, the Distro is the overall package. So , if the argument is bogus, was the article meant to just create headlines?
If so, who is behind it?
Thank you for alerting me early that I was reading the pious opinions of an anti-capitalist: you saved me some time.
damaged by dogma
The world already has a microsoft and an apple! What more could it need but a reliable operating system? Linux solves a problem that Linus once had. As long as Linux continues to provide protection against that problem for SOMEONE (Linus or anyone else) it will remain a novel alternative to the offerings of proprietary vendors. There is no future for a fork of Linux aimed toward competing with proprietary vendors. Linux exists on an anthropic foundation. It exists because it is necessitated by the history which produced it. Linux is a rigorous statement of common and academic knowledge. How can any proprietary system really compete with that? There is a need for competition in the proprietary operating system market, all markets. Linux is free, so the notion of competing in a market does not apply! In those areas where Linux is not completely free, it is guaranteed to be open -- to competition from all markets. Thus the nature of Linux is not to compete in a market, but rather to coexist with all markets.
Oh shit! I forgot to click "Post Anonymously"...
I have been subscribed for many years. Storms in the kernel mailing list teacup are rather common.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Jesus fuck I'm getting tired of this shit. Every "reporter" who uses the word "fanboy" -- except to decry the stupidity of the word -- should be forced to wear a scarlet letter "F" around their neck.
The "F" is for "FAIL".
... that really does not exist?
Like the BSD/GPL licensing issue that was used in a failed attempt to create a problem that did not really exist.
Matt Dillion of Dragonfly BSD clairified it... There really was no issue or concern...
Whats this gotta go this way or that way crap now?
There is no spoon....feeding..... there is forking for the masses...
So fork the fool wants to creat a problem that really doesn't exist...
Is this just another advertising maneuver from Kolivas? ...
The guy posted a patch, then collected a bunch of fun-boys to make noise on LKML, and pretended that code to go in.
The maintainer posted a better patch that did a better job of the one Kolivas did, and that was merged.
It's THAT simple. There's no crisis.
Then Kolivas left crying like a baby. One gone, ten millions to go
I can see that you picked your logon appropriately.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I would prefer total Linux annihilation.
TIA,
BillG
1998 called.
It would like it's FUD back.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
There's a fourth option, that being to keep the advanced functionality and reliable kernel in place but shield it from the "less than adept", as Apple has done with OS X. I see absolutely no reason that Linux cannot have a pretty GUI for those of you that are married to Microsoft, while retaining the advanced functionality, reliable kernel, AND all that geekie goodness for those of us who crave its' sustainance.
Can you imagine the flamewar if someone forked OpenBSD, GPL'd it, and called it ScrewYouTheo-nix?
:-)
Would probably go nuclear
If developers were willing to target a wine-like framework, it would be a _much_ easier problem to make Wine (or at least the Winething framework), and it would be much easier to make cross platform apps, particular for shops that are accustomed to Win32.
I have no desire to import Windows Exploits tm. into Linux with WINE. Linux applications is what I would rather have.
A starter list includes The Gimp, Open Office, Firefox, Acrobat Reader, Adobe Flashplayer 9, etc.
The problems caused by applications miss-use of the Registry in Windows is the biggest mess I want to dispense with. Rooting out malware from it is 95% of my Windows troubleshooting problems. Still broken on my Wife's XP pc is the photocopy software. It was working until we needed to edit a photo for e-mail. The bundled photo editor that came with the Dell was a limited trial. It took over the TWAIN driver breaking the photocopier. Using the photocopier simply launches the photo-editor instead of printing a copy. Removing the offending program did not fix the photocopier. Neither did removing and reinstalling the photocopier. Somewhere buried in Windows is some leftovers re-direct. It is probably buried somewhere in the registry where no documentation existing will allow me to fix it short of reinstall Windows from scratch. Windows simply can't find the photo editor any more and offers to help me find it. Obscure registry keys are a nightmare and are best left out of Linux.
I prefer a much simpler install remove route that works. I don't have that problem on my Linux box. SANE does not launch Gimp by default.
The truth shall set you free!
installing Linux means you no longer get Vendor support.
It's the classic "left handed" syndrome. Manufactures usually just make right-handed versions of products because the setup and management costs of a left-handed version is about the same but less people buy it. Thus, they lose money on it because there's not enough sales to cover the setup/mgmt costs for marginal products. It's a catch-22: you can't get vendor support until you get market-share, and you can't get market-share until you get support.
Table-ized A.I.
This Yet Another FUD attempt is starting to irritate me, so let's turn this one 180 degrees and see just what an ugly truth is hiding below the surface. And when I say 'ugly' I mean "oh mother of God" ugly, and most certainly not something you want to tell your shareholders. And you know what? Too late! They know!
:-). Yes, that's right. The small, silly toys that run Linux are the ones that keep Amazon selling. It powers Paypal together with Solaris. It feeds Google distributed computing power and storage. Rock solid, but yes, I'm the first to admit that you'll have to develop some skills. Like you did when you started with Windows, no different other than that you have to learn to deal with multiple solutions to any problem (otherwise known as "there is always a way to do what YOU want"). And it interoperates and is multi-user because it was written like that from the ground up. Need something that runs eBay in idle time? No problem, stick an E10k with Oracle in. Need a whole bunch of virtual machines? Hell, you may want to think about recycling that IBM mainframe. Need to calculate a lot? Some people build a Beowulf cluster out of old computers just for the hell of it. All of it in principle based on the same platform.
Deep intake of breath..
You, Mr-I-have-based-it-all-on-Microsoft, tell me what you are going to do if Europe indeed proves too tough for Microsoft. Hell, they may not bother and pick up their toys and walk out in a huff. Even if they stay it's very uncertain what format future products are going to be in to comply with the EU demands. WHERE ARE YOU GOING TO GO?
Yes, that's right - you're a single source user. No diverse supply chain there - it's all from that one club in Redmond. That club that accidentally disclosed just how well they can screw up global computing by losing their WGA server for a few days. That club that demonstrated that you don't have quite as much control over your operating platform as you thought you had when an upgrade got through the backdoor without you having any say in it. That club that forces you to repeatedly shell out serious amount of extra money because making it as safe as it should be would mean you would stop buying the upgrades (unless they screw up so badly you wake up - look at Vista sales).
Now, your little problem is that when these boys (and gals) go home, you are stuck. You may already have DRM-ed content, you have problems replacing as much as a single component because of that lovely integration (read: as little out-of-platform interoperability as they could get away with). You can't access corporate data without reverse engineering which may be illegal. You are up the creek without a paddle. You're on your way to become a footnote in the annual accounts.
Now, here's a bit of context for you. If you know Unix, you can in principle walk to Solaris, *BSD, Linux, HPUX (if it's still around), hell, even Mac OSX is based on Unix under the hood (da hood?
So, for the next disaster I wouldn't just have cross supplier arrangements. When that plane lands off runway and uses your shiny windows as an air brake, that stupid, free Linux CD may just be the only thing you can legally touch to recover your business.
If you're into Crisis Management, if you have recovered businesses, if you know how much a company gets screwed and abused if it is stupid enough to go down the single supplier route - as an investor or shareholder I would know whose nuts to take if the business went bust after a disaster. Yours.
Think interoperability, think open standards, think vendor swap.
There are almost 200 different ways to do better, and I don't think you have that much time left.
This has been a public service announcement. Normal FUD shall now resume.
Contents copyrighted under the Creative Commons license - spread but attribute. And get me some pizza while you're at it.
Insert
FUD or not, other than personal vendettas, there is no reason that Linux could not take BOTH of the first two paths, and forget the third.
Yet another Linux article by someone who doens't know what they're talking about.
"/.../there could eventually be a Windows killer distro out there."
You don't need a killer distro, just a killer app. Something that can't be ported to Windows. Gimp is close, it has an excellent UI used with many Linux desktop systems and the UI sucks big time used in Windows or OSX. It gives superior productivity for many tasks, especially compared to its biggest competing application, thats still is stuck in the darkrooms of the '60s. Unfortunatly it has some serious drawbacks.
Linux has many features that Windows and other OS lacks. Some day, some one make an killer application, that combine enough of those, not to be easely ported to other platforms.
... but how's the tequila?
- Disclaimer: Information in this post deemed reliable but not guaranteed.
I fail to see the any point at all in your entire posting. This article seems to try to make something out of a dispute amongst a bunch of very talented but very stubborn geeks over an algorithm that's inside a kernel that's inside most Free Software operating systems. This specific dispute has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the appeal of Linux-based OSes to the end user. Sure, perhaps one scheduling algorithm works better in high-performance clusters and servers, whilst the other is more "well-rounded" and thus more consistent for desktop use. So what? What does that mean to "Joe NotaGeek" anyways? 3 FPS faster animation on a 3D shooter game? OO.o opens 200 ms faster?
.deb vs. .rpm...now THOSE are issues MUCH more visible to the end user. The outcome of THOSE kind of issues can affect whether I can install a package, whether it runs, whether it breaks if my OS is upgraded and whatnot. This scheduler debate is an academic debate--it's not like they're making wholesale changes to the kernel APIs. The moves from kernel 2.0 to 2.2 to 2.4 to 2.6 were far more significant. The move from a.out to ELF was huge. While the content of your post might be something that should be discussed it has nothing to do with the debate over the scheduler.
Sorry, I fail to see the connection between the "great scheduler debate" and "the future path of Linux-based OSes as we know them". Plugging in another scheduler is not an issue anyone but kernel geeks will get emotional about. Period. "Libre" free graphics drivers, GPL versions, design changes in GNOME and KDE, uptake of standards like LSB for distribution-neutral packaging,
It's like arguing over whether Ford could make the Fusion more appealing to the biggest market segment of car buyers by employing an Intel 8049 or a Siemens 80535 micro-controller to run the fuel injection module in the ECU. For 99.99 percent or more of potential buyers they WON'T EVEN CARE and wouldn't notice the difference. For the two dozen people in the world who DO care they'll have their little spat and move on, and perhaps both alternatives will exist in the market for a long time...and only those two dozen people will notice. It is the same thing with the kernel. Even if the scheduler was to fork and some distros use one and others use the other, neither fork is going to break compatibility with the other and consumers won't notice and won't care. It's all GPL anyways so they'll look at each other's stuff and make sure they both remain compatible
at the API level, and we won't have the big mess the commercial UNIXes had in decades past.
My point what forking could bring that isn't already possible with by adding an additional option in make menuconfig ?
Basically the desktop type of targets needs two kind of stuff :
- The first and most important is issue with timing, scheduling and such, which can make the system more responsive at the cost of raw performance. The kernel is already full of such optimization that can be switched on or off depending on the distributions needs (or sometime a middle balanced solution can be used).
If some of the recent patch are too much desktop oriented and my degrade the performance, why not just making them conditional. Or even run-time selectable (like the different scheduler) ?
- The second stuff that a certain fraction among the desktop proponents are asking for is a stable API for binary drivers. Linus is against it, but anyway lots of pro-desktop people are against B.L.O.B.s too. And the issue is specially mitigated given the fact that some manufacturer start to realize the importance of releasing hardware specs, and the fact the most during most API shift, very often the old API is kept around for some time in the source after it has been deprecated (OSS drivers are still available even if ALSA is the new standart, V4L is still available despite efforts shifting to V4L2, the various packet filtering API that each kernel revision brought had all compatibility layer to be used in legacy software. In fact 2.4 kernel could not only be interfaced with 2.2 but also in 2.0 still API)
- OSS had never had a unified front to support. Not only are there major differences in Linux kernel revisions, but there's also a vibrant community around a completely different kernel like the *BSD family. But that doesn't prevent several F/LOSS and proprietary software to run on both.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
When did this become a Republican/Democrat issue? Maybe I'm showing my bias here but how in the hell is the "liberal" wing in Linux all about making money? Isn't that the domain of Republicans? If you think that Linux really is split into a liberal wing and conservative wing the comparison would make more sense if the roles were reversed. Conservatives want this to be based about money and the free market. Conservatives would rather have corporations like HP choosing the direction of Linux based on their needs. Liberals are more worried about their rights with the software and abuses taking place by the corporations.
These are bad political analogies.
The ones who worry about their rights are libertarians. The ones who want to help corporations are fascists.
True conservatives wouldn't want to interfere in it, but might make some noises about morality. But these conservatives are nearly extinct now. Modern-day conservatives (neocons) are the fascists I mentioned above.
Liberals would want to tax it heavily and make it socialist. They wouldn't want to help corporations, but instead they'd want the government choosing the direction of Linux.
Liberals and modern-day conservatives (neocons) are pretty much two sides of the same coin: they want to take away all your rights (and money), and give them to a small and powerful elite. The liberals want that elite to be a huge government; the neocons want it to be a collection of huge, powerful corporations answerable to no one, and aided by a corrupt government.
So you submitted a patch, and made the Linux kernel use 1% fewer cycles, or 2% less core. Big f'in deal! So you increased the network throughput, and think you're smart because of that? You're not!
In the bigger picture, tightening the screws to squeeze out a little extra performance out of the kernel isn't significant. Think in utilitarian terms!
Make Linux and/or BSD more usable. The more usable it is, the more users will be drawn to it; more developers, more resources will become available to the cause. Improving Linux / BSD usability will give you far more return on investment ( time and energy ), than optimizing the kernel.
-- Subvert the dominant paradigm. Repeat as desired. http://ownlifeful.com/
After "total Linux annihilation", will Linux stop working on my computer?
Like the Black Screen of Darkness...
shudder
OOo does not have a best-of-breed anything. It is getting better but you have to be *better* than MS Office to win converts. Otherwise organizational momentum will kill you.
;-)
For spreadsheet manipulation, *nothing* beats Gnumeric. It is far and away the best spreadsheet I have ever worked with for doing complex manipulation of real spreadsheets.
For simple letters, I usually use Abiword, primarily because it interfaces well with my *real* document creation system (Vim/LaTeX). It isn't perfect but it doesn light-weight work well enough. For heavier-duty stuff there is always LyX for those who don't do enough of it to worry about learning how to use Vim and LaTeX properly together.
For presentations, you can use Beamer if you are familiar with LaTeX. Otherwise, you can break down and use OOo for that. This isn't ideal but then neither are presentations
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Linux is perfectly usable.
Who's to say my utility isn't squeezing 1% out of the kernel so those cycles are available for a supercomputing application?
You want "far more return on investment", then *you* make that investment, and let me make mine; or just shut up.
from somebody trying to start a flame war.
When can we start marking articles posted here and elsewhere as "flamebait" or "troll"?
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
The Penguin Battle Royal Continues!
It's Linus 'the Creator' Torvalds squaring off against Con 'whatizname' Kolivas and the mainstream Linux fanatics! Tune in today as we sensationalize this bit with tabloid journalism for the delight of the trollmiesters.
Sorry guys, what was it you are trying to say?
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
"stay geeky and appeal to the advanced tech guru in all of us; go mainstream and leave the advanced functionality and reliable kernel behind to compete with Microsoft and Apple; or face a "civil war" that could lead to total Linux annihilation.""
Oh Jebus, a bit melodramatic are we?
Simple solution, fork it, one 'tech guru' fork and one 'not tech guru' fork, code get shared both ways, we get the best of both worlds, neither gets annihilated, everyone wins.
First, it's actually better than it was. There used to be a separate root password, and you had to enter it every time. Now, you just enter your normal user password (via sudo), and it remembers it for some 5-10 minutes.
Second, it's not needed for everyday tasks. It's needed for messing with global system settings -- things like your screen resolution -- or for installing software. Most people don't install software every day. (Although it might get a bit annoying doing it for updates...)
Third, it can be turned off, temporarily or completely, or customized in various way. Technically, I don't know what Vista can do here -- I imagine "just turn it off" is an option.
Compare this to Vista. Some software pops up the prompt constantly, sometimes it only pops up intermittently. The vast majority of the times it pops up, there's really nothing special happening. And, to my knowledge, there's nothing like the "remember for 5 minutes" feature of Linux.
Granted, the gap isn't as big as it once was, but the reason we make fun of cancel/allow is not that they ripped off sudo, but that they ripped it off and got it so horribly wrong. Compare what Microsoft has done to what Apple has done, faced with the same problem: Microsoft has essentially kept backwards-compatibility almost all the way back to DOS, and certainly back to systems like Win95 and Win98, which had all the security of "Forget your password? Press esc at the password prompt to login as Administrator."
Apple, on the other hand, completely ditched their OS 9 architecture. Yes, OS 9 apps run on OS X, but only through an emulation layer ("Classic"), just as PPC OS X apps run on Intel OS X only through Rosetta. So, when Apple implemented sudo and a new application bundling system, they had a good shot at getting it right, because they didn't have to support all the quirks of the old programs directly.
That's what Microsoft should have done with Vista: Provide an emulation/virtualization layer, or at least something akin to a chroot, in which to run old apps in. Give it a performance hit -- and actually write a new API. When people port their apps, they do so in such a way that there are minimal "cancel/allow" windows, but for people who haven't ported, there's absolutely no cancel/allow, but they also can't harm the rest of the system.
Maybe they should license a Wine variant?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Time makes more converts than reason
The whole article is based on the flawed assumption that both camps can't co-exist. I think they can.
The Linux Kernel is not going to set us free if Linus doesn't make user freedom his top priority. Those who care about user freedom are eager to win the home and office desktop users from Microsoft. This has huge implications for media reform. The question is this: Does Linus care about user freedom, or does he just want to make money while delaying the inevitable liberation of society by free software? If Linus is only concerned with making money by catering to big business, his name will be a mere footnote in the narrative of free software liberating society from corporate media control.
Freedom is free.
In the proprietary software world, a fork is a split on the order of a political party collapsing in on itself. It means fewer resources, missed deadlines, and vaporvare products. Or worse, it means half your development team just left to work for another company, bringing their ideas with them -- meaning that two competing products are about to be shipped, where once there was a monopoly.
This might be interesting to see applied to a certain software monopoly. ^.^ It just can't happen with Linux, though, for the reasons that you describe.
Because when you have two sides fighting in a civil war, neither wins? It may be stressful, but two products will probably emerge, and one will probably end up being the most successful. I don't think civil war is the right term. I would see it as move of a divorce with a custody battle over who gets the users.
Linux should be for the mainstream. The larger the user base, the more interest there will be in it. The more interest, the more likely hardware manufacturers will open up their specs, making it easier to develop drivers and leading to increased support for all users. The larger the user base, the more applications and games will be available, leading to a snowball effect of more users. Another reason to not just use a Mac or Windows is cost. What if Linux had Apple's ease of use and Microsoft's hardware support and software repository? Not only that, but an easier to use Linux will probably improve the productivity of even the geeks, even if it is only a little when they have to install Linux on another computer...
Actually you are part right. I did you a disservice.
Your post wasn't as bad as I said it was. You just used one blanket statement about a political party that wasn't even all that bad. At this point I am so sick of politics on Slashdot that I want any post that names a political party set to -5 if they are not in the Politics section.
My bad, terribly sorry. And I happen to agree with most of what you said.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Anything Ziff-Davis has to say about Linux is arrant nonsense. Why this to Slashdot at all? ZD will do whatever they must to keep their sources of "insider information" at Microsoft intact, including spreading as much FUD as Redmond tells them to.
This thing is a flea circus. Anything that generates clicks is fodder for exploitation by the media.
It'd be nice if they stuck to things that were actually newsworthy.
What heated discussion? I read slashdot every day, why don't I know about this?
Or what's more, even care?
expandfairuse.org
Exaggerate much
I just can't be bothered.
Reminds me of another large company starting with an "M"
No idea what's in it except for all the worst offcuts of lips and arseholes, tastes like shit, bad for your health but very profitable and now an international phenomenon.
Special sauce, Cancel or Allow?
I don't therefore I'm not.
The difference is that Linux isn't freaking annoying when it asks you to sudo. Vista is a retarded, slow, ugly, mess. With Linux permissions are a natural part of the system that have been thought out and dealt with for years. They flow well. Vista makes it feel like you've hit a brick wall - over and over and over. It's about time M$ started worrying about security but they obviously have stuff to learn about making security usable.
:)
DRM is a moot point as to make content work on any platform you have to either buy your way through the wall or just break the wall down. I'm more of a break the wall down sort of guy as I don't believe in DRM. If I spend my mony to buy a DVD then IMHO I can do whatever the hell I want with it. If I want to go into Linux, rip it, take off the annoying menus and advertisements, burn my corrected version back to DVD, and then watch it from Linux then it's my right to do so. Screw the law. Corrupt officials that were bought by the rich (and greedy) passed that law so it's our right, and possibly our duty, to ignore that law. Even in Windows I opt to use technology that removes DRM from DVD and HD movies.
Most of the people I've known that have switched to Vista have switched back to XP. Myself, I don't care for anything newer than Windows 2000 and that is what I usually use when using Windows for personal use. (For work I have to use 2000, XP, Vista, Linux, AIX, and OS X on a daily basis.)
In my experience OS X is the easiest OS to run a couple programs in and Linux is the easiest to run a lot of programs in. Windows mostly sucks but you just need it if you want to run many off-the-shelf apps. Luckily those are needed less and less as time goes on. The only real major hold back is games and a few speciality apps. Luckily VMWare exists so you can run those without needing to reboot into Windows.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Don't compete directly with Apple and Micrsoft.
You haven't the marketing and advertisement dollars to do that. And that's not what works with Linux. What makes Linux valuable isn't the desktop -- its the fact that it just works. This is the one thing that Linux provides, especially as a server, that Microsoft simply cannot compete with.
Apple will either dominate the market or self destruct (again). No action required as yet.
Are they mutually exclusive? Why can we not keep usability and customisability yet be simultaneously easy to use and family-friendly? Different Linux distributions, perhaps? Just as there are different versions of Windows and Mac OS. Linux could go mainstream with a small initial fee, and no licencing fee. A geeky version, a family version? Like Ubuntu, which has different versions for different uses (education, home use).
for security reasons, so when I set up Ubuntu, I set up the root account as well.
Tech Public Policy stuff
If anything it has raised awareness about the state of play in the gui "responsiveness" arena - yes, frankly, I feel there is room for improvement when I use my fedora box but how do you measure it? I tune my kernels as best I can and am always looking for a little more.
I think that ck might have been a bit abrasive because of his back injury and that rubbed the kernel dev's up the wrong way. Don't get me wrong I think what ck has done is valuable, if not just for the code but for the fact that ck has raised awareness in this area.
About forking time too.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Hopefully, The Linux Identity will do well enough to see a sequel, as The Linux Supremacy. If we're really lucky, a trilogy, with The Linux Ultimatum. I could foresee that in 'Supremacy' Tux makes it to the desktop, and in 'Ultimatum' the organization forces the use of Tux. But if Tux decides to do Surf's Up 2.0 next, I'm afraid he'll surf his head on rocks and end completely brain dead before his time.
TA Spring is available for Linux, these days. clickie
In any case, I don't see what the OP is on about with Linus (plus his supposed "minions") "squaring off against Con Kolivas".
As far as I was aware, all Kolivas does is to cherry-pick among the patches Linus (OK, and his minions) produce to make a useful machine for the desktop.
If it happens to be true that Linus doesn't like that, perhaps he needs to take a break from working on the kernel.
This is a news story coming from a pro-windows site saying that Linux might die. Of course Linux will never die, it's open source and there are millions of people who use or are interested in it. ZDnet are just trying to push people away from Linux because they are a windows friendly site.
I find it is actually possibly less secure. With sudo, I can selectively give different accounts different levels of access to root commands, without having to give any of them a root password. Also, it means the root account can't be attacked over the network, and the user account is more secure, if we're talking about a dictionary cracker / brute force attack -- with normal users, they have to guess your username and your password. With root, they only have to guess the password, but if you use sudo for everything, there is no root password.
Personally, I use passwords only for things I have to log into locally. I then use sudo and ssh keys for everything else.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I vote for a large "Civil War" cross-over between all distributions that will span the entire Linux universe.
That was funny.
If someone offered me a shrink wrapped copy of Vista for free, I would accept it, but only because I could turn around and sell it to some dumb snit that thinks it is an operating system.