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Torvalds on Where Linux is Headed in 2008
Stony Stevenson writes "In an interview at the ITNews site, Linus Torvalds lays out his current excitement about the future of Linux. Torvalds is looking forward to hardware elements like solid-state drives, expects progress in graphics and wireless networking, and says the operating system is strong in virtualisation despite his personal lack of interest in the area. 'When you buy an OS from Microsoft, not only you can't fix it, but it has had years of being skewed by one single entity's sense of the market. It doesn't matter how competent Microsoft — or any individual company — is, it's going to reflect that fact. In contrast, look at where Linux is used. Everything from cellphones and other small embedded computers that people wouldn't even think of as computers, to the bulk of the biggest machines on the supercomputer Top-500 list. That is flexibility.'"
So 2008 is finally the year of Linux on the desktop?
No mention in TFA of this. Could this be the breakthrough?
Only three things are certain; death, taxes, and apocryphal quotations - Ben Franklin.
Its very important that kernel developers have their priorities right,
commenting on unnecessary things takes steam out of any initiatives
Not really much to the interview.. It can be summed up with 1 Q&A
Interviewer: Where is Linux going.
Linus: Its going where it wants to.
and didn't care much about the politics or market share of Linux... just in writing goog code; and preferring GPL2 to GPL3? So why should we care to read his views on topics that do not interest him?
The EEE PC from Asus shows the extents to which vested interests will go in ensuring drivers for display, ACPI, wifi etc. will be DRM-ridden binaries... and Linus hasn't had much to say about these things.
Maybe if he cared about the future of Linux so much, he would try and make as much of it GPL3 as he could?
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
If games made for Windows worked 1% faster in Linux, we'd have a generation of kids who would only know windows as the OS used in businesses.
The day I see in a game forum "Use Linux, n00b." as the usual reply to "OMG! Low fps! Getting pwned! HALP!" will set the ten year count to Linux victory over Windows.
I agree with much of what was said. However, from my perspective. I believe that a very strong emphasis in laying a robust foundation for gaming should be at the top of everyone's list to see more Linux market penetration...
I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask where they're goin' and hook up with 'em later.
Dear Linus is talking like people would want flexibility, power and truth. In reality things are more close to the opposite. /.
Actually, most people want to be lied and to be told how to think. Flexibility is many times the opposite of easy-to-use.
Marketing will still decide how the products will look like, no matter how cumbersome/stupid it would be to use it.
Yes, I personally like Linux, but I wouldn't get pompous about taking over the OS market. Ever. It sounds weak even in a clearly Linux-biased community like
Oh well, nvm, where is that ol tar'n'feather? Go get them, boys!!!
Is Linux kernel development proceeding faster than Windows Server development?
I'm the wrong person to ask, for multiple reasons. First off, I'm somewhat biased, of course. But the other reason is that I don't even know -- or really care -- how Windows Server development actually proceeds, so how could I even compare and make an intelligent point?
I simply don't use Microsoft products, not because I hate them, but because they aren't interesting to me.
And, they were talking about virtualisation and the development process used in both of them:
In your opinion, where does Linux shine versus Windows? Reliability? Virtualisation?
I think the real strength of Linux is not in any particular area, but in the flexibility.
So, where do Desktops and wireless come in all this again Mr. Troll?
"..."
Can someone summarize Linus' earlier claims on Linux? He must have been asked where he saw Linux in 2005, 2006 and 2007. While there must be some "right on" predictions, I am sure there are some predictions that could be seen as way off course. I slashdotter is eager to know.
Linux wireless support is often better than windows (packet injection, rfmon sniffing etc)... You just need to shop around and buy decent cards if you want the best performance.
All the cards I use are Atheros based, and work perfectly with Linux... I used to use Prism2 (802.11b only) based cards which also worked well.
I've also found Intel's cards work very well.
If you run some rare type of wireless card you may find that the windows drivers aren't too great for it either, and might stop receiving any updates rather quickly. You're also more likely to have other issues, like drivers breaking when you update windows (how many older types of card don't work at all with vista? and how many of these are no longer supported by their manufacturers and so will never work?).
And don't get me started on manufacturers who sell the same model of card with different chipsets, that's wholly irresponsible. They should change the model number if they change the core chipset, as it effectively becomes a whole different card.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
2008 is seeing the birth of laptop computers below $300: XO, Asus EEE, and I guess some new will appear soon.
Vista alone is almost more expensive than the hardware !
Microsoft was a good alternative when computers did cost $1500, but now the price is just too heavy.
But they really can't win when the hardware is cheap.
If they keep remaining in the high performance market (which seems their belief, see DirectX 10), they'll lose their market share in 2 years, along with Dell !
There is a new 80211 stack in Linux with better structure that allows easier creation of device drivers. This makes it easier for manufactures to create drivers, like the one who designed your card. For those manufacturers that do not bother, like the one who made your card, it also makes it a tiny bit easier for enthusiasts to step in.
I hope that makes it clear for you.
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
Linux will make the desktop when it 'just works', no hassle, no issues. And by just works - I mean all programs installed, not just the OS (once running... the installers seem to have gone far enough down the 'just works' route for my tastes... and they still have (most of) the fall back 'custom' selection)
Sadly, the call for 'flexibility' - which probably is its greatest strength, is also its greatest weakness. Things should "just work(TM)". In my experience, they don't... and getting better doesn't cut the mustard in todays world.
The Bible: Historically verifiable fact from an observers point of view
Is Linux kernel development proceeding faster than Windows Server development?
I'm the wrong person to ask, for multiple reasons. First off, I'm somewhat biased, of course. But the other reason is that I don't even know -- or really care -- how Windows Server development actually proceeds, so how could I even compare and make an intelligent point?
I simply don't use Microsoft products, not because I hate them, but because they aren't interesting to me.
As to where he is getting this idea of improved wireless support. FTA:
Where will the Linux kernel gain added strengths in 2008?
We really are pretty much all over the map. One of the fun things about Linux, and certainly the thing that has kept it interesting over almost two decades now, is how different people have different goals and the hardware keeps changing under us too.
So a lot of the effort ends up being hardware-related. Both in terms of peripheral drivers and simply in platform changes. The bulk of the kernel really is about hardware support, and that alone keeps us busy. The situation in graphics and wireless networking devices -- both of which have been somewhat weak spots -- is changing, and I suspect that will be a large part of what continues to happen during 2008 too.
To sum it up for you...
Linus doesn't use Windows. He declined to compare linux with Windows Server due to lack of knowledge of the platform.
Linus is kinda, sort of, a tiny bit involved in kernel development. He believes that the issue of graphics and wireless networking support is changing. I would venture a guess that this opinion was formed by his involvement in the kernel. Perhaps he is seeing more drivers written, and more frequent patch submissions. Disclaimer: I have not actually gone and validated this guess. I could very well be wrong, and it could be something else such as a call from Miss Cleo.
I have found that I have more issues with older wireless cards than new ones. There are a few brands that I just avoid, and a few that almost always work. Same with video cards (in linux and windows). ATI cards and I haven't gotten on well in the last four years or so. I hear that ATI support is much better than the last time I've tried it though.
I'll believe in corporations having personhood when Texas executes one... - advocate_one
I misread "One of the things I personally am really interested in is the move over to SSD" as "to BSD " and nearly lost my coffee all over my laptop....
Oh arse
pull your head out of your *ss.
;)
:)
my grandma is using linux all-day, i never needed to put a cd other than the install cd into the drive. add/remove programs does everything not just remove, no hw issues (no crappy hardware at all, certainly
linux is geeky in some areas, but if you are a power user, you must learn ITS quirks and tricks THE SAME WAY YOU LEARN WINDOWS' ONES. it's an other world, your 10 years of windows practice means nothing for linux. clever people can learn a second operating system that serves them better. i'm playing on windows, working on linux. what's the problem?
this whole flame is about highlighting issues in other's operating system. linux has it's strengths (on desktop too) and windows too.
I think you confuse "support" with "platform that supports".
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
you got it right, i have been using linux for almost a year now, had 2 crashes in 10 months! my winXP used to crash once every week, i didnt need drivers for anything, neither my sound card nor my lan card, nothing! i use windows only in gaming, and last week i discovered how easier it is to write math formulas in openoffice from writing them in the overbloated M$ office, and my whole linux system is barely 5 gb, whereas XP with office and few other applications is taking 12 gb! all-in-all my experience with linux has been and is still being great, no matter what!
my sig pwns your sig
Because of Vista Linux is bound to at least increase more than usual. I'm a XP-user and I'll probably continue to be for a while, but I've barely touched Vista and I abselutely hate it. I've Been trying out Ubuntu, and when I can't use XP anymore I'll switch for sure. (And besides, I've kinda fallen in love with Fluxbox. Tabs! :)
Stop trolling retard
...it comes as a business platform, not an operating system. The difference is: the OS has to do its job flawlessly in the best possible way in order to minimize the amount of work (read: time, money) required, while the business platform is something that resembles an OS but also comes with a load of business services built around it in order to generate a flow of money.
The problem with the business platform is that it was built for the sole purpose of selling services, therefore when it eventually works and there's less demand for services (data recovery, repairs, etc.) it must be tagged as obsolete and replaced by something newer and shinier but still defective in order to generate again a strong demand for services.
This is the exact reason why Microsoft stopped developing XP the moment it started being a decent OS, pushing instead the adoption of that Vista crap, and also explains why anybody who cares for his/her data or systems should consider Linux, BSD and other operating systems built to work with no strings attached.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
I got one better than that. I put Ubuntu on my sons laptop, ran like a champ. Tried XP, suddenly it couldn't find the sound card. Turns out Creative never made an XP driver for my particular card (CL PCI128) so I had to hunt to find a 3rd party created-from-the-linux-driver driver. Ubuntu, worked out of the box. Windows, refused to run it, and even with the driver it's still flaky.
Now that Linux can run my 1 Windows game, forget Windows.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
Because the zip doesn't contain the source, which was exactly the point. Would moderators please RTFA of that case?
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
My wireless card from 2004 still doesn't work properly,
Simple solution: do what you do for every other operating system--buy supported hardware.
Linux isn't even trying to support all hardware. Neither, for that matter, is Windows.
I recall since early 90's, every reporter said that desktops were dead and that it was the year of laptops. And yet, desktops continue.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I am just a noob, but it sound like this Linus guy is what you people are calling a "real fanboy". In my country, is easier to trust critic. In such cases we do not even read TFA.
me too!
I re-installed Windows and Ubuntu on my laptop on the same day.
Ubuntu worked out of the box, whereas i had to look up all kinds of drivers for my windows install.
(wireless, sound card, etc etc)
Also, the ubuntu install was friendlier and much faster.
If you look at the industry in general, Linux has continued to gain ground and is now present in more computers than ever before - giving manufacturers more incentive to develop their own Linux drivers.
And wi-fi is, itself, more common. Just about any laptop you buy has it built in and it's hard to find a low-end router without it.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
but I didn't see any momentum at any place
/. readers are pro-standards, the lack of a 'hard' standard, or small set of standard configurations is a hindrance to more widespread *desktop* adoption.
I take it you don't shop at Wal-Mart?
I didn't see anyone in my office switched to Linux.. or any of my clients.
And you probably won't, as most office PCs fall under the jurisdiction of IT overlords who dislike users replacing OSes.
Sure.. they have nothing else to do other than wrestling with Linux.
I'll take that as sarcasm, and agree with you. The biggest stumbling block to widespread Linux adoption on the desktop is that it usually does take some 'wrestling' to get it to work, whereas Windows generally 'just works'. Yet that's not a fault of Linux, it's a fault of hardware makers who decide to release a driver for Windows and NOT for Linux.
I was going to mention the lack of GUI tools for some tasks, requiring users to manualy edit init files, but then I remembered how many times I've had to open regedit and manually change registry entries. In that sense I've had to wrestle with Windows as much as Linux.
See.. how many distros ??
Actually, a good point. There are a significant fraction of Windows users who don't know which version they're running, and in order to support them you need to know that. Same with the various distros, as they all are different enough so that you need to know which you're dealing with. I was recently at an acquaintance's house and saw their computer. "Hey, you run Linux" I said.... "No, it's Ubuntu" they said. They could have just as easily said "No, it's KDE". Sadly, as much as most
how many kernal updates every week ???
Less than the number of Patch Tuesdays in a month, apparently.
Linux sure got some momentum on academia. Well... to be frank.. its not because they really like. Only because they want to escapre from paying volume-licenses.
Actually, it *is* because 'they like'. $300 is nothing when you've got research grants in the million$. Academia likes it because they can whittle away and tweak Linux until it does *only* what they need it to do, and do it efficiently and fast. Faster than Windows. And when you only need half the computers to get the same speed, or can get twice the speed with what you've got, you use Linux.
But if you really want to argue cost, then don't forget the electricity bill. The $300 spent on a license costs more when you need to buy and power more computers to get the same results in the same time.
Furthremore, there are linux idiots who worship linux OS, who monopolize linux-OS in their domain.
There are Apple fanboys too. And yes, sometimes Windows actually *is* a better choice, although thankfully those special cases are becoming fewer and fewer as time goes on.
Linux community should give up their efforts and must try to learn some lessons from M$ and either help Windows to be better OR do something like Windows for FREE.
I think they *did* learn some lessons... lessons in what NOT to do. In fact, looking at Vista, I think MS has a few lessons that *they* need to learn from the Linux community.
As for 'doing something like Windows....for free', isn't that *exactly* what Linux is?
Afterall.. true power of linux can not be executed without being a linux-geek.. who knows all the command line commands and some degree of linux kernal modding... that's pathetic.
And the true power of Windows can not be executed... FULL STOP. Can't streamline the kernel, must know all the registry tweaks which may or may not be published anywhere. THAT is pathetic.
I'll agree with you that for some advanced functions, mostly used for security testing, linux has better support than windows. The problems I have had seem to be at the application level with gnome network manager (haven't tried KDE on a laptop). The performance was slow, and there were a number of small yet annoying bugs. Also (now for drivers) on return from hibernate the wireless card was not detected. This was with an ipw3945 card on a Thinkpad T60p running Ubuntu Edgy/Feisty/Gutsy. Using a cheap atheros based PCI bus card solved all these problems and I got to use the excellent madwifi-ng drivers as opposed to the binary intel driver.
_____
Thank you.
You can have a nearly identical operating system sitting on top of any of them. Choose your preferred kernel. I think Linus should keep his head on the kernel, in particular how he can improve it to bring it to the level where it can compete with the opensolaris kernel when Sun GPLv3's it. I'm sure he'll worry[1] about that when they actually do it.
[1] Where worry == rejoice.
Deleted
You dont seem to emphasise how kick ass Madwifi is. :D
One card can do anything the most expensive access point you can find can do.
The most amazing thing I can think of is its ability to do multiple things with a single card seamlessly.
You can sniff networks on one channel and surf the net on another, you can have virtual access points and surf the net (while monitoring) and so on.
Absolutely amazing.
*applause*
Bravo sir. I think I have just read the greatest rational pro-Linux post on Slashdot.
You keep thumping on the features. What about usability?
Here is one single little feature that I wish were fixed. I want to install VMWare on a Linux distro without having to need a compiler installed. I can do this on Windows, why not Linux?
For example I bought VMWare and I am forced to upgrade because my version is old, and something in the Linux headers has changed that needs a new patch to fix up. WTF... This is a prime reason why I have given up on Linux on the desktop. It just requires too much work even with VMWare.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Debian GNU/kFreeBSD, Debian GNU/kNetBSD, Debian GNU/HURD
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
I'm gathering you don't use OOo, the Gimp, or VLC, or any number of other desktop linux programs. If you do, and you have, please accept my apologies, and give me (and the thousands of other N800 users) the link to the repo.
But yes, I did look at something running Windows Mobile. Then I asked myself "Why the hell would I want to do that?"
'When you buy an OS from Microsoft, not only you can't fix it, but it has had years of being skewed by one single entity's sense of the market. It doesn't matter how competent Microsoft -- or any individual company -- is, it's going to reflect that fact. In contrast, look at where Linux is used. Everything from cellphones and other small embedded computers that people wouldn't even think of as computers, to the bulk of the biggest machines on the supercomputer Top-500 list. That is flexibility.'
The above has been in use since 1999. It needs to be retired. "We're not Microsoft," alone isn't going to cut it for much longer. If Linux advocates keep trying to use that line to the exclusion of all else, they'll eventually find that it isn't Microsoft they'll be competing with...it's Apple. That is one battle that they can't hope to win. OSX is both UNIX based, and with close-to-mainstream user friendliness. Next to that, people have no incentive to use Linux at all.
One thing I find my computer quite often busy doing is swapping. With only 512MB of RAM, and many bloated programs running, it can't hold everything in RAM all at once. But worse, I find, is when a program is doing a lot of I/O output, which gets buffered in RAM more than it should. If the data being copied is a 40GB HD video file, the assumption that I might be reading the file back in soon (so it should be cached in RAM) just doesn't cut it. An SSD dedicated just for swapping might be faster (eliminates the seeks, but still uses I/O bus bandwidth). And it won't prevent existing pages from being swapped out, requiring them to be swapped back in again (usually a lot sooner than I would be reading those large files back in, which obviously cannot be read in whole).
But is SSD the answer for this (swapping)? If it were significantly cheaper than regular RAM, I might think so. For other uses (live copies of /usr, and such) it certainly could help. What I think is the answer for my case is to go overboard on RAM. My current estimate of normal RAM usage I need for my next computer build (in progress ... 1/3 of the parts already purchased) is 2GB. But what I plan to do in this case, however, is go with 8GB of RAM ... and not enable any swap space at all. Normally, the amount of swap space I would allocate is the lesser of 1: 2x the RAM ... and 2: the amount of data that can be transferred in one direction in 30 seconds. I'm switching to SATA so the latter figure will be larger. Still, the 8GB figure well exceeds the 2GB I expect to need for a while.
Suppose with that 2GB of RAM I deploy 6GB of swap space. That gives me a total of 8GB of space for dirty pages (not counting I/O output buffers which have a destination elsewhere). But during the course of normal use, dirty pages often get forced out to swap because of things like I/O output buffering, which also in turn slows down that I/O (more so if it's in the same disk as the swap space, due to head seek times). Now compare that to 8GB of RAM with no swap space at all. The capacity for keeping dirty pages is the same. But when heavy I/O starts to get pushy, there's no where else for those dirty pages to go (to make room to needlessly overbuffer the I/O). The end result should simply be that the I/O can do nothing more than be written where it belongs as fast as it can (and it can be faster since swapping isn't using up any I/O bus bandwidth nor tying up the disk heads into other locations in the case of non-SSD).
So what else is SSD good for? Maybe for /usr if the price is right. But if SSD is just RAM, bottled up through a SATA/SCSI/IDE/etc, how is that any better than RAM? Is 16GB (high end of what /usr needs for nearly everyone) of SSD cheaper than 16GB of RAM by enough to make it worthwhile? I suspect not, unless the SSD is just using cheap RAM.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Now why'd you have to do that? I was trying to make a point.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
There is one huge problem with the madwifi drivers: no powersaving whatsoever, at least with the Atheros-based miniPCI cards used in Thinkpads. The power drain is really off the scale when compared to some more reasonable cards. Using an Atheros card costs me about an hour of battery time in Linux when compared to Windows XP.
I think you forgot something rather... important/interesting.
:)
Leave a WinXX desktop running, say... 3 days.
By the 4th day, performance shows slower than crawl speeds, horrible network performance, and i dont even want to go into details if the desktop is used for gaming.
Linux (kubuntu here!) keeps going and going and going and going.... plus this box is a couple years old, and running kubuntu for work/dev is a bliss in speed compared to the counterpart in winXX.
And i do think that messing with linux is like.... wrestling a worty oponent.
Well, somebody didn't read TFA (that would be you):
"The situation in graphics and wireless networking devices -- both of which have been somewhat weak spots -- is changing, and I suspect that will be a large part of what continues to happen during 2008 too."
Case in point, it appears that VISTA is actually the best OS to run on a tablet with wacom support. XP tablet has had some driver issues, and was never built for a tablet, just had support put in after the fact. My tablet works great with Vista/onenote combo. I really wish I could see how fast this thing would be with Kubuntu, but I could not find any solutions even close to the convenience of Onenote running on vista.
Ambition is a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy.
Since you're not paying the Microsoft License, you don't need to raise your prices accordingly.
Therefore your products can sell for LESS than those which require a Microsoft License, and you are more competitive on the marketplace.
e.g.: Asus eeePC, Everex
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
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This is exactly the case with my unit (Gateway TB120.) It shipped with XP Tablet PC 2005 and the drivers were pure garbage. The drivers were really designed for Vista and it runs much better with Vista than XP Tablet. I also have OpenSUSE 10.3 x86_64 on there too and it *flies* compared to Vista, but the TB120 uses a USB Wacom tablet that currently has no driver for Linux. When the linux-wacom guys ship the USB tablet driver, I'll be sure to drop Windows and use Linux.
Just "gittin-r-done," day after day.
The desktop market is less concerned about technical excellence, and more concerned with compatibility with established software. Apparently, Linux doesn't handle the midrange very well. Web servers also fall into the middle range, and Linux has a significant market share there.
I am so damned tired of questions like "Will $nextyear be the year of Linux on the desktop?". Linux is already on the desktop. it has been for years. And I hate to say it, because I don't like hype, but Ubuntu really does deliver the goods for the best desktop system ever. Ubuntu can do 95% (or so) of what Microsoft can do on the desktop, and a lot that Microsoft can't.
What the Linux world is missing out on is the specialized applications, such as CAD, electronics design, chemistry, etc. It would be great to have native builds of these tools, and not to have to run them under emulation.
the problem has been solved, I run VmWare workstation on gutsy with no problems
the solution is here:#
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=3558604
I just install VmWare Workstation as normal, when it fails at configuration I run the patch and it does the trick.
It's easy.
As for 'doing something like Windows....for free', isn't that *exactly* what Linux is?
LINUX IS NOT WINDOWS > http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm
this is probably the biggest problem facing people who convert from windows. they often expect linux to just be windows but better.
ITs not harder to use
ITs not harder to setup
IT IS different, and alot of windows users have trouble accepting that they dont know anything about linux and instead of politly asking for help get rude and abusive and say stuff like "IM GOING BACK TO WINDOWS" or "IN WINDOWS it just worked", as a result they get no help then go running back to windows and spend the rest of there days complaining that linux sucks
regarding linux helping windows, were do you think they get they're ideas, im not sure if it was BSD or linux but many of the security improvements for vista started here (sudo, file privelages, stack smashing protection)
i think the current linux approach will slowly grow, but were stealing the geeks!
3/4 years ago i was the hacker/geek family&friends always wanted my help with problems, then my i went to (k)ubuntu, initially i had no linux knowledge (took me a day to get beryl running etc). now im so used to my settings i find it hard to use windows (whats all this clicking about no RSI for me), so when somebody comes to me with a problem i give it the standard checks, virus, malware( with abit of help), Drivers and then i pass it of to my brother. Unfortunately my brother has also seen the light so its just a matter of time till my dad will have to switch. At the end of the day if you want to get under the hood of your pc you need linux (once you switch you can choose how deep/often you go, ive been on linux about 18 months and compiled my 1st program last week, so the myth that you NEED to compile just comes from windows users that are used to knowing 'everything' and cant take the step back to being just users
1. opensolaris has very few bright spots (as Linus said it, and he's correct), namely ZFS
2. opensolaris is not actively developed. At least compared to Linux. Linux had more commits for 2.6.24 in the merge window than opensolaris in _years_.
3. opensolaris is terribly obsolete. The code seems to be stuck a form written for compilers in the 80's.
4. They brag about their low number of bug reports, hiding the fact that a low number of users and almost no development justifies a low number of bug reports.
5. There is almost no hardware support. If you feel Linux should improve its hw support don't even think about solaris.
opensolaris attempts to compete with linux, not the other way around.
"Some apps are too heavy for the hardware, that's not linux's fault but rather the individual apps and the hardware. A program designed for a supercomputer with a terabyte of ram won't work very well on even a high end gaming pc."
In other words, the claim that Linux (or Windows, or some other OS) runs at all these different scales isn't really meaningful in the general case. If your cell phone was the size of a mainframe, it might be able to run enterprise applications by mere recompiling, but since it isn't - who cares?
"linux is geeky in some areas, but if you are a power user, you must learn ITS quirks and tricks THE SAME WAY YOU LEARN WINDOWS' ONES."
It's not as if you even have to futz with text files much either - usually there is a GUI frontend app that will do the configuration for you. And if you use Ubuntu, it will be in the repos. I'm finding Synaptic on Ubuntu to be for applications like Google is for information. Just the other day I was having an issue getting a drive mounted at boot, searched "fstab", and came up with a solution that didn't involve reading man pages or searching forums.
I have no doubt that as time goes by, more and more of these things will be included by default in the distro.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
I do believe Linux should receive more support for WiMAX, it's non-existent right now and it seems Nokia is doing a lot of the work with the Nokia PDA N900, I just hope they release drivers at least...
ghostbar page.
They're getting bigger and developing better language skills. Starve young trolls so they don't ever get a chance to grow into ones like this.
>What portion of that 95% is due to technological superiority vs. vendor lock-in, and monopolistic practices?
Since people aren't exactly flocking to the newly available free alternatives despite them being trumpeted by the IT press, probably not as much of the latter as you think.
Sorry to crush your worldview.
Except he's totally wrong. Some lame uninstallers require a reboot becuase they don't kill their parent process before uninstalling. So you have to reboot to finish the install, because you can't delete *open files* on Windows macnines. the pagefile has nothing to do with it.
This is really a problem with software that installs bullshit task-bar applets (Apple and Adobe, I am looking at you). The vast majority of Microsoft's own software does not require a reboot to install or uninstall. Even fairly major items like SQL Server, Excahnge, or Sharepoint can be installed or uninstalled without a reboot. The same goes for Office apps since 2000.
The reason many MS security patches require a reboot is beacuse they patch explorer, the kernel, or some other subystem (such as the Worksation service) which is always open. But even that has improved quite a bit lately; several of the last few rounds of MS patches have not required reboots on most of our servers.
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I really enjoyed reading the Torvalds article on Linux future
i believe we need 'idiot' tags for the likes of nerdyalien.. i mean, COME ON...