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GNU Hands Out Trisquel At a Microsoft Store
alexanderb writes "Remember GNU's Windows 8 launch trick or treat in October, where Free Software Foundation activists handed out gratis copies of the free (as in freedom) system Trisquel GNU/Linux? Well, GNU returned for a Microsoft store's 'Tech for Tots' session on December 20th in Boston, MA. Like in October, the activists (accompanied by a gnu) handed out gratis copies of Trisquel GNU/Linux — a free alternative to Microsoft's new operating system, Windows 8."
Handing out an desktop operating system that only has a desktop user interface?
This is 20-damn-12, I'd expect a mimimum of at least one useless user interface!
I welcome these Gnus bearing free gifts! (valid to say "free gifts" in this context, with free as in software freedom. It's redundant to say "free gifts" with "free as in beer" as the word "gift" by itself implies "free as in beer"). [On Grimm, they mentioned that "gift" means "poison" in German, {'Geschenk' is the german word of the english word "gift"}so is it necessary to disavow that meaning? Free as is beer not as in poison?]
No, the problem is that they're trying to compete with windows 8.
The best way to compete with windows 8 is let people try it.
Ubuntu is a tough enough sale and that's with some proprietary stuff added on. Don't even want to know if Trisquel can play DVDs out of the box or not.
I never heard of that distro before?
What is it like?
Zero proprietary drivers and media files?
GNOME desktop?
PITA to install?
Curious
Thanks
Steve
True, but every new Linux user will start demanding either that the OEMs stop bundling Windows, find one more amenable to their requests, or they'll start building their own boxes.
It also means that each new Linux user isn't buying MS Office, using IE, or all the other bits and bobs that Microsoft also sells.
You gotta eat that elephant one bite at a time, yanno?
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
To the average "dude or dudette on the street", it is just plain "Linux", and this "GNU/Linux" label just oozes righteous political correctness.
Which is based on Debian, which is already "free"
round and round we go
Then you need to give up on the Microsoft store, and focus on corporate consumers and IT admins, because those are the people who keep MS alive. MS at the consumer level is a joke, no one WANTS their product, it's just the path of least resistance. Get it out of the corporation and your task is complete, but IT admins are well and truly sold on ActiveDirectory and their ability to micromanage settings on user machines at an individual basis. Sometimes I can't argue with them either, as users really are retarded sometimes.
Every new computer at the store includes Windows, so you have to pay for it even if you don't want it.
That must suck for people buying Macs.
Face it, the demand isn't there. That's the problem that's being ignored. Big names like Dell have tried to market systems with alternative operating systems, but the sales don't justify it. I can't see how sending two guys and a furry to intercept shoppers is going to help either. If anything, having people see them getting hauled off by security is going to put a negative image in people's minds.
Why Trisquel?
Why not Linux Mint or Ubuntu or Debian or Redhat or one other distribution that is not only widely known, but has appropriate support, forums and users who can help?
I'm all for showing people what alternatives to Windows are out there, but surely it would be better to give them something else that - well - a decent number of people actually use?
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
I'm a sole developer in my shop (in addition to being our Linux server admin). My workstations all run Debian and I'm about as pro-GNU as you can get. With that said, if it weren't for Active Directory keeping our end users from random acts of jackassery, our entire organization would have degraded to a Mad Max-esque wasteland where roving bands of IT geeks roam the cubicle ranges keeping everything in check manually.
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
To beat any incumbent you need to offer better products. MS isn't just a Windows desktop, it's the server, terminal services, AD, DNS, DHCP, Exchange, SQL, IIS, .Net, Sharepoint and a whole hoard of other stuff that works, and works nicely together with very little effort. As much as the Linux fanbase would this not be true, there is no linux solution that even comes close to this. Sure you could cobble together a bit of this and a bit of that that sort does something similar, but it takes 10x as much effort, only has 1/2 as many features, and is a nightmare to support or troubleshoot when it breaks (or a new guy comes onboard and has to figure out your homebrew mess you created.
I once had to write 40 pages in Open Office. The next day I ordered MS Office. I'd like to apologize to friends and family for polluting their machines with Open Office. I swear it looked like a good idea before I actually used it.
Good point. Reminds me of all those "free" AOL CD-ROMs I used to get.
Are they also doing this demonstration at events at Apple Stores? If they were really serious about their message, and not just trying for a pissing contest with Microsoft, you would likely hear more about their efforts against Apple. My bet is that they have confused themselves in their fight against paid software, and made it a fight against Microsoft.
Were it not for GNU, Linux's userland would be based on that of BSD. USL v. BSDi finished about a year after Linux came out.
If I had mod points... they would be yours. Well said.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
They haven't, really. They make half-hearted attempts and go back and forth with Microsoft on it. In the server land it's another deal entirely but in the consumer world, Dell is pretty much balls-to-the-wall Microsoft.
Exactly. Hell look at how Linux as an "OS" is managed, you got fifty billion little fiefdoms, NONE of which are ruled by one grouped or even really has to talk to one another on a regular basis, and then all these "little programs written by little groups with their own agendas" get slapped together and called an OS.
Now this works just great on a SERVER for several reasons. 1.- Removing the GUI and sound subsystems cuts out a LOT of complexity and overhead, 2.- You can "mix and match" to build a system that is right for the jobs your company is doing, 3.- MSFT prices itself very stupidly in that market, with Windows SBS costing $400 a pop, so 4.- Even after hiring an admin at 6 figures you are still gonna be ahead in a large org by the money you save not dealing with the mess that is Windows Server licensing.
But on the desktop this is exactly reversed, you HAVE to have a well built GUI and sound subsystem and frankly X-Server is a crashy mess, and Pulse is a bad joke, the users WILL NOT put up with CLI fiddling and "open up Bash and type" like a server admin would, and finally the cost for most users is practically zero because with trialware the OEMs end up getting windows Home and Basic for free, maybe even make a few bucks which they can use to lower the price.
So I'm sorry but Linux just isn't in the same league as OSX and Windows when it comes to ease of use, user friendliness, stability..its just not even in the same ballpark. I would argue that "free as in freedom" all volunteer doing your own thing nature that so many in the Linux community prizes so highly also insures that it never ever will be up to the task of standing in the same arena with OSX and Windows, because you just can't have the level of QA and QC with everybody doing their own thing. The X-Server guys don't listen to the DE guys who don't listen to the Pulse guys and so on so all it takes is ONE of these groups to change a pointer in the right spot and the whole thing falls down like a house of cards. Go look up the rant Thom that runs OSNews had when he tried to watch a video while chatting and the whole system crashed, its THAT kind of shit, probably caused by the video player team expecting something to be A when the X-Server team changed it to B, that gives Linux a bad rep.
I have said before and I'll say again not a single distro can pass the "Hairyfeet challenge" yet, not one. We take one of the user friendly distros like Ubuntu or PCLOS and install it side by side with Vista, along with a range of average software. We make sure ALL the drivers are working, then we update both to current. The vista machines WILL have 100% working drivers and software, the Linux system? Will be a mess. heck in just the last 5 years we've seen the devs gut both the DEs and the audio and wireless subsystems so good luck getting those systems to update without making a mess.
Until one can pass the Hairyfeet Challenge with flying colors, where every driver and every program still runs without a single forum hunt? Then I'm sorry but your product simply isn't in the same league, end of story.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I once had to write 40 pages in MS Office. The next day I learned LaTeX. I'm not apologising.
All other things being equal I suppose I'd prefer Micosoft Office to LibreOffice. But when price and freedom are considered, I'm happy with LibreOffice.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
This may not be flattering to Trisquel Linux, but it makes a real point and didn't deserve to be modded into oblivion.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
Google Docs works better.
I do a lot of my work while riding the bus with no Internet access. Does the offline part of Google Docs work better than Open Office or LibreOffice?
would the FSF rather someone stick with Windows if they are unable to use a FSF approved Linux distribution?
I assume FSF would want users to buy a new PC whose hardware supports a GNU/Linux distribution that does not contain or advertise proprietary software.
When I did this (late 2010) Open Office had some weird undo behavior when you had pictures in the document. You would do something like increase a font which would move pictures to new pages. Say you don't like it you press undo but things won't return to the previous state. It turns out that pictures had some kind of anchor or something that would not be affected by undo. Office 2010 was coming out and it had that killer live preview feature. On one side I had Open Office that could not do proper undo and on the other I had MS Office that could change formatting and undo it just by moving the cursor through the menu. In addition Open Office crashed when I had more than one OO program open. I wanted to work with Writer and Draw at the same time but it seems like a shared component or something caused them to crash.
Maybe things are much better now but I never bothered to check and probably never will.
This happened before LibreOffice. I did not use anything too advanced but when I used Draw and Writer at the same time something crashed bad :) I don't even want to think about Base.
I have written descent sized projects on Open/LibreOffice(.org) and never had a problem with it. What were your problems with it exactly? My only problem so far has been when i tried opening a MSWorks document and a recent bug with long load times for .RTF documents in LibreOffice.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
Not sure what the problem is.
I've written a 100+ page book with OpenOffice 2.x without any problems.
You admit that Dell treats the server market differently. Why is that? It's not because Microsoft has surrendered in the server market. If anything, Windows Server 2012 shows a lot of effort to compete in that space. Dell handles multiple environments in the server market because that's where the demand is. Dell's number one job is to make money. Linux makes money in the server realm.
Why is the consumer market different? It's because Dell's consumer customers are balls-to-the-wall Microsoft, even if they don't realize it. They want a PC that works like those their peers have and is a natural migration from their last PC. PC manufacturers targeting the consumer mass market aren't going to want to spend a fortune to generate demand for another operating system. This makes me think back to when IBM went to great lengths to get OS/2 into homes. It didn't work, and they went at it "full-hearted". It's a high risk in a market where the margins are razor thin. The slightest misstep can cost big time.
The fact that I cringe even using the term "Linux" doesn't help. I'm sure there's a small army of geeks that are ready to say it's the wrong term to use. Consumers are going to walk away if you start battles like that. That's not even getting into issues such as KDE vs Gnome vs Unity or this distro versus that distro and so on.
They're getting desperate. This is like a church handing out pamphlets outside of a movie theater or arcade. It'll all go in the garbage, and end up being a waste of time and resources.
I don't have the time or inclanation to bother correcting everything that's wrong with this post, but here's a few facts that run counter to your inane babbling:
*Windoze crashed constantly when I used it. The acronym BSOD is a household name, because of that "stability" on the MS desktop.
*OSX is a Unix based OS. It is, by its very design, in the same league as Linux.
*Linux doesn't have "a bad rep."
*Your statements are very biased and inaccurate, especially when saying that a Vista machine will run 100% perfectly.
I'm out of time, but i'm sure a bunch of people will pick-up where I left off and correct the rest of the fallacies in your post.
It's Spanish for the 3-legged symbol that appears, among other places, on the flag of the Isle of Man.
See, the spaniards of Galicia claim celtic heritage.
Still not cool enough for you?
Find me a windows system where every driver works without a single forum hunt... You're delusional. I use windows almost exclusively, mostly because I game a lot, and I have problems requiring forum hunting all the time.
Just today I've spent ages trying to get this stupid usb headset driver to work in 7x64. Apparently Rosewill still hasn't made it easy after however many years 7 has been out.
A normal user using Ubuntu or another well crafted distro will have a computer exactly as messed up as their windows computer would be.
RUGBYRUGBYRUGBY
No, it's still an awful name. There is a history of computer products using non-English words as names, such as Ubuntu, Adobe, and Amiga, but the words themselves have to sound good or catchy, and ideally have a strong definition behind it which those who look into it will identify with. 'Trisquel' is a weak-sounding word and given the definition I don't see why people outside of the Isle of Man and Galacia would be interested enough to remember it.
As for me the first time I heard it I assumed it was something to do with SQL, possibly doing something unholy with three different SQL backends.
404 Not Found: No such file or resource as '.sig'
You probably just discovered that OO/LO is just not an exact copy of MS Office and your highly conditioned and inflexible mind could not handle the simple adjustment to a different system. The same applies to your friends and family.
OO/LO is great software. It must, however, be approached with an open and agile mind.
"Linux? Oh, you mean those idiots dressed as animals in the mall?"
Yes, this'll go well. If you're going to do something memorable make sure it's not something stupid.
404 Not Found: No such file or resource as '.sig'
Speaking of better products, see whether you can read this until the end without laughing out loud. Personally, I broke at the point where they compared FSF membership card to a $50 iTunes card. I mean, seriously?
Ah, and the spewing of hate begins. These diverse distros don't really matter because all the "communication" happens in the projects that these distros are comprised of. But the only ones that really matter these days are Ubuntu, Mint, Debian, and Fedora. In the enterprise space, it's RHEL and SuSE. Your commentary here is toothless.
It's not there yet. So what. Say something insightful or original for once man, this certainly isn't. Of course, Canonical is trying hard to get there.
Which is why distros are so important.
Most vocal criticism from someone who apparently fails to understand development. Each of the independent projects does its own thing and stable versions are codified into a distro release. That release is then QA'd.
Actually they are, which is why Wayland is coming along. The DE guys aren't using much of the functionality that exists from the days of X11 yore, so Wayland omits it.
You think in a very set and staid "the world works only when it is done like Microsoft or Apple" mindset. And they succeed mostly either because of marketing or monopoly force.
Bullshit. But this is coming from the guy who thought that some developer in a core library would be able to undetectably target Steam and cause it and only it to crash out of some misguided hate.
I'd be curious as to what graphics drivers he was using. If they were closed source, then it's the vendor's fault most likely.
And I suspect once one gets close you'll move the goalposts. I suspect you never actually want to see Linux pass.
Are you hairyfeet's sockpuppet account?
Of course. When you have a monopoly like Microsoft does, consumers don't have a choice. Microsoft absolutely doesn't have a monopoly in the server space.
Sure, and they can keep themselves tied to Microsoft's boat and accept as they get dragged down along with them.
but it would be hard
they have made no effort whatsoever to make it clear what they are and why I should try it
I mean, does it really hurt to condescend to lower yourself and explain what it is your are doing and why anyone should care ??
I just built a from-scratch brand new system. Every part from the mobo to the graphics card is current-generation and fairly high-end. While Win7 SP1 didn't have the drivers out of the box to use its network interface (somewhat surprisingly; I wouldn't have expected the mobo's built-in gigabit Ethernet to be that different from those in the days of Win7 and on older PCs Win7 always recognized the network for me), Win8 did. It also supported the graphics card (I installed the Catalyst drivers anyhow because I wanted more control over it, but the system worked fine without, but that was just a short trip to amd.com), SSD, USB3, USB headest (Logitech), etc. Not a single unknown item in Device Manager after Windows Update (automatically!) pulled the drivers for a few peripherals. This is absolutely a 64-bit system (32GB of RAM...)
So, system found. Not sure what's wrong with yours. I didn't even do any research beyond checking the Newegg and Amazon reviews.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
There is demand. The problem is it is too complicated to mix and match. Apple's stuff sorta works because they have are not trying to sell Microsoft. Consumers get that. Consumers already are presented with too many decisions. Dell can't sell GNU/Linux. To the extent they offer it the solutions suck.
... I ordered a Dell laptop with Linux preinstalled on it this afternoon. $319 for a 15" laptop, and the same configuration with Windows 7 on it was $50 more. Dell does sell Linux on hardware that consumers would want, but they put it in the small/medium business section of their website. And to address another point you made, everything that laptop has in it is Intel reference hardware... given how well Intel is supporting/developping for Linux, I think that says Dell understands very well the importance of not relying on proprietary binary blobs for drivers.
have to agree with most of what you say, except for your implication that its a bad thing. i think its great that linux pwns the server space and windows/mac owns the desktop, and i'm a linux advocate.
I happen to be modded down -1 often here touting that Windows is simply a better option for a regular pc for average Joe and I agree with you and AMD/ATI comments. ... however when it comes to a server. Ah uh. Windows SUCKS.
With Linux I may not have exchange. But I can run SMTP trace. Sure, I may not have AD. But I have ethereal and a libcap and a million other apis, tools, for a shitload of languages.
Apache beats IIS hands down for configuration and options. You do not have to sit and wait on the MS upgrade trendmill thinking man maybe the next version of IIS will do X. Apache and the Unix culture itself encourages hackability and modules. As a result you can choose. Hell do not like Apache? Use NGIX. With Windows you are stuck with what MS wants. Well I guess what Oracle wants too if you hate .NET and invested in Java back when it was cool and owned by SUN.
Users do not care about hackability yes, but real IT pros who need to configure servers for clouds and backend stuff DO. With that said I have to say Windows Server 2012 is a big improvement. It is nice it is VM friendly and when you fire it up it does not use 100% of all the ram in your VM. I can have 10 VMs in 16 gigs of ram of Linux becuase I give them 2048 each and they use only what they need and dynamically scale on VMWare. But WIndows ... nope it has to use 100% of the ram even if all you do is run notepad in previous releases. Linux has been ahead for well over half a decade.
With that said its hackiness and the lack of an API is why it does not belong on a desktop. But the average user does not care or know what Exchange or SQL server is. It is what PHB IT managers want thinking it will somewhow save money to be locked into a proprietary stack like IE 6 which they can't leave 10 years later.
http://saveie6.com/
Windows 7 does work really well in this regard.
For awhile with Ubuntu Linux had an advantage. XP really is dated with driver detection but considering it is form 2001 how would it know what a Firewall 800 card is or a SATA?
Since it is the next XP, I wonder in 2019 when IT people and loyalist try to backforce it on an futuristic system how it will work? If MS is cancelling SP 2 for Windows 7 how is that going to work out?
http://saveie6.com/
Well, it's a distro that started out at Vigo University which, obviously, saw a symbolism with the triskele (a perfectly cromulent English word). So Trisquel has nuance for the non-English people, for whom Galician localisation was a factor in forking debian.
And regional symbolism is important for a people that identify as neither Spanish nor Portuguese but the Celts that predated the Romans. And the Celtic theme isn't just in the distro's icon but the codenames for each release. Gone are "raring", "warty", "sid", "woody" etc, replaced by 'dwyn' and 'awen'.
So no denying it's a celtic-themed debian derivative whose name has a resonance to the people that founded it.
Now whether that's an appropriate name as the Poster-Child distro to push the FSF agenda on the other side of the world in Massachusetts, is a separate issue. Nevertheless a pagan celtic symbol has been co-opted to represent extremist advocacy!
And, Ubuntu sure showed its users how much they matter when searches (including local file searches) can be sent to Amazon for affiliate dollars, didn't they? This despite user protests and feedback to remove the feature or disable it by default.
At least in Windows, I know that if I search in Explorer, it will be a local file search, but if I search within a browser, it will be an internet file search. Tested to be true in Vista SP2 even with IE9 installed, if I do a file search in Explorer it doesn't get sent to Microsoft UNLESS I also allowed the customer improvement program.
Use Open Office...
I have. In fact, I've written books using OOO and MS Word, and I can say without hesitation that MS Word does not even compete.
And No, Google doesn't get a free advance copy of my next one, thanks.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Has this been tried to date w/ PC-BSD?
This! If creating a kernel is so easy, how come HURD still ain't complete? They tried several microkernels - Mach 3, L4, Coyotos and Viengoos, and all were disastrous. One thing they didn't try was Minix 3.0 - while that is under a BSD license, the FSF guys could have legally forked it under a GPL3 license, added whatever drivers they needed to the user space as well as all the HURD servers, and built themselves a complete kernel that they could have called HURD. Once that was done, they could have put on top of it anything - Emacs, GNOME 3.6, GNUSTEP, whatever...
Since when did RMS have anything to do w/ BSD, beside persuading them to make the OS free - which they did, while declining to make it copyleft as well?
And you are trolling in other ways as well. Microsoft built NT from scratch, using the guys who did VMS (Dave Cutler) and Mach 3.0 (Rick Rashid). That was in no way BSD, much less GNU. NEXTSTEP was built using Objective-C, which Apple too used in making Darwin and OS-X. Xenix came & went - never remained a long term part of Microsoft - it was more successful in SCO.
RMS' only software contributions were in Emacs and GCC, but he had long ceased to be involved in software development, and has solely focused on public trolling. Others, like Torvalds, Reynolds, Perens, de Raadt et al have had far more to contribute to software than he has.
You are conflating 'free software' and 'open source' - something that RMS and the FSF would frown on. 'Free software' does not allow companies to make money, since it bans them from restricting re-distribution. Open source, by contrast, can be incorporated in code that disallows re-distribution, depending on the license that is used. Open Source software is used when companies want to have a control on their future in a way they can't if their software provider going away or going belly up would result in them being in a soup. But it doesn't force them to allow their customers to freely re-distribute their software, in a manner the FSF insists on.
Those AOL CD-ROMs at least worked - it's just that one didn't need a gazillion of those once one had made use of one to install on his computer. With most Linux CDs that I've tried, at least in the 90s, they'd never recognize the network card, and so I was out of luck, except for playing a few games. That's probably better today, but there are still issues about recovery & restoration of software.
Actually, if I go into my local Incredible Connection (a local computer retail chain in South Africa, more fondly called the the terrible infection, incredible decption etc) and buy a brand new laptop with windows and ask about support I get told pretty much exactly the same thing. If want windows support in this country, it costs me roughly $20 an hour extra, more if I want to phone microsofts support line directly because it's an international phone call for me. Sorry, support costs no matter the operating system. If your complaint is about being told to go somewhere else and pay for it, instead of the strore at which you bought it, then again I have to say there are a ton of retail stores that don't offer desktop support (only hardware repairs) too.
That would be Firefox lacking a grammar check not LibreOffice
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
They're getting desperate. This is like a church handing out pamphlets outside of a movie theater or arcade. It'll all go in the garbage, and end up being a waste of time and resources.
That is called advertising, and its just how things work. Would you feel better if it was a multi-million dollar smear campaign, like Microsoft is buying [and openly I might add], or backroom deals done with politicians and companies. This is how Google make money. In fact this sort of advertising is how advertising should be to "inform" not "brainwash". Now you could argue its poor use of time and money compared to some alternative, but as time is freely given, and CD's are pretty disposable your answer would probably end .,,on the internet [Sigh]. The fact that your example involves a religion...instead of coca cola speaks of your own bigotry, ironically your church example is pretty poor, as Religions tend to do well from this type of advertising.
You can also buy computers without Windows. Maybe not at the big stores, but there are options. Except for my very first self-bought computer, no computer I've ever bought came with Windows installed. And not a single one was self-assembled.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
The only times I've ever had X crash was due a faulty proprietary graphics driver (and honestly, there's no way an OS supplier can protect against that). My home PCs had no X crash for about a decade. My Laptop hasn't had an X crash ever.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Dell has never tried to market Linux systems in my neck of the woods. Briefly, it was possible to find Ubuntu-loaded desktops in the bowels of their website, but you needed to know it was there and go looking for it. That lasted all of about one year in my market, before they disappeared again.
The only time in my life I've seen Linux machines on shelves being advertised (excluding Android) was during the initial Netbook craze; and that was notable for just how awful the Linux distros chosen really were. I mean honestly, they were truly awful. My EeePC came with Xandros on it, and it was damned near unusable. 10 minutes work to put an Ubuntu variant on it and it was one of the best machines I ever had. Linux isn't a magic bullet- if companies are going to market Linux machines and do a terrible job of it, they're going to get just as far as any company that markets terrible products anywhere.
I know all of the reasons why this wouldn't happen, but if they wanted to win people away from Microsoft they would have had better luck passing out copies of MINT with the KDE
Because you need elevated privileges in Windows for certain things and you could lock down things more tightly in Linux? Forget it, this isn't a technical problem.
It's one where managers cannot stand the idea that you, peasant, could do anything on their machine that they can't, no matter how little they know about it. They will DEMAND admin privs on their machines and they will also be the ones that you have to spend most of your time on because they tried to "adjust" something and of course it blew the whole ecosystem up. And of course it's NOT their fault, it's either yours or that stupid system.
Don't give in to the temptation to point out that systems are never stupid only their users are, it might get you fired.
This is also the reason why you'll never see Linux on office desktops unless the head honcho is in some way familiar with it. Or do you think your boss wants to deal with a system that he cannot use? Or, as the cynic in me would say, a system he can't FUBAR for you?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Ironically winpcap is actually more feature-rich than the original libpcap.
What the hell has happened to /.? There was once a time when a story like this would have generated excitement on this site. ANYONE promoting FOSS, regardless of how "weird" their methods, would have gotten positive points.
"Why didn't they use x distro?"
"Why would they wear an animal suit? That's weird."
I say good for these guys. They are offering a free/free alternative to a OS with a horrible UI (among other problems). I hope they do the same at the Apple store. Sorry they weren't "cool" enough.
He who questions training, only trains himself at asking questions. -- The Sphinx, Mystery Men
Buy a prebuilt machine from someone like Dell. Problem solved. Plenty of those 'just work'
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
No, Apple would have these assholes tazered and be done with it ;)
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Uhhh...95%+ of the systems released in the last 5+ years? In case you didn't get the memo there is really only a handful of ODMs making parts on motherboards anymore, not that you'd know it by Linux, thanks to the "ZOMFG you have firmware 3.72343 and I want firmware 3.72346!" fiddly and picky as fuck nature of the driver situation. Pick ANY board on Newegg or Tiger, any one you want, and I'll take NOTHING but the Win 7, hell even the Vista install DVD and afterward it will have 100% working drivers without a single forum anything.
Now if you WANT the little extra crap, like Realtek HD Audio manager or AMD CCC? Then you'll have to OMG actually put the disc that came with the system in the drive but none of that is actually REQUIRED, again exact opposite on Linux because everything is tied to kernel which is just retarded.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
They can waste their mod points all they want but when you can't even use a tool for the job its intended to do then I'm sorry but your software just isn't suitable for purpose. And don't even get me started on running more than one at a time, you'd think OO.o/LO was designed for DOS the way it shits all over itself if you try to run Writer and another tool like Calc or Base at the same time.
But spend ANY real time in base and you'll find out its complete and total garbage, you try doing what is the most obvious and bog standard uses for a DB, like adding keys and making relationships and the whole thing will just shit all over itself and die hard, often taking its DB with it. Frankly anybody that needs Access or Excel wouldn't spend 5 minutes in either base or Calc before reaching for their CC to buy MS Office just to get away from the mess, its THAT bad. Frankly neither Base nor Calc should have been allowed into the release, its not even alpha quality.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
No, the church example was a perfect comparison. Usually people...
The original poster was a bigot trying to associate one [artificial] negative cogitation with onto another. IT was simply offensive.
I'd address your other points, but clearly you live in some kind of fantasy where large corporations play nice, and where Advertising isn't an effective method. I don't live in the same world as you.
Wow, is this really Slashdot, or have I visited a different forum by mistake? I agree, this has been my limited experience with Linux, but I have made my living developing on Windows for years so I am biased. My impression is that the really significant part of Linux that has brought its success and widespread adoption is, less than any particular technological achievement or facility, the licensing scheme. It seems to allow the community to contribute useful work to it without it spinning too wildly out of control.
Yeah, and RedHat doesn't (and can't) stop anyone from redistributing its OS. Since CentOS already does it for them, and since non-commercial users use Fedora, they don't have to bother too much about that.
But let's say a software company wrote a piece of software, and wanted to be the only supplier of that software so that they could make money off the entire market that was there. Let's say they priced it @ $25. In their license, or in their CD, they include the sources as well, so that customers can tweak it if they can or wish. Now, let's say that in their license, they wrote this, but banned customers from redistributing them, instead asking that any potential customer be sent directly to them for a sale.
This is what the FSF crowd would be against, since it violates 'Freedom 2' - the help your neighbor deal. The open source definition too requires that redistribution be free, but a model like the above is more likely to get endorsed by the OSI, since the sources are always accompanying the binaries. Open source, as far as the dictionary definition of the term where freedom to redistribute is not covered, is a great development philosophy & mechanism. Free software, on the other hand, is just a mechanism for proliferating software throughout the market w/o the software creators being compensated for all the software that gets duplicated. As a result, there is very little quality 'free software' out there, since after a while, maintenance of this software or development of new versions cost money, and there are few ways of making it under a 'free software' license. Which is why companies stay away from it like the plague.
Yes, I've used both, and I've been using Linux for almost 20 years now and do you know what? It's a shitty desktop operating system. Linux on the desktop fucking sucks ass, Ubuntu is every bit as stupidly bloated as anything Microsoft has ever shipped, don't believe me? Well go install Ubuntu without a GUI and then add Gnome or KDE and watch as Ubuntu downloads several gigabytes of dependencies and loads your system up with crap. And what do you get? A piece of shit desktop that's basically just a ripoff of what Microsoft and Apple are doing, except that it's a piss poorly implemented ripoff. Then there's the fact that Linux has bugs and for the most part companies that sell Linux aren't any better at fixing those bugs than Microsoft or Apple. Canonical certainly isn't. I've been using Ubuntu for the last three years. Upstart is still a buggy, fucked up piece of shit, if you want services to start reliably on a Linux system, you end up having to edit the Upstart scripts in /etc/init, because otherwise Upstart is too fucking stupid to properly mount your NFS filesystems and you end up with orphaned inodes because Upstart doesn't properly unmount the root filesystem before the system is shut down. These are major bugs that were reported over two years ago and they still haven't been fixed. I keep hearing all of you fucking Linux fanbois bitching about how bad Microsoft is but you never bring stuff like this up, either because you're dishonest or you're just ignorant little shits who aren't actually using Linux in a production environment and but who think that because you installed it at home you're super duper 1337.
Linux does a lot of things really well. Linux virtualization with libvirt/KVM is amazing. It's not as fully featured as VMware yet, but it's made huge leaps and bounds in the last three years. Companies such as Tivo and DataDomain have shown that Linux is a great operating system for dedicated devices. Companies such as Amazon run on Linux and have been for over a decade. But Linux on the desktop fucking sucks, it's nothing more than stupid, bloated, imitative shit.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
Have you ever considered that perhaps your system had bad hardware, or that perhaps you're just a fucking retard who can't get a Windows system to work?
Wow, and here you were accusing someone else of inane babbling. OS X is not in the same league as Linux. OS/X is based upon BSD, which, under the hood, is completely different from Linux. OS/X has a great GUI. Linux GUIs are stupid, derivative and bloated. Apple spends lots of time making sure that all of the components of OS/X work with each other, they aren't perfect but they're a Hell of a lot better than any Linux distro out there. When Apple updates a major component of the system, such as the init manager they do it right. Migrating to launchd was transparent and painless, things just worked. Compare and contrast this to the fucked up and retarded way that the dickheads at Ubuntu grafted Upstart on to Debian. Upstart has been shipping with every Ubuntu distro since Lucid, and it's still buggy as Hell and even now, after almost three years there aren't any third party packages that support it. Linux does have better memory management than MacOS X, although that's not saying much, and if you've never had OOM killer fuck up something important then you obviously haven't run too many Linux systems, and it has better filesystems available (XFS) and it's had logical volume management since 2001, whereas Apple didn't introduce volume management until MacOS Lion (10.7).
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
A few years ago I worked for a company that was running Oracle on RedHat. We reached a point where it was time to buy new servers and instead of buying RedHat licenses we bought licenses for Oracle Enterprise Linux, which is basically RedHat Linux except someone downloaded the RedHat source and ran
find . -type f -exec sed -i -e "s/Red Hat/Oracle/g"
Man the RedHat rep was pissed off when I told him that we were switching to OEL from RedHat. I got a big lecture on how Oracle was just piggy-backing on all of RedHat's hard work. It was rather hilarious.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
Yes, have you ever heard of Oracle Enterprise Linux? Oracle went out and took RedHat Linux, added OCFS2 and other Oracle enhancements and started selling OEL. Oh, and if you were already licensing Oracle for your database OEL was compelling because it meant that you had one less throat to choke if you were trying to solve a problem with the system and because it was cheaper to add support for OEL to your Oracle license than it was to purchase a support contract from RedHat. Needless to say RedHat was not happy about this but there wasn't anything they could do about it except suck it up and watch as they lost customers to Oracle. Now Oracle has a brilliant business model here. Develop a proprietary product and then let someone else develop an operating system that your product runs on and then you copy their OS and use it to drive sales for your product.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
I think it sounds lovely. Much better than any closed source OS I can think of.
Macs can run Trisequel as well. Apple bundles iOS with the Mac and you cannot buy a Mac without paying for iOS.
I am so sick of everyone making this an MS-only problem. Does everyone forget that Apple's computer price includes the price of the OS? Just because Apple sells the software and hardware in one go doesn't mean that the same thing is happening here---i.e. you are paying for the OS if you want it or not.
Seems to me that RedHat was right. What exactly did Oracle, as a company, do that added any value to RHEL? Even in their current distro, do they offer, independently of RHEL, btrfs as a file system option on OEL? The Oracle software ran previously on RHEL, and now, on the re-branded OEL. It's not like they enhanced it w/ Solaris code, or enhanced Solaris w/ RHEL, or anything of that sort. Heck, they didn't even offer OEL on their own Sun SPARCservers, even though the RHEL ports on the UltraSPARC already existed. They just did everything that Microsoft was previously accused of - leverage their clout in one market - applications - to muscle in their clout in another - Linux distros. As one may have read of accounts here where people switched to OEL just so that Oracle couldn't point fingers @ Red Hat if their apps didn't work w/ RHEL.
Red Hat, along w/ Caldera at the time, and Debian later, was one of the pioneer companies as far as Linux development went. They managed to figure out a model by which they could make money - freely offer the source, but sell the binaries, and really make money on the service. Which was good and worked well until CentOS came along. And until Oracle just took their offering and rebranded it as its own.
That's the reason a lot of vendors avoid 'free software' like the plague. They know that the 'community' is a bunch of freeloaders who don't believe in putting their money where their mouth is, but just mooching of the hard work of a few. Only problem - there is only so much of free work that one is willing to do before one has to actually make money of their work, or what RMS sneeringly refers to as '"earning a living"'. It's less of a problem w/ BSD or other open source s/w, where a vendor has the options of combining BSDL licensed s/w w/ any other s/w. Had RHEL based their business on FBSD or OBSD, they'd not have had to helplessly watch the likes of Oracle or CentOS simply smooch off their work, but could have made their own innovations to their OS and picked whatever they thought was worth open-sourcing, vs whatever needed to be locked in.
Like in my above response to multiplexo, this is why Red Hat would have done better to have gone w/ a BSD, rather than a Linux. That way, Oracle couldn't have swindled them. And your post proves the point - let's make Oracle's proprietary applications GPL2 (not even 3) and then see how far they go. The only reason they are successful is that their software is proprietary, and they've leveraged that advantage w/ Linux, where they are legally free to steal RHEL and pass it off as their own.
All in all, proves the point that one can't be successful w/ GPL software - and Red Hat is not exactly a complete exception to this rule. TiVo is - and look at how the FSF does their hit jobs on them. Android would be next, whenever RMS gets time to work on GPL4.
"Hell look at how Linux as an "OS" is managed, you got fifty billion little fiefdoms, NONE of which are ruled by one grouped or even really has to talk to one another on a regular basi"
thats actually a good thing.
Look at gnome 3 and windows 8. Both were flagship products in the previous version (2, and 7 respectively), well used and liked interfaces.
Both did some really goofy, hated shit with the UI in the new version that caused their respective fanbois and user base to get rael mad.
Linux - forked gnome 2 into MATE, gnome 3 into cinamon, others took refuge with KDE and XFCE.
Windows - your kinda fucked, stuck on hoping microsoft will support 7 for as long as it supported windows XP, that said, you'll never be able to benefit from new things like ReFS, or kernel upgrades, or new technology, without giving up your UI. Mabey they'll get KDE working on windows 8, and you'll be saved by the linux community.
lol @ sharepoint, and IIs
"I happen to be modded down -1 often here touting that Windows is simply a better option for a regular pc for average Joe "
because its FUD.
you haven't obviously used modern versions of linux, or your entirely biased. Windows is far far far behind on user interface, and windows 8 was a sad attempt to catching up to UNITY/Gnome shell.
Just like the app stores from Apple/MS were sad attempts at keeping up with the Ubuntu Software Center.(years later).
Or mabey you'll start citing contributes the former made by patenting things other people invented.
Thank you. And notice that NOT ONE will put their money where their mouth is and take the Hairyfeet Challenge? Know why? because I've already tried it with over half a dozen distros and the results are ALWAYS the same, the Vista machine has 100% working drivers and software, the Linux system will 8 times out of 10 end up in single user mode (or black screen of death as many call it) and the other 2 will have major subsystems like sound and wireless trashed beyond recovery.
At the end of the day they are trying to force a server OS into the home user space and its just not gonna work, home users aren't gonna put up with trolling forums or learning a shitload of bash commands or googling for fixes like a guy that gets paid 6 figures to deal with that shit. I know quite a few Linux admins, that admin large numbers of Linux servers for a living, know what they ALL use at home? Macbooks, some have a Windows partition for gaming but they ALL have Macbooks, why? Because they say they deal with enough of that fiddly bullshit at work, when they get home they just want to push the button and "it all just works" which Windows and OSX does, Linux don't, simple as that.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
yeah, first OS to have USB 3 support, built in drivers, easy networking config, uniform software installation and package management, uniform audio/video codecs (no more spyware laden .exe installers, or shit like DivX ;) ), everything is in gstreamer, the file managers actually work like you'd expect.
Windows is fucking clunky.
" But Linux on the desktop fucking sucks, it's nothing more than stupid, bloated, imitative shit."
Funny, thats what I think of Windows. even "heavyweight" desktops run faster with far less resource usage than windows. Gnome 3 and KDE 4 are on the level of windows XP with research usage.
I also still have pentium III boxes running modern kernels with LXDE, and modern versions of firefox, and pentiumn 4s with XFCE and firefox, that can watch youtube videos nicely.
There is NO "hope" involved friend, the EOL dates are published and right there for anybody to see. I get support until Apr 2020 on that Win 7 Home I paid $50 for and the Win 7 pro I paid $100 for to use in the shop. Show me ANY Linux that will give me the same level of support at anywhere close to that price point, just 1. you can't do it because it don't exist. Either you get on the horribly broken upgrade bandwagon or you spend $1500+ just to get what I paid $50 for and THAT is why Linux is stuck at 1% and even with a bomb like Win 8 won't gain a single percentage point in share, people would rather shell out over $100 plus my costs to go to Win 7 rather than take your product for free because its simply not suitable for purpose, end of story.
And I'm still waiting on someone to take the Hairyfeet challenge, 2 years now and not a single 'challenge accepted" if that don't tell you that in their hearts they know I'm right then nothing will.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Depends what you mean by 'better'. If you have a bunch of apps that only run on MSSQL the it wins by default. You can argue it shouldn't be this way but in the corporatey back-office IT world, this is how it is.
". Either you get on the horribly broken upgrade bandwagon or you spend $1500+"
.iso, scratch that, update a few names in /etc/apt/sources.list and type apt-get dist-upgrade.
.0 releases like microsoft that break everything and introduce massive security features leaving a sucky OS for a few years while they refine it.
how I am going to spend $1500 for a new version of linux, when I just download the
While I can be fairly certain my UI will stay the same, here is what I get when upgrade versions in linux:
new kernel with new features. Also linux does incremental upgrades, there are no disaster spelling
New graphics server, new userland, all of which are incremental, and don't radically change things causing breakage.
Ever actually trying upgrading a windows machine. Major version like 98 - XP? You will break the machine
"people would rather shell out over $100 plus my costs to go to Win 7 rather than take your product for free because its simply not suitable for purpose, end of story."
People take windows 7 because its the OS that comes with the computer. Most people are simply incapable and scared to even learn how to re-install an existing OS on a computer, regardless of what it is, far less than change it.
Lets face facts, how many end users buy Windows 7 retail? 99% of sales are pre-installed on machines.
No one really wants windows, they use it because they more or less feel they have to. end of story.
Also
"And I'm still waiting on someone to take the Hairyfeet challenge,"
what the fuck is the hairyfeet challenge? If you mean "usable GNU/Linux desktop you can toss out windows for", I've been running linux since 2009 as my main OS, and love it.
I made mostly the same reservations as you, until I actually tried it on the desktop, and well, it works, it works well, it works better than windows.
It has a few hiccups, but less than windows does. As for why this isn't sold in stores? Its because the comapnies that make computers have a fetish for windows. Saying they are automaticly right for being capitalists is one horrible "Appeal to authority"
http://www.logicalfallacies.info/relevance/appeals/appeal-to-authority/
Ubuntu 11 new enough for you? And again if you are so confident step right up and take "The Hairyfeet Challenge" where we will test the distro of YOUR CHOICE against Windows, the rules are simple,
1.-It has to be a distro touted for home users, no making your own or using an expensive enterprise product that home users won't have access to, 2.-It has to have at least 1 release out at the same time Windows Vista was released, that's Jan 2007 in case you are wondering, 3.- while you will be allowed to use any CLI tools during setup (since during that portion you will be the builder NOT the customers) you must then update to current using ONLY the GUI tools.
But you won't accept the challenge and we all know why. I can install Office 2K7 and Vista RTM, update both through ALL the SPs and patches and at the end? 100% working drivers and software with no exception. Your product? WILL crap on itself and die, again with no exceptions.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
"1.-It has to be a distro touted for home users, no making your own or using an expensive enterprise product that home users won't have access to, 2.-It has to have at least 1 release out at the same time Windows Vista was released, that's Jan 2007 in case you are wondering, 3.- while you will be allowed to use any CLI tools during setup (since during that portion you will be the builder NOT the customers) you must then update to current using ONLY the GUI tools."
linuxmint.com
it does all that and more. Mint and Ubuntu both have automatic updates, and nice GUIs for manual updates. in fact all the tools are GUI, and command line is optional.
also, microsoft does not have as anything as neat as jockey for install drivers.
oh, and here is the davey dagger, challenge, to one up you.
GUI tools ONLY durring setup/install. Again, mint and ubuntu pass, does windows?
In fact, mint also makes available OEM installer disks, that after I set up for a customer, asks all the username, timezone, language, personal info crap at first boot. All in GUI, with a mouse, with easy to read menus.
http://www.linuxmint.com/release.php?id=18
Also, tell me more about "windows support", most of the time, MS will tell you to call whomever sold you the computer, and the idiot you call in the phone is just that, an unhelpful idjit who barely speaks english.
Tried it, Mint FAILED, the wireless and the sound were completely trashed by the end. It was a bog standard dell inspiron BTW.
In the end you simply can't change one simple fact: Linux is like the shifting sand, everything from the kernel up is in a constant state of flux so drivers and subsystems get shat on all the time. Look at what DE, sound subsystem, and what kernel Mint was using in Jan 07 and what they are using now, we are probably looking at a good dozen plus revs in between jan 07 and today. How many kernels did Vista go through? Sound subsystems? DEs?
But you go right ahead and try it, because I already have tried it with Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora (I knew that one was hopeless but I had a FOSSie that insisted I use it because he thought anything by RH was God), Sabayon, PCLOS, and Mandriva. Not a SINGLE ONE, not one, came out the other end with 100% working software and drivers, not one.
And I don't know what you are smoking but you haven't need any CLI for setup or install of Windows since Windows 9x, in fact Win 7 will even download and install all the drivers through WU for you during install if you like. Meanwhile here is a list of all the major showstoppers currently in Linux, please not the date at the top of the page. Also not the blue words which are links to the proof by Linux sites such as Phrononix, not some random guy's blogs. These are respectable Linux sites pointing out serious issues with drivers and software yet if you check out the original list from 3 years ago you'll see that not only is more than half of the issues from 3 years ago STILL there, but they have simply added new bugs and new issues on top of the old.
I'm sorry but there is a REASON why Linux can't break out past 1%, that is because it simply fails at such trivial tasks like updates so badly due to its fragmented nature of design.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
lol,
I am posting this from a computer with linux mint
you can't change facts:
your a brownshirt who shifts goalposts, and has no idea what your talking about.
you lost, go home.