Slashdot Mirror
OSS and Linux coming through
Roxus sent us
a nice little article in the Melbourne Age extolling the
Virtues of OSS.
It's a nice little article. Nothing remarkably insightful or
new, but further proof of what we already know.
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
CRY! I thought it was supposed to be out today!
*sniffle*
Hmm, how about it?
Or maybe the 't' should be capitalized, after the mascot. InTux.
Tie a bowtie on your monitor...
However, since there are plenty of non-Intel Linux x86 installs (two Cyrix's at my house), the whole thing is too silly.
\begin{nitpickmode}
CmdrTaco states
"further proof of what we already know"...
articles like "Code donors are Open for business"
are not particularly solid building blocks for
a pro-opensource argument. the regurgitated
opinions of a "journalist" (recall the recent
veracity snafu concerning Robert X. Cringely?)
are of little value other than for measuring
relative media attention. Linux does not need
promotion-via-drivel (as opposed to certain
1985 era OSes).
apply the word "proof" to real data.
\end{nitpickmode}
Well, that was about right for Linux in the server market of '98. Linux in the desktop is at about 2.5%.
As for peoples' reluctence to change, consider the Giga survey last December and this FairFax poll. There are a lot of people out there sick and tired of using Microsoft, looking for a change.
Well, "to cut off XXX at the knees" sounds like a familiar strategy.
When more people think like this, Linux and the Linux advocates go the way of M$, deciding on so-called "technological" reasons Linux is best for us all.
Who decides that? I want to run whatever *I* want.
These kinds of replies sound to me like Linux going the way of assimilating people.
And by the way, the pro-Linux articles get boring. I know Linux is good. I use it daily. And I bet every other Linux owner and user knows it.
I must of missed the "proof" that open source works. Where is it exactly?
MORE FUD FROM THE OSS SOCIALISTS.
It seems like not so long ago when any story about Linux (most were FUD filled) were very newsworthy. That was around the time when the comments were still of a high quality.
Now, Linux is everywhere, people are complaining on Slashdot about the number of Linux articles, and most of the comments (this one not withstanding) pretty much suck.
Oh, and Slashdot doesn't seem to go down much anymore. I'm feeling old.
Enough with the feel-good contentless Linux articles already!
It's not news, and hasn't been for MONTHS!
It seems like every day there are at least one or two fluff stories about Linux showing up on Slashdot. I am soooo tired of seeing these articles on Slashdot! WHO CARES if Lancastershire World Weekly News Special Sunday Edition or *whoever* does an article about how great Linux is and how interesting this cool new "open source" stuff is. IT'S NOT NEWS AND IT IS NOT STUFF THAT MATTERS!
Yeah, I'm sure that in 1985 *everyone* had their hardware-accelerated 3d stuff working... Besides, DOS is older than 1985, and based on work that was older still.
Just as DOS (or CP/M) is the basis for what is today Windows, UNIX is the basis for Linux.
(they weren't *finished* in 1960, you freak...)
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
What's a "Lintel" box? Nobody who actually *uses* Linux names their system after a part of a door.
I wonder why Slashdot wastes so much space (and time) informing us of articles about Linux. For one thing, not everyone here uses Linux. Secondly, there are other websites DEVOTED to the task of monitoring the press' coverage of Linux and other OS (like Linux Weekly News) - so this stuff is redundant. Third, it's pointless, because it's not really news at all - why should we care of some magazine in some way-off part of the world writes an article about Linux? That sort of thing happens all the time.
--
Timur "too sexy for my code" Tabi, timur@tabi.org, http://www.tabi.org
Why do people always tend to lose sight of what is "conventional"? "Guarding" source is a recent trend, started in the late 70s; computers are here because before that it was "conventional" to share. Copyrights are here since the Renaissance when the press was invented; arts are only here because, before that, it was "conventional" to share. And I fail to see any "wisdom" in not sharing... is there? Why are people's heads so fscked up? Yes, I'm starting to believe in the results of the IQ poll. Perhaps we are here because we think, we are able to see what for us seems obvious but for "them" seems to be a wonder. Go figure.
My statistics has gotten rusty, but in cases like this, where there's a natural boundary to growth, you get what looks like exponential growth initially, but at some point the *rate* of growth slows (Example: an epidemic can only go so far before growth slows, 'cuz at some point it's killed almost everyone, so there's a dwindling number of people left to infect). This is not a bad thing at all for Linux! What we'll see is continued amazing growth, then at some point it'll simply slow down a tad. I'll have to brush off the stat textbook, but it's something like after you hit 30% coverage the rate of growth starts to ease up just a bit. So Linux will leap to 30 market share quickly, 50% in good order, and then getting to 80% will take quite a bit longer.
I have a long term goal. If I'm still in my
current job (sysadmin for a university department)
in 20 years, I'll have moved everyone to free
software.
I figure it will take that long.
Danny.
I have written over 900 book reviews
Probably the same people who in days of yore referred to BSD as "Berklix". (See the Jargon File.)
Bruce Perens
Bruce Perens.
It's because people like having their ego stroked. If you're not interested in having yours stroked, here's a relatively simple solution: Don't read the posting or the linked article.
One would think such a simple solution would be obvious to most any sentient being.
*shrug* Human stupidity knows no bounds...
Many people actually *like* the fact that their hard work is starting to get some press coverage. Some of them don't care. Those that whine about links to such coverage apear to be idiots.
good day.
scottwimer
-- Beer. It's what's for breakfast.
I'm not sure if Linux really does have faster TCP/IP any more. I've heard that Microsoft is incorporating networking code from FreeBSD into Windows, which should make it about as fast as Linux.
Can anyone confirm or deny this?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Face it, if you're sitting in front of a single user PC, doing email, Web surfing and running games, what do you care if your system crashes once in a while??? Linux will eventually make its way into that market, but not for a while.
- First come the back room servers.
- Then the workstations (people sitting all day long at desks doing design, CAD, high powered IT).
- Last (but not least) Joe Schmoe running games at home.
(One possible twist in this - if networked games like Quake really take off, and Linux really runs these games over the Net faster because of better TCP/IP, then you could see that market really drive Linux. Just a thought...)Your Servant, B. Baggins
True enough, but I'm willing to bet you're the exception rather than the rule. Most people get upset when their game crashes (or their letter to Grandma is lost, or their latest checkbook updates get scrogged), but how many get upset enough to abandon their comfortable MS "womb"?
Don't get me wrong - home users will come in time, but it's going to take a while.
Your Servant, B. Baggins
nah, Linux is not like everything else, Linux is cool enough that it *will* sustain an exponential rate, until every electron in the universe is running it!
Hm, I compiled the sucker and it wouldn't mount any partition off my 1g HD (my root partition). Caveat emptor.
Dogma: Dead (mostly because your Karma ran it over)
Perhaps Slashdot could create a sidebar devoted to keeping an eye out on OSS/Linux/whatever publicity and just list the latest URLs instead of making them stories...
Exponential growth is not sustainable. Eventually it will have to plateau out. The article predicts outstripping all Microsoft OSs in about four years. After that point, there will be relatively few people to assimilate, and the curve will start to flatten.
This gives us one to two years to develop the "killer" desktop, one that beats the Mac (a much better environment than Windoze, all stability issues aside). Linuxconf has come a long way, but needs more polishing, and COAS sounds promising. System configuration is probably still the area where the most improvement can be made. (I'm still getting a good feel for the new linuxconf that comes with RedHat 5.2, as I usually do my system configuration stuff with vi...) Will GNOME 2.0 (or KDE 3.0) be it?
Linux itself is rock-solid. We just need to make it a little more accessible for the clue-impaired. That, and help out the Wine developers, cut off Microsoft at the knees...
-- Blame any errors on your own stupidity. All wrongs reserved.
Well, they seem to have missed one thing: saying that free software (or open source software; they don't really distinguish) comes under the GPL is a bit blunt. Let's not forget that the GPL puts restrictions on what you can do with the code. GPL is open source for sure, but free...?
--B
The adoptation of new technology follows an S curve, as described by Harry S. Dent, Jr. in "The Roaring 2000s". According to his model, at about the 10% level, the curve really takes off... which by my calculations, should happen this year.
That being said, I still find it difficult to beleive that millions of people that struggled for years to learn the Windows interface will be willing to learn another new interface -- regardless of how superiour it is! The M$ experience has trained everybody to beleive that new releases are always buggy, documentation is always poor, new software is frustrating and difficult to learn, and support is either non-existant or prohibitively expensive. They will apply these lessons learned to Linux, and will shy away from anything new, prefering the evil they know to the "evil" they are unfamiliar with.
This seems to be a principle that all us geeks and early adopters have trouble grasping -- not everybody in the world thinks the way we do!
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
One of them is patience, untill it becomes THE business model.