Slashdot Mirror
New York Times on Linux
papertiger was the first one to write-in and tell us about the latest issue of the New York Times magazine. The major tech article just happens to be about an OS we're a bit familar with-in this case, Linux, The Rebel Code, as titled here. The link does not require registration but will only be live for the next week.
"Build a better blow-up sex doll and the world will beat a path to your door." -Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Not that this is really relevant but I think Linus would look cooler (read: less dorky) with a new pair of glasses. Seems to me his face has kinda grown out of them a few years ago :)
Yeah, flame away then...
His wife is the 6 time karate champion of Finland? ...wow
And his favorite zoo is in Singapore? Way to go! cool cool!
I love this paragraph.
"late last year in Atlanta at a Linux convention, which was impressively organized by an ad-hoc group of Linux fans, Eric Raymond, the open-source guru, elaborated on his notion of prestige as a motivating force. "None of my peers are impressed by what kind of car I have," he said with twinkling eyes. "They're impressed when I have a T-1 line in my house. This all goes back to evolutionary biology where we're all competing for
prestige because we think it will get us babes."
There was a pause, as the almost entirely male audience -- some of whom looked as if they hadn't started shaving -- considered the obvious
implications of this observation. Finally, someone called out: "Is it working for anyone?" There came the resounding unanimous reply: "Nooo!" "
HeeHee.
This was a really good observation. I understand now that the spelling has been corrected. It's too bad that illiterate f*ck guy isn't smart enough to get his message across as clearly as this!
Who the hell is doing the censoring of the flames? /.? Are we in need of a babysitter? If someone wants to spell like a 3 year old, let them get flamed by someone with the maturity of a 3 year old.(Or were they bad because they used the F*** word?)
Is this now a monitored site? Did AOL just buy
all the way, baby!
> They do RESERCH
... RESEARCH
> This is what seperates
...separates
> Note that "Smart Reseller" whose target is in it's
... target is in its
Note: since FUD stands for Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt, it is hardly something you tell --- appropriate verbs would be `create', 'evoke', 'produce' etc.
Alternatively, since the term FUD is most closely associated with *.advocacy (i.e. low-IQ rant) newsgroups, it may be preferable to let it fall gently into disuse, as it tends to give a rather defensive --- if not to say whining --- impression.
After all, Free Software proponents are not the ones who need to feel defensive.
Oh dear.....
There is a difference between getting married and "getting the babes" however. :)
Take it from an expert, here's how to get the babes:
1. Show them your T1 lines and your modifications to the Linux kernel -- they'll be very impressed.
2. Grunt when they say anything to you -- remember, avoid eye contact at all costs.
3. Never leave your home -- any babes worthy of your attention will come knocking at your door.
4. Surf the net for porn, so you know what real women should look like.
5. Test whether they really love you, never ever shave or shower.
The quote from the Sun Chief Oper. Offcr. shows that they are no friends of OSS:
"Why should software be free?" asks Edward J. Zander, chief operating officer of Sun microsystems. "Why should I give away what I pay millions of dollars to develop? Why doesn't General Motors give its cars away for free? Why don't you give me your newspaper for free?"
Heck, they even require a fee to see the Java src so that suggestions can be contributed!
They've never supported the OSS/Linux community, and the OSS/Linux community shouldn't waste their time with them.
Java is a farce. It fills no need, and no one asked for it. It doesn't accomplish anything that can't already be done with compiled C/C++ binaries, mod_perl, CORBA, or animated gifs.
Let me first begin by saying this was a really positive article on Linux and the Open Source movement. However, must every article on Linux be regurgitation? To wit:
:p
:-) [Hint: It is *NOT* attractive]
- 7 million people use Linux. Er, it was 7 million in July of last year, 7 million in October, 7 million in December, and now, almost March, 7 million again? I think it's time for a new estimate.
- "Akin to Coca Cola giving out the recipe". Cliche!!!
- "Linux is hard to use". You *always* have to see at least 1 FUD item in an otherwise-positive article, eh?
Still...good article. I'm always embarassed by the scruffy-beard wearing losers that organize the protests, however. Grab a shave!
I've met a number of them (before I got married, of :o) - some of them fairly attractive at that.
course
They're rare, but they do exist.
It's always nice to be reminded of one of the great hypocrites of our time.
He's a great guy, and we all owe him a debt of gratitude... but "the spider at the center of the web has the final say" ? I mean, come on! it's not like he wrote the whole damn thing himself... I'm not bad mouthing him, but it seems like the press needs a *person* to latch on to, and give all the attention to, and it kind of detracts from all the nameless minions that have contributed. my two cents.
I do my web browsing in Windoze because Netscape for linux is about the biggest load of crap that I have ever seen. The fonts are sick looking, it crashes more than any other piece of software I have ever used, it takes longer to load than anything else than any other browser in windoze, it "feels" like crap, and it tends to just disappear after being used for more than 3 minutes. If you want linux to really take off on the desktop someone has to make a decent port of Communicator, because the one we have now just won't cut it. I've tried gtkzilla and qtzilla and they both have a long way to go. The single most important application on my box is my web browser, i spend about 60 % of my time on my computer browsing the web, so if theres not a decent browser for linux, then i'm not going to use linux on my desktop. Sure linux rules as a web server, ftp server, samba file server, proxy server, on my little P90, but for browsing the web I sit down at my win98 box and load up communicator.
Or hard to configure?
I'd agree about configuration--at least if you want to keep the defaults.
But if you want to setup anything even slightly differently than the manufacturer envisioned, Linux is a lot EASIER to configure.
And I find Win95/NT harder to use every day. Where's "locate"? Grep? How about some decent shell-scripting? How do I setup different profiles with some realistic security?
I didn't know we had eight year old users on /.
Seriously man, if you have a problem: PLEASE GIVE US THE INFO TO HELP YOU.
:)
If you can't tell me obvious things like: Which Linux dist, kernel version, X version, Netscape version, and where it's crashing (java?) then there is *NOTHING* any of us can do to help you. With a post like this I have nothing left to do but assume you are lieing and not waste my time on you.
There are other nice browsers you can use too..
About fonts:
Install a TTF font server; And your fonts will look great...
About crashes:
Netscape crashes as much in win32 as linux (the same goes for IE4/5 in win32).
Do like I, hope for Netscape 5.
Sorry, but it is still hard to use for the average computer user like myself. Nevertheless, I will try it again...
Why should I spend a lot of money on a software package, for which I do not get the source code, and which you may choose to discontinue at your merest whim?
Well, maybe you should forget it...
Agreed - flaming illiterate posts is necessary to prevent total degeneration.
"English is not his/her first language" doesn't fly either because 50% of Americans are functionally illiterate.
First on 'gnu' - The dictionary by my terminal (who needs online spellcheckers? :)) has three pronunciations for 'gnu'. The first is with a silent 'g' (The second and third are a 'ng' and a 'g' sound at the start.) 'GNU', of course, is not necessarily the same.
Second, on why lignux might have a silent 'g': look up the word 'lign-aloes' in a (good) dictionary and look for its pronunciation. It's a real word, yes. (Hint: a related word is 'linaloe')
You probably didn't want to know this, no! But I thought it was interesting. No, really.
I suspect the vast majority couldn't install either one correctly if something did not go perfectly. A bad 95 setup can take hours or days to fix, even if you think you know what you are doing.
I would say its break-even really.
If you do not like Sun's control of Java then
help out with the Kaffe or Japhar project. Each
is creating a free JVM. Lets face it, Java is
a good tool now and it will only get better with
time. All these, "Java Sucks" posts are getting
on my nerves. If you do not like it, do something
about it!
rofl
We are the Open Source. Industrial espionage is irrelevant. We will assimilate YOU.
Really? That's strange.
Go to my page for more tips
I remember when money was being spent to teach all of the illiterate people in rural areas. Now all of the illiterates have moved to the city.
50% of Americans functionally illiterate may be about right. Where do you live? I live in America.
America is now an anti-intellectual country. People are valued by how much money they make - and they get "degrees" mostly because this may lead to better paying jobs.
But, most Americans, even those with college degrees (or rather ESPECIALLY those with college degrees), may be funtionally illiterate. First, Americans don't read or value literacy. Secondly, they perform poorly compared to persons from other cultures with similar opportunities, on average. Of course at the very high end Americans do perform better - but most Americans can't read well or think analytically or even use a table of contents. I feel that this is mostly because of being constantly preoccupied with accumulating wealth and avoiding old age. Americans worship a false god who is a very stupid god and it shows. Most Americans really do think Bill Gates is the smartest man in the world simply because he's the richest.
The dumbing down of America is real, despite what you read about more and more Americans going to college. This is a ritual to belong so a certain social or economic class and nothing more. Many working class Americans I know are far more literate (and intelligent) than the bulk of resume toting suits and skirts who say all the buzz words but have no life beyond fulfilling the stereotype of "success".
Sure, people everywhere want to be successful or rich, but it does not prevent them from being happy if they are poor, or from being literate if they are poor. Literacy is not respected here, but it is in some places.
I guarantee you that America will be the last place in the world where Linux and other "free software" is widely adopted by Joe and Jane User, who are far more literate beyond our shining shores.
Just goes to shows you how out of touch Raymond is.
Im sick of gtk, its really honestly very imature and basic, and well... windows coding is 10x easier...
Even the macos in 1986 was easier to code, gtk makes it hard, prepare for lots of pissed of new coders to linux in time.
Gtk is by no means, a "WOW" technology, its very 80's/basic. If anything can make it work nicely, its those wrappers on top to make it humanly programmable.
Oh yeah, I like every other geek like to code a gui in 5000 lines of code with 7 calls to make one listview... NOT!!!
QT is not an option.
In the mean time, gota write more of my nice high end wrappers on top to make it easy to use.
Sigh... *strugling on*....
Hmmm... Edit -> Preferences -> Fonts Welp, that fixed that problem. It crashes? How often? Granted it does crash on me some, like once every 3 days or so, but I hardly classify that as an anything more than a minor pain to reclick that icon off my GNOME bar.
Besides Netscape is not the only web browser. There's lynx for the console loving, there's Arena, and.. uhh... someone help me out here....
Oh well. Most of the article was good.. I see they managed to fit another mini RMS rant in there about the whole Linux/GNU thing..
Interestingly, this article was almost entirely about the social aspects of Linux, not the technical ones. A bit more technical detail would have been good for the more so inclined readership... Although that would have created more opportunity for mistakes, so maybe it's a good thing. They also should have included a few URLs to Linux-related sites.
If you don't like the fonts in Netscape (or X in general) get the True Type font server called xfstt. I now have Arial, MS Comic, and all those other Windows fonts that make for a better browsing experience. Yes it works, and it works very well. There are binary and source RPMS at http://rufus.w3.org/ Try this and stop complaining about fonts.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
From the point of view of an end-user used to the GUIs of Windows or Macs, it is harder to use. Some aspects are just plain different; for example, the need to have a separate window manager to run X, which in turn involves knowing about the .Xclients or .xinitrc file and what it does and how to alter it so that you can run a different window manager. Not that difficult to understand once you get used to it--but you do have to get used to it. Some aspects are simply flaws. The usefulness and ease-of-use of the GUI tools still needs work. KDE is commonly touted as a user-friendly GUI, but it still has a number of niggling annoying flaws that could make a new user throw up his or her hands. For example, the place for turning off the keybinding for switching desktops, Ctrl-Tab, is in neither in the K menu entries "Settings -> Keys -> Standard" nor "Settings -> Keys -> Global" but in "Settings -> Windows -> Advanced". Drag and drop is still being worked on. When it comes to underlying technical quality, Linux is ahead, but its GUIs are still playing catchup.
"Novice users aren't going to be trying to change keybindings."
Don't be so sure about that. I had to do it because a keybinding from KDE conflicted with a keybinding from my app.
"For the novice user, a preconfigured machine with KDE/KDM (the latter part is *crucial*), StarOffice, Netscape, KPPP, and a few other goodies is as easy as Windows, and almost as easy as MacOS."
That's true for starting out. I myself started with Applix and FVWM2 set up in the default Red Hat configuration. But at some point, I had to learn how to mount floppies and CD-ROMs. I had to learn what permissions were. I had to learn how to change my execution path so that StarOffice came up when I typed 'soffice'. I'm no hacker, at least not a software hacker, but I still had to learn things in order to really use my system. Life with Linux is not life with Windows. You can be a technophobe and use Win95 and Mac, but you can't be a technophobe and use Linux.
Certainly Linus is not a God, but just as certainly he is the Spider.
If you follow the kernel development as I do, then you would see that decisions about clean vs unclean, smooth vs ragged, proper vs hack, consistent vs flakly, smooth vs brute force, sanity check vs bloat all fall to Linus to decide in the final analysis.
Also decisions such as ext3 will be a new, from the ground up development and not a rewrite of ext2. And many many more.
If these *few* examples do not illustrate that Linus is the spider then I recommend that you review the last 100 kernel comments made by Linus. Nearly every one of them will be a decision about Class in the kernel.
And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make
Date sent: Wed, 17 Feb 1999 09:27:46 -0800 (PST)
From: Linus Torvalds
To: "Stephen C. Tweedie"
Copies to: Alexander Viro , "Theodore Ts'o" ,
linux-kernel@vger.rutgers.edu, Alan Cox
Subject: Re: fsync on large files
On Wed, 17 Feb 1999, Stephen C. Tweedie wrote:
>
> This is already working. I'm currently extending ext2fs to call the
> joural API to clearly demarkate the beginning and end of each
> individual filesystem operation, so that the "patches" (ie. the
> journaling transactions) correspond to complete transitions from one
> consistent filesystem state to another.
Stephen, I'v etold you before: I will not accept these kinds of extensions
to ext2. Make a new filesystem, and if you want, re-use the code (and the
layout) of ext2.
There's not a chance in hell that I will ever release a kernel with these
kinds of major fs modifications - call it "ext3" and after a year or so of
in-production use we can drop ext2.
Linus
And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make
Eric has a mate!
We should thank her for the fact he does not need
to "work" so that he can do his lifes work.
I have to agree.
The name is "Linux", no one is changing it now.
It refers to the kernel, do whatever you want to the system, including using lcc and lsh, and rewriting ed to be edlin-compliant, I don't care, it doesn't mean we're changing the name of the OS to "Lindos", or "Lindows", and if we use the GNU tools, it won't be "LiGnux"...
RMS's idea of a "GNU/Linux" system is okay, except that (a) of course he wants "GNU" first, and (b) what's to stop us from calling it a "GNU(GPL'ed) X11(X11/MIT) Wine(Artistic) INSERT_APP_HERE(LICENSE) etc. etc. Linux" system?
Nope, way too complicated.
Friggin' Lugnuts...
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Exactly. This is why the internet is so important to OSS. It lets us do end-runs around the PC Mags of the computer industry. Does anyone think that this kind of article would *ever* appear in a Ziff-Davis publication? Of course not. All you have to do is look at PC Mag for the last year. Lots and lots of hype about NT 5.0/Windows 2000, virtually nothing concering linux or the BSD's. How do I miss the old Compute! magazine. Too bad that got turned into magazine that did nothing but advertise Windows software.
The flames are probably being censored because they tend to be off-topic, irrelevant to the article and generally tend to cause inflammatory responses of their own.
If you disagree with the CONTENT of a post, feel free to respond in a rational manner and make your point. Flames and other useless drivel belong elsewhere.
And besides, it's not "censoring", it's "moderating". If you want to see the flames and counter-flames, adjust your threshold to -1, -2 or lower so you can see them.
I think they were referring to Molnar Ingo... and that isn't his handle, it's his name! Heh ;).
"Sebastian you're in a mess. They called you King of all the Hipsters, is it true or are you still the Queen?" -- B
I thought that newspapers generally didn't charge much over the cost of printing and made money on ads, anyway. Since there's no cost of printing on the Internet..
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
Actually, my understanding is that he is responsible for merging patches into the final 'official' kernel. Calling him 'the spider in the middle of the web' is entirely factual and not at all a religious reference. :-)
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
As for window-managers..I wrote a set of scripts that modified the Debian X setup for my parents so that each user had a windowmanager-config file and could tweak it with a cute graphical tool. The same could be done for almost anything.
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
If I leave Netscape open for more than 15 minutes, I start thrashing. That monster leaks like a sieve..
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
I wouldn't go that far, but Netscape for Linux is a disgrace to the company that wrote it..it singlehandedly manages to send me deep into my swap partition every time I do something nontrivial with it. Switching windows is like watching paint peel since it almost always has to thrash around to find where it was a moment ago. And there's a really irritating latency in the widget set. But I think I can put up with it till Mozilla comes out.
daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
...what continues to impress me is what a well rounded and sane man he is. Cool and calm of character in the midst of this maelstrom we call Linux and he continues to stress that his priorities are all in favor of his family.
Then the news comes out that he likes zoos and his wife is a karate champion. What he's doing is setting an example for all male geeks. Live a full and active life, be a proper, multi-dimensional person and you won't have any problems finding babes, friends, or followers....
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
Damm good article !!
Linux is only free if your time has no value. Windows is only free if you threaten to use Linux.
This is what seperates the big boys from ZDNet.
The readers of the Wall Streat Jurnal and the
NWTimes and such rags will kick and scream when
they are told claptrap or FUD.
Enquirer, Cosmopolitan and Most of ZD dosn't have
the same kind of apeal.
Note that "Smart Reseler" who's target is in it's
name gives realetively FUDless coverage.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
Overall, probably the best article I've seen from the mainstream press. They got the facts mostly straight except for the bit about usage (the 0x6ACFC0 user count is kinda' old), "copyleft" (is not a "new" kind of license) and use of the word program (the kernel itself could be called a program, but the "Linux-OS" is a collection of programs)
I was glad to see a historic perspective (most treat linux like it was written yesterday), due credit given to RMS (no flames, please), the brief mentions about Beowulf and Apache and that they didn't try to get technical (which the mainstream always blunders).
Offtopic: How about linGnuX or liGnuX? If the G was silent(??), you wouldn't even have to pronounce it differently. 8]
/* MAGIC THEATRE
ENTRANCE NOT FOR EVERYBODY
MADMEN ONLY */
Duh, I meant it as a joke, so laugh.
Okay, maybe it wasn't funny, so don't laugh.
In any event, take a pill and a deep breath.
/* MAGIC THEATRE
ENTRANCE NOT FOR EVERYBODY
MADMEN ONLY */
This was orders of magnitude better than the ZDNet and other online articles that usually get linked here. The author actually did some reporting instead of reading an article on CNet and rearranging "Finnish programmer", "free", "geek Unix wizards" and "threat to Microsoft" into a slightly differerent order.
Also, it's the first mainstream article I've seen that gets what "free" means.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
> copyleft" (is not a "new" kind of license)
I had to read that twice when I first saw it. Read it again. It's pretty clear that the author was saying the license was new back when RMS started the FSF, which it was.
--
Kyle R. Rose, MIT LCS
[ home ]
And before you jump all over the Linux's most vital code comment, that was clearly made by the author. My pet peeve is when people use a single, out of context statement to air their pet peeve.
--
This signature left intentionally blank.
Real nerds just fork()...
hehe.
A host is a host from coast to coast...
Unless it's down, or slow, or fails to POST!
If i hear one more thing about this gnulix/lignux stuff, i'm gonna track the person who said it down, beat h{im,er} over the head with a clue-by-four, draw and/or quarter h{im,er}, ship h{im,er} to redmond, and then REALLY hurt h{im,er}.
Btw, is the g in gnu silent? No, it isn't. Then why do you think that the g in lignux would be?
(that felt good. ahh, stress relief.)
If 90% of everything isn't crap, your standards are too high.
No one can complain that RMS got short shrift! We'll have to think of something else to bleat about.
OK, you can organize one. Non-conformity is, well, non-conformity. I admire the "I'm myself and I don't really care what you think" attitudes that Linux luminaries tend to have. If you are not happy with the appearance of people who represent us, then become a representative. Don't whine about the people who take the trouble to do so.
;-) ,
I understand what you are saying. If I had my 'druthers', I'd 'ruther' have everyone [in the Linux community] look as conservative as Linus, but it's not my place to criticize the people who have contibuted so much *more* to a cause that I believe in than I have been able or willing to do.
It's what each person has contributed that counts. I believe that the "Scruffy-Beards" are 'correlational' with the contribution.
Not a flame, just a heart-felt observation
-Steve Bergman
steve@netplus.net
Did you catch the last paragraph, about the 2
Microsoft guys conjoining the Linux protest?
>> Apparently they had been monitoring the group's
>> Web site. "What you guys are doing is touching
>> a lot of people's hearts," one of them told the
>> group. "We'd love to sit down and talk."
This clearly leaves the reader (MS stockholder)
with the warm fuzzy assurance that microsoft is
on the ball and smart enough to be trying to
figure out how to *assimilate* the passion shown
by Linux devotees. They'll analyze it with all
their IQ and market ruthlessness and so there's
no need to worry.
Just my take.
Everybody who usually flames the authors of bad articles, write to the NY Times and tell them what a good job they did. This kind of stuff should be encouraged as much as bad journalism should be discouraged.
It's a Unix system - I know this.
This was actually a very well-informed article. Go NY Times. They even pointed out something about "free speech not free beer". Amazing what decent journalism can do. :)
Particularly, the forms fields would fill with random characters, which meant I couldn't even register for an upgrade when it came time to fill in my info on their web page.
Happily, I saw someone here who mentioned the glibc-compiled version in the unsupported area, managed to get it downloaded.
It works better. No more screwy random characters, and it behaves better.
I don't know if the person who posted this cry of frustration is interested in trying something else out, or if they have already, but if Netscape is all that's standing between you and losing Win98, heck, why don't you try the glibc version out? I was pretty frustrated, too, until I got it.
Incidentally, the version I ended up pulling down came from Netscape ftp site:
ftp://ftp.netscape.com/pub/communicator/4.5/englis h/unix/unsupported/linux20_glibc2/
You'll get your choice of the full Communicator package or the standalone browser. If you go to the next directory up, there are a few more OS choices in the "unsupported" branch of the tree.
As for fonts, Times at 18 points on my 1024x768 S3V-driven display seems to display fine. I know there's a fix for even having to do that, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. Don't really need to.
Anyhow, hope that helps, if help's what you're looking for. If it isn't... well... maybe someone else was.
Toodles.
----------
pudding_yeti@yahoo.com
"Give me $20 worth of pudding, or kill me."
----------
mphall@cstone.nospam.net
"A horse laugh is worth a thousand syllogisms"
I found the font thing annoying too, until I got the ttf font server and used it with my windows fonts. Right now, I see all web pages in Arial and it makes things a WHOLE LOT better. So, get xfstt and some fonts from you beloved windows box.
This is probably the best written article on Linux that I've seen on real dead trees. I was hoping for a mention of KDE or GNOME but oh well. Yes Linus needs new glasses. And they didn't name Tux!
Ex Machina "From the Machine"
xm@GeekMafia.dynip.com [http://GeekMafia.dynip.com/]
Well, if your so sick of using gtk, by all means, use something else. But, as it happens, some people, myself included, like using gtk to program. I don't feel like writing tons of code to make a trivial X app. And for the wrappers, I've never had to use any. I suggest you learn a little more object oriented programming, it would make it a lot more understandable.
I hope to die peacefully in my sleep like grandpa, not screaming like his passengers.
Well, though I can say little about crashing, before Mozilla 1.0 is released, some time ago I too became dissatisfied with the rather lousy X standard fonts just trying to become involved in HTML page rendering.
.bdf's and some before/after screenshots. One of them's the ZDNet home page; you've got to admit, it's a noticeable difference }:)
So what did I do? I converted a bunch of TTF's, and to make a long story short, NS/X11 on my workstation looks reeeeeeally nice.
Check out this page, toward the bottom end, for a tarball of
Hope it can make non-W98 browsing a bit more palatable....
iSKUNK!
Linus is my god.
Linux gets good plublicity!!!
: - )