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Caldera OpenLinux 2.2 Review
Michael McPherson
sent in a link to Nicholas Petreley's
Glowing review of Caldera
that appears in the current issue of LinuxWorld. Talks about
the windows based install program and a lot more.
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
Sounds cool. Almost makes me want to try linux.
I like seeing a big red FAILED when someting doesn't load. Also, what about Tetris? I perfer RedHat's set up the install and come back in ten minutes. It also doesn't sound as cusomisable as I'm used to. I don't see what makes it worth $50 when you can download redhat for free. I think I'll stay with that for now.
That said, anything that gets windows users onto linux is a good thing in my book. But, I'd perfer if KDE didn't look so much like Windows. Then again, anyone who minds can probably figure out how to fix it.
Why do distros stick with LIBC5? Is it less buggy than Glibc6 or is it for legacy compiled code?
Normally when something new comes out people upgrade..
So why not in this case?
RH5.2 includes libc5 libs (like they work very well though)
The problem is that there isn't very much to maintain if you
can't install the OS....
Does anyone have screenshots of the KDE Wizard?? Drool.
If you love Debian, you'll find FreeBSD even better! http://www.freebsd.org/. FreeBSD has many features Debian doesnt like a better package manager, KDE, more stable... etc.
Hey, fishtacoboy, no wanna use windoze to 'stall leenux
Hi, on the config front you may find that KDE has a headstart with its KConfig class. You can find KDE at http://www.kde.org/. Good luck.
Good point. Debian has a _very_ confusing install because of Ian Jackson's dselect. Even as a seasoned Unix user, I am absolutely _baffled_ at the keybindings used in dselect. It has no relation to VI, Emacs, Windows keybindings.
I hope they don't call the tetris game "tetris" because the company which owns that trademark is very protective of it!
Ahh, but this is the problem Caldera is trying to solve with OpenLinux 2.2. I understand they've added their own spit and polish to KDE. Remains to be seen.
Maybe they licensed it? Probably not. In that case, I think it would probably be safe to directly call it "a cheap Tetris(tm) knock-off".
is rpm compatible across the three? why not?
Ummm...no. KDE is already there. Caldera is providing COAS to do a bunch of other stuff. What files exactly do you think newbies will have to edit?
Oops, correction. I haven't had COL1.3 installed for at least a year... More like 8 months. But I like it!
Linux 2.2 has a new feature called the FrameBuffer. This allows you to boot up your kernel in graphics mode, at funky resolutions like 1024x768, boot up logos, splash screens etc.
Caldera must have customized this feature.
where is the openlinux 2.2 "lite" download?
they have always had a lite distro that had everything but the commercial software...
i really hope this appears soon
If it walks like windows, Talks like windows, it must be... Naahh couldn't be.
Fix yer article then!
"They're both great products, but my point was that to woo the GENREAL popluace, you can't expect the "normal" user to ever edit a single .conf file if they don't want to."
So Microsoft is taking regedit and sysedit off their cd's then?
Why do distros stick with LIBC5?
Maybe it's because so many folks have dynamically linked binaries but no source.
Try compiling complex packages from Debian source someday. apt-get does not hold a candle to ports in this regard!
KDE: KDE is _neither_ in contrib _nor_ non-free, and nor will it ever change. check bugs.debian.org to see why.
more stable: It is accepted between developers that FreeBSD is better under higher loads.
Depending on what you mean by 'tinker' you might want to try Debian or Slackware. Slackware will force you to get right into the system, Debian will encourage it.
However, if you just want to get up a system that works and isn't a pain in the ass to keep working, Red Hat and it appears now Caldera are your best bets.
For the record, I'm a Debian user.
Pah! Dselect isn't hard to use. And Debian isn't target to the novice either.
Hm, I would say MS Word still screws up the formating of all other documents.
a.
I'll be at Comdex this week. Instead of just getting T-Shirts for the girls, I'll get me a copy of this, too. Toys for ever'body!
But hey, that's what the timing of press releases is all about.
You got it! Nothing could POSSIBLY be easier than pushing FULL on the installation menu, and waiting 5 minutes (24x CDROM!) ;-) :-) ;-)
Too bad your valid comment was moderated... maybe next time, huh?
And I don't think there's an easier distro to burn to CD, or install over NFS... and a RedHat system I worked on actually didn't have make and gcc installed... I gave up when even after installing these manually a kernel still wouldn't compile... ahahahahaha!
Please, please, oh please, moderate me... I need it! Come on, you feel like pushing -1, don't you? I mentioned slackware... isn't that in the auto -1 database?
I don't really think it is windows based installation. More like windows based partitioning. I don't see why that would bother anybody, as long as there is a way to do it without having windows installed on the machine.
Ah, fair Linux(1), closer and closer to Mac OS X...
In ways, at least.
p.s. no-flames
----
(1) Referring to the "operating system," as it were, not just the kernel.
Microsoft does not support use of regedit.
It isn't even in the start menu unless you add it.
Maybe SO 5.0 is statically linked. Not everything has to be dynamic you know... ;)
My point? Stop trying to make it so brain-dead a trained monkey could operate it! START trying to make it so simple a reasonably intelligent human being could operate it.
Why?
Your reasoning is spurious. There is NO reason not to make an interface simple to the "newbie". There is NO reason not to make it accessible to the idiot.
The more accessible Linux becomes the less likely I will be to have to work on a fucking machine that crashes twice a day and doesn't follow even the most obvious and standard protocols. The more accessible Linux becomes the more I get to use it at my job where I have to work on a computer. I want to see Linux so fucking easy to use that my dog can use it. Why? Because then I won't have to use Windows ever again, and that suits me just fine.
Why allow Windows to remain the idiot's system? Linux can do that job too, but it will be a STABLE idiot's system that non-idiots can still use. Making it easy to use is not equivalent to crippling it. You still have bash, you still have ftp/telnet/X11/all your Unix stuff. How can this be bad for us? It isn't. It's good. Accept it, Linux will be popularized and there will be an easy to use interface on it. It's going to happen eventually.
Why just settle for a good system? I want a PERFECT SYSTEM, and I know that Microsoft isn't going to provide that because it would kill their revenue cash cow of the Eternal Upgrade. Screw that, you can only keep a carrot in front of my face for so long before I realize that I'm never going to get it.
Yes, but people actually USE Linux, unlike Mac OS X, plus it's free, unlike Mac OS X. Yes, this was a flame.
I'll repeat, there is more to human-computer interaction than 'pretty pictures' and 'cute widgets'.
Yes, to a POWER USER who is the traditional user to Unix.
No, to mom and dad that use it to balance the checkbook, send/receive mail, and surf the Internet.
I for one would be very happy if I could go to my parents house, telnet into my machine at work, and get work done. Unfortunately, Microsoft didn't bother to implement RFC 854 even remotely correctly, X11 isn't integrated into any Microsoft OS, and Microsoft can't even write a VT100 emulator that does escape sequences correctly. I say dump Microsoft and replace it with something better and the only way you are going to do that is to make it easy to install and easier to use than Windows.
You make the statement:
;)
Second, newbie friendliness is only marginally valuable. You're only a newbie for so long, but you're a user forever. (well...if you use it that long
I strongly disagree with that statement. There are some people that will remain newbies forever. There are some people that write code in wordpad. There are some people that will burn hours on repetitive tasks rather than take half an hour and learn how to script them. There are some people that are idiots. It's just the nature of the world.
Do we want Linux to be accessable to them? Maybe. Personally I think they would probably be better off with Windows, but I am all in favor of stripping some marketshare from Microsoft...so more power to Caldera!
Hey, grabbing the good ideas from Mac OS X is OK, just like we can use good ideas from Windows, OS/2, Mac OS 8.x, etc.
/Local/Profiles/Administrator (or something like that). Eeew.
I just hope Linux never comes anywhere close to Mac OS X's highly annoying file system layout. For example (from memory), the super user's login name is root, but its home directory is in
Umm you missed the point. .conf file if they don't want >to"
>"but my point was that to woo the GENREAL >popluace, you can't expect the "normal" user to >ever edit a single
If the above is true then Microsoft never should have put either tool on their cd's
The fact that they're present on the cds means that there is the expectation that at some point(s) in time the user would have to edit something.
Them wanting to [or not]is irrelevant.
...that Caldera has hopefully done something to make fbcon & svgatextmode *stable*. If that's the case, I might have to spring for this thing just to see what they're doing with it to make it work well.
("Well" being defined, in the case of fbcon, as "doesn't lock the box up hard every Nth use.")
No, not so. In fact, that mentality is what bugged me enough to post in the first place. There is a LOT more it than icons and widgets.
Use a WebTV box. This is the main thing that most people use a computer for, that and "we have to get a computer for our kids".
Software must assist the user perform a task, not become a task in itself
Give me a break. Automation is one of the principle uses for computers. You know, performing a task.
Software must not make the user feel stupid
Software must not make the computer appear to be stupid
And is Caldera's install doing any of this? I'll let you answer the obvious. I didn't see 'Clippy' anywhere.
I agree. It is very much possible to make Linux user friendly enough to where mom can turn on the computer and send a few emails or whatever, and use the internet, do some checkbook balancing, and the kids could play some games. And it will still be possible for us to bang into a good old $ or # and do some real work, maybe script a few jobs in Perl, make a webpage in vi, or tweak some scheduling parameters so that your MIDI player gets more execution priority than your web browser. Microsoft's real problem is bloated programming, useless instructions, and incompatibilites. I am not saying that there is nothing in Linux that is incompatible, because that wouldn't be true. Look at libc5 and libc6 programs, and some of the bleeding edge stuff like Gnome when you don't upgrade GTK 1.0 to 1.1.x, or whatever. It's bad, but it surely was not as bad as when I installed IE 5 on a fresh Windows 98 and the machine had an invalid page fault every time you tried to access any aspect of Explorer, albeit IE, or the Control Panel. I am saying that even if you build a good desktop environment and graphical interface that is easy for people to use, it would take some very bad programming to reach the level that Microsoft reached over 4 years ago. There are layers of abstraction with Linux/Unix. Nothing is so hardcoded into the system where you can't change your window manager to make it look like a Mac, or Windows operating system, or go to a commandline interface and have some fun with bash or your shell of choice. I personally will never use a Microsoft operating system, as I have been using Linux for years, and am very happy to just have a choice of operating systems. Oh well, enough for now...Gotta get some more Vodka. =)
I think I can sum up the bases for your entire rant.
People will not change therefore we should change.
Awfully selfish and shortsighted don't you think?
If people want to use Linux that's fine as long as they understand it isn't windows, it wasn't created by the windows culture and it's selfish to demand or even be perceived as demanding that it fits the windows mold.
When was the last time you read that Windows should change and become more like Linux?
When was the last time you heard that because people will not change therefore windows should change?
Not often I bet.
Things that don't change are know as stagnent.
Things that become stagnent are know as extinct.
Hmmm. Looks like my last post didn't fall under the correct post. I was agreeing with the post that mention Microsoft's bad VT100 emulation, etc.
there's also the alien utility that easily ("alien package_name.rpm") converts .rpms into .debs for use in debian.
say, i've been thinking lately about trying to do some boot-up splash screen stuff with linux. can anybody point out some good references? thanks!
<DRUNK POST>
:) I think I am just drunk and not thinking correctly. LoL
Nevermind about the misplaced post.
</DRUNK POST>
XF86Config is the big one which springs to mind. Improving the RH configurator and getting it into all the distros has to be a priority,
I think I can sum up the bases for your entire rant.
People will not change therefore we should change.
Awfully selfish and shortsighted don't you think?
I would say "awfully fucking REALISTIC". You are being shortsighted thinking that you are going to somehow change fundamental human behavior. I want a powerful operating system becomming dominant, the ONLY way to do this is to make a powerful operating system also easy to use.
If people want to use Linux that's fine as long as they understand it isn't windows, it wasn't created by the windows culture and it's selfish to demand or even be perceived as demanding that it fits the windows mold.
If you want Linux to take on Windows (and I do at least), you're going to have to make Linux so that it can at least appear to act and work LIKE Windows. This won't diminish the traditional interface, it will just make the system more available to people. It's selfish to expect people to change. It's also futile.
Look at it from a long term point of view. We can either have operating systems 30 years down the line based off from a variant of DOS that sucked, or we can have operating systems based off from Unix that was a pain to use. Which is better? Looking right now, if there were 0 applications available for either OS, which is the better choice?
This is the LAST opprotunity to change operating systems before people become completly entrenched in case you do not realize it. MS is currently KILLING themselves, I vote we simply take advantage of it.
When was the last time you read that Windows should change and become more like Linux?
Every time somebody complains about stability.
Every time somebody complains about 'bloat'.
Every time somebody complains about licensing.
Every time somebody complains about remote administration.
When was the last time you heard that because people will not change therefore windows should change?
Cygnus solutions.
Who here wants remote administration from NT?
Who here wants a stable system?
Who here wants X11?
There is a reason why we don't use Windows, it's because MICROSOFT WON'T MAKE THE SYSTEM USEABLE BY US. SO SCREW 'EM.
Not often I bet.
All the time. Just think about it. I would convert to NT tomorrow if it simply didn't suck anymore. I cannot do my job on the damn thing because I write software on embedded operating systems that are POSIX compliant, like UNIX is and NT ISN'T. I'm just being realistic. Linux can be more than a toy, it can be a tool. For everybody.
Things that don't change are know as stagnent.
And Linux would be stagnent if we followed your advice.
Things that become stagnent are know as extinct.
Good thing we have Caldera improving the installation process. Eh?
Really?!?
DOWN WITH THE METRIC SYSTEM! DOWN WITH THE FRENCH! PRAISE GOD. PRAISE J...
Wait. I'm an atheist.
Actually, this site screws up quite often that way. It's happened to me more than once.
I suggest smoking pot. No hangover, no addiction, but it will mess you up more mentally since it causes neurons to fire randomly - at least when you start and aren't used to it. Don't do it more often than a week either, it really can be dangerous if you smoke it too often when you start out. Stop for a month periodically to make certain that you aren't using it as a crutch for creativity (at least once a year). If you feel depressed when you quit, you are smoking too often.
This message not brought to you by D.A.R.E.
Have I broken a taboo? I just love anonymity. And my company firewall.
You may as well accept it, idiot friendly is the way to go. Don't get me wrong, I don't LIKE this but it's the way the world is.
Actually, I'm a proponent that if you don't understand something at all you cannot use it. You should at least understand the basics to a lightbulb to use it. And the basics to a TV, the basics to a car. Think of how much smarter the world would be if we gave them an incentive not to go through life as idiots?
Oh well, this will never be legislated.
If you want to beat Windows, we have to be idiot friendly, or even moron friendly. I have nothing against idiots or morons after all, so why keep them out in the cold?
hehe, i suggest trippin'...mmm, psychoactiave drugs...=P
...it should be called falling-blocks-which-you-try-and-make-lines-out-of -without-filling-up-the-screen.
I'v tripped a few times, but you need at least a weekend to recover, sometimes more. You also need somebody that you TRUST REALLY REALLY WELL, somebody that you TRULY TRUST otherwise paranoia will get you. That's not fun. Well, it can be fun, but only if you are like me and enjoy the novelty of being irrationally paranoid and thinking you will never recover from it. Few people are like me.
Hehehe :D
Well, can't do that yet (gov't job.) For now, 1 liter of Tequila will have to do on the really good weekends, plus going to clubs and bars on the side. =) Oh, then there is Linux...Mmm the best drug. Well, just as addictive anyway.
" would say "awfully fucking REALISTIC". You are being shortsighted thinking that you are going to
/insert name of os/ isn't for everyone.
somehow change fundamental human behavior. I want a powerful operating system becomming dominant,
the ONLY way to do this is to make a powerful operating system also easy to use."
The ONLY way?
"If you want Linux to take on Windows (and I do at least), you're going to have to make Linux so that it can at least appear to act and work LIKE Windows. This won't diminish the traditional interface, it will just make the system more available to people. It's selfish to expect people to change. It's also futile."
Doesn't stop them from coming on slashdot and demanding that *the linux culture* change so that they can escape the os that they brought on themselves.
"This is the LAST opprotunity to change operating systems before people become completly entrenched in case you do not realize it. MS is currently KILLING themselves, I vote we simply take advantage of it"
The last? I'm certain MS has many more mistakes to make.
"Every time somebody complains about stability.
Every time somebody complains about 'bloat'.
Every time somebody complains about licensing.
Every time somebody complains about remote administration"
Only if they are aware of Linux, otherwise they just complain and think that they have no choice and just suffer.
"Cygnus solutions.
Who here wants remote administration from NT?
Who here wants a stable system?
Who here wants X11?"
See above and keep in mind that we're talking about 'normal' users not administrators
"All the time. Just think about it. I would convert to NT tomorrow if it simply didn't suck anymore. I cannot do my job on the damn thing because I write software on embedded operating systems that are POSIX compliant, like UNIX is and NT ISN'T. I'm just being realistic. Linux can be more than a toy, it can be a tool. For everybody"
So were talking about YOU, fine. so if Linux can be a tool for EVERYBODY is there any room for mac0s,qnx,os/2,etc?
"And Linux would be stagnent if we followed your advice"
My advice is that Linux isn't for everyone period.
Windows isn't for everyone,
Linux was created by a culture, not a company,not magic, a culture a group of like minded
individuals. For an outsider to tell that culture that they need to change because the outsider doesn't like windows and wants to change is selfish. World Domination was said in jest that is the spirit in wich it should be taken.
If Linux ends up as the domint os that people use it's because we earned it.
"You may as well accept it, idiot friendly is the way to go. Don't get me wrong, I don't LIKE this but it's the way the world is"
So lets give in. Hmm people murder other people in this world. Guess we just need to accept it. Thats the way the world is.
"Actually, I'm a proponent that if you don't understand something at all you cannot use it. You should at least understand the basics to a lightbulb to use it. And the basics to a TV, the basics to a car. Think of how much smarter the world would be if we gave them an incentive not to go through life as idiots?"
OK. Now were is the incentive in the present situation for them to not go thru life as idiots?
If there isn't then aren't we becoming part of the problem then?
"If you want to beat Windows, we have to be idiot friendly, or even moron friendly. I have nothing against idiots or morons after all, so why keep them out in the cold?"
The things people will do to garner their ends.
Hope it's worth it.
Well considering whom win95/98 is targeted to.
The admin IS the user. Now NT is a different story.
I always find the mom test amusing. Are there a lot of moms out there just chomping at the bit waiting to install an os?
:)
Seriously there are some very smart moms out there. Some might even give the dads a run for their money.
" would say "awfully fucking REALISTIC". You are being shortsighted thinking that you are going to somehow change fundamental human behavior. I want a powerful operating system becomming dominant, the ONLY way to do this is to make a powerful operating system also easy to use."
/insert name of os/ isn't for everyone.
The ONLY way?
YES. the ONLY way Wake up. The cheapest and easiest product won. 3.1 sucked and people used it because it ran on PC's which everybody was used to having, when 95 came out it nearly killed Apple. NT was encroaching even on Unix territory. Why? Because a monkey (sorry, I mean a stupid high school student working in IS) can operate the thing.
"If you want Linux to take on Windows (and I do at least), you're going to have to make Linux so that it can at least appear to act and work LIKE Windows. This won't diminish the traditional interface, it will just make the system more available to people. It's selfish to expect people to change. It's also futile."
Doesn't stop them from coming on slashdot and demanding that *the linux culture* change so that they can escape the os that they brought on themselves.
Hey. It's not like I don't write code for Unix. It's not like I'm demanding anything. But when people like you say "no no no, it's WRONG to simplify Unix" all I can do is give it a big Fuck You. We can do anything we goddamn want and it works both ways. I'm as annoyed as you are about some twit demanding that we slave away to provide them with X for FREE - those people can go shaft them selves with a shotgun and pull the trigger, however, I am also slightly annoyed at the idea of trying to shut people out or keeping the OS difficult to use - although much less so.
"This is the LAST opprotunity to change operating systems before people become completly entrenched in case you do not realize it. MS is currently KILLING themselves, I vote we simply take advantage of it"
The last? I'm certain MS has many more mistakes to make.
! Have you been watching the last 10 years? Microsoft is nothing more than a colossal fuckup. They haven't EVER invented anything new. They are a totally useless company. "But how do they stay in business?" you ask. Do they compete or do they hide their API which everybody is dependant on? You've got to be kidding me. They are nothing BUT mistakes except that one strategic move: make everybody dependant on them. They have just about lost a court case and are risking being broken up over a freaking useless nobody gives a shit about it BROWSER. It's a BROWSER!!! I mean COME FREAKING ON!! Who cares about a FUCKING browser? NOBODY! It's a displayer, now THAT'S worth breaking a company up over!! Idiots - fools, rich rich rich idiot fools though.
Hey, how's that satellite system of their's doing? Love that MS Bob! Look at how well WinCE is just ZOOMING off!!
The only thing they do is make an OS, and programs that run on top of it, and they loose money on everything else. WebTV is still loosing money and probably will for 5 more years at least.
And the latest blunder. For a stupid, useless, program, that displays data they are now on the verge of breakup. But they have their secret API and more than 100 million users. You put 2+2 together. As a company, they are stupid, but they have one hell of a resource. Their OS, which LINUX is seen as a competitor to. Think they will try to protect it?
If they get broken up, there will be less than 2 years to take advantage of it. This will be the last opprotunity, next time they will be prepared for it.
"Every time somebody complains about stability.
Every time somebody complains about 'bloat'.
Every time somebody complains about licensing.
Every time somebody complains about remote administration"
Only if they are aware of Linux, otherwise they just complain and think that they have no choice and just suffer.
Well naturally. If I wasn't aware of Amiga, Mac and Windows I wouldn't be complaining about the interface, lack of DVD support, or X11 (aspects of it anyhow). So what? What is your point? My point is that we have a hell of a lot of good press at the moment and it might be a good idea to take advantage of the fact. We have a fucking awesome system, but it won't matter if nobody uses it. We will also loose developers over time as well if the base of the users doesn't spread.
"Cygnus solutions.
Who here wants remote administration from NT?
Who here wants a stable system?
Who here wants X11?"
See above and keep in mind that we're talking about 'normal' users not administrators
Don't you understand? If we make Linux easy to use for the typical idiot (read that as Windows user) then I can have all the power that I need no matter where I go. I view this as "good". Why don't you? You cannot seriously believe that the typical peanut head is going to willingly become a sysadmin.
Back to the first premise: to make Linux ubiquitous, it must be easy to install and easier to use than Windows. There is no doubt about it. How can you question this?? What, pretel, is hard to use that everybody uses? This is a nation of television watchers after all, the remote control was invented here.
"All the time. Just think about it. I would convert to NT tomorrow if it simply didn't suck anymore. I cannot do my job on the damn thing because I write software on embedded operating systems that are POSIX compliant, like UNIX is and NT ISN'T. I'm just being realistic. Linux can be more than a toy, it can be a tool. For everybody"
So were talking about YOU, fine. so if Linux can be a tool for EVERYBODY is there any room for mac0s,qnx,os/2,etc?
Who cares if there is room? Take the useful features out of MacOS, and QNX, and OS/2, WinNT, Win95, etc, and ABSORB THEM. This is what needs to be done to make a perfect OS, or more perfect OS (perfection being unattainable of course). Why would anybody lament the loss of MacOS if Linux has every feature of MacOS + it is absolutely FREE and runs on the hardware? Sure, there are religious wars between groups of OS users, but if they can move over to the other OS and it still works like their old OS AND it's cheaper, well, heck with it. Most people are actually quite practical when it comes right down to it.
Besides, QNX is a real time OS. It's a nice little Unix, but it's a LITTLE Unix. I work with it on and off.
"And Linux would be stagnent if we followed your advice"
My advice is that Linux isn't for everyone period.
Windows isn't for everyone,
Yes, it currently isn't. That's a shame. That's my point. What was originally said is that it is 'bad' to make a computer 'idiot friendly'. Why? How does this hurt ANYBODY? If we don't make it idiot friendly people won't even be willing to try it.
Making it idiot friendly will widen the base, and bring in more developers. GNOME and KDE will make it idiot friendly soon enough. Now we need it to be installable by idiots as well otherwise that can't use GNOME and KDE. We are within 1 year of attaining it.
Linux was created by a culture, not a company,not magic, a culture a group of like minded individuals. For an outsider to tell that culture that they need to change because the outsider doesn't like windows and wants to change is selfish. World Domination was said in jest that is the spirit in wich it should be taken. If Linux ends up as the domint os that people use it's because we earned it.
It was started by a college student that couldn't possibly afford a Unix workstation who had this cheap crappy commodity hardware running the lousy operating system on it. He, in his infinite wisdom and cockiness, decided to fix that and made his creation available to anybody that had the same problem. Other peole of like minds adopted it. That's why we use it, Windows lacks key elements that we have grown accostomed to, or in some cases need.
If we don't change, we will be destroyed. And don't think I'm an outsider simply because I'm anonymous. I'm anonymous because it is the best way to freely express how I feel. Microsoft will copy us, don't be a fool by thinking they are nearly destroyed, they aren't even close - they are keeping a low profile. They have hundreds of billions of dollars, and they are vicious, ruthless, and unprincipled. They will attack us. They will steal code. Any corporate giant with as much to loose as they do would.
Think MS would stoop to using proprietary hardware? I don't. Think MS would stoop to modifying IP protocols? I don't. You have absolutely NO FUCKING IDEA what they will do to protect their monopoly, I don't see why not when you can see the shit they've pulled in the past. If we don't take them out now, they will take us out later. We aren't playing with the FreeBSD folks, we're playing with a big, ugly, corporation whose wealth is tied in stock and is a major contributor to the S&P 500 index which millions of American's are putting their retirement into. It's going to be a war, and being stupid is a sure way to get your head blown clean off.
Notice the FUD heating up? Mindcraft, press releases from winntmag. Get a clue. This is why the industry hates MS, and why MS is rightfully paranoid, they are scum but that's business. 100 billion dollars is nothing to scoff at either.
"You may as well accept it, idiot friendly is the way to go. Don't get me wrong, I don't LIKE this but it's the way the world is"
/etc/services can be used to move the telnet port from 23 to 80? I may as well have a gui do it. What do I gain by knowing that ifconfig is used to setup the IP address? I may as well have a gui. There is no point to making something complicated just to make it complicated. Make it as simple as possible and no simplier. It is the golden rule of engineering which is my field.
So lets give in. Hmm people murder other people in this world. Guess we just need to accept it. Thats the way the world is.
GIVE IN?? Making something EASY TO INSTALL is not anywhere near to being equivalent to KILLING PEOPLE is it? To die for a principle is to put a heavy price on speculation, and to make Linux as complicated as possible is certain death. It's not "giving in", it's simply not being stupid about the situation. There is a legitimate need to simplify installation and usage. This post isn't a demand that somebody do it, it's just a plain and ordinary fact.
To say something to the effect of: "Caldera has provided easy installation! Those rat FACED BASTARDS!", is insanity. Nobody has been hurt by this. This can only help us. This is what I'm trying to make clear. You tell me how this is detrimental in any way whatsoever to anybody - besides Microsoft.
"Actually, I'm a proponent that if you don't understand something at all you cannot use it. You should at least understand the basics to a lightbulb to use it. And the basics to a TV, the basics to a car. Think of how much smarter the world would be if we gave them an incentive not to go through life as idiots?"
OK. Now were is the incentive in the present situation for them to not go thru life as idiots? If there isn't then aren't we becoming part of the problem then?
Linux isn't going to be an incentive as long as Windows is around is it?
Answer that one. Stop being neurotic and understand that to make a product that people use you have to work with them not against them. I don't like screwing around with reading man pages if I don't have to, even though I went through the pain to do it because I knew there would be a pay off. Not everybody is as far sighted as I am.
Incidentally, what do I gain by knowing that
Unix was built with this paradigm. Hence we have piping, we have short commands, but the machine has changed a lot in the last 10 years. 60 MB isn't a lot of disk space and we don't work on character terminals anymore and a 15 inch monitor costs about 100 dollars not 500.
"If you want to beat Windows, we have to be idiot friendly, or even moron friendly. I have nothing against idiots or morons after all, so why keep them out in the cold?"
The things people will do to garner their ends.
Hope it's worth it.
Come again?
Yes, I'm willing to do a GENOCIDE to do this! What the hell are you talking about?
There is a free matlab work-a-like called Octave. http://www.che.wisc.edu/octave/octave.ht ml Works well.
Not my mom.... she doesn't know what to do, and gets lost if the desktop icons are moved from their normal positions!
Pay attention.
>"You may as well accept it, idiot friendly is the way to go. Don't get me wrong, I don't LIKE this but it's the way the world is"
In other words the world is full of idiots and we should cater to them.[1]
Never heard of that case involving McDonalds and that lady who sued them over hot coffee have you?
We should be newbie-friendly not idiot friendly.
There's a difference, a very important difference.
>"Linux isn't going to be an incentive as long as >Windows is around is it?"
We must have been enough of an incentive to last this long. We aren't planet Linux circling sun Microsoft. Remember all those slashdot post that speculate how MS will damage us is some way?
Well the rebutal is that Linux was never created nor continues to exist because of Windows.
We exist and will continue to exist in spite of Windows. The 'incentive' for people to come over to linux or any other os for that matter is a personal one.
1)Newbie 'john' for example may want to try Linux because his boss has give him a small budget too small to buy the brand name solution.
2)Newbie 'Mark' may have 'problems' with his present os and has heard from friends that there is this new os that doesn't have some of the problems his present os have.
etc,etc,etc.
As far as paradigms go. Unix/linux was built on the theory that thinking is necessary to operate it. Not for the person who believes that his/her cd-caddy is a cup holder.
[1] I'm assuming you know what the difference is between an idiot and a newbie.
"Yes, I'm willing to do a GENOCIDE to do this! What the hell are you talking about?"
I could ask you the same.
We should be catering to the newbie crowd, not the idiot crowd.[1]
2-5 should be the goal.
As for #1 remember that quote "Make something idiot-proof and we will build a better idiot"?
"any-user-friendly" One size doesn't fit all.
As long as we're individuals that will always be the case.
"As long as the system is easy to use at any level of experience, and allows, but does not require the user to learn anything (s)he might want to about the system, who can possibly have a problem with that? I, for one, don't"
Fine, but no one has yet pointed out to me. Were is the *incentive* to progress from newbie to any other stage[2]? Remember you've taken away any 'hill' for them to overcome. They can progress from level to level. but were is the will to do so? And most importantly what happens to an idividual who doesn't progress in any capacity?
What happens to a society were such a thing a rampant?
[1] Assuming you know the difference between newbie and idiot.
[2]Assuming no external forces.
We should be newbie-friendly not idiot friendly.
There's a difference, a very important difference.
The only difference between an idiot and a newbie is that an idiot refuses to learn and a newbie *might* learn. Quite often they are one in the same. I'm an idiot about crochet, I make no apologies for it.
I think we should cater to everybody.
We must have been enough of an incentive to last this long. We aren't planet Linux circling sun Microsoft. Remember all those slashdot post that speculate how MS will damage us is some way?
Microsoft really did not perceive us as a threat. That isn't going to last now. We really are a threat now. We are definately taking away sales from NT, there is no question. In '93 I never guessed that Linux would be where it is now, it was just a nifty toy - today it's a viable tool.
Well the rebutal is that Linux was never created nor continues to exist because of Windows.
One minor point: Linux was created as a rebuttal to Windows. Just ask Linus. However I would agree that it doesn't exist to spite Windows. In any case it doesn't matter why it exists, it's now a legitimate threat. Don't forget the lengths that MS went through to kill Netscape which made a joke of a product. It was a browser, hardly on par with an operating system in terms of complexity. Linux is a REAL threat, Netscape wasn't. They are putting on a facade that they don't care, let me tell you they are freaking out and for good reason. We have a better product than they do. And it costs 0 dollars. They can't buy it out, they can't FUD it out, so they are going to try to destroy it. Do not fool yourself, this is PR - they are trying to lull US into complacentcy. Think logically, ignore what they say, propoganda is a tool and they are adept at using that tool.
Think carefully. What other choice do they have? Consider that very carefully. Try to come up with an alternative scenario - you will find there is none. They have no other choice. They are going to have to go to the jugular. We have forced them to. This is the central reason that we must go for their jugular first.
We exist and will continue to exist in spite of Windows. The 'incentive' for people to come over to linux or any other os for that matter is a personal one.
Then it will remain as a 'toy' not as a tool. The reason that I feel that it is in everybody's interest to make Linux as ubiquitous as possible are:
1) prevent MS from taking over hardware
2) force MS to improve their crappy software (I think Linux was part of the reason W95 came out)
3) allow us to program in Unix
4) eliminate hidden API's
5) create level playing field for everybody
6) Linux encourages sharing of idea's, not hoarding - this is good
7) Linux doesn't charge for the wheel idea anymore, nor the concept of fire like Windows still does
Windows will become more stable. You would have to be blind, and seriously so, to think that Windows 95 wasn't a HUGE improvement over Windows 3.1. What might very well happen is that Windows will become the everything OS - it will eventually become rock solid, fast, everything Linux is, EXCEPT free and open. I think this should be prevented.
Microsoft makes crappy software, but they have a million monkeys working for them, they will EVENTUALLY get it right. And their solution will work, the average moron will be able to use it, but the only power users will be MS employees. THAT's the future if Linux doesn't take them out NOW. It is quite conceivable that they will start replacing Unix as the backbone of the Internet, replace the open IP protocols wich god knows what, and shut us out. This is EXACTLY what they are attempting to do now. This is why they give incentives to ISP's to use them. Sound scary? Well - it is.
As far as paradigms go. Unix/linux was built on the theory that thinking is necessary to operate it. Not for the person who believes that his/her cd-caddy is a cup holder.
Well Nifty. It still can be, but there isn't any reason that you cannot make it accessible to the average user. If we don't, Windows "X" will become the defacto standard and we won't be allowed to think to use it. Compilers cost $500 for Windows, are not standard C, and the API isn't documented. Imagine if this is on 99.9999% of all computers? We MUST be Microsoft to the punch.
How did you learn to code? I got out a manual from the C=64 and started reading. That cost my parents $300 for the entire setup (I paid half). Today, it would cost you a minimum of $1,500 to do the same thing, I would never be a coder if I had to shell that much $$ out as a kid. I make a considerable sum of money, that $300 investment pays for itself every day I come to work. If computers become inaccessible as Microsoft is trying to make them, by ELIMINATING the ability to write code for it, we are all fucked. And some kid like me will be screwed out of a decent future. This isn't being selfish, it's the opposite. We need to make it ubiquitous to make it fair. No company would do that willingly because they are greedy, we aren't.
"Yes, I'm willing to do a GENOCIDE to do this! What the hell are you talking about?"
I could ask you the same.
In reply to "how far I'm willing to go" or something like that. I have no idea what that means. I have no coercive power. I can go anywhere but nobody is required to follow me. The only thing I am is somebody that is studying the situation. As soon as the DOJ is gone, we are going to have a frontal assault. I know it sounds depressing, I know it's nothing to look forward to, but it is going to happen so we better be fucking prepared for it.
There is a window of opprotunity. GNOME has been adopted in Mexico's schools. KDE is nearly finished (as in polished to a high shine). Caldera is simplyfing the interface. Corel is making familiar office apps. Video games are being ported. If we can just get a significant number of users on our side, we might be able to win, and even then it's MIGHT. Expect secret standards to come back and expect MS to align itself with Intel again.
Do not underestimate the enemy. And they are the enemy. They will try to destroy us. We can coexist with them, but they will no coexist with us. The sooner the community faces that fact the better we will all be. Don't fool yourself.
2-5 should be the goal.
As for #1 remember that quote "Make something idiot-proof and we will build a better idiot"?
Why should if be the goal. You've given no reasons.
We should cater to every crowd. There is no advantageous reason to be selective. It just limits us, nobody else. We would be painting ourselves into a corner.
"any-user-friendly" One size doesn't fit all.
As long as we're individuals that will always be the case.
One size doesn't have to fit all. We should and already have multiple interfaces and we will always have them. We are missing one interface, the drooling moron interface. Just because you personally do not like them doesn't mean they should be ignored. They are 90% of the population and a drooling moron is hard to educate if you haven't noticed.
I like drooling moron interfaces myself, it is convienient when you need to do something simple. For example, do you use netscape to do ftp downloads or do you use ftp? I often use netscape unless I have to get multiple files. I don't use archie any more either, I use www.hotbot.com. Think about it, are we better or worse off with the general populace on the net? Since information on the net is now plentiful (from crap like creation science to gems like astrophysics) I would say we are better off. There is definately more worthless dirt than ever before, but there is so much more gold I don't care.
"As long as the system is easy to use at any level of experience, and allows, but does not require the user to learn anything (s)he might want to about the system, who can possibly have a problem with that? I, for one, don't"
Fine, but no one has yet pointed out to me. Were is the *incentive* to progress from newbie to any other stage[2]? Remember you've taken away any 'hill' for them to overcome. They can progress from level to level. but were is the will to do so? And most importantly what happens to an idividual who doesn't progress in any capacity? What happens to a society were such a thing a rampant?
Why do we need people to progress? Let people do what they want, don't force them. I know plenty of very intelligent and even brilliant people that don't care about the OS as long as Matlab is running on it. An astrophysicist doesn't want to have to muck around with the goddamn OS believe it or not. Nor does an anthropologist. Believe it or not, there are better things to do with your time than to play with an OS. I just happen to be a crossover that works on embedded systems professionally and Linux for fun, like Math still even though I'm getting old at 27 and reads psychology. I'm wierd, most people are on a single track. What are your interests in knowledge besides technology? You better have a long list to demand other people to learn your hobby.
[1] Assuming you know the difference between newbie and idiot.
[2]Assuming no external forces.
All an idiot is is somebody that is ignorant. I'm an idiot about many things. I will always be an idiot about them too. Being an idiot isn't so bad really. I have no incentive, desire, or want to ever lean about organic chemistry except for the rudimentary parts of it. And dammit, I'm not going to change. I'd rather learn to speak French again. I only have so much time to learn so much, don't expect people to have the same interests that you do.
Yes, it does matter. What you conveniently forget is that KDE does not consist of 6 or 7 .debs. There are HUNDREDS of KDE applications out there.
Just how is it a pain in the ass to keep a Debian system working (assuming you're not running unstable, though that works well for me)?
APT fixes all this, my ass. You still have to run apt-get a hundred times to install a hundred packages and you have to run and suffer dselect to find those packages.
According to Linuxland, it will be shipping by the End of April.
I have been VERY VERY unhappy with Caldera support. Caldera has continually marketted itself as being able to support the "Enterprise." If "enterprise" quality support means taking the b.s. that Caldera dishes then I think we are better off with something else.
/w version 2.2.6 of the Linux kernel which provides better support for the AMI MegaRAID controller being used than what it sounds like OpenLinux 2.2 will provide. It is really too bad that Caldera consider "Enterprise level support" to really mean "second best."
I am dealing with using Linux withen a largely Novell (using NDS) enviroment. Other distributions using the 2.0.36 kernel and related Novell NCP utilities could only connect to Novell if the server supports "binary emulation" which our's do not. So, we forked $199 per copy of OpenLinux Standard and another $199 per copy for a year of support. What we got in the way of support made either RedHat or SuSE look like a definate prefered choice for the future...
"Enterprise" quality support via quarterly CD upgrades: the last quarter's CD upgrade was TWO MONTHS LATE. The expected date of release as January 1st. We did not recieve our upgrade CDs until March!
"Enterprise" quality Novell client support: As I said perviously, Caldera has had the advantage over previous distributions of being able to use an NDS Novell enviroment. However, with the 2.2.x kernel, that all changes. RedHat 5.2 upgraded to 2.2.x kernel has NDS Novell support. Caldera 1.3 upgraded to 2.2.x kernel has NO ADDITIONAL NOVELL SUPPORT! The reason is that Caldera's Novell client support all rests on a proritary kernel modules call "nkfs.o" that Caldera has failed to release the source code too. Btw, when a kernel modules loads it is *linked* with the rest of the kernel (anyone care to explain the GPL's position on linking prioritary binaries with GPL'd binaries?)
Caldera has *TWO* support references on the fact that Caldera Novell client support fails with kernel 2.2.x. Both state that Caldera's prioritary nkfs.o module will be made available for newer kernels on Caldera's public ftp site. Despite being able to make their final release of OpenLinux 2.2 available for review with 2.2.5 kernel, Caldera has STILL REFUSED to make the nkfs.o for 2.2.5 kernel available to user's contracting for OpenLinux 1.3 support.
Now that RedHat via kernel 2.2.x can support being used as an NDS client, we will be making the transition to RedHat. Caldera's "support" is too little, too late.
Btw, nkfs (non-kernel file system) is similar (but not compatible) with an open-source kernel module called user-space fs. And Caldera still refuses to release the source code for nkfs.o, despite the fact that nkfs probably contains no trade secrets (the NDS/Novell support is all contained externally in a program that runs outside the kernel) and that GPL *REQUIRES* that the kernel linked nkfs have it's source code available.
Before future versions of Caldera will be considered by my organization, the ability to ensure support of the nkfs module in future kernels must be garrenteed by Caldera releasing nkfs.o's source code under GPL.
Oh, btw... the server we are using to "bring it all together" is running RedHat 5.2
Don't be locked into a specific Linux kernel version... don't use Caldera for Novell client access!
>Mine gripes when it tries to start NFS. No big
>deal, because I know I don't need NFS, but a
>newcomer to Linux might not know that
So why don't you just take NFS out of your init files?
>What apps do you need that are not on Linux?
How about a descent news reader and an email program that don't crash every five minutes?
If you are having problems with Caldera's support, drop them. It is a free enterprise system after all.
I think since he was commenting on newbies, he implied that newbies wouldn't know what an init file is let alone how to comment something out.
That color coded startup process you described for RedHat 6.0 sounds similar to the process for HP-UX 10.20 and 11.0. I always thought it was pretty neat looking, but relatively useless. (Hmph, reminds me of Windows, kind of neat looking on the surface, but relatively devoid of functionality underneath.)
Regardless, a SUCCESS/FAILURE note for each service might help newbies understand their system a little better, so why not.
...To lazy to login right now...
Huh? I don't have any problems with color ls under RH5.2.
Try tin and mailx.
What kind of video card do you have? The frame buffer device has been totally solid for me. I use a Matrox Mystique 220 (1164SG w/ 4MB) at 1152x864 for "text mode".
There's no need to touch the XF86Config with OpenLinux 2.2: Caldera configures it all during :-) Try it, it truely beats that
Installation
RH configurator thinggy.
No, not Netscape...Netscape sucks. IE5 kicks Netscape's butt and leaves it's cleat prints behind (ducking behing a table). Netscape is slow, it crashes (every version that I can remember), it can't even do simple things like handling two IMAP accounts. Netscape has never been very good, but until recently there wasn't any choice.
I want *good* newsreader and email client...a newsreader like Forte Agent and an email clent like OE5, or at least Eudora. The best newsreader is slrn; not that it's that good, it just doesn't have any competition (analogous to Netscape for Linux). For email, M is on the right track, but it's not even close to ready for prime time.
octave is pretty good, but its plotting and visualization (with gnuplot) is way behind matlab's. If I'm wrong, please tell me how
to get good plotting and visualization with
octave. Thanks.
I find myself split on this one. First, Linux was created by someone who wanted an OS to do what he wanted it to do, without the limitations placed on by a closed source. Linux therefore, seems to have been created for users who know what they are doing. Looking at it this way, Linux should not be geared for 'beginners' as much as it should towards a more competent crowd.
Now, having said that, the flip is true. Linux advocates wish to reach out and 'convert' as many computer users as they can. No one should stop this attempt. The OS was made open source so that things like this could take place, and I haven't heard Linus shout this progress down yet.
People, listen up. Unless you have tried and died on your own, or been taught by someone who has tried and died, you are not going to know how to install a Windows product any more than you are Linux. Once Linux is placed on PCs in stores for average PC users to see, and once popular programs become available for Linux, people will see the difference and go with what they want. They won't care about a damn sound card working or not working, as long as the one in the computer they bought plays their games and music! Those of us who use Linux, and have felt the pains of compatability and frustrations of learning a different OS tend to forget that the average user only wants a few things: Get on the internet, play that game they like, run that favorite program of theirs, and not worry about support (or lack of) when something goes wrong. The stability of Linux, and the power it holds may never enter their heads. What they will gravitate to depends on what happens between the time they start the computer and the time they turn it off.
Linux stability will continue to win over the IT and IS crowds. Linux ease of use on the desktop will determine if it will win over the others.
Try using Pine for email and Tin for news. They're the more userfriendly console apps for doing such stuff that i have seen.
Some people also say that Mutt is good.
(I forgot my password, so I'm posting this as AC)
Looks like I was wrong about the ld.so issue - it is a feature of ld.so that was added at version 1.9.8. (Many thanks to the readers who alerted me to this). That means this potential trap is not unique to Caldera.
-Nicholas Petreley
Because people AREN'T trained monkies.
But they are lazy. This is why they use Windows instead of Unix. Unix may be free, but Windows is easy. You're not going to change people.
And you;'re a newbie for what? a few weeks, maybe a month? I am in favor of it being newbie-accessable, I am NOT, however, in favor of it being dumbed down soo much that the newbie effectively STAYS a newbie for the duration.
You just try to teach an adult TECHNOPHOBE how to use Unix. Or windows for that matter. People aren't willing to change no matter how much money and how much effort they have to go through not to change. This is why diet pills and excercise gimmicks have been sold for 50 years.
If you want to progress beyond newbie, that is YOUR choice, forcing a stubborn lazy person that doesn't give a rats ass to learn will make the user choose to stick with Windows. Try it.
Well...eh...I don't think people ARE idiots...and I believe those that call themselves idiots have some serious issues to work out.
Some people are idiots. Other people are lazy. Others just see no reason they should change from something that works to something that is harder to use. They don't care if it costs them $100 bucks, they don't care if it makes Bill Gates richer, why should they. They just want to send and receive email and play video games. They don't care about perl scripts, piping, telnet capabilities, etc. Hey - maybe that's why none of that stuff is in Windows, ya think?
A perfect system does nt, and WILL NOT exist. That is a plain and simple FACT.
A blind assertion carries no weight.
Why? Name a reason. The reason it will never exist with Windows is that there needs to be an artifical reason to upgrade all the time. The reason it can happen with Linux is the source code can be modified by anybody that sees a need to. Linux scales from a 386 all the way up to a Beowulf supercomputer, tell me this isn't closer to a perfect system than Windows 95 or NT.
As for Windows, Linux isn't Windows.
Who said it was? I'm just advocating that we should take the ideas that make Windows work and put them in Linux. This won't hurt Linux in any way whatsoever. The Not Invented Here syndrome is STUPID and has no place in making a technically complete system accessible to everyone.
Drop the idealism. Work with what you've got, not what you wish you had. The people in this society are what you have to design for, not the people that you wish you had in society. We live in a nation where we couldn't convince people to change to the METRIC system for god sakes, you think we can change them from Windows to Linux without giving them a similar interface and making the install easy? You're delusional.
I've had all of the following installed for at least a year each during my Linux career: Caldera OpenLinux, Red Hat Linux, Debian, and Slackware.
Here's what I think:
Slackware is the most fun. Instead of wasting time watching TV nights, you can come home, compile stuff, write all kinds of nifty scripts of your own to do system administration tasks, and so forth and so on. I had a blast for years running Slackware 2.0 all the way up through 3.0, learned something new about a Linux tool every night, and it made me feel as though I was working on one of those venerable old '80s Unix workstations. It was beautiful. Unfortunately, I got a job and school got more intense, and suddenly I didn't have the time to keep it up.
So, I switched to Red Hat 5.0 for the package management and supposed "ease of maintenance". Red Hat's installer is niftier than Slackware's, but once I got going, I discovered that Red Hat has some serious problems and limitations: for some reason, their gcc setup won't compile anything out of the box; better to download and install your own gcc configuration. Red Hat also somehow manages to make it difficult to install anything other than a Red Hat RPM -- getting a downloaded copy of Netscape to run under Red Hat can be a challenge, where it was always easy to do such things with Slackware. In the end, I became frustrated with Red Hat and decided that it was fine for those that didn't want to bang on their systems at all, but for those that did, there was just too much "search and repair" to do.
Then, I switched to Debian 1.x and later, 2.0. Debian was very like Slackware in some ways. During install, I could choose a large number of packages in a very specific way and the dependencies worked well. The package manager is the best, in my opinion, but is also a little harder to work with at first. There were no real problems, and on the whole, Debian is a solid (if slightly personality-less) distribution, and I was fine with it. The amount of software packaged for Debian is incredible, and I preferred the Debian tools to the graphic-based Red Hat tools. Still, Debian just isn't exciting for some reason; it's not shiny metal, more like concrete: strong but uninteresting. This is silly and personal, of course, but it's how I felt. I still used it, though, since I didn't want to go back to Red Hat and didn't feel that I had the time to use Slackware.
Then, someone gave me a free copy of OpenLinux 1.3, and I thought "may as well" and backed up my Debian installation on 8mm and gave OpenLinux a shot. What a system! Install, especially when dealing with odd devices, is better than any of the others (including Red Hat), and is smooth and fast, without a single reboot from the time you insert the floppy to the time you start KDE, which is included and installed for you. It was the first time that a distribution installer had been able to figure out support for both of my printers using LPD and ghostscript, and install both a raw and a PostScript buffer for each, with a filter to automatically route most files to the correct spool. The KDE desktop was preconfigured and included icons for Netscape, BRU, and a bunch of other included applications. Experimenting has led me to believe that the gcc installation is the best of any of the distributions I've tried; nearly everything compiles out of the box. Even the installed threads implementation works, which is amazing for a libc5-based distro. All of the tools were the very latest; I found that I could install a 2.2 kernel, compile, and install it right away without breaking its "Changes" file dependencies or downloading other software.
What am I saying?
I've tried the big four, and of them, I prefer Slackware and OpenLinux. I'm still using OpenLinux 1.3 now, and am seriously considering buying 2.2, though I've also toyed with the idea of going back to Slackware with 4.0.
I've heard lots of people just dismiss OpenLinux as a dying, boring distribution, not worth anybody's time, but I think that what people miss is that OpenLinux has taken the time to get the guts right and make the "unintersting" stuff work (as has Debian), and has then gone the extra distance by including KDE and so forth. In my opinion, it's the most corporate-safe of them all. OpenLinux is quality (which Red Hat sometimes lacks) coupled with intuitiveness (which Debian sometimes lacks) and correctness (which Slackware sometimes lacks). It's the only distribution in my opinion which is similar in quality to commercial Unixes.
I am not a Caldera employee. No, I don't make my own distro. *sigh*
Yeah yeah. I've never reinstalled.
You can just plop the libc5 libraires in say /usr/i486-libc5, add that directory to /etc/ld.so.conf, ldconfig, and voila, use all your old stuff as good as before.
/lib, even though everything on my system was libc5 still. Then I slowly recompiled and redid all my rpms. Oh, I can go on and on of the joy of that experience (much easier than the a.out/elf transition, if anyone remembers back that far)...
I did just this when manually upgrading Redhat 4.2. I did this and put glibc2 in
Alex Bischoff
---
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
The prob isn't the compatability libraries, SuSE, RedHat Debian etc all have them, the prob was the way NP went about upgrading the libraries. I did the same thing to a RedHat system about a year and a half ago. You can't replace the old libs, you have to add the new ones. If you replace the old libs that ldd is linked against you'll bust your system. Also the order of ld.so is important. Also if you pay attention you'll notice that /lib and /usr/lib aren't listed in ld.so.cache.
Ah well, you live and you learn.
Being as MacOS has to be reinstalled on a regular basis it _better_ be a snap.
obsolete, thats what it is
You forgot Blender!
- better package manager: apt is pretty damned amazing. apt-get install <package> and you're set. While ports might be as good as that, apt is not inferior in any way.
- KDE: currently depends on a non-free Qt. Once Qt 2.0 goes gold, it can be included in main, because the QPL meets the requirements of the DFSG, but until then it stays in contrib and non-free.
- more stable: I've never seen anyone show me any sort of evidence either way. When you're dealing with Linux and FreeBSD on PC-style hardware, it is sort of a function of the crap hardware (or not), now isn't it?
FreeBSD may be good, but my pick is Debian. Try both.You can have old libc5 run-time libraries as well as glibc2.1 installed on the same system; in fact it's pretty much suicide not to. The only thing that saying a distribution is "glibc2.1" does is tell you that all of the programs are, by default, linked with glibc2.1. The old libraries are still there, though, just not used by the majority of programs.
He's saying color ls with classify is NOT standard in a default RH install.
/etc/profile and the /etc/bashrc EVERY TIME I install RH. How hard is this to fix?
I have to modify the
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
Put a protected computer running Windows in a Chimpanzee cage with a Linux CD in it and see if the chimps can install Caldera.
Would they have it done in an hour, a day, a week?
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
I don't think they install programs using the same directory layout, but ya, why shouldn't they be compatible? Grab the *.src.rpm and recompile that if you have too.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
Posted by jeremycrabtree:
Me a SNOB?!?!1
Sorry, you'll have to come up with a better rebuttal than that. I just don't like systems that treate users like trained circus monkies.
I'll repeat, there is more to human-computer interaction than 'pretty pictures' and 'cute widgets'.
Posted by OGL:
/etc/ld.so.conf? Can you say incompatible? I hope this goes away once Caldera comepletely makes the transition to libc6. Everything else sounds fine though...it's too bad we just completed our installfest at my school -- perhaps I'll pick up a copy anyway for any random newbie installations I have to perform.
Changing the format of ldconfig and
-W.W.
Posted by jeremycrabtree:
;)
(This is in reaction to several earlier posts)
I am very much annoyed now. Why does it seem like EVERYBODY equates
User Friendly == Newbie Friendly
Where
Newbie == Idiot
User Friendly is first, and foremost, a SUBJECTIVE term. It is NOT quantifiable, it CANNOT be measured.
Second, newbie friendliness is only marginally valuable. You're only a newbie for so long, but you're a user forever. (well...if you use it that long
Third, these "user friendly" tools can become crutches that prevent real learning about the system.
My point? Stop trying to make it so brain-dead a trained monkey could operate it! START trying to make it so simple a reasonably intelligent human being could operate it.
There is a LOT more to human-computer interaction than just 'pretty pictures' and 'cute widgets'.
Something to remember...
If you tell somone s/he is an idiot over and over and over, s/he is likely to start believing you.
Posted by jeremycrabtree:
/HATE/ those 'for dummies' and 'for idiots' books with a passion)
My point? Stop trying to make it so brain-dead a trained monkey could operate it! START trying to make it so simple a reasonably intelligent human being could operate it.
Why?
(bold used to separate my qords from yours)
Because people AREN'T trained monkies.
Your reasoning is spurious. There is NO reason not to make an interface simple to the "newbie".
And you;'re a newbie for what? a few weeks, maybe a month? I am in favor of it being newbie-accessable, I am NOT, however, in favor of it being dumbed down soo much that the newbie effectively STAYS a newbie for the duration.
There is NO reason not to make it accessible to the idiot.
Well...eh...I don't think people ARE idiots...and I believe those that call themselves idiots have some serious issues to work out.
(YES, I
As for the rest of your little rant...
A perfect system does nt, and WILL NOT exist. That is a plain and simple FACT.
As for Windows, Linux isn't Windows.
Posted by jeremycrabtree:
I'll repeat, there is more to human-computer interaction than 'pretty pictures' and 'cute widgets'.
Yes, to a POWER USER who is the traditional user to Unix.
No, not so. In fact, that mentality is what bugged me enough to post in the first place. There is a LOT more it than icons and widgets.
Here, from www.Iarchitect.com
We begin with the system requirements and a few basic rules:
Software must assist the user perform a task, not become a task in itself
Software must not make the user feel stupid
Software must not make the computer appear to be stupid
I think that helps explain my stance.
Before you say it, I am NOT anti-GUI.
(I rather quite enjoy X, ad the assorted WMs available (I've tried almost every wm I could get my hands on))
AFAIK it will ship the week of April 26th.
TedC
TedC
Who care if you don't switch from Windows to Linux? Nobody really. One less script kiddie in the Linux userbase in IMHO...
Hmmm, they're shipping with glibc 2.1 and SO 5.0, eh? How did they get that to work? If it's a hacked version of SO, where can I get it?
My dad was computer hopeless. Once my mom and dad shared a computer. After, oh so many situations where my mom left the computer in a working state, and later I would get a call from her about how dad had fowled it up(please come and repair, I will fix dinner for you) we finally broke down and bought him one of his own.
He is getting better, I have not had a repair call in three weeks now...have not gotten one from mom since the split.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
However for point #2 - the incentive to progress from stage to stage comes from a thirst for knowledge. And that's exactly the way it should be.
There will be people who don't want to know how their computer system works, they will just be glad that it does. There will be others that do want to know how their system works.
(sorry, couldn't resistIf a particular user does not want to learn how some function of his system works, but is forced to do so by an inadequacy in the system, he may learn something, but he won't learn it willingly or well. He'll tinker with it and will almost certainly hit problems because of his lack of knowledge. Maybe he'll work it out, maybe he won't, but he won't enjoy the experience.
(You can lead a horse to water...)
OTOH, if he does not need to learn about that function, because the system can adequately handle it for him, he will leave it alone and it will continue to function properly.
With Linux, it is always possible to get stuck into learning how the system hangs together. It is only useful (and fun) if you want to, otherwise it is downright annoying.
And I don't believe that any-user-friendliness is some sort of unattainable Holy Grail. Linux is almost there already. With the vast diversity and configurability exhibited across different distributions, there should be at least one combination of distribution, apps, UI and configuration that a user will be able to work with easily.
Ahh - My eye!
The doctor said I'm not supposed to get Slashdot in it!
The thing that bothers me most about reviews is the amount that a users background can show through. Maybe this is a good thing since people who use linux are guaranteed to have a background working with something else. We then judge a review by how closely the reviewers background matches our own. The problem with this is that a good review for one person is a bad review for another while everyone assumes that the reviews are one-size-fits-all.
Yes, I belive this was a good review. But I'm a Debian user who hasn't tried any other disributions that is interested in how they compare. Will we ever see a good objective review without any bias from the reviewers background? I doubt it. Will it be of any use if it were made? Probably not. What's my point? I have no clue, except that it would be nice to see a fair review of linux or a linux distribution compared against all the other operating systems and distributions to know what should be fixed without the typical pro-linux or pro-ms or pro-bsd or pro-whatever bias.
If I remember correctly, 2.1 is compatible with 2.0 unless the program depends on specific symbols in the library (something I red on the gnu libc web page although I can't find it now).
...
It should be on http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/libc.html but
/jarek
The RPM program is compatible, but each system's files are set differently, so the contents of the RPMs each system comes with are not compatible.
> KDE: KDE is _neither_ in contrib _nor_ non-free, and nor will it ever change. check bugs.debian.org to see why.
Hmm, might be true. But does it matter? Debian don't want to distribute KDE because it would be illegal for them. (Even if it's no risk) But I ran KDE until GNOME 1.0, installed it from deb's in something like 1.5 minutes and it works just fine in Debian.
So if anyone wants to run KDE in Debian there is no problem att all to do so.
What about the, as it seems, equally newbiefriendly (and "one size fits all, use KDE or get lost") " EasyLinux" that was on /. a while ago?
I think Debian fixed this problem long ago. (With 2.0) I've had both libc5 and glibc2 a long time now and never ever had a problem with it.
But here might be some problem I just have not encountered? I really don't know much about this and I've never had a reason to look into it. It has just always worked.
We live in a nation where we couldn't convince people to change to the METRIC system for god sakes,
That's because the metric system is a tool of the devil....duh!
Caldera Open Administration System, that is. The article gave it a passing mention.
/etc is called for. I'm hoping we'll see enough improvement with Linuxconf or COAS that Joe Avg. Macuser will be able to handle those tasks as well.
/etc/ld.so.conf "when adding new libraries" - does he just mean new libc5 libraries, or would I really have to futz around pointlessly every time I make a semi-weekly upgrade to some bleeding edge libs? If it's the latter, count me out. Red Hat's been supporting libc6 & libc5 programs side by side for a year and a half now without that kind of kludge, and all the trouble I've ever had to take was run "ldd" on libc5 programs to make sure all the libraries they want are in /usr/i486-linux-libc5/lib
It's been in quiet development for at least a year now, Linux Journal claims it's going to be modular, GUI based & vi-compatible, it looks like the only serious competitor to Linuxconf, and it fills the software hole (user friendly & newbie friendly system configuration) that Linux needs most desperately.
Linux is currently at a state where any PC or Mac user could switch to and use it, as long as they had some guru to log in as root whenever mucking around in
A couple more things I'd like to have cleared up:
Is COAS under the GPL like they said it would be? What non-free software (if any) is on the Caldera 2.2 CDs?
Petreley mentions having to muck about with
The best solution, of course, would be if Corel recompiled WP8 (or hurried up on their 2000 product) so I could ditch libc5 compatibility entirely.
Wow... I had this idea a few years ago. I even
messed around with Slackware's installation script
to make it work, but I never did anything with it.
I'm glad to see this happen in a released
distribution though... it's SO much better than
the annoying "Why Win9x is great" messages in
certain other OS install programs.
As for the second half of the post... Windows.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
i am seriously impressed. i use redhat, and don't really have plans to change, but i think n.p.'s description of caldera's install rocks.
why?
1. it installs from windows directly. smart move. i doubt they're as open with their install program as debian and redhat are (which is fine, it's their choice). be nice if the other distributions added a gpl workalike, but then hopefully win9x will go away...
2. tetris. *brilliant* i can see hardware benchmarks now: this new pentium iii cthulu chip is so fast i ony got through 5 levels of tetris during a full caldera linux install. it doesn't just answer the "hard to install" complaint, it takes it out back and shoots it.
3. in general it sounds very "innovative." while bill gates is making innovative a dirty word, caldera has shown it's alive and well in the linux world, and i hope the other distributions can show that innovation is constuctive - not something you use to whallop your cometitors with.
please don't take this in a negative way, but caldera seems a little less open then redhat and debian wrt code they write. even so they've contributed a large amount to the community. i wish them luck and i hope the other distributions see openlinux 2.2 as a constructive challenge. maybe redhat can get xbill going for their distribution.
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
see if it can pass the PHB test! anyway, you can't say the test is passed until the PHB (or mom) can install linux, play around with it and change the graphics card (assume someone else opened the pc and inserted the card)
---
The last thing I need is someone telling me that I need to spend six months to get up to the level of knowledge that I have now with my _own_ operating system (OS/2, if you're wondering). If Caldera is willing to set up tools that allow me to use Linux occasionally without any appreciable downtime, BULLY FOR THEM. And if you really think I need to spend six months to a year so that I can run command line batchfiles, I have better things to do with my time. Get over it.
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
From ftp://ftp.coas.org/pub/FAQ
Q - What license will be used for the release of COAS?
I was wondering, how do they do bootup in a window? Once we get to the rc.sysinit stage
(with reference to a RedHat box), some dinky X server could be started, but until that stage,
what? Has anyone seen this beast? is it just a xterm with scrolling or some KDE app?
The Inscrutable Gargoyle
I know they refer to it as a tetris game, but I don't remember actually seeing a title on the screen. So they can get away with creating a game that doesn't have its own name because it's embedded in another program.
I remember at LinuxWorld Expo when Caldera was demonstrating the GUI OpenLinux install, they got to the tetris game, and the audience exploded into applause louder than when the guy was handing out free software.
hehe, not to sounds chauvanist, but I don't think there's any decent OS out there that can pass the "Mom" test. Mine can browse the internet, email, and use Office apps, but I couldn't imagine her being able to install any OS.
Hopefully, this will be user-friendly enough to attract people from the Windows world. The more user-friendly the install process becomes, the greater the mainstream acceptance for Linux...(and that's what we need for support from hardware manufacturers and software companies!
First:
They also put the System Policy Editor, Windows Batch Setup, and other such goodies the Win95/98 cd. They don't except a user to use them. They expect an admin to use them.
Didn't you read RedHat 6.0?
I've installed RedHat 5.9 last week (since
then it has been removed because of the
frequent core dumps)
Hopefully they'll fix that before the release.
As for colors on the console. The boot is the
only place. They still forget to put colors
or the listing of files. We still have to had
it in a scripts.
Say what?
You don't know what the heck you are talking
about.
I have been using just about every versions that
came around of Netscape for posting and I could
be on a newsgroup for hours and I don't recall
it crashing. I had problem at one time with
the ISP's fix IP which would send netscape
in deep space (and NcFTP as well) but it wasn't
due to Linux or Netscape or NcFTP.
I've tried KDE's news program. It works well
even though I prefer Netscape.
Some people swear by GNU.
There are lots of em.
And at least under Linux it doesn't Melissa you.
"My car gets 40 furlongs to the cord and THAT'S THE WAY I LIKE IT!"
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Linus has personally granted permission for proprietary kernel modules. As Linus is the copyright holder, he can override any provision in the GPL as he pleases.
This should be a FAQ.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Speed is not really the issue with games on Linux. Operating system overheads are small enough not to matter. What does matter is the scheduling policy; "fair" schedulers like those used in Linux are not ideal; rate-based schedulers are much better for "multimedia" applications.
On Windows, games can tell the operating system to get out of the way and not interrupt them while they are running. On a single-user system this is fine. On Windows NT, games can do a similar thing and, mostly, this works. There's no reason why this can't be implemented on Linux; several projects have already done so.
Of course, the question then becomes "what happens when I want to run two or more of these applications at the same time"; a new design of operating system is required to support this.
I'm sure that they will when the official version comes out next week. We should all pressure them to set an iso image on the ftp site as well.
There's always cheapbytes.com...
No joke. I already use linux, because I am a geek and Like networkig, but as soon as they get ride of this library crap, and K office comes out (lookin' good) I think I will be able to start telling my non-geek friends "Hay, you should install linux, it won't crash as often." Right now, i know that they wouldn't be able to do anything once they see a comand prompt. (so really it doesn't matter how good linux is. They still can't use it.)
Ambition is a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy.
The upcoming release of RH 6.0 looks just like how HPUX has started up for quite a long time. Certainly SuSE wasn't the innovator here.
You are right that the keybindings for dselect are
horrible. With my first installation of Debian, I
tried dselect for about a minute before deciding
it was too hard. I then spent about a month
manually installing packages by downloading them
and using dpkg. I then installed Debian on another
computer. I spent two minutes reading the dselect
instructions and then have found dselect easy. The
main problem is that I expected enter to select a
package, and not go back. Apt fixes all this of course.
It seems to me the reason that Linux hasn't already trounced MS is twofold.
The first and possibly biggest reason is the lack of ANY decent installer or config tool (and no, I don't believe there is a SINGLE good one out there). Caldera's Windows based installer is a good attempt at widening Linux's appeal but runs the risk of alienating the diehard Linux-only crowd. GNOME is coming along nicely on the config front but it needs HELP.
The second part of the problem just compounds everything. The almost total lack of support from the hardware front for Linux makes the job of writing an installer harder (can't autodetect hardware that doesn't work with Linux) and keeps our beloved OSS a good way behind what we are able to support. (There have been a few good signs recently, such as Intel's investment in Red Hat, etc., but we've still got a LONG way to go.)
With a GOOD AND COMPLETE installer and config tool set and hardware support as wide as that of Windows, I see nothing but success in Linux's future. Until then...
There comes a time in every man's life when he must say, "No mother! I do not want any more Jell-O!"
They're both great products, but my point was that to woo the GENREAL popluace, you can't expect the "normal" user to ever edit a single .conf file if they don't want to. I know it's almost imposible, but for Linux to triumph, we have to find a way to keep Linux as powerful and configurable as ever (for you and me who know what /dev/cua0 is) but at the same time make it as easy (simple or dumb if you like) to those who like it that way. KDE and GNOME still have a long way to go to that end.
There comes a time in every man's life when he must say, "No mother! I do not want any more Jell-O!"
>the forthcoming RedHat 6.0 is going to have >color-coded "OK" or "FAILED" for service startup
You mean like S.u.S.E. 6.0 ??
I'm so impressed!!
"Keep working at it... you will either succeed, or become an expert."
Unix is user friendly... it just chooses it's friends selectively!!
These people don't do it by informed choice, they do it because they think they can't do the "more advanced" things. One of the rules of user-friendly interfaces - "Don't make users feel stupid".
Unfortunately, windows does by not providing the scripting tools as a part of the OS (and therefore, obviously not easy enough for me). Linux distributions do this by not providing tools to build scripts for common tasks. I remember Windows 3.x had "Windows recorder" (I think it was called).
I don't know exactly what would be appropriate for this, but a GUI app with modules for playing with files from various apps would be useful.
What is more important? Installation or Maintainability. I choose maintainability. How often do you need to install linux? Hopefully not very many. I'd rather have a system that runs, and let me upgrade without any problems. That's why I run Debian.
ok why do I say that I have seen the ditro and it looks good but has a few bugs but updates are a comeing
.conf files so it is perfect for the over 45's office still working in dos spreadsheets they are NEWBIE's and this is what they want !
first caldera is THE distro to Lure 9X users away from their over indulagance in hardware
I managed to get my whole house to go over to it a DirectX programer and a VB (doodler not a programer) and that says something why because they wanted to use something to get work done and Caldera has this and thats it !
it works it dosnt want you to recompile the kernal it dosnt want you to edit
redhat if for performace and tweaks caldera is not ok thats my Veiw anyway
HAVE FUN install it on the office machine and watch people gwap !!!
It's not really about ease of use for me. I don't have a problem with command prompts. Linux just doesn't have the apps that I want to run and need to use for my work.
Linux sounds very cool, but the thing is, I don't really have time nowadays to play with new OSes. I need a compelling reason to switch over, and there isn't really a compelling reason to switch to Linux, besides supposed greater stability, and NT seems stable enough for my needs. Linux doesn't even have the apps that I want, and since I'm really lazy, even if the same apps were available on Linux, I still might not switch because of the time and trouble involved -- I'd expect Linux to offer much much more before switching over (which it doesn't).
MATLAB. What I really want to run now is MATLAB. I know there's MATLAB for Linux, but I don't have it (lame, I know), and I don't think there's a student version for Linux either.
Decent web browser. I think Netscape is horrendous and I don't want to switch back to that. Changing from Netscape to IE improved my computing quality of life more than any other change I remember.
MS Word. WPS8 for Linux still screws up the formating of word documents.
Development environment with nice IDE i.e. something that compares with MS visual studio. In fact, when I was developing a program for unix-systems, I would develop it in Visual studio,then ftp it over and compile it with gcc.
And of course games....
me neither!
then again i never really used MacOS.
Its lame. i don't like things that are lame.
Use OpenBSD! its not lame =P~
"Computers will never truly be free until the last windows user is strangled with the entrails of the last mac user."
Yeh, but unlike SUSE, RedHat doesnt use propriety tools with hidden source code does it?
"Computers will never truly be free until the last windows user is strangled with the entrails of the last mac user."
StarOffice handles MS Word files perfect.
I've used SO5 a lot for compatiblity with people who used it (don't as me why they use it, i think its ugly and silly myself).
but anyway, use SO5 for MS office compatibility.
"Computers will never truly be free until the last windows user is strangled with the entrails of the last mac user."
I've used All (AFAIK) Distros of Linux, and Free, Open and NetBSD (thats why i have no life =) and i can say that the deb package format is better then the ports stuff. the ports stuff works fine, but its no where near apt.
*BSD's hardware support is behind linux's.
And you are generally correct, the BSD 4.4 light varients tend to be slightly more stable. You can really bag the fuck out of a BSD system.
Can with linux to, but BSD handles it a little better.
"Computers will never truly be free until the last windows user is strangled with the entrails of the last mac user."
I donno myself, but i have a friend who thinks he knows everything about linux and he says the LIBC5 is more stable.
Ive been using linux longer then him, and I can say i've never had a problem with glibc2 stuff, cept compiling old libc5 code. He claims he has but lying. Essentially, for some things libc5 *might* be more stable.
"Computers will never truly be free until the last windows user is strangled with the entrails of the last mac user."
COAS IS GPL
It is an open project just like any other OpenSource software. Other distributors are welcome to use it.
If there is one thing holding other distributors like SuSE back, it is their proprietary administration programs (e.g. YaST in the case of SuSE).
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
Independent Author, Consultant and Trainer
Can we say KDE.
I am installing it and I see KDE.
It is installed and rebooting and I see KDE.
LILO goes away and I see KDE.
KDM instead of console and I did not want it nor
select any options to have it run. Heck, I did
not even get a list of packages to choose from.
only three options: minimal, normal and a full install.
I went back three times to see what the
fourth, no-name, check box was, and to see if
I could maybe have some control over what I got
on my machine. Kinda sucks when you loose control
just so that it can be easier to isntall for others.
Oh, well though. I guess that is just the way it must be. Or not?
010110000010110101010100011110010111000001100101
An excellent point. However, what does the user first see of Linux? They'll never see the great maintainance if they can't get past the install.
Please no flames about "If they can't install we don't want them running Linux" since the point of this distribution is expanding Linux to more of a non-hacker audience.
Caldera's site only lists and mentions OpenLinux 1.2 and 1.3; where and what does the 2.2 moniker signify?
Perhaps 2.2 isn't officially out yet? If I were to look for it, where and what should I look for?
Curious, currently running WinNT, want to tinker more with Linux, Caldera's OpenLinux looks like an excellent place to start. Any clues, anyone?
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Nice review...adding in Tetris to the install process was a bright idea...more installers ought to do that. (especially those 40 NT boxes I had to set up last summer)
/usr/i486-linux-libc5/lib in my ld.so.conf. I don't know if Caldera tries the same thing...
I've noticed that the distributions are starting to try to make the Linux startup a little more friendly...the forthcoming RedHat 6.0 is going to have color-coded "OK" or "FAILED" for service startup (although it's still in text mode), and from what I've heard, other distros are similar. The author does bring up a certain concern - newbies are going to react negatively when they see a "failed" message on their screen. Mine gripes when it tries to start NFS. No big deal, because I know I don't need NFS, but a newcomer to Linux might not know that.
One thing I noticed is that the author mentions that RedHat went with glibc while the other vendors went with libc5. The thing is that RedHat does install libc5 compatibility libraries. I've got
RedHat also charges around $40-50 for cdrom version with manual, and you will also be able to download OpenLinux 2.2 for free just as you can currently download all previous versions of OpenLinux from their ftp site.
What the $50 version (of any distrobution) gives you is a cdrom set which alot of people who's only access to the internet currently is a modem (downloading a 500 meg distro at those speeds is almost unfeasible), manual and usually some email or phone based installation tech support.
Highly worth it for a new user or company just starting to check out Linux and doesn't know much more than what they've read about it in P.C. Magazine
I seem to have no trouble at all recompiling my kernel, upgrading programs, libraries, the kernel, etc and performance tweaking all versions of OpenLinux I've ran over the last 3 years.
As far as OL 2.2's install I believe the expert mode is still CLI based, if not it should give you manual control over the setup and hardware if you dont want to use the autoconfiguration wizards.
Plus just changing the runlevel should give you back your CLI on bootup instead of loading KDM.
2.2 might be desinged to be easier for newbies but it will still be fully functional and powerful for the rest of us.
2.2 is supposed to be officially released on Mon April 19th, at least according to a few articles on LinuxToday
I'm wondering what the whole point of this entire argument is.
It's true Linux was formed by a community but not everyone in that community thinks alike. Instead it's formed by various groups that have a common demoninator (Linux) but somtimes very different agenda's.
This is seen very easily in the different distributions, ranging from Debian or SUSE (I forget which one but they only want GNU compatible free software in it without any commercial code at all), to RedHat trying to make screaming easy to install leading edge distributions, to Caldera concentrating on ease of use, more applications to bring Linux into corporation use and dont care if its open source or closed binarys as long as it works to many other distro's.
While one or two groups and/or distributions might try to make Linux easier to use for the newbie, others concentrate on being super configurable and making the user learn every little niche of the OS like Slackware does.
My point here is that this argument along with most big arguments that happen in the Linux community like KDE vs Gnome etc, are pointless.
While there will allways be people and groups who think differently, there will also be a version of Linux or a distribution that matches our agenda or needs.
Making a "version" of Linux more user or newbie friendly doesn't change or hurt Linux itself in the overall sense, and for those newbies who do start out on an easy distribution allways have the choice to move to a different one later on if they decide they want to learn more about the system and have more control over than the current distro gives them.
It was a Simpson's take-off. Abner Simpson (or whoever -- Homer's dad) believes that the Metric System is the tool of the devil (or claims to believe such, anyway).
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
What I think Jeremy is saying is that you we've redefined "user-friendly" to "idiot-friendly." If a system forces a newbie to always remain a newbie, it's "idiot friendly."
Everyone has a different definition of "user friendly." Talk to a tech reporter and he'll define it as being idiot proof. I would define it as being intuitive and having a consistant user interfaces. It has nothing to do with "pretty pictures" and "cute widgets."
Not everyone in the world can be an expert. To expect them to is wrong. To expect to achieve world domination for experts only is stupid. I definitely see newbie distros as well as guru distros in the future. Just look at the audio market: you can buy "user-friendly" stereos with just volume and tuning knobs, or you can buy the audophile systems that let you control everything. Most people are in the middle.
A friendly distribution that doesn't skimp on the power will allow a newbie to become an expert. But if the newbie is rudely dumped to the command line with no clue as what to do next, he'll dump Linux.
Linux has the chance the be the OS for everyone, newbie and expert alike.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Care to back up that claim? Maybe you have some inside info worth sharing.
Aside from concerns about 3D hardware support I can't see how you could justify that. Carmack's comments have indicated that the ammount of platform specific code is quite small. If that's the case you can expect to see Q3 running faster on Linux than Windows simply as a result of lower OS overhead.
3D Hardware support will certainly improve with the comercial sales of a Linux version of Q3. Looking for Windows-level driver support before a major 3D game has been sold for a platform is not realistic.
-sam
I do believe the correct word is P U H!
hehe
Just have to try it to find out. Windows is going down. =)
-- The intelligence on this planet is a constant, but the population is growing. --
is such a computer moron that I have had to restrict his access level on his computer to guest. And I have hidden every single directory other than the one that contains his files
maybe that is one of the really good things about linux... by requiring people to log into the system, and hopefully keeping them from logging in as root this can cut down on the damage they can do. On the other hand that is how you learn... I was never all that competent with computers in college when 3 of my neighbors were CS majors (had a problem they just breezed in and fixed it) once I moved on and had to beging fixing my own problems then I really learned how to use my system. Of course now I have started over again at the moron level in linux (I hope this will be the system for a long time).
My 60-year-old mother successfully installed MacOS 8.5 on her iMac, but since that's not a "real" OS, I guess it doesn't count.
It's good to see a company address the installation issue, though. We're getting close to the newbie/one-button click Linux installation.
Dave
so i say...
slackware!! slackware!! slackware!!
--
hellraiser ( @linuxfreak.com || @nac.net )
awk 'BEGIN { printf "Just another %s hacker\n", ARGV[0] }'
--
hellraiser ( @linuxfreak.com || @nac.net )
awk 'BEGIN { printf "Just another %s hacker\n", ARGV[0] }'
I have been using KDE 1.1 on my desktop for the past couple months and I think it is a very good product for a version 1. If the develpoment team continues to do quality work I think KDE will mature into an excellent , user friendly GUI. A GUI that any computer user will be able to pick up on with very little effort.
My problem with these Linux-on-the-desktop discussions are that the Linux community has just recently begun to make a *real* effort to compete with commercial products for the desktop. The goal of the Linux development team was to make an OS that WORKS, the GUI's and ease-of-install has to come next. I wouldn't expect any Linux distribution to be as easy to use as a Mac or a Windows workstation, or as easy to install. Linux needs a little time to mature. Articles like this lead me to believe that it won't be very long. Lets have a little patience and not get carried away with all the media hype.
I can think of plenty of apps that don't have linux versions. True, I could use wine, but I can't even get linux to detect my SCSI card, so I can't even get it installed.
I'd like to know if this could pass the mom test. Someone should give it to their mom and get her to install and use it without any help...=)
Matt
pj said hi.
-- your knees hurt, don't they?
debian install was pretty easy for me and i basically knew nothing at the time, just spent an hour and a half reading howtos
-- your knees hurt, don't they?
As you said, Matlab is available for Linux. It runs very well, in fact. There might not be a student version...but Octave, a free matlab clone, works better than some stripped-down Student version with restrictions on the sizes of vectors, etc.
And as for browsers and word processing. If you're not willing to change your browser or your word processor in exchange for the obvious long-term benefits of free software, then forget it. There are many IDEs floating around for Linux, too, but we all know coding is really about editing plain ascii text, and for that, emacs or vi are about as good as it gets.
It looks to me like you've got some hidden reason to dislike Caldera. If you've got a valid gripe, at least have the decency not to trash a product while hiding behind a cowardly AC posting. As pointed out, Linus has said non-GPL kernel modules are fine - that's kind of the point of a loadable kernel module, allowing kernel functionality to be wrapped up in a pluggable package that's not really the kernel. If you have another beef with Caldera fine, but you can drop that one. (I've tried most modern Linux distros, and I'd be slightly more likely to recommend Caldera than RedHat to an enterprise client.)
I selected Caldera v1.1 because it was by far the most professional Linux distro on the market at that time. (Heck, it was arguably the *only* professional Linux distro on the market then - RH wasn't really a going concern yet in those days.)
Although I've had minor problems, I have to say I'm impressed enough to seriously consider buying the new 2.2 release. I may also buy the RH 2.2 release when it comes out, but in general, I think Caldera adds a lot of value. (Even Linus admits to using a commercial distro CD to save time and effort when he builds a machine, so streamlined installation has plenty of value to everyone.) I have also recently tried RH5.2, but still prefer Caldera by a bit. I've seldom used Caldera's support, but got decent responses when I did.
I do hope they've done something about their docs, which were deplorable (at least through 1.2) - A Linux manual that doesn't even mention administration, recompiling the kernel (or even bother to mention that you can avoid that in Caldera in most cases by using LISA) really is inadequate.
Let face it folks, there's just not that much difference between modern Linux distros - there's no right or wrong choice here, just a selection of flavors from which to choose! I certainly prefer a Baskin-Robbins Linux OS selection of tasty flavors to the two MS flavors of "tar" and "old dirty socks"...
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Traditionally, they've had a "Lite" version, which is their equivalent to the freely distributable RH version. This is the one that gets pasted inside book covers and the like.
Like RH, they also bundle commercial, non-freely-distributable software into their boxed sets. (For instance, my understanding is that you cannot legally distribute the StarOffice or WP8 CD, even though both are available for "free" eval downloads on the net.)
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
How about a Visio-like vector-drawing program with the automatic connectors and all, and a decent project manager that can at least read and write the Project 98 files that are the de-facto industry standard now?
OpenSource replacements for these would fill about the last remaining gaps, and if they used open (XML?) file formats as their native formats, people would have a good reason to leave MS apps behind to avoid the upgrade treadmill...
As soon as these gaps are plugged, I'm going to Linux full-time.
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
This raises an important question: How well will this handle (the admittedly pathological) case where the system on which the OS is *loaded* is not the same as the system on which it will *run*?
Case in point: I want to load Linux on the Libretto - the only reasonable way to do this is to temporarily transplant the HDD into a desktop machine, do the install, and then reimplant the HDD in the Libretto.
It would be *REALLY* slick if there were an installation option that would defer any hardware-specific mods until the first boot rather than trying to do them as part of the installation process. This is sort of the way Microsoft's OEM OS installs work (ever wonder why that "electronic break the seal" takes so long?), and one of the few things they've done right.
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
>You have absolutely NO FUCKING IDEA what they will do to protect their monopoly
You're very right about MS vs.Linux being a war -- when the DoJ gig is up MS will begin spewing FUDdy crap about Linux to the six corners of the universe, buying off any and every Linux developer with big bucks and hitting with lawyers in every way possible. Marketing & PR comprise much of the battle ground in the "business as warfare" metaphor and the stakes in this war are very, very high.
Combine with this the fact that a huge number of middle and upper IS/IT managers in this country have been socking away their retirement bucks in MS and MS-related stocks (whether they know it or not) and you'll begin to grok just how pervasive the resistance against Linux will be. Better check your own portfolio while you're at it, eh? You'd be surprised at the many ways MS and related stocks effect all sorts of markets.
Linux is very strong in its foundations and can withstand "idiot proof" layers on top provided the foundation is not compromised. The biggest technological mistake MS made was to build their OS foundations on top of a GUI (i.e., they considered the GUI more important) and they ended up with a really crappy OS. Linux builds GUIs on top of an exceptionally strong foundation, which is the way to build anything really complex -- the facade is added after the main structure is built, not before.
To sum up my points:
-it's going to get really ugly if the feds and states wimp out and let MS off with a wrist slap for public consumption (while shaking one another's hand all the while -- if you think the feds are going to risk fscking up the economy, you're dreaming;)
-Linux needs to bring into the fold every single living human body it can; this is best done by appealing to all levels of computer users, from newbies to gods, at their own level.
Linux can win this war easily. Indeed, I think it's our war to lose at this point, so remember:
No contribution is so small that anyone can't make one -- all players have effect.
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
Hmmm, this library problem has been a pain in the proverbial butt for awhile now, perhaps it's time to make a big push and move to glibc6 ASAP. I most certainly would be happy not to have to deal with this library problem any longer and I surely don't want to have Microslug whackin' us on the head about it. My opinion is that the change-over has been put off and ignored for much too long, but for understandable reasons.
The big problem is what to do with all the legacy programs which no one in their right mind wants to lose. Perhaps a community-wide Library Upgrade Festival would work, replete with sponsored prizes for those who convert the most code/programs from the old library to the new, etc.
I've noticed that the Slackware folks are moving to make the glibc6 more inclusive in their new 4.0 distribution (3.6 had run-time support for glibc6 compiled programs -- was great as long as you didn't need to compile.) Most of the other distros have already made or seem to be making moves towards glibc6, so it's surely happening. I can't help feeling as though I'm moving from apartment A to apartment B and it's taking 2 years to make the move complete. Ugh.
Another possible solution is to move to dual library cross-compilers as standard issue. There is a fella who put up a website talking about how to do this -- no mean feat, I assure you. This or something similar seems to be Caldera's solution to the problem and it is a viable solution, although there are some nasty traps and pitfalls for the unwary.
Anyway, something has to be done and do I admire Caldera's attempt at a solution, even if it's only a temporary fix to a lasting problem.
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
Forget Mom test. How about Dad test. My dad is such a computer moron that I have had to restrict his access level on his computer to guest. And I have hidden every single directory other than the one that contains his files. He can use office, netscape (only if the proper profile is already up) and his CAD. He cannot even figure out how to shut down properly or log onto the net. I have to automate everything. If he can install an OS, then I will be impressed!
-Kit
What do you want to run and need to use fo work?
Games? - Quake, Doom, Descent, CTK not 'nuff? High end relational DBMS? Oracle Server 8 not enough? Office Suites? SO5, WPS8, AW not enough? 3d rendering - Povray not enough (it kicks Bryce and 3dSMAX)? Development tools? gcc (incl. cross compiler for m68k, palm pilot, etc), gas, gdb, perl, compilers for Fortran, Modula-2, Modula-3, Interpretors for Lisp, Prolog - not enough? Connectivity - server? Apache, inetd, telnetd, mountd, nfsd... - not enough? Connectivity - client? Netscape, ftp, Real Audio, Shockwave, Shockwave Flash, tin, slrn, elm, pine, emacs,...
What apps do you need that are not on Linux?
k.
MATLAB - Looks like you're looking for "free beer", not "free speech."
IE4, MS Word, Visual Studio - I use all of these tools at work, and they are inferior to the comparable tools that I have on Linux (Netscape, Emacs/LaTex or SO, emacs and ass'td compilers)
But hey, if NT is stable enough for you, and you don't mind running on a proprietary system, and you don't mind coding to a nonstandard, poorly documented, inconsistent API - all the power to you. You have that choice.
However, my original post was in response to your allegation that Linux did not have the tools that you wanted or needed.
But let's see. Why switch to Linux
Open-Source 'nuff said
Basic servers (telnetd, mountd, apache) included
with standard dist.
Dev tools included with dist.
Interoperability that NT doesn't even come close
to. (Appletalk, Novell, NFS...)
Faster, more stable implementation of MS's own
SMB protocol than NT
Available on a variety of h/w platforms.
More stable - don't try to dispute this. You
will lose.
You're not supporting a company that uses
unethical, illegal marketing strategies.
Linux provides a better performance, more robust, more standard, and more open platform to use or to code on.
I'm not sure I understand what the big deal is -- that is, why the hostility? When I read this article, my jaw dropped. "It's really going to happen," I thought. "People all over the place are going to be opening their eyes." Is there a problem with that? Linux installation has never been hard, but now, all the guesswork is taken out for new users. And I don't think flexibility is much of an issue. I'd have to actually use this distribution to really know, but I doubt that the ld.so thing is going to cause a lot of problems. Someone raised on this system will know how to do this stuff. I think it all depends on how much the user likes computers -- if it's a lot, they'll catch on, and in a few years, we'll have a new crop of experts; if it's not a lot, they simply get more stability and satisfaction and we get world domination...
rtfGPL. However, almost all distributions include some commercial software -- Caldera includes a licensed version of Partition Magic, which could be trouble.
And StarOffice is one of those programs that depend on specific symbols.
I am fairly confident that OpenLinux 2.2 has the exact same solution to this problem as Red Hat. It is not a solution specific to any one distribution, it's an option making it possible to specify what kind of libraries are where: the libc5 directory has a =libc5 appended in /etc/ld.so.conf.
/etc/ld.so.conf without understanding what he's doing is likely to screw up his system.
/usr/lib and /usr/local/lib you don't have to mock with /etc/ld.so.conf.
Anybody mocking with
As long as you install your libraries in standard places like
Sure does. Tetris is a neat idea. I remember playing nibbles while loading some C64-games. Sort of the same thing..
// Simon
The reason Caldera is doing this is to make money. They don't seem to care about the "movement", but why should they? There's nothing in the GPL that says you have to wear your heart on your sleeve.
.Xresources and .Xdefaults, I have downloaded enough software that needed to be tweaked that I am getting comfortable with recompiling source, and I have built my own IDE with vim, ddd, and xterm for testing and running tkinfo.
A lot of the above postings seem to take the position of, "What does this mean to me, Al Franken?" Hopefully, it means that there will soon be enough growth in the Linux user market that hardware vendors will provide M$ and Linux drivers and more software vendors will port their applications. If that happens, then even if you use Slackware, you will benefit.
So, let's just hope that this brings another chunk of users over, and stop worrying about whether it passes the litmus test of "good Linux".
BTW, I have been using Calera's distro (currently OpenLinux 1.2) for the past 3 years as my primary home OS. This is because at some time during the week, I also use M$ Win 3x, Win 9x, NT, Sun/OS, AIX, IBM OS/400, IBM VM/ESA, and IBM MVS/ESA, and I didn't feel like spending the time up front learning everything I needed to know to build a usable system. However, in that 3 years, I have finally learned enough about X to edit
So don't knock making it easy to get started.
Is caldera like redhat, I can buy the cds from their homepage, but I can also copy my friends cd
without any legal hassel?
And even sell them officially?
come on and be my god,come on and be my gun.one is for killing,one is for fun